Killing News Comments Only Solidified Google, Facebook Dominance

from the ya-played-yourself dept

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DHS's Social Media Monitoring Is Causing Collateral Damage, But Doesn't Seem To Be Making The Nation Safer

from the no-surprises-here dept

The DHS has made traveling in and out of the US an experience worth sharing. Not so much with your fellow travelers or friends and family back home, but with CBP officers and other DHS employees, who are demanding access to social media accounts under its "extreme vetting" program.

While DHS components have stepped up the intrusiveness of their border screenings, they haven't been able to show all these manhours and infringed rights are actually doing anything to keep the country safer. More and more information is being gathered, but it's either of little to no use, or the agencies engaging in these searches can't be bothered to tally up the wins and losses of the border security game.

The Brennan Center, however, has compiled a report on the DHS's screening programs and their various enhancements. It isn't just about what has been done by DHS components, but the side effects of these efforts. The Fourth Amendment might be the noticeable victim, but these programs -- especially the social media monitoring -- have adverse effects on other rights as well.

[S]ocial media monitoring — like other forms of surveillance — will impact what people say online, leading to self-censorship of people applying for visas as well as their family members and friends. The deleterious effect of surveillance on free speech has been well documented in empirical research; one recent study found that awareness or fear of government surveillance of the internet had a substantial chilling effect among both U.S. Muslims and broader U.S. samples of internet users. Even people who said they had nothing to hide were highly likely to self-censor online when they knew the government was watching. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a 2012 Supreme Court case challenging the warrantless use of GPS tracking technology, “[a]wareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveals private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse.”

"Susceptible to abuse" is the DHS's middle name. Going beyond the dubious wisdom and Constitutionality of demanding travelers and visa applicants hand over passwords for social media accounts, there's the CBP's recent surveillance of journalists, immigration lawyers, and activists. The DHS wields a lot of power, but doesn't handle much of it responsibly.

The report [PDF] shows the DHS collects a lot of social media information but doesn't do a great job matching accounts to applicants and detainees. These social media-reliant searches act more like dragnets than targeted investigations, sweeping up information on friends, family members, and social media contacts who interact with targeted accounts. This excess info is often retained under the theory it may, someday, be "relevant" to an ongoing investigation.

These problems are made worse by the DHS's reliance on third-party analytic software and data harvesting. The tools may be great at collecting data, but they're of little use when it comes to making informed decisions about the risk level of travelers and visa applicants. As is the case with any analysis done at this scale, nuance and context are lost as analysts zero in on phrases and keywords, discarding relevant info that could lead to better risk assessments.

The DHS's haystacks -- gathered en masse with minimal restraints -- are then fed to law enforcement agencies across the US and around the world. What was gathered for the purpose of vetting immigrants and travelers can now be used for any purpose whatsoever by a number of government agencies.

Unfortunately, DHS programs generally have low standards for sharing highly personal information, such as that found on social media, and the standards do not differentiate between Americans’ information and that of people from other countries. This information can easily be shared with entities ranging from the Department of State, the FBI, and congressional offices to foreign governments and Interpol. For example, data obtained from CBP searches of travelers’ electronic devices at the border, which can include the full contents of these devices, can be shared with federal, state, tribal, local, or foreign governmental agencies or multilateral government organizations when CBP believes the information could assist enforcement of civil or criminal laws. ICE, too, can disseminate any device information “relating to national security” to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Information from ICE’s LeadTrac system, which is used to vet and manage leads of suspected overstayers and status violators and includes social media information, can be shared with any law enforcement authorities engaged in collecting law enforcement intelligence “whether civil or criminal.”

Through its massive data-sharing program, the DHS could conceivably gain access to any information it has walled itself off from with internal policies. Since this sharing is usually two-way, other agencies could unwittingly (or wittingly) launder off-limits data for the DHS, sending it back in the form of "relevant" info for use in its vetting/investigations.

That's just the social media end of it. The Brennan Report also discusses the CBP's warrantless and suspicionless device searches, and the fact that the information pulled from devices can be stored for up to 75 years if it's related to an arrest, detention, or removal. If it isn't, the CBP will only hold onto it for 20 years. This includes everything pulled from social media accounts, much of which is fed to ICE, which has its own social media monitoring program.

