What does it mean to recognise Palestinian statehood?
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Why Hannah Ferguson and Maria Ressa are sounding the alarm about social media disinformation
When Hannah Ferguson started Cheek Media five years ago, she wanted to create space for young Australians to engage with the deeply fun and the deeply serious. Like many gen zs, she felt let down by legacy media, and believed there was a better way to connect young people with politics and news. Fast forward to the present, Hannah Ferguson's biting political commentary and social media prowess have helped her amass a following of more 290,000 across her Cheek Media and personal Instagram accounts. Before Australia's 2025 federal election, more than 4 million people viewed Ms Ferguson's content, with thousands watching a "get ready with me" reel before her interview with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. "[Social media has] been an incredible tool for change and starting social impact conversations around politics, education and media literacy," she tells ABC TV's Compass. While Ms Ferguson is proud of organically building an online community — and one that cares deeply about social, political and feminist issues — she says that being a social media commentator has come at a cost. "Trying to lead hopeful conversations [has] come with threats to my life, threats to my safety, threats to my family," she says. She is also wary of the broader implications of social media. "The algorithms push inflammatory material, and we are so used to that," she says. Despite her online success, Ms Ferguson says there have been times when she's looked in the mirror and asked: "Is this doing more harm than good?" "The way that information is spreading right now is so volatile and so inflammatory and divided that we do not have a sense of a shared truth," she says. Ms Ferguson points to how social media has helped fuel political instability in places such as the United States. "Our system of compulsory preferential voting is inherently different to the United States, but to say [Trump-style politics] couldn't happen here is naïve," she says. "We need to be aware about what we're consuming and how that can look in Australia." Like Ms Ferguson, Philippines-based investigative journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa is alarmed by the pollution of our information ecosystem. She's reported from war zones, written about terrorism and online radicalisation, and risked her life fighting for press freedom. For her, social media poses an existential threat because of the way it proliferates lies. Ms Ressa's fears are not unfounded. A MIT study from 2018 found that lies travelled six times faster than the facts on Twitter. That was before Elon Musk took over the platform and fired moderators tracking hate and other harmful content. As the co-founder of the Philippines' first digital news outlet, Rappler, Ms Ressa knows the real-world consequences of disinformation. Back in 2016, she and her team witnessed how social media was weaponised after the election of "strongman" president Rodrigo Duterte. Rappler uncovered an online network of bots, fake accounts and influencers that supported Duterte and his anti-drug campaign that killed thousands of Filipinos. When Ms Ressa published the story, both she and Rappler were viciously attacked online. She says a smear campaign was launched against the news group, and she was bombarded with an average of 90 hate messages per hour. This spilled into the real-world, when Ms Ressa was arrested for various charges, including tax evasion and cyber libel. She faced cumulative jail sentences of up to 100 years, with Amnesty International calling it "brazenly politically motivated". While Ms Ressa has been acquitted of most charges, her speaking out still comes with risk. And yet, she remains a vocal critic of big tech and its sustained role in the undermining of modern democracies. Experts and whistleblowers from social media companies have raised similar concerns. Online algorithms can manipulate our emotions, stoke division, and set the stage for violence and political unrest. Last year, riots erupted across England after social media posts falsely accused a Muslim asylum seeker of stabbing three young girls in Southport. It exemplified how platforms can amplify hate and fracture social cohesion. These problems are surfacing on Australian shores, too. National technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre and ABC NEWS Verify discovered that a Pro-Russian news website attempted to "poison" AI chatbots with propaganda in this lead up to the 2025 federal election. An audit found that 16.66 per cent of the chatbots' answers amplified the false narrative they were fed. This included disinformation related to Australian politics. For instance, when asked about an "Australian Muslim Party" — which does not exist — two AI models returned answers suggesting it did. The Australian government attempted to address this issue through the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2024, but it failed to pass through Parliament. Criticism of the bill came from all sides. It ranged from fears over the suppression of free speech to concerns about poor implementation and government overreach. But there is some social media legislation coming into effect. From December, Australians under the age of 16 will be banned from accessing social media, now including YouTube. Maria Ressa supports regulation, but says more can be done. She wants to see the design of social media platforms overhauled, and new restrictions on the collection of users' data. Working alongside her Nobel Peace Prize counterpart Dmitry Muratov, she has devised an ambitious 10-point plan to tackle this. She also believes journalists, institutions and governments need to work together to protect the integrity of facts and the future of democracy. "Without facts, you can't have truth, without truth, you can't have trust," she warns. "Without these three things, you can't have a shared reality. Watch All Eyes On Big Tech on Compass tonight at 6:30pm on ABC TV and iview.
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Hamas says it won't disarm unless independent Palestinian state established
Hamas has said it would not lay down arms unless an independent Palestinian state is established. Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel aimed at securing a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza war and a deal for the release of hostages ended last week in deadlock. In a statement, the Palestinian militant faction said its "armed resistance … cannot be relinquished except through the full restoration of our national rights, foremost among them the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital".
News.com.au
11 hours ago
- News.com.au
US envoy meets Israeli hostage families in Tel Aviv
US envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday met the anguished families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, as fears for the captives' survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack. Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum confirmed the meeting was underway and videos shared online showed Witkoff arriving as families chanted "Bring them home!" and "We need your help." The visit came one day after Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza, to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory. Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP in the square: "The war needs to end. The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so. "The Israeli government must be stopped. For our sakes, for our soldiers' sakes, for our hostages' sakes, for our sons and for the future generations of everybody in the Middle East." After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying that Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages. The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely. But talks broke down last month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is under increasing domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead. He is also facing international calls to open Gaza's borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation. - 'Without rest' - But Israel's top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting in Gaza if the hostages were not released. "I estimate that in the coming days we will know whether we can reach an agreement for the release of our hostages," said army chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, according to a military statement. "If not, the combat will continue without rest," he said, during remarks to officers inside Gaza on Friday. Of the 251 people who were kidnapped from Israel during Hamas's attack in October 2023, 49 remain in Gaza, 27 of them dead, according to the military. Palestinian armed groups this week released two videos of hostages looking emaciated and weak. Zamir denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza. "The current campaign of false accusations of intentional starvation is a deliberate, timed, and deceitful attempt to accuse the IDF (Israeli military), a moral army, of war crimes," he said. "The ones responsible for the killing and suffering of the residents in the Gaza Strip is Hamas." Hamas's 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures. A total of 898 Israeli soldiers have also been killed, according to the military. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN. - Civilian deaths - Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed 21 people in the territory on Saturday. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said two people were killed and another 26 injured after an Israeli strike on a central Gaza area where Palestinians had gathered before a food distribution point run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). He added that Saturday's bombings mostly targeted the areas near the southern city of Khan Yunis and Gaza City in the north. Witkoff visited another GHF site for five hours on Friday, promising that Trump would come up with a plan to better feed civilians. Adnan Abu Hasna, of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told AFP that the agency had "approximately 6,000 trucks ready for the Gaza Strip, but the crossings are closed by political decision. There are five land crossings into the Strip through which 1,000 trucks can enter daily." The UN human rights office in the Palestinian territories on Friday said at least 1,373 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza had been killed since May 27, most of them by the Israeli military. Israel's military insist that soldiers never deliberately target civilians and accuses Hamas fighters of looting UN and humanitarian aid trucks.
