Once Again: Content Moderation Often Mistakes Reporting On Bad Behavior With Celebrating Bad Behavior

from the and-it-will-always-do-so dept

On Monday, the Twitter account Right Wing Watch -- which is famous for highlighting some of the nuttier nonsense said by Republicans -- announced that its YouTube account had been permanently banned.

As you can see, that ban was initially put in place over a claim that the videos violated YouTube's Community Guidelines. RWW appealed, and was told that YouTube had "decided to keep your account suspended" even after the appeal.

This sort of thing happens all the time, of course. For over a decade, we've highlighted how demands that social media take down "terrorist" content resulted in the company shutting down accounts that tracked evidence of war crimes. Because the very same videos that might serve as terrorist propaganda can also serve as an archive and evidence of war crimes.

In short, context matters, and that context goes way beyond the content of a video.

And this seems to be the same sort of case. Lots of people (including, somewhat ironically, the Right Wing Watch account itself) have been demanding that social media websites be more aggressive in moderating the accounts of conspiracy theorists and propagandists peddling nonsense about elections and the pandemic and the like. But, in highlighting the examples of extremists promoting that nonsense, RWW is showing the same content itself.

Not surprisingly, after this story started going viral, YouTube said it had been a mistake and reinstated the account:

“Right Wing Watch’s YouTube channel was mistakenly suspended, but upon further review, has now been reinstated,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Monday afternoon. The social-media site also suggested that the issue was a mistake due to high volume of content and that they attempted to move quickly to undo the ban.

Right Wing Watch also confirmed that YouTube informed the site on Monday afternoon that their channel was back online.

“We are glad that by reinstating our account, YouTube recognizes our position that there is a world of difference between reporting on offensive activities and committing them,” Right Wing Watch director Adele Stan said in a statement after the reinstatement. “Without the ability to accurately portray dangerous behavior, meaningful journalism and public education about that behavior would cease to exist.”

And, indeed, it is true that there is a world of difference, but the important point is that it's not easy to tell that difference when you're a content moderation reviewer just looking at the content. They won't have the context, and it's almost impossible to get them the proper context in an easy to understand manner. Someone not familiar with the RWW account is not going to understand what it's doing without understanding a much wider context in which that account operates.

And, this is just one of many, many, many reasons why content moderation at scale is impossible to do well.

Filed Under: content moderation, reporting, right wing watch
Companies: youtube

Creating State Action Via Antitrust Law And Making The People Who've Been Wrong About The Constitutionality Of Content Moderation Suddenly Right

from the stopped-clocks dept

The challenge of a 24+ hour legislative session covering multiple bills is that it's hard to keep track of everything that happens. In my last post I wrote about a few impressions and examples that I happened to catch. This post is about another.

Plenty of people on both sides of the aisle have been plenty wrong about content moderation on the Internet. Many Democrats get it very wrong, and so do many Republicans. In the case of people like Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, their particular flavor of wrongness has been to rant and rave about the private editorial decisions platforms have made to remove the speech they think they should have the right to make on these services, no matter what. They complain that what these platforms are doing to their posts must somehow be violating their First Amendment rights—and they are completely and utterly wrong on that point. Platforms are private actors with their own First Amendment rights to choose what speech to associate with. Making those decisions, even in ways some people (including these Congressmen) don't like, is entirely legal and THEIR constitutional right to exercise. It in no way impinges on the First Amendment rights of any would-be user of their service to refuse their expression.

But these Congressmen and some of their similarly-minded colleagues have noticed that if these antitrust bills should become law in anything close to their current form their speech will continue to be denied access to these services. And this time that denial may well represent an unconstitutional incursion on their speech rights. Because it's one thing if the platforms make their own independent editorial decisions on whether to facilitate or deny certain user speech, including these Congressmen's speech. But it's another when government pressure forces platforms' hand to make those decisions in any particular way. And that's what these bills threaten to do.

