Deception & Trust: A Deep Look At Deep Fakes

from the don't-get-carried-away dept

With recent focus on disinformation and “fake news,” new technologies used to deceive people online have sparked concerns among the public. While in the past, only an expert forger could create realistic fake media, deceptive techniques using the latest research in machine-learning allow anyone with a smartphone to generate high-quality fake videos, or “deep fakes.”

Like other forms of disinformation, deep fakes can be designed to incite panic, sow distrust in political institutions, or produce myriad other harmful outcomes. Because of these potential harms, lawmakers and others have begun expressing concerns about deep-fake technology.

Underlying these concerns is the superficially reasonable assumption that deep fakes represent an unprecedented development in the ecosystem of disinformation, largely because deep-fake technology can create such realistic-looking content. Yet this argument assumes that the quality of the content carries the most weight in the trust evaluation. In other words, people making this argument believe that the highly realistic content of a deep fake will induce the viewer to trust it — and share it with other people in a social network — thus hastening the spread of disinformation.

But there are several reasons to be suspicious of that assumption. In reality, deep-fake technology operates similarly to other media that people use to spread disinformation. Whether content will be believed and shared may not be derived primarily from the content’s quality, but from psychological factors that any type of deceptive media can exploit. Thus, contrary to the hype, deep fakes may not be the techno-boogeyman some claim them to be.

Deceiving with a deep fake.

When presented with any piece of information — be it a photograph, a news story, a video, etc. — people do not simply take that information at face value. Instead, individuals in today’s internet ecosystem rely heavily on their network of social contacts when deciding whether to trust content online. In one study, for example, researchers found that participants were more likely to trust an article when it had been shared by people whom the individual already trusted.

This conclusion comports with an evolutionary understanding of human trust. In fact, humans likely evolved to believe information that comes from within their social networks, regardless of its content or quality.

At a basic level, one would expect such trust would be unfounded; individuals usually try to maximize their fitness (the likelihood they will survive and reproduce) at the expense of others. If an individual sees an incoming danger and fails to alert anyone else, that individual may have a better chance of surviving that specific interaction.

However, life is more complex than that. Studies suggest that in repeated interactions with the same individual, a person is more likely to place trust in the other individual because, without any trust, neither party would gain in the long term. When members of a group can rely on other members, individuals within the group gain a net benefit on average.

Of course, a single lie or selfish action could help an individual survive an individual encounter. But if all members of the group acted that way, the overall fitness of the group would decrease. And because groups with more cooperation and trust among their members are more successful, these traits were more likely to survive on an aggregate level.

Humans today, therefore, tend to trust those close to them in a social network because such behavior helped the species survive in the past. For a deep fake, then, the apparent authenticity of the video may be less of a factor in deciding whether to trust that information than whether the individual trusts who shares it.

Further, even the most realistic, truthful-sounding information can fail to produce trust when the individual holds beliefs that contradict the presented information. The theory of cognitive dissonance contends that when an individual’s beliefs contradict his or her perception, mental tension — or cognitive dissonance — is created. The individual will attempt to resolve this dissonance in several ways, one of which is to accept evidence that supports his or her existing beliefs and dismissing evidence that does not. This leads to what is known as confirmation bias.

One fascinating example of confirmation bias in action came in the wake of President Donald Trump’s press secretary claiming that more people watched Trump’s inauguration than any other inauguration in history. Despite the video evidence and a side-by-side photo comparison of the National Mall indicating the contrary, many Trump supporters claimed that a photo depicting turnout on Jan. 20, 2017, showed a fuller crowd than it actually did because they knew it was a photo of Trump’s inauguration (Sean Spicer later clarified that he was including the television audience as well as the in-person audience, but the accuracy of that characterization is also debatable.) In other words, the Trump supporters either convinced themselves that the crowd size was larger despite observable evidence to the contrary, or they knowingly lied to support — or confirm — their bias.

The simple fact is that it does not require much convincing to deceive the human mind. For instance, multiple studies have shown that rudimentary disinformation can generate inaccurate memories in the targeted individual. In one study, researchers were able to implant fake childhood memories in subjects by simply providing a textual description of an event that never occurred.

