Rep. Lofgren Looks To Reddit To Help Crowdsource Anti-SOPA

from the not-sure-that-will-work dept

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who has been one of the few leaders in Congress when it comes to pushing for real copyright reform and pushing back against the bad proposals of Hollywood, is apparently looking to use Reddit to crowdsource a new bill concerning internet freedom. Earlier this year, we noted that Lofgren had introduced two good bills -- one on ECPA reform (pushing for more privacy for your communications) and one called the Global Internet Freedom Act to create a task force designed to ensure internet freedom. It will be interesting to see how well this works.

Of course, post-SOPA, some on Reddit sought to crowdsource a bill on internet freedom themselves, and the process went a bit off the rails. I don't know that crowdsourcing is the best way to create a bill. I could see how it would be very handy in critiquing and improving an existing bill -- or maybe just generating ideas for a bill -- but if it's just starting from scratch, quality control could be an issue. Either way, this seems like an interesting experiment that will be worth watching.

Filed Under: anti-sopa, copyright, crowdsourcing, internet freedom, zoe lofgren
Companies: reddit

Tomorrow: Internet Freedom Experts Team Up For A Giant Reddit AMA

from the join-us dept

All day tomorrow, Wednesday, October 24, a bunch of people heavily involved in internet freedom causes -- from the SOPA fight to the Declaration for Internet Freedom to work around cybersecurity and the fight against ACTA/TPP are all teaming up for a giant Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything -- or, basically, a big Q&A session). I'm included as one of the folks taking part, but there are plenty of much more interesting people involved, including Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, HipMunk, Breadpig), Ben Huh (Cheezburger), Michael Geist (Canadian copyright expert), along with people from EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen, Open Media, ACLU and a bunch of others as well. It's basically going to go all day, starting from 9am ET. So stop by, ask some questions, and talk about internet freedom... Update: The link to the AMA.

Filed Under: alexis ohanian, ama, ask me anything, ben huh, copyright, internet freedom, michael geist, sopa
Companies: reddit

Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated

from the keeping-up dept

In case you haven't been following last week's big controversy on Reddit, there are a number of debates going on about a variety of topics, concerning free speech, trolling, anonymity and more. The very short version is as follows: there had been some (quite reasonable and understandable) concern about the subreddit /r/CreepShots in which people (almost all of whom are likely to be guys) were posting surreptitiously shot photos of others, usually women, usually focused on sexually objectifying the subjects of the shot. The subreddit was one of a number of similarly disturbing subreddits that focus on objectifying women -- often very young women. Reddit tends to take a mostly hands off approach to this kind of thing, letting the community do what the community does. In extreme cases where the terms of service have been violated (and laws have been broken) stuff gets shut down -- but for the most part, Reddit lets the community police itself. Some Redditors figured out that the best way to deal with information they don't like is with more information and they started exposing information about the moderators of CreepShots, sometimes naming them publicly (and getting a teacher fired for posting cameraphone shots of his students -- ick).

Jezebel published an article about outing CreepShots moderators, and from that came the news that Adrian Chen at Gawker was getting set to expose one of the more well known moderators/trolls on the site, ViolentAcrez. Before this even came out, some of the moderators on one of the most popular subreddit, /r/Politics announced that they were banning links to all Gawker sites "until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity." Chen went on to publish the story anyway -- a well-written, thoroughly detailed story about the guy, Michael Brutsch, who admits to enjoy being a "troll" in order to get a reaction out of people. Over the weekend, Brutsch was apparently fired from his job.

There has been a lot of talk about all of this -- and about the ethics of pretty much everyone involved. Someone named Navneet Alang directly challenged us, claiming that if Facebook had "censored" an article, we'd be "raging" about it -- but that since we're somehow aligned with Reddit, that's not the case.

