Toronto Sun: We Value Criticism And The Voice Of The Reader So Much, We're Killing Both

from the disingenuous-drivel dept

At this point it has become a personal pastime of ours to track the idiotic reasons websites give for killing their local news comment sections. Instead of simply admitting nobody on their writing or editorial staff wants to deal with on-site conversation, or acknowledging they've never liked readers being able to point out story errors right below articles, lazy websites instead give a rotating crop of hilarious excuses. These usually range from claims they're killing comments because they really care about building relationships, to claims their muting all on site dialogue because they just so love conversation.

The Toronto Sun is the latest to join what's now a massive trend, a note to readers proclaiming that the paper is regretfully killing its news comment section because the paper just can't figure out how to interact with human beings in the digital age, and would like to roll the clock back to an era where only editor-approved thinking reaches the readers' eye. The note from Sun editor James Wallace begins:

"The voice of our reader has always been a critical part of the Sun."

So critical that we no longer feel like allowing it on site!

"As a paper, we pride ourselves both on dishing out and taking criticism - especially when the latter comes from our readers."

Yes we're so proud of this criticism we're eliminating the ability for you to view this criticism at all. Like other comment-killing websites, the Sun pretends this is a temporary measure while the website figures out a better way to deal with reader feedback and opinion (read: throw it at social media and forget about it):

"Therefore we have decided, for the time being, to no longer allow commenting on most online articles until we sort out a better and more accountable way for our readers to interact with us and each other. Like a growing number of news organizations, we are also moving away from anonymous commenting because there are other options that encourage respectful, civil debate. Much of that debate already takes place on social media."

What the Sun and other websites don't yet understand is that by eliminating site comments, you're not only killing a strong, local, on-site community, you're harming news transparency. Like it or not news is now a conversation between sites, between news outlets, and perhaps most importantly between the public and news outlets. Having a comment section -- however filled with bile poorly-managed sections can be -- is part of that transparent process of fact collection, analysis, and correction.

As more and more sites have shuttered comments I've become increasingly aware of my own knee-jerk tendency to head to the comments to see what the author may have missed or misinterpreted; something I can no longer do at places like The Verge, ReCode, Reuters, Popular Science, The Daily Beast, and many others. Shoveling this important discourse over to social media is one way of hiding the reality that your reporters and your outlet can make errors, may not always have the full picture, and aren't (gasp) infallible:

@KarlBode If the convo is scattered across social media then only the publisher "sees" the convos, the readers have to dig thru hashtags etc

— Cynthia B. Meyers (@AnneHummert) September 24, 2015

Except if the Sun really valued conversation and reader insights it would leave the comment section intact and weed the troll garden via better comment system design. But if you don't understand the value of comments, don't care about transparency, and are too cheap and lazy to spend time cultivating local community, you get half-assed mea culpas like the Suns':

"We regret having to make this decision and are working on a solution that will best serve you, our readers, and the Sun. Meanwhile, keep your comments, views and opinions coming. We value them."

Yes, your opinions are so valuable we've decided to dig a six foot hole and bury them. If you want to interact with us, please feel free to shout at us at the curated nitwit cacophony that is Facebook, Tweet at us via the fractured, cordoned off hallways of Twitter, or fire a letter to the editor our way which we'll promptly ignore. For the sake of conversation and respectful debate, of course.

Filed Under: comments, community, journalism, news, toronto
Companies: toronto sun

I'll Put My Name On This Piece Declaring It Idiotic To Argue Against Anonymity Online

from the that's-just-wrong dept

This happens every few months -- whenever there's a flare up of "bad behavior" on the internet. Some genius thinks he can solve everything by just "getting rid of online anonymity." The latest to step into this well trodden, widely debunked, canyon of ridiculousness... is Lance Ulanoff over at Mashable. He seems to think that he's the first person to seriously consider the idea of doing away with online anonymity, and it only serves to show that he's barely thought through the issue at all. First off, it's simply wrong to associate anonymous comments with trollish comments. Yes, some anonymous comments are trollish, but most are not. And, in fact, many trollish, harassing comments come from people who have their real names attached to them. This has been studied widely, but Ulanoff doesn't even bother to look for evidence, he just goes with his gut. The largest single platform for harassment online... has been Facebook, which famously requires "real names." That hasn't stopped harassment, and nor would it do so on Reddit.