According to these theories, then, when it comes to whether a person believes a deep fake is real, the quality matters less than whether an individual has pre-existing biases or trusts the person who shared it. In other words, existing beliefs, not the perceived “realness” of a medium, drives whether new information is believed. And, given the diminished role that the quality of a medium plays in the believability calculus, more rudimentary methods — like using Photoshop to alter photographs — can achieve the same results as a deep fake in terms of spreading disinformation. Thus, while deep fakes present a challenge generally, deep fakes as a class of disinformation do not present an altogether new problem as far as believability is concerned.

Sharing Deep Fakes Online.

With the rise of social media and the fundamental change in how we share information, some worry that the unique characteristics of deep fakes could make them more likely to be shared online regardless of whether they deceive the target audience.

People share information — whether it be in written, picture or video form — online for many different reasons. Some may share it because it is amusing or pleasing. Others may do so because it offers partisan political advantage. Sometimes the sharer knows the information is false. Other times, the sharer does not know whether the information is accurate but simply does not care enough to correct the record.

People also tend to display a form of herd behavior in which seeing others share content drives the individual to share the content themselves. This allows disinformation to spread across larger platforms like Facebook or Twitter as the content builds up a base of sharing. The number of people who receive disinformation, then, can grow exponentially at a very rapid pace. As the popularity of a given piece of content increases, so too does its credibility as it reaches the edges of a network, exploiting the trust that individuals have in their social networks. And even if the target audience does not believe a given deep fake, widespread propagation of the content can still cause damage; simply viewing false content can reinforce beliefs that the user already has, even if the individual knows that the content is an exaggeration or a parody.

Deep fakes, in particular, present the audience with rich sound and video that engage the viewer. A realistic deep fake that can target the user’s existing beliefs and exploit his or her social ties, therefore, may spread rapidly online. But so, too, do news articles and simple image-based memes. Even without the richness of a deep fake, still images and written text can target the psychological factors that drive content-sharing online. In fact, image-based memes already spread at alarming rates due to their simplicity and the ease with which they convey information. And while herd-behavior tendencies will drive more people to share content, this applies to all forms of disinformation, not just deep fakes.

Currently, a video still represents an undeniable record of events for many people. But as this technology becomes more commonplace and the limitations of video become more apparent, the psychological factors above will drive trust and sharing. And the tactics that bad actors use to deceive will exploit these social patterns regardless of medium.

When viewed in this context, deep fakes are not some unprecedented challenge society cannot adapt to; they are simply another tool of disinformation. We should of course remain vigilant and understand that deep fakes will be used to spread disinformation. But we also need to consider that deep fakes may not live up to the hype.

Jeffrey Westling (@jeffreywestling) is a Technology and Innovation Research Associate at the R Street Institute.

Filed Under: deep fakes, disinformation, trust

Be Careful What You Wish For: Demanding Platforms Delete Disinformation May Make It Harder To Understand What Happened

from the watch-out dept

Here's another one in the "be careful what you wish for" category. Over the last few years, under tons of pressure from politicians and many users, various internet platforms have gotten more and more aggressive in removing content and accounts that were credibly accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda. Most people cheered over this, and you can completely understand why. But, that doesn't mean it doesn't create some consequences that might not all be good. J.A. Guerrero-Saade points out that all of this content removal can make things harder for researchers and investigators.

I'm reminded, somewhat, of all the demands in the past (and present) that these platforms need to take down "terrorist" content as quickly as possible. That ignores the fact that "terrorist" content can actually also be evidence of war crimes and atrocities that it might be useful for certain people to see. It also makes it that much more difficult for investigators -- whether government actors or open source investigative reporters -- to track down the perpetrators.

In response to this thread, Facebook's former Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, warned that he didn't think the research Facebook conducted over the past few years to find Russian disinfo spreaders would even be allowable under the GDPR:

This, as always, is the kind of thing we've been concerned about from the very beginning with the GDPR. There may be the best of intentions behind it, and "protecting privacy" always sounds good. But there are significant consequences to this, and demanding that private data be locked up, or that "bad" content be deleted as fast as possible, can have significant real world consequences that we might not like very much over the long haul.