One such way that they flagged is through the bills' demands for interoperability. Interoperability sounds like a nice idea in theory, but in practice there are significant issues with privacy, security, and even potentially content moderation, especially when it is demanded. Because one of the problems with an interoperability mandate is that it's hard to tell if, in being interoperable, one platform needs to adopt the same moderation policies of another platform they are trying to interoperate with. If the answer is yes, then suddenly platforms are no longer getting to make their own editorial decisions; now they are making editorial decisions the government is forcing them to make. Which means that when they impose them against certain user speech it now is at the behest of the state and therefore likely a violation of those users speech rights, which are rights that protect their speech against state action.

But even if a platform opts not to conform its moderation policies, the constitutional problem would remain. Because if these bills were to become law in their current form, the decision not to conform moderation policies might still be seen to flout the law's requirement for interoperability. And, at least initially, it would be up to the FTC to decide whether it does and thus warrants taking an enforcement action against the platform. But that means that the FTC could easily be in the position of making content-based decisions in order to decide whether the platform's content moderation decision (in this case not to conform) looks like an antitrust violation or not. This situation deeply concerned these Congressmen, who also happen to be of the belief that the FTC is a captured agency prone to making content decisions that conflict with their own preferred viewpoints. While their concerns generally seem overwrought, bills like these start to give them an air of legitimacy. Because regardless of whether the FTC actually is captured by any particular point of view or not, if it is going to make ANY enforcement decision predicated on any expressive decisions, that's a huge Constitutional problem, irrespective of which point of view may suffer or benefit from such government action.

So while it is very difficult to credit the particular outrage of these Congressmen, their alarm illustrates the fundamental problem with these bills and other similar legislative efforts (including some anti-Section 230 bills that these Congressmen favor): these targeted businesses are not ordinary companies selling ordinary products and services where market forces act in traditional market-driven ways. These are platforms and services handling SPEECH. And when companies are in the speech-handling business we can't treat them like non-speech businesses without impinging on those speech interests themselves in an unconstitutional "make no law" sort of way.

But that is exactly what Congress is deliberately trying to do. It is the government's displeasure with how these companies have been intermediating speech that is at the root of these regulatory efforts. It's not a case of, "These companies are big, maybe that's bad, and oops! Our regulatory efforts have accidentally implicated a speech interest." The whole acknowledged point of these regulatory efforts is to target companies that are "different," and the way they are different is because they are companies in the online speech business. Congress is deliberately trying to make a law that will shape how companies do that business. And the fact that its efforts are running headlong into some of the most provocative political speech interests of the day is Exhibit A for why the whole endeavor is an unconstitutional one.

Filed Under: antitrust, content moderation, interoperability, jim jordan, matt gaetz, state action
Companies: amazon, apple, facebook, google

Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills

from the sit-down-marco dept

It seems like we can't have even a peaceful week go by without yet another grandstanding fool in Congress introducing yet another terrible bill to destroy the internet. The latest comes from Senator Marco Rubio, who, last week, excitedly released a ridiculous bill that he claims will "crackdown on big tech algorithms and protect free speech." Of course, cracking down on algorithms is, itself, an attack on free speech. And the rest of his bill is nothing but an attack on free speech.

The actual bill is a clusterfuck of bad ideas. It's called the "Disincentivizing Internet Service Censorship of Online Users and Restrictions on Speech and Expression" or "DISCOURSE" Act, and the only thing clever about it is the name.

So what does the bill do? It says big internet companies can no longer moderate "viewpoints." Specifically, it says you no longer get Section 230 protections if you're a firm with a "dominant market share" who...

... engages in a content moderation activity that reasonably appears to express, promote, or suppress a discernible viewpoint for a reason not protected from liability under subsection (c)(2), including reducing or eliminating the ability of an information content provider to earn revenue...

In other words, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are no longer allowed to kick Nazis off their platform or even to demonetize them. This is basically "the Marco Rubio wants to make sure Nazis get free services Act."

And from there it gets worse. It says you don't get 230 protections for anything an algorithm recommends. You lose 230 if your firm with a dominant market share...

... amplifies information provided by an information content provider by using an algorithm or other automated computer process to target the information directly to users without the request of a sending or receiving user...

So, Facebook or Twitter trying to make your feed more relevant means they have to take on liability for everything in your feed.

For all the talk of how this is protecting "free speech," it's the opposite. It's an out and out attack on the free speech of these companies to recommend to their users what they think is most relevant to them and not to be associated with assholes, trolls, Nazis and the like.

