How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War

from the chaos-and-suspicion dept

China's efforts to subdue the turkic-speaking Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region will be familiar to Techdirt readers. International awareness is increasing, too, not least thanks to the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics that the US and other countries have announced. That presents an interesting challenge to the Chinese authorities: how to counter the growing evidence of pervasive surveillance and large-scale arrests of the Uyghurs. Using official outlets like China's Global Times is one way, but its articles are easily dismissed as crude propaganda. Much more interesting is the approach described by the New York Times, which looks at how China is helping Western YouTubers to report on the country:

The videos have a casual, homespun feel. But on the other side of the camera often stands a large apparatus of government organizers, state-controlled news media and other official amplifiers -- all part of the Chinese government's widening attempts to spread pro-Beijing messages around the planet.

State-run news outlets and local governments have organized and funded pro-Beijing influencers' travel, according to government documents and the creators themselves. They have paid or offered to pay the creators. They have generated lucrative traffic for the influencers by sharing videos with millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Typically, the Chinese government support comes in the form of free organized trips around China, particularly in Xinjiang. By showing the influencers a carefully sanitized image of life in the country, the authorities don't need to worry about negative stories. They simply make it easy for the YouTubers to present images of jolly peasants and happy city-dwellers, because that's all they are allowed to see.

One of the authors of the New York Times piece, Paul Mozur, noted on Twitter another important way that the authorities are able to help their influencer guests. Once produced, the China-friendly videos are boosted massively by state media and diplomatic Facebook and Twitter accounts:

One video by Israeli influencer Raz Gal-Or portraying Xinjiang as "totally normal" was shared by 35 government connected accounts with a total of 400 million followers. Many were Chinese embassy Facebook accounts, which posted about the video in numerous languages.

A new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, "Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang", has some more statistics on this practice:

Our data collection has found that, between January 2020 and August 2021, 156 Chinese state-controlled accounts on US-based social media platforms have published at least 546 Facebook posts, Twitter posts and shared articles from [China Global Television Network], Global Times, Xinhua or China Daily websites that have amplified Xinjiang-related social media content from 13 influencer accounts. More than 50% of that activity occurred on Facebook.

Mozur says that the use of Western influencers in this way also allows employees of Beijing-controlled media, like the journalist Li Jingjing, to present themselves as independent YouTubers. On Twitter, however, she is labeled as "China state-affiliated media". The Australian Strategic Policy Institute sees this as part of a larger problem (pdf):

labelling schemes adopted by some video-sharing and social media platforms to identify state-affiliated accounts are inconsistently applied to media outlets and journalists working for those outlets. In addition, few platforms appear to have clear policies on content from online influencers or vloggers whose content may be facilitated by state-affiliated media, through sponsored trips, for example.

According to Mozur, China's state broadcaster is actively looking for more influencers, offering bonuses and publicity for those who sign up. In the US, China's consulate general is paying $300,000 to a firm to recruit influencers for the Winter Olympics, ranging from Celebrity Influencers with millions of Instagram or TikTok followers, to Nano Influencers, with merely a few thousand. The ultimate goal of deploying these alternative voices is not to disprove negative stories appearing in Western media, but something arguably worse, as the New York Times report explains:

"China is the new super-abuser that has arrived in global social media," said Eric Liu, a former content moderator for Chinese social media. "The goal is not to win, but to cause chaos and suspicion until there is no real truth."

As if we needed any more of that…

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: china, influencers, propaganda, social media, surveillance, uyghurs

Birds Aren't Real, And Kids Are Not So Susceptible To Conspiracy Theories (Their Parents On The Other Hand...)

from the birds-aren't-real dept

Back in high school, I read Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy back-to-back with Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and ended up being amused and fascinated at the intersection of conspiracy theories and pranksters. If you're unaware, both books satirize the nature of conspiracy theories. Soon after I picked up a copy of Re/Search's Pranks! book, which, to this day, is on my book shelf between a copy of the Mondo 2000 book and The Book of the SubGenius (with a copy of the tiny Loompanics yellow version of Principia Discordia sitting next to them). Soon after reading those, I got to college, and thanks to the wonders of the internet (and Usenet in particular) discovered a group of somewhat merry internet pranksters who dubbed themselves "The Flat Earth Society" -- as a purely ironic group who enjoyed the mixture of absurdity, satire, pranking, with an appreciation for the occasional conspiracy theory worth mocking (I'm still in touch with some people from that group decades later, again, thanks to the internet).