Filed Under: alex stamos, deleting information, disinformation, gdpr, historical record, privacy, propaganda

Pompous 'International Grand Committee' Signs Useless But Equally Pompous 'Declaration On Principles Of Law Governing The Internet'

from the they're-really-going-all-in-on-this dept

So just a few weeks after a bunch of countries (and companies and organizations) signed onto a weird and mostly empty Paris Call for Trust and Safety in Cyberspace, a group of nine countries -- Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and the UK, have declared themselves the "International Grand Committee on Disinformation and Fake News" and signed onto a Principles of the Law Governing the Internet. If that list of countries sound familiar, that's because it's the same list of countries that put on that grandstanding inquisition of Facebook that produced fake news in its own way, by falsely claiming that Facebook had discovered Russians extracting 3 billion data points via its API back in 2014 (it wasn't Russia, it was Pinterest; it wasn't 3 billion, it was 6 million; it wasn't abuse of the API, but using it correctly).

The Declaration makes some grand pronouncements:

Noting that:— the world in which the traditional institutions of democratic government operate is changing at an unprecedented pace; it is an urgent and critical priority for legislatures and governments to ensure that the fundamental rights and safeguards of their citizens are not violated or undermined by the unchecked march of technology; the democratic world order is suffering a crisis of trust from the growth of disinformation, the proliferation of online aggression and hate speech, concerted attacks on our common democratic values of tolerance and respect for the views of others, and the widespread misuse of data belonging to citizens to enable these attempts to sabotage open and democratic processes, including elections.

Affirming that:— representative democracy is too important and too hard-won to be left undefended from online harms, in particular aggressive campaigns of disinformation launched from one country against citizens in another, and the co-ordinated activity of fake accounts using data-targeting methods to try manipulate the information that people see on social media.

Believing that:— it is incumbent on us to create a system of global internet governance that can serve to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of generations to come, based on established codes of conduct for agencies working for nation states, and govern the major international tech platforms which have created the systems that serve online content to billions of users around the world.

Okay. So what does it all mean? Well, here are the details of the "declaration":

i. The internet is global and law relating to it must derive from globally agreed principles;
ii. The deliberate spreading of disinformation and division is a credible threat to the continuation and growth of democracy and a civilising global dialogue;
iii. Global technology firms must recognise their great power and demonstrate their readiness to accept their great responsibility as holders of influence;
iv. Social Media companies should be held liable if they fail to comply with a judicial, statutory or regulatory order to remove harmful and misleading content from their platforms, and should be regulated to ensure they comply with this requirement;
v. Technology companies must demonstrate their accountability to users by making themselves fully answerable to national legislatures and other organs of representative democracy.

Of course, in the context of the committee who created this Declaration having now been revealed to have created "fake news" itself, this kind comes off pretty... weak. But also, the whole thing is kind of meaningless. The companies do recognize their "power" and have been trying to deal with this issue. Yes, perhaps they didn't grasp the severity of the issue in the past, but they certainly have more recently. But simple declarations and pronouncements don't really do anything useful in "solving" those issues. That's because much of it is a human nature issue, and expecting tech companies to "take responsibility" for human nature is... well... nonsense.

Filed Under: argentina, belgium, brazil, canada, content moderation, disinformation, fake news, france, internet regulation, ireland, latvia, prais call, singapore, uk
Companies: facebook

UK Hosts Theatrical Facebook Hearings On 'Fake News'... Undermined By Creating Fake News Itself

from the good-for-show,-not-good-for-truth dept

As you may have heard, the UK Parliament put on quite a show on Tuesday in what it claimed was an attempt to go after Facebook for its "fake news" problem. Of course, in the process, the hearings themselves created some fake news that undermined the entire point. To be clear, upfront, Facebook does have many issues that should be taken seriously. But this hearing did not get at those, and actually showed how, when political grandstanding is the focus, it's quite easy to create "fake news" in the process. Still, boy, was that hearing theatrical. It was apparently the first time since 1933 that the UK Parliament had representatives from other countries participate in a hearing, and so there were nine other countries present, including Canada, France, Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, Latvia, Argentina and Singapore. On top of that, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the bad decision of refusing to participate in the hearings, giving the Committee the opportunity for this classic photo op:

Facebook's VP of policy, Richard Allan appeared instead, and despite even him admitting that it didn't look great that Zuckerberg wasn't in attendance, he is actually someone who would probably be better positioned to answer actual substantive questions about Facebook's policies in these areas.