Ulanoff completely brushes off privacy concerns, by misunderstanding them. Completely:

Please, please, spare me all the privacy arguments. I know that each and every one of you is terrified that if your real names appear anywhere online, a cyber-crook will start wearing your identity like a cheap suit. Of course, you often forget that you’re sometimes complicit, in some fashion, in the crime: Answering phishing attack emails, using terrible passwords, not shredding your snail mail. Granted, sometimes the cyber thievery happens when hackers scoop up tons of private data on a third-party server.

Yes. This all happens. And I still want to end online anonymity – even if it does leave us a little more exposed online and, though not my objective, destroys Reddit.

Preventing cybercrime is not the main reason why people like to remain anonymous online (again, if that were true, why would anyone be using Facebook?). Many people have really good reasons for wanting to be anonymous online, having to do with not revealing details of their personal life. Want to have a discussion about surviving rape? Maybe you don't want to blast that out to the public. Hell, want to have a discussion about being stalked online? Perhaps not the best thing to put your name out there in public, right? Or what if you're criticizing a boss? Or whistleblowing? Or questioning anyone who has authority to make your life miserable?

Ulanoff lives in a privileged world where apparently he can't ever imagine needing to speak truth to power (this is a reporter?!?) or where he might want to be able to discuss things personally without everyone in the world knowing about it. Lucky him. Most of the world is not so lucky.

We need to shut down online anonymity and stop confusing it with privacy. The answer to protecting yourself online is not to be someone else and please do not talk to me about online identity as if it’s some fluid thing to be protected. If you officially change your name, your address, your email, your phone number, please, by all means, change it online. “FunkyDawg” is not your identity. It’s a handle.

On virtually all of my social accounts, I am “LanceUlanoff.” Granted, I’ve built a tiny online brand around my name, but I’ve also found this transparency much easier to manage than a bunch of random handles and identities. It also keeps me honest. I am accountable for the things I post on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Again, this is because you're in a position of privilege where you don't need to go in search of people to talk to about how your parents beat you. Or you don't need to find a community to talk to about coming out. Or about finding a new job. There are all sorts of reasons why anonymity matters, and Ulanoff doesn't seem to have considered any of them. And they're not just the "extreme" cases of rape or sexual orientation or things like that either. There are lots of reasons why people might not want to reveal their personal interests or hobbies. What if all of your co-workers are staunch Republicans and you secretly support Hillary Clinton? What if you don't really want the world to know that you are the world's most knowledgeable expert on the TV sitcom Taxi? It could be anything. Maybe you like steamy romance novels and you think your friends would make fun of you for that. Maybe you think hockey is a stupid sport, but all your friends are really into it. Not everyone's life is an open book, nor should it be. There are lots of reasons we don't reveal everything about us, and it takes quite a lot of ignorance to assume that just because you happen to live in a comfy situation where your life is an open book that everyone else's should be as well.

Even if sites like Reddit continue to allow members to hide behind screen names, they should know, in the Reddit system, who they are: Full name, age, birthdate and maybe even address. If Reddit does this, it will not only cut down the number of attacks, it will likely scrub Reddit of much of its disgusting, hateful and racist content. It might also help the site, assuming it survives, monetize more activity than it is now.

Again, this is a total myth. Facebook has much of that info and yet all sorts of hate and attacks happen on Facebook all the time. Ulanoff can't seem to get over his initial conflation of "anonymity" with "bad behavior." There is some overlap in the venn diagram, but it's nowhere near as complete as he seems to think it is. Also, if Reddit has that info, then it's at risk. Notice all those hacks and data leaks lately? How safe will the woman seeking help to leave her abusive husband feel knowing that some hackers might leak her name and address at any moment?

