Identifying Insurrectionists Is Going To Be Easy -- Thanks To Social Media And All The Other Online Trails People Leave

from the not-going-dark dept

As Techdirt readers know, there's a lot of hatred for social media in some circles, and lots of lies being told about why Section 230 is to blame. Against that background, it's useful to remember that, as their name implies, they are just media -- things in the middle of people communicating to others. As such, they are neither good nor bad, but tools that can be used for both. In addition, social media posts themselves can be used in good and bad ways. Examples of the former include the Bellingcat investigations that frequently analyze social media to tease out information about major events that is otherwise hard to obtain. Sometimes, the information is so easy to find, you don't even need any special skills. An article on Ars Technica points out that identifying the leading insurrectionists who participated in the recent events at the US Capitol is going to be pretty straightforward, thanks to social media:

the DC Metropolitan Police and the FBI will probably need to look no further than a cursory Google search to identify many of the leaders of Wednesday's insurrection, as many of them took to social media both before and after the event to brag about it in detail.

Things are made much easier because many of those taking part in the rioting did not wear masks, despite requirements to do so in some locations. As a result, the authorities have thousands of really clear pictures of the insurrectionists' faces. In addition, Witness, an organization that "helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights", was encouraging people to save livestreams of the riots, and to share them with "investigating organizations like Bellingcat". The Ars Technica article notes:

Neither would an agency need actual photos or footage to track down any mob participant who was carrying a mobile phone. Law enforcement agencies have also developed a habit in recent years of using so-called geofence warrants to compel companies such as Google to provide lists of all mobile devices that appeared within a certain geographic area during a given time frame.

This underlines a fact that law enforcement doesn't like to talk about: far from things "going dark", there is more useful data that can be used to identify and convict people than ever before. In this case, it could perhaps also have been used to prevent the violence, since far-right supporters openly discussed their plans online beforehand. But it wasn't -- we don't know why. This plethora of readily-available information is another reason why backdooring encryption is not just foolish, but completely unnecessary. Today, there are so many other sources of key information -- not least the much-maligned social media.

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

Filed Under: evidence, insurrection, law enforcement, section 230, social media

In His Last Two Weeks, Ajit Pai Finally Finds A Backbone And Refuses To Move Forward With Trump's Ridiculous 230 Attack

from the too-little-too-late dept

On Thursday, a day after his boss helped incite a mob to storm the Capitol, only then did outgoing FCC chair Ajit Pai finally "distance" himself from Trump and say he won't go forward with Trump's plan to have the FCC reinterpret Section 230.

In an interview on C-SPAN's "The Communicators," Pai told Protocol and C-SPAN co-host Peter Slen that he does not intend to move forward with a rule-making on Section 230, which was laid out in Trump's social media executive order. He said he won't "second-guess" the decisions made by Facebook and Twitter to bar Trump from posting. And he said the president bears some responsibility for the riots that engulfed Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Specifically on 230, this was the exchange:

On Oct. 15, you said that you intend to move forward with a rule-making for clarity on Section 230. What's the status of that?

The status is that I do not intend to move forward with the notice of proposed rule-making at the FCC.

And why is that?

The reason is, in part, because given the results of the election, there's simply not sufficient time to complete the administrative steps necessary in order to resolve the rule-making. Given that reality, I do not believe it's appropriate to move forward.

If you could, what do you think should be done on Section 230?

There's now a bipartisan consensus among elected officials that the law should be changed. Obviously the president believes it should be repealed, President-elect Biden has campaigned repeatedly on its repeal, but within Congress there appears to be a consensus also that it should be revised or reformed in some way. Obviously in terms of changing the law, that's a decision for lawmakers to consider, but I do think there are certain bipartisan consensus areas forming regarding how it should be revised.

It's a very complicated issue, one that I think Congress will have to study and deliberate on very seriously. I personally would think about it more carefully in terms of the immunity provision, for example, but those are the kinds of things that I think the next administration and Congress will think about very carefully.

He's trying to escape this one with his reputation intact, and no one should let him get away with it. He could have spoken up earlier. He could have actually defended the 1st Amendment and the fact that internet websites have the right to moderate as they see fit. That's what his ideologically aligned colleague on the FCC, Mike O'Rielly, did in calling out that social media moderation is not an issue for the government. Pai sat by and said nothing, and watched as his colleague, who had backed up every other nonsense position Pai has taken for years, got fired for it.

