PewDiePie Dives Into The Mark Fitzpatrick, Toei Animation Saga

from the pew-pew-pew! dept

We had just been talking about how Mark Fitzpatrick, a YouTube personality who focuses on doing reviews and let's draws for anime properties, had been targeted by Toei Animation for the takedown of over a 150 of his videos over copyright claims. Toei is the animation house for several popular animes, including the Dragon Ball series. While Fitzpatrick's videos fall squarely in the category of fair use, as they are chiefly commentary and reviews that use snippets of the animes in question in order to illustrate points, because of the onerous way YouTube enforces such claims, his videos were taken down first and remain down at the time of this writing.

Well, if Toei was hoping this would all fly under the radar, it most certainly is not. Fitzpatrick's own video complaining about how Toei is behaving itself has over 700k views. And now streaming icon Pewdiepie is inserting himself into all of this, squarely on on Fitzpatrick's side.

On December 9, PewDiePie uploaded a video reacting to Toei’s apparent mass copyright strike against Fitzpatrick, calling the studio a “big-shot company that couldn’t care less about some random anime YouTuber.”

“Japan is so notoriously dumb when it comes to copyright,” he said. “Backwards thinking or just overall lacking in what most people agree is Fair Use and not. They just don’t care. They’re a big company. That’s it.”

Now, I'm not in love with Pewdiepie's phrasing in all of this, but he certainly is correct that the manner in which Japan has constructed its copyright laws is highly problematic. There is a reason that plenty of nations have built in fair use provisions into their copyright laws and they are for situations just like this. Nothing about the use in Fitzpatrick's videos in any way threatens the business of Toei Animation. There may certainly be some commentary in his videos that Toei doesn't like, but that's a different thing. Copyright laws in general weren't created in order to give content creators the ability to suppress commentary; they were supposed to be a method for protecting the business interests of creators. Instead, there are several carveouts in Japanese copyright law that were added specifically to grant more control over how content is used for the anime and manga industries.

Pewdiepie is also no dummy on this stuff. It's his business, after all, and he knows enough about it to point to past examples of how badly this all works when it comes to properties coming out of Japan.

Kjellberg went on to compare Toei’s copyright claims to Nintendo’s failed creator program, which allowed creators to use game footage and music — provided they split their revenue.

“I think it’s important that we call these things out, so that hopefully they can listen,” PewDiePie continued. “This, what happened to Mark, just really highlights a huge issue with YouTube.”

And he then turned his sights on YouTube in full, arguing that the manner in which the platform enforces copyright claims is extremely tilted against YouTube creators.

“Any day, your livelihood on YouTube could get removed, because some big company decided, out of the blue: ‘That, no. Stop that,'” he added.

To be fair to YouTube, as I stated in the previous post on Fitzpatrick's tribulations, this is not an easy problem to solve. But it is a problem and YouTube honestly doesn't seem to be doing much about it. If that continues, there's no reason why the struggles Twitch has had retaining its creative community couldn't happen to YouTube as well.

Filed Under: anime, copyright, copyright strikes, dmca, fair use, mark fitzpatrick, pewdiepie, reviews
Companies: toei animation

Texas Says Its Unconstitutional Content Moderation Law Should Still Go Into Effect While We Wait For Appeal; Judge: 'No, That's Not How This Works'

from the good-judge dept

Last week, the district court Judge Robert Pitman wrote an excellent ruling tossing out Texas' silly content moderation law as clearly unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment. As was widely expected, Texas has appealed the ruling to the 5th Circuit (undeniably, the wackiest of the Circuits, so who knows what may happen). However, in the meantime, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also asked the lower court to have the law go into effect while waiting for the appeals court to rule!

A stay is also supported by the widely recognized principle that enjoining a state law inflicts irreparable harm on the state, and that the public’s interest is aligned with the state’s interest and harm. Plaintiffs, in contrast, will not be irreparably harmed if a stay is granted. This is evidenced by the fact that (1) their supportive members stated they either already comply with aspects of the law or could not explain how the law would be burdensome in practice; and (2) Plaintiffs’ other members, filing as amici in opposition to the Preliminary Injunction, have demonstrated no harm will occur by enforcement of H.B. 20. For all these reasons, as further set forth below, a temporary stay while the Fifth Circuit considers the merits of this Court’s Preliminary Injunction is warranted.