ICE's monitoring program was going to be automated but that was shelved after the agency sustained some public and Congressional backlash. Instead, it has turned this over to contractors -- 180 people who keep an eye on social media posts from the 10,000 foreign visitors ICE has declared to be "high risk."

The DHS is awash in social media posts but hasn't shown it can do anything useful with all of this information. The only thing guaranteed is incursions on rights, self-censorship by those who've been targeting by this vetting, and a whole lot of people targeted solely because of their religion or national origin.

Filed Under: dhs, extreme vetting, national safety, social media, social media monitoring

Dear Kara Swisher: Don't Let Your Hatred Of Facebook Destroy Free Speech Online

from the bad-takes dept

I'll start this post off with a brief story about famed tech reporter Kara Swisher. Many, many years ago, she reached out to me and suggested we meet up for some reason or another (I honestly don't remember why). I went to her house in San Francisco and we walked to a fancy nearby coffee shop where she insisted on telling me exactly what type of coffee I should get.

Here's the thing: I don't drink coffee. I can't stand the stuff.

However, Swisher is such an incredible force of nature that I felt like I literally had no choice but to order the coffee that she recommended. I ordered it and drank (a bit of) it. And I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing my own opinions on things.

That is to say, Swisher is not just strongly opinionated, she has a way of convincing lots of other people that her opinions should be theirs as well. And that's a really powerful ability, and one that Swisher has wielded well over the past few decades -- especially in calling bullshit on dumb tech ideas and policies. We need someone like Swisher holding tech companies accountable.

However, what happens when Swisher's opinion is a bad one? She recently has become so focused on attacking Facebook (in some cases for good reasons) that her thinking on the company is going to cause an awful lot of harm to not just other reporters, but to free speech and the open internet. Last month I was shocked to find Swisher proactively cheering on government censorship in Sri Lanka, after the country blocked Facebook following the terrorist attacks in that country. We pointed out how shortsighted this was, and Trevor Timm from the Freedom of the Press Foundation was even more direct in his criticism, noting how it smacked of Western paternalism, in which "we" can handle free speech, but poor people "over there" somehow can't.

Arguments like Swisher’s smack of “otherism” and paternalism — ordinary Sri Lankans aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with these problems, we know better than they do, and we must trust their political leaders. It’s akin to the tired arguments made by many in the U.S. national security community that people in the Middle East “can’t handle” democracy. It’s insulting.

Unfortunately, it appears that Swisher is continuing to argue for more and more censorship-by-Facebook -- a company that she herself admits we cannot and should not trust. Her latest opinion piece at the NY Times, bizarrely, goes beyond just attacking Facebook to mistakenly attacking Section 230 of the CDA as well.

The story involves the latest "big controversy" on Facebook, in which some trolls have been posting slightly doctored videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slowed down and (sometimes) edited, to make her appear to be slurring and stumbling over words. The videos have been getting passed around among Trump supporters -- and Trump himself retweeted one of those doctored videos when it was featured on Fox News. There are plenty of reasons to decry the whole mess, as it's a form of disiniformation and propaganda. After people called out Facebook about the video, the company proceeded to include a flag on the video, noting that it had been doctored, and downgrading the ability of the video to be spread more widely, but refusing to take it down entirely.

Many, many people (including Swisher) still disagree with this choice, arguing that since the video is being used for blatant propaganda and disinformation, it should be removed from Facebook entirely. Where you come down on this question may differ depending on where you sit. But Swisher goes beyond that, bizarrely (and ridiculously -- and incorrectly) blaming Section 230 for this situation:

Would a broadcast network air this? Never. Would a newspaper publish it? Not without serious repercussions. Would a marketing campaign like this ever pass muster? False advertising.

No other media could get away with spreading anything like this because they lack the immunity protection that Facebook and other tech companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 was intended to spur innovation and encourage start-ups. Now it’s a shield to protect behemoths from any sensible rules.