Then Pai could have done the correct thing and refused to even bother to take up the issue of CDA 230 after the NTIA, under orders from Trump, sent over a petition. He chickened out and asked for comments, wasting everyone's time. Then, he could have taken those comments -- in which every single substantial comment explained how he had no authority and shouldn't be engaging at all -- and decided not to move forward. But, he spinelessly moved forward with it anyway, pushing out a laughable legal justification that was diametrically opposed to everything he had said about the net neutrality issue.

It's only now -- with two weeks left in the Trump Presidency, after more and more people (including Republicans) have come to realize that maybe Trump is a destructive mess who helped incite a riot at the Capitol -- that Pai pretends to find a backbone and push refuse to move forward on this issue. And he does it in the weakest possible way -- saying that he's run out of time. It's a spineless move from someone who has spent nearly all of his years in public office publicly patting himself on the back for standing by his "keep government out of business" principles.

Obviously, Pai has made a political calculus here, and he's hoping to slide away from this mess and the stench associated with it on the same day that a bunch of other Republicans hoping to revitalize their reputations are doing so as well. But it's not principled to wait until the politically convenient point to do what you should have done months ago. The truth is simple: Pai isn't the principled defender of "free markets" and "light touch regulation" he has positioned himself as over the years. He's just another political hack who took the convenient path.

Filed Under: ajit pai, donald trump, fcc, free speech, michael o'rielly, section 230, social media

PSA: If Someone Doesn't Accept Your Friend Request, Do Not Threaten To Kill Them And Kick In Their Front Door

from the with-friends-like-these dept

We've all been there. You jump on some social media platform having met someone in this existence that passes for real life and fire off a friend request to them. And then you... wait. Sometimes you then wait some more. And then, sometimes, you're left in this terrifying, self-absorbed limbo, having tried to make this connection only to see it never accepted. Your mind races. Why didn't they accept my request? Do they not like me? Is it something I said? I know, you think, I'll just threaten to murder them and go break down their front door!

Wait, what? Well, that appears to be exactly the way that one North Dakota man chose to end his 2020 after a co-worker didn't accept his Facebook friend request.

Caleb Burczyk, 29, pleaded not guilty to felony charges of burglary and terrorizing filed in Williams County District Court Tuesday, Dec. 29. Burczyk’s attorney Jeff Nehring declined to comment on the case.

Police say Burczyk started sending aggressive Facebook messages to his ex-coworker on Dec. 24, according to an affidavit of probable cause. He threatened his ex-coworker’s life and warned him that he was going to “come at” him if he did not accept his Facebook friend request, the affidavit stated.

“Accept my friend request or I’m going to murder you,” Burczyk wrote in a message to his ex-coworker, according to the affidavit.

An addendum PSA: the best way to convince someone to accept your social media connection is probably not to explicitly threaten them with murder if they don't. On top of landing you in legal hot water, most of us just don't want to associate ourselves with folks who threaten to kill us.

Regardless, law enforcement reports that Burczyk proceeded to go to his ex-coworkers home, where there was a security camera, and kicked in the front door. He was arrested afterwards, of course. Given the mountain of physical evidence at hand, it feels like a certainty that he's not going to be found innocent, assuming any of this actually gets to a trial decision.

So stay even, Techdirt friends. A rebuffed social media connection request is nothing to go to jail over.

Filed Under: caleb burczyk, friending, jeff nehring, social media
Companies: facebook

FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies

from the this-could-have-been-helpful dept

On Monday, the FTC announced that it was issuing what's known as 6(b) orders to nine social media and video streaming companies, demanding a fairly massive amount of information regarding their data collection and usage policies, as well as their advertising practices. To me, this is a huge missed opportunity. If the FTC is truly trying to gain a better understanding of data collection, privacy, and advertising practices, perhaps to better inform Congress on how to, say, pass a truly comprehensive (and useful?!?) privacy legislation, then there are ways to do that. But this... is not that. This looks like a weird fishing expedition for a ton of unrelated information, from an odd selection of nine companies, many of whom are in a very different business than the others. It leaves me quite perplexed.

First, let's look at the odd selection of companies. The letters are going to:

• Amazon (apparently including Twitch)
• Bytedance (TikTok)
• Discord
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Snap
• Twitter
• WhatsApp (owned by Facebook)
• YouTube

Okay, so they've definitely focused on many of the big players, but they've also left out a ton as well. Where's LinkedIn? Or Github? Or WeChat? Or Pinterest? Or Quora? They list Facebook and Whatsapp... but not Instagram? Where's Zoom? Now it's true that sometimes the FTC will randomly sample a bunch of companies in a particular industry to get a look at certain practices -- but for that to make sense, you want to sample from a set of similarly situated companies. This is... not that.