It is really incredible:

The Attorney General has also raised questions never considered by the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court as to common carriage and the First Amendment. Correspondingly, the Attorney General has demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits regarding Plaintiffs’ claims. While this Court may have rejected the Attorney General’s arguments, it did so by relying on readily distinguishable First Amendment case law and giving dispositive weight to a novel “fact”: whether the entity “screen[s] and sometimes moderate[s] or curate[s]” user generated content.

Therefore, given the novel nature of Plaintiffs’ claims and the substantial support for the Attorney General’s arguments, the Court of Appeals should have an opportunity to consider these issues before the injunction is implemented.

Basically, "even though we lost easily, we really made the better arguments, so therefore you should let the law go into effect." It's nonsense.

Remember, the key reason that the judge blocked the law from going into effect was because it so obviously violates the 1st Amendment, so letting the law go into effect fundamentally would violate 1st Amendment rights. Texas' argument here that blocking the law from going into effect "inflicts irreparable harm on the state" is positively bizarre. "If we can't violate the 1st Amendment rights of websites, then we're irreparably harmed" is a dumb argument. The plaintiffs in the case, NetChoice and CCIA fired back with the proper "LOL, wut?" opposition brief, though most of that focused on Paxton wanting the other parts of the case to continue to move forward in the district court while the appeal is happening (and basically to get into the intrusive discovery process).

The judge wasted little time in rejecting Paxton's nonsense:

The State largely rehashes the same arguments this Court rejected in its Order. The State’s new argument—that the preliminary injunction is overbroad—also asserts, again, that HB 20 is not unconstitutional. (Id. at 13). However, the Court already found that Plaintiffs are likely to establish that Sections 2 and 7 of HB 20 are unconstitutional and, as a result, fashioned a narrow, preliminary injunction. The Court is also not persuaded by the State’s contention that preliminarily enjoining the enforcement of Section 2—which contains disclosure requirements—was too broad a remedy because one of Plaintiffs’ members happens to already satisfy “several” disclosure requirements. (Id. at 13). Whether one of Plaintiffs’ members makes a business decision to publish certain disclosures, even if a few of those disclosures align with Section 2’s requirements, does not impact this Court’s decision that the State cannot constitutionally enforce Section 2’s many requirements imposed on social media platforms. Accordingly, the Court declines to stay its Order.

It also sides with NetChoice in staying the other parts of the case until after the appeal.

To preserve court resources and for judicial efficiency, whatever the posture of this case when it returns to this Court, the Court will exercise its discretion to stay this case and preserve its current posture

In other words, no, Paxton, you're not likely to succeed, and if you do, we can take up the issue then...

Filed Under: 1st amendment, appeals, content moderation, robert pitman, texas
Companies: ccia, netchoice

Polish Prosecutor First Beneficiary Of Apple's 'You've Been Hacked By NSO Spyware' Notification Program

from the anything-that-screws-with-NSO-and-its-customers-is-fine-with-me dept

Concurrent with Apple's announcement that it was suing Israeli tech company NSO Group over its iPhone exploits was its announcement that it would be notifying customers of suspected hacking attempts utilizing NSO's extremely powerful Pegasus malware.

Apple is notifying the small number of users that it discovered may have been targeted by FORCEDENTRY. Any time Apple discovers activity consistent with a state-sponsored spyware attack, Apple will notify the affected users in accordance with industry best practices.

Unlike Apple's lawsuit -- which might nudge the CFAA towards a more expansive interpretation of "unauthorized access" that could adversely affect security research -- this notification practice is undeniably good. It undercuts the abusive acts of state actors by giving their targets a heads up about phone hacking attempts.