That's all preamble to note that I not only recognize, but really appreciate what's going on with a group of Gen Z pranksters, who cooked up a rather brilliant satirical conspiracy theory, better known as "Birds Aren't Real," which has been making the rounds for a while now, and only was officially "exposed" as a prank in a thoroughly delightful NY Times article last week.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds don’t exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren’t Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan.

It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren’t Real and the movement’s followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

What Birds Aren’t Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It’s Gen Z’s attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism.

It seems that every generation needs this kind of thing -- and it's often driven by young folks (correctly) mocking older folks for various moral panics about different conspiracy theories. We see it again, and again. The Stuff You Should Know podcast just recently had an episode all about SINA, the "Society for Indecency to Naked Animals" which was a very similar style prank in the late 1950s, early 1960s.

In each case, these tend to be efforts by younger folks mocking this or that moral panic by older folks -- who always cloak the moral panic in a desire to "protect the children," even as the moral panics themselves seem frequently to come out of conspiracy theories or nonsense that the older folks fall for, and many of the younger folks see through. It's hard not to identify with this kind of thinking:

Most Birds Aren’t Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship, Mr. McIndoe said.

“Birds Aren’t Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies from the outside. It is from the deep inside,” he said. “A lot of people in our generation feel the lunacy in all this, and Birds Aren’t Real has been a way for people to process that.”

Or as someone notes later in the article:

Mr. Gaydos added, “If anyone believes birds aren’t real, we’re the last of their concerns, because then there’s probably no conspiracy they don’t believe.”

To me, though the clear take away from this is that, yet again, the kids are alright, and will continue to be alright. And for all of the "but think of the children" moral panics we will experience over and over again, the kids will figure out ways to process and deal with those moral panics in the best way possible for them, figuring out the best ways to deal with the impossibilities of the world, and making the best of what may seem like a bad situation.

Count me as all in as saying "birds aren't real."

Filed Under: birds aren't real, conspiracy theories, pranks, protect the children, satire, social media

Turkey's Dictator Erdogan, Who Has Sued Thousands Of Critics, Jailed More, Now Claims That 'Social Media' Is A 'Threat To Democracy'

from the takes-one-to-know-one dept

In the past we've pointed out how western politicians' attacks on social media are only serving to play into the hands of authoritarians around the globe, justifying their crackdowns on free speech and critics. And that doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. The latest is Turkey's President repeating the exact lines that US/EU politicians have been using to slam social media as "dangerous to democracy" in order to justify even more draconian crackdowns on speech and the press in his country.

We've written about Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for years -- mostly covering his regular attacks on free expression. Erdogan has sued thousands of people for "insulting" him online. Even more serious is his regular practice of jailing journalists by falsely calling them terrorists. He's also lead aggressive campaigns to ban any website that portrays him in an unflattering light.

So, you'd think that maybe US/EU politicians might recognize the problems of someone like Erdogan using their own words to further push his agenda. This weekend, Erdogan announced that social media is a "threat to democracy" and pushed for new laws that would criminalized "fake news" being spread on social media.

“Social media, which was described as a symbol of freedom when it first appeared, has turned into one of the main sources of threat to today’s democracy,” Erdogan said in a video message to a government-organised communications conference in Istanbul.

He added: “We try to protect our people, especially the vulnerable sections of our society, against lies and disinformation without violating our citizens’ right to receive accurate and impartial information.”

I mean, that sounds nearly identical to claims made by people like Senators Amy Klobuchar, Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Warren, or Ted Cruz. Of course, there is no actual democracy in Turkey right now, and Erdogan is just using these claims to justify even greater suppression of speech that criticizes him. As we've highlighted over and over again hate speech laws always turn into a mechanism for the government to punish people they don't like.

