Facebook Is Banning Anyone Charged With Participating In Capitol Hill Insurrection

from the really? dept

Mark Gray spotted an interesting tidbit buried in a Washington Post story about online activism among Trumpist supporters. Most of the story is the usual stuff about how propagandists are finding each other and organizing movements online. There is some of the usual hand-wringing that is standard in these stories about how social media is "enabling" this kind of activity, though it also notes that users very quickly migrated to other welcoming sites (and, also, how they've figured out ways to sneak back onto the bigger platforms):

The mainstream tech companies‘ crackdown on Trump and his followers helped splinter that vast network, researchers have found, without fundamentally weakening it. Influencers kicked off Facebook or Instagram ported followers to the lightly-policed app Telegram or right-wing YouTube rival Rumble, but they’ve also found ways to get back on the mainstream platforms by creating new accounts or using alternate language to avoid detection.

But later, the article claims that Facebook has a policy to shut down any account of anyone charged in the January 6th insurrection:

Alan Hostetter, a former local police chief and yoga teacher as well as a speaker at the June rally attended by The Post, was indicted on a charge of his alleged role in the insurrection June 10. Shortly after, he went back on Facebook Live, YouTube, Spotify, Rumble and several other services, filming himself walking on the beach in San Clemente in a “Free Man" baseball cap. He decried the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag staged event” and a “fakesurrection” because he believed infiltrators were in the crowd.

[....]

Within hours, his accounts were banned on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook says that it does not allow people charged in the insurrection on the platform and that it may fact-check claims that the riot was staged. Spotify and YouTube removed the videos a week later.

That part I've bolded is news to me -- and quite interesting. We've talked somewhat about how off-platform activities are increasingly coming under scrutiny by platforms in their content moderation/trust and safety efforts, but this is the first I've heard of any platform (let alone Facebook) having a blanket policy of refusing to allow those charged in the January 6th attack from using their platform.

At the very least, this does raise some questions. Since it's just based on charging, and not on conviction, what happens if the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted? That may be unlikely with many (if not all) of the January 6th folks, but it does raise some questions. And is the ban permanent? So far, the initial January 6th cases, against those who didn't seem to do that much once in the Capitol, have involved relatively mild sanctions. Will that also include a lifetime ban from Facebook? Should it?

Obviously, Facebook is free to moderate how it wants, and I think this will be interesting to follow over time. Will there be other situations in which being charged with a crime leads to your removal from Facebook? The Supreme Court weighed in on this issue in the Packingham case, that you can't have a law that requires the loss of internet service in response to a crime, but that only applies to laws. Facebook still has the freedom to refuse service to anyone it chooses.

At the very least, it will be interesting to watch how this kind of policy -- regarding off platform activities -- evolves on Facebook and other social networks.

Filed Under: banning, charges, content moderation, insurrection, january 6th
Companies: facebook

Court Denies Politician's Attempt To Dismiss Lawsuit Over Banning Critics From His Facebook Page

from the really-not-how-the-First-Amendment-works dept

Late last year, Maine governor Paul LePage was sued by the ACLU and two of the state's residents. It wasn't over his vocalized desire to shoot a local political cartoonist or his tone deaf handling of the Net Neutrality debate. This lawsuit deals with LePage's moderation of his official Facebook page. LePage (or more likely, his staff) swing the banhammer pretty freely, blocking users and deleting critical comments.

If LePage is using this Facebook page as an official extension of the governor's office, he can't engage in this kind of moderation without doing damage to the First Amendment. LePage has tried to claim the page isn't official, but it's been used to deliver official statements from his office. In addition, the page states it's Lepage's "official" page, and the page itself has been "verified" as official by Facebook, which requires the input of LePage and his office to make his official page official.

So, when LePage argues it's just some sort of unofficial campaign page with no ties to his current position in the government -- as he did in his motion to dismiss -- it's a Hail Mary play. The court isn't going to buy these assertions, not when there's plenty of evidence pointing to the Facebook page's officialness. For an official mouthpiece of a government entity, blocks and bans of critics aren't just a PR black eye, it's likely a First Amendment violation as well.

In addition, as the court points out in its ruling [PDF], claiming all content posted by third parties as comments will somehow be construed by page visitors as government speech is just as ridiculous as claiming the page isn't official. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

Based solely on the allegations in the Complaint, the Court must disagree with the premise that all of the information on the Governor’s Facebook page constitutes his speech. The posts on the Facebook page are labeled with the name of the person who posted them, and the Governor’s speech—his posts—is distinct from the private citizen posts.