None of this, by the way, should hamper “Free Speech” on Reddit.

Yes, actually it will. A ton. Because all those people who would like to feel comfortable discussing things in such settings will go away. The Supreme Court itself has made it clear that anonymity is a key part of free speech. Ulanoff should familiarize himself with some of its statements, such as:

Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

And yet, Ulanoff ridiculously thinks that he's the one protecting people from an "intolerant society" because he's too ignorant and too privileged to recognize all those people who rely on anonymity.

Oh, and then he closes it out with his own, incorrect, definition of the First Amendment:

I know that most of the members who hated Pao and wanted her out were angry about the necessary changes she was making and they often decried her actions as an attack on free speech. Sorry, but, in my book, hate speech does not equal free speech.

In your book it may not, but under the Constitution it does. That does not mean, of course, that Reddit needs to put up with hate speech. That's a decision for the company to make on its own. But Ulanoff's argument here is so confused as to be laughable. It's like a high school student who just discovered these issues and didn't bother to do any research before spouting off his opinion.

The facts are pretty clear: anonymous speech is incredibly important in protecting free speech, mostly in protecting people from harassment or risks. It is a key tool that allows people who are facing difficult situations to find each other and discuss. On top of that, most content from anonymous individuals online is perfectly reasonable and fits within community norms. Finally, requiring real names has never been shown to adequately limit trollish behavior. So Ulanoff is spouting off an idea that puts more people at risk, limits communities that need such connections the most and does nothing to actually stop trollish behavior.

If, however, these Reddit members really believe it is their right to harass, spew hate and post their insane ideas about various races, then do it without the mask of a user name. Put your real name and photo on the site. Stand up for what you believe in, you bastards.

Again the ignorance and the privilege shine through. Ulanoff can't imagine a world in which anyone would say something anonymously unless they're being a "bastard." You'd think that someone who has spent as much time online as Ulanoff apparently has would at least know enough to do some basic research, or at least talk to some people who actually do rely on anonymity every day.

Filed Under: anonymity, community, free speech, lance ulanoff, names, trolls
Companies: reddit

The Verge Shuts Down News Comments To Help 'Build Relationships'

from the ill-communication dept

Oh, the poor, lowly comments section. These days, you can't turn a corner without the comment section being blamed for the death of civility, falling gold prices, and the general, entropic heat malaise of the universe. If you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a trend in the news industry afoot wherein you kill off the comment section, mindlessly shove your community over to Facebook if they want to comment, then proudly proclaim you're doing this not because you're too lazy or cheap to moderate, but because you're really just super passionate about improving online conversation. It's kind of a thing.

The Verge seems to be the latest news outlet to join the trend, co-founder Nilay Patel informing readers this week that the website will be shutting down the site's comment section because the Internet has just gotten too kooky to concentrate. Like other comment section killers, The Verge rather proudly proclaims that this move is part of an effort to build better relationships:

"What we've found lately is that the tone of our comments (and some of our commenters) is getting a little too aggressive and negative — a change that feels like it started with GamerGate and has steadily gotten worse ever since. It's hard for us to do our best work in that environment, and it's even harder for our staff to hang out with our audience and build the relationships that led to us having a great community in the first place."

Nothing quite says "building relationships" like removing the ability for your readers to publicly speak to you. Meanwhile, if you can't do your "best work" because a few obnoxious trolls can't stop pooping in your comment section, maybe don't read the comments until you're done working? As we noted when Reuters, ReCode, Vox and everybody else killed comments in the noble pursuit of high planes of communication, by closing comments down you're sending a clear message to your community and lifeblood that their input doesn't matter.

And as some (whoa, the irony) Verge commenters point out, killing comments (as is done at Verge sister site Vox.com) doesn't do much for the local flora and fauna, either: To The Verge's credit they'll still allow forum posts and indicate the comments will return eventually, but the pretense that we're building a better community by putting a collective bag over said community's head never seems to get tired. As numerous sites have illustrated, it doesn't take much work to create a more civil, less-batshit comment section. Some do it with minimal moderation. Others, like us at Techdirt, try to create better incentives for good comments and encourage a strong and vocal community, rather than seeing comments as some sort of "task" to be "dealt" with. Hopefully The Verge's comment vacation is a step toward that direction, and not toward a permanent community comment vacation.

