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Final week, Google launched the Nigeria Elections Trends Hub to help the West African nation’s presidential election, which is ready to happen in 37 days. In a press launch shared with TechCabal, the corporate said the Nigeria Elections Traits Hub will empower voters. Nevertheless, the portal solely appears able to catering to the candidates being voted for.
The hub makes use of maps and graphs to match the recognition of presidential candidates and uncover trending searches about them and their events. Talking concerning the device, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Google’s communications and public affairs supervisor for West Africa, mentioned, “We’re empowering voters in order that they don’t seem to be merely watching from afar, however collaborating, partaking with, and shaping the political course of in a democratic approach.” But it surely’s troublesome to see how the hub empowers the on a regular basis Nigerian voter, provided that it appears extra prone to contribute to the recognition of the candidates than to defend or advance the rights of the common Nigerian voter.
A device for the enterprise of politics
The Elections Pattern Hub is hosted by Google Traits, and so they perform identically.
Google Trends is a device that informs the commercial campaigns of small to massive companies for prime engagement and efficient price planning. It makes use of graphs to match the search volumes of various queries over time and analyses their recognition throughout numerous areas and languages. Web site publishers use it to write down about trending matters that may drive site visitors to their websites (search engine optimisation and content material advertising and marketing). In the identical vein, the Elections Pattern Hub presents knowledge that may inform the advertising and marketing campaigns of political events and drive the recognition of their candidates. Media publishers and content material creators who want to remain on high of developments through the election season may also use them to drive their content material methods. From all indications, the Nigeria Elections Pattern Hub serves the curiosity of contesting politicians, not voters, however it’s being marketed as voter-focused as a substitute.
Nevertheless, Google does have some voter-centered applied sciences. Voters in Africa face issues equivalent to misinformation and disinformation, censorship, internet shutdowns, bodily violence, cyberattacks, and so forth. Google has a couple of instruments to attempt to resolve these issues, protect the democratic rights of voters, and empower voters to make use of them.
Google for voters
Google has a mission referred to as Protect Your Democracy, which affords free instruments that purpose to guard public entry to the free and open internet, defend voters’ private info from cyber theft and abuse, and defend their well-being as they take part in election-related actions on-line. The instruments within the mission embrace Define, Intra, Challenge Defend, Perspective, and Truth Verify Explorer.
The Outline tool
Google’s device, Outline, protects customers from state-mandated internet shutdowns.
Throughout political contestations, equivalent to protests or elections, governments sometimes shut down web companies. In 2021, 12 nations minimize web entry 19 instances in Africa. This consists of Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan, Cameroon, and Nigeria.
Nigeria has not skilled a nationwide web shutdown; nonetheless, in 2021, the federal government blocked its residents’ entry to the social media platform Twitter after the platform deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, claiming it was in violation of Twitter guidelines. Previous to that, the federal government had been threatening residents with social media regulation after Twitter performed a central position within the EndSars protest. The Twitter ban lasted for about seven months, throughout which customers had been solely capable of entry the platform utilizing Digital Non-public Community (VPN) apps.
Outline makes it straightforward for anybody to create their very own VPN and bypass web shutdowns. It additionally has independently audited safety controls and powerful encryption to assist preserve communications non-public.
Intra and Project Shield
Intra and Project Shield are instruments that may empower voters by defending their entry to info through the election interval.
Intra is an Android app that goals to stop Area Identify Server (DNS) manipulation, a type of cyberattack that can be utilized to dam web sites and steal individuals’s info. Challenge Defend is a free service that protects web sites that monitor the information, human rights, and elections from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults.
Throughout elections, DDoS can be utilized to take down web sites like election monitoring web sites that supply important election info equivalent to stay stories of vote counts. Final yr, Nigeria’s Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee (INEC) reported that its result-viewing portal was unsuccessfully attacked by hackers through the current governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states. In one other West African nation, Ghana, the electoral fee web site additionally skilled a cyber assault. The hackers had been reportedly trying to place up faux outcomes.
The assaults that journalists expertise throughout politically delicate durations should not solely bodily. A number of have reported experiencing cyberattacks that rendered their web sites inaccessible for hours after publishing stories that pose threats to their governments. HumAngle claims that it skilled one thing comparable after it printed a report that disputed what the navy claimed occurred through the #EndSARS protest in Nigeria.
Challenge Defend gives resilience to such necessary web sites to maintain them on-line for entry by voters despite assaults. It makes use of Google Cloud Armor to ship limitless defence towards any form of cyberattack that shuts down web sites with a purpose to suppress content material.
Fact Check Explorer
Google can be striving towards misinformation and disinformation, which turn out to be rampant throughout elections. The Fact Check Explorer works identical to Google search. It means that you can seek for matters, occasions, or statements which have been fact-checked. For instance, you may seek for a politician’s assertion and see if a reality checker or journalist has decided that they really mentioned it or if it was fabricated info or a parody. You possibly can seek for something, from particular matters to full politicians’ quotes.
The Truth Verify Explorer is just not part of Google’s Defend Your Democracy mission, so Google doesn’t endorse any of the printed reality checks. Nevertheless, any fact-checker, journalist, or researcher can publish their declare critiques utilizing Google’s Fact Check Markup Tool. In case you publish an internet web page that critiques a declare, you should utilize the Truth Verify Markup to allow a summarized model of it to pop up when individuals seek for it.
Perspective
On-line harassment peaks round elections and silences influential voices in discourse, pushing those that are already excluded offline. Social media content material and conversations are more and more contributing to election violence, and social media platforms like Facebook have come beneath fireplace for insufficient moderation of content material that has been instantly linked to politically motivated violence in African nations.
Perspective is a device for dialog moderation that may help moderators in eradicating offensive or abusive remarks whereas fostering productive discourse with out stifling free expression. The self-serve API can help publishers and builders to facilitate safer on-line dialogues on their platforms by utilising machine studying to establish poisonous language.