The truth -- as always -- is a lot more complex. First of all, let me be clear on a few things: I think that /r/CreepShots and various other subreddits like that are very troubling and ethically dubious. I equally think that the decision to ban Gawker stories from certain subreddits was stupid and really counterproductive if the intent was to draw attention away from the article. That said, the goal may have been more to create chilling effects for other journalists. And, on that front, I'm with Adrian Chen. I think he did a fantastic piece of reporting (actual journalism, yay) and should not be punished for doing so. I tend to think it makes the mods who decided to do the ban look childish and, if not directly hypocritical, very much open to charges of hypocrisy.

That said, the situation is not so simple. This is not the same thing as Facebook banning links -- because that's a company's decision that impacts its users. Reddit, on the other hand, has always been driven by its users with the mods having significant power over each subreddit they control. If they want to make a decision like banning every Gawker site -- no matter how stupid and counterproductive such a decision might be -- they have the right to do so. In some ways, the "Facebook analogy" would be more proper if the person had said that any individual had the power to block links on their own wall. Which they do -- and which no one complains about.

The different subreddits are playgrounds controlled by those mods, not by "Reddit" itself. Sometimes amazing things come out of there, and sometimes absolute crap comes out of there. This is the nature of the internet, and shutting down something or silencing one's speech doesn't change any of that. It just reshuffles the deck.

I believe quite strongly in the importance of anonymity online -- but that's mainly to the extent that the government should not be able to force anonymous speech to be connected to the speaker, except in extreme circumstances. That, however, is entirely different than an enterprising reporter discovering the details that connect someone's account to their name. The accusations by various Reddit moderators that this is somehow an unfair "doxxing" seems like an extreme overreaction. Chen put together information and reported on it. That's journalism.

But, at the same time, I think it's unfair to blame Reddit itself or its management for the (admittedly dumb) decision to block links to Gawker. Reddit is very much about what it's community decides it wants to do, and with that comes some good and bad decisions. I can (and will) criticize what I think is a bad decision by the moderators who did this, but that doesn't mean a condemning of Reddit as a whole, any more than criticizing someone who blocks others from posting to his Facebook wall or Google Groups or personal blog, automatically implicates those platform providers.

Free speech does not mean you are free from the consequences of your speech. And, in the end result, this whole situation encapsulates the power of "more speech" being the best answer to "bad speech." A giant conversation has been started and (almost) none of it has involved getting the law involved to step in and decide who is bad and who is good. Instead, in occasionally messy ways, the community is working out its own norms, and that's fascinating to watch.

Filed Under: adrian chen, creepshots, doxxing, free speech, michael brutsch, violentacrez
Companies: reddit

Reddit Sleuths In Action: Highlight How Obama Answered A 'Planted' Question [Update: Or Not?]

from the but-let's-talk-about-rampart dept

Update: There are some good points raised in the comments, showing that the woman in question has responded to the claims and insist that she wasn't a plant.

We were a bit disappointed in how President Obama handled his recent Reddit AMA, giving mostly canned politician's answers to a community that tends to expect a bit more human emotion. It was no Woody Harrelson debacle, but it did seem like a missed opportunity. And, now, some Redditors are suggesting that parts of it were actually stage. Some internet sleuthing pointed out that among the only 10 questions that Obama chose to answer (out of hundreds that were asked almost immediately) was one from someone who appears to have been planted by the administration. The evidence:

• Profile created mere hours before minutes after the AMA was announced, and literally six seconds before asking a well written, paragraph long question (approximate typing speed assuming it was typed after creating the account? 1570 wpm)
• Created a profile 5 minutes 39 seconds after the AMA going live, when servers were having a fit.
• Asked question explicitly requesting ways to recruit the youth that Obama relied on last election (many of whom are disillusioned with him, for all the reasons she presents herself as being subject to)
• Is literally only 1 of 10 questions answered.
• asked by one hmlee who (according to some internet detective work):
  • has only one comment in her history, total
  • Posted a blog entry supporting Obama
  • lists herself as working/having worked as an intern at the Department of Justice

So, is it possible that she heard about it on her own, created an account, and typed up an eloquent question that is a PR man's wet dream all within less than 6 minutes? Yes, it's possible. It's just not particularly likely.