For the smaller companies on the list, such as Reddit and Discord, the FTC demanding they file a ton of paperwork in a very short time frame is going to mean a tremendous waste of time.

The second concern is the broad nature of the requests. The "sample order" is massive. There are 53 separate requests, many with multiple sub-parts. They're not just asking for specific information, but rather going on what appears to be an incredibly broad fishing expedition for information about a wide variety of practices at all of these companies -- including broad demands for future strategies and plans. For example, beyond just information on the number of users, it demands all documents relating to "business strategies or plans," "research and development efforts," "strategies or plans to reduce costs, improve products or services..." It also seems to be demanding all "presentations to management committees, executive committees, and boards of directors."

That feels like a fishing expedition, rather than an attempt to actually understand data collection and usage practices.

There are categories of information included here that I think it would be useful for the FTC to understand. But there's just so much information requested that it seems likely to bury the useful information.

The one FTC Commissioner who dissented from this effort, Noah Joshua Phillips, raises important questions in his dissent:

Effective 6(b) orders look carefully at business practices in which companies engage in a manner designed to elicit information, understand it, and then present it to the public in way that is usable and can form a basis for sound public policy.

The first step is to select a group of recipients that will permit such examination, usually a group of firms engaged in conduct that can be compared. But the logic behind the choice of recipients here is not clear at all. The 6(b) orders target nine entities: Facebook, WhatsApp, Snap, Twitter, YouTube, ByteDance, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord. These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models. And the orders omit other companies engaged in business practices similar to recipients, for example, Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr, not to mention other firms the data practices of which have drawn significant government concern, like WeChat. The only plausible benefit to drawing the lines the Commission has is targeting a number of high profile companies and, by limiting the number to nine, avoiding the review process required under the Paperwork Reduction Act, which is not triggered if fewer than ten entities are subject to requests.

Phillips calls out the same broad demands I raised above regarding business plans, R&D and presentations, noting:

Such a request would be suited to an antitrust investigation. But as part of an inquiry ostensibly aimed at consumer privacy practices, it amounts to invasive government overreach. And that is just one of the order’s 50-plus specifications.

And, finally, he highlights how this effort is just demanding way too much information to be of use for a comprehensive policy recommendation:

The biggest problem is that today’s 6(b) orders simply cover too many topics to make them likely to result in the production of comparable, usable information—yet another feature proper oversight and public comment could have flagged. Rather than a carefully calibrated set of specifications designed to elicit information that the agency could digest and analyze as a basis for informing itself, Congress, stakeholders, and the public, these 6(b) orders instead are sprawling and scattershot. Their over 50 specifications, most with numerous and detailed subparts, address topics including, but not limited to: advertising (reach, revenue, costs, and number and type); consumer data (collection, use, storage, disclosure, and deletion); as noted above, all strategic, financial, and research plans; algorithms and data analytics; user engagement and content moderation; demographic information; relationships with other services; and children and teens (policies, practices, and procedures).

Recipients of 6(b) orders typically negotiate to limit their productions, to tailor them in light of their specific business models and business practices. Perhaps the Commission will push back on attempts to do so, devoting additional lawyers to litigating the orders and having a federal judge oversee them, rather than OIRA. Or negotiation may reduce the burdens. But if that happens, each recipient will be responding to a different set of negotiated specifications. That certain of the companies in question have very different business models makes this even more likely. The end result of that is, say, the agency learning a lot about one recipient’s advertising practices, but not as much about its algorithms. For another recipient, the agency might receive information about privacy practices but very little about its plans to expand. Each of the nine recipients will produce differing, if any, amounts of information to each of the 50-plus specifications.

I actually think it would be a good thing for the FTC to better understand how these companies work and their practices. I think it could be useful for them to gain such an understanding, and then make recommendations on a comprehensive federal privacy law. But I don't see how this fishing expedition does any of that. Instead, it just asks for basically everything and the kitchen sink from a somewhat random selection of companies, some of whom will have difficulty producing all of this information.

Filed Under: data, data collection, data protection, fishing expedition, ftc, privacy, social media, video streaming
Companies: amazon, bytedance, discord, facebook, reddit, snap, tiktok, twitch, twitter, whatsapp, youtube

Will Parler Users Treat Its 'Glitch' That Hid Georgia Election Content The Same Way They Treated A Twitter Glitch?

from the hypocrites dept

It's been absolutely fascinating -- though not at all surprising -- to watch a ton of Trumpists mentally struggling with the process of understanding the nature, importance, and necessity of content moderation online over the last few months via Parler. As you may recall, after whining about being moderated on sites like Twitter and Facebook, a bunch of Trump fans started using Parler, a site that was only recently revealed to have been cofounded by Rebekah Mercer (Parler fans like to claim that their users are migrating from Twitter to Parler, but most of them are still using Twitter, because Parler is mostly them preaching to the converted).