But that would only matter if the inquisitors were interested in discussing substantive policy matters. And it did not appear they did. They were there for the grandstanding, repeatedly blaming Facebook for reflecting back human nature and all its foibles. There were questions about what Facebook was doing to protect democracy -- which I don't think is actually Facebook's job (indeed, seems like that's the government's job, no?). But, of course, the main highlight of the show was the organizer of the hearing, MP Damian Collins, who you'll recall seized a bunch of documents, under questionable circumstances, from a US business exec who was visiting the UK.

The "documents" were supposed to be the star of the show, and Collins dropped the apparent big bombshell during the hearing: Facebook had, he claimed, actually been alerted to an attempt by Russian's to mess with the site all the way back in October of 2014. As summarized by Wired:

Collins cut right to the heart of the documents during the hearing. In October of 2014, he said, a Facebook engineer notified the company that entities with Russian IP addresses had been using a Pinterest API to pull out three billion data points a day from the Facebook friends API. Collins wanted to know what happened after that information was brought forward.

"Was that reported or was it kept, as so often seems to be the case, kept within the family?" he asked.

Ooooh. Intrigue.

Except... it was bullshit. Facebook revealed the redacted emails in question and it showed that while an engineer had initially raised concerns that it appeared that Russian IP addresses were using the Pinterest API access to get lots of data, further investigation showed that he was wrong. The initial email says that the person is seeing calls from "Russian IPs" and is having the Site Integrity team investigate, though it's quickly followed up with a note that "those might not have been Russian IPs after all, we are digging."

Then, on the very same day -- indeed, just a little over two hours after the initial alarm of Russian IPs -- the person emails that it was a false alarm.

If you can't see that, it says:

Ok, thinks are not as bad as they seemed, apologies for the trash. There was a series of unfortunate coincidences that made me think the worse.

1/ We verified that the endpoint has not been "leaked" and calls seem to be coming all from Pinterest servers.
2/ We verified that the volume of calls per day is actually around 6M successful and 40M failed due to invalid access.

In short, it wasn't 3 billion data points and it wasn't Russia. Also, it wasn't abuse of the system. And yet, the way Collins raised the issue, he suggested that Facebook was aware that Russians had abused the API to access 3 billion data points and then kept it secret. In other words, Collins' explanation of what happened was 100% incorrect and misleading. It was misinformation. Or, as some like to call it: fake news.

And while it will not be, this should be the lesson that the folks who held this hearing should learn: there are all sorts of ways to make incorrect claims. Some of them on purpose. Some of them by accident. Some of them because of confirmation bias of what you want to be true. And expecting Facebook to magically understand what is what... is insanity.

So, not that MP Damian Collins will respond to me (perhaps I should set up a dramatic photoshoot of an empty chair with his nameplate), but I'm wondering. Does he think Facebook should block all the stories reporting on his false claim about them supposedly "hiding" news of Russians abusing the API to extract 3 billion data points? Or would that, you know, be crazy?

Filed Under: api, damian collins, disinformation, fake news, grandstanding, interference, mark zuckerberg, richard allan, russia, uk
Companies: facebook

UK Government Screws Head On Straight, Bans Use Of Term 'Fake News' By Gov't Officials

from the stopped-clock-governance dept

A government has decided to handle "fake news" in about the only way it should be handled. FINALLY. While most governments appear willing to treat "fake news" legislation as a gateway drug to censorship, the UK government -- a government that certainly isn't known for its rational handling of speech issues -- is going the other way.

It's a decision that treats the term with all the respect it deserves: none.

The government has banned the term “fake news” after urging ministers to use “misinformation” or "disinformation" instead.

The phrase - a favourite of US President Donald Trump - will no longer appear in policy documents or official papers because it is “a poorly-defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes,” officials said.