This is wrong on so many levels that it makes me wonder where Swisher is getting her information from. Section 230 is what allows Facebook to flag and "demote" this video in the first place. Without it, the company would be held liable for any of the moderation choices it made (see: Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, the law that inspired CDA 230 and which CDA 230 explicitly overrules).

Without a CDA 230, platforms are incentvized to do one of two things: either look the other way and ignore basically all content, so as not to be held liable (which would make the situation Swisher is complaining about even worse), or to basically block almost everything that might possibly be controversial, meaning tons of perfectly legal and important speech would get blocked. This is not a good solution -- and certainly not one that a reporter should be advocating for.

Also, her analysis is simply incorrect. First of all, the claim that "no media could get away" with this is proven incorrect by the fact that Fox News did, in fact, spread one of these videos. And if anyone sued Fox over this, it would win on 1st Amendment grounds. And there have not been "serious repercussions." Unless you count whatever the fuck this tweet from Rudy Giuliani was supposed to say:

Second, the point of CDA 230 is that the internet does not work like a news publication. There is no "editor" who reviews what goes up, because it's a communications medium, like the telephone. We don't expect AT&T to monitor everything everyone says on the telephone (I mean, the NSA may expect it, but most people are rightfully horrified by this concept), so why should we expect the same here?

Some, including Swisher probably, would argue that they're not asking for just ditching CDA 230, but amending it to require some sort of "responsibility". But that also opens up massive questions -- ones that Swisher seems unprepared to deal with. As the UN's expert on free expression, David Kaye, suggested, just try to come up with rules that would force Facebook to remove the Pelosi video but wouldn't then end up being used against dissent, humor, satire or other forms of protected speech:

Or, to be even more to the point, the EFF's Jillian York noted that if you're going to require that Facebook face responsibility for "disinformation" -- or even disinformation that leads to harm -- how exactly is Facebook expected to deal with religious information:

For quite some time now, we've been talking about the "impossibility" of doing content moderation at scale well. There are always going to be disagreements. But Section 230 is what allows for experimentation. People can (and should) criticize Facebook when they think the company made the wrong call, but to blithely toss Section 230 under the bus as the reason for Facebook failing to meet her own exacting standards, Swisher is actually throwing the open internet and free speech under the bus instead. It's a horrifically bad take, and one that Swisher should know better about.

And, if Swisher, wants, I'm happy to discuss this with her in more detail. Perhaps over a cup of tea.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, cda 230, content moderation, free speech, gatekeepers, kara swisher, nancy pelosi, section 230, social media
Companies: facebook

Forget 'Breaking Up' Internet Companies, Senator Josh Hawley Says They Should All Die Because They're Too Popular

from the say-what-now? dept

We've had our issues with politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren whose plans to "break up" big internet companies don't seem to make much sense, but it appears that Senator Josh Hawley has decided to take things to another level of insanity altogether. In an op-ed for USA Today, Hawley makes the argument that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter should all die. And while there are plenty of people who appear to support a dead Facebook in response to that company's long history of sketchy practices, that's not really the reason Hawley wants them dead.

He wants them dead because they're too popular. Hawley cherry picks some evidence to suggest that using social media is bad for our health.

And in order to guarantee an audience big enough to make their ads profitable, big tech has developed a business model designed to do one thing above all: addict.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — they devote massive amounts of money and the best years of some of the nation’s brightest minds to developing new schemes to hijack their users’ neural circuitry. That’s because social media only works — to make money, anyway — if it consumes users’ time and attention, day after day. It needs to replace the various activities we enjoyed and did perfectly well before social media existed.

This hearkens back to nearly every other overblown, ridiculous moral panic of yesteryear. Television, radio, video games, novels, comic books, dungeons and dragons, pinball, rock and roll. They've all received this nutty treatment. Even chess.

"A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises--not this sort of mental gladiatorship."

Or, remember the report from 1909 by the "NY Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children"

This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving pictures.'

Hawley's piece is one and the same with those previous moral panics. It's kind of amusing for a guy who claims to be a "free market, less government intervention" conservative to now stand up and argue for literally shutting down private enterprises because they're popular, but politics and hypocrisy go hand in hand.

