Busting Still More Myths About Section 230, For You And The FCC

from the human-readable-advocacy dept

The biggest challenge we face in advocating for Section 230 is how misunderstood it is. Instead of getting to argue about its merits, we usually have to spend our time disabusing people of their mistaken impressions about what the statute does and how. If people don't get that part right then we'll never be able to have a meaningful conversation about the appropriate role it should have in tech policy.

It's particularly a problem when it's a federal agency getting these things wrong. In our last comment to the FCC we therefore took issue with some of the worst falsehoods the NTIA had asserted in its petition demanding the FCC somehow seize imaginary authority it doesn't actually have to change Section 230. But in reading a number of public comments in support of its petition, it became clear that there was more to say to address these misapprehensions about the law.

The record developed in the opening round of comments in the [FCC's] rulemaking reflects many opinions about Section 230. But opinions are not facts, and many of these opinions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how Section 230 works, why we have it, and what is at risk if it is changed.

These misapprehensions should not become the basis of policy because they cannot possibly be the basis of *good* policy. To help ensure they will not be the predicate for any changes to Section 230, the Copia Institute submits this reply comment to address some of the recurrent myths surrounding Section 230, which should not drive policy, and reaffirm some fundamental truths, which should.

Our exact reply comment is attached below. But because it isn't just these agencies we want to make sure understand how this important law works, instead of just summarizing it here, we're including a version of it in full right here, below.

As we told the FCC, there are several recurring complaints that frequently appear in the criticism leveled at Section 230. Unfortunately, most of these complaints are predicated on fundamental misunderstandings of why we have Section 230, or how it works. What follows is an attempt to dispel many of these myths and to explain what is at risk by making changes to Section 230 – especially any changes born out of these misunderstandings.

To begin with, one type of flawed argument against Section 230 tends to be premised on the incorrect notion that Section 230 was intended to be some sort of Congressional handout designed to subsidize a nascent Internet. The thrust of the argument is that now that the Internet has become more established, Section 230 is no longer necessary and thus should be repealed. But there are several problems with this view.

For one thing, it is technically incorrect. Prodigy, the platform jeopardized by the Stratton Oakmont decision, which prompted the passage of Section 230, was already more than ten years old by that point and handling large amounts of user-generated content. It was also owned by large corporate entities (Sears and IBM). It is true that Congress was worried that if Prodigy could be held liable for its users' content it would jeopardize the ability for new service providers to come into being. But the reason Congress had that concern was because of how that liability threatened the service providers that already existed. In other words, it is incorrect to frame Section 230 as a law designed to only foster small enterprises; from the very beginning it was intended to protect entrenched corporate incumbents, as well as everything that would follow.

Indeed, the historical evidence bears out this concern. For instance, in the United States, where, at least until now, there has been much more robust platform protection than in Europe, investment in new technologies and services has vastly outpaced that in Europe. (See the Copia Institute's whitepaper Don't Shoot the Message Board for more information along these lines.) Even in the United States there is a correlation between the success of new technologies and services and the strength of the available platform protection, where those that rely upon the much more robust Section 230 immunity do much better than those that depend on the much weaker Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors.

Next, it is also incorrect to say that Section 230 was intended to be a subsidy for any particular enterprise, or even any particular platform. Nothing in the language of Section 230 causes it to apply to apply only to corporate interests. Per Section 230(f)(2) the statute applies to anyone meeting the definition of a service provider, as well as any user of a service provider. Many service providers are also small or non-profit, and, as we've discussed before, can even be individuals. Section 230 applies to them all, and all will be harmed if its language is changed.

Indeed, the point of Section 230 was not to protect platforms for their own sake but to protect the overall health of the Internet itself. Protecting platforms was simply the step Congress needed to take to achieve that end. It is clear from the preamble language of Section 230(a) and (b), as well as the legislative history, that what Congress really wanted to do with Section 230 was simultaneously encourage the most good online expression, and the least bad. It accomplished this by creating a two-part immunity that both shielded platforms from liability arising from carrying speech, as well as from any liability in removing it.

By pursuing a regulatory approach that was essentially carrot-based, rather than stick-based, Congress left platforms free to do the best they could to vindicate both goals: intermediating the most beneficial speech and allocating their resources most efficiently to minimize the least desirable. As we and others have many times pointed out, including in our earlier FCC comment, even being exonerated from liability in user content can be cripplingly expensive. Congress did not want platforms to be obliterated by the costs of having to defend themselves for liability in their users' content, or to have their resources co-opted by the need to minimize their own liability instead of being able to direct them to running a better service. If platforms had to fear liability for either their hosting or moderation efforts it would force them to do whatever they needed to protect themselves but at the expense of being effective partners in achieving Congress's twin aims.

