Marriott Freezes Its Social Media Globally, And Makes Grovelling Apology To China, All For A Drop-Down Menu And Liking A Tweet

from the rectification-of-names dept

As Techdirt readers are well aware, China is rapidly growing more powerful, both economically and politically. Its economic rise has been clear enough for some time, not least in its technological prowess. Its political might, however, has only recently become more evident, as it begins to assert itself in various ways around the world. China's sense of its own power, and its increasing impatience with anyone that dares to go against it, is nicely illustrated in a recent incident. It concerns a drop-down menu and a like on a tweet, both belonging to the "global lodging company" Marriott International, which issued the following corporate statement a few days ago:

Marriott International respects and supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. Unfortunately, twice this week, we had incidents that suggested the opposite: First, by incorrectly labelling certain regions within China, including Tibet, as countries in a drop-down menu on a survey we sent out to our loyalty members; and second, in the careless "like" by an associate of a tweet that incorrectly suggested our support of this position [that Tibet is a country in its own right]. Nothing could be further from the truth: we don't support anyone who subverts the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China and we do not intend in any way to encourage or incite any such people or groups. We recognize the severity of the situation and sincerely apologize.

In addition to this grovelling apology, Marriott publicly punished itself by shutting down large chunks of its digital activities, as China Daily, the English-language news organ of the Chinese government, reported:

After identifying its errors, the company has taken the survey offline, "unliked" the post, shut down its six websites and apps in Chinese, and put a freeze on its social media across the world. The CEO has volunteered to issue an apology.

It has also terminated the contract with the third-party vendor that built the survey, a Canadian company that Marriott has been working with for a long time, and with the US-based employee who "liked" the tweet.

It's not clear whether Marriott was ordered directly to take these actions, or decided to carry them out voluntarily. Either way, it's striking that Marriott is apologizing so abjectly for actions taken in the US and Canada -- not in China -- and even shut down its social media activity globally, for a while. That's a striking demonstration of China's reach today: no matter where something happens, if the Chinese authorities don't like it, they now expect businesses that want to work in China to come up with a "rectification plan" for these slips, just as Marriott has done, according to China Daily. That's probably a reference to a concept in Confucian philosophy, the "rectification of names", which means making words correspond to reality -- in this case, the policies of the Chinese government. An article in Business Insider notes that other multinationals have received loud and clear the message China wishes to send by its humiliation of Marriott:

A number of international companies, including Zara, Marriott, Qantas, and Delta Air Lines, have apologized to China in the last week for listing Taiwan and Hong Kong as "countries" on their websites.

Zara, Marriott and Delta Air Lines all deleted references to these regions as countries and were publicly reprimanded by Chinese authorities, while Qantas discovered and fixed the same type of "error" during a routine review of its website.

Expect much more of this kind of thing, as a newly-confident, and increasingly arrogant, China starts to swing its weight around. It will doubtless seize on even the most trivial "hurt", real or perceived, as a pretext for humbling Western companies and thus, implicitly, their governments -- just as they did to China once upon a time.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: china, free speech, social media
Companies: marriott

German Hate Speech Law Goes Into Effect, Turning Social Media Platforms Into Gov't Revenue Generators

from the gentlemen:-start-your-paperwork dept

Social media platforms doing business in Germany can look forward to a year filled with fines of up to €50m. Germany's hate speech law went into effect on January 1st, providing the country with a new revenue stream it can tap into for the rest of whatever.

The Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (NetzDG) law was passed at the end of June 2017 and came into force in early October.

The social networks were given until the end of 2017 to prepare themselves for the arrival of NetzDG.

The law gives social media platforms 24 hours to remove "obviously illegal" content. This, of course, raises the question about how obvious "obviously illegal" content needs to be to trigger the 24-hour deletion requirement. Presumably, the government gets to decide how "obvious" the illegality is and how often it gets to collect millions of euros.

In what must be considered a show of government largesse, one week will be allowed to handle "complex" removal orders -- again, something likely determined solely by the German government. Given Germany's ultra-weird relationship with its Nazi past, the difference between complex and simple takedown demands isn't likely to be clear cut, putting companies in the path of fines and further German government grousing.