Parler's founders (including Mercer) and its biggest fans have been insisting that Parler stands for "free speech" and that unlike Twitter, it won't moderate content. Indeed, despite claiming that it would only moderate "based off the FCC and the Supreme court" (whatever the fuck that means), we knew that the site would end up doing much more moderation, just like every other social media site.

In fact, we highlighted how Parler seemed to be doing a speedrun through the content moderation lessons of every previous social media network that comes on the scene, promising to do no moderation at all, and then quickly discovering that that's impossible. First, you have to moderate some content under law (such as child sexual abuse material). Second, there is plenty of content that you have strong legal reasons to moderate (such as copyright infringement, to avoid massive liability). Third, every site recognizes they need to deal with straight up spam. And lots of sites insist that they can just do that and nothing else. But then they discover that they have people on their platform trolling, harassing, and abusing others.

Last summer, we highlighted how Parler was banning trolls who were joining the platform just to make fun of Parler and its users. Hilariously, that post keeps getting comments every few days from Parler users saying things like "of course Parler has to ban you leftist trolls." Just a few examples from our comments. This guy says that he needs Parler as a sort of "safe space."

So, how does censorship feel to you? Parlor provides a place where people can escape the insults, bullying, Mental/emotional assaults. Try presenting a point of view without name calling, with facts and data, with an open mind and with a little thought toward strangers and how the vitriolic hates speech affects them. Then perhaps the lefties will be welcome.

This is pretty hilarious, given how frequently Trumpists mock others for wanting "safe spaces" and insisting that "hate speech" is not a thing. And then there's this one from someone who thinks its obvious that the users trolling Parler should get banned:

Every last one of those crybabies up there just self-explained why they were banned. Lol "I created an account just to mess with conservatives." Yeah dude, I can see why you were banned. If you create an account just to screw with people, you're a troll and you SHOULD be banned regardless of the web site. If you create an account to debate and give general respect to everyone, then no, you're fine. The people above got exactly what they deserved. NO WEB SITE is going to allow harassment of any kind. Period.

Um. Yes, that was the very point of that post. That every site discovers it needs to deal with harassment. And that's a big part of the reason why people get kicked off of Twitter.

I find it hilarious that the same crew who insists that Twitter/Facebook are "censoring" them, immediately spins around and insists that it's totally obvious that Parler must remove "trolls, hate speech and harassment" without recognizing their own hypocrisy.

Anyway, sooner or later we were going to have a controversy in which Parler moderation impacted their Trumpist-style supporters, rather than just the folks jumping in to troll. And that day is today.

The Daily Beast has an article giving some of the important background. A SuperPAC connected to convicted political scammer Roger Stone is trying to get people to write in Trump's name in the two Georgia Senate runoff elections:

The most aggressive call to boycott or cast protest ballots in the two runoff races has, so far, come from a dormant pro-Trump super PAC with ties to Stone that unveiled a new initiative to retaliate against the Republican Party’s supposed turncoats by handing Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

The group, dubbed the Committee for American Sovereignty, unveiled a new website encouraging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump’s name in both of the upcoming Senate runoff elections, which could determine the party that controls the upper chamber during President-elect Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The PAC argued that doing so will show support for the president in addition to forcing Republicans to address the wild election-fraud conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters and members of his own legal team.

This entire campaign is somewhat bewildering, since (1) there is no way to write-in names during the run-offs and (2) it would seem to go against Trumpist interests to sink the support of the two Republican candidates. So it was somewhat amusing to suddenly find out that Parler is apparently blocking hashtags related to this campaign:

For what it's worth, Parler's recently hired policy executive says that the accusation may have been "a glitch" according to Newsweek. And I'd totally buy that is a possibility.

There seems to be no way to link directly to that Parler post, but it says:

This is false, as evidenced by the fact that this post showed up when I searched for the tag.

There may be a glitch, or a delay of some kind, because the initial screen summarizing the results showed “1 post,” and then when you click on that, you see a whole bunch.

Please people, don’t jump to conclusions. I know you’re accustomed to biased content curation, but we don’t do that here. Ask before jumping to conclusions.

However, I will note that when Twitter admitted that it had a glitch that filtered some people out of auto-complete and latest results in search, the same folks rushing to Parler now (such as Ted Cruz) insisted that it was obviously deliberate and to this day continue to falsely accuse Twitter of shadowbanning them. So it's pretty rich for Parler people to say "please people, don't jump to conclusions." The only reason Parler has any audience at all is because its insanely gullible userbase jumped to a bunch of false conclusions about Twitter moderation.