[T]he Court is similarly unpersuaded that the Governor incorporates or adopts the comments and posts of others as his own speech simply by not deleting them after the speakers post them to his page. Such posts are readily distinguishable from a city’s acceptance of a donated monument for display in a public park or a town’s inclusion of private-company hyperlinks on the official town website—both of which have been held to be government speech. Pleasant Grove City, 555 U.S. at 468; Sutliffe, 584 F.3d at 330. Citizens posting to the “Paul LePage, Maine’s Governor” page control the content and timing of their post without any prior review from the Governor. The page acts a passive conduit for the posts.

The ruling goes on to point out that having dissenting views on his page in no way prevents Governor LePage from getting his message out. Even without moderation, page visitors cannot "drown out" official posts or otherwise engage in a heckler's veto, thus affecting the governor's First Amendment rights. Visitors do not control the page and aren't able to post anything other than comments or questions. LePage's free speech is as free as ever, even if he can't control what others say when commenting on his posts.

The court is also unimpressed with LePage's argument that banning dissenting commenters or deleting critical comments is somehow protected speech. As the court sees it, considering the facts it has on hand, the only speech getting squelched is that of page visitors -- and apparently only those who have nothing nice to say about the governor or his messages.

The Governor does not dispute the Plaintiffs’ claims that his deletion of their posts and banning of them from his page constituted viewpoint discrimination. Given this and the Court’s conclusion that forum analysis does apply, the Court finds that the Plaintiffs plausibly stated a claim for violation of their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The governor isn't going to come out of this case looking any better, even if he might secure tiny wins on small procedural points. Rather than simply cease deleting critical comments and banning critics, the governor has chosen to fight for his "right" to oppress dissent via an apparently official government page. That's really all you need to know about LePage's respect for the First Amendment. It's kind of sickening a government figure would try to argue banning critical speech is protected under the same First Amendment rights he would deny to those engaging with his page.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, banning, followers, maine, moderation, paul lepage

In Trying To Ban Telegram, Russia Breaks The Internet

from the unintended-consequences dept

Russia's war on encryption and privacy has reached an entirely new level of ridiculous. We've noted for a while how Putin's government has been escalating its war on encrypted services and VPNs in the misguided hope of keeping citizens from dodging government surveillance. But things escalated dramatically when the Russian government demanded that encrypted messaging app Telegram hand over its encryption keys to the FSB. After Telegram refused, a Russian court banned the app entirely last Friday, and the Russian government began trying to actually implement it this week.

It's not going particularly well.

Telegram tried to mitigate the ban by moving some of its essential infrastructure to third-party cloud services. But Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor responded by blocking upwards of 16 million IP addresses, many belonging to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Not too surprisingly, the heavy-handed maneuver resulted in connectivity problems across massive swaths of the Russian internet:

Some users say the ban has disrupted the functionality of unrelated online games and services:

And even credit card terminals:

While the Russian government has been portrayed as a technological and hacking mastermind in the wake of its escalating global disinformation and hacking campaign, there's nothing at all competent about this effort. The Russian government is demanding that both Apple and Google pull encrypted messaging apps from their app stores. They've also tried to pressure sideloading websites like APK Mirror into refusing to offer alternative access to the Telegram app. But it's just another game of Whac-a-Mole, with VPN provider NordVPN saying it saw a 150% spike in Russian usage in the wake of the ban.

The Russian government is claiming that its ham-fisted blockade has resulted in a 30% dip in Telegram usage. But Telegram founder Pavel Durov has downplayed the ban's impact on overall "user engagement":

"For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason is our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise.

"Despite the ban, we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for our users there."

Russian state media meanwhile continues to demonize Telegram as a haven for villains, and is directing users to alternatives like TamTam with alleged ties to the Russian government. All told, it's another wonderful illustration of how filtering the internet doesn't work (unless collateral damage and annoyance is your stated goal), and a war on fundamental security and privacy tools only makes everybody less secure. This is not a battle Russia can "win," but it's apparently too far down the rabbit hole of bad ideas to stop now.