Of course, to make his point, Hawley wants to tie popular social media to another moral panic: "drugs!"

Let’s be clear. This is a digital drug. And the addiction is the point. Addiction is what Mark Zuckerberg is selling.

Like other drugs, this one hurts its users. Attention spans dull. Tempers quicken. Relationships fray.

And those are the benign effects. The Journal of Pediatrics recently noted a surge in attempted suicide: more than double the attempts over the last decade for those under 19, with a tripling among girls and young women 10 to 24. The study’s authors can’t prove social media is to blame, but they strongly suspect it plays a critical role. Congress has a duty to investigate that potential link further.

Meanwhile, as we noted just earlier this week, another comprehensive study did not find any evidence to support the idea that social media is driving depression. But who needs facts when you have a moral panic to sell.

Filed Under: addiction, drugs, health crisis, josh hawley, moral panic, popularity, social media
Companies: facebook, instagram, twitter

Huge New Study Finds Almost No Evidence That Social Media Makes Kids Unhappy

from the don't-always-buy-the-narrative dept

Among the many narratives making the rounds these days about how terrible the internet and social media apparently are, one popular trope is the idea that using social media makes people depressed. Just last year there was a study purporting to show that limiting your social media use could limit depression. But that study was conducted by an undergrad at UPenn, based on just 143 other UPenn students. Not exactly the most rigorous of studies. A much more thorough, careful, and methodologically sound study was just released finding little impact on "adolescent life satisfaction" from using social media. The study was conducted by three researchers at Oxford's well-respected Internet Institute, including Professor Andrew Przybylski, who has a history of very thoughtful work in this space. The conclusions suggest that there's perhaps more of a moral panic among some about social media than any actual evidence:

In this study, we used large-scale representative panel data to disentangle the between-person and within-person relations linking adolescent social media use and well-being. We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population. Instead, social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific, and contingent on analytic methods.

As the report notes, most past research in this space is not great, often leading to "trivial trends" being "routinely over-interpreted by those under increasing pressure to rapidly craft evidence-based policies." The study was carefully done, involved a very large number of individuals (over 12,000), and tries to tease out the actual impact, and where that is, rather than generalize across the board.

Discussing the study with the BBC, Przybylski noted that social media seems to be a tiny blip in terms of impacting how kids feel.

Their study concluded that most links between life satisfaction and social media use were "trivial", accounting for less than 1% of a teenager's wellbeing - and that the effect of social media was "not a one-way street".

Prof Przybylski, director of research at the institute, said: "99.75% of a person's life satisfaction has nothing to do with their use of social media."

[...]

"Parents shouldn't worry about time on social media - thinking about it that way is wrong," Prof Przybylski said.

"We are fixated on time - but we need to retire this notion of screen time.

"The results are not showing evidence for great concern."

Of course, many people already have their minds made up on this, but it's nice to see a thorough, and detailed study to counter some of the myths.

Filed Under: depression, happiness, kids, social media, study

Governments And Internet Companies Agree On Questionable Voluntary Pact On Extremist Content Online

from the well-meaning-but-misguided dept

Yesterday, there was a big process, called the Christchurch Call, in which a bunch of governments and big social media companies basically agreed to take a more proactive role in dealing with terrorist and violent extremist content online. To its credit, the effort did include voices from civil society/public interest groups that raised issues about how these efforts might negatively impact freedom of expression and other human rights issues around the globe. However, it's not clear that the "balance" they came to is a good one.

A free, open and secure internet is a powerful tool to promote connectivity, enhance social inclusiveness and foster economic growth.

The internet is, however, not immune from abuse by terrorist and violent extremist actors. This was tragically highlighted by the terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019 on the Muslim community of Christchurch – terrorist attacks that were designed to go viral.

The dissemination of such content online has adverse impacts on the human rights of the victims, on our collective security and on people all over the world.