Believe it or not, the bill gets even worse and becomes an even bigger attack on free speech. It also says that if you comment upon some other content, you lose 230 protections over that content. I mean, that's just a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment, as the entire purpose is to disincentivize companies from adding their own commentary, fact checking, and the like. The bill says you lose 230 protections if a market dominant firm...

... solicits, comments upon, funds, or affirmatively and substantively contributes to, modifies, or alters information provided by an information content provider...

Got that? Fact checking now makes you liable for the underlying thing you fact checked. That's... both unconstitutional and ridiculous at the same time.

And it gets worse. It would only exempt a very narrow class of content, by limiting it to a revised version of (c)(2)'s classifications -- taking away the subjective ability of a platform to decide what is objectionable on their platform and limiting it to:

any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user has an objectively reasonable belief is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, promoting terrorism or violent extremism, harassing, promoting self-harm, or unlawful, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected

The wider net of "otherwise objectionable" is removed, and a few new categories are added ("promoting terrorism or violent extremism, promoting self-harm, or unlawful"). Of course, locking it to just these categories is problematic. Unless you consider Nazism to be "promoting violent extremism" then you probably can't ban Nazis. Spam... totally allowed under this bill. Being an asshole, as long as it's not "objectively" deemed to be harassing... must be allowed.

The bill also has a transparency clause whose only real purpose is to allow Nazis and trolls to insist they were treated unfairly, by insisting that their harassment of someone was nothing of the sort, and that they were treated unfairly.

Finally, it makes a huge additional change by saying that Section 230 is no longer an immunity, but rather "an affirmative defense." This may not sound like much, but it gets rid of the main procedural benefit of Section 230 as an immunity. As an immunity, it means you get cases dismissed much faster. As an affirmative defense, in many cases you don't get to assert that until much later in the case, after you've gone through expensive discovery. So this takes away the most useful part of Section 230 and makes it an expensive burden.

It's hellishly weird to see someone like Marco Rubio, who pretends to be a traditional "conservative," pushing a bill that will be a massive boon to tort lawyers, and will clog up the courts with vexatious lawsuits. But, hey, it seems that Marco has realized the only way for him to stay relevant these days is to culture war with the best of them, and thus he has to pretend that social media really is out to get conservatives (it is not) and that he has to pass an unconstitutional law to attack the 1st Amendment rights of websites. It's a pitiful move by an increasingly pitiful politician.

Filed Under: bias, content moderation, marco rubio, section 230, social media, transparency

Stop Using Content Moderation Demands As An Effort To Hide The Government's Social Policy Failures

from the look!-squirrel! dept

We've been seeing over and over again lately that politicians (and, unfortunately, the media) are frequently blaming social media and content moderation for larger societal problems, that the government itself has never been able to solve.

In other words, what's really happening is that the supposedly "bad stuff" that shows up on social media is really indicative of societal failures regarding education, mental health services, criminal law, social safety nets, and much much more. All social media is really doing is putting a spotlight on those failures. And the demands from politicians and the media for content moderation to "solve" these issues is really often about trying to sweep those problems under the rug by hiding them from public view, rather than looking for ways to tackle those much larger, much more difficult societal questions.

Over in Wired, Harvard law lecturer (and former Techdirt podcast guest), Evelyn Douek, has one of the best articles I've seen making this point. First, she describes how -- contrary to the narrative that still holds among some that social media companies resist doing any moderation at all -- these days, they're much more aggressive in seeking to strike down disinformation:

Misinformation about the pandemic was supposed to be the easy case. In response to the global emergency, the platforms were finally moving fast and cracking down on Covid-19 misinformation in a way that they never had before. As a result, there was about a week in March 2020 when social media platforms, battered by almost unrelenting criticism for the last four years, were good again. “Who knew the techlash was susceptible to a virus?” Steven Levy asked.

Such was the enthusiasm for these actions that there were immediately calls for them to do the same thing all the time for all misinformation—not just medical. Initially, platforms insisted that Covid misinformation was different. The likelihood of harm arising from it was higher, they argued. Plus, there were clear authorities they could point to, like the World Health Organization, that could tell them what was right and wrong.

