Public Interest Groups Ask Social Media Platforms To Preserve Data Regarding COVID-19 Content Moderation For Future Study

from the 'twould-be-useful dept

Over the last month or so, we've written plenty on the challenges of social media companies managing content moderation in the midst of a pandemic, highlighting the challenges when misinformation is coming from official sources, when it's impossible to distinguish legit info from misinformation, when the intersection of politics and misinformation gets tricky, and, of course, when platforms have to rely more on AI while all their workers are working from home (raising significant privacy concerns if they're still moderating content).

In the long run, what happened over the last couple months is going to represent a truly fascinating place to look for case studies about content moderation on the internet -- but only if the data is available. To that end, a bunch of public interest groups, led by CDT, have put out an open letter asking social media platforms to preserve as much as possible about the content moderation decisions they're making and to be as transparent as possible for future research:

The importance of accurate information during this pandemic is clear. But knowledge about the novel coronavirus is rapidly evolving. This is also an unprecedented opportunity to study how online information flows ultimately affect health outcomes, and to evaluate the macro- and micro-level consequences of relying on automation to moderate content in a complex and evolving information environment. But such studies rely on information that your companies control–including information you are automatically blocking and removing from your services. It is essential that platforms preserve this data so that it can be made available to researchers and journalists and included in your transparency reports. The data will be invaluable to those working in public health, human rights, science and academia. It will be crucial to develop safeguards to address the privacy issues raised by new or longer data retention and by the sharing of information with third parties, but the need for immediate preservation is urgent.

We, the undersigned organizations, institutions, and researchers, urge you to:

1. Immediately commit to preserving all data on content removal during the COVID-19 pandemic, including but not limited to information about which takedowns did not receive human review, whether users tried to appeal the takedown (when that information is available), and reports that were not acted upon.
2. Preserve all content that the platform is automatically blocking or removing, including individual posts, videos, images, and entire accounts.
3. Produce transparency reports that include information about content blocking and removal related to COVID-19
4. Provide access to this data in the future to researchers and journalists, recognizing that privacy will need to be ensured.

Hopefully the various platforms will agree to this.

Filed Under: content moderation, content moderation at scale, covid-19, social media, studies, transparency

Game Of (Internet) Life: How Social Media Reacts To Questionable News

from the moving-towards-truth dept

On April 11, Princeton mathematician and the inventor of “Game of Life” John Horton Conway passed away from the coronavirus. Known as a “magical genius” whose curiosity extended beyond just mathematics, the passing was a devastating blow to many who loved the man.

Yet as news of his passing broke, an interesting scenario developed. Instead of a formal statement from the institution or his family, the news first appeared on Twitter. With no verifiable proof of the claim, many were left struggling to determine whether to believe the story.

This scenario––a questionable story that can be proven true or false in time––presents a challenge for combating the spread of false information online. As we have seen many times before on social media, stories are often shared prior to the information being verified. Unfortunately, this will increasingly occur––especially in an election year and during a pandemic. Therefore, examining how social media responded during this particular event can help better determine the rules and patterns that drive the spread of information online.

Around 2:00 pm EST on Saturday, April 11, news started to spread on social media that John Horton Conway had died. The main source was a tweet that came from a fellow mathematician, who expressed his condolences and shared a story of Conway writing a blog post for April Fool’s Day.

As the news began to spread, most individuals who saw the tweets accepted the information as true and began expressing condolences themselves.

However some started to question the news; mainly because the original tweet had no source verifying the claim. As time went on, people began to speculate that this may indeed be a hoax, and many began deleting and retracting earlier tweets; a void existed where a source should be.

Users filled that void with Wikipedia, a platform where any individual can make changes to the information on any given page. However, this led to a series of citation conflicts, where users would post and then others would delete the post, claiming a lack of source.

The confusion eventually died down as more individuals who knew John Horton Conway explained what had happened, and how they knew. Indeed, the account that first broke the news followed up later with an explanation of what happened. But in that brief window where questions arose, we received a glimpse into how social media reacts to questionable news. And as if discovering the rules to a “Game of Misinformation,” this teaches us a few important lessons about user behavior and how misinformation spreads over time.

First, most users quickly trusted the initial reports as the information filtered in. This is to be expected: research has shown that individuals tend to trust those in their social networks. And indeed, the mathematician whose tweet was the primary source, while not the closest person to the deceased, was in the same community. In other words, what he said had weight. Further, by linking an article in Scientific American, users may have made a connection between the news and the article, even when the tweet did specify that was not the case.