As the article notes, Turkey has already moved to have much great control over social media companies, and this new move will ratchet up the pressure:

Turkey passed a law last year requiring social media platforms that have more than 1 million users to maintain a legal representative and store data in the country. Major social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, have since established offices in Turkey.

The new legislation would make the dissemination of “disinformation” and “fake news” criminal offences punishable by up to five years in prison, according to pro-government media reports. It also would establish a social media regulator.

It seems like those US social media companies may want to reconsider their local offices.

But, even more to the point, US and EU politicians going out of their way to exaggerate and slam social media as a "threat to democracy" might want to think a bit more about how their words are being used, almost verbatim, as a justification around the globe to suppress free speech and political criticism.

Filed Under: censorship, democracy, hate speech, recep tayyip erdogan, regulations, social media, turkey

DOJ Tells Courts They Don't Need To Explore The Constitutionality Of Section 230 To Toss Donald Trump's Dumb Lawsuits Out

from the better-than-nothing dept

Last month, we noted that the DOJ had announced it was going to intervene in Donald Trump's bombastically silly lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for suspending his account for violating the websites' terms of service. Those lawsuits have not been going well. While Trump filed them in his home court in Florida, they've all been transferred to California. His decision to use the case to claim Section 230 is unconstitutional only served to wake up the Justice Department, and have them step in to respond to that particular point.

The DOJ has now filed its briefs -- we'll just share the one in the Twitter case since they're all basically the same -- to say (1) it's easy to dismiss this case without bothering to explore the constitutionality of 230, but if it feels otherwise (2) it's blatantly obvious that 230 is constitutional.

On point one:

Section 230(c) immunity is an affirmative defense, so the Court need not consider the constitutionality of that provision unless Plaintiff has first demonstrated that he has otherwise sufficiently alleged valid claims against Defendants. Accordingly, before the Court reaches the constitutional challenge as part of the preliminary injunction motion, it should first consider whether Plaintiff is otherwise likely to succeed on the merits of his claims against Twitter. For example, the Court might decide that Twitter is not a state actor constrained by the First Amendment, in which case Plaintiff could not prevail on count one of the FAC, meaning there would be no need to address the constitutionality of Section 230(c) with regard to that claim. And the Court might similarly decide that Plaintiff is not likely to succeed on the elements of his state law claims.

Another possible avoidance path stems from Plaintiff’s contention that Section 230(c) does not apply to the misconduct alleged. See Motion at 15-18. If the Court were to conclude that Twitter’s acts as alleged by Plaintiff do not fit within the terms of either Section 230(c)(1) or (2), then the statute would not apply, and there would be no occasion for passing on the constitutionality of the statute. Similarly, if the Court were to agree with Plaintiff that Twitter was coerced into suspending Plaintiff’s account, it might determine that immunity under Section 230(c)(2), which applies to certain actions “voluntarily taken in good faith,” is unavailable

That latter paragraph is a bit head-scratching, because it's pretty blatantly obvious that the websites' moderation is clearly covered by 230, but the overarching point stands: there's no need for the court to explore whether or not 230 is constitutional.

But, then, if the court does decide to go down that path, well...

... although Plaintiff’s constitutional challenge is not fully developed, it appears that Plaintiff’s argument is that Section 230(c) is unconstitutional because it supposedly “encourages” Twitter to “censor constitutionally protected speech.” Id. at 9. That argument misunderstands the nature of Section 230(c) and the reach of the Skinner and Hanson decisions. Section 230(c) does not require online service providers to limit or regulate speech by their users. Instead, Section 230(c) allows companies like Twitter to choose to remove content or allow it to remain on their platforms, without facing liability as publishers or speakers for those editorial decisions. See Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1102 (in the context of Section 230(c), “publication involves reviewing, editing, and deciding whether to publish or to withdraw from publication third-party content.”) (emphasis added). Section 230(c) does not reflect a preference for restricting content, much less for restricting content relating to any particular viewpoint.