This is a shocking development. While some government figures have recognized the term is divisive and generally means nothing more than "stuff I don't like," most have felt compelled to do something about it. A lot of this "something" has presented itself as pressure applied to social media platforms. For other governments with a more authoritarian bent, the term has proven to be a handy way to directly control new agencies and third-party content posted to social media services.

The UK's clearheaded stance isn't likely to be adopted by others. It returns too much control to citizens and strips the term of its power. But this is the way governments should approach the loaded term: by first admitting they have a problem. A nebulous term that acts as a partisan dog whistle should be eliminated from governments' vocabulary. As is suggested here, it should be replaced with clearly defined terms far less likely to be abused by politicians looking to score easy points in front of the home team crowd.

“We recommend that the Government rejects the term ‘fake news’, and instead puts forward an agreed definition of the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. With such a shared definition, and clear guidelines for companies, organisations, and the Government to follow, there will be a shared consistency of meaning across the platforms, which can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement,” [the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee] stated.

This is a remarkable turnaround, considering only a few months ago DCMS members were going after Facebook for contributing to the "fake news that threatens our democracy." Included in this package of adopted recommendations is (surprise!) the abandonment of a social media tax targeting Facebook and Twitter -- two companies routinely blamed for the incredible amount of stupidity and misleading content posted by their users.

Some sanity has prevailed somewhere in the world. Let's try to enjoy that.

Filed Under: ban, disinformation, fake news, political, uk

Boeing Accused Of Covert, Coordinated Op-Ed Smear Campaign Against Space X

from the disinformation-nation dept

For years we've noted how the American press has an absolutely horrible tendency to run guest Op-Eds without disclosing the author's financial conflicts of interest(s). Jesse Jackson, for example, can sometimes be found comparing efforts to bring competition to the cable box to racism in the 60s, without disclosing the cable industry's underlying influence. Similarly, former Representative and fair use champion Rick Boucher can often be found praising CISPA, denying a lack of competition in broadband or attacking net neutrality in Op-Ed pages nationwide on behalf of AT&T with zero disclosure of his real financial motivations.

The act of republishing these missives without clearly disclosing financial conflicts of interests isn't just unethical, it pollutes the national discourse, undermines already shaky trust in media, and contributes to a sound wall of disinformation as giant companies try to sell their latest megamerger, pass anti-consumer regulations and legislation, undermine a competitor, or justify terrible behavior.

One more recent example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Boeing, which is being accused of running a covert smear campaign against Space X via media outlets that fail to adequately disclose ulterior financial motives of Op-Ed authors.

Back in August, just around the time that Boeing was hyping the company's Starliner spacecraft program, a series of Op-Eds began showing up in newspapers nationwide attacking Space X and its allegedly unsafe fueling practices. The articles, which appeared everywhere from the Houston Chronicle to the Washington Times, all purported to simply be worried about astronaut safety. All were penned by Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program, but now resides in Tennessee. All implied repeatedly that Space X was ignoring safety standards and putting astronauts at risk.

But amusingly, when Ars Technica tried to track down Hagar, they discovered that he didn't actually write the vast majority of the Op-Eds published in countless news outlets nationwide under his name. Instead, the missives were penned by a PR and policy shop with an expertise in astroturf and other disingenuous messaging:

"To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds.

In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as "associates" at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. We reached out to multiple editors at papers that ran the op-eds, and they confirmed that no LMG affiliation was disclosed to them. Attempts to reach Julian Epstein, the chief executive of LMG, by phone and email were unsuccessful."

Boeing is an LMG client, and has worked previously for the company on past projects by "developing messaging" and crafting a "social media campaign amplifying our nationwide chorus of genuine American voices supporting Boeing." Boeing is also Space X's only competitor in the commercial crew program, so the mathematics here should be fairly obvious. Law Media Group (LMG) was busted for this exact sort of thing ten years ago and apparently absolutely nothing has changed, making it abundantly clear just how little most people care about this sort of disinformation.