Because of this level of trust within networks, individuals must carefully consider the content and the context by which they share information. Rushing to post breaking news can cause significant harms when that information is incorrect. At the same time, presentation can also have a drastic impact on how the reader digests the information. In this case, linking to the Scientific American story provided interesting context about the man behind the name, but also could give the reader the impression that the article supported the claim that he had died. That is not to say that any tweets in this situation were hasty or ill-conceived, but individuals must remain mindful of how the information shared online is presented and may be perceived by the audience.

Second, people do read comments and replies. The original tweet or social media post may receive the most attention, but many users will scroll through the comments, especially those who post the original material. This leads to two key conclusions. First, users should critically examine information and wait for additional verification before accepting assertions as truth. Second, when information seems incorrect, or at least unverified, users can and should engage with the content to point out the discrepancy. This can mean the difference between a false story spreading between 1,000 people or 1,000,000 people before the information is verified/disproven. Again, while this will not stop the spread of false information outright, it can lead to retractions and a general awareness from other users, which will “flatten the misinformation curve”, so to speak.

Finally, when a void of sources exists, individuals may try to use other mediums or hastily reported news to bolster their point of view. In this case, so-called “edit wars” developed on John Conway’s Wikipedia page, with some writing that he had died while others removed the information. While it is impossible to say whether the same individuals who edited the Wikipedia page also used it as evidence to support the original tweet, it does highlight how easy it could be to use a similar method in the future. Users often have to rely on the word of a small number of individuals in the hours following the release of a questionable story. When this is the case, some may try to leverage the implicit trust we have in other institutions to bolster their claims and arguments. In this case, it was Wikipedia, but it could be others. Users must carefully consider the possible biases or exploits that exist with specific sources.

Like Conway’s Game of Life, there are patterns to how information spreads online. Understanding these patterns and the rules by which false information changes and grows will be critical as we prepare for the next challenge. Sadly, the story that spread earlier this month turned out to be true, but the lessons we can learn from it can be applied to similar stories moving forward.

Jeffrey Westling is a technology and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Filed Under: converging on truth, disinformation, game of life, john horton conway, misinformation, skepticism, social media, trust

Oncologists Say The Absolute Best Information They're Getting These Days Comes From Twitter

from the it's-not-all-russian-propaganda dept

It's become sort of a common refrain among many that social media is only good for spreading misinformation and disinformation. I've even seen some people claim that social media is to blame for misinformation spreading about COVID-19. This is not to say that such information doesn't exist, and isn't being spread, but it ignores how much useful information is being spread as well. Indeed, nearly all of the accurate and more factual information I received concerning COVID-19 came via experts on Twitter, and generally anywhere from a week to nearly a month ahead of "official" reports. While I haven't seen it officially stated anywhere, I have seen people say that those on Twitter were more likely to quickly embrace social distancing and lockdown, as compared to those not on Twitter.

So it didn't come as much of a surprise to me to hear, on a recent episode of the Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) podcast, a bunch of oncologists all say that the best information they were receiving was via Twitter. The entire episode is quite interesting -- talking with Dr. Bobby Green from Flatiron Health, Dr. Sumit Shah from Stanford's Cancer Center along with A16Z's Vineeta Agarwala (who recently joined A16Z and I believe is still a physician at Stanford's Cancer Center as well) -- about how oncologists are dealing with their cancer patients in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd recommend listening to the whole thing, but for the purposes of this post, I wanted to highlight just two short parts. The first one comes starting around 10 minutes in (and I think I've figured out whose voice is whose, so I believe the transcript here is accurate, though I wouldn't guarantee it) where they discuss the importance of Twitter, starting with Dr. Green talking about crowdsourcing ideas.

Agarwala: Who is the group that you're able to engage in real time on such difficult decisions on individual patients?

Green: Well, Vineeta, as one of my seven Twitter followers, you may have seen that I [laughs]...

Agarwala: I saw that you crowdsourced that! Well done...

Green: Yeah, I crowdsourced an early-stage lung cancer question today. We have a multi-disciplinary lung tumor board, Vineeta, where these questions have come up. A lot of curbsiding other docs. That's been my experience. I think what's really interesting about the problems we're facing is that there's sort of the art and the science of medicine. This is one of those circumstances where the art of medicine and judgment and how to apply knowledge about data to great areas of uncertainty, really comes into play. And it's been intellectually challenging to do so.

Agarwala: I'm glad you brought up Twitter. Is that a viable tool for you guys for crowdsourcing for even anecdotal data, advice, decision-making in this area?