And further:

As courts in this district have already concluded, the federal regulations in Skinner bear no relationship to Section 230(c). “[N]othing about Section 230 is coercive.” Divino, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3245, at *17 (contrasting the regulations in Skinner). Rather, “Section 230 reflects a deliberate absence of government involvement in regulating online speech[.]” Id. “Unlike the regulations in Skinner, Section 230 does not require private entities to do anything, nor does it give the government a right to supervise or obtain information about private activity.” Id. Therefore, Twitter “remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment.” Prager University v. Google LLC, 951 F.3d 991, 995 (9th Cir. 2020). “[C]ourts have uniformly concluded that digital internet platforms that open their property to user-generated content do not become state actors[.]” See id. at 997; see also Atkinson v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 20-17489, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 34632, at *3 (9th Cir. Nov. 22, 2021) (“Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not independently transform Meta Platforms into a government actor for First Amendment purposes.”).

Meanwhile, in that same case, Twitter has also filed its motion to dismiss, and it's worth a read just to understand how bloviatingly pathetic Trump's original complaint is.

Plaintiffs—like all Twitter account holders—agreed to abide by Twitter’s Rules, and yet proceeded to repeatedly violate those Rules. When Twitter responded by suspending or restricting their accounts, Plaintiffs filed this putative nationwide class-action seeking, among other things, an injunction forcing Twitter to carry Plaintiffs’ speech and appointing a court-supervised monitor to oversee all of Twitter’s future content-moderation decisions for the hundreds of millions of Tweets posted on its platform every day. In support of such unprecedented relief, Plaintiffs assert four claims that would upend bedrock principles of constitutional law, disregard standing and other procedural limitations, and stretch Florida consumer protection laws far beyond their geographic, temporal, and substantive limits.

Each of Plaintiffs’ claims is defective for multiple reasons. To summarize just a few: Plaintiffs’ lead claim—that Twitter’s editorial judgments not to disseminate their messages violated Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights—ignores both that Twitter is a private actor that is not constrained by the federal constitution and that Twitter has its own First Amendment rights to make those judgments. Plaintiffs’ invitation for this Court to invalidate a decades-old federal statute (47 U.S.C. § 230) as violative of the First Amendment fails both because they have no standing to assert such a claim and because their suggestion that the statute is unconstitutional is frivolous. Plaintiffs’ claim under the general consumer protection provision of the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act (“FDUPTA”) founders both because that provision does not apply in this case due to a binding contractual choice-of-law clause and because the Complaint alleges no facts that support Plaintiffs’ theories of consumer deception. And Plaintiffs’ claim under a new (and recently enjoined) Florida statute that purports to regulate content moderation by certain social media companies (Florida SB 7072) fails at the threshold because all of the conduct challenged in the Complaint occurred before the statute took effect. Plaintiffs’ claims should all be dismissed with prejudice.

Don't hold back now. There's a lot more in the filing, but we'll wait until the judge almost certainly dismisses the case to explore the reasoning...

Filed Under: doj, donald trump, section 230, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter, youtube

The Bipartisan Attacks On The Internet Are Easily Understood If You Realize They Just Want To Control Speech Online

from the that's-all-it-is dept

Understanding the "bipartisan" approach to internet regulations over the last couple of years really boils down to "both parties want to control the internet" and twist it to their own advantage. Almost everything you hear about "harms" from the internet are disingenuous nonsense from grandstanding politicians. That's not to say there aren't real problems with things on the internet or how it's structured -- but there is almost no realistic exploration of those issues by those in various legislatures. It's all about grabbing control over the internet. Two recent articles highlight pretty clearly how both Republicans and Democrats are clearly salivating to control speech online for their own benefit -- and not for the actual good of society or the internet.

First up, we have The Spectator. To be honest, this publication has been a garbage publication recently, pushing out all sorts of nonsense, but apparently there are still a few people there who can publish something good. Taylor Millard has written a short and to the point article noting, accurately, that so much of the bipartisan attacks on the internet lately are really about one thing: how both parties want to control your speech online. We've discussed how the policy plans of Republicans and Democrats often feel at odds, with Republicans complaining about too much moderation, and Democrats complaining about too little, but the truth is slightly more nuanced, and both are really just looking to have control over speech online -- control that is simply not allowed under the 1st Amendment.