This won't pose much of a problem for Apple, as it's out of the legal reach of most of NSO's customers. Even if foreign surveillance agencies did obtain the equivalent of a warrant to hack phones and intercept communications, any accompanying gag orders would be useless. We'll see how this disclosure process works out if a US-based government agency utilizes NSO malware -- something that seems even less likely now that the Commerce Department has blacklisted NSO.

The notification program has already paid off for one Polish government employee, who was recently informed by Apple she was targeted by NSO spyware. (h/t 9to5Mac)

Ewa Wrzosek is a prosecutor, a member of the Association of Prosecutors "Lex Super Omnia". She exposed herself to the authorities on April 23, 2020, when she initiated an investigation into the so-called "Envelope elections". On the same day, however, the investigation was taken from her and discontinued, and disciplinary proceedings were initiated against Wrzoski. Since then, the prosecutor has repeatedly criticized the changes in the Polish judiciary after 2015.

Yesterday evening, Ewa Wrzosek announced on Twitter that she had received a notification from Apple about a possible attack by state services on her iPhone using Pegasus.

The "Envelope Elections" were a hasty and apparently unlawful attempt to hold an election during the first few months of the COVID pandemic. Last May, the failed presidential election managed to rack up a hefty tab to be settled by Poland residents, but didn't actually result in the election of anyone.

Poland’s abandoned presidential election, which was scheduled for 10 May but took place without any voting, still generated high costs. Private broadcaster TVN has revealed that invoices issued in connection with the preparations amounted to almost 70 million zloty of costs for the state postal service, Poczta Polska.

The run-up to the planned election was fraught with chaos and controversy, as the Polish government pushed ahead with preparations for a fully postal vote before relevant legislation had been passed. Many local authorities refused to cooperate, on the basis that doing so without the law in place would be illegal.

Following this logistic and political failure (there was some speculation this process was fast tracked to give the incumbent president the best chance to win), Wrzosek began an investigation. That appears to have proven unpopular with the party controlling the Polish government. Given this history, it's not much of a leap to presume she's being targeted by her own government.

The twist is that the Polish government has never officially confirmed it has ever acquired NSO malware. But governments rarely discuss surveillance programs, especially their most controversial ones. However, there is a paper trail that suggests at least one government agency is in possession of NSO's most powerful surveillance tool.

For nine months, the Ministry of Finance has not been able to decide whether the Justice Fund, which is in the hands of the Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, had the right to transfer PLN 25 million to the CBA for the purchase of a modern surveillance system, tvn24.pl learned.

The fact that the Central Anticorruption Bureau received money from this fund and allocated it to the purchase of the most modern surveillance system for telephones and computers was revealed on tvn24.pl almost exactly a year ago.

Now, reporters of the "Black on White" program suspect that the system bought by the anti-corruption service is probably the Israeli Pegasus. - This system was created to prevent terrorist attacks, kidnappings, human trafficking and drug smuggling - journalists from "Black and White" explained.

If so, there's a good chance the targeted phone is compromised. Wrzosek has asked for answers from the Minister of Justice, but she's unlikely to receive any acknowledgements or apologies. If it is what it looks like, the prosecutor is being targeted in retaliation for her attempted investigation by the same government she works for.

As Apple continues to notify users targeted by NSO malware, hopefully those targeted will continue to inform the rest of the world how the company's "for bad guys and terrorists ONLY" exploits are actually being used.

Filed Under: ewa wrzosek, malware, pegasus, poland, spyware
Companies: apple, nso group

Book Publishers Sue Maryland Over Law That Would Require Them To Offer 'Reasonable' Prices On Ebooks To Libraries

from the reasonable-is-not-allowed dept

For years now, we've been highlighting how book publishers are at war with libraries, and see ebooks and ebook pricing as a key lever in that war. With regular books, a library can just buy the book and lend it out and do what they want with it. But not ebooks. Because of a broken copyright law, publishers retain excess control over ebooks, and they lord that over libraries, arbitrarily raising prices to ridiculous levels, limiting how many times they can lend it out before they have to "repurchase" the ebook, and generally making it as difficult as possible for libraries to actually be able to offer ebooks.

