Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'

from the seriously,-guys? dept

The Republican grievance culture wars about the internet are never ending. The Grand Old Party -- which once presented itself as believing in private property rights, keeping government out of business, and mocking "snowflakes" for playing victim all the time -- has shown its true colors as being for everything it previously insisted it was against. As we noted earlier this year, a bunch of states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors have been proposing blatantly unconstitutional bills to try to prevent social media companies from moderating disinformation and propaganda. Utah was the first state to pass such a bill, but Governor Spencer Cox wisely vetoed it, noting the Constitutional concerns.

Next out of the gate was Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis chose poorly, signing the bill that was thrown out last week for being blatantly unconstitutional under basically any standard of review. As we've noted, this is all performative nonsense, playing to a base that wants to insist it's the aggrieved victims, because sometimes when they violate a website's policies, they face consequences.

Incredibly, though not surprisingly, Texas legislators have looked at Florida's giant constitutional mess of wasted taxpayer funds and said, "yeah, let's do that!" Earlier this year, Texas proposed another awful social media content moderation bill, but the legislative session ended without it being voted on. Rather than move on to dealing with actual problems, Texas launched a special legislative session with a long list of culture war grievances -- including the social media bill.

And so the bill has be re-introduced and it's arguably even more blatantly unconstitutional than the Florida bill. Most of the first part of the bill is just creating a ton of silly and wasteful compliance paperwork -- requiring social media websites to do a lot more to actually moderate content on their site, including having someone people can call, having an official appeals process, and explaining to people in exact terms why they were moderated (this gambit is a favorite of trolls and assholes, who want this information solely to disingenuously insist that they didn't break the rules, or to insist that others who broke similar rules were treated differently, usually by removing any and all context from those decisions).

But then the bill veers into even more ridiculous territory. First, it defines "censorship" to mean things that are clearly not censorship. Even if you disagree with the basic premise that moderation is not censorship, the Texas bill defines "censorship" so broadly to make the term meaningless:

"Censor" means to block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.

De-monetizing is censorship? De-boosting is censorship? In what world? I mean, Fox News refuses to put me on the air to express my views about their propaganda. Is that censorship? The bill does exempt news organizations, but still. Under this bill, it seems that search ranking is censorship. After all, whoever is ranked below the top spot has been "de-boosted" and not provided "equal access or visibility." I can't wait until I can sue Google for not putting Techdirt at the top of every search!

The bill then tries to prohibit its definition of "censorship" for viewpoints.

CENSORSHIP PROHIBITED. (a) A social media platform may not censor a user, a user ’s expression, or a user ’s ability to receive the expression of another person based on:

(1) the viewpoint of the user or another person;
(2) the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression or another person’s expression; or
(3) a user’s geographic location in this state or any part of this state.

So, you cannot ban Nazis any more. Or bigots spewing hatred. Sounds great, Texas. I mean... actually, sounds totally blatantly unconstitutional, and a clear waste of Texas taxpayers money, as you will have to go to Court and defend this law that will easily be tossed out as unconstitutional. But, who cares about that when there's a culture war to fight, and an opportunity to whine about how you're the victim again?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, content moderation, florida, section 230, texas, transparency

Chinese Government Now Using National Security Law To Censor Art Being Displayed In Hong Kong

from the less-freedom-for-all;-tiny-Chinese-flags-for-others dept

Hong Kong's new "national security" law -- thrust on it by the Chinese government that's supposed to stay out of Hong Kong's governmental business until 2047 -- continues to increase the amount of censorship in the supposedly still-independent region.

Once the Chinese government began interfering, Hong Kong residents revolted. This only encouraged the Chinese government to apply a heavier hand. The new law allows prosecutors to seek life sentences for anti-government protesting. It also hands police the power to censor the internet and compel assistance to decrypt communications.

To further ensure its desires go unchallenged, the Chinese government adopted a resolution that forced four pro-democracy legislators out of office in Hong Kong. This led to another dozen sympathetic lawmakers resigning from their positions in protest. Unfortunately, this means there are even fewer Hong Kong politicians willing to stand up to the Chinese government's impositions.

The national security law has already enabled the punishment of dissent, censored the internet, silenced pro-democracy press, and ousted pro-democracy legislators. Now it's coming for culture, seeking to limit Hong Kong residents to government-approved creative works.

The updated rules announced Friday require Hong Kong censors considering a film for distribution to look out not only for violent, sexual and vulgar content, but also for how the film portrays acts “which may amount to an offense endangering national security.”