News outlets have little incentive to crack down on this kind of disingenuous dreck, as they don't want to anger the companies footing the bill. Most Americans are totally clueless about the perils on zero transparency in this regard, so public pressure to actually do something about it for many media outlets remains largely nonexistent. And while you could pass a law mandating that corporations are free to speak as long as they speak for themselves, countless corporations would certainly be quick to claim their ability to spread misleading nonsense via covert intermediaries violates their First Amendment rights.

Aside from applying continuous public pressure on news outlets to behave more transparently and ethically, it's a problem that doesn't seem to have an obvious solution.

Filed Under: disinformation, fake news, opeds, smear campaign, space
Companies: boeing, law media group, spacex

Senator Mark Warner Lays Out Ideas For Regulating Internet Platforms

from the be-careful dept

For over a year now, Senator Mark Warner has been among the most vocal in saying that it's looking like Congress may need to regulate internet platforms. So it came as little surprise on Monday when he released a draft white paper listing out "potential police proposals for [the] regulation of social media and technology firms." Unlike much of what comes out of Congress, it does appear that whoever put together this paper spent a fair bit of time thinking through a wide variety of ideas, recognizing that every option has potential consequences -- both positive and negative. That is, while there's a lot in the paper I don't agree with, it is (mostly) not in the hysterical moral panic nature found around such debates as FOSTA/SESTA.

The paper lays out three major issues that it hopes to deal with:

1. Disinformation that undermines trust in our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets.
2. Consumer protection in the digital age
3. Antitrust issues around large platforms and the impact it may have on competition and innovation.

All of these are issues worth discussing and thinking about carefully, though I fear that bad policy-making around any of them could actually serve to make other problems even worse. Indeed, it seems that most ideas around solving the first problem might create problems for the other two. Or solving the third problem could create problems for the first one. And so on. That is not to say that we should throw up our hands and automatically say "do nothing." But, we should tread carefully, because there are also an awful lot of special interests (a la FOSTA, and Articles 11 and 13 in the EU) who are looking at any regulation of the internet as an opportunity to remake the internet in a way that brings back gatekeeper power.

On a related note, we should also think carefully about how much of a problem each of the three items listed above are. I know that there are good reasons to be concerned about all three, and there are clear examples of how each one is a problem. But just how big a problem they are, and whether or not that will remain the case is important to examine. Mike Godwin has been writing an important series for us over the last few months (part 1, part 2 and part 3) which makes a compelling case that many of the problems that everyone is focused on may be the result of a bit of moral panic, overreacting to a smaller problem and not realizing how small it is.

We'll likely take more time to analyze the various policy proposals in the white paper over time, but let's focus in on the big one that everyone is talking about: the idea of opening up Section 230 again.

Make platforms liable for state-law torts (defamation, false light, public disclosure of private facts) for failure to take down deep fake or other manipulated audio/video content -- Due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, internet intermediaries like social media platforms are immunized from state tort and criminal liability. However, the rise of technology like DeepFakes -- sophisticated image and audio tools that cart generate fake audio or video files falsely depicting someone saying or doing something -- is poised to usher in an unprecedented wave of false and defamatory content, with state law-based torts (dignitary torts) potentially offering the only effective redress to victims. Dignitary torts such as defamation, invasion of privacy, false light, and public disclosure of private facts represent key mechanisms for victims to enjoin and deter sharing of this kind of content.

Currently the onus is on victims to exhaustively search for, and report, this content to platforms who frequently take months to respond and who are under no obligation thereafter to proactively prevent the same content from being re-uploaded in the future. Many victims describe a "whack-a-mole" situation. Even if a victim has successfully secured a judgment against the user who created the offending content, the content in question in many cases will be re-uploaded by other users. In economic terms, platforms represent "least-cost avoiders" of these harms; they are in the best place to identify and prevent this kind of content from being propagated on their platforms. Thus, a revision to Section 230 could provide the ability for users who have successfully proved that sharing of particular content by another user constituted a dignitary tort to give notice of this judgement to a platform; with this notice, platforms would be liable in instances where they did not prevent the content in question from being re-uploaded in the future a process made possible by existing perceptual hashing technology (e.g. the technology they use to identify and automatically take down child pornography). Any effort on this front would need to address the challenge of distinguishing true DeepFakes aimed at spreading disinformation from satire or other legitimate forms of entertainment and parody.