The Democrats' attacks on free speech are pretty straightforward:

Congressional Democrats are hoping to enact rules due to their concerns over so-called misinformation and “harmful content.” Their anger over the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the bogeyman of Russian interference fueled the original push for new regulations. The coronavirus pandemic and 2020 presidential election fallout poured rocket fuel on the ideological pyre, as did the QAnon conspiracy and discussions around alternate Covid treatments, masks and vaccine efficacy.

Vermont congressman Peter Welch promoted a new five-member commission with civil penalty power making sure Big Tech is “unbiased” and doesn’t promote harmful content. The Democrat used the infamous “for the children” crusade as reasoning. Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar desires Health and Human Services control over the internet where public health is involved. She believes more lives would be saved if Section 230 protections for Big Tech were removed. New Mexico senator Ben Ray Lujan took it a step further, saying that the spread of misinformation ended up “fueling distrust in public health officials, promoting conspiracy theories and putting lives at risk.” To paraphrase Frank Herbert: he who controls the information, controls the world.

The Republican side is just slightly more nefarious in that they falsely claim that their efforts are in support of free speech, though as rulings in Texas and Florida have shown, they're equally as problematic under the 1st Amendment.

Republicans are just as censorious — but they shroud their urge to regulate Big Tech under the guise of protecting free speech. The Florida and Texas legislatures passed rules requiring large social media companies not to remove users from their platforms if they express dissident viewpoints.

We see this elsewhere too -- not just in the states. Nearly all of Josh Hawley's policy proposals regarding the internet are about controlling how internet companies present speech. And Republicans are just as prone as Democrats to roll out "for the children!" legislation that is designed to simply give government more control over speech.

The second article is by Adam Thierer, and published over at The Hill and makes a very similar point:

The only thing unifying both sides is a desire for greater regulatory control of media. In today’s hyper-partisan world, tech platforms have become just another plaything to be dominated by politics and regulation. When the ends justify the means, principles that transcend the battles of the day – like property rights, free speech and editorial independence – become disposable. These are things we take for granted until they’ve been chipped away at and lost.

Is there any way to make both sides happy without undermining the digital economy, which has been dominated globally by American firms for over a quarter century? 

That’s unlikely, but it hasn’t stopped lawmakers from introducing a flurry of bills to weaken or eliminate protections afforded by Section 230, which limits liability for platforms that host user-generated content. Implemented in 1996, it has served as the cornerstone of America’s ascendancy in the digital world and helped spur an avalanche of innovation. Gutting it would put all that at risk. 

As Thierer rightly notes, this is entirely about attacking free speech and the 1st Amendment, by both parties, in order to control a medium they haven't been able to control for the past few decades:

Without admitting it, both sides are really at war against the First Amendment, which protects the editorial decisions made by private companies. To be sure, there is problematic content to be found on digital media platforms, and there are some legitimate complaints about overzealous takedown policies and lack of transparent standards. That does not mean there is an easy policy fix to those problems, however. But courts have held repeatedly that the First Amendment protects efforts by private media firms to devise their own approaches. Just last week, a Texas judge blocked a law that sought to limit social media platforms’ editorial freedoms. That followed a court in Florida enjoining a similar law this summer. 

Critics like to paint large tech companies as nefarious overlords out to destroy civilization. In reality, the problems we see and hear on modern platforms reflect deeper problems in our society. If these companies are to be blamed for anything, it’s making human communication so frictionless that every person now has a soapbox to speak to the world. That’s both a blessing and a curse. With unbounded speech comes many wonders but also many problems.

The battles here are not about making a better internet. Or "protecting children." It's very much about each of the political parties wanting control over the key tool that has enabled people to communicate with each other, without having that speech first filtered through an "official" source.

Filed Under: controlling speech, democrats, free speech, republicans, section 230, social media, speech

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

Yet Another Study Shows Mainstream Media Is A Key Vector In Spreading Misinformation

from the again-and-again-and-again dept

The common "accepted knowledge" these days among many is that the rise of disinformation and conspiracy theories must be driven by social media, and Facebook in particular (with Twitter and YouTube right behind). This theory has always seemed a bit bonkers, and we've pointed to multiple detailed, data-driven studies that showed that cable news was a much bigger driver of misinformation than social media. Specifically, it found that conspiracy theories and misinformation and the like didn't actually "go viral" until after it appeared on cable news.