It isn't that surprising that the administration would plant questions, though it is a bit surprising that they thought they'd get away with such a blatantly obvious planting. Why not find a supporter who was an actual Redditor and have them ask the question? Either way, we've pointed out that the key to a good Reddit AMA tends to be showing off your human side. Responding to planted questions with politicians' answers doesn't seem to qualify.

Filed Under: ama, barack obama, planted questions
Companies: reddit

President Obama Does Reddit AMA; Gives Weak Politician's Answer About Internet Freedom

from the that's-not-how-you-do-it dept

The ritualistic "Reddit AMA" has become an important right of passage for lots of interesting people (both famous and not-so-famous). But, there's a pretty clear set of guidelines for how to do one right -- and the first step is to sound like you're a human. That's often difficult for the rich and famous -- and it's doubly true of politicians. Rep. Jared Polis, for example, did a great Reddit AMA. Today, of course, the big news is that President Obama is doing a Reddit AMA -- obviously, the first time that a sitting President (or any US President, I would imagine) has done one. The site has had trouble staying up, but one of the first questions that President Obama chose to answer was about internet freedom, asking "Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?" The President's answer was quite... political.

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.

And while there was originally a there/their typo in the comment (which has since been fixed), the problem with this statement is that it doesn't seem "human." It's a politician's answer, rather than any real commitment. This isn't a surprise, it's just a disappointment. This was a chance to show a real commitment to internet freedom, but instead the answer comes across as wishy-washy. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Filed Under: internet freedom, president obama, reddit ama
Companies: reddit

Meet The Internet Defense League (And Join It, Too)

from the defend-the-internet dept

A bunch of the folks who were instrumental in the SOPA/PIPA fight have been working together over the last few months to build The Internet Defense League, which is launching today. Techdirt is a founding member, along with a number of other organizations and sites, including Reddit, Mozilla, Cheezburger, EFF, Fark, Imgur and more. The process is being driven by the awesome folks at Fight for the Future, who were the ones behind the American Censorship Day effort during the SOPA fight. The launch is today, in part because today is also the day that the new Batman movie opens -- and part of the IDL's concept is that when the internet is at risk, it can shine a "cat signal" to alert the internet to jump in and do something: Believe it or not, they've actually put together a few of these cat signals in real life, so look around tonight in a few cities and you might see one.

Taking a page from Kickstarter, the IDL has set up various tiers to which you can donate to get your own personal mini-cat signal or a t-shirt or some other fun offerings.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Hacking Society gathering, put on by Union Square Ventures. During that discussion, Clay Shirky brought up the idea of an "Internet Volunteer Fire Department" and Tiffiniy Cheng, from Fight for the Future, explained the IDL and how they were already working on it. You can watch that discussion to get a sense of the thinking behind this effort: We're proud and excited to be a part of this effort. We, like many, hope that the IDL is actually a wasted effort and is never actually needed. But, given what we see happening all the time, it seems unlikely that the IDL will never need to be called into action.

Filed Under: defense, free speech, internet, openness
Companies: cheezburger, eff, fark, imgur, internet defense league, mozilla, reddit

Facebook Engineer Apologizes Via Reddit For Accidentally Blocking Imgur Across Facebook

from the web-3.0 dept

Here's an odd one. Yesterday, I saw that a top story in the technology subreddit was a claim that Facebook was blocking Imgur, the popular image hosting service (especially popular with Redditors, but which we use here as well). This screenshot was shown (hosted on Imgur, natch): A few hours later, however, an interesting comment popped up on the Reddit thread, from a user "fisherrider," who claimed to be a Facebook engineer taking responsibility for the situation. What's somewhat stunning is that when companies screw up something, you almost never get this level of honesty about the nature of what happened (especially directly from the person who screwed up):

