NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework

from the cry-harder,-cop dept

The New York Police Department is complaining about having to do work again. The New York Post reports officers are unhappy that they're required to do a little bit more paperwork for every stop, regardless of whether the stop results in a citation or arrest.

NYPD cops will soon have to start recording the race, gender and age of every person they pull over during a vehicle stop — even cyclists, The Post has learned.

From Jan. 1, officers will be required to fill out a new form that notes the demographics of the person driving the vehicle or bike, and whether any police action was taken against them, according to an internal order obtained by The Post.

The forms have to be filled out even if no law enforcement action is taken.

This is nothing more than the logical next step for a department that has repeatedly shown it engages in biased policing. Years of lawsuits over its stop-and-frisk program resulted in a court-ordered mandate to collect demographic information on stop-and-frisk encounters. The NYPD complained about the extra work when this was ordered in 2013. Then it spent the next half-decade refusing to comply with it.

Another mandate followed, demanding the collection of information on all stops, which would seemingly include any stop, even those not conducted on foot. The NYPD wasn't any happier with the new mandate and one of its unions claimed that recording demographic information would result in fewer stops and less policing.

That attitude remains unchanged three years later. The NYPD has been given another mandate and officers are once again claiming they're just not going to do it. Their rationale for failing to comply with direct orders? People might find out NYPD officers are engaged in biased policing.

But an NYPD officer with more than two decades on the job said it is just a “recipe for disaster.”

“As an officer, I’m definitely going to think twice about pulling anyone over. That’s the first thing they’re going to look at how many black and Hispanic people you pulled over,” the cop said.

The officer added that some cops were already hesitant to stop people — and the additional paperwork would just deter them even more.

The PR spin by the NYPD implies something different than the opinions offered by the rank-and-file:

“We are complying with the requirements of Local Law 45 of 2021,” an NYPD spokesman said.

But it's not a complete rebuttal. It is possible to comply with the requirements while also engaging in fewer stops of drivers and bicyclists. It sets the stage for the NYPD to blame any rise in crime rates on demographic tracking requirements, rather than step up and discipline officers for refusing to comply with the order or do their jobs. Chances are good no officers will be punished for refusing to do either of these things.

And, once again, a police union is there to blame everything on everyone else, rather than suggest officers do their best to comply with the mandate. Here's Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, railing against everyone else who isn't a cop refusing to their job.

“They passed bill after bill to further the anti-police narrative, but did absolutely nothing to help us curb the bloodshed in our neighborhoods,” he said. “The incoming Council needs to refocus their priorities. Instead of new paperwork, we need meaningful support to get violent criminals off the street.”

I'm not sure what the NYPD is incapable of accomplishing with a $10 billion annual budget, but city officials have agreed to a $465 million increase for 2022. That suggests there's at least a half-billion in "meaningful support" headed its way and that the city council isn't just engaging in an anti-cop narrative. This just sounds like cops who don't want the public to be better informed about how this $10 billion/year is being spent.

If cops are afraid of engaging in any policing because of a fear of it being interpreted as biased policing, perhaps they should direct their anger at the decades of biased policing that led to these mandates. The culture of the department could have been changed at any time. Instead it took court orders and new laws to force the NYPD to confront its own racism. Now that it has to, officers are deciding they'd rather not be forced to look in the mirror.

Filed Under: bias, nypd, police, racism, transparency

PD Whose Officers Brutalized A Black Soldier For Driving To A Well-Lit Area Sued By Virginia Attorney General

from the fuck-with-the-rights,-get-the-horns dept

Windsor, Virigina was the recipient of unflattering nationwide news coverage due to two police officers deciding a black driver -- and Army medic -- needed to be brutalized for seeking a well-lit area to pull over. The whole thing was caught on the officers' body cameras, including their threats to make Lieutenant Caron Nazario "ride the lightning" (a reference to the officer's Taser) as well as the officer's affirmation that Nazario was right to be scared to exit his vehicle.

A low-speed, non-lengthy, non-chase of one hundred seconds led to several minutes of violence, threats of further violence, and violated rights. The officers shouted conflicting orders -- to both keep hands where they could be seen as well as to exit the vehicle, something impossible for Nazario to comply with considering he still had his seatbelt on. The officers pointed their guns at him the entire time, pausing only to pepper spray him in the eyes. Nazario sued. That lawsuit is still ongoing. One of the officers -- Daniel Crocker -- is also facing criminal charges.

But there's a postscript to this case that involves another lawsuit involving the Windsor Police Department. The state's Attorney General, Mark Herring, is suing the Town of Windsor over biased policing engaged in by PD officers.

After a months-long investigation revealed disturbing evidence of discriminatory, unconstitutional policing, Attorney General Mark R. Herring today filed suit against the Town of Windsor alleging that its police department has operated in a way that led to discrimination against African Americans and violated their constitutional rights. This is the first enforcement action against a law enforcement agency under the new state law empowering the attorney general to file suit to stop systemic violations of Virginians’ civil rights.

The lawsuit [PDF] alleges plenty of questionable behavior by the town's law enforcement officers -- something that explains the actions taken by the two officers involved in this controversial traffic stop. Here's what the Attorney General uncovered during the investigation of the Windsor PD:

Black drivers accounted for approximately 42% of the department’s traffic stops from July 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021 (810 of 1,907 stops.) During that time period, the Town stopped Black drivers between 200% and 500% more often than would be expected based on the number of Black residents in the town or county.

From July 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021, the Department searched more vehicles driven by Black drivers than White drivers, even though Black residents do not constitute the majority of the population of the Town or the Commonwealth.

Not only is there evidence of biased policing, there's evidence the Windsor PD misled its most direct oversight, the Windsor Town Council.

For many of the examined months, there was a significant discrepancy between the number of traffic stops and citations reported to town council and reported to the Virginia State Police for tracking and reporting purposes. In all instances the numbers reported to the Commonwealth were lower than those shared with town council, and the discrepancy has not yet been explained.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring the PD from engaging in discriminatory policing. It demands policy changes to ensure traffic stops are bias-free, mandates accurate reporting of use of force incidents, and order the PD to submit to third-party monitoring of its compliance with state and local laws, as well as the specifics of any order issued by the court handling this lawsuit.