This basic policy math remains just as true in 2020 as it did in the 1990s, which is why it is so important to resist these efforts to change the statute. Undermining Section 230's strong platform protections will only undermine the overall health of the Internet and do nothing to help there be more good content and less bad online, which even the statute's harshest critics often at least ostensibly claim to want.

While some have argued that platforms who fail to be optimal partners in meeting Congress's desired goals should lose the benefit of Section 230's protection, there are a number of misapprehensions baked into this view. One misapprehension is that Section 230 contains any sort of requirement for how platforms moderate their user content; it does not. Relatedly, it is a common misconception that Section 230 hinges on some sort of "platform v. publisher" distinction, immunizing only "neutral platforms" and not anyone who would qualify as a "publisher." People often mistakenly believe that a "publisher" is the developer of the content, and thus not protected by Section 230. In reality, however, as far as Section 230 is concerned, platforms and publishers are actually one and the same, and therefore all are protected by the statute. The term "publisher" that appears in certain court decisions merely relates to the understanding of the word "publisher" to mean "one that makes public," which is of course the essential function of what a platform does to distribute others' speech. But content distribution is not the same thing as content creation. Section 230 would not apply to the latter, but it absolutely applies to the former, even if the platform has made editorial decisions with respect to that distribution. Those choices still do not amount to content creation.

In addition, the idea that a platform's moderation choices can jeopardize their Section 230 protection misses the fact that it is not Section 230 that gives platforms the right to moderate however they see fit. As we explained in our previous comment and on many other occasions, the editorial discretion behind content moderation decisions is protected by the First Amendment, not Section 230. Eliminating Section 230 will not take away the right for platforms to exercise their discretion. What it will do, however, is make it practically impossible for platforms to avail themselves of this right because it will force them to have to expend their resources defending themselves. They might potentially eventually win, but, as we earlier explained, even exoneration can be an extinction-level event for a platform.

Furthermore, it would effectively eviscerate the benefit of the statute if its protection were conditional. The point of Section 230 is to protect platforms from the crippling costs of litigation; if they had to litigate to find out whether they were protected or not, there would be no benefit and it would be as if there were no Section 230 at all. Given the harms to the online ecosystem Section 230 was designed to forestall, this outcome should be avoided.

All of this information boils down to this essential truth: the NTIA petition should be rejected, and so should any other effort to change Section 230, especially one that embraces these misunderstandings.

Filed Under: comments, fcc, ntia, section 230

Fight For The Future Wants To Help You Tell The FCC Where To Shove The NTIA's Anti-Section 230 Petition

from the good-for-them dept

We recently filed comments in the still ongoing FCC comment period regarding the NTIA's petition to get the FCC to reinterpret Section 230 to match with the President's bizarrely warped view of social media content moderation. I filed personal comments from my perspective running Techdirt, and we also filed more official comments as an organization. Both were filed during the initial comment period, but we're now in the middle of a second comment period -- officially for "responses" to the initial comments -- which are due by September 17th.

It really is not particularly difficult to file a comment with the FCC, though if you do, I recommend that you write out a letter and submit a PDF that clearly states the issue and your argument (rather than just ranting incoherently) as many FCC commenters have been known to do.

However, if you want it to be even easier, the good folks over at Fight for the Future have announced that they've set up a new site, SaveOnlineSpeech.org to make it even easier to file a comment.

The comments will be submitted directly to the FCC’s public docket, which so far has been mostly filled with nonsense, including identical astroturf comments backed by AT&T –– some that still include boilerplate “XYZ group” language –– and hundreds of comments from an anti-LGBTQ hate group backing the executive order. 

The page notes that, while there may be very real problems with how big internet companies are managed and how platforms are run, messing with Section 230 is not the way to fix that.

There’s no question that Big Tech companies have amassed tremendous power to limit expression, spread dangerous misinformation, silence dissent, and manipulate public opinion. These are serious problems that impact our lives, and it’s long past time the government took action to address this dangerous behavior by enacting strong legislation to prevent corporate data harvesting, banning abusive practices like microtargeted advertising, and taking on Silicon Valley’s monopolistic business practices at their root. But this Trump executive order, and similarly misguided proposals from Democrats to rip up Section 230, won’t do any of that. Instead, they’ll make these problems worse.