Filed Under: comments, community, openness, relationships, the verge
Companies: vox

Modders Un-Region-Restricting Halo Online Undeterred By Microsoft DMCA

from the back-in-the-ussr dept

One of the most wonderful sights to see in the gaming community, particularly in the PC gaming community, is what a combination of a loyal fan-base and a strong modding community can produce. This is particularly so when the mods released are clear and active attempts at doing nothing more than making the original product even better. You see this all the time in PC gaming -- old games being yanked into the present, an increase the replayability of a classic, and even all-new sub-games created out of the original. All of this done through a modding community that loves the original work produced by game designers. Some gaming companies embrace the modding community, while some don't. Which way they go is typically decided by just how much control the company generally wants to exert over its product.

Guess which way Microsoft tends to go? Well, they tend to be the protectionist sort, but a recent story about the release of a new free-to-play Halo game, Halo Online, both puzzled me and amused me. The puzzled part came from Microsoft firmly insisting that the release would be available for play in Russia only, which...what the hell? Even the excuse of a long testing period in a Russia-only beta setting is, well, kind of strange.

Microsoft: Right now our focus is on learning as much as we can from the closed beta period in Russia. Theoretically, any expansion outside of Russia would have to go through region-specific changes to address player expectations.

Note that availability of the game to markets outside of Putin-ville is theoretical at this point. Except not really, of course, and that's where the amusement came from. Because if the alchemy ingredients for mods is a loyal fan-base, something begging for modification, and a capable modding community, everyone had to know that restricting this to Russia was going to be a barrier tested by the public before too long. It turns out that "before too long" meant in the past few weeks, because modders were already posting information on their work to free Halo from Russian imprisonment when Microsoft caught wind and fired off a DMCA notice to the host site.

Modders have been mucking about with the leaked Halo Online files to unlock features, with one team creating a game launcher called ‘ElDorito.’ But all that work came to screeching halt yesterday after Microsoft sent a DMCA takedown notice to Github, who was hosting the files. The site quickly complied. Microsoft sent the following notice to Github:

"We have received information that the domain listed above, which appears to be on servers under your control, is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to, copyrighted works published by Microsoft," the company wrote in a DMCA notice to Github.

Under other circumstances, that might be the end of the story, except that these are game modders we're talking about. When they commit, they're committed, and their work tends to mean that they're the sort of types who know how to route around these sorts of attacks. Now, to be clear, Microsoft certainly has the right to try to kill off these modders' work, but they're going to have to try a lot harder than a single DMCA if they want to really have this battle.

"In terms of DMCA/C&D mitigation, we have made redundant git backups on private and public git servers. This is to ensure we will always have one working copy. These are being synchronized so that data is always the same," [modder] Woovie explains. "Further DMCAs may happen potentially, it’s not really known at the moment. Our backups will always exist though and we will continue until we’re happy."

Team member Neoshadow42 says that, as a game developer himself, he sympathizes with Microsoft to a point about protecting ones copyrighted material:

"As someone involved in game development, I’m sympathetic with some developers when it comes to copyright issues. This is different though, in my opinion,” the dev explains. "The game was going to be free in the first place. The PC audience has been screaming for Halo 3 for years and years, and we saw the chance with this leak. The fact that we could, in theory, bring the game that everyone wants, without the added on stuff that would ruin the game, that’s something we’d be proud of."

Making the moral equation here slightly more complicated is that the things that "would ruin the game" don't only refer to the geo-restrictions, but to other game "features" as well, such as in-game microtransactions that almost uniformly piss off the PC gaming community. The modding team has aimed at removing those from the game as well, which, given that this is a free-to-play game, might break the business model Microsoft set up for the game. I expect Microsoft to continue battling for control of its product, as well as for the game's restrictions and microtransactions.