The Town of Windsor has already responded. And it claims [PDF] AG Mark Herring is doing this for the clicks:

The decision by Attorney General Mark Herring to file a lawsuit against the Town of Windsor on the eve of the new year and just 17 days before he leaves office is clearly political.

[...]

Despite the Town’s cooperation and progress, the Attorney General’s office, just days later, issued an ultimatum demanding immediate action or the threat of litigation, knowing the Town Council would not meet again to address this until January 11 – a mere four days prior to Mr. Herring leaving office. Given that the Complaint cites questionable data on the quantity and nature of traffic stops and searches, as well as its reporting, the suit lacks any context as to what the Town has done over the past year to address any concerns. The Town is stunned that this suit was filed on December 30, just hours before Courts closed for the year.

[...]

Therefore, there was no need for Mr. Herring to file this lawsuit, except perhaps for the sake of headlines, which he will surely receive.

A government complaining about how another government entity engages in government business is pretty rich. Government officials wait until holiday weekends to dump bad news. Litigation almost always commences at the last minute, often just before the statute of limitations takes effect. Everything is political, even when everyone in political agencies claims it isn't.

But it's extremely disingenuous to claim this was done solely for the headlines. An actual investigation occurred and the results led the AG to the conclusion a lawsuit was needed to change the Windsor PD's evidently-biased policing. The results of this investigation will also aid Lt. Nazario's lawsuit against these officers, as he will now be able to point to a pattern and practice of targeting minorities.

The town says it "looks forward to a reasonable conversation" with AG Herring's successor. But its first response is anything but reasonable and suggests the town feels its police department doesn't need to be changed, much less subjected to more scrutiny. And that suggests any future conversations will be short on reasonableness and heavy on defensiveness.

Filed Under: bias, caron nazario, daniel crocker, mark herring, police, virginia, windsor, windsor police department

It's Ridiculous The 'Developing World' Wasn't Given Access To The Facebook Files

from the do-this-the-right-way dept

By now it's fairly clear the Facebook leaks showcase a company that prioritized near-mindless international growth over the warnings of their own experts. They also show a company that continues to painfully struggle to be even marginally competent at scale, whether we're talking about content moderation or rudimentary customer service. While this has become an all-encompassing media spectacle, the real underlying story isn't particularly unique. It's just a "growth for growth's sake" mindset, where profit and expansion trumped all reason. It just happens to be online, and at unprecedented international scale.

One thing I haven't seen talked a lot about is the fact that if you look back a few years, an awful lot of of folks in developing nations saw these problems coming a mile away, long before their Western counterparts. For a decade, international activists warned repeatedly about the perils of Facebook's total failure to understand the culture/regulations/language/norms of the countries they rapidly flooded into. Yet bizarrely, Frances Haugen's PR team somehow excluded most of these countries when it came time to recently release access to the Facebook files:

The "consortium" handling release of the files is basically a loose collaboration between 17 U.S. news orgs and a handful of European outlets. They're all being given access to redacted versions of documents Haugen provided the Securities and Exchange Commission, showing Facebook repeatedly prioritized growth and profit over, well, everything else. The whole thing was handled by Haugen's PR team via an ordinary embargo, which some oddly saw as itself somehow nefarious (it's not, embargoes, though often kind of stupid, are commonly used to maximize impact).

The real problem was who was included in that consortium. And a bigger problem, oddly not talked about until a month into the Facebook leak news cycle, was that much of the developed world was just... excluded... from the coalition by her PR reps. The exclusion of academics and researchers that could make the most sense of the data was a problem. But restricting analysis to most white, western newsrooms, (despite Haugen's very clear understanding that most of Facebook's impact problems disproportionately harmed developing nations) is particularly odd and tasteless.

For all the problems Facebook (sorry, Meta) has had in the United States in regards to managing the company's platform at scale, those problems have been dramatically worse internationally. Facebook was so excited to flood into dozens of international locations to wow investors, they didn't dedicate the time, resources, or attention needed to actually understand what they were doing. Even if they had (and the whistleblowers keep showing they absolutely didn't), the sheer scale of the expansion made it impossible to do well. That Facebook did so anyway despite being warned about it is an act of greed and hubris.

It was actually a net neutrality debate that keyed many overseas activists into Facebook's problems more than a decade ago. Activists in India were particularly sensitive to Facebook's attempts to conflate "the internet" with Facebook in developing nations. If you recall, activists in India successfully derailed Facebook's Free Basics program, which was Facebook's attempt to corner developing nation ad markets under the banner of altruism.

Basically, it involved Facebook striking deals with local wireless companies to offer discounted access to Facebook, under claims that aggressively curated version of "online" was better than no online access at all. It was a highly curated walled garden bastardized variation of AOL or CompuServe, in which Facebook decided what information, services, and resources mattered (they initially even banned encrypted services). But activists and international experts were quick to see the problem with giving Facebook this kind of power, especially in countries they didn't take the time to understand.

We've seen repeatedly how conflating "Facebook" with "the internet" (or Whatsapp with "the internet") has created a laundry list of problems that are especially pronounced in developing nations. The centralized approach of programs like Free Basics defeated the purpose of the open internet, reduced transparency, was a big boon for authoritarian governments, and helped create an even more potent funnel for propaganda. One recurring theme in whistleblower accounts is that Facebook's own researchers generally warned about all of this, repeatedly, but were ignored for profit and growth's sake.

As early as 2015 organizations like Mozilla were busy arguing that if Facebook genuinely cared about information access in developing nations, they should simply fund access to the internet itself. Facebook was ultimately forced to back off its plan in some countries like India and Egypt, but if you were a reporter or activist in these countries who pointed out the problems with Facebook's ambition, you were accused of being an enemy of the poor. When the Free Basics brand became toxic, Facebook just named Free Basics something else (sound familiar?).