I understand that American companies are somewhat obliged to follow local laws when providing services overseas, but they should not be put in the position of being held criminally and civilly liable for the posts of their users. They can attempt to moderate content with an eye on local statutes, but the fines for posting "obviously illegal" content should be levied on the person posting it, rather than the service provider.

This ridiculous shifting of liability is even more egregious in Germany. Not only are service providers fined for not removing illegal content, EMPLOYEES of these companies can be directly fined as well.

[T]he law also provides for fines of up to €5m for the person each company designates to deal with the complaints procedure if it doesn’t meet requirements.

We often see government officials claiming the billions of dollars in profits Google, Facebook, et al rack up somehow should result in perfect compliance with every esoteric, content-related complaint worldwide. But no one's claimed individual employees tasked with government compliance are callous billionaires, and yet the German hate speech law makes that equation with its willingness to bankrupt individuals for not responding to government removal demands fast enough.

There are concerns in Germany this law could lead to government censorship and a restriction of free speech. These concerns have already materialized somewhat indirectly. A regime with an interest in censorship and curtailing criticism has already pushed out a carbon-copy of Germany's law. This gives Russia the opportunity to push companies into performing censorship on its behalf, with Germany to point at when critics start questioning Russia's actions.

Filed Under: germany, hate speech, intermediary liability, social media
Companies: facebook, google

Once Again: Expecting Social Media Companies To Police 'Bad' Stuff Is A Bad Idea

from the it-doesn't-work-folks dept

It's not clear how many times we're going to need to repeat this, but when people call for internet platforms to wave magic wands and get rid of the "bad" people, they may not like how things actually turn out. As you may have heard, last month Twitter rewrote its guidelines, and promised that it would be using those updated guidelines to kick off more "bad" people. Twitter, as a private company can set up its service however it likes, but it was striking how many people were giddily awaiting yesterday when the new rules were set to take effect. There was talk of how Twitter was magically about to become fun and nice again. The reality was a little bit more mundane.

A few extremists, like the leaders of the nutty Britain First party in the UK were barred, but lots of others, including "famous" white nationalists were allowed to remain:

Prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, for example, was not suspended. Nor was former grand wizard of the KKK David Duke — although Duke is reporting that some of his posts are hidden behind the “sensitive material” warning. Curiously enough, his “It’s Ok To Be White” message appears in the header image, but is censored in his timeline behind a sensitive material warning.

But, of course, the takedowns also shut down some accounts in a manner that some people felt was wrong. A key example: Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas, who has a long history of documenting human rights abuses.

Abbas is blogger-in-chief for the website Misr Digit@l, which posted about the suspension, saying it involved the deletion of “over 250,000 tweets. Dozens of thousands of pictures, videos and live streams from the middle of every crisis in Egypt with date stamp on them, reporting on people who got tortured, killed or missing. Live coverage of events as they happened in the street.”

This kind of takedown is not unprecedented. Indeed, we've written multiple times about YouTube taking down the accounts of people documenting war crimes and human rights abuses, because these platforms have difficulty determining the difference between promoting war crimes and documenting them.

What's really troubling about all of this, though, is that many are still focusing on why Twitter should be waving a magic wand to fix this problem, while at the same time criticizing the company for leaving up some accounts, while taking down others. It's easy to sit behind your laptop and insist it's "easy" to know which accounts are "good" and which accounts are "bad," but the truth is that it's almost impossible for a company to actually make such a determination without tons of false positives and false negatives. And that's because there is no objective measure of "good" or "bad" that they can go on, and the scale of the problem is completely unfathomable to most users.

Some think that that answer to all this is that the platforms need to "do better" about this, but it still seems like a situation where people are expecting too much of the platforms and not understanding the difficulty in making these kinds of determinations. Yes, Twitter can manage its platform any way it wants, but people should be cautious about demanding Twitter silence people (or, even worse, that it be legally required to do so), because you're not going to like many of the choices that it makes -- either in leaving up people you don't like, or taking down those you do.