Filed Under: banning, encryption, ip addresses, privacy, roskomnadzor, russia, surveillance
Companies: amazon, google, telegram

Facebook Bans Tsu Links Entirely, Choosing Control Over User Empowerment

from the banbook dept

Facebook has brought out the ban-hammer on its competitors in the past. Most notably, the social media giant banned advertisements from users for links to Google+, when that was still a thing. That said, the most recent example of Facebook banning what can be seen as a competitive product has gone even further, preventing users from linking to Tsu.co in status updates or on its messaging service.

Try mentioning the social media website Tsu.co on Facebook or Instagram -- or even in a private conversation on Facebook Messenger. It won't work. Facebook is blocking any link to Tsu.co on every platform it owns, including Messenger and Instagram. It even went back and deleted more than 1 million Facebook posts that ever mentioned Tsu.co, making pictures, videos and comments disappear in an instant. You can type the name "Tsu," but you'll be blocked if you write "Tsu.co" or post any link from the site.

I tried this for myself and found that it's in fact true. When simply attempting to update my status with nothing other than "tsu.com", Facebook returned the following popup.

Now, it is worth mentioning that Tsu appears to be somewhat sketchy. The premise of the site seems to be that it keeps a small percentage of ad revenue it generates, while the rest of the revenue gets split up between users with ads being displayed on their Tsu site, the users that originally invited those users to Tsu, and up the ladder. If this all sounds familiar to you, it should, because it's a classic pyramid model. The nature of the model means that the spread of the site will only pace more quickly, making it entirely possible that Facebook users could suddenly find their feeds inundated with Tsu links and ads.

And that's exactly what Facebook has encountered. Tsu users were creating fake accounts to boost their pages. Facebook says its users started reporting Tsu.co links as spam, which Facebook defines as "sending bulk messages, excessively posting links ... and sending friend requests to people you don't know personally." On September 25, Facebook cut off Tsu.co completely.

And, in light of what was going on, you can understand why Facebook wanted to get out in front of this. But, as is always the case with these situations, there are other options beyond outright control through the banning of all links to a competitor's site. If the Tsu links and premise result in the annoyance Facebook claims, it shouldn't be particularly difficult to allow users to inform Facebook that it doesn't want to see any links or posts involving Tsu. That solution achieves Facebook's stated desire -- not allowing users to become annoyed with spammy deluges of Tsu links -- while still allowing users who may find Tsu useful to continue on as usual.

What it doesn't allow Facebook to do is suppress the spread of another site with whom it is competing.

Carolina Franco, a 28-year-old model in Colombia, thinks Facebook's strategy is an attempt to keep its users from flocking to a competitor.

"Very few people even know about Tsu," she said. "I don't believe that Facebook and Instagram want Tsu to go viral. it would cost them a lot of money."

Whether that's true or not, it's easy to see how this perception exists. Given that another option -- empowering users instead of exerting control --would have avoided this perception, it's difficult to see why Facebook would have gone this route except that it concerns a competitor.

Filed Under: banning, censorship, competition, links
Companies: faceook, tsu

Valve Announces It's Handing Its Banning-Keys Over To Game Developers

from the trust-us dept

In the wake of the recent flop that was Valve's attempt to create a platform for paid game mods, you'd have thought that the company would be on its digital toes when it comes to being gamer-friendly. I have no interest in piling on Valve or the Steam platform, given what a great example of how game developers can make money in the digital age, but I was a bit surprised to learn that the company just announced it won't be in charge of banning gamers from games any longer. Instead, it's turning the keys to banning gamers over to the game developers themselves.

Because nobody likes playing with cheaters. Playing games should be fun. In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats. Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account. The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer. For more information about a game ban in a specific game, please contact the developer of that game.

Now, when anyone, including the Steam announcement above, talks about reasons to ban gamers from games, cheating is always brought up. And, indeed, nobody would be wrong to suggest that gamers cheating in online games reduce the fun-factor for the rest of the gaming community. Would it be better to exclude cheaters from games? Yes, no doubt. Is Valve's announced plans above to turn the responsibility for banning games from its platform make for a good way to go about this? Hell no.

Why? Well, because giving that kind of control over to the game developers shifts the balance of power when it comes to being banned from games and the reasons why a player might be banned. The nice thing about Steam is that it has two sets of customers: both the gamers themselves and the game developers on its service. Therefore, when Steam is the one administering the ban-button, it essentially serves as an arbiter. It might be an imperfect arbiter, sure, but having all the power to ban customers from games residing in the hands of developers takes us from imperfect to completely broken. Whatever the developers say goes.

