When Facebook Decides To Silently Delete Journalism

from the down-the-memory-hole dept

There's been an awful lot of discussion about the role of Facebook on journalism these days. I'm actually a lot less concerned than many who have been complaining that Facebook's growing importance is somehow "dangerous" for the future of news. The simple fact is that a huge percentage of people (especially young people) currently get their news via Facebook. But, at the very least, we should be concerned when Facebook starts to play the role of the arbitrary editor, simply deleting stories it doesn't like.

Jim MacMillan, a photojournalist who is currently the Assistant Director for the Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University happened upon a somewhat tragic scene last month, of a 68-year-old woman struck and killed by one of those "Duck Boats" (the rickety half bus/half boat things that are -- for reasons I still don't get -- popular with tourists). The story made headlines in part because of claims that the woman was too focused on her mobile device to notice that she was walking in the road against the traffic light.

MacMillan just happened to be there, and while he notes that he's been out of the "breaking news" photojournalism business for years, he recognized an opportunity and snapped a few photographs and posted them to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter:

Police hang a tarp after a person was caught under #RideTheDucks boat at 11th and Arch just now. Looks very serious: pic.twitter.com/FOvgs3PuMY

— Jim MacMillan (@JimMacMillan) May 8, 2015

The reason that I only linked to the Twitter version is because the other ones are gone. According to MacMillan, Facebook silently deleted the other two with no explanation:

I posted the photo to my Instagram account and clicked the button to share to Facebook. But while discussing the incident with a colleague last night, I scrolled back and discovered that both posts had been deleted.

MacMillan notes that he was careful to post a photo that did not show the actual body, but rather the police putting up the tarp:

In the most recent incident, I saw the victim’s body between the right, rear wheels and it was clear that she was dead, but I posted a more sensitive picture of police on the other side of the vehicle and captioned it only to say: “Police hang a tarp after a person was caught under ‪#‎RideTheDucks‬ boat at 11th and Arch just now. Looks very serious.”

We do things like this to eliminate the possibility that loved ones will learn of the death from anyone but official sources and to spare viewers the traumatic effects of graphic imagery whenever possible. In other words, I was operating conservatively within standard practices of photojournalism.

That was my best effort to be sensitive to the victim while responsible to the public's right to know that there had been another fatal accident involving a Ride the Ducks boat.

As MacMillan notes, it's particularly ridiculous that Facebook didn't even inform him of this or give him any chance to respond or protest the silent deletion of his journalistic work:

But why would Facebook take down this image? Who might have complained? And shouldn’t I have been offered the opportunity to respond?

In an update, MacMillan notes that people from Facebook are claiming they have no record of a takedown at all -- leading MacMillan to wonder if he really posted them at all if some sort of technical glitch may be to blame. Yet, he also notes that the way it got onto Twitter was because he has an IFTTT recipe that reposts all his Instagram/Facebook posts to Twitter. The fact that the image is on Twitter certainly suggests he did, in fact, post them to Facebook. Either way, there are legitimate concerns about how Facebook's policy works in terms of taking down stories. The company has certainly had problems in the past, and this is going to be a concern going forward. You're relying on someone else's platform, and they can do what they want with it.

While I'm less worried than many others about Facebook's impact on journalism, it does seem like the company really ought to very, very clear and transparenty how it handles taking down content. Many other sites make sure that they, at the very least, inform users of any takedowns and even provide clear processes for challenging the decision. Here, assuming MacMillan is correct, the content was just removed. If the content really was just removed, it should call into question the credibility of journalism found on Facebook.

Filed Under: deleting, editors, jim macmillan, journalism, takedowns
Companies: facebook

Jimmy Wales Thinks Snowden Is 'An Innocent Party' And 'A Hero'; Wants To Know If He Ever Edited Wikipedia

from the another-mystery dept

A post on Examiner.com points out that Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, is interested in Edward Snowden:

I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere. In the media there have been reports of user accounts used on various tech discussion sites by Edward Snowden. He was apparently quite an active person online, particularly a few years back when he was younger. It seems highly likely to me that he would have edited Wikipedia -- most people who fit his profile (tech savvy, internet activist types) will have done so. Do we have any evidence of that, or suspicions about that?

As Wales says, it certainly seems possible that Snowden might have fiddled with a bit or two on Wikipedia, as one does, so it's a reasonable question to pose. But there's a complication, also pointed out in the Examiner.com story:

However, a key problem for Mr. Wales is that Wikipedians aren't allowed to snoop into the identity of other other Wikipedia editors who have not disclosed their real name on Wikipedia.