Again, Parler has every right to moderate however it sees fit. And getting rid of trolls and assholes is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Also, glitches happen all the time. However, I find it amusing that once again, Parler is learning all the same lessons that Twitter learned over time -- and Parler's users (and employees) are demanding we give Parler the benefit of the doubt they never gave Twitter. So before Parler's fervent supporters rush into our comments to defend Parler, let me be clear: Parler has every right to do this. No one is mocking them for that. We're mocking them for (1) insisting that Parler wouldn't do this and (2) for the fact that you give Parler the benefit of the doubt that you refuse to give Twitter.

Filed Under: content moderation, georgia elections, glitch, roger stone, section 230, social media
Companies: parler, twitter

Inconceivable: TikToker Who Made Paint Mixing Very, Very Cool... Is Fired From Sherwin-Williams For Doing So

from the mix-it-up dept

TikTok remains a somewhat fascinating service to me, as different people experiment with using it to express all sorts of things in ways that are unexpected and often delightful. A couple months ago I discovered that there appears to be an entire genre of TikTokers creating videos about... mixing paint colors. I know... I know. At first that sounds insane. Who could possibly want to watch that? But some of them are truly amazing, as first noted by reporter Rebecca Jennings who tweeted about her discovery of Christian Hull, an Australian TikToker whose videos of him watching paint mixing videos and trying to guess what color the eventual mix will be is just so insanely joyful and addicting.

Some people argued that the viral attention towards these paint mixing videos was due to people getting cabin fever from the never-ending pandemic, but I'd say it's just one of those amazing internet oddities that have always gone viral on the internet since its earliest days. The ability to see this kind of actual, unfettered joy at something that seems so mundane, and which most people didn't even think was exciting -- only to discover that it's very, very exciting.

Anyway, Hull wasn't the only paint mixing TikToker out there. Another account, Tonester Paints (the user name of Tony Piloseno) worked at a Sherwin-Williams paint store in Ohio. He made a ton of paint mixing videos, including taking requests, and showing people how to make certain colors (with paints he purchased himself, which he then donates to Habitat for Humanity)). Again, the videos are surprisingly mesmerizing. (I tried to use TikTok's native embed code in this post, but it seemed to fuck up everything and was causing all sorts of problems, so I've now tweeted the Tiktoks from my Twitter account and are embedding those tweets instead).

Piloseno says as his TikTok (and YouTube and Instagram) paint mixing videos got more and more attention, he thought that perhaps Sherwin-Williams would be interested in having him actually represent the brand in doing his paint mixing. He approached executives at the company's headquarters (with the approval of his own manager) with a presentation about how to better use social media to gain attention. He never got the meeting, but instead the company fired him for "gross misconduct" in response to people calling the company in response to his videos.

He showed Buzzfeed his termination papers, which also said he was accused of "wasting properties [and] facilities" and "seriously embarass[ing] the Company or its products." The company also provided a bizarre quote to Buzzfeed saying he was fired due to a customer complaint:

According to termination papers Piloseno provided to BuzzFeed News, the official offense the company handed down to him was "gross misconduct," which included the offenses of "wasting properties [and] facilities," and "seriously embarrass[ing] the Company or its products."

Shortly after this story was published, the company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that it was due to a "customer complaint" about Piloseno's TikToks that it had terminated his employment.

Piloseno told BuzzFeed News he did admit to filming TikToks while he was already mixing paints for customers when he first started posting to his channel in December 2019. But, as his page grew, he committed to purchasing cans of paint with his employee discount.

"They first accused me of stealing — I told them I purchased all my paint," he said. "They made me answer a bunch of questions like when I was doing this, where, if there was anyone in the store while I was doing [filming]. There was never anyone with me while I doing it."

So, you could see how, at first, the company might be upset that some of his early videos involved filming the paint he was mixing for customers... but... also... why? He wasn't revealing any private information of the customers. He was just filming the paint mixing process (which is, again, fascinating).

The Buzzfeed article notes that one reason why customers had called the company was in response to this video in which Piloseno mixed actual blueberries into paint to to color it blue:

That's amazing. And I say that as someone who once got out of being fined for significant room damage to a college dorm by buying some white paint and mixing in nutmeg and cinnamon in varying amounts until it matched the dull beige of the existing paint job (it also smelled amazing).

The whole thing seems bizarre. Sherwin-Williams incredibly corporate response to all of this is just silly:

The company told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that a "customer's concerns" is what launched its investigation, and what ultimately led to its decision to let him go "due to multiple company policy violations."