Instead, we really need to be thinking about better overall systems to encourage good behavior online, without assuming that the only possible thing that can be done is to have the platforms act as speech police. They're not good at it, and no amount of yelling at them is going to make them good at it.

Filed Under: bad people, extremists, human rights, liability, platforms, social media, terms of service
Companies: twitter

Gov't Committee: UK Should Move To Holding Platforms Liable For Third-Party Content Post-Brexit

from the stop-trying-to-help,-you-idiots dept

Going Brexit is to swear off logic, apparently. TorrentFreak reports that, in addition to everything else the UK's newfound independence will muck up, it's going to start doing an even more horrendous job policing the internet.

The protection offered by the E-Commerce Directive is a hot topic right now, one which necessarily involves the UK. However, with the UK due to leave the EU at 11pm local time on Friday 29 March, 2019, it will then be free to make its own laws. It’s now being suggested that as soon as Brexit happens, the UK should introduce new laws that hold tech companies liable for “illegal content” that appears on their platforms.

The advice can be found in a new report published by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Titled “Intimidation in Public Life”, the report focuses on the online threats and intimidation experienced by Parliamentary candidates and others.

The report summary, thankfully, puts all the bad news up front. Following a list of (terrible) recommendations, the report quotes government officials wringing their hands about the fact terrible people exist.

Lord Bew, Chair of the Committee, said:

This level of vile and threatening behaviour, albeit by a minority of people, against those standing for public office is unacceptable in a healthy democracy. We cannot get to a point where people are put off standing, retreat from debate, and even fear for their lives as a result of their engagement in politics. This is not about protecting elites or stifling debate, it is about ensuring we have a vigorous democracy in which participants engage in a responsible way which recognises others’ rights to participate and to hold different points of view.

Lord Bew's beef should be with "vile and threatening minority of people," rather than platforms. But of course it isn't. Like many government officials, Bew believes the liable party should be the host of the offending content, rather than the actual offenders. The Committee wants to handle questionable content in the most ineffectual and dangerous way possible:

Government should bring forward legislation to shift the liability of illegal content online towards social media companies.

And if that's not dumb enough, there's this recommendation which is sure to have a damaging effect on political speech -- normally the sort of things governments should strive to protect.

Government should consult on the introduction of a new offence in electoral law of intimidating Parliamentary candidates and party campaigners.

Cool. A brand new #PoliticalLivesMatter law that won't be abused by every thin-skinned politician who finds criticism intimidating.

And that's not all. As TorrentFreak notes, the report also suggests adding new intermediary liability for things having nothing to do with "intimidation in public life."

“Currently, social media companies do not have liability for the content on their sites, even where that content is illegal. This is largely due to the EU E-Commerce Directive (2000), which treats the social media companies as ‘hosts’ of online content. It is clear, however, that this legislation is out of date,” the report reads.

If this goes through, platforms could be held liable for IP infringement and defamation, even though those acts were committed by platform users.

Fortunately, these are still just recommendations. There's no telling how this all will work out when the UK's divorce is official. But past actions by the UK government hardly raise hope it won't decide to go after the largest targets, rather than the proper targets, when finally free of EU regulations.

Filed Under: blame, brexit, e-commerce directive, eu, hosts, intermediary liability, social media, uk

Russia Threatens To Ban YouTube And Twitter, But Probably Won't Try

from the VPN-crackdown?-what-VPN-crackdown? dept

Last year, the Russian authorities ordered LinkedIn to be blocked in the country, supposedly for failing to store personal data locally. Since other US companies like Google and Facebook had also ignored this data localization requirement, it was curious that only LinkedIn was affected. Now the German news site Deutsche Welle is reporting that Twitter and YouTube risk being locked out of Russia, but for quite different reasons. These involve Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the wealthiest person in Russia, and a long-time vocal opponent of President Putin. Khodorkovsky spent a number of years in prison, allegedly for fraud and embezzlement. He now lives outside Russia, and has set up the NGO Open Russia, which promotes democracy and human rights in Russia.