Green: I've personally found the discussions on Twitter about this to be really helpful and really informative. So, to me, yes. You have to be a little more general than you would like to be for PHI [Protect Health Information] reasons, obviously, but I find it very useful.

Shah: I actually think that Twitter is the best source of medical information right now. The majority of the data I'm receiving, I"m actually receiving in real-time from my Twitter feed as opposed to waiting for publications to come out. So it's actually been very, very helpful to have access to Twitter, and it's been a tremendous communication tool for experts around the country and the world in general.

I believe this is the "crowdsourcing" tweet that Dr. Green was referring to:

It looks like six oncologists from around the world quickly responded to him. It's kind of amazing to see that in practice.

The second mention of Twitter in the podcast is briefer and comes towards the end. They're discussing how they're handling clinical trials for various cancer treatments and whether or not they can or should continue, and Dr. Shah notes:

We are doing an international cancer registry right now on patients with coronavirus. And this was an effort that was largely led through Twitter actually, by recruiting other physicians from other institutions, to capture all this data.

As I said, the whole podcast is quite worth listening to, covering just how oncologists are dealing with treating cancer patients in the midst of a pandemic -- but I find it especially fascinating to see just how helpful Twitter has apparently been to them, even as we still keep hearing people insisting that Twitter and other social media is nothing but misinformation.

Filed Under: cancer, doctors, information, oncology, social media
Companies: twitter

It Will Take A Hell Of A Lot More Than Whatsapp Tweaks To Fix Our Global Disinformation Problem

from the ill-communication dept

With increased regulatory pressure surrounding the platform's ability to help distribute disinformation (often to bloody and disastrous effect), Facebook owned Whatsapp this week announced it would be more tightly restricting how app messages can be forwarded. Under the new system, if a user receives a "highly forwarded" message – one which has been forwarded more than five times – that user will only be able to send it on to a single chat at a time. Previously, users could forward these messages on to five people at a time, a limit that was implemented last year.

It doesn't block all message forwarding (you can still smash the forward button individually as many times as you like), but it does implement a little "friction" in a bid to slow mass forwarding in general. Over at the Whatsapp blog, the company explains its thinking:

"Is all forwarding bad? Certainly not. We know many users forward helpful information, as well as funny videos, memes, and reflections or prayers they find meaningful. In recent weeks, people have also used WhatsApp to organize public moments of support for frontline health workers. However, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation. We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation."

Last year, Whatsapp says it introduced double arrow labels to indicate that forwarded messages were not from a "close contact," trying to make it clearer which messages were effectively from someone you trust, versus mass forwarded memes or spam. It's not entirely clear yet how impactful this will be in places like India, where, for several years, misinformation has helped fuel violence against religious minorities.

But as we've noted previously, these problems often go well beyond just Whatsapp, making it illogical to place the entire onus for fixing the problems squarely on Whatsapp's shoulders. There's also a mountain of cultural and technical issues (like managing what's sent inside of encrypted messages) that makes the assumption that Whatsapp can "just fix this" overly simplistic. Still, with the app now being used to spread bogus Coronavirus information, the stakes have grown higher, and the calls from regulators and governments to "do more" have grown exponentially.

But again, there's numerous factors at play, and it has long been clear that any solution is likely complicated and multi-faceted.

In many countries, social media applications have been conflated with the internet itself, creating a walled garden "internet" that consists of just a few apps and sources, creating a less open echosphere where it's easier than ever to spread disinformation. Often that's by design as we saw with Facebook's "Zero Basics" program, which attempted to help the company corner developing nation ad markets by offering free access to a Facebook "curated" selection of content -- but not access to the full internet. Add in government censorship, and it gets even more complicated.

That's not to say Whatsapp shouldn't continue to experiment with ideas to slow the spread of mis and disinformation. The company has helped promote a World Health Organization bot aimed at providing more accurate information, and it recently donated $1 million to the International Fact-Checking Network.

But because of the scope and complexity of the problem, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than just Whatsapp tweaks to fix a global, surging disinformation problem. It's going to require a cooperative, global shift in media literacy and critical thinking -- combined with mass collaboration between governments, platforms, academics, and users -- with nary a single silver bullet anywhere in sight.