The "Call" is not binding on anyone. It's just a set of "voluntary commitments" to try to "address the issue of terrorist and violent extremist content online and to prevent the abuse of the internet...." There are a set of commitments from governments and a separate set from social media companies. On the government side the commitments are:

Counter the drivers of terrorism and violent extremism by strengthening the resilience and inclusiveness of our societies to enable them to resist terrorist and violent extremist ideologies, including through education, building media literacy to help counter distorted terrorist and violent extremist narratives, and the fight against inequality.

Ensure effective enforcement of applicable laws that prohibit the production or dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content, in a manner consistent with the rule of law and international human rights law, including freedom of expression.

Encourage media outlets to apply ethical standards when depicting terrorist events online, to avoid amplifying terrorist and violent extremist content.

Support frameworks, such as industry standards, to ensure that reporting on terrorist attacks does not amplify terrorist and violent extremist content, without prejudice to responsible coverage of terrorism and violent extremism.

Consider appropriate action to prevent the use of online services to disseminate terrorist and violent extremist content, including through collaborative actions, such as:

• Awareness-raising and capacity-building activities aimed at smaller online service providers;
• Development of industry standards or voluntary frameworks;
• Regulatory or policy measures consistent with a free, open and secure internet and international human rights law.

That mostly seems to stop short of demanding content be taken down, though that last point teeters on the edge. On the social media side, there is the following list of commitments:

Take transparent, specific measures seeking to prevent the upload of terrorist and violent extremist content and to prevent its dissemination on social media and similar content-sharing services, including its immediate and permanent removal, without prejudice to law enforcement and user appeals requirements, in a manner consistent with human rights and fundamental freedoms. Cooperative measures to achieve these outcomes may include technology development, the expansion and use of shared databases of hashes and URLs, and effective notice and takedown procedures.

Provide greater transparency in the setting of community standards or terms of service, including by:

• Outlining and publishing the consequences of sharing terrorist and violent extremist content;
• Describing policies and putting in place procedures for detecting and removing terrorist and violent extremist content.

Enforce those community standards or terms of service in a manner consistent with human rights and fundamental freedoms, including by:

• Prioritising moderation of terrorist and violent extremist content, however identified;
• Closing accounts where appropriate;
• Providing an efficient complaints and appeals process for those wishing to contest the removal of their content or a decision to decline the upload of their content.

Implement immediate, effective measures to mitigate the specific risk that terrorist and violent extremist content is disseminated through livestreaming, including identification of content for real-time review.

Implement regular and transparent public reporting, in a way that is measurable and supported by clear methodology, on the quantity and nature of terrorist and violent extremist content being detected and removed.

Review the operation of algorithms and other processes that may drive users towards and/or amplify terrorist and violent extremist content to better understand possible intervention points and to implement changes where this occurs. This may include using algorithms and other processes to redirect users from such content or the promotion of credible, positive alternatives or counter-narratives. This may include building appropriate mechanisms for reporting, designed in a multi-stakeholder process and without compromising trade secrets or the effectiveness of service providers’ practices through unnecessary disclosure.

Work together to ensure cross-industry efforts are coordinated and robust, for instance by investing in and expanding the GIFCT, and by sharing knowledge and expertise.

Facebook put up its own list of actions that it's taking in response to this, but as CDT's Emma Llanso points out, it's missing some fairly important stuff about making sure these efforts don't lead to censorship, especially of marginalized groups and individuals:

In response to all of this, the White House refused to join with the other countries who signed on to the voluntary commitments of the Christchurch Call, noting that it had concerns about whether it was appropriate and consistent with the First Amendment. That's absolutely accurate and correct. Even if the effort is voluntary and non-binding, and even if it makes references to protecting freedom of expression, once a government gets involved in advocating for social media companies to take down content, it's crossing a line. The Washington Post quoted law professor James Grimmelmann, who makes this point concisely:

“It’s hard to take seriously this administration’s criticism of extremist content, but it’s probably for the best that the United States didn’t sign,” said James Grimmelmann, a Cornell Tech law professor. “The government should not be in the business of ‘encouraging’ platforms to do more than they legally are required to — or than they could be required to under the First Amendment.”

“The government ought to do its ‘encouraging’ through laws that give platforms and users clear notice of what they’re allowed to do, not through vague exhortations that can easily turn into veiled threats,” Grimmelmann said.