This is because of a broken copyright system that gives publishers way more control over ebooks than traditional hardcopy books. And book publishers have spent the past decade abusing that power. In an ideal world, Congress would get its act together and fix copyright law and properly add first sale rights for digital goods like ebooks. But, without that, some states are trying to step in and fix things, including Maryland, which earlier this year passed a law that would require publishers to sell ebooks to libraries at "reasonable" rates.

With the law set to go into effect next year, helping more Maryland residents get access to ebooks in the midst of a still ongoing pandemic, the book publishers have continued their Grinch-like ways, and sued to block the law. The complaint says that this is an attempt by state law to route around federal copyright law, and since the 1976 Copyright Act, state copyright laws are pre-empted by federal law.

The complaint spews a lot of nonsense and propaganda about "the importance of copyright" to "the ultimate benefit of the public" which is laughable -- especially coming from book publishers who have gone out of their way to use copyright to fuck over the public. But, as ridiculous as it is from a societal level, the publisher's reading of the 1976 Act might convince a court. It is true that the 1976 act says that states can't pre-empt federal copyright law, so the publisher's argument is that this law is a route around that.

I assume that Maryland will argue, forcefully, that this is not a copyright law or an attempt to route around federal copyright law, but rather something else entirely. Indeed, as some have noticed, the Maryland law is deliberately "modest." It only says that if a publisher is already offering ebooks, it also has to make sure it will sell to libraries at a reasonable price. It's not forcing publishers to offer ebooks at all -- just make sure that the publishers can't treat consumers and libraries differently. And, as the libraries argued in the runup to this bill passing, there is historical evidence that a law that only impacts contracting does not impede on copyright:

First, the bills are not preempted by federal copyright law. The AAP cites section 301 of the U.S. Copyright Act as authority for its argument that federal copyright law preempts the bills. In fact, section 301 was adopted by Congress in 1976 to preempt state copyright laws—laws that created rights that are “equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright.” Courts around the country have repeatedly held that section 301 does not preempt state laws relating to contracts because contract rights are not “equivalent” to the exclusive rights of copyright. Central to those courts’ analysis is that the existence of a contract constituted an “extra element” not present in copyright law. Because the bills regulate license terms, they are completely outside the scope of section 301. It should be noted that 21 years ago, Maryland adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (“UCITA”), which regulates licenses for copyrighted works such as software and databases. Publishers strongly supported the adoption of UCITA, and did not argue that its regulation of licenses was preempted by section 301 of the Copyright Act.

Realistically speaking, this is just the book publishers, once again, attacking libraries and the public, and using copyright as their weapon to do so. It's shameful behavior, but the underlying problem is our copyright laws, and the belief instilled in copyright abusers like the publishers, that it lets them control everything, even after they've sold something. The answer is to fix our copyright laws wholesale. If the copyright laws weren't so broken in the first place, we wouldn't need states like Maryland stepping in to try to fix situations like how publishers rip off libraries (and the public with it).

Filed Under: contracts, copyright, ebooks, libraries, maryland, pre-emption
Companies: aap

Surveillance Company CEO Threatens To Sue Reporter For Writing About His Company

from the really-serving-your-company-at-full-capacity-there,-Scotty dept

When a reporter sends inquiries about claims made on your website, the best response is obviously to threaten them with a lawsuit. That should ensure a steady stream of positive press and deter them from asking further questions about claims made on your website.

Oh, wait. It's the other thing. It ensures you'll be at least temporarily enshrined as an asshat and litigious thug, especially when the reporter is only asking questions any logical person might when coming across these claims.

That's what just happened to Isabella Cheng of IPVM, a long-running and respected authority on security cameras and other video surveillance technology. Here are just some of IPVM's credentials:

IPVM research is cited in US Congressional reporting as well as global publications ranging from the WSJ, BBC, Financial Times, WaPo, NY Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, VoA, and many more.

And here are Backstreet Surveillance's CEO Scott McQuarrie's most relevant… um… credentials… as relayed to the IPVM reporter after she emailed questions about claims made on Backstreet's site. Keep in mind, these were questions Cheng was also asking other surveillance camera sellers.