Ultimately, this is a damned shame, because there's a lesson to be learned from all of this and that lesson is not that the modding community is the enemy of the game designer. This is pure market testing at its finest. What this entire episode clearly outlines for Microsoft, were it willing to listen, is that potential customers want wider availability for the beta version of the game (as in, not restricted along national borders) and don't want annoying microtransactions in a Halo game. And if they want those things, fans will be willing to pay for them. Should Microsoft continue with its plan to not meet customer demand, those customers likely won't go unfulfilled, they'll simply find their pleasure in the form of a mod from a strong modding community that Microsoft wants to play whac-a-mole with, rather than listen to the wants of its customers.

Filed Under: community, copyright, dmca, geoblocking, modders, regional restrictions, russia, takedowns, video games
Companies: microsoft

The Internet Never Ends: You Can Deny That Or Embrace It

from the embrace-it dept

Over at NiemanLab, there's a good interview with Tom Standage who runs the Economist's digital efforts, in which he reveals the Economist's general view of how it approaches the internet -- which could be summarized as "deny it exists." Basically, the argument that Standage makes is that people want to feel like they've "completed" something and that they're fully informed, and so the Economist likes to pretend that once you've read it, you're completely informed and you don't have to look elsewhere. This is also why the Economist refuses to link to anyone else, because it would disabuse you of the "illusion" that the Economist provided you everything you needed:

...what we actually sell is what I like to call the feeling of being informed when you get to the very end. So we sell the antidote to information overload — we sell a finite, finishable, very tightly curated bundle of content. And we did that initially as a weekly print product. Then it turns out you can take that same content and deliver it through an app.

The “you’ve got to the end and now you’ve got permission to go do something else” is something you never get. You can never finish the Internet, you can never finish Twitter, and you can never really finish The New York Times, to be honest. So at its heart is that we have this very high density of information, and the promise we make to the reader is that if you trust us to filter and distill the news, and if you give us an hour and a half of your time — which is roughly how long people spend reading The Economist each week — then we’ll tell you what matters in the world and what’s going on. And if you only read one thing, we want to be the desert-island magazine. And our readers, that’s what they say.

And as for links:

Another aspect of it is — and I get all the morning briefings, Sentences, the FT one, and Quartz’s, and the rest of them — is that we don’t do links. The reason that we don’t do links, again, if you want to get links you can get them from other people. You can go on Twitter and get as many as you like. But the idea was everything that you need to know is distilled into this thing that you can get to the end of, and you can get to the end of it without worrying that you should’ve clicked on those links in case there was something interesting. So we’ve clicked on the links already and we’ve decided what’s interesting, and we’ve put it in Espresso.

That’s the same that we do in the weekly as well — we’re not big on linking out. And it’s not because we’re luddites, or not because we don’t want to send traffic to other people. It’s that we don’t want to undermine the reassuring impression that if you want to understand Subject X, here’s an Economist article on it — read it and that’s what you need to know. And it’s not covered in links that invite you to go elsewhere.

Mathew Ingram rightly calls this view of things selling an illusion. He notes that such an illusion can be very powerful -- and even very satisfying and appealing. But it's still an illusion.

To me, it's also a version of denial -- a somewhat hubristic denial that actually says (loudly) that the Economist thinks it's much, much smarter than its readers. That seems like a pretty big mistake in the internet age, where (quite frequently) your readers are much smarter. In many ways, we at Techdirt have always taken the opposite approach. We link aggressively outward to source material, knowing that it will help people explore the subject more deeply. We encourage discussion and conversation in our comments, knowing that many of our readers are more knowledgeable on these subjects than we are.

The Economist is obviously super successful, but as we've stated before, the way people consume the news these days is changing. The kind of people who want to just sit down, consume one thing and feel that they're "informed" are going away. That's just not how people consume news these days, and young people especially don't want to consume news that way. They want to explore and dig and share and discuss. The ability to truly interact with the news, research things yourself, share your thoughts and actually be a part of the effort is what's appealing to so many people.