"While we don’t discuss the details of employee matters publicly, what I can tell you is that we were made aware of the TikTok videos produced by Anthony Piloseno through a customer complaint," said Julie Young, the vice president of global corporate communications. "We take all complaints seriously and thoroughly investigated the customer’s concerns. Following the investigation, Mr. Piloseno was let go in July 2020 due to multiple Company policy violations."

Piloseno is still making his paint mixing videos now. He's just doing them in a friend's basement where he's built a studio, according to his recently launched GoFundMe campaign. Oh, and he told Buzzfeed that he's not buying paints from Sherwin-Williams:

"I bought myself a light box. I bought some empty gallons at Lowe's — I basically started shopping at Lowe's afterward," he added.

Not surprisingly, this is not reflecting at all well on Sherwin-Williams. In the responses to his TikTok explaining all of this (which shows a brief screenshot of the marketing presentation he made for the corporate execs) people seem quite reasonably ticked off at Sherwin-Williams for firing a guy who was actually making their paint cool. The comments in response to the video about Sherwin-Williams corporate (again, his own manager and the people at the store supported him), suggest that they not only screwed up a huge opportunity, but they've now actively turned people off of the brand:

There are nearly 20,000 comments on that video... and pretty much all of them are saying some variation of how badly Sherwin-Williams fucked this up, and how the company execs should be fired instead.

This is going to be a case study in how not to handle social media and going viral for big companies.

Update: And just this morning Piloseno has posted about how he's gotten a new job because of all of this. A company called Florida Paints heard about his story, flew him to Orlando and has hired him to help promote their paint products.

Filed Under: fired, paint, paint mixing, social media, tonester paints, tony piloseno
Companies: sherwin-williams, tiktok

Bad Analogy: Comparing Social Media To Guns

from the no,-no,-no dept

We've been seeing all sorts of really dumb analogies lately as people try to complain about social media. During the recent Senate hearing about social media and content moderation, Senators from both parties compared social media to cigarette smoking, somehow ignoring the fact that in that analogy the "tobacco" is "1st Amendment protected speech." But Reuters decided to one up that and compare social media companies to gunmakers. And, if that sounds incredibly stupid as a concept, reading the actual article makes it worse. Much worse.

Guns and social networks have several things in common. Many people enjoy them responsibly, but in the wrong hands they’re dangerous. Yet both enjoy an unfair subsidy in the form of legal protections that shield them from the actions of their users. That can’t last forever.

I mean... what? The article argues that Section 230 is an "unfair subsidy" in the same way that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is an "unfair subsidy" to gunmakers. But, in both cases, these laws aren't a subsidy. They're both laws that properly apply liability to those committing the crimes, and in doing so, creating rules that help protect key Constitutional rights.

Without these shields, both industries would change radically. Gun-rights supporters claim that without PLCAA, a sector with 47,000 workers would go bust. That’s probably hyperbole. But lawsuits and safety features would impose legal costs and make guns more expensive to produce. For social media, more active moderation would mean more employees. Users would have to get more used to the idea that their Facebook or Twitter posts aren’t free.

I don't know how changing the PLCAA would impact gun makers, but this article takes a huge fucking leap in assuming that removing 230 would "mean more employees" and "more active moderation." After all, pre-230, the courts seemed to be zeroing in on using traditional distributor liability concepts, which would mean that there was a knowledge standard to create liability. And thus, without 230, you'd be likely to see the opposite in many cases: fewer moderators, fewer employees, and less moderation. More lawyers, though.

Or you'd get the other extreme: a few specialized sites, with very, very heavy handed moderation, which would effectively be true gatekeepers for speech, and not the open arenas for discussion we see today.

Facebook and Twitter have an edge over gunsmiths. They know their legal impunity is threatened and are trying to get ahead of the problem. Dorsey and Zuckerberg have welcomed Section 230 changes. That’s sensible, because they can help reset the rules. Compared with gunmakers, they’ll then be better equipped to survive when their magical armor is taken away.

What? Dorsey and Zuckerberg support narrowly tailored reform (mainly around transparency reporting) in part because they know that they can handle the regulatory burden to deal with the increased liability. All the smaller companies and individual websites could not.

Bad analogies are not useful in understanding how free speech works online -- and comparing social media to gunmakers is particularly ridiculous. And, how does it compare to guns? In this analogy, with guns people get killed. In social media... people say dumb stuff? And that needs to somehow be regulated? Really?