Punching a hole in Section 230 will allow any president to decide what speech is allowed on the Internet. If the government doesn’t like how social media websites moderate content, the government can simply shut those companies down. That might seem like a good idea when someone you support is in the Oval Office, but political power changes quickly. No matter what your political beliefs are, we should all be able to agree that letting governments and corporations restrict the free flow of information is a bad idea.

Feel free to check it out if you're looking for a way to file a comment, and the FCC page was not user-friendly for you.

Filed Under: comments, fcc, ntia, section 230

GOOGLE THREATENS TO DEFUND TECHDIRT? Where Are All The Politicians Complaining?

from the hello?-anyone?-hello?-bueller? dept

OH NO. GOOGLE MUST HAVE ANTI-TECHDIRT BIAS! THEY'RE THREATENING TO DEFUND US! Or not. A couple of weeks ago, we received yet another notice from Google that some of the pages on Techdirt violated its AdSense policies (AdSense is Google's program for putting ads on 3rd party pages). We'll get to what those pages were and what the complaints were in a moment, but the timing struck us as ironic -- as it came a day after we had written about why Google sending a similar notice to The Federalist was not some conspiracy of "anti-conservative bias" to silence them. Yet, when it happened to the Federalist, a bunch of big name politicians and commentators went into overdrive attacking Google.

So my question: where are they now defending Techdirt? Hmm?

The background: a few weeks back there was a bunch of attention paid to a misleading story from NBC claiming that Google had banned the Federalist from its ad program -- The Federalist, of course, being a laughable propaganda machine promoting the president's messaging, no matter how ridiculous it makes that site look. So, immediately, a bunch of people jumped onto the claims that this was yet more evidence of "anti-conservative bias" by Google and an attack on a website that supports the president. A bunch of politicians jumped onto the grandstanding train, starting with old friend Senator Josh Hawley who sent an angry letter demanding answers from Sundar Pichai:

Google’s decision to threaten the conservative publication The Federalist with removal from the Google Ads platform—based on, apparently, the contents of its comments section—is startling, but apparently just the latest instance of Google’s long pattern of targeting any perspectives that deviate from its preferred party line.

Of course, as we explained in our article, we periodically get similar notices. In fact, we've talked about them since as early as 2014. We got another in 2015. Oh, and in 2016. Oh right, and in 2018 and 2019. Amusingly, those last two involved Google demonetizing our article on the impossible choices involved in content moderation!

As we noted last year, the notices to us -- just as in the case of the Federalist -- were sometimes (not always) about finding the content in our comments problematic. Google is often not clear in their messages on this, and in the past, we've often had to go back and forth with Google before they admit that the problem might be in the comments, though they refuse to ever say which comments. As we said then, and we'll say again, this policy is stupid. But it's not "anti-conservative bias." Google is free to make stupid policy decisions (just as we're free to mock them for it). It does that all the time. And, recognizing the impossible nature of content moderation, you can even understand the logic behind how this came to be, which has nothing whatsoever to do with "anti-conservative bias." Instead, I'm sure, advertisers (or possibly just random people) have probably complained about ads appearing "next to" sketchy content. So, Google's ad team writes up some rules that say "you can't put our ads next to 'derogatory' or 'sexual' or 'shocking' content." And then content reviewers don't have time to go investigate -- and they can't determine the difference between if the bad content is in the comments or in the story. The policy just says "nope, not allowed" and whenever Google becomes aware (usually through reports) of such content, it says "you can't put our ads there." Even if the content is in the comments.

Anyway, that brings us to our latest batch of "demonetized" stories. Literally the day after we wrote about the Federalist getting a similar notice, Google said the following list of stories could not have Google ads, and gave the following reasons:

• Yes, Federal Agents Can Identify Anonymous Tor Users, Because Most People Don't Know How To Be Anonymous Reason: Dangerous or derogatory content
• Github Nukes Repository Over Use Of The Word 'Retard' Reason: Dangerous or derogatory content
• YouTube Takes Down Live Stream Over Copyright Claim...Before Stream Even Starts Reason: Dangerous or derogatory content
• The DOJ's Plan To 'Fix' The T-Mobile Merger Is Already A Hot Mess Reason: Dangerous or derogatory content
• Prostitutes Have Just Moved From Craigslist To Facebook Reason: Adult: Sexual content
• Cop Shoots Cuffed Teen In The Face With A Taser, Claims He 'Feared For His Safety' Reason: Shocking content
• Myth Busting: Yes, An Advertisement Can Be Fair Use Parody Reason: Adult: Sexual content
• The FBI's Megaupload Domains Are Now Hosting Porn Ads Reason: Adult: Sexual content
• Let. The Motherfucker. Burn. Reason: Shocking content