There has been some valid and not so valid criticism of the way Haugen handled these latest revelations. Some have tried to argue that because she was smart enough to hire lawyers and a PR team to maximize impact she can't possibly be technically seen as a "whistleblower." There was also some brief hyperventilation over a Politico report, with some trying to claim that because she had received some money from investor Pierre Omidyar, she shouldn't be taken seriously. But a shrewd, organized whistleblower is still a whistleblower, and Omidyar proxy groups actually just funded whistleblower orgs Haugen was part of after she went public. It's actually a good thing to see a whistleblower do the right thing and not be economically and reputationally devastated for once.

But it's both weird and telling that people freaked out about these perceived injustices, but didn't notice that the whistleblower's PR coalition apparently just forgot the developing world existed:

Nobody I've talked to so far at news organizations seems clear why this seems to have happened (a strange decision for an effort geared toward greater transparency). It's not like it would be particularly difficult to coordinate the release via the same organizations in places like India that warned about Facebook's consolidated power almost a decade ago (see: IFEX). Some outlets, like Gizmodo, have been trying to expand access to the source documents to everyone. That's apparently to the chagrin of Haugen's PR team, who seems to think they can put the genie back in the bottle.

There was a certain hubris in Facebook stumbling its way across the developing world in a quest for growth without bothering to understand the impact their platform would have on foreign cultures. But there's a fairly substantial amount of hubris in excluding these developing nations from accessing raw data on a problem they've disproportionally been harmed by.

Filed Under: bias, developing nations, facebook files, facebook papers, frances haugen, india, journalists
Companies: facebook, meta

House Republican's Entire 'Big Tech' Platform Is 'We Must Force Big Tech To Display Our Conspiracy Theories And Lies'

from the sad-state-of-affairs dept

The Republican Party that once claimed to be the party of keeping government out of business and that actions have consequences has moved far, far beyond that. These days, it's a parody of everything it once derided. Take a look at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's newly announced Framework to Stop the Bias and Check Big Tech. Even from the naming you can see quite clearly ridiculous victim-playing. There remains no evidence of any "anti-conservative bias" in social media content moderation. It is true that some Republican supporters have faced moderation... for breaking the rules. Just as some non-Republicans have faced moderation for those same reasons. It's just that these Republicans -- with no other fundamental principles to go on -- have tried to turn basic content moderation for policy breaking into a whiny victimhood.

Remember when Republicans used to mock Democrats for always playing the victim and being "whiny snowflakes"? Apparently it was all projection.

Just days before the 2018 primary election, Google search results for “California Republicans” identified our ideology as “Nazism.” At the same time, conservatives like Devin Nunes and Donald Trump Jr. were shadow banned on Twitter. For pro-life groups like Live Action and others, the discrimination wasn’t subtle at all. Since then, the examples of conservative censorship and bias across internet platforms has proliferated. Each one of you are all too familiar with how Big Tech and its overwhelmingly liberal executives want to set the agenda and silence conservatives.

Of course, each of those has a story behind them and none of them are presented accurately. Note that McCarthy doesn't bother to explore why any of the above happened (if they happened -- Twitter doesn't engage in "shadow banning" so that's just misleading claptrap). No one at social media companies wants to "silence conservatives." Again, most of the evidence suggests the exact opposite. But the fact is that if you violate policies -- including by spreading dangerous disinformation about, say, health or elections -- you might get kicked off.

That should be a policy that actual "conservatives" support. It's about the rights of private property owners to choose not to do business with those who are disruptive -- and for those being disruptive to face the consequences of their own actions. That seems like the kinds of things that conservatives used to insist they support.

Over 90 percent of search happens on Google and 90 percent of users drop off after first-page results. The ability to stack the deck protects the willing participants of the scheme and punishes the non-compliant. The same gatekeeper effect lies with Amazon and Apple. If your company or product doesn’t meet the criteria of corporate wokeism, it’s increasingly likely Americans won’t find it on these platforms.

What are you even talking about? It's got nothing to do with "corporate wokeism" -- a hilariously stupid term in its own right. And we've seen over and over again that the platforms have actually bent over backwards to have a light touch on conservatives to avoid being accused of bias. The reality is that there is unequal treatment: the sites have given conservatives a lot more leeway, and only proceeded to moderate in the most extreme cases.

Just to make this clear, looking at the accounts that get the most link clicking on Facebook, they are almost always dominated by famous "conservative" individuals and organizations.

Again, the evidence does not suggest "anti-conservative bias." If it's true (and even this could be disputed) that conservatives violate the policies of social media services more often -- for example, by posting utterly debunked conspiracy theories about elections, healthcare, and more -- well, perhaps that's on them. Not the companies.

Then we get to the actual policy recommendations:

Accountability: Our framework would rein in Big Tech and end their abusive practices, including by changing the law so that Americans can challenge Big Tech directly for their infringement of public speech rights. This effort starts by taking away the liability shield Big Tech has hidden behind for far too long. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would be changed to limit liability protections for moderation of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment and would preclude Big Tech from discriminating against Americans based on their political affiliation. We would also require regular reauthorization of Section 230 so Congress may update regulations of the constantly-evolving internet landscape.

Sigh. This is such garbage. Moderation is not an infringement of your right to speech. You can still speak -- you just don't have a guaranteed right to use someone else's property to speak. And if you took away 230, you'd get significantly less speech because you'd massively ramp up the legal liability and frivolous lawsuits against social media websites. Remember when Republicans were against handing plaintiffs' lawyers the easy ability to file vexatious lawsuits? Apparently that's out the window.

Also, what the hell does: "limit liability protections for moderation of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment" mean? That would be a massive 1st Amendment violation in its own right, saying that websites must leave up all protected speech. Lies, porn, hate speech, conspiracy theories, harassment, abuse are all protected speech under the 1st Amendment in most cases (there are a few edge cases that wouldn't count). But under such an approach, these Republicans would be turning the entire internet into a cesspool of garbage.