Open Russia was put on the official list of "undesirable organizations" in April of this year. The Russian government has shut down Open Russia's web site, and now it is demanding that the NGO's presence on social media be deleted as well. Roskomnadzor, the country's media regulatory agency, gave YouTube and Twitter a deadline to delete Open Russia's accounts on their services, or be blocked entirely. The deadline has now passed, but the accounts are still accessible within Russia. The question is: what happens now?

If Twitter and Google continue to refuse to delete the accounts, the Russian authorities could try to block them individually. That wouldn't be easy, so the government might simply order the whole of Twitter and YouTube to be blocked. After all, that is what it did with LinkedIn. However, the local experts interviewed by Deutsche Welle point out that LinkedIn was never very popular in Russia, so its loss passed largely unnoticed. Shutting down Twitter and YouTube would be a different matter, and would probably cause widespread online protests -- something the authorities would be keen to avoid.

In any case, users could use proxies, VPNs, and Tor to circumvent such blocks. It's true that Russia has brought in a law that gives the authorities the power to order those kinds of services to block access to particular sites, or be shut down. But the Deutsche Welle post contains the following information about what is actually happening on the ground:

The Russian government has already limited the use of such [circumvention] tools. But [Russian reporter and blogger Alexandr] Plushev pointed out that is just a formality. "They have declared about seven VPNs illegal but there are tens of thousand of them to be found online," he said. "Both the Tor and Opera browsers allow you to get around such blocks."

That's an indication that the latest threats to block Twitter and YouTube may not amount to much in practice, and are designed more as a warning of what the Russian authorities could do at some point, rather than what they will do immediately. The fact that Russia will be holding a presidential election next March, in which Vladimir Putin is standing, and presumably expects to win, may be a factor here.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: bans, mikhail kordorkovsky, roskomnadzor, rozkomnadzor, russia, social media
Companies: twitter, youtube

Court Tosses Cop's Attempt To Sue Twitter And Facebook For Someone Killing Cops In Texas

from the lots-of-wrongs-don't-make-a-right...-or-make-anyone-whole dept

Presumably prestigious law firm 1-800-LAW-FIRM is winning some cases somewhere. But it's not having any luck with its dubious legal theories related to social media companies and "material support for terrorism." The firm hasn't racked up any wins in these cases (as far as I'm aware). The page touting its "anti-terrorism" lawsuits has a lot to say about the filings, but provides no details on the firm's lack of success. And yet, the lawsuits keep flowing.

Not content to represent family members of people killed in terrorist attacks, 1-800-LAW-FIRM is also representing law enforcement officers not killed or injured by terrorists, but rather ones who happened to be on the scene of shootings targeting cops. Again, the real villain, according to this law firm (and its plaintiffs), is social media.

In January, Dallas Police Sergeant Demetrick Pennie sued [PDF] Twitter, Google, and Facebook, claiming they were directly responsible for "radicalizing" Micah Johnson, who shot and killed five police officers in Dallas, Texas. According to Pennie, the social media companies actively allowed and encouraged terrorist use of their platforms to spread their message and attract participants.

Pennie's exploration of the outer limits of culpability has come to an end, netting 1-800-LAW-FIRM (and Excolo Law) a loss in its "sue social media for violent acts committed by individuals" sweepstakes.

In dismissing Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero found the plaintiffs failed to show a clear link between Hamas’ use of the companies’ social media networks and the Dallas shooting. Many similar cases have been filed, usually unsuccessfully.

“Absent plausible allegations that Hamas itself was in some way a substantial factor in the attack, there is no basis to conclude that any support provided by defendants to Hamas was a substantial factor,” Spero wrote.