Look at all that conservative content defunded! Oh man, Josh Hawley's gonna be so mad. I'm really looking forward to his letter on our behalf. Oh... wait. I'm being told that Hawley only sends such letters when it lets him grandstand on a fake cause unsupported by actual facts... darn. Anyway, if you look at some of those links, you can probably guess why Google decided it didn't want ads on those pages, and in other cases, it's not clear at all, and there's probably some weird comments in there. Google doesn't tell us, and it's too much of an effort to figure it out. But, when it happens to us, it doesn't become a huge story.

Of course, plenty of others grandstanded away on behalf of the Federalist too, and I'm sure they'll come to my defense. Right? Right? Here's another of our favorite Senators, Marsha Blackburn:

"Beware the power of Big Tech to cancel conservative voices," she says. I'm sure her tweet about Google canceling my voice is going to be on fire. "Google chokes off ad revenue to silence conservatives!" And me! And me! Come on, Marsha, speak up! What about me? Silence? Huh. How about that?

Here are Tom Cotton and Jim Jordan talking about how this means Google should lose 230 and that it's against free speech. I'm looking forward to their statements in support of Techdirt.

How about House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy. He's asking "When will Big News and Big Tech #StopTheBias?!" And I agree. When will they stop the bias against smallish tech/law/policy focused websites that report on this stuff. When, Rep. McCarthy, when? I can't wait for you to get to the bottom of this!

Even the president's silliest son got into the fun, saying that the "GOP Senate needs to wake up & IMMEDIATELY subpoena and haul in the CEO of Google for questioning," adding that "Google is an out of control monopoly, with a leftwing political agenda, engaging in a clear campaign to silence dissent. It's election interference, full stop." I'm excited to hear what he thinks of the [checks notes] "election interference" of Google stopping ads on our site for our story on [double checks notes again] why people should support the protesters who are burning police cars. Or, really, that story about fair use? Yes, clearly election interference. Come on, Donnie Jr., Techdirt craves your support.

Or how about Meghan McCain. Okay, this one's a bit unfair, because she's married to the founder of The Federalist, so maybe she's maritally required to spew nonsense about her husband's site, but I assume she believes in equal treatment, right? So I assume she's going to claim that Google's notice to us is also "digital fascism" intended to "completely" ban "all conservative speech."

Meghan, I await your support of us on your next TV appearance.

Even FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr got in the game, claiming that Google's decision to do what it's been doing for years is... an argument for Section 230 reform?

I'm quite sure that Brendan will come to our defense. Right?

Or, maybe this is just yet another example of the impossibility of doing content moderation well, and because the same thing that impacts tons of other sites all the time finally hit a site like The Federalist it makes news. It's not anti-conservative bias, but just yet another example of how difficult it is to do any form of content moderation at scale, and a recognition that this kind of thing impacts tons of sites. Do I wish Google was better at this? Yup. Do I wish they'd give us more information than what we have above? Sure thing. They don't say which content in particular caused the complaint. They don't have much of a functioning appeals process (there is one, but it's limited).

But the fact that all of these political folks immediately jumped to these silly misleading grandstanding position suggests that if there's any "bias" out there, it's their own in leaping to false conclusions and using that to push for policy outcomes they'd like.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what we're doing about this notice from Google? The answer is nothing. Nothing at all. Google will remove ads from our page, and we've got some vague threatening language about how now we might get lower quality ads, and there's always the threat that Google will remove ads entirely from our site. If that happens, that'll happen and we'll deal with it. But, that's my job as the publisher of the site, and I certainly don't expect any politician to come out demanding they help Techdirt. Except Josh Hawley. I'd really like to see Josh Hawley do it. Just because.