Hey folks - so this is actually my fault. Literally, I'm the guy who accidentally blocked imgur for a brief period of time today. I'm really sorry. Some background: I'm an engineer who works on the system we use for catching malicious URLs. In the process of dealing with a bad URL that our automated defenses didn't catch, I ran into a rare bug that caused us to incorrectly block some legitimate URLs for a brief time. Right after I figured that out and removed the bad data, I reworked the UI so no one will get bit by the same issue in the future. As a form of apology that I'm sure is insufficient, here is a picture of my dog dressed up for the 4th of July: https://imgur.com/pR4mR

As some have noted, this really is a fantastic apology. It's not filtered through PR and actually seems to come from someone who sounds human -- which is pretty important in the midst of the Reddit faithful. But it should spread beyond just Reddit. When companies screw up, this is a pretty good lesson in how to respond. Admit to the screwup, be clear and honest about it, and explain what happened and what's been done to prevent it from happening again. And... don't let it near a PR person.

Filed Under: apologies, pr
Companies: facebook, imgur, reddit

Healthcare, Journalism, And The Mad Dash For 'The Scoop'

from the getting-back-to-insights dept

As you may have heard, when the Supreme Court came out with its ruling on healthcare, CNN and Fox News jumped the gun and incorrectly reported that the Court had struck down the individual mandate. Fox News corrected the mistake pretty quickly. CNN took a bit longer (and spread the false "breaking news" story far and wide). The whole thing even had President Obama confused for a little while.

It was, of course, also great for late night television. People are referring to this as cable news' "Dewey defeats Truman" moment, while others are arguing that "breaking news is broken." Of course, being a part of the "blogging" world which is often accused by "old media" types of publishing untrue things... there is some element of schadenfreude in being able to see it made clear that the mainstream media is often no better at publishing incorrect things. Of course, some tried to flip this around, and suggest that the problem actually came about because of "new media" thinking around things like "process journalism," though there's a strong argument that reporting before reading something isn't process journalism, it's just bad journalism (i.e., process journalism is about reporting things as additional news comes out -- but in this case, the news was out, the problem was people reporting it before reading it).

A few years ago, uber-blogger Mike Arrington said something that has quite a lot of truth to it: to get attention as an online media player, you generally have to be first, funny or insightful -- and being first is often the easiest, so lots of people concentrate on that. It's the chase for "the scoop." Being funny is powerful, but very, very difficult. And... being insightful takes a lot of time and effort, and is no guarantee of attention. Generally speaking, our goal here has never been to be first with news (in fact, we often wait for others to publish so that we can link to their reports in what we write up). Personally, I like that much better. Focusing just on "the scoop" may be good for traffic in the short term, but especially for big stories like this one, I'm not sure how much value it creates in the long term.

Of course, the realities of gaining traffic often support the quick "scoop" over deeper insight. For example, Reddit -- a potential major firehose of traffic these days -- has its algorithm designed to reward quick, early votes, meaning that longer, thoughtful, insightful pieces almost have no chance, because by the time people have read and thought through them, it's "too late" to have the votes really count.

Some will argue, of course, that this is just a sign of the "bad" side of the internet: valuing quick, dirty and sometimes wrong reporting over longer, more thoughtful work. But I'm not convinced that's true. Again, there are plenty of historical examples of this in pre-internet times as well -- with Dewey Beats Truman being just one of many such examples.

Instead of just mocking those who messed up, or using a bit of confirmation bias to insist that it shows how awful things are in this "real time era," I'd be much more interested to see if we could have a discussion on how to change the incentives. How do we better reward insight and thoughtful commentary over the quick hit-scoop? Is it possible? And, if so, what needs to be done?