Anything that is “objectively and reasonably capable of being perceived as endorsing, supporting, promoting, glorifying, encouraging or inciting” such acts is potential grounds for deeming a film unfit for exhibition, the rules now say.

This gives China-approved censors the freedom to forbid anything they perceive as being anti-China. And it's not just limited to content. The rules also allow films to be censored if the perceived "effect" of viewers of the work might cross the multiple lines the Chinese government says now threaten the security of the nation.

The new rules have already had their intended impact on theaters and filmmakers, including those participating in an annual Hong Kong film festival.

A local cinema was pressured into scrapping the screening of a documentary on the fierce clashes between police and radical protesters occupying the Hong Kong Polytechnic University at the height of the social unrest, while the M+ Museum in the city’s cultural hub came under similar pressure not to show exhibits deemed to be anti-China art.

In a separate development on Friday, organisers of the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival, which nurtures local young film talent, cancelled its screenings for Far From Home, saying the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration had failed to issue either a certificate of approval or notice of refusal to approve in time.

And so it continues. China isn't going to wait until 2047 to take control of Hong Kong. It wants subservience now. The pro-democracy protests that have rocked Hong Kong for the past few years will continue. But it looks as though China's national security mandates will ultimately turn Hong Kong into a directly controlled subsidiary of the Chinese government a couple of decades ahead of schedule.

Filed Under: censorship, china, culture, free speech, hong kong, national security

Nigeria Suspends All Of Twitter After It Removes President's Tweet

from the you-want-to-talk-censorship? dept

If you want to see what censorship is, let's take a look at Nigeria banning Twitter indefinitely in response to Twitter removing a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that it believed violated the site's policies. The tweet was read to be a threat to brutally kill those engaging in attacks on public infrastructure, in particular police stations in Southeast Nigeria. Buhari's tweet harkened back to the way dissenters were dealt with during the Nigerian Civil War:

"Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand," Buhari wrote in the now-deleted tweet, referring to the brutal two-year Nigeria-Biafra war, which killed an estimated one to three million people, mostly from the Igbo tribe in the eastern part of the country between 1967-1970.

While the announcement that Twitter would be blocked does not reference its decision to remove that tweet, it instead says the ban is because of ""the persistent use of the platform for activities... capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence." I honestly don't understand what the hell that means. Basically, it seems like a twisting of the usual nonsense we see from some corners of the internet, who insist that any moderation of anyone is somehow an affront to their rights, and doubly so when it's a government official.

But, sorry, no one has a right to demand a private company host their speech.

Apparently, part of the process of blocking Twitter in the country involved requiring every social company to get a license from the country's broadcast regulator:

The government gave no details on how the ban would work in practice, or any explanation of how Twitter had undermined Nigeria's corporate existence.

Its statement, which was released on Twitter, also revealed that the national broadcasting regulator, NBC, has been told to start "the process of licensing all OTT [internet streaming services] and social media operations in Nigeria".

That certainly sounds like a prelude to an even harsher crackdown on social media in the country, which has been one of a few growing tech hubs in Africa.

Separately, though, various telcos have been told to block Twitter, but apparently people are still getting around the block, leading the Nigerian government, in a moment of true patheticness, to insist that it will prosecute anyone who gets around the ban. That doesn't seem at all desperate.

It's also interesting, given that in 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey talked about the importance of Africa, and even announced plans to live there for an extended period of time in 2020 (a plan that was put on hold because of the pandemic). Of course, a couple months ago, Twitter announced that it's African offices would be based in Ghana, and not Nigeria. So you have to wonder if that also played a role in Nigeria's sudden hostility to the company. Though, of course, the reasons Twitter mentioned for why it chose Ghana maybe should have caused the Nigerian government to pause before rushing in to silence the entire website:

As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Furthermore, Ghana’s recent appointment to host The Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area aligns with our overarching goal to establish a presence in the region that will support our efforts to improve and tailor our service across Africa.

Still, this is what actual censorship is. A government stepping in and blocking speech in retaliation for other speech. Not that the US is any better, of course. It was less than a year ago that President Trump tried to do the same thing with TikTok and WeChat.