Backstreet Surveillance's CEO objected to an IPVM reporter's questions, warning the reporter to "elevate this to your upper management, it [sic] important they be involved because we will pull the trigger on a lawsuit the instant you refence [sic] me or my company in any article" in a lengthy response to questions about the company's NDAA claims.

Scott McQuarrie might want to explain where in the United States "referencing [Backstreet] or [CEO Scott McQuarrie] in any article" is an actionable legal claim. I understand the legal system will, however briefly, entertain anything lobbed into a court with a filing fee attached, but there is currently no (legal) way to prevent someone from referencing companies in articles, blog posts, tweets, Facebookery, LiveJournal fanfic, or whatever.

The backstory hardly explains the response. IPVM was seeking comment from several camera providers about NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) claims made on their websites. "NDAA compliant" may look good slapped on products and referenced in marketing copy, but all it really means is the company is not one of a handful of Chinese companies which have been blacklisted by the federal government. Being compliant simply means not reselling these products or using their components. Not all that tough to do.

While it's true there's such a thing as "NDAA certified," it's not much more than being "NDAA compliant." Any manufacturer that is compliant can easily become "certified" by filling out and signing a form stating that you're not on the ban list nor do you use components that are on the ban list.

Backstreet makes a big deal about both of these things. It also has written a blog post about these things, amplifying the company's ability to not be a Chinese manufacturer banned by the US government. In that post, Backstreet calls out another company for claiming to be NDAA compliant when, in fact, it is owned by a Chinese company banned by the federal government. In that post, it uses this image:

It tells customers to "look for this logo," pointing to Backstreet's self-created "NDAA Compliance" logo. This post was edited after IPVM started asking questions. The original post told customers to "only buy equipment that displays the approved [NDAA] logo." IPVM wanted to know what "approved logo" referred to, since it's pretty clear the federal government hasn't created or distributed an "NDAA Compliance" logo. Instead, camera manufacturers are creating their own logos, giving their products an air of (federal) authority without actually having any government-created logo to designate their ability to be not one of a handful of Chinese manufacturers.

Prior to the belated correction, Backstreet gave the impression there was such a thing: a government-created logo given only to those who were truly NDAA compliant.

How do you know you are buying equipment that is approved and secure? Only buy equipment that states it is NDAA compliant and displays the approved logo.

Rather than simply apologize or offer to get back to the reporter with more details, McQuarrie fired off an email calling the reporter "incompentent" and a "rooky" [sic]. This followed his first email where he stated the reporter didn't "understand" the apparent complexities of Backstreet's "approved logo" claims.

After the legal threats came a correction -- one that could have been given as an initial response to the reporter's questions:

There is no government approved NDAA logo. The logo we use on our site was created by us and is placed on all products on our site that meet NDAA requirements. This is done so consumers are aware of which items they can consider if NDAA is of concern to them. Initial postings on a single webpage included the term "approved NDAA logo". This was an error made by an entry level programmer, as soon as we were aware of the error the term was removed.

A little late but better than what the CEO offered in response to press inquiries. And rather than simply admit the error and walk away from it, the correction (prompted by the IPVM reporter's questions) arrived with additional direct criticism of the site that made the CEO aware of its misstatements about NDAA logos.

Why we Posted this Information

We received an email from a reporter for IPVM, an online security magazine. While we welcome any inquiry and interest in our equipment and services, we were offended by the tone of her email and and lack of basic knowledge. We do not appreciate her prejudgment and biased approach. She gave us until December 6th to respond because its likely she had already written the article and it is scheduled to be published. The problem is her ignorance of the basic facts is already woven into her article. ISABELLA, YES THERE IS NDAA CERTIFICATION AND YES YOU USE A GOVERNMENT FORM TO DOCUMENT IT! Its stunning that a publication that presents itself as a security industry resource is void of such basic knowledge.

But the report had not yet been written. The journalist was still seeking comment from several companies. The report was never going to be solely about Backstreet… at least not until Scott McQuarrie made at least this article solely about him and his company. One has to assume this addition wasn't written by everyone's favorite scapegoat, an "entry-level" employee. The typos and grammatical errors eerily align with McQuarrie's (shall we say) cadence when responding to IPVM's inquiries.