Similarly: "preclude Big Tech from discriminating against Americans based on their political affiliation." First of all, no one is being banned for being a Republican today. The only cases I've ever seen of someone being banned for political affiliation were Nazis. So the Republican Party is now making it official party platform that websites must protect Nazi speech? Really?

Transparency: Our framework would empower Americans by ending Big Tech’s ability to hide behind vague terms of service that have not constrained their conduct in any meaningful way. We will do so by mandating that any Big Tech content moderation decisions or censorship must be listed, with specificity, on a publicly available website. In addition, by requiring Big Tech to implement and maintain a reasonable user-friendly appeals process, our plan will empower conservatives and others whose speech rights have been infringed to challenge Big Tech’s attacks.

Anyone who knows anything about content moderation knows what this really means: give us the rules so we can figure out how to argue with you that we didn't break them. This is the abusers/harassers free pass to be a total asshole to the staff of social media companies, insisting that when they're harassing someone it wasn't "really" harassment. Or when they post racist garbage "it was just a joke." This is to open the floodgates on being able to continue to annoy and harass social media to try to make sure all garbage content must remain up.

Strengthening Anti-Trust Review: Our framework also recognizes that the status quo and bureaucratic delays are not acceptable when it comes to bringing long-overdue antitrust scrutiny to Big Tech. We will provide an expedited court process with direct appeal to the Supreme Court and empower state attorneys general to help lead the charge against the tech giants to break them up. We will also reform the administrative state and remove impediments that delay taking action on Big Tech power.

I mean, Republicans have spent the past four or five decades redefining anti-trust to make it effectively impossible to win a case on anti-trust grounds, so this is quite a turnaround -- but also one of those situations where you almost want to say "hey, you made this bed, now lay in it."

Anyway, a few days after McCarthy put out this ridiculous "framework," Republicans on the House Judiciary put out their own plan, which they claimed was "consistent" with McCarthy's framework -- and it is. It is consistently disconnected from reality.

It, of course, removes Section 230:

A cause of action to empower Americans. For far too long, Big Tech has been able to censor the views of conservatives with effectively no recourse available to those affected. This proposal would create a statutory basis for Americans to directly challenge Big Tech in court for its censorship and silencing of conservatives.

Overhauling Big Tech’s liability shield. Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to allow internet platforms to moderate unlawful or offensive content on their platforms. Big Tech has exploited this protection to make subjective content moderation decisions, often in a manner harmful to conservative voices. This proposal will ensure that any content moderation decisions are done in good faith, based on objectively reasonable criteria, and in accord with particularized rules.

As has become standard among politicians these days, this completely misstates and misunderstands how Section 230 (and the 1st Amendment) work. Both of the concepts above would be clear violations of the 1st Amendment, as we just saw with the Florida law that Florida Law that tried to create something similar.

The whole thing is one giant performative, grievance, pity party from the party that used to pretend to be against such things. It's just sad, but that is the state of the Republican party these days.

Filed Under: antitrust, bias, big tech, kevin mccarthy, republicans, section 230

Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills

from the sit-down-marco dept

It seems like we can't have even a peaceful week go by without yet another grandstanding fool in Congress introducing yet another terrible bill to destroy the internet. The latest comes from Senator Marco Rubio, who, last week, excitedly released a ridiculous bill that he claims will "crackdown on big tech algorithms and protect free speech." Of course, cracking down on algorithms is, itself, an attack on free speech. And the rest of his bill is nothing but an attack on free speech.

The actual bill is a clusterfuck of bad ideas. It's called the "Disincentivizing Internet Service Censorship of Online Users and Restrictions on Speech and Expression" or "DISCOURSE" Act, and the only thing clever about it is the name.

So what does the bill do? It says big internet companies can no longer moderate "viewpoints." Specifically, it says you no longer get Section 230 protections if you're a firm with a "dominant market share" who...

... engages in a content moderation activity that reasonably appears to express, promote, or suppress a discernible viewpoint for a reason not protected from liability under subsection (c)(2), including reducing or eliminating the ability of an information content provider to earn revenue...

In other words, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are no longer allowed to kick Nazis off their platform or even to demonetize them. This is basically "the Marco Rubio wants to make sure Nazis get free services Act."

And from there it gets worse. It says you don't get 230 protections for anything an algorithm recommends. You lose 230 if your firm with a dominant market share...

... amplifies information provided by an information content provider by using an algorithm or other automated computer process to target the information directly to users without the request of a sending or receiving user...

So, Facebook or Twitter trying to make your feed more relevant means they have to take on liability for everything in your feed.

For all the talk of how this is protecting "free speech," it's the opposite. It's an out and out attack on the free speech of these companies to recommend to their users what they think is most relevant to them and not to be associated with assholes, trolls, Nazis and the like.

Believe it or not, the bill gets even worse and becomes an even bigger attack on free speech. It also says that if you comment upon some other content, you lose 230 protections over that content. I mean, that's just a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment, as the entire purpose is to disincentivize companies from adding their own commentary, fact checking, and the like. The bill says you lose 230 protections if a market dominant firm...

... solicits, comments upon, funds, or affirmatively and substantively contributes to, modifies, or alters information provided by an information content provider...

Got that? Fact checking now makes you liable for the underlying thing you fact checked. That's... both unconstitutional and ridiculous at the same time.

And it gets worse. It would only exempt a very narrow class of content, by limiting it to a revised version of (c)(2)'s classifications -- taking away the subjective ability of a platform to decide what is objectionable on their platform and limiting it to:

any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user has an objectively reasonable belief is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, promoting terrorism or violent extremism, harassing, promoting self-harm, or unlawful, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected

The wider net of "otherwise objectionable" is removed, and a few new categories are added ("promoting terrorism or violent extremism, promoting self-harm, or unlawful"). Of course, locking it to just these categories is problematic. Unless you consider Nazism to be "promoting violent extremism" then you probably can't ban Nazis. Spam... totally allowed under this bill. Being an asshole, as long as it's not "objectively" deemed to be harassing... must be allowed.

