A/HRC/29/37 with Veri.ly.48 Alternatively, Checkdesk, a platform designed for individual newsrooms, allows for collaborative and transparent verification among members of a bounded crowd. 88. While the technical difficulty of verification should not be exaggerated, its importance cannot be overstated. If used by a human rights organization, unverified material can lead to the degradation of the organization’s credibility, but hoaxes can also create combustible situations — so-called “digital wildfires” — that can lead to violence.49 Many States already have laws limiting freedom of expression for reasons such as incitement of violence or panic, but they are struggling with how to apply those laws effectively to online activities. Any regulation in that area will remain complex and controversial; it has been suggested that the online community itself must fill the gap, with important roles for community curators and moderators. 50 The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance reported to the Human Rights Council in 2014 on the complex challenges for his mandate posed by the Internet and social media (A/HRC/26/49). In addition to pointing out policies developed by some of the major social media sites, he also highlighted the importance of civil society initiatives. 4. Using digital evidence 89. Most of the information that can be captured through the streams described above is “convenience data”, but its value to a human rights investigation cannot always be immediately assessed. Moreover, it is important not to privilege images as much can also be learned from blogs or micro-blogs, which can be used to corroborate other sources. 90. While verification subsidies potentially speed up the verification process, using them requires digital literacy about verification among human rights fact-finders and civilian witnesses. It is unclear how knowledge about producing and transmitting information effectively, safely and ethically for evidence will be diffused among civilian witnesses, particularly those who are acting in a truly spontaneous manner. Pre-emptive steps to train human rights monitors will favour the prepared, but it is often the accidental witnesses who are best placed to be truly informative. 91. For that reason, organizations such as WITNESS advocate for the standard inclusion of an “eyewitness��� or “proof” mode, resembling InformaCam, in preloaded photo and video applications on smartphones and in social media platforms.51 The inclusion of those features in mainstream applications and platforms means that civilian witnesses are more likely to know about them and thus to use them. F. Use of information and communications technologies by human rights mechanisms 92. Thus far, the present report has addressed the applications of ICTs in human rights work in general, rather than their use by the international machinery for the protection of human rights. It is important that the international community be open to these new 48 49 50 51 See Victor Naroditskiy, “Veri.ly – getting the facts straight during humanitarian disasters”, (August 2014), www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-08-13-verily-getting-facts-straight-during-humanitariandisasters. This issue was raised in the World Economic Forum Global Risks report, 8th ed. (2013), pp. 23–27. See Lee Howell, “Only you can prevent digital wildfires” (8 January 2013), www.nytimes.com/ 2013/01/09/opinion/only-you-can-prevent-digital-wildfires.html. Sam Gregory “How an Eyewitness mode helps activists (and others) be trusted”, WITNESS Blog (3 March 2014), http://blog.witness.org/2014/03/eyewitness-mode-helps-activists/. 17