The lawsuit was so lacking in connective arguments, Judge Spero never even had a chance to address the Section 230 immunity that likely would have seen it tossed anyway. The plaintiff posed a novel theory: that payments of ad revenue to alleged terrorists strips immunity, but the court says the plaintiff needs a lot more factual assertions on his side for the judge to even reach that question. From the decision [PDF]:

Because Plaintiffs‘ failure to allege a causal connection between Hamas and the Dallas shooting is reason enough to dismiss all claims, the Court declines to resolve the question of if or how the CDA applies where an interactive service provider shares advertising revenue with a content developer that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Unfortunately, a string of losses all predicated on the same lousy legal theory aren't going to head off further wastes of legal resources in the future. Suing terrorists may be almost impossible, but suing social media companies isn't the solution. The person responsible for violent acts is ultimately the person who committed them. I understand the urge to seek some form of closure or redress when loved ones and colleagues are killed by terrorist acts, but trying to find a way to make Twitter, et al pay for violent acts they aren't plausibly connected to will do little more than make the internet worse for everyone.

Filed Under: demetrick pennie, intermediary liability, lawsuit, micah johnson, police, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter

SLCC Rankles Judge With Social Media Posts As A Jury Prepares To Rule

from the oversharing dept

We've been following the trademark dispute between the Salt Lake Comic Con and the San Diego Comic-Con for some time now, including all of its strange ups and downs. Despite this whole dispute starting something like three years ago, the trial itself has kept a brisk pace, with SLCC already resting its defense and jury deliberations beginning this week as well. While we'll have to wait for the jury's decision, the trial has gone pretty much as we expected. SDCC rolled out its trademark registration that it appears to have forgotten it ever had until recently from an enforcement perspective, along with some commissioned surveys suggesting that the public views the word "comic-con" as a brand and not a generic term. SLCC has pointed out that there are a ton of other comic cons out there, few of which have any licensing agreement with SDCC, and SLCC had expert witnesses poke some glaring holes in the SDCC's survey.

Andrew Baker, associate professor of marketing at San Diego State University, reviewed the survey for Salt Lake Comic Con and testified Wednesday that the results are flawed. Because of risks he saw of "good participant bias," and because the online survey didn't include a way to weed out unreliable responses from people who may have attempted to fill out the survey for money, Baker criticized the results as inconclusive.

"This study cannot be relied upon to tell us the percentage of people who think comic con is a brand," Baker testified.

Bryan Brandenburg, one of the partners behind SLCC, took the stand to recount the process by which they came up with the name Salt Lake Comic Con. As you'd expect, he recounted searching around for other similar conventions, noting that nearly all of them were using the "comic con" phrase, or some variant of it, and concluding that this is just what those types of shows are called. It's an understandable position, particularly given the descriptive nature of the phrase. A "comic con" is a "comic convention." Simple. One would hope the jury would understand that simple fact.

But there was some minor drama in the courtroom surrounding SLCC's desire to speak out about the case on its social media platforms, specifically to do with Brandenburg's testimony and the defense he would offer.

The post announced that Brandenburg would take the witness stand to show that "comic con is owned by the people, by all the fans that experience the joy and celebration of comic con in cities all over the world."

Battaglia prohibited such arguments in the trial based on objections raised beforehand by San Diego. He warned that if Brandenburg intended to make any such statements during his testimony, "tell him to bring his toothbrush with him."

Notably, Brandenburg did not raise that defense on the stand, so His Honor was not forced to put him in jail. But this wasn't the only remark Judge Battaglia made on the subject. He expanded upon it in a way that shows him bristling with the striking down of his earlier gag order on SLCC from speaking at all about the case.

"The circuit seems to believe people can say whatever they want in the world and in the media, but they don't get that privilege in my courtroom," Battaglia noted Wednesday.

Well, okay then. While I've cheered on SLCC discussing the case in public for the benefit of that public, and while we were quite critical of Battaglia's gag order, the freedom to speak is not without its dangers. It's a little surprising that SLCC would be so cavalier with its public comments on social media sites that run directly contrary to the orders of a judge who had already tried to slap it with a gag order. That's just silly and a sign that, whatever happens moving forward, SLCC should probably get its PR house in order.

Regardless, the jury is in deliberations and you can be sure we'll be commenting on the results they bring back.

Filed Under: comic con, free speech, generic, social media, trademark
Companies: salt lake comic con, san diego comic-con