Maybe the Economist's view of things works for people who are scared of the internet and don't like the endless firehose of information that's available, but I'm betting that's a population that will be progressively shrinking, rather than growing.

Filed Under: community, denial, internet, journalism, links, news, the economist, tom standage
Companies: the economist

Free Speech, Censorship, Moderation And Community: The Copia Discussion

from the not-an-easy-issue dept

As I noted earlier this week, at the launch of the Copia Institute a couple of weeks ago, we had a bunch of really fascinating discussions. I've already posted the opening video and explained some of the philosophy behind this effort, and today I wanted to share with you the discussion that we had about free expression and the internet, led by three of the best people to talk about this issue: Michelle Paulson from Wikimedia; Sarah Jeong, a well-known lawyer and writer; and Dave Willner who heads up "Safety, Privacy & Support" at Secret after holding a similar role at Facebook. I strongly recommend watching the full discussion before just jumping into the comments with your assumptions about what was said, because for the most part it's probably not what you think: Internet platforms and free expression have a strongly symbiotic relationship -- many platforms have helped expand and enable free expression around the globe in many ways. And, at the same time, that expression has fed back into those online platforms making them more valuable and contributing to the innovation that those platforms have enabled. And while it's easy to talk about government attacks on freedom of expression and why that's problematic, things get really tricky and really nuanced when it comes to technology platforms and how they should handle things. At one point in the conversation, Dave Willner made a point that I think is really important to acknowledge:

I think we would be better served as a tech community in acknowledging that we do moderate and control. Everyone moderates and controls user behavior. And even the platforms that are famously held up as examples... Twitter: "the free speech wing of the free speech party." Twitter moderates spam. And it's very easy to say "oh, some spam is malware and that's obviously harmful" but two things: One, you've allowed that "harm" is a legitimate reason to moderate speech and two, there's plenty of spam that's actually just advertising that people find irritating. And once we're in that place, it is the sort of reflexive "no restrictions based on the content of speech" sort of defense that people go to? It fails. And while still believing in free speech ideals, I think we need to acknowledge that that Rubicon has been crossed and that it was crossed in the 90s, if not earlier. And the defense of not overly moderating content for political reasons needs to be articulated in a more sophisticated way that takes into account the fact that these technologies need good moderation to be functional. But that doesn't mean that all moderation is good.

This is an extremely important, but nuanced point that you don't often hear in these discussions. Just today, over at Index on Censorship, there's an interesting article by Padraig Reidy that makes a somewhat similar point, noting that there are many free speech issues where it is silly to deny that they're free speech issues, but plenty of people do. The argument then, is that we'd be able to have a much more useful conversation if people admit:

Don't say "this isn't a free speech issue", rather "this is a free speech issue, and I’m OK with this amount of censorship, for this reason.” Then we can talk."

Soon after this, Sarah Jeong makes another, equally important, if equally nuanced, point about the reflexive response by some to behavior that they don't like to automatically call for blocking of speech, when they are often confusing speech with behavior. She discusses how harassment, for example, is an obvious and very real problem with serious and damaging real-world consequences (for everyone, beyond just those being harassed), but that it's wrong to think that we should just immediately look to find ways to shut people up:

Harassment actually exists and is actually a problem -- and actually skews heavily along gender lines and race lines. People are targeted for their sexuality. And it's not just words online. It ends up being a seemingly innocuous, or rather "non-real" manifestation, when in fact it's linked to real world stalking or other kinds of abuse, even amounting to physical assault, death threats, so and so forth. And there's a real cost. You get less participation from people of marginalized communities -- and when you get less participation from marginalized communities, you lead to a serious loss in culture and value for society. For instance, Wikipedia just has fewer articles about women -- and also its editors just happen to skew overwhelmingly male. When you have great equality on online platforms, you have better social value for the entire world.