So this seems very carefully worded and structured. Specifically, it would appear to require first a judicial ruling on the legality of the content itself, and then would require platforms to avoid having that content re-uploaded, or face liability if it were. The good part of this proposal is the requirement that the content go through a full legal adjudication before a takedown would actually happen.

That said, there are some serious concerns about this. First of all, as we've documented many times here on Techdirt, there have been many, many examples of either sketchy lawsuits that were filed solely to get a ruling on the books to try to take down perfectly legitimate content. If you don't remember the details, there were a few different variants on this, but the standard one was to file a John Doe lawsuit, then (almost immediately) claim to have identified the "John Doe" who admits to everything and agrees to a "settlement" admitting defamation. The "plaintiff" then sends this to the platforms as "proof" that the content should be taken down. If Warner's proposal goes through as is, you could see how that could become a lot more common, and you could see a series of similar tricks as well. Separately, it could potentially increase the number of sketchy and problematic defamation lawsuits filed in the hopes of getting content deleted.

One would hope that if Warner did push down this road, he would only do so in combination with a very strong federal anti-SLAPP law that would help deal with the inevitable flood of questionable defamation lawsuits that would come with it.

To his credit, Warner's white paper acknowledges at least some of the concerns that would come with this proposal:

Reforms to Section 230 are bound to elicit vigorous opposition, including from digital liberties groups and online technology providers. Opponents of revisions to Section 230 have claimed that the threat of liability will encourage online service providers to err on the side of content takedown, even in non-meritorious instances. Attempting to distinguish between true disinformation and legitimate satire could prove difficult. However, the requirement that plaintiffs successfully obtain court judgements that the content in question constitutes a dignitary tort which provides significantly more process than something like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice and takedown regime for copyright-infringing works may limit the potential for frivolous or adversarial reporting. Further, courts already must make distinctions between satire and defamation/libel.

This is all true, but it does not take into account how these bogus defamation cases may come into play. It also fails to recognize that some of this stuff is extremely context specific. The paper points to hashing technology like those used in spotting child pornography. But such content involves a strict liability -- where there are no circumstances under which it is considered legal. Broader speech is not like that. As the paper acknowledges in determining whether or not a "deepfake" is satire, much of this is likely to be context specific. And so, even if certain content may represent a tort in one context, it might not in others. Yet under this hashing proposal, the content would be barred in all contexts.

As a separate concern, this might also make it that much harder to study content like deepfakes in ways that might prove useful in recognizing and identifying faked content.

Again, this paper is not presented in the hysterical manner found in other attempts to regulate internet platforms, but it also does very little beyond a perfunctory "digital liberties groups might not like it" to explore the potential harms, risks and downsides to this kind of approach. One hopes that if Warner and others continue to pursue such a regulatory path, that much more caution would go into the process.

Filed Under: antitrust, cda 230, consumer protection, deepfakes, disinformation, free speech, intermediary liability, intermediary liability protection, mark warner, regulating social media, section 230
Companies: facebook, google, twitter

A Massive Cable Industry Disinformation Effort Just Crushed The FCC's Plan For Cable Box Competition

from the thanks-for-'helping' dept

Back in February the FCC proposed a new plan to bring competition to the cable box. Under the plan, cable providers would need to provide their programming to third party hardware vendors without the need for a CableCARD. The goal? Bring some competition to bear on a stagnant, captive market, resulting in cheaper, more open, and higher quality cable boxes. But because the plan would demolish $21 billion in rental fees while eroding sector control, the cable industry launched one of the most unprecedented lobbying and disinformation efforts I've ever seen in 16 years of covering the sector.

Politicians loyal to the cable industry wrote letters lambasting the FCC for "jeopardizing the incredible evolution of video distribution services," falsely comparing the idea to Popcorn Time. A flood of editorials magically began appearing in newspapers country wide claiming the FCC's plan would boost piracy, hurt consumer privacy, and even "steal the future." The cable sector even trotted out Jesse Jackson, who claimed in a horribly misleading op-ed that increased cable box competition was akin to the "snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings" of America's racist history. Seriously.