Filed Under: disinformation, misinformation, sharing, social media
Companies: facebook, whatsapp

Yet Another Court Says Suing Twitter For Terrorist Acts Is A Waste Of Everyone's Time

from the litigation-as-junk-mail-as-a-service dept

Every tragedy should be exploited. That's the theory behind a string of Excolo Law and 1-800-LAW-FIRM lawsuits that seek to hold social media companies responsible for acts of terrorism. So far, not a single court has been willing to ignore Section 230 of the CDA or the First Amendment to give these opportunists any satisfaction. Notwithstanding some very bizarre arguments from one Ninth Circuit judge, it's been a long run of shutouts for lawyers I fucking hope are working on contingency.

However you may feel about social media companies' efforts to cut down on "terrorist" content, the reality of the situation is Twitter, Facebook, et al are not directly or indirectly responsible for acts of violence. Moderation at scale is impossible and allowing litigants to target social media companies directly is only going to result in lousier moderation, rather than whatever it is each litigant desires. (See also: numerous lawsuits about "anti-conservative bias.")

This lawsuit is a particularly durable loser. Eric Goldman has the details at his blog. How many times do litigants need to be told "No?" Well, I told you once and I told you twice, but you never listen to my advice:

This lawsuit alleges that social media providers contributed to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub terrorist attack in Orlando that killed 49 people and injured dozens more. If that sounds familiar, that’s because those facts formed the basis of the Crosby v. Twitter litigation from Michigan, which failed in the lower court in 2018 and then on appeal to the Sixth Circuit in 2019. In a litigation move I’ll charitably characterize as tenacious, after the emphatic loss in the 6th Circuit, the plaintiffs’ lawyers immediately recruited new plaintiffs and filed a new lawsuit in Florida over the exact same terrorist attack. The do-over attempt works about as well as you would expect.

Three attempts. Three losses. And since these law firms apparently have unlimited money to blow, the lawsuit was refiled in a different jurisdiction. Not that it changed anything. It certainly didn't make the lawyering any better. As Goldman points out, the courts didn't limit themselves to criticizing the weak legal arguments. One court took time to chastise the law firm for its inability to follow the court's formatting rules. It may seem petty but it's important: if you can't follow easy-to-follow rules, chances are you're not paying that much attention when loading the court up with lawsuits so baseless they may as well be pro se.

Welcome to pandemic litigation, punks. Before informing the plaintiffs (yet again!) of the weakness of their arguments, the court reminds their representatives that this kind of thing isn't making the court any more sympathetic to their arguments. From the decision [PDF]:

“Filing identical lawsuits in multiple district courts is abusive and wasteful of judicial resources.” Daker v. Bryson, No. 5:15-cv-00088-TES-CHW, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27392, at *9 (M.D. Ga. Feb. 21, 2019). While Plaintiffs’ counsel may have selected different named Plaintiffs with which to do so, this is essentially what he has done. Despite the outcome of dismissal in the Michigan Case, Plaintiffs’ counsel filed the same lawsuit—with different Plaintiffs—here in the Middle District of Florida.

The court goes on to point out the obvious: a terrorist committed the act of terrorism (the Pulse nightclub shooting) but the plaintiffs have chosen to sue social media companies rather than the person who killed their loved ones. Suing the shooter's relatives would be a similar waste of time as blood draws from stones are seldom effective, but suing social media companies isn't the better option.

The court dismisses the lawsuit. But, inexplicably, it allows the plaintiffs to try again. So far, the plaintiffs have had six chances to compose an actionable claim. Somehow this court thinks giving them a seventh chance is in everyone's best interest -- even the court that just said this was a "waste of judicial resources."

As discussed above, Plaintiffs’ counsel has essentially had six opportunities to assert the allegations in the TAC—two complaints in the Michigan Case and four here. In light of this, the Court would like to better understand from Plaintiffs why leave to amend should be granted after Plaintiffs’ counsel has been, as of yet, unable to cure the deficiencies in the TAC. Therefore, the Court will defer ruling on Plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend and will set this issue for a brief telephonic status conference.

Chances are there will be no arguments that move the court to give the plaintiffs leave to amend after this conference. But the door is still slightly open when it should have been slammed shut by this judge. So, this means more tax dollars will be wasted in addition to whatever fees the law firm has collected from the crime victims it's exploiting.

This is not to make light of the tragic circumstances that led to these lawsuits. The families of the victims have suffered unimaginable damage. But this has nothing to do with Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media network. No court is going to find in their favor -- not unless they want to do some legislating from the bench. These companies are doing what they can to limit the spread of content that might radicalize impressionable people. It's an impossible job but someone's trying to do it. And the only people responsible for acts of terrorism are the people committing acts of terrorism.