But the line did not hold for long. Platforms have only continued to impose more and more guardrails on what people can say on their services. They stuck labels all over the place during the US 2020 election. They stepped in with unusual swiftness to downrank or block a story from a major media outlet, the New York Post, about Hunter Biden. They deplatformed Holocaust deniers, QAnon believers, and, eventually, the sitting President of the United States himself.

But, as the article notes -- especially on topics where we're learning new stuff every day, and early ideas and thinking may prove incorrect later -- it's proven that relying on content moderation to deal with these issues might not be that great an idea.

The chaos of 2020 shattered any notion that there’s a clear category of harmful “misinformation” that a few powerful people in Silicon Valley must take down, or even that there’s a way to distinguish health from politics. Last week, for instance, Facebook reversed its policy and said it will no longer take down posts claiming Covid-19 is human-made or manufactured. Only a few months ago

The New York Times had cited belief in this “baseless” theory as evidence that social media had contributed to an ongoing “reality crisis.” There was a similar back-and-forth with masks. Early in the pandemic, Facebook banned ads for them on the site. This lasted until June, when the WHO finally changed its guidance to recommend wearing masks, despite many experts advising it much earlier. The good news, I guess, is they weren’t that effective at enforcing the ban in the first place. (At the time, however, this was not seen as good news.)

She separately highlights how these efforts in the US are being used as an excuse for authoritarian governments around the globe to ramp up actual censorship and suppression of activists and dissident voices.

But the key point is that sweeping larger societal issues under the rug by hiding them doesn't solve the underlying issues.

“Just delete things” removes content but not its cause. It’s tempting to think that we can content-moderate society to a happier and healthier information environment or that the worst social disruptions of the past few years could have been prevented if more posts had just been taken down. But fixing social and political problems will be much harder work than tapping out a few lines of better code. Platforms will never be able to fully compensate for other institutional failures.

There's a lot more in Douek's write-up, but I think it's important for anyone who is debating the content moderation space to have read this piece and to at least account for it in any of these debates and discussions. It is not saying not to do any moderation. It is not saying that we should throw up our hands and do nothing. But it is making the very, very important point that content moderation alone does not solve underlying social issues, and yet so much of the focus on questions around social media and content moderation really are discussions about those failures. And we're not going to make progress on any of these issues if people don't understand what's the symptom and what's the actual disease.

Filed Under: content moderation, government failures, institutional failures, societal issues

Streamer Raptors Continue To Test Twitch's Appropriate Content Guideline Fencing

from the wet-willy dept

It's no secret that we've dinged streaming giant Twitch over and over again these past months. Frankly, it was done with good reason, as the Amazon-owned company continues to respond to crisis after crises, conflict after conflict, with pure confusion and callous behavior. While some of those conflicts were Twitch-specific, the company is also dealing with the more common problem of attempting to have a coherent content policy when it comes to what is appropriate to stream and what is not. For instance, Twitch recently found itself in the headlines yet again first by yanking advertising revenue from so-called "hot tub meta" streamers, where streamers live-stream in bathing suits from hot tubs or kiddie pools. Kaitlyn "Amouranth" Siragusa was one of the more prominent names impacted by this move, which again came with no warning. As a result of the public backlash over Twitch choosing not to communicate with its own creative community, the platform announced a "hot tub channel" category, as though that solved anything.

But now this has moved on from just a situation where Twitch sucks at communication with streamers, its most important asset. With all of the above having occurred, it seems that the raptors are now going about testing their fencing when it comes to what content is appropriate and what is not. And, if you want to get a sense of just how weird these tests can get, you need only dive into the latest Twitch trend: ear lick meta streams. Perhaps not surprisingly, Amouranth is once again leading this charge.

Perpetual Twitch provocateur Amouranth, along with model indiefoxxlive, have been temporarily taken off the livestreaming service following some delightfully bizarre video clips going viral on social media. While Twitch never comments on bans, the timing coincides with the proliferation of a clip in which Amouranth wears a horse mask. Neighing, the controversial Twitch streamer sometimes takes the entire mic into her mouth to make slurping sounds.