Appended to what appears to be McQuarrie's angry keyboard-hammering is an equally ridiculous "legal notice for IPVM":

Posted December 5th at 9:23am MST documenting this factual information was publically available to IPVM before IPVM posted any non-factual slanderous articles. All liability now lies with IPVM and all legal remedies for damages inflicted on Backstreet are reserved and will be exercised to the full extend of the law.

Well, no lawyer was consulted before this was angrily written. You can't shift liability just by adding a paragraph to a blog post. Responding in kind would require IPVM to "fully extend" at least one middle finger in the direction of the CEO, who doesn't appear to have the mentality needed to interact with the press, much less hold a leadership role in a company that employs anyone but himself.

IPVM asked some simple questions. The CEO could have answered the questions and corrected any claims that weren't entirely accurate. It's not that hard to do. Two other companies contacted by IPVM with similar questions responded this way:

[V]deo surveillance supplier, Clare Controls, responded "The use of the word certified is an error. Our policy is to state compliance. This will be corrected immediately."

Likewise, Verkada responded saying they "have removed the page in question" and ceased saying they were "NDAA certified."

It doesn't appear Backstreet is willing to sue. (At least so far…) McQuarrie, having fucked this up entirely, has decided to walk away from this with his unearned smugness intact. This is how he responded to IPVM's post covering his baseless legal threats:

John,

Hang on, after looking at what you posted, we are quite comfortable. It clearly shows the bias of your reporter and our concerns. If you would please provide more SEO links to our site so we get as much benefit from the article as possible it would be apricated.

Thank you

Oh, but it doesn't, Scott. It shows you don't know how to handle press inquiries and are willing to sabotage both your and your company's reputations because you think legal threats are an appropriate response to errors or misleading claims on your company's website. You're not going to score any Google juice from IPVM's article. SEO does not work that way, doubly so because IPVM never links to your website directly. And we won't either. What's going to be rising in the Google ranks is your bullshit legal threats in response to mistakes on your company's website. You need to think before you speak. And, as the CEO of a company, you should probably consult your company's legal reps before issuing legal threats.

Filed Under: isabella cheng, journalism, ndaa, reporting, scott mcquarrie, surveillance cameras
Companies: backstreet surveillance, ipvm

Daily Deal: The Complete 2021 Beginner to Expert Guitar Lessons Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Complete 2021 Beginner to Expert Guitar Lessons Bundle has 14 courses to help you master playing guitar. By the end of these courses, you'll be playing chords in songs, soloing, strumming various patterns, reading the guitar tab, and generally understanding your guitar. You'll be able to teach yourself any song you want to learn. Courses will also introduce you to electric guitar, blues and jazz guitar, and more. It's on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

CNN Goes Full Moral Panic About Kids And Social Media

from the have-we-no-balance? dept

CNN, the news organization that, until recently, employed Chris Cuomo, and still employs Jeffrey Toobin, and is (for the moment at least) owned by AT&T which funded an entire extremist propaganda TV network just to appease President Trump (not to mention being absolutely terrible on privacy issues), wants you to hate social media. There may be reasons to hate on social media, but it's difficult to take CNN seriously when it presents itself (1) as some unbiased party in this discussion, and (2) puts forth an article that is nothing more than blatant moral panic propaganda about kids and social media.

Are there dangers to kids on social media? Maybe! Are there benefits for kids on social media? Maybe! Does the article only present one side full of anecdotes without any actual data? You bet. The article presents a couple of anecdotes about teens with depression, and then just insists that it's because of social media. Apparently it may surprise CNN's reporters to learn this, but teenagers (and adults) have been dealing with depression for a long, long time, including before social media existed. Again, it's entirely possible that social media creates image problems for teens, but the article repeatedly just insists its true without evidence. It opens with a pure anecdote that is designed to pull at the emotional heart strings.