Filed Under: material support for terrorism, section 230, social media, terrorism
Companies: twitter

As Politicians Are Still Looking To Destroy The Internet, Covid-19 Reminds Us Why Social Media Is Not Just Good, But Saving Lives

from the killing-it-might-kill-more-people dept

For all the fears and freak-outs over "disinformation" on social media, over the past few weeks Twitter, especially, has been an amazing source for getting accurate, thoughtful information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and how to deal with it. It's a pretty stark contrast, in fact, between people who seemed to be paying attention to credible voices on social media, and who began "social distancing" sooner, and those who were getting their information from politicians and television (especially cable news) who seemed to wave off the dangers for way too long. That's not to say there hasn't been disinformation about Covid-19 online -- including some spread by politicians and crackpots. However, on the whole, social media has done what it does best: allowed credible, knowledgeable voices to rise to the top for many.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason notes, COVID-19 Reminds Us: Social Media Is Good, Actually:

Social media have also been providing news from early outbreak zones across the globe, as users widely disseminate stories from foreign news outlets, statements from foreign leaders, and first-hand accounts from residents of affected areas abroad.

These snaphots helped give Americans a better sense of the scope of the threat posed by COVID-19 at a time when the messages coming from official channels were conflicting and confusing. They also illustrated the ways in which various social responses could play out—giving credence to calls here for "social distancing" and spurring measures to make room in medical facilities.

Around the U.S., communities still seem to be experiencing widely different reactions to the pandemic, with some areas seeing runs on grocery stores and empty streets while in others things look pretty normal. This will likely change rapidly, as more businesses close their doors voluntarily—and as more governments order them to close whether they want to or not. But for now, one thing that's been noticeable is how quickly the mood on Twitter, Reddit, etc. embraced voluntary social distancing, especially in comparison to the mood in the "real world."

The NY Times had a similar article, though with a bit more snarky a title, When Facebook Is More Trustworthy Than the President. Of course, Facebook is often more trustworthy than our current President, so that's not unique. But it is notable that during such a crisis, people are able to get much more reliable information via social media.

All through February and early March, the voices of doctors and nurses on social media provided a vital antidote to those of confused and complacent political leaders embodied by President Trump. Their voices carried credibility and urgency in a way the always-on crisis of cable news can’t. They fed and were fed by credible journalism. And they helped force the United States to reckon with the crisis.

After four years in which social media has been viewed as an antisocial force, the crisis is revealing something surprising, and a bit retro: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others can actually deliver on their old promise to democratize information and organize communities, and on their newer promise to drain the toxic information swamp.

Elsewhere, it's been noted that the first person to really spot the threat of Covid-19 was a blogger in Florida who tracks flu outbreaks (and, no, don't ask me why the Washington Post put this story in their "Lifestyle" section):

The news seemed so intriguing — and so potentially alarming — that Sharon Sanders stayed up almost until dawn on Dec. 31 to keep track of it.

From her home in Winter Haven, Fla., Sanders began compiling reports of public comments by health officials in China’s Hubei Province. The officials, Sanders reported on her blog, FluTrackers, had announced an outbreak of an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases, caused by a mysterious virus.

The disease apparently had spread among merchants in a seafood market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. “A number of people from hospitals in Wuhan said that the current cause is not clear,” read one of FluTrackers’ first, uncertain posts about the outbreak.

As you may or may not recall, this was the original promise of the internet. It would enable anyone to get their voices out there, and that could allow more viewpoints and perspectives. Of course, that also includes ill-informed people or those with malicious or chaotic intent to get their voices out there as well. And over the last few years it's felt that we've over-corrected on worrying about those people. But one key point that I think has become quite clear in the past few weeks is that for much of the public, the ability to parse through and determine who is credible and who is trustworthy, is a useful skill that still applies online, and has allowed many more people to inform themselves, rather than to mis-inform themselves.

Indeed, it appears that you'd receive a lot more misinformation just by watching the mainstream news acting as a stenographer for a President who is more concerned about how the crisis makes him look, than how it actually impacts the lives of everyone. Social media has always been a tool for getting voices heard -- and part of that means that we, the users of social media, are taking on some responsibility to sort out the good from the bad.

But, most importantly, the events of the last few weeks show the importance of enabling platforms where people can connect and share knowledge, and we shouldn't toss all of that in the gutter, as some in Congress are trying to do, just because there remain a small group of people pushing misinformation.

Filed Under: covid-19, disinformation, internet, news, section 230, social media