"Safeguarding freedom of speech and expression is so important that it is constitutionally protected in most civilised countries, as it is in Sri Lanka. Legislators seeking to address the new problems posed by rapid and articulated dissemination of user generated content must first decide what the priority is. If it is rapid takedown (to avoid situations such as the live-streaming of the Christchurch massacre), the solution is not what is proposed in this bill. By the time the “Online Truth Commission,” likely to be ill-resourced like most regulatory bodies, issues its orders the damage will be done." 
"Safeguarding freedom of speech and expression is so important that it is constitutionally protected in most civilised countries, as it is in Sri Lanka. Legislators seeking to address the new problems posed by rapid and articulated dissemination of user generated content must first decide what the priority is. If it is rapid takedown (to avoid situations such as the live-streaming of the Christchurch massacre), the solution is not what is proposed in this bill. By the time the “Online Truth Commission,” likely to be ill-resourced like most regulatory bodies, issues its orders the damage will be done."
Wijeratne, Y., de Silva, N. (2020). Sinhala Language Corpora and Stopwords from a Decade of Sri Lankan Facebook. LIRNEasia.
Presented by Helani Galpaya, Ayesha Zainudeen and Tharaka Amarasinghe on 22 May 2019 in Colombo, Sri Lanka
The biggest barrier to policing social media is language. Based on a draft LIRNEasia white paper on neural language processing. Published in Foreign Policy.
A whitepaper distilling LIRNEasia's current thoughts on the possibilities and issues with the computation extraction of syntactic and semantic language from digital text.
Nepal performs better on Internet connectivity and mobile phone use than its wealthier neighbors in Asia, our AfterAccess surveys showed.
Seventy-two percent of the Nepali population aged 15-65 owned a mobile phone, and 60% of these were Internet-enabled (feature or smartphone). In addition, 46% of Nepali’s are aware of the Internet – the highest reported number out of the Asian countries included in the report: India, Pakistan, Myanmar Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Presented by Helani Galpaya (@helanigalpaya), CEO, LIRNEasia and Tharaka Amarasinghe (@tharaka89), Research Manager, LIRNEasia on 4 October 2018 in Kathmandu, Nepal
LIRNEasia. (2018). AfterAccess: ICT access and use in Asia and the Global South (Version 1). Colombo: LIRNEasia 
The AfterAccess surveys have revealed that by late 2017 only 13% of Bangladeshis aged 15-65 had EVER used the Internet and social media. This is despite 45% of the same age group owning an Internet-friendly device.
Is this a sign that Facebook is moving into transactions and payments in an even bigger way? Under Facebook’s new emerging technologies group, Mr. Zuckerberg has also created a new team focused on blockchain, a digital ledger that underpins virtual currencies like Bitcoin. The group will be led by David Marcus, who had been overseeing Facebook Messenger, with the mandate of examining how Facebook can incorporate blockchain. Over the last six months, three people who have had conversations with Mr.
In early April, the Indonesian government considered banning Facebook amid concerns of privacy breaches and potential abuse of the platform to influence the upcoming presidential elections through fake news and hate speech. Ibrahim Kholilul Rohman and Ayesha Zainudeen used indicative survey data on the use of social media and other online services by 1,200 Indonesian citizens collected by LIRNEasia in 2017 in this article (Bahasa-Kontan.co.id., English – The Jakarta Post) first published on Tuesday, 24 April 2018.
Here is what Mark Zuckerberg said in his testimony before a Senate Committee: He also said that while Facebook is beefing up its use of AI to spot and remove offensive content, it will be five to 10 years before the company will have tools to do this automatically. So I was correct in my phrasing in the New York Times op ed: Media companies of all kinds must accept responsibility and deploy artificial intelligence and plain old elbow grease to the task. And people of good will must play their part by calling out falsehoods and reporting those responsible. So let’s apply the elbow grease while working on the AI.
Iran is considering a permanent ban on Telegram. To make it effective, they will probably have to go after VPNs too. Interestingly, a lot of the opposition seems to have an economic basis. Is this the basis of Gyanendra’s Law and its various exceptions? For the many small-business owners who use Telegram to market their services and communicate with clients, the ban adds to their financial woes.
Occasionally, I accept invitations to speak on subjects I am still exploring in my mind. The talk I am going to give today at an event called Festival of our Future falls into that category. Should I apologize for not knowing the full and complete answer on how to fix politics? Not really. This is from a book review written by one of the world’s leading political philosophers: In recent decades, American public discourse has become hollow and shrill.
After a weeklong blackout, the Sri Lankan government lifted its nationwide ban on social media on Thursday. Facebook and several other platforms had been shut down after days of violence targeting Muslims in the Kandy district, a popular destination for tourists and pilgrims.
I was asked by the FT about the Facebook shut-down decision of the government. Here is my response: It is true that Facebook as well as Viber, etc. have been, and are being, extensively used by various extremist groups to organize. The climate for this conflagration was created by mainstream media such as Divaina, which gave coverage to hate speech as well as by hate speech messages that were circulated among their circles of friends and family without central direction by members of the majority community using social media, not limited to Facebook. The root cause of the problem lies in this insidious spread of falsehoods and hate over multiple years, not solely in the specific messages being communicated now.