It's really not that difficult to understand how Section 230 works, and the kinds of things that would happen if it were removed. You'd think that a media organization like Reuters would at least make sure the stories its publishing would understand basic concepts. After all, as a publisher, they're "liable" for whatever they publish.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, free speech, guns, liability, plcaa, section 230, social media, subsidy

What If Cambridge Analytica Owned Its Own Social Network? CA Backer Rebekah Mercer Admits She's A Co-Founder Of Parler

from the oh-look-at-that dept

Since the election, Parler has found renewed life among Trump supporters who feel that... [checks notes] being fact-checked, or limited for sharing debunked and dangerous conspiracy theories, is somehow an attack on... something (reality: it's an attack on their delusions). And as Parler has gotten a new round of attention, some questions were raised about the funding behind it. After all, there was no big VC or known investor behind the company, so it wasn't entirely clear how it was surviving. There was a crazy and incorrect conspiracy theory making the rounds that it was owned by Trumpists' favorite bogeyman, George Soros. That's not true, though it would have been completely hilarious if it had been.

Late last week, a Twitter thread made the rounds trying to tie Parler's founding to Russia, though it involves a lot of conjecture and guilt by association, rather than facts.

But then, on Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Parler was being funded by the Mercer family, the same family who funded a bunch of pro-Trump projects, including Cambridge Analytica, Breitbart, and, well, Trump's own presidential campaign. Over the weekend, Rebekah Mercer took it up a further notch by claiming that she was the co-founder of the company along with CEO John Matze.

That's a post from Rebekah Mercer saying:

John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy. Benjamin Franklin warned us: "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy.

That's... information that is brand new. Prior to this weekend, it was always claimed that the company was founded by Matze and a friend, Jared Thomson. In the past they had claimed that they founded it together, and had some support from a "small group of close friends and employees." But they never mentioned the Mercers. That's some "friends."

Also, Rebekah Mercer's claims are pretty ridiculous when you pick them apart. Despite claiming that they're setting up "a neutral platform for free speech" we know perfectly well that's utter garbage. As we've seen, they've got no problem banning people they dislike for ideological reasons. In fact, despite claiming on the website that they would only take down content if it violated the 1st Amendment, the company quickly realized that it would have to ban a lot more than that.

My favorite example of this was in a Forbes interview, where Matze admits that he's sitting around banning trolls as quickly as he can:

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m eating: I haven’t eaten all day,” says Parler founder John Matze, devouring a late lunch. His social media app—a new favorite of President Trump’s and other GOP leaders—has been under siege for the past few hours. “I’m sitting here like, banning trolls.”

By trolls he means teenage leftists who’ve flooded onto Parler....

As we said, they've sort of speed-run the content moderation learning curve that every website goes through when they claim to support free speech. They insist they'll allow anything. Then they start banning spammers. Then trolls. And, that's the same damn thing Twitter does, and even here they're admitting that they're banning "leftist trolls." In fact, over the past week or so we keep having people showing up on our article from the summer about Parler banning users it doesn't like and screaming at us about how it's okay because they're just banning trolls. But, that's the point. That's what Twitter is doing too. Except that Twitter isn't complaining about ideological trolls.

It's only Parler that seems to be staking out an ideological claim, trying to ban "leftist" trolls after being cofounded by one of the most extreme partisans around, who laughably claims that Parler will be neutral.

The other incredibly ridiculous claim is that Parler is a response to "the ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords" and that it is trying to "lead the fight against data mining." Or that Parler is "a beacon to all those who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy." We already covered how its views on free speech are not very different from other social media platforms, but the privacy claims are ridiculous as well.

Remember, Cambridge Analytica's entire claim to fame was collecting a shit ton of data on people by abusing the rules on an academic's personality quiz on Facebook, and then use it to target political messages. Remember, part of the reason Facebook got hit with a huge FTC fine was that it had let Cambridge Analytica extract a bunch of data it had promised not to.

Former Cambridge Analytica data expert Christopher Wylie noted this weekend that when he was there, the Mercers had always wanted their own social network in order to cut out the middle man and collect the data directly (and distribute propaganda directly). And now they've got that:

Oh, and they've got access to a lot more private data than Facebook, Google or Twitter do. Hell, Matze practically brags to a Forbes reporter how he has all sorts of private data on the "leftist trolls" he's trying to ban:

Matze knows the leftists’ ages of the trolls, as he calls them, because some verified their accounts, coughing up selfies and driver’s licenses or passports (a set of highly unusual requirements for proving identity and registering for an online account).

Twitter doesn't require you to upload your driver's license. Also, if you want to have a verified account on Parler, you're required to hand over your Social Security Number as well.