Last September, just a few weeks into the school year, Sabine Polak got a call from the guidance counselor. Her 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and had contemplated suicide.

"I was completely floored," said Polak, 45, who lives in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. "I had no clue she was even feeling remotely down at all. When I asked her about it, she just kept saying she wanted to get away from it all ... but I didn't know what that meant."

After taking her to a crisis center, which banned phone use for anyone checking in, Polak learned from her daughter that the pressures of social media were driving her increased anxiety. The main source of stress: waiting for her friends to open and respond to messages and photos on Snapchat.

Okay. But people had anxiety pre-internet as well. It's easy to blame it on these services, but what actual evidence is there? The article presents literally none.

And the only attempts at pointing to "evidence"... doesn't say what it seems to think it says. There are just some of the documents Frances Haugen revealed, which showed a study that Facebook/Instagram conducted showing that some teens self-reported that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves. But what nearly all of the reporting left out -- and CNN of course ignores -- is that same study showed a much larger percentage said that Instagram made them feel better about themselves.

That doesn't mean that anyone should discount those who are depressed, or those who claim that Instagram and social media make them feel worse about themselves. Because anything that can be done to help should be explored. But presenting a totally one-sided article that suggests social media is all bad for kids and dangerous ignores all the people (again, a much larger percentage) who found that social media helps them.

It seems most likely that much of it depends on existing personality types and how people use social media. If you use it to make connections and maintain friendships, it can be super helpful. If you use it as a barometer of how much better other people's lives are, it's easy to see how it can be damaging. But how do you allow one and prevent the other?

Unfortunately, the CNN piece explores exactly none of this nuance. Instead, it just runs the party line: "social media = bad for teens." And in doing so it ignores all the many teens who are able to connect with people, or find their communities, or explore interests that their local schoolmates might not have, all thanks to the internet's ability to bring them together.

Any serious look at the challenges and negative impacts of social media has to take into account the flipside as well, and come up with some sort of plan to balance the two, and explore how do you help encourage more of the good kind of connectivity, and minimize the problematic kinds. But that's not what CNN gives you. If you read the CNN article you'd naturally assume that all social media is bad for all teens, and the only solution is to take the phone away from your kid.

Later in the article, there's a second bit of "evidence," but it comes from Bark, a company that sells parental snooping software and has a huge economic incentive to scare parents into believing their kids are all being lead astray by social media. Again, a thoughtful exploration of the challenges of teens and social media might look for a more credible source, but that's not what CNN's reporters were doing. They had a narrative, and they needed to support it, so this is what they got.

Some data also support that mental health issues among young people on social media are on the rise. Bark, a paid monitoring service that screens social media apps, personal messages and emails for terms and phrases that could indicate concerns, said it saw a 143% increase in alerts sent around self-harm and suicidal ideation during the first three months of 2021 compared to the year prior. (Parents receive alerts when Bark detects potential issues, along with expert recommendations from child psychologists for how to address them.)

"Our children's lives are buried deep within their phones and the problems live within their digital signal in places that parents don't go," said Titania Jordan, chief marketing officer of Bark. "If you're not spending time in the places where your children are online, how can you be educated and then how can you give them guidance?"

Yeah, quote the person trying to sell subscriptions to the service, because that's reliable and credible.

And the article does basically nothing in exploring the challenges of what you might actually do about this if it were true. There are suggestions of taking away these services from kids, which again kind of ignores that many more people find these services helpful and useful than find them harmful. Or there's the suggestion -- I kid you not -- of forcing kids to watch The Social Dilemma.

Polak, the mother whose daughter had suicidal thoughts, has proposed a Mental Health Awareness Week at her daughter's school that would include screenings of Childhood 2.0 and The Social Dilemma -- two documentaries that touch on how platforms are impacting the well-being of its users.

As we've explained, that documentary is almost entirely misinformation about how social media applications work. So the "solution" to the bad things that social media does to kids (unsupported by any facts) is to... share with them a propaganda film full of disinformation? Genius.

In 20 years or so, we're going to look back on these moral panics and laugh, just as we did with moral panics in the past. Rock and roll, Dungeons & Dragons, TV, radio, pinball, etc., all promised to rot our brains. This time around it's social media.