And he's also right that it's difficult to take this administration's position seriously, especially given that the very same day that it refused to join this effort, it was also pushing forward with its sketchy plan to force social media companies to deal with non-existent "conservative bias." So, on the one hand, the White House says it believes in the First Amendment and doesn't want governments to get involved, and at the very same time, it's suggesting that it can pressure social media into acting in a way that it wants. And, of course, this is also the same White House, that has made other efforts to get social media companies to remove content from governments they dislike, such as Iran's.

So, yes, we should be wary of governments telling social media companies what content should and should not be allowed, so it's good that the White House declined to support the Christchurch Call. But it's difficult to believe it was doing so for any particularly principled reasons.

Filed Under: censorship, christchurch, christchurch call, extremism, free speech, human rights, social media, terrorist content, voluntary, white house
Companies: facebook, google, microsoft, twitter, youtube

White House Sets Up Echo Chamber For Complaints About Social Media Bias Against Conservatives

from the complainer-in-chief dept

After months of fact-free complaints about bias against conservatives on social media, the White House has finally decided to engage in a fact-finding mission. And by "fact-finding mission," I mean "knock together a shitty webform to collect complaints." Or build a mailing list for the 2020 election run. Who knows. But here it is in all of its "will this do" glory.

It opens with this statement before it starts harvesting personal info.

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear “violations” of user policies.

No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump.

From there, the form asks for first name, last name, citizenship, zip code, phone number (optional), and email address. If you're not a US citizen or resident, the White House's form says it can't help you. That's pretty weird considering this form does nothing more than harvest information, most of it personal. If non-US citizens want to share their personal information -- and their stories of social media bias -- with the administration, they should be able to. But that's how the White House set this up: Americans only.

After that, it's time to start detailing the bias. Pick a platform and start bitching. Start by giving the government the link to your social media account, describe the incident, and upload screenshots of the tweet/post removed for violating terms of use being conservative.

You also have the option of being added to the White House's newsletter email list. Then you have prove you're not a robot by typing in the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. Fortunately for the bots, the question and answer never change, so not much a bulwark against exploitation.

Finally, you have to agree to the White House's "user agreement," conveniently located at another site and hidden behind a shortened link.

At the White House's site, you'll learn that complaining about bias via this webform gives the government permission to:

...use, edit, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, post, or otherwise distribute all or part of the Content (including edited, composite, or derivative works made therefrom).

Forever.

The license you grant is irrevocable and valid in perpetuity, throughout the world, and in all forms of media.

And there's nothing you can do if the government decides to alter your tweet and turn it into the centerpiece of its next Congressional hearing.

You waive any right to inspect or approve any Content or edited, composite or derivative works made from Content (including those which may contain your Information) before use. You are not entitled to any prior notice before the U.S. Government uses Content or Information. You are not entitled to any compensation for Content.

And even though the government has taken irrevocable possession of your content, it's still your content where it matters most.

You solely bear all responsibility for all Content.

This isn't about political bias. This is about confirmation bias. The White House has asked people to complain about being blocked or banned. Only those with negative experiences are invited to participate and that slant guarantees a bunch of unreliable narratives. Everything fed into this ad hoc complaint box will be vetted by an administration already convinced the social media deck is stacked against conservatives.

This will allow the administration to cherry-pick what it needs to back up the claims it's been making for months and ignore everything else. It will give the President a stack of printed-out tweets to wave at social media company execs during the next closed door meeting. What it won't produce is much reliable evidence of bias. The lack of reliability won't matter to the administration or the man at the top.

The real question, though, is what the administration plans to do with this info. It seems the ultimate goal is to talk itself into believing the bias problem is bad enough the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity will need to be damaged to make it right.

But, for now, at least the government has given the public a platform to complain about beverage companies threatening to send their urine to journalists.