And developers haven't always proven that they can be trusted with lesser forms of this power. Imagine Derek Smart in this scenario, no longer having the power to simply blanket-ban gamers from the Steam forums over negative reviews and comments, but now also being able to ban them from his games. Other developers have already attempted to ban players from their own single-player games over forum issues, so imagine what's going to happen now that there is no "trying", only "doing" when it comes to bans.

Steam made its mark by being fairly friendly to gamers in a myriad of ways. Giving this much power over bans to game developers is a step in the opposite direction. It would be a strange decision at any time, but now it seems particularly odd.

Filed Under: banning, cheaters, developers, gamers, steam, video games
Companies: valve

Texas Religious Leaders Try To Get Public Libraries To Ban Vampire Books For Them

from the church-and-state dept

Public libraries: they're important. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, somebody is going to have to explain to me why we occasionally see people attempt to take books out of libraries on either religious or decency grounds. It seems to me that these people often need a lecture on the First Amendment and how they probably want to be careful about eroding its protections. The latest in need of such a lecture is a group of Texas religious leaders who are circulating a letter demanding a local public library remove all works of fiction that have to do with vampires and the occult.

Phillip Missick and other religious leaders have called on the Austin Memorial Library to remove books about vampires, demons and other magical beings from the teen section. Missick is circulating a petition that requests that the "occultic and demonic room be shut down, and these books be purged from the shelves, and that public funds would no longer be used to purchase such material, or at least require parents to check them out for their children," according to the Cleveland Advocate.

Missick's reasoning for this is the same moral panic crap we've written about so often: if children read about the occult, they'll end up being demonic little hooligans or whatever. It's Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and chess all over again. But it's all the more egregious when a religious leader calls for the removal of secular funds from a public institution to fulfill his religious views. We don't do that in America. Let me show Pastor Missick why we don't do that, using one of his own statements.

"This is dark. There's a sexual element. You have creatures that aren't human. I think it's dangerous for our kids," Missick, a pastor at King of Saints Tabernacle of Cleveland, told KTRK.

Now, let me think what other books that might exist that I could argue contain dark literature, sexual elements, and creatures that aren't human? Oh, I know! How about the bible? Plenty that could be considered dark, what with the detailed descriptions of war and Cain killing Abel and all that. Sexual elements? Oh, you betcha, what with the incestuous date-rape of Lot by his daughters and the orgies and whatnot. Non-human creatures? Well, you know, there's God, angels, and demons, so yeah. Most public libraries carry the bible in the reference section, alongside the equally dark-n-sexy religious texts from other major religions.

So, are we going to ban the bible in public libraries because of this? Shall we insist no public funds go to buying religious texts, including the bible? Of course not, because libraries aren't for partisan texts, they're for all texts that have value to the public, including texts we may not care for. You can't understand literature if you don't have a basic understanding of religious texts and you can't understand the current realm of young-adult fiction if you don't have access to vampire books. Sad, but that's the way it is.

So, hey, to my religious friends: stop trying to ban books. You're chipping away at a federal law that allows you to exist.

Filed Under: banning, books, moral panic, phillip missick, public libraries, texas, vampires

UK Politician Believes News Organizations Should Hide Articles During Important Trials

from the where-theory-meets-reality-and-reality-laughs dept

A former Lord Chancellor in the UK (who was in charge of running the legal system, apparently) is suggesting that on certain important lawsuits, news organizations be forced not to report on the case and to remove any articles in archives that could influence the case, as he's worried about the articles influencing the outcome. This, of course, is similar to the story we were discussing yesterday, where a California court forced Wikileaks offline so it wouldn't influence a Swiss lawsuit. Of course, the response to that should be instructive of what would happen in the UK. Almost immediately, people started mirroring the content and making sure it was widely available. In fact, the very effort of trying to hide that content drove much more attention to it -- something that should come as no surprise to those familiar with the Streisand Effect. Also, thanks to the internet, where anyone can effectively report on any topic, it's impossible to see how the UK would successfully ban and block any reports on these particular cases. Sure, it's nice in theory to say that you don't want reporting that would influence the outcome of a case. Unfortunately, reality is unlikely to cooperate with that theory.

Filed Under: banning, censorship, news, trials