So, it's good (but not at all surprising) to find yet another study pointing out the same thing. This one, first highlighted by MediaPost, involved a big survey exploring the spread of conspiracy theories -- and found that the mainstream media is often the biggest vector, rather than social media.

Contrary to popular opinion, we found that while technology (and social media specifically) has a role to play in perpetuating CTs, our data suggests that this is not the only source of information about CTs, and often not the main one either. People are more likely to say they heard about some CTs from a ‘mainstream’ news source (such as TV or a broadsheet or tabloid newspaper) than they are from a social media channel. We therefore need to be careful about locating technology as the source of the problem and indeed as the sole focus for possible solutions

In fact, the study notes:

“Our findings suggest that this highly effective disinformation campaign, with potentially profound effects for both participation in, and the legitimacy of, the 2020 election, was an elite-driven, mass-media led process. Social media played only a secondary role.”

Again, none of this says that conspiracy theories aren't spread on social media, because of course they are. But increasing evidence suggests they don't really catch on until the mainstream media gets involved, with TV News being a key vector and newspapers -- both "broadsheets" and "tabloids" -- playing a role as well. And yet, almost no one wants to explore the differing role among these other sources, and many people are solely focused on social media -- perhaps because it's new, and it's always easy to blame the "new" thing.

But it won't get to the root of the problem, and actually can serve to mask the real problems.

Filed Under: cable tv, internet, misinformation, newspapers, social media, tv news

Devin Nunes Retires From Congress To Spend More Time Banning Satirical Cows From Trump's New Social Network

from the we-have-to-do-content-moderation? dept

In a bit of a Monday afternoon surprise, Rep. Devin Nunes has announced that he's retiring from Congress this month to become the CEO of Trump's new media company, Trump Media & Technology Group -- a company which apparently now has tons of money in the bank (even if from sketchy sources) but also is facing a newly revealed SEC investigation that might require someone who actually understands this stuff, rather than a very thin-skinned politician who sues people who criticize him.

Note to Devin: you can't sue the SEC for defamation.

There's all sorts of speculation about why Nunes would do this now. He's actually a pretty powerful Congressional representative, and in line to be in charge of some very powerful committees if, as is widely expected, the Republicans retake control over the House next year. But, he might also see the writing on the wall. Earlier in his career he was winning elections by a pretty wide margin, but the last two elections have actually been pretty tight. And, with California going through its redistricting process, he may have realized there was a high likelihood he'd lose next time around. Also, we know that watchdog groups have asked for an investigation into some of Nunes' activities.

And, then, of course, there are all the many, many frivolous lawsuits he's filed over the last few years, with the first one remaining the most notable and the most ridiculous: suing a satirical cow that made fun of Devin Nunes online. The fact that he'd sue a satirist for making fun of him does not suggest someone who believes very strongly in free speech.

So it should be extra interesting to see just how Devin Nunes handles content moderation questions for Truth Social now that he's in charge. Will he allow @DevinCow to have an account there? Or will he prove himself to be a hypocrite -- complaining about "censorship" on other sites, but actively engaging in the same (or more selective and biased) moderation on his own site? The press release from TMTG with quotes from Nunes reads as quite laughable when you realize he's suing satirical accounts on Twitter that made fun of him:

Congressman Devin Nunes added, “The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship. The United States of America made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream. I’m humbled and honored President Trump has asked me to lead the mission and the world class team that will deliver on this promise.”

For someone who is literally suing a bunch of reporters and critics, the claim of allowing for "the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship" doesn't just ring hollow, it rings of being a total hypocrite.

Either way, as we've seen with every wannabe Trumpist social media site promising to "bring back" free speech, it doesn't take long for them to realize that content moderation is not about "censorship," it is simply necessary to run a modern website.

How long will it take Nunes to recognize this simple fact? And will it happen before or after Trump fires him and stabs him in the back?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, congress, content moderation, defamation, devin nunes, donald trump, free speech, nune's cow, retirement, social media
Companies: tmtg, truth social