Basically, the Mercers are building a huge database of gullible idiots that they can now market propaganda to directly, cutting out the Facebook middleman. I'm curious how it was a huge problem when it was happening by Facebook, but somehow fine when it's all directly on the Mercer's own social network?

Filed Under: content moderation, free speech, john matze, mercer family, privacy, rebekah mercer, social media
Companies: cambridge analytica, parler

Trumpland Apparently Just Forgot About Its Manufactured TikTok Hysteria

from the whoops-a-daisy dept

We've repeatedly made it pretty clear that President Trump's effort to ban TikTok is little more than a performative, xenophobic, idiotic mess. For one, the effort appears more focused on trying to get Trump-allied Oracle a new hosting deal than any serious concern about consumer privacy and security. Two, banning a teen dancing and lip syncing app does jack shit in terms of thwarting China or protecting U.S. consumer privacy, since the U.S. telecom, app, and adtech markets are largely an unaccountable privacy mess making it trivial to obtain this kind of data elsewhere.

Further highlighting the performative nature of the proposed ban, TikTok this week effectively stated that Trumpland appears to have forgotten about the proposed ban entirely. TikTok filed a petition this week in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), pointing out that the deadline for ByteDance to sell off its US assets over national security concerns came and went this week with no action from Trumpland or word on any extension.

Apparently the whole TikTok thing fell off the radar as the administration focuses on pretending it didn't lose the election. Whoops:

"For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment,” TikTok says in a statement to The Verge. “In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework."

This is, of course, because the TikTok ban was largely performative bullshit and cronyism, designed to drum up some hysteria over China and provide Trump with leverage in his harmful trade war while driving some additional cash and influence to his U.S. allies.

If the Trump administration and GOP genuinely cared about U.S. consumer privacy and security, there's a laundry list of more pressing issues it could do something about, including shoring up vulnerable U.S. telecom infrastructure, passing even a baseline U.S. privacy law for the internet era, better policing the widespread abuse of user location data (by corporations and the government alike), attempt to shore up security in the internet of broken things sector, secure election integrity, and stop, you know, trying to destroy encryption.

Neither Trump Inc. nor the Trump-allied GOP does any of this because it's more interested in bad faith posturing and bullshit than serious governance or public welfare. If the folks fanning their face over TikTok truly cared about consumer privacy and security, we'd do something about the broader, unaccountable mess that is adtech, app, government, and telecom data privacy. Instead we get a giant pile of bullshit and a mountain of billable legal man hours over something that was never serious adult policy to begin with.

Filed Under: apps, ban, cfius, china, executive order, social media
Companies: bytedance, tiktok

While Social Media Was Quick To Highlight And Limit The Spread Of False Claims Of Election Victory, Traditional Media Just Let It Flow

from the guys,-seriously? dept

For four years, all we've been hearing about is how social media was this terrible source of disinformation that had to be regulated because they were destroying democracy and all that. And so what happened last night/early this morning when Donald Trump falsely tried to claim he had won prior to all the votes being counted? Twitter and Facebook both reacted pretty quickly to flag the information, and highlight that it was misleading or false (and Twitter limited the ability to share it).

Meanwhile, nearly every major TV station allowed Trump to give his speech directly, in which he falsely claimed that he had already won states where there were still many votes to be counted, insisted that the counting of votes must be stopped (and claiming he was going to ask the Supreme Court to stop the count), and suggesting that there was fraud going on in a few states that still had significant mail-in ballots to count (most of which they hadn't been able to count prior to yesterday because of Republican legislatures blocking that ability). There was no attempt to delay what he was saying, to contextualize it or to point out it was wrong until well after it had broadcast.

And then you had journalistic malpractice via the Associated Press. Two of its White House reporters, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire, decided to do a "straight" tweet repeating what Trump had said, without any context, without any caveats or context, as if it were factual reporting.

It's flabbergasting that the AP would take this view from nowhere approach to reporting on something so critical. And, even worse, since so many local newspapers just rerun AP newswire, that's the take that many people are going to see.

Other sources got it correct. Buzzfeed -- a site that old school journalists used to love to mock -- did a hell of a lot more journalism than the AP:

The Guardian, a UK paper, got the story correct as well:

We've been noting in the past year how studies have shown that TV news is the key source for disinformation and how it doesn't tend to go viral on social media until after it appears on TV.

So can someone explain to me why it is everyone wants to rush out and blame social media for disinformation?

Filed Under: content moderation, disinformation, donald trump, elections, fact checking, jonathan lemire, media, social media, zeke miller
Companies: ap, associated press, buzzfeed, facebook, guardian, twitter