Filed Under: ads, adsesnse, anti-conservative bias, comments, content moderation, defunding, donald trump jr., josh hawley, marsha blackburn, tom cotton
Companies: google, the federalist

No, Google Didn't Demonetize The Federalist & It's Not An Example Of Anti-Conservative Bias

from the another-day-another-story dept

So, earlier today, NBC reported that Google had "banned" two well known websites from its ad platform, namely The Federalist and Zero Hedge. The story was a bit confusing. To be clear, both of those sites are awful and frequently post unmitigated garbage, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. But, it turns out the story was highly misleading, though it will almost certainly be used to push the false narrative that the big internet companies are engaged in "anti-conservative bias" in moderation practices. But that's wrong. Indeed, it appears what happened is exactly what Google has done to us in the past, in saying that because of certain comments people put on our stories, they were pulling any Google ads from appearing on that page. Now we've explained why this is a dumb policy, that only encourages bad comments on sites to try to demonetize them, but it's not got anything to do with "anti-conservative bias." Also, it's just pulling ads from a single page, not across the board.

But that's not how NBC presented it. Indeed, NBC's coverage is weird in its own way. It took a report from a UK-based operation that put together a blacklist of websites it says should be "defunded" for "racist fake news." Of course, "racist" is in the eye of the beholder, and "fake news" is not a very useful term here, but whatever. NBC reporters took this report and reached out to Google to ask about these particular pages, and that set off Google's usual review processes, and the recognition that some of the comments on the page violated Google's ad policies on "dangerous and derogatory" content (the same thing we got dinged for above). Google, as it does, alerted the Federalist to this content and warned that if it wasn't corrected, ads would be removed on that page (Google claims that Zero Hedge's page had already gone through this process prior to the communication from NBC). While the fact that Google did a review after NBC's request for comment may upset some, this is the nature of content moderation: much of it happens after an inbound report is made in some form or another.

Of course, as the story got bigger and bigger and spun out of control, even Google had to come out and clarify that The Federalist was never demonetized, but rather that they called out specific comments that would lead to ads being pulled on that page:

Again, this sounds exactly like what happened to us last year. But, still, tons of people are calling the NBC story an example of anti-conservative bias. I'll bet none of those people called this "anti-tech reporter bias" when it happened to us last year.

Filed Under: advertisements, bias, comments, content moderation, content moderation at scale, dangerous and derogatory
Companies: google, the federalist, zero hedge

Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over Data On Fake Net Neutrality Comments

from the plot-thickens dept

We've long discussed how the Pai FCC's net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (myself included) had their identities used to support Pai's unpopular plan, as did several Senators. The Trump FCC stonewalled both law enforcement and journalist inquiries into who was behind the comments, and why the FCC didn't lift a finger to either stop them or to help identify those responsible.

Numerous journalists like Jason Prechtel have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it. Thanks to that effort, early last year, Gizmodo's Dell Cameron worked with Prechtel to link some of the fake comments to Trump associates and some DC lobbying shops like CQ Roll Call. Then late last year, Buzzfeed's Kevin Collier and Jeremy-Singer Vine showed how, unsurprisingly, the broadband industry funded at least some of the fraudulent efforts.

Meanwhile two reporters for the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore and Gabriel Dance, sued the FCC under the Freedom of Information Act after the agency refused to reveal logs that could show the IP addresses used to submit the mass comments. Last week, a Manhattan federal judge hand over copies of the logs to both Confessore and Dance:

"The FCC attempted to quash the paper’s request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency’s decision-making process is “vulnerable to corruption."

Keep in mind this sort of thing wasn't a one off; numerous regulatory agencies have been plagued by similar efforts for years. Generating bogus support for shitty government policy is now just an additional service many law, lobbying, and PR firms offer corporations and clients as an added service. But much like astroturfing -- which often extends to real world protests -- it's such an obscure concept to most people it never warrants a second thought. But it's ethically grotesque all the same, especially given it pollutes some of the only opportunities the public has to comment on harmful government policies.

At this point there's enough evidence to reasonably conclude that the broadband industry and GOP hired a bunch of K Street firms to "stuff the ballot box," and the FCC -- likely knowing the broadband industry's involvement -- took steps to try and help cover it up. This lawsuit is likely to reveal even more data to help bolster that conclusion. The question now is whether the courts (or anybody else) will actually care, and whether anybody's going to do anything about it.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fcc, foia, net neutrality, transparency
Companies: ny times

Australia Says Media Companies Can Be Sued Over User Comments On Facebook

from the intermediary-liability-gone-mad dept

It's no secret that Australia has taken a very different view towards intermediary liability than the US, saying (for example) that search engines can be responsible for search results it had nothing to do with, and even that they can be held liable if you are offended by the images that show up next to yours in an image search. So perhaps the latest such case in Australia shouldn't be a surprise. A court has ruled that media companies can be held liable for comments on their news stories. And not just the comments on their own pages... but on Facebook.