That said, there's a huge problem... and it's entering the same policy stage that was prepped and primed by the DMCA, essentially. We're thinking about harassment as content when harassment is behavior. And we're jumping from "there's a problem, we have to solve it" and the only solution we can think of is the one that we've been doling out for copyright infringement since the aughties, and that's just take it down, take it down, take it down. And that means people on the other end take a look at it and take it down. Some people are proposing ContentID, which is not a good solution. And I hope I don't have to spell out why to this room in particular, but essentially people have looked at the regime of copyright enforcement online and said "why can't we do that for harassment" without looking at all the problems that copyright enforcement has run into.

And I think what's really troubling is that copyright is a specific exception to CDA 230 and in order to expand a regime of copyright enforcement for harassment you're going to have to attack CDA 230 and blow a hole in it.

She then noted that this was a major concern because there's a big push among many people who aren't arguing for better free speech protections:

That's a huge viewpoint out right now: it's not that "free speech is great and we need to protect against repressive governments" but that "we need better content removal mechanisms in order to protect women and minorities."

From there the discussion went in a number of different important directions, looking at other alternatives and ways to deal with bad behavior online that get beyond just "take it down, take it down," and also discussed the importance of platforms being able to make decisions about how to handle these issues without facing legal liability. CDA 230, not surprisingly, was a big topic -- and one that people admitted was unlikely to spread to other countries, and the concepts behind which are actually under attack in many places.

That's why I also think this is a good time to point to a new project from the EFF and others, known as the Manila Principles -- highlighting the importance of protecting intermediaries from liability for the speech of their users. As that project explains:

All communication over the Internet is facilitated by intermediaries such as Internet access providers, social networks, and search engines. The policies governing the legal liability of intermediaries for the content of these communications have an impact on users’ rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to privacy.

With the aim of protecting freedom of expression and creating an enabling environment for innovation, which balances the needs of governments and other stakeholders, civil society groups from around the world have come together to propose this framework of baseline safeguards and best practices. These are based on international human rights instruments and other international legal frameworks.

In short, it's important to recognize that these are difficult issues -- but that freedom of expression is extremely important. And we should recognize that while pretty much all platforms contain some form of moderation (even in how they are designed), we need to be wary of reflexive responses to just "take it down, take it down, take it down" in dealing with real problems. Instead, we should be looking for more reasonable approaches to many of these issues -- not in denying that there are issues to be dealt with. And not just saying "anything goes and shut up if you don't like it," but that there are real tradeoffs to the decisions that tech companies (and governments) make concerning how these platforms are run.

Filed Under: censorship, community, copia, free expression, moderation, section 230
Companies: copia, copia institution

What A Strong Modding Community Can Do: How Doom Has Been Yanked Into The Selfie Age

from the cheeeeese! dept

We've made the argument for some time that a good modding community and culture is a boon for games and game creators. Far from the dangerous infringement on the original works that some seem to think, a prolific modding community can lengthen the shelf life of a game, improve it for customers of the original work, and even allow the original work to spiral off into unforseen directions, all of which only serve to increase the game's playability, replayability, and fun factor, making it all the more attractive for purchase.

(An aside: many people think that modding as an element that can be included in business model considerations is unique to gaming. It isn't. Remixing, after all, is modding in another form, as are fan-edits to movies/television shows, or fan-made creations in existing universes. All of these are modding in a fashion simliar to how it works for gaming, so don't let anyone tell you that gaming is unique this way.)

All that being said, it's fun for gaming enthusiasts like myself to watch a decades old game being yanked into modernity through the modding community. An obvious example of this is the original Doom games, still relevant enough to warrant the modding community developing a way for players to take "selfies" in-game.

After almost 22 years Doom is finally finished thanks mod-maker Linguica's "InstaDoom", which adds 37 InstaGram filters to the game and swaps out the fabled BFG with a selfie stick. Available as a free download over at Doom World, "InstaDoom" gives players of the classic shooter a chance to take the battle to the next level by applying filters like "Ashby", Lo-Fi" and "Valencia".

