DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression Mechanisms for reporting can themselves be a tool of transnational repression. Malicious reporting, in which users submit spurious complaints about content violations in order to have accounts suspended or posts removed, is a concern across multiple diasporas and platforms. Rwandan exile David Himbara alleges that progovernment accounts successfully instigated the removal of some of his Facebook posts by reporting them en masse. Facebook restored the posts after Himbara filed an appeal.143 The Instagram page of Pashaei’s organization was reported after he criticized Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. He explained that the organization contacted Instagram and was able to restore the page, “but actually we lost it [again] last month, and it never came back.” He said the experience with mass reporting was disheartening and made him feel like technology companies were not on the side of activists: “I don’t care if I get a daily threat, every day. But at least protect us, support us. So we don’t lose our page and our personal pages that we have been working on.” The necessity and burden of documentation Problems with reporting are closely related to those presented by the task of documentation. Records of digital transnational repression are necessary to support research and advocacy by civil society, and for use as evidence for any possible criminal prosecution. However, the burden of documentation currently falls on the shoulders of people targeted with transnational repression. The task is time consuming and entails repeated exposure to trauma. As Samuel Chu explained, “[US law enforcement says] ‘people should have screenshots. And sometimes people get threatening calls, and they just throw away the whole phone.’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah, because that’s really stressful, and I might also throw away my phone if I got a bunch of threatening phone calls. That actually might be my first move, is just to throw it away.’” As with reporting, the challenges associated with documenting online abuse are not unique to transnational repression. Some documentation aids already exist. Twitter provides users with an option to prepare a report for law enforcement when they inform the platform of a violent threat.144 Twitter also recently partnered with Jigsaw to launch Harassment Manager, a tool intended to help users document and manage abuse.145 The rollout was aimed at women journalists, who face heightened levels of abuse online. Crucially, the tool gives users autonomy on how to handle abusive content, including the ability to review and sort posts and to decide whether to mute, block, or hide 32 @FreedomHouse harassing posts. Diaspora groups that are known to face transnational repression could benefit from Harassment Manager or similar tools. There is an opportunity to educate vulnerable groups about the importance of documentation, but any educational efforts should be paired with measures by technology companies and civil society groups to alleviate the time requirements and emotional costs of documentation. Toward a proactive and coordinated response to digital transnational repression People subjected to digital transnational repression should not have to fend off attacks on their own. Governments, companies, and civil society all have a role to play, and interviewees repeatedly expressed their desire for a renewed focus on the problem, including systematic efforts to identify perpetrators: “We know harassment happens. I think that the next step is figuring out who is on the other side of it, and who are the people, and the organizations and entities that are conducting that. I think that that would help a great deal.”146 Government responses to transnational repression in general will be incomplete if they do not account for the phenomenon of digital attacks. Similarly, technology companies cannot address online harms more broadly without an understanding of transnational repression. They should increase their awareness of the threat and recognize its intersection with existing policy concerns such as content moderation, harassment, foreign influence operations, cybersecurity, and privacy. Company-wide strategies that unite these streams of work could improve platform resilience in the face of transnational repression. A collaborative approach, in which governments and technology companies consult with civil society and targeted individuals and groups, will yield the best results. Civil society organizations should continue to provide trusted resources on digital hygiene, shed light on the inevitable evolution of tactics, and help bridge communication gaps among vulnerable groups, technology companies, and governments. Given the rapid development of digital technology and its ability to connect people around the globe, autocrats will work vigorously to adapt their practices and maintain pressure on extraterritorial dissent. Defenders of democracy and human rights must outpace these efforts through careful coordination and a shared commitment to proactive, constantly improving strategies for resisting digital transnational repression. #TransnationalRepression