The bill also has a transparency clause whose only real purpose is to allow Nazis and trolls to insist they were treated unfairly, by insisting that their harassment of someone was nothing of the sort, and that they were treated unfairly.

Finally, it makes a huge additional change by saying that Section 230 is no longer an immunity, but rather "an affirmative defense." This may not sound like much, but it gets rid of the main procedural benefit of Section 230 as an immunity. As an immunity, it means you get cases dismissed much faster. As an affirmative defense, in many cases you don't get to assert that until much later in the case, after you've gone through expensive discovery. So this takes away the most useful part of Section 230 and makes it an expensive burden.

It's hellishly weird to see someone like Marco Rubio, who pretends to be a traditional "conservative," pushing a bill that will be a massive boon to tort lawyers, and will clog up the courts with vexatious lawsuits. But, hey, it seems that Marco has realized the only way for him to stay relevant these days is to culture war with the best of them, and thus he has to pretend that social media really is out to get conservatives (it is not) and that he has to pass an unconstitutional law to attack the 1st Amendment rights of websites. It's a pitiful move by an increasingly pitiful politician.

Filed Under: bias, content moderation, marco rubio, section 230, social media, transparency

What I Hope Tech CEOs Will Tell Congress: 'We're Not Neutral'

from the just-lay-out-the-truth dept

The CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter will once again testify before Congress this Thursday, this time on disinformation. Here’s what I hope they will say:

Thank you Mister Chairman and Madam Ranking Member.

While no honest CEO would ever say that he or she enjoys testifying before Congress, I recognize that hearings like this play an important role -- in holding us accountable, illuminating our blind spots, and increasing public understanding of our work.

Some policymakers accuse us of asserting too much editorial control and removing too much content. Others say that we don’t remove enough incendiary content. Our platforms see millions of user-generated posts every day -- on a global scale -- but questions at these hearings often focus on how one of our thousands of employees handled a single individual post.

As a company we could surely do a better job of explaining -- privately and publicly -- our calls in controversial cases. Because it’s sometimes difficult to explain in time-limited hearing answers the reasons behind individual content decisions, we will soon launch a new public website that will explain in detail our decisions on cases in which there is considerable public interest. Today, I’ll focus my remarks on how we view content moderation generally.

Not “neutral”

In past hearings, I and my CEO counterparts have adopted an approach of highlighting our companies’ economic and social impact, answering questions deferentially, and promising to answer detailed follow up questions in writing. While this approach maximizes comity, I’ve come to believe that it can sometimes leave a false impression of how we operate.

So today I’d like to take a new approach: leveling with you.

In particular, in the past I have told you that our service is “neutral.” My intent was to convey that we don’t pick political sides, or allow commercial influence over our editorial content.

But I’ve come to believe that characterizing our service as “neutral” was a mistake. We are not a purely neutral speech platform, and virtually no user-generated-content service is.

Our philosophy

In general, we start with a Western, small-d democratic approach of allowing a broad range of human expression and views. From there, our products reflect our subjective -- but scientifically informed -- judgments about what information and speech our users will find most relevant, most delightful, most topical, or of the highest quality.

We aspire for our services to be utilized by billions of people around the globe, and we don’t ever relish limiting anyone’s speech. And while we generally reflect an American free speech norm, we recognize that norm is not shared by much of the world -- so we must abide by more restrictive speech laws in many countries where we operate.

Even within the United States, however, we choose to forbid certain types of speech which are legal, but which we have chosen to keep off our service: incitements to violence, hate speech, Holocaust denial, and adult pornography, just to name a few.

We make these decisions based not on the law, but on what kind of service we want to be for our users.

While some people claim to want “neutral” online speech platforms, we have seen that services with little or no content moderation whatsoever -- such as Gab and Parler -- become dominated by trolling, obscenities, and conspiracy theories. Most consumers reject this chaotic, noisy mess.

In contrast, we believe that millions of people use our service because they value our approach of airing a variety of views, but avoiding an “anything goes'' cesspool.

We realize that some people won’t like our rules, and go elsewhere. I’m glad that consumers have choices like Gab and Parler, and that the open Internet makes them possible. But we want our service to be something different: a pleasant experience for the widest possible audience.

Complicated info landscape means tough calls

When we first started our service decades ago, content moderation was a much less fractious topic. Today, we face a more complicated speech and information landscape including foreign propaganda, bots, disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, deepfakes, distrust of institutions, and a fractured media landscape. It challenges all of us who are in the information business.

All user-generated content services are grappling with new challenges to our default of allowing most speech. For example, we have recently chosen to take a more aggressive posture toward election- and vaccine-related disinformation because those of us who run our company ultimately don’t feel comfortable with our platform being an instrument to undermine democracy or public health.

As much as we aim to create consistent rules and policies, many of the most difficult content questions we face are ones we’ve never seen before, or involve elected officials -- so the questions often end up on my desk as CEO.

Despite the popularity of our services, I recognize that I’m not a democratically elected policymaker. I’m a leader of a private enterprise. None of us company leaders takes pleasure in making speech decisions that inevitably upset some portion of our user base - or world leaders. We may make the wrong call.

But our desire to make our platform a positive experience for millions of people sometimes demands that we make difficult decisions to limit or block certain types of controversial (but legal) content. The First Amendment prevents the government from making those extra-legal speech decisions for us. So it’s appropriate that I make these tough calls, because each decision reflects and shapes what kind of service we want to be for our users.

Long-term experience over short-term traffic

Some of our critics assert that we are driven solely by “engagement metrics” or “monetizing outrage” like heated political speech.

While we use our editorial judgment to deliver what we hope are joyful experiences to our users, it would be foolish for us to be ruled by weekly engagement metrics. If platforms like ours prioritized quick-hit, sugar-high content that polarizes our users, it might drive short term usage but it would destroy people’s long-term trust and desire to return to our service. People would give up on our service if it’s not making them happy.

We believe that most consumers want user-generated-content services like ours to maintain some degree of editorial control. But we also believe that as you move further down the Internet “stack” -- from applications towards ours toward app stores, then cloud hosting, then DNS providers, and finally ISPs -- most people support a norm of progressively less content moderation at each layer.