And the reasoning here is truly incredible. Because an "expert" testified that news sites could "hack" Facebook with a filtered list of common words to block comments, that magically makes them liable. No, really.

The judge wrote that each company had the power to effectively delay reader comments on Facebook and monitor if they were defamatory before "releasing" them to the audience.

This was based on evidence from social media expert Ryan Shelley, who testified that although you can't turn off comments on Facebook posts, you can deploy a "hack" to pre-moderate them.

Shelley's hack involves putting 100 of the most commonly used words in the English language ("a", "the", etc) on a Facebook filter list, causing any comment containing those words to be automatically hidden from the public.

Not doing that convoluted "hack" magically makes the news sites (not even Facebook) liable as a publisher for the comments. The judge's reasoning here is pretty incredible:

But Rothman found each company could reasonably monitor comments if they had sufficient staff to do so.

Rothman said that each media company running a public Facebook page had "little to do with freedom of speech or the exchange of ideas".

"Rather, the media companies’ use of a public Facebook page is about their own commercial interests," he said.

He acknowledged that "of course" it is the reader who writes the comment and posts it, but the media companies had brought about that result by running a public Facebook page where the comment could be seen, and by not hiding and moderating comments.

The comments are therefore published, for defamation purposes, by the media companies, he wrote.

"Each defendant was not merely a conduit of the comment. It provided the forum for its publication and encouraged, for its own commercial purposes, the publication of comments."

This has shades of the awful Delfi decision in the European Court of Human Rights, that held that a publication could be liable for its comments, but this seems even worse, as it's not even comments on the news organization's own site. Even worse, the idea that news sites have to somehow "hack" third party sites to "pre-block" all comments seems insane. This seems like the mirror images of the US. This kind of ruling goes even beyond Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy in the US -- the case that inspired Section 230 of the CDA.

It seems increasingly wise for internet companies not to offer any services in Australia, as the threat of liability extends so far as to be untenable.

Filed Under: australia, comments, content moderation, dylan voller, intermediary liability, news sites

Killing News Comments Only Solidified Google, Facebook Dominance

from the ya-played-yourself dept

We've talked a lot about how the trend du jour in online media circles is to ditch the news comment section, then condescendingly pretend this is because the website just really values user relationships. ReCode, NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, Popular Science and more have all proclaimed that they just love their on-site communities so much, they'll no longer allow them to speak. Of course what these sites often can't admit is that they were too lazy or cheap to cultivate their communities, can't seem to monetize quality discourse, and don't really like people pointing out story errors in such a conspicuous location.

Many of these same editors and outlets will (justly) complain how Google and Facebook have hoovered up online ad revenue to the point where operating an independent media outlet is a financial minefield. Only occasionally will you see somebody realize that the process of outsourcing all on-site discourse to social media by killing news comments contributed to the overall problem. Sure, outsourcing the hassles of moderation may have saved you a little time and money, but driving the on-site community away from your website to giant social media platforms contributed to the very dominance you're now railing against.

That's something Simon Owens recently did a good job of pointing out in a piece about how killing on-site news comments is a "colossal mistake" that has directly contributed to the social media domination many editors now lament:

Did comments sections invite trollish behavior? Yes. Did moderating that behavior require both editorial and technical resources? Also yes. But deploying these resources was worth the cost, as it would have resulted in publishers maintaining a stronger relationship with their readerships. Instead, much of the news media became commoditized, with news outlets placing more emphasis on drive-by Facebook traffic than serving loyal readers. In pursuing this strategy, publishers placed more distance between themselves and their users, and so they were ill-equipped when digital advertising models collapsed and platforms like Facebook siphoned off their traffic.

While you'd be hard-pressed to find many editors admit it, much of the assault on ye olde news comments was driven by a desire to return to the bygone era of "letters to the editor," when outlets were able to carefully curate reader response and mute particularly pointed criticism. But if these editors cared even an iota as much about "conversation" and "community" as they claimed, they'd realize that deleting your on-site communities sends a very clear message to these users that they really don't actually matter. At least not outside obvious, easily-documented advertising metrics.

While many of these same editors were quick to claim that low comment engagement made the hassles of moderation not worth it, Owens does a good job deconstructing that claim and pointing out the benefits of a small but loyal cadre of on-site fans:

Let’s be clear: even the publishers with the best comment moderation still only see a small percentage of their readers convert into on-site commenters. But let’s say only 5 percent of your readers choose to register and comment; those readers will punch far above their weight in terms of driving traffic and revenue to your site. Those are your chief evangelists, your repeat customers, your paying subscribers.