Similarly, if you click on Twitch’s “ASMR” tag at the moment, the most popular streamer is a woman whispering with the occasional wet sound thrown in. The community has taken to calling such shticks “ear lick streams,” as that is basically what these broadcasts sound like.

"Delightfully bizarre" appears to be exactly the right phrase for all of this. ASMR is not specifically meant to have any sexual connotation to it. That being said, it seems quite clear that what Amouranth and the like are doing is in part at least attempting to rope some measure of sexuality into behavior that would otherwise not necessarily have any sexual connotation to it. And, of course, adding a dash of the absolutely absurd just for shits and giggles.

In other words, if you want to argue that there is clear sexual connotation to these specific videos (you can find them in the link above if you're curious), I won't argue with you all that much. But -- and this is a big caveat -- finding precisely where and how any of this violates Twitch's streaming guidelines on what's appropriate is very much an exercise in subjectivity.

The general idea predates Twitch, of course, but it’s certainly true that Amouranth is savvy enough to command attention wherever she goes. Whether or not viewers approve of her methods is beyond the point. Twitch’s Community Guidelines have multiple pages dedicated to sexually suggestive content on the site, but the general gist is that it’s not allowed on the platform.

“Evaluations on the sexual suggestiveness of a behavior or activity are independent of user attire and are instead based on the overall surrounding framing and context,” the rules read. “This policy also applies to embedded media, augmented reality, creative broadcasts, and channel content—such as banners, profile images, emotes, and panels—that are focused on provocative images or video.”

But this leaves us still with two issues. The first is yet again how Twitch doles out these punishments and changes without any real communication with streamers or the public. It all just kind of happens and we get to play the game of attempting to interpret what it all means after the fact. The second issue is common among online platforms that do a shit job of having clear content guidelines: nobody actually knows where the lines are and these punishments tend to be doled out asymmetrically.

For example, the above guidelines would appear to prohibit, oh I don't know, a liveplay of Dungeons and Dragons in which the players creatively act out to one degree or another sexual situations. And, yet, shows like Critical Role which stream on Twitch have had such content in one degree or another on the regular. Is that considered as graphic as a woman in a horse mask engulfing a microphone in her mouth?

Maybe? This feels like less of an obvious answer and more of a discussion open to interpretation. But, since Twitch has the final say for what occurs on its platform, only its opinion actually matters. But that doesn't change the fact that Twitch's guidelines are vague and unhelpful, its communication method neutered, and its handing out of punishment arbitrary and capricious.

Good times. Sluuuuuurp!

Filed Under: appropriate content, content moderation, streamers, streaming
Companies: twitch

Reason Shows How To Properly Respond To A Questionable Social Media Takedown: By Calling It Out

from the speak-up dept

Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. I will keep repeating this point forever if I must. Now, I recognize that when you're on the receiving end of a content moderation decision that you disagree with, it's natural to feel (1) angry and (2) that it's a personal affront to you or a personal attack on your view of the world. This is a natural reaction. It's also almost certainly wrong. The trust and safety teams working on content moderation are not targeting you. They have policies they are trying to follow. And they need to make a lot of subjective calls. And sometime they're wrong. Or sometimes you just have a different view of what happened.

The publication Reason recently had a video pulled down from YouTube, and rather than freaking out and talking about how YouTube is "out to get" them, they instead wrote an article that clearly said that they support YouTube's right to make whatever content moderation decisions it wants, but also calmly explained why they think this decision was probably a mistake. As the article notes:

It remains essential to defend YouTube's right to make poorly reasoned and executed content moderation decisions; any government regulation of speech on social media is likely to backfire and hamper the free exchange of ideas. But it's also essential to recognize and critique censorious overreach if we want the market to respond to such errors. And a healthy market response is exactly what we need when the boundaries of acceptable discourse are being hemmed in by large companies susceptible to political pressure.

And, frankly, it's not that difficult to make some educated guesses on how the video ended up being moderated. It was a video from early in the pandemic about self-described DIY biohackers looking to see if they could create their own vaccines for COVID. Given what was known about COVID-19 at the time, and the speculative/experimental nature of DIY biohacking, some of the thoughts and ideas were probably a bit out there. The video described people who were trying to create their own "knockoff" versions of the mRNA vaccines (which have now proven to be massively successful), in part because of the (certainly at the time) reasonable belief that the FDA would be impossibly slow in approving such vaccines. In retrospect, that didn't really happen (though there are arguments about how the FDA could have moved even faster).