In other words, our users may not want to see controversial speech on our service -- but they don’t necessarily support disappearing it from the Internet altogether.

I fully understand that not everyone will agree with our content policies, and that some people feel disrespected by our decisions. I empathize with those that feel overlooked or discriminated against, and I am glad that the open Internet allows people to seek out alternatives to our service. But that doesn’t mean that the US government can or should deny our company’s freedom to moderate our own services.

First Amendment and CDA 230

Some have suggested that social media sites are the “new public square” and that services should be forbidden by the government to block anyone’s speech. But such a rule would violate our company’s own First Amendment rights of editorial judgment within our services. Our legal freedom to prioritize certain content is no different than that of the New York Times or Breitbart.

Some critics attack Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a “giveaway” to tech companies, but their real beef is with the First Amendment.

Others allege that Section 230’s liability protections are conditioned on our service following a false standard of political “neutrality.” But Section 230 doesn’t require this, and in fact it incentivizes platforms like ours to moderate inappropriate content.

Section 230 is primarily a legal routing mechanism for defamation claims -- making the speaker responsible, not the platform. Holding speakers directly accountable for their own defamatory speech ultimately helps encourage their own personal responsibility for a healthier Internet.

For example, if car rental companies always paid for their renters’ red light tickets instead of making the renter pay, all renters would keep running red lights. Direct consequences improve behavior.

If Section 230 were revoked, our defamation liability exposure would likely require us to be much more conservative about who and what types of content we allowed to post on our services. This would likely inhibit a much broader range of potentially “controversial” speech, but more importantly would impose disproportionate legal and compliance burdens on much smaller platforms.

Operating responsibly -- and humbly

We’re aware of the privileged position our service occupies. We aim to use our influence for good, and to act responsibly in the best interests of society and our users. But we screw up sometimes, we have blind spots, and our services, like all tools, get misused by a very small slice of our users. Our service is run by human beings, and we ask for grace as we remedy our mistakes.

We value the public’s feedback on our content policies, especially from those whose life experiences differ from those of our employees. We listen. Some people call this “working the refs,” but if done respectfully I think it can be healthy, constructive, and enlightening.

By the same token, we have a responsibility to our millions of users to make our service the kind of positive experience they want to return to again and again. That means utilizing our own constitutional freedom to make editorial judgments. I respect that some will disagree with our judgments, just as I hope you will respect our goal of creating a service that millions of people enjoy.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today.

Adam Kovacevich is a former public policy executive for Google and Lime, former Democratic congressional and campaign aide, and a longtime tech policy strategist based in Washington, DC.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bias, big tech, congressional hearings, content moderation, disinformation, jack dorsey, mark zuckerberg, neutral, section 230, sundar pichai
Companies: facebook, google, twitter

Utah's Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Terrible, Censorial 'Free Speech' Bill Is A Disaster In The Making

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

A month ago, we noted that a bunch of state legislatures were pushing blatantly unconstitutional bills to try to argue that social media websites can't moderate "conservative" views any more. All of these bills are unconstitutional, and most are just silly. The latest one comes from Utah -- and stunningly seems to have legs as it's been moving through the Utah legislative process with some amount of speed over the last week or so.

The bill, SB0228 from state Senator Michael McKell, is so bizarrely wrong on just about everything that it makes Utah look really bad. It's called the "Freedom from Biased Moderation Act" and already that's a pretty clear 1st Amendment problem. Leaving aside the question of whether or not there's any evidence about "anti-conservative bias" in social media moderation (and, just so we're clear: there is no such evidence), if there were moderation decisions that were biased against political viewpoints that would be protected by the 1st Amendment. For good reason.

Courts have made it clear, repeatedly, that the 1st Amendment bars the government from compelling anyone to associate with speech they disagree with. Yet, that's exactly what this bill, and others like it, are seeking to do. Any law that bars the ability to moderate would violate this key part of the 1st Amendment.

But this bill is even more nefarious, in that it couches many of its proposals in ideas that sound reasonable, but they only sound reasonable to people who are totally ignorant of how content moderation works. A key part of the bill is that it requires social media companies to "clearly communicate" the "moderation practices" including "a complete list of potential moderation practices." That's ridiculous, since many cases are unique, and any company doing this stuff has to constantly be responding to changing context, different circumstances, new types of attacks and abuse, and a lot more. This bill seems to presume that every content moderation decision is an obvious paint-by-numbers affair. But that's not how it works at all. Senator McKell should be forced to listen to Radiolab's Post No Evil episode, which details how every time you think there's an easy content moderation rule, you discover a dozen exceptions to it, and you have to keep adjusting the rules. Every damn day.

Then the bill says that a social media company can not "employ inequitable moderation practices." But what does that even mean? Again, every moderation decision is subjective in some way. When we ran 100 content moderation professionals through a simulator with 8 different content moderation decisions, we couldn't get any level of agreement. Because so many of these are judgment calls, and when you have thousands or tens of thousands of moderators making thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of these judgment calls every day, you're always going to be able to find some "inequitable" results. Not because of "bias" but because of reality.

And how would you even define "inequitable" in this situation anyway? Because context matters a lot. All sorts of factors come into play. Someone in a position of power saying something can be very different from someone not in power saying the exact same thing. Something said after an attack on the Capitol might look very different than something said before an attack on the Capitol. Every situation is different. Demanding the same treatment ignores that the situations will always be different.

Indeed, just recently in discussing Facebook bending over to keep Trumpists happy on the platform we noted that the company was confusing equitable results with equitable policies. Part of the issue is that, right now, you have more utter nonsense and misinformation on the Republican side of the aisle, and if you use "equitable policies" you will get inequitable results. But this bill seems to think that inequitable results must mean inequitable policies. But that's... just wrong.