Filed Under: first, healthcare, hot news, scoop, scotus, traffic
Companies: cnn, fox news, reddit

Epic Win/Fail: Bullied Bus Monitor Sparks Overwhelming Support, But Also Death Threats To Kids

from the best-of-the-internet,-worst-of-the-internet dept

A few years ago, I noted the seeming irony in the fact that there appeared to be a decent amount of overlap between groups of people doing amazing altruistic things on sites like Reddit, while also doing amazingly troll-tastic things in places like /b/. Groups getting together to "do something" are a powerful force, and often are a powerful force for good. But they can also get out of hand, and turn into questionable mob-like vigilante-ism. However, it's not often that you see both such forces come together in the same story. However, that appears to be the case with the amazing story concerning upstate NY school bus monitor, Karen Klein. If you've been buried under a rock somewhere, Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother, has a low-paying job as a school bus monitor for a middle school in upstate NY (Greece, near Rochester). Middle school kids can be incredibly cruel, and a group of kids spent a bus ride mercilessly mocking Klein and filming the interaction. Someone else saw the video being passed around on Facebook and posted it to YouTube, where it quickly racked up millions of views, with tons of downvotes. The video is heart-wrenching for the cruelty from the boys in question. Just horrifying: It also appears this was not a one-incident either. There are at least two other such videos.

However, in response to this, someone set up an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for Karen to go on vacation. And, wow, did the internet ever come through in a massive outpouring of altruism, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. As of this writing, it's already around half a million and there's still nearly a month to go. That's going to be quite a vacation.

Cue tons of great stories about how wonderful the internet can be.

But... then there's the flipside of it. The part where tons of people on the internet who find out about this story then barrage the school, the kids and anyone they think is related to this with nasty calls and emails including death threats:

The names of some of the alleged perpetrators — all juveniles who have yet to be charged with any crimes — and their parents and details about where they live ended up online. And since Wednesday, they’ve been barraged by death threats and harassing phone calls.

Greece police Capt. Steve Chatterton said Thursday that someone even made a false 911 call claiming there were people being held hostage inside one of the students’ homes. He said officers have been assigned to run special patrols down the youths’ streets to ensure their safety.

“We have a cellphone of one of the boys and he’s received more than 1,000 missed calls and more than 1,000 text messages threatening him,” he said. “Threats to overcome threats do no good.”

Karen herself has come out to say:

“This is going too far,” she said. “This is no better than the kids who did that on the bus.”

Exactly. If you're so upset by people acting totally obnoxiously to someone, there are a lot better ways to express yourself than to call them with a death threat.

Filed Under: altruism, bullying, death threats, karen klein, steve chatterton
Companies: 4chan, indiegogo, reddit

Online Communities Bust Kickstarter Scam

from the well-done dept

Amidst all the recent talk of just how successful Kickstarter has been as a platform for creators raising money, some people have suggested that the company may run into problems down the road because it seems ripe for fraud. Of course, most things are ripe for fraud in one way or another, so Kickstarter isn't exactly special in that regard—and when fraud does happen, people will fight it just like they do anywhere else.

At least, that was certainly the case with a recent video game project on Kickstarter that turned out to be fake. As BetaBeat reports, the crowdsourcing scam was exposed by a crowdsourced investigation:

... a campaign for an action video game, MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods and Men, has just been busted by forum users at Reddit, SomethingAwful and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The creators claimed to be an independent studio, “Little Monster Productions,” of 12 industry veterans in Hollywood. “Our team has done a significant amount of work on the World of Warcraft series as well as Diablo 2 and the original Starcraft,” says the project page.

Bullshit, said the Internet. Turns out the art was cribbed, the text for backer rewards was copied and pasted from another Kickstarter project, and even the office photos were from another game studio, Burton Design Group.

When people brought their accusations to the Kickstarter comments, the developers made a few weak attempts at deflection then quietly shut down having raised just under $5,000 (far short of their goal, so that money won't actually be released). With Kickstarter gaining more attention every day, we're sure to see more attempts at scams—and maybe even some successes—but with a savvy community that polices itself like this, the scammers face an uphill battle.

Filed Under: crowdsourcing, video games
Companies: kickstarter, reddit