So, you can easily understand how a content moderation review of the content of such a video might flag it as potentially medical misinformation -- or even potentially dangerous. After all, it's talking about injecting a non-FDA approved "vaccine" (and one that, at the time, was highly experimental and hadn't gone through rigorous clinical trials). But, within the context (when it was done, what was being said, how it was framed), there's a strong argument that it should have been left up (and, indeed, has certain historical relevance to talk about the various approaches that people were considering early in the pandemic).

But, this is the very nature of content moderation and why we consider it so impossible to do well at scale. Context is always so important, and that can even include temporal context. Without thinking about the context when the video went up, it could appear to be more questionable a year and a half later. Or not. It's all pretty subjective.

But, Reason's response is the correct one. It's not blaming YouTube. It's not taking the decision personally, or acting like its viewpoints were systematically targeted. It recognizes that opinions may differ, that YouTube has every right to manage its platform how it wants, but also that Reason can use other means to push a response and counter-argument. If only others who felt similarly wronged were willing to do the same.

Filed Under: content moderation, more speech, section 230, takedowns
Companies: reason, youtube

Changing Section 230 Won't Make The Internet A Kinder, Gentler Place

from the stop-expecting-it-to dept

Tech platforms, especially the largest ones, have a problem—there’s a lot of offensive junk online. Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill keep coming back to the same solution: blaming Section 230.

What lawmakers don’t notice is that a lot of the people posting that offensive junk get stopped, again and again, thanks to Section 230. During a March hearing in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, lawmakers expressed concern over some of the worst content that’s online, including extremist content, falsehoods about COVID-19, and election disinformation.

But it’s people spreading just this type of content that often file lawsuits trying to force their content back online. These unsuccessful lawsuits show that Section 230 has repeatedly stopped disinformation specialists from disseminating their harmful content.

Section 230 stands for the simple idea that you’re responsible for your own speech online—not the speech of others. It also makes clear that online operators, from the biggest platforms to the smallest niche websites, have the right to curate the speech that appears on their site.

Users dedicated to spreading lies or hateful content are a tiny minority, but weakening Section 230 will make their job easier. When content moderation doesn’t go their way—and it usually doesn’t—they’re willing to sue. As the cases below show, Section 230 is rightfully used to quickly dismiss their lawsuits. If lawmakers weaken Section 230, these meritless suits will linger in court longer, costing online services more and making them leery of moderate the speech of known litigious users. That result could make it easier for these users to spread lies online.

Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Hateful Content

James Domen identifies as a “former homosexual,” who now identifies as heterosexual. He created videos that describe being LGBTQ as a harmful choice, and shared them on Vimeo, a video-sharing website. In one video, he described the “homosexual lifestyle” this way: “It’ll ruin your life. It’s devastating. It’ll destroy your life.”

In at least five videos, Domen also condemned a California bill that would have expanded a ban on “sexual orientation change efforts,” or SOCE. Medical and professional groups have for decades widely recognized that efforts to change sexual orientation in various ways, sometimes called “conversion therapy,” are harmful.

Vimeo removed Domen’s videos. In a letter to Domen’s attorney, Vimeo explained that SOCE-related videos “disseminate irrational and stereotypical messages that may be harmful to people in the LGBT community,” because it treated homosexuality as “a mental disease or disorder” that “can and should be treated.” Vimeo bans “hateful and discriminatory” content, and company officials told Domen directly that, in their view, his videos fell into that category.

Domen sued, claiming that his civil rights were violated. Because of Section 230, Domen’s lawsuit was quickly thrown out. He appealed, but in March, the federal appeals court also ruled against him.

Forcing a website to publish Domen’s anti-LGBTQ content might serve Domen’s interests, but only at the expense of many other users of the platform. No website should have to face a lengthy and expensive lawsuit over such claims. Because of Section 230, they don’t.