Next, the bill requires a "notice" from a social media company for any moderation, that includes an explanation of exactly why that content was moderated. Again, I understand why people often think this is a good idea (and there are times when it would be nice for companies to do this, because it is often frustrating when you are moderated and it's not clear why). However, this only works if you're dealing with non-abusive, honest actors. But a significant amount of moderation is to deal with dishonest, abusive actors. And having to explain to each one of them exactly why they're being moderated is not a recipe for better moderation, it's a system for (1) having to litigate every damn moderation decision as the person will complain back "but I didn't do that" even when they very clearly did, and (2) it's training abusive, dishonest trolls how to game the system.

Then, the bill has this odd section where it basically would attempt to force social media companies to hire Facebook's Oversight Board (or some other brand new entity that does the same basic thing) as an independent review board:

A social media corporation shall engage the services of an independent review board to review the social media corporation's content moderation decisions.

While this might be a good idea for some companies to explore, for the government to mandate it is absolutely ridiculous. I thought the Republican Party was about keeping government out of business, not telling them how they have to run their business. It gets even sillier, because the Utah legislature thinks that it gets to dictate what types of people can be on such independent review boards:

The independent review board shall consist of at least 11 members who represent a diverse cross-section of political, religious, racial, generational, and social perspectives.

The social media corporation shall provide on the social media corporation's platform biographies of all of the members of the independent review board.

If this law actually passed, and wasn't thrown out as obviously unconstitutional, I'd love to see the Utah legislature determining if the mandated review board for... let's say OnlyFans, had the proper "religious, generational, and social" diversity...

As an enforcement mechanism, the bill would give the Utah Attorney General the ability to take action against companies deemed violating this law (which, again, would be every company because it sets up a nonsensical standard not based in reality).

This bill is an unconstitutional garbage fire of nonsense, completely disconnected from anything even remotely recognizable as to how content moderation works at social media companies. Utah should reject it, and maybe should get someone to teach Senator McKell some basics about the 1st Amendment and how social media actually works.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bias, content moderation, inequity, michael mckell, utah
Companies: facebook, twitter

Another Section 230 Reform Bill: Dangerous Algorithms Bill Threatens Speech

from the another-problem dept

Representatives Malinowski and Eshoo and have introduced a Section 230 amendment called the “Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act” (PADAA). The title is somewhat of a misnomer. The bill does not address any danger inherent to algorithms but instead seeks to prevent them from being used to share extreme speech.

Section 230 of the Communications Act prevents providers of an interactive computer service, such as social media platforms, from being treated as the publisher or speaker of user-submitted content, while leaving them free to govern their services as they see fit.

The PADAA would modify Section 230 to treat platforms as the speakers of algorithmically selected user speech, in relation to suits brought under 42 U.S.C. 1985 and the Anti-Terrorism Act. If platforms use an “algorithm, model, or computational process to rank, order, promote, recommend, [or] amplify” user provided content, the bill would remove 230’s protection in suits seeking to hold platforms responsible for acts of terrorism or failures to prevent violations of civil rights.

These are not minor exceptions. A press release published by Rep. Malinowski’s office presents the bill as intended to reverse the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s ruling in Force v. Facebook, and endorses the recently filed McNeal v. Facebook, which seeks to hold Facebook liable for recent shootings in Kenosha, WI. These suits embrace a sweeping theory of liability that treats platforms’ provision of neutral tools as negligent.

Force v. Facebook concerned Facebook’s algorithmic “Suggested Friends” feature and its prioritization of content based on users’ past likes and interests. Victims of a Hamas terror attack sued Facebook under the Anti-Terrorism Act for allegedly providing material support to Hamas by connecting Hamas sympathizers to one another based on their shared interests and surfacing pro-Hamas content in its Newsfeed.

The 2nd Circuit found that Section 230 protected Facebook’s neutral processing of the likes and interests shared by its users. Plaintiffs appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. The 2nd Circuit’s held that, although:

plaintiffs argue, in effect, that Facebook’s use of algorithms is outside the scope of publishing because the algorithms automate Facebook’s editorial decision‐making.

Facebook is nevertheless protected by Section 230 because its content-neutral processing of user information doesn’t render it the developer or author of user submissions.

The algorithms take the information provided by Facebook users and “match” it to other users—again, materially unaltered—based on objective factors applicable to any content, whether it concerns soccer, Picasso, or plumbers.

The court concludes by noting the radical break from precedent that that plaintiffs’ claims demand. The PADAA would establish this sweeping shift as law.

Plaintiffs “matchmaking” argument would also deny immunity for the editorial decisions regarding third‐party content that interactive computer services have made since the early days of the Internet. The services have always decided, for example, where on their sites (or other digital property) particular third‐party content should reside and to whom it should be shown

Explicitly opening platforms to lawsuits for algorithmically curated content would compel them to remove potentially extreme speech from algorithmically curated feeds. Algorithmic feeds are given center stage on most contemporary platforms – Twitter’s Home timeline, the Facebook Newsfeed, and TikTok’s “For You” page are all algorithmically curated. If social media platforms are exposed to liability for harms stemming from activity potentially inspired by speech in these prominent spaces, they will cleanse them of potentially extreme, though First Amendment protected, speech. This amounts to legislative censorship by fiat.

Exposing platforms to a general liability for speech implicated in terrorism and civil rights deprivation claims is more insidiously restrictive than specifically prohibiting certain content. In the face of a nebulous liability, contingent on the future actions of readers and listeners, platforms will tend to restrict speech on the margins.

The aspects of the bill specifically intended to address Force v. Facebook’s “Suggested Friends” claims, the imposition of liability for automated procedures that “recommend” any “group, account, or affiliation,” will be even more difficult to implement without inhibiting speech and political organizing in an opaque, idiosyncratic, and ultimately content-based manner.

After I attended a Second Amendment Rally in Richmond early this year, Facebook suggested follow-up rallies, local town hall meetings, and militia musters. However, in order to avoid liability under the PADAA, Facebook wouldn’t have to simply refrain from serving me militia events. Instead, it would have to determine if the Second Amendment rally itself was likely to foster radicalism. In light of their newfound liability for users’ subsequent actions, would it be wise to connect participants or suggest similar events? Would all political rallies receive the same level of scrutiny? Some conservatives claim Facebook “incites violent war on ICE” by hosting event pages for anti-ICE protests. Should Facebook be held liable for Willem van Spronsen’s firebombing of ICE vehicles? Rep. Malinowski’s bill would require private firms to far reaching determinations about diverse political movements under a legal Sword of Damocles.