Of course given our news outlets don't think it's particularly important to highlight financial conflicts of interest, most of these editorials were presented as purely objective insight into the FCC's proposal. Even the US Copyright Office joined the festivities, falsely claiming the FCC's plan would "interfere with copyright owners' rights to license their works as provided by copyright law" despite IP experts stating it would do nothing of the sort.

And this cavalcade of lobbying, disinformation, and hand-wringing worked absolute wonders.

Apparently informed by all the wrong people, FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn began waffling after voting yes on the original proposal. That forced FCC boss Tom Wheeler to scrap his original plan, releasing a revamped, weaker app-based alternative proposal based largely on the cable industry's recommendations. Despite this new plan effectively being their idea, cable companies like Comcast still complained, falsely claiming the FCC's plan would "stop the apps revolution dead in its tracks by imposing an overly complicated government licensing regime and heavy-handed regulation in a fast-moving technological space."

Yes, because when I think about "fast moving" innovation, the dusty old cable box with its circa-1998 GUI is usually the first thing to come to mind.

As a result of this collective feigned hysteria, when the FCC's latest plan for cable box competition went up for a vote yesterday morning, the agency found it no longer had the votes to move forward. Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel issued a joint statement that goes out of its way to avoid noting that Wheeler lost his fellow commissioners' support:

"We have made tremendous progress—and we share the goal of creating a more innovative and inexpensive market for these consumer devices," Chairman Tom Wheeler and fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel said today in a joint statement. "We are still working to resolve the remaining technical and legal issues and we are committed to unlocking the set-top box for consumers across this country."

By "technical and legal issues" the FCC means it no longer had the votes to move forward after Commissioners buckled under the pressure of a tidal wave of bullshit. And while the FCC says the plan will "remain under consideration," it's entirely possible that the entire effort just died a quiet death in committee. That's not the end of the world given the cable industry (and the cable box) will likely implode on its own in the face of streaming competitors, and it might make more sense for the FCC to use its regulatory calories on things like broadband competition and usage caps anyway.

That said, the cable industry's ability to manipulate the public, press, and regulators in this fashion isn't our nation's finest hour. And while it's possible the FCC could revisit the vote, the end product may be so watered down as to be useless for consumers. Believing they've done yeoman's work in defending the cable industry's walled garden empires, some politicians took to applauding Rosenworcel's expected decision to "stand up for content creators" in voting down the FCC plan:Comcast also was quick to applaud the FCC for heeding the call of the sound wall of "respected third parties" opposed to the FCC's plan:

"The FCC made the right decision this morning to delay its vote on the set-top box item. It is now critical that the Commission heed the bipartisan calls of dozens of Members of Congress and respected third parties and release its new proposal and associated rules to allow the public to provide comment...Based on the limited information available from the Chairman’s Fact Sheet and op-ed, a broad range of content creators, civil rights organizations, labor unions, and others have concluded that the Chairman’s new approach does not solve the copyright, privacy, innovation and other significant concerns that were implicated in his discredited original proposal – and suffers from the same legal infirmities."

Right, but again, that's bullshit. Most of the opponents listed by Comcast were paid by the cable, broadcast and entertainment industries in one form or another to falsely malign the plan. The plan doesn't hurt copyright, it doesn't hurt privacy, and it certainly doesn't harm racial diversity. What it would harm is the cable and entertainment industry's monopoly over cable hardware, and the $21 billion in captive revenues it enjoys annually. It would also most certainly harm the walled garden that consistently protects the cable sector from pesky things like consumer choice.

While Wheeler today proclaimed that the delayed vote was "simply a matter of running out of time," it was notably more than that. It was another disgusting example of how the US Copyright Office frequently fights against the best interest of the public, regulators aren't getting sound advice, media outlets are thrilled to regurgitate pay-to-play industry garbage as objective insight, and Congress remains happy and willing to prioritize campaign contributions over consumer welfare. Wonderful job, everybody. Kudos all around.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, copyright office, disinformation, fcc, set top boxes, tom wheeler