Some lawmakers have proposed carving civil rights claims out of Section 230. But that could have the unintended side effect of allowing lawsuits like Domen’s to continue—making tech companies more skittish about removing anti-LGBTQ content.

Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Covid-19 Falsehoods

Marshall Daniels hosts a YouTube channel in which he has stated that Judaism is “a complete lie” which was “made up for political gain.” Daniels, who broadcasts as “Young Pharaoh,” has also called Black Lives Matter “an undercover LGBTQ Marxism psyop that is funded by George Soros.”

In April 2020, Daniels live-streamed a video claiming that vaccines contain “rat brains,” that HIV is a “biologically engineered, terroristic weapon,” and that Anthony Fauci “has been murdering motherfuckers and causing medical illnesses since the 1980s.”

In May 2020, Daniels live-streamed a video called “George Floyd, Riots & Anonymous Exposed as Deep State Psyop for NOW.” In that video, he claimed that nationwide protests over George Floyd’s murder were “the result of an operation to cause civil unrest, unleash chaos, and turn the public against [President Trump].” According to YouTube, he also stated the COVID-19 pandemic and Floyd’s murder “were covert operations orchestrated by the Freemasons,” and accused Hillary Clinton and her aide John Podesta of torturing children. Near the video’s end, Daniels stated: “If I catch you talking shit about Trump, I might whoop your ass fast.”

YouTube removed both videos, saying that they violated its policy on harassment and bullying.  

Daniels sued YouTube, demanding account reinstatement and damages. He claimed that YouTube amounted to a state actor, and had thus violated his First Amendment rights. (Suggesting that courts treat social media companies as the government has no basis in the law, which the 9^th Circuit reaffirmed is the case last year.)

In March, a court dismissed most of Daniels’ claims under Section 230. That law protects online services—both large and small—from getting sued for refusing to publish content they don’t want to publish.

Again, Internet freedom was protected by Section 230. No web host should be forced to carry false and threatening content, or Qanon-based conspiracy theories, like those created by Daniels. Section 230 protects moderators who kick out such content.

Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Election Disinformation

The Federal Agency of News LLC, or FAN, is a Russian corporation that purports to be a news service. FAN was founded in the same building as Russia’s Internet Research Agency, or IRA; the IRA became the subject of a criminal indictment in February 2018 for its efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.

The founder and first General Director of FAN was Aleksandra Yurievna Krylova, who is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Later in 2018, the FBI unsealed a criminal complaint against FAN’s chief accountant, Elena Khusyaynova. In that complaint, the FBI said that Federal Agency of News was not so different than the IRA. Both were allegedly part of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian operation to interfere with political and electoral systems both in Russia “and other countries, including the United States.”

Facebook shut more than 270 Russian language accounts and pages in April of 2018, including FAN’s account. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the pages “were controlled by the IRA,” which had “repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the U.S., Europe, and Russia.” The IRA used a “network of hundreds of fake accounts to spread divisive content and interfere in the U.S. presidential election.” Facebook’s Chief Security Officer stated that the IRA had spent about $100,000 on Facebook ads in the United States.

At this point, one might think that anyone with alleged connections to the Internet Research Agency, including FAN, would lie low. But that’s not what happened. Instead, FAN’s new owner, Evgeniy Zubarev, hired U.S. lawyers and filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that his civil rights had been violated. He demanded that FAN’s account be reinstated, and that FAN be paid damages.

A court threw the FAN lawsuit out on Section 230 grounds. The plaintiffs re-filed a new complaint, which the court again threw out.

Small Companies And Users Can’t Afford These Bogus Lawsuits 

Weakening Section 230 will give frivolous lawsuits like the ones above a major boost. Small companies, with no margin for extra legal costs, will be under more pressure to capitulate to bogus demands over their content moderation.

Section 230 protects basic principles, whether you run a blog with a comment section, an email list with 100 users, or a platform serving millions. You have the right to moderate. You have the right to speak your own mind, and serve other users, without following the dictates of a government commission—and without fear of a bankrupting lawsuit. 

Innovation, experimentation and real competition are the best paths forward to a better internet. More lawsuits over everyday content moderation won’t get us there.

Reposted from the EFF's Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: bad stuff online, content moderation, internet, section 230