Filed Under: anxiety, depression, evidence, moral panic, social media, teenagers
Companies: cnn, instagram

Apple's 'Do Not Track' Button Is Privacy Theater

from the privacy-theater-incorporated dept

Earlier this year Apple received ample coverage about how the company was making privacy easier for its customers by introducing a new, simple, tracking opt-out button for users as part of an iOS 14.5 update. Early press reports heavily hyped the concept, which purportedly gave consumers control of which apps were able to collect and monetize user data or track user behavior across the internet. Advertisers (most notably Facebook) cried like a disappointed toddler at Christmas, given the obvious fact that giving users more control over data collection and monetization, means less money for them.

By September researchers had begun to notice that Apple's opt-out system was somewhat performative anyway. The underlying system only really blocked app makers from accessing one bit of data: your phone's ID for Advertisers, or IDFA. There were numerous ways for app makers to track users anyway, so they quickly got to work doing exactly that, collecting information on everything from your IP address and battery charge and volume levels, to remaining device storage, metrics that can be helpful in building personalized profiles of each and every Apple user.

Privacy advocates and the press noted how this was all giving Apple users a false sense of security without really fixing much. Privacy experts and press outlets also repeatedly informed Apple this was happening, but nothing changed. In fact, the Financial Times notes that six months after the feature was introduced, Apple has further softened its stance on the whole effort:

"But seven months later, companies including Snap and Facebook have been allowed to keep sharing user-level signals from iPhones, as long as that data is anonymised and aggregated rather than tied to specific user profiles.

Here's the thing. There's been just an absolute torrent of studies showing how "anonymizing" data is a gibberish term. It only takes a few additional snippets of data to identify "anonymized" users, yet the term is still thrown around by companies as a sort of "get out of jail free" card when it comes to not respecting user privacy. There's an absolute ocean of data floating around the data broker space that comes from apps, OS makers, hardware vendors, and telecoms, and "anonymizing" data doesn't really stop any of them from building detailed profiles on you.

Apple's opt-out button is largely decorative, helping the company brand itself as hyper privacy conscious without actually doing the heavy lifting required of such a shift:

"Lockdown Privacy, an app that blocks ad trackers, has called Apple’s policy “functionally useless in stopping third-party tracking”. It performed a variety of tests on top apps and observed that personal data and device information is still “being sent to trackers in almost all cases."

A lot of folks spend a lot of time trying to tap dance around a fundamental truth: any effort to give consumers more control and clear insight over what's being collected or sold reduces revenues by billions of dollars annually, even if only a fraction of existing users take advantage. And nobody with their face buried deep in the data monetization trough wants that. It's why it's 2021 and the U.S. still doesn't even have a basic, clear privacy law for the internet era. Not even a super clean one mandating basic transparency requirements and working opt-out tools.

So what we get instead is a lot of gibberish and privacy theater by a lot of folks who don't want to take even a tiny hit in revenues in exchange for healthier markets and happier users.

We also get just an endless parade of semantics, like ISP claims they "don't sell access to your data" (no, they just give massive "anonymized" datasets away for free as part of a nebulous, broader arrangement they do get paid for). We get tracking opt-out tools that don't actually opt you out of tracking, or opt you back in any time changes are made. And we get endless proclamations about how everybody supports codifying federal privacy laws from companies that immediately turn around and spend millions of dollars lobbying to ensure even a basic privacy law never sees the light of day.

At some point this combination of feckless oversight, rampant overcollection of data, minimal transparency, and repeated failure to adhere to the basics on data security will result in a privacy scandal that makes the last fives years' worth of scandals look like a grade school picnic. When that happens, we might finally see some traction on at least a basic law that mandates transparency, opt-out tools that actually work, and penalties for lax security. Until that momentum shift happens, the majority of "privacy reform" efforts are going to have a high ratio of meaningless song and dance.

Filed Under: apps, data, do not track, ios, opt-in, opt-out, privacy
Companies: apple, facebook, snap