Spurring platforms to exclude organizations and interests tangentially linked to political violence or terrorism from their recommendation algorithm would have grave consequences for legitimate speech and organization. Extremists have found community and inspiration in everything from pro-life groups to collegiate Islamic societies. Budding eco-terrorists might be connected by shared interests in hiking, veganism, and conservation. Should Facebook avoid introducing people with such shared interests to one another?

The bill also fails to address real centers of radicalization. As I noted in my recent testimony to the House Commerce Committee, most radicalization occurs in small, private forums, such as private Discord and Telegram channels, or the White Nationalist bulletin board Iron March. The risk of radicalization – like rumor, disinformation, or emotional abuse, is inherent to private conversation. We accept these risks because the alternative – an omnipresent corrective authority – would foreclose the sense of privileged access necessary to the development of a self. However, this bill does not address private spaces. It only imposes liability on algorithmic content provision and matching, and wouldn’t apply to sites with fewer than 50 million monthly users. Imageboards such as 4 or 8chan are too small to be covered, and users join private Discord groups via invite links, not algorithmic suggestion.

The Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act attempts to prevent extremism by imposing liability on social media firms for algorithmically curated speech or social connections later implicated in extremist violence. Expecting platforms to predictively police algorithmically selected speech a la Minority Report is fantastic. In practice, this liability will compel platforms to set broad, stringent rules for speech in algorithmically arranged forums. Legislation that would push radical, popularly disfavored, or simply illegible speech out the public eye via private proxies raises unavoidable First Amendment concerns.

Filed Under: algorithms, anna eshoo, bias, cda 230, padaa, rankings, section 230, tom malinowski

Facebook Is So 'Biased Against Conservatives' That Mark Zuckerberg Personally Agreed To Diminish The Reach Of 'Left-Leaning' Sites

from the the-narrative-is-garbage dept

As you well know if you've been reading this site for the last few years, there's a garbage myth out there that the internet companies have an "anti-conservative" bias. First of all, even if this were true, there's literally nothing wrong with that. Historically, media companies have long had political biases, going all the way back to the founding of the country (seriously you should read how crazy it was). This is literally part of the reason the 1st Amendment exists in the form that it does. The founders knew that allowing the government to crack down on biased media would create problems over time.

But, it's also important to note that there remains no actual evidence for this so-called bias. There are certainly plenty of examples of the big companies kicking off or otherwise limiting trolls and assholes, but not evidence that it's targeted towards any particular political viewpoint. Indeed, there have been trolls and assholes on both sides of the political spectrum removed, but it does appear that there may be slightly more (and slightly more prominent) trolls and assholes on the Trumpist side of the political scale. Even the one study people tout seems to simply show an anti-Nazi and anti-troll bias, but the study counted accounts like the "American Nazi Party" as "conservative".

Meanwhile, other research has suggested that, if anything, Facebook's moderation efforts have been biased in the other direction, favoring more Trump-friendly news organizations. Some people have blamed the fact that two of Facebook's top policy execs are long-term, hardcore Republican operatives, including former FCC chairman Kevin Martin and former Scalia clerk Joel Kaplan. And Facebook execs will even admit (off the record, apparently) that the Trumpist content thrives on the platform and just does much better.

Of course, a new giant WSJ piece suggests another idea. Despite all the huffing and puffing by Republicans -- or perhaps because of it -- Facebook made the decision to diminish left-leaning sites in its algorithm. As you may recall, facing a ton of criticism about how news flowed on Facebook, Zuckerberg announced plans to diminish the overall importance of "news" and to focus on friends and family more. Of course, he's made that promise more than once, as you might note from the dates on these two separate NY Times articles written a year and a half apart:

Anyhow, as Facebook engineers set about making that work (not very successfully by all accounts), it appears that there was a fear within Facebook that whiny snowflake Trumpists would go insane if any of their sites got demoted. And thus, Facebook engineers tweaked the algorithm to make sure it harmed left-leaning sites in a weird attempt to stave off criticism from Trumpists:

In late 2017, when Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm to minimize the presence of political news, policy executives were concerned about the outsize impact of the changes on the right, including the Daily Wire, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers redesigned their intended changes so that left-leaning sites like Mother Jones were affected more than previously planned, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg approved the plans. “We did not make changes with the intent of impacting individual publishers,” a Facebook spokesman said.

Of course, it hasn't worked in any sense of the word, because Republicans are still insisting that Facebook is biased against them -- because they see that it's working. Zuckerberg (pushed on by Kaplan and Martin) is bending over backwards to favor the Trumpists, and so they're just going to keep playing victim to continue to pressure the company not to make any moves that hurt their presence on the site, while actually harming those at the other end of the political spectrum.

In the WSJ article, the Trump campaign more or less admits that this is their strategy, first admitting that they think that Zuck is a "pragmatist" who is trying to stay out of political fights, and then immediately flipping to whine about how the company treats Trump content:

The Trump campaign considers Mr. Zuckerberg more of a pragmatist than top executives at other major tech companies, according to a person familiar with the matter. But the campaign also has sharply criticized Facebook’s policies. “Just like the rest of the Silicon Valley Mafia, Facebook erroneously believes it is the arbiter of truth and decider of elections,” said Samantha Zager, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, adding that tech companies increasingly censor Mr. Trump and conservatives.

Of course, running a giant company like this is going to involve lots of tradeoffs, and I'm sure that no news story can fully convey the reasons for various decisions made by the company. The most simplistic narratives are rarely true. But this absolutely includes the simplistic narrative that Facebook is somehow biased against "conservatives."

Filed Under: anti-conservative bias, bias, content moderation, mark zuckerberg, politics
Companies: facebook