Digital Democracy Charter

Our democracies are awash in digital disinformation. It manipulates political viewpoint, distorts electoral outcomes, and threatens the integrity of self-government rooted in rational public debate. This phenomenon accompanies a paradigm shift in information markets as the Internet displaces traditional media as the primary distribution channel for news. We now stand at an inflection point. Our democracies are being pulled apart by the abuse of technologies that were once heralded as liberatory. We must design a public policy response to steer technological development back towards serving the well-being of democratic society. There are no single-solutions that can meaningfully change outcomes. Only a combination of policies -- all of which are necessary and none of which are sufficient by themselves -- will show results over time. We have been developing this policy agenda over the past 18 months - the Digital Democracy Charter. Built on the foundations of ON sponsored research and already well received by several governments, we hope to work with the Paris Peace Forum to bring it to scale. In order to confront the global nature of this problem, we need a global response. We need 10s of countries to take these Principles on board. Disinformation techniques know no boundaries and have rapidly been taken up by autocrats, extremists and populists the world over.