This, of course, is simply the latest mod coming out for a game that has one of the most insane mod-rosters of any in the history of gaming. The whole modding of the game original took off in no small part because Doom was an incredibly well-made game, but the continued modding of the game by the loyal fan community is what propelled the game far beyond being relevant to gaming, to instead being relevant to culture as a whole. The very idea that a game made over two decades ago, long before smartphones existed and any of us had to put up with the term "selfie," has been dragged into relevance with cultural motifs tossed in for effect by a modding community still going strong shows the power of a passionate fan base.

With the success of Doom still on display, and sequels continuing to ride on the early success of a franchise still enjoying relevance in its oldest parts, why would anyone want to kneecap the modding community?

Filed Under: community, doom, modding, selfies

Guardian, Salon Show How Keeping And Fixing News Comments Isn't Hard If You Give Half A Damn

from the Walter-Cronkite-is-Dead dept

We've been talking a lot lately about how the new school of website design (with ReCode, Bloomberg, and Vox at the vanguard) has involved a misguided war on the traditional comment section. Websites are gleefully eliminating the primary engagement mechanism with their community and then adding insult to injury by pretending it's because they really, really love "conversation." Of course the truth is many sites just don't want to pay moderators, don't think their community offers any valuable insight, or don't like how it "looks" when thirty people simultaneously tell their writers they've got story facts completely and painfully wrong.

Many sites justify the move by claiming comments sections are just so packed with pile that they're beyond redemption, though studies show it doesn't actually take much work to raise the discourse bar and reclaim your comment section from the troll jungle if you just give half a damn (as in, just simple community engagement can change comment tone dramatically). Case in point is Salon, which decided to repair its awful comment section by hiring a full time moderator, rewarding good community involvement, and treating commenters like actual human beings:

"You can measure engagement by raw number of comments or commenters. Using Google Analytics, Livefyre and Adobe, Salon looks at metrics like the number of replies they make as a share of overall comments, how frequently they share Salon articles, and how many pageviews they log per visit. (Users who log in, which is required if you want to comment, view seven pages per session on average, while non-registered users make it to only 1.7, according to Dooling.) After it identified these top commenters, Salon has solicited their feedback and invited them to lead discussions on posts and even help moderate threads.

..."Comments aren’t awful,” (said Salon community advisor Annemarie Dooling). “It’s just the way we position them. The whole idea is not to give up on debate."

That news is now a conversation and a community is something traditional news outlets have struggled to understand, so it's ironic that a major wave of websites proclaiming to be the next great iteration of media can't seem to figure this out either. For example Verge co-founder Josh Topolsky, spearheading the freshly-redesigned Bloomberg, recently argued that disabling comments is ok because editors are still "listening" to reader feedback by watching analytics and the viewer response to wacky font changes. But that's not the same as engagement or facilitating engagement. Similarly, Reuters and ReCode editors have tried to argue that Facebook and Twitter are good enough substitutes for comments -- ignoring that outsourcing engagement to Facebook dulls and homogenizes your brand.

Former managing editor for digital strategy at the New York Times Aron Pilhofer, now at The Guardian, seems to understand this point:

"I feel very strongly that digital journalism needs to be a conversation with readers. This is one, if not the most important area of emphasis that traditional newsrooms are actually ignoring. You see site after site killing comments and moving away from community – that’s a monumental mistake. Any site that moves away from comments is a plus for sites like ours. Readers need and deserve a voice. They should be a core part of your journalism."

Now -- can you quantify and prove that money spent on community engagement will come back to you in clear equal measure as cold, hard cash? Of course not. But all the same, it's not really a choice. We're well beyond the Walter Cronkite era of journalism where a talking head speaks at the audience from a bully pulpit. We're supposed to have realized by now that news really is a malleable, fluid, conversational organism. Under this new paradigm, reporters talk to (and correct) other reporters, blogs and websites talk to (and correct) other blogs and websites, and readers talk to (and correct) the writers and news outlets. You're swimming against the current if your website design culminates in little more than a stylish uni-directional bullhorn.

Filed Under: comments, community
Companies: guardian, salon