Filed Under: blocking service, censorship, free speech, muhammadu buhari, nigeria
Companies: twitter

Upload Filters Will Always Be A Bad Idea, But Germany's New Implementation Of Article 17 Is An Attempt To Provide Some Protection For Users, Which Others May Follow

from the but-what-will-the-CJEU-say? dept

The EU's Copyright Directive was passed back in 2019, and the two-year period for implementing the law in national legislation is almost up. The text's contradictory requirements to stop infringing material from being posted online without imposing a general requirement to monitor users, which is not permitted under EU law, has proved difficult for governments to deal with. France aims to solve this by ignoring even the limited user protections laid down by the Directive. Germany has been having a rather fraught debate about how exactly Article 17, which implicitly requires upload filters, should be implemented. One good idea to allow users to "pre-flag" as legal the material they upload was jettisoned. That led to fears that the country's implementation of Article 17 would be as bad as France's. But the final version of the law does attempt to ensure that automated filters -- now admitted as indispensable, despite earlier assurances they were optional -- do not block user uploads that are not infringing on copyright. Communia explains:

the German implementation relies on the concept of "uses presumably authorised by law", which must not be blocked automatically. For an upload to qualify as "presumably authorised by law", it needs to fulfil the following cumulative criteria:

The use must consist of less than 50% of the original protected work,
The use must combine the parts of the work with other content, and
The use must be minor (a non-commercial use of less than 15 seconds of audio or video, 160 characters of text or 125 kB of graphics) or, if it generates significant revenues or exceeds these thresholds, the user must flag it as being covered by an exception.

Although it's good that this "presumably authorised by law" use is enshrined in law, the actual limits are absurd. For example, the name alone of the EU Copyright Directive in German is longer than 160 characters. Copyright holders can still challenge the legality of material, but platforms have to keep the uploads online until the complaints have been reviewed by a human. As former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda writes on the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (Society for Civil Liberties) site, there's another feature of the new German law that might help keep upload filters in check, at least a little (original in German, translation via DeepL):

In order to enforce freedom of expression and artistic freedom against upload filters gone wild, the draft law provides for a right of association action for non-commercial associations dedicated to protecting the interests of users. These associations can take legal action against platforms that repeatedly block legal content. In addition, users will be able to claim damages against false copyright claims. The Society for Civil Liberties will use these possibilities if it becomes necessary.

Those are important new options for getting material back online, and discouraging over-blocking. Reda notes that there is also good news for popular online activities such as caricature, parody and pastiche, which will be permitted without restrictions:

This copyright exception includes memes, remixes, mashups, fan fiction and fan art. The German government's draft proposal was to restrict this right to remix in the German copyright reform, although it was adopted as mandatory at the EU level as part of Article 17. The German government's proposal that these uses should only be allowed "provided that the extent of the use is justified by the specific purpose" generated an outcry in the fan fiction community. This has apparently had an effect, because the [German parliament's] legal committee has removed this restriction. Fans in Germany can now look forward to a solid legal basis for fan art and remix culture.

The new German copyright law also brings in copyright exceptions for online teaching, and text and data mining. Cultural institutions such as libraries or archives will be permitted to make their collections available online if these works are no longer commercially available. Those are all welcome, but it is the implementation of Article 17 that is likely to have the most impact. As the Communia blog post notes:

the German implementation law sets a new standard for the implementation of the [Digital Single Market] directive. This is especially true for the implementation of Article 17. With the Commission having missed the chance to issue guidance for the member states in a timely manner [discussed previously on Techdirt], other member states who seek to implement Article 17 in a fundamental rights-compliant way should look at the German law for guidance.

Since the new Germany copyright law could become the model for other EU nations as they implement Article 17 -- except for France, of course -- it's good news that it has a number of positive elements. Those are likely to prove crucial if -- or rather when -- the EU Copyright Directive faces another legal challenge at the CJEU, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Poland has already lodged one). The complaint is likely to be that Article 17 cannot be implemented without violating the fundamental rights of users. In that case, the CJEU will have to decide whether Germany's innovative approach goes far enough in preserving them.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: article 17, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, fair dealing, fair use, germany, presumably authorized by law, snippets, upload filters

Mozilla, Google Ask Mauritius Gov't To Abandon Its Plan To Intercept, Decrypt All Social Media Traffic Originating In The Country

from the little-on-the-heavy-handed-side,-Mauritius dept

The government of small African island nation Mauritius seems to want to entirely upset the internet applecart for a number of poorly explained reasons. Its Information & Communications Technologies Authority (ICTA) has bundled together some bad ideas and is presenting these as a cure-all for everything social media related -- including "fake news" and the distribution of content considered illegal by the Mauritius government.

As the ICTA's proposal notes, it's difficult for the country's government to persuade social media platforms to take down unlawful content since not a single one of them has an office located in the small island nation. To fix this, the government wants to amend existing law to give the government the ability to take down content without having to ask for help from outsiders.