To understand how a small percentage of a publisher’s most loyal users can drive revenue growth, consider The New York Times. Currently, its digital subscribers only account for 3.6 percent of the newspaper’s monthly online audience, and yet that 3.6 percent drove over $400 million in subscription revenue in 2018. When you’re dealing with the scale of the internet, catering to your most engaged readers is worth the investment.

Unfortunately this was a lesson lost by many outlets as they shoveled their on-site fans into the maws of social media giants, only to turn around shortly thereafter to complain about Google and Facebook's insurmountable domination.

Filed Under: comments, community, competition, dominance, internet, journalism, social media
Companies: facebook, google

FCC (Read: Taxpayers) Forced To Pay Journalist's Legal Bills After Tap Dancing Around FOIA Requests

from the nothing-to-see-here dept

You may or may not remember that FCC boss Ajit Pai promised to operate the "most transparent" FCC ever. Initially, Pai lived up to that promise by changing FCC policy so that FCC orders would be released before they were voted on; a pretty obvious improvement of benefit to both consumers and ISP lobbyists alike. But in the year or two since, Pai has shown that genuine transparency is the very least of the chairman's priorities.

For example, Pai's FCC has actively refused to aid law enforcement inquiries into who was behind the millions of bogus comments that polluted the net neutrality repeal public comment period. Similarly, the Pai FCC's general response to FOIA requests has been to stall, delay, and ignore said requests whenever possible, resulting in numerous lawsuits by media outlets attempting to get to the bottom of all manner of bizarre FCC policy decisions (like that fake DDOS attack emails show they made up to try and downplay public anger over the net neutrality repeal).

One of those lawsuits was filed by journalist Jason Prechtel, whose analysis recently helped shed some light on the telecom and Trump-linked organizations who stuffed the FCC ballot box during the net neutrality public comment period -- in some cases using stolen identities. The Pai FCC repeatedly ignored or stalled in response to Prechtel's FOIA requests regarding this data, so he sued the agency back in 2017. Last week, a court ruled that the FCC (read: taxpayers) will be forced to reimburse Prechtel's legal costs to the tune of $43,000.

As Gizmodo notes, it was probably money well spent if integrity and transparency actually matter to you:

"The data Prechtel ultimately obtained through the case formed the basis of a Gizmodo report last month—which he coauthored—that revealed how investigators had linked various entities, including a prominent Washington, D.C., publication, to potentially millions of fraudulent comments submitted during the 2017 net neutrality rollback.

The same data was previously withheld from law enforcement investigators by the FCC’s top lawyer citing jurisdictional and privacy concerns. Prechtel eventually obtained it under FOIA from a separate agency."

The settlement formally settles the dispute, though the FCC denies any wrongdoing. Still, numerous state AGs, the GAO, and the FBI are all investigating those bogus comments filed during the net neutrality repeal, and have subpoenaed several of the ISP-linked organizations Prechtel's data helped identify as the culprits. As such, this singular FOIA dispute is just one small part of a much larger, weirder story that still hasn't been fully told.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fcc, foia, jason prechtel, net neutrality, transparency

YouTube And Demonetization: The Hammer And Nail Of Content Moderation

from the not-so-easy dept

Last week we had a story about a bunch of Pokemon YouTubers discovering their accounts were dropped after YouTube confused their discussion of "CP" (Combat Points), thinking it might actually refer to a different "CP": child porn. The accounts were reinstated after a bit of an outcry.

It appears that this was part of a larger effort by YouTube to deal with a variety of problems on its platform (and, yes, its platform has problems). But some of the resulting stories suggest that YouTube is so focused on "demonetization" as a tool that it's losing sight of alternatives. The Pokemon story appears to have actually been part of a larger effort to respond to claims that child predators were using the comments of certain, perfectly normal videos of kids to, well, do bad stuff. The whole thing is pretty sickening and horrifying and I have no interest in going into the details.

As the controversy over this -- quite reasonably -- gained attention, some pointed out that these videos with exploitative comments were, in many cases, being monetized with big brand name ads appearing next to them. This type of complaint is... not new. People have been complaining about brand names appearing in ads next to "bad" content or "infringing" content for many years. Of course, it's pretty much all matched by algorithm, and part of the problem is that because people are gaming the system, the algorithm (and YouTube) hadn't quite caught on to what was happening. Of course, the outcry from the public -- especially about the monetization -- then resulted in advertisers pulling all their ads from YouTube. And, whether it was the advertisers leaving or the general public outcry (it was almost certainly both, but I'm sure most people will assume it was the advertisers bailing that really made the difference), YouTube went on a big new effort to pull ads from lots of videos.