Filed Under: bias, campaigns, conservative bias, content moderation, echo chamber, social media, social media bias, white house
Companies: facebook, twitter, youtube

Another Day, Another Company Scraping Photos To Train Facial Recognition AI

from the ALL-YOUR-FACE-ARE-BELONG-TO-US dept

If your face can be found online, chances are it's now part of a facial recognition database. These aren't the ones being utilized by law enforcement, although those are bad enough. The ones used by law enforcement are littered with millions of noncriminals, all part of a system that works worse than advertised 100% of the time.

The faces aren't in those databases (yet!), but they're being used to train facial recognition AI with an eye on selling it to law enforcement and other government agencies. Another photo storage company has been caught using users' photos to fine tune facial recognition software… all without obtaining consent from those whose faces became fodder for the tech mill.

“Make memories”: That’s the slogan on the website for the photo storage app Ever, accompanied by a cursive logo and an example album titled “Weekend with Grandpa.”

Everything about Ever’s branding is warm and fuzzy, about sharing your “best moments” while freeing up space on your phone.

What isn’t obvious on Ever’s website or app — except for a brief reference that was added to the privacy policy after NBC News reached out to the company in April — is that the photos people share are used to train the company’s facial recognition system, and that Ever then offers to sell that technology to private companies, law enforcement and the military.

This has been 2019's theme for the first five months of the year. Users of popular photo apps and services are being notified belatedly -- and not by the companies performing the harvesting -- that their faces are an integral part of law enforcement machinery and/or the military-industrial complex.

Ever's oh-shit-we-got-caught statement doesn't offer much mollification.

Doug Aley, Ever’s CEO, told NBC News that Ever AI does not share the photos or any identifying information about users with its facial recognition customers.

Lots of people would rather not be participants in creating surveillance tech. Most never seek employment at companies crafting products for law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the US military. Without being informed, the photos they thought they were harmlessly sharing with family and friends have been used to make surveillance easier and more pervasive, if not actually any better.

Ever is just the latest. Prior to this, Flickr photos were swept up in a facial recognition data set compiled by IBM.

The photo is undeniably cute: a mom and a dad — he with a stubbly beard and rimless glasses, she with choppy brown hair and a wide grin — goofing around and eating ice cream with their two toddler daughters.

The picture, which was uploaded to photo-sharing site Flickr in 2013, isn't just adorable; with a bunch of different faces in various positions, it's also useful for training facial-recognition systems, which use artificial intelligence to identify people in photos and videos. It was among a million images that IBM harnessed for a new project that aims to help researchers study fairness and accuracy in facial recognition, called Diversity in Faces.

IBM also apologized for using people's photos for its data set without their permission. It said users were welcome to opt out at any time, but did not give users tools to find out whether their photos had been used. Nor is there any way to expeditiously remove found photos other than by handing over your Flickr ID to IBM.

And if it's not a tech company harvesting photos to run AI tests, it's random internet users showing just how easy it is to compile a data set using other people's photos.

Tinder users have many motives for uploading their likeness to the dating app. But contributing a facial biometric to a downloadable data set for training convolutional neural networks probably wasn’t top of their list when they signed up to swipe.

A user of Kaggle, a platform for machine learning and data science competitions which was recently acquired by Google, has uploaded a facial data set he says was created by exploiting Tinder’s API to scrape 40,000 profile photos from Bay Area users of the dating app — 20,000 apiece from profiles of each gender.

The data set, called People of Tinder, consists of six downloadable zip files, with four containing around 10,000 profile photos each and two files with sample sets of around 500 images per gender.

Tinder's reaction was to call this a violation of its Terms of Service. But this determination doesn't undo the damage nor make it impossible for someone else to do the same thing. Tinder users spoken to by TechCrunch weren't happy their photos -- some of which have never been uploaded outside of the app -- are being used by a person they don't know to perform research.

It's not that there's no legitimate uses for publicly-available photos. But transparency is the key and no one harvesting photos to train AI systems or perform research seems too concerned about being upfront with the people whose photos they're using. It's even worse in the case of Ever, where the app company itself is the one developing facial recognition software on the side, which should make users question the intent of the app developers. Did they really want to offer another photo service or were they just using this to gather faces for their real moneymaker?

Filed Under: ai, facial recognition, photos, social media
Companies: ever