The solution proposed by the government is truly astounding:

Incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in Mauritius will first need to be segregated, that is, only social media traffic will need to be routed to the technical toolset (proxy server). All social media traffic will be decrypted so that when a complaint regarding social media is received, the following actions can be effected:

a. Blocking of the incriminated social media web page without blocking the whole social media site;

b. Blocking of a fake profile page and determine who created the fake profile (without the need to contact social media administrator);

c. Regarding offensive comments posted, let’s say on a newspaper social media webpage, blocking of its page is not envisaged. In this case, with the technical toolset, it will be possible to determine the originating IP address of the person who posted the offensive comment; and

d. Once decryption is done, copy and send decrypted traffic to the data analysis software with an advanced reporting feature to be able to drill into the decrypted traffic to search specific keywords, comments posted, etc and correlate with originating IP addresses.

That's right. The government wants to be able to decrypt all web traffic so it can perform takedowns on its own, without the assistance of the platforms carrying it. As if that wasn't bizarre enough, the government also believes it can then re-encrypt the intercepted content and allow it to continue to its social media destination if it passes inspection.

Another important feature of the technical toolset is the need to re-encrypt the decrypted social media data with the self-signed digital certificate of the proxy server before reaching out to or originating from the social media servers. This is a one-off operation to be done by each user from Mauritius trying to access social media websites for the first time via the proxy server. The envisaged operational scenario is that the social media end user from Mauritius should be prompted for the automatic installation of this self-signed certificate on his workstation/device when he will try to access the social media website for the first time via the proxy server. He will also be informed in the prompt that it is only after having successfully installed the self-signed certificate of the proxy server on his workstation/smart phone, that he will be able to access his chosen social media platform.

Pretty much straight-up insanity. The only way to achieve this would be to subject everyone (and every site) to bulk removal of protections most people (and sites) use to protect themselves and their users.

That's why Mozilla and Google have taken advantage of the commenting period to tell the government of Mauritius just how terrible and harmful this proposal is.

In their current form, these measures will place the privacy and security of internet users in Mauritius at grave risk. The blunt and disproportionate action will allow the government to decrypt, read and store anything a user types or posts on the internet, including intercepting their account information, passwords and private messages. While doing little to address the legitimate concerns of content moderation in local languages, it will undermine the trust of the fundamental security infrastructure that currently serves as the basis for the security of at least 80% of websites on the web that use HTTPS, including those that carry out e-commerce and other critical financial transactions.

Mozilla and Google suggest literally anything else as an alternative to this approach. First and foremost, request cooperation from other governments and their law enforcement agencies if there's truly illegal content that needs to be removed and social media companies aren't getting it done. Or better yet, work directly with the companies the government feels aren't responsive enough and see if they can address these concerns. Stripping everyone in Mauritius of the protection of encryption (and promising the government will just slap some encryption on communications and content once its done looking at them) isn't the answer.

Filed Under: censorship, encryption, interception, mauritius, social media, takedowns

The Washington Post Thought It Might Be Nice To Provide Free Book Marketing To Insurrectionist Josh Hawley

from the zero-accountability dept

Let's be clear about something. The U.S. doesn't really do "accountability" particularly well. It's a major reason why we often repeat the same mistakes over and over again without learning much from history or experience. That's been made particularly clear by a U.S. press that continues to not only platform the insurrectionists who spread election fraud lies leading to the violent events of January 6, but treats these lies as valid and meaningful opinions. That, understandably, has led to concerns that it's going to happen again. But worse.

Case in point is the Washington Post, which this week decided, for whatever reason, to give Senator Josh Hawley oodles of free publicity for his latest book. Washington Post Live hosted Hawley as part of a chat, providing him ample free marketing for his book complaining about the "tyranny of big tech" (tyrannically sold by Amazon, and heavily marketed by Hawley on Twitter). Not only that, the Post couldn't be bothered to craft an accurate bio for Hawley, instead using the one provided by his publicist that paints Hawley in an aggressively inauthentic light:

Not too surprisingly, the Post marketing doesn't really bother to inform readers that Hawley's anti-monopolist credentials are largely nonexistent. Like most of the GOP, it's literally impossible to find an instance where Hawley, for example, so much as criticized a telecom monopoly. And, like most of the press, it's rare you'll find outlets like the Washington Post pointing out that a primary platform of the GOP for forty fucking years has been to encourage monopolization, whether we're talking about telecom, airlines, banking, or countless other marginally competitive and largely broken U.S. business sectors.

The GOP isn't engaged in histrionics over "big tech" because it genuinely cares about monopolization or unchecked corporate power. Decades of policy history make it abundantly clear that's not remotely true.