And in doing so, it created a brand new controversy. Just as this started, a mother named Jessica Ballinger complained on Twitter that YouTube had demonetized videos of her 5 year old son. YouTube responded on Twitter, noting that it was because of the comments on the video, obliquely referencing the stories discussed above.

Of course, this immediately created a new kind of backlash as people (rightfully!) pointed out that disabling monetization of a video based on the comments on that video just seems to empower and encourage trolls. Want to harm a YouTuber you don't like? Just post a sketchy comment on their videos and, boom, you can take away their money.

And, to be clear, this is not a new thing for Google. Just last month we noted that the company has a similarly silly policy with Adsesnse and blogs that have comments. If Adsense decides that some of your user-generated comments are "bad" they might demonetize the page that hosts those comments. As with the stories above, this is mostly to appease advertisers and avoid the sort of (slightly misguided) screaming about "big brand ad appearing next to awful comments." We found that policy to be silly in that situation, but it's even more ridiculous here.

As Dan Bull noted in response to all of this it seems that a much simpler solution compared to demonetizing such videos is to just remove the sketchy, awful, predatory comments.

That doesn't work in the Adsense context, where the comments are out of Google's control, but on YouTube it's their own damn platform. Of course, the reality is probably that YouTube freaked out following the initial reports about the predatory comments, and then did what it could do most quickly -- which was to demonetize any such video that might possibly have such content, before doing a more thorough sweep of the awful comments.

Still, this once again highlights the difficulty, perils, and trade-offs associated with content moderation on a massive platform. Every choice has trade-offs and creates different kinds of problems. And between the speed with which people freak out about stuff and the scale that this is happening, you get situations like this where people (rightly!) freak out about the awful thing some people are doing in the YouTube comments (with the associated freak-out about how the videos are monetized) leading to YouTube to rush to demonetize... leading to a freak-out from others who were demonetized for totally innocent videos, where they had done absolutely nothing wrong. You can see how these choices may get made to deal with that situation, and still end up in a kind of messed up position.

Of course, demonetization is a perfectly reasonable tool for YouTube to use in some cases. Soon after the mess described above, YouTube also demonetized a bunch of quack anti-vaccine videos, which had also resulted in people being reasonably upset about the kind of nonsense that was showing up in their YouTube feeds (and making these anti-science quacks money). But, again, it's likely that there's a cat and mouse game going on here, and filters of questionable quality. It won't surprise me to find out that (1) anti-vaxxer conspiracy nuts figure out ways to get around this monetization block and (2) perfectly innocent videos get de-monetized (while I haven't heard of any yet, it wouldn't surprise me if -- for example -- a legitimate news report about the anti-vaxxer movement might get caught up in the flow).

Again, there's nothing wrong with YouTube or other platforms making these kinds of decisions, but they're not easy decisions and they (1) make mistakes and (2) have unintended consequences that are worth watching carefully as well. Right before YouTube did that demonetization, another story was making the rounds about how Pinterest took an even more extreme position in basically blocking all anti-vax content and searches on its platforms. Especially given the latest stories of measles outbreaks caused entirely by gullible anti-vaxxers, there's a perfectly reasonable argument that Pinterest is doing the right thing here. But... as others like Christina Xu noted, this kind of move is kind of difficult to separate from Chinese internet censorship.

Indeed, it would not surprise me in the slightest to see stories appear in the Chinese media before long pointing to these examples of why it is taking the right approach with the Great Firewall of China and its free speech suppressing censorship. After all, the Chinese have done it in the past with other, similar, stories.

And, thus, once again, there's a key point to make in all of this: anyone who thinks there are "easy" choices here is wrong. There is not. Almost any choice has massive problems and potentially huge consequences -- including the choice of doing nothing at all. And while many people use this to argue that it is a bad look for the internet platforms, it seems a stronger argument is that it's a bad look for humanity. These platforms are reflecting humanity, including some pretty awful humans. And society hasn't been able to stop some humans from being awful, terrible people with awful ideas, and it would be unfair to suggest that internet companies should magically be able to step in and solve that problem with hamfisted tools like "demonetization."

Filed Under: comments, content moderation, demonetization, free speech, youtube, youtube comments
Companies: google, youtube