The GOP is angry at big tech because a handful of social media companies belatedly started policing disinformation and race-baiting, cornerstones of party power and recruitment in the face of an aging, sagging, and shifting electorate. There are plenty of very valid criticisms of "big tech," but the U.S. press seems incapable of acknowledging that many of the GOP's concerns on this front aren't entirely in good faith.

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has long lamented the U.S. media's obsession with the "view from nowhere," and how this undermines accountability while letting bad actors off the hook. Rosen wasn't particularly impressed with the Post offering free book marketing to a guy who just got done spending months filling the American public's heads with dangerous fluff and nonsense, and shows absolutely nothing that could be mistaken as contrition in the wake of January 6:

Even if you just want to ignore that Hawley's anti-corporate power and anti-monopolist credentials are nonexistent, it shouldn't be that hard to see how treating Hawley's (read: Trump's) lies as valid can easily help undermine accountability for recent attacks on democracy. And while the Post did challenge Hawley somewhat on his role in the insurrection, the very act of free marketing and platforming Hawley then gives him ample opportunity to muddy the waters and distort his actual role in triggering the events of January 6, which he happily proceeded to do:

Rosen wasn't the only media scholar to take issue with the Post's decision to give Hawley's book free marketing in the wake of his attacks on democracy:

Comedians routinely critical of the U.S. press also took issue with the Post's decision to provide free book marketing to Hawley:

Of course the folks most in need of hearing and understanding this message, didn't hear it at all. In reality, Hawley has been facing nonexistent to very light accountability for lying repeatedly about the 2020 election results, which put the very fabric of democracy at risk. But for the "cancel culture" set the very act of questioning the Post's failures of accountability and journalistic standards is itself somehow viewed as "censorship":

Again, light accountability for lying about the results of an election is not "censorship." And criticizing someone for spreading lies that put elected officials' lives at risk shouldn't be seen as "conservative." One major reason America keeps stumbling through the same issues over and over without learning anything from the experience is because for the ad-based, impression-obsessed U.S. press. It's more profitable to heavily market Hawley and enjoy the resulting controversy than it is to do the right thing and not platform his dangerous lies at all. The age-old internet concept "don't feed the trolls" isn't adhered to because adhering to it harms profits.

That doesn't mean the Post shouldn't cover him when he does something of note (like being the only Senator to vote against a hate crime bill protecting Asian Americans), but they don't need to be helping him sell a book five months after his lies contributed to numerous human deaths, normalizing his behavior and setting an ugly precedent for something even worse just over the horizon.

Filed Under: big tech, censorship, insurrection, josh hawley, journalism, news coverage, platforming, promotion
Companies: washington post

It Took Four Months And Thousands Of Dollars To Overturn One Manifestly Stupid Upload Block: Imagine How Bad It Will Soon Be With EU Copyright Directive's Blanket Use Of Filters

from the this-is-gonna-be-bad dept

The upload filters required by the EU's Copyright Directive are not yet in operation -- even though France seems keen to bring them in as soon as possible. So we have been spared for the moment the inevitable harm to freedom of speech and loss of online users' rights that this ill-conceived and dishonest legislation will cause. But a minor case in the Czech Republic provides a foretaste of what is to come. It concerns the Czech file-sharing and hosting site Ulož.to. TorrentFreak has the details:

Late last year, the Municipal Court in Prague ruled that Ulož must filter and block files that reference the word "Šarlatán" ('Charlatan') which is also the name of a Czech movie.

Blocking files that merely reference a particular word is a ridiculously crude approach: all kinds of material will be caught and blocked. Fortunately, the stupidity of this move, requested by the movie distributor Cinemart, was understood by the High Court in Prague when Ulož appealed against the order. However, it took four months to overturn the preliminary filtering order, during which time Ulož was obliged to comply with the lower court's instructions. Not unreasonably, it is now seeking compensation for the unnecessary work this entailed, as well for its legal costs:

Ulož is seeking 585,000 Czech Koruna (~$27,320) to compensate for the filtering and monitoring costs, and another 200,000 (~$9,340) to cover the legal costs and fees.

In itself, it's hardly a ground-breaking result. But even for this minor case, it required considerable amounts of time and money before a manifestly unjust ruling was thrown out. Imagine how things will be once the EU's new upload filters start to operate. They will give rise to many cases -- hundreds? thousands? more? -- where material is wrongly blocked, but where sites are unwilling to allow it to be posted on appeal. Most members of the public will give up at this point, deterred by the prospects of unknown costs for what are likely to be far more complex legal questions than the simple one considered in Prague. All-in-all, the isolated case of Ulož does not bode well for what will soon be the painful everyday reality of copyright across the whole of the EU.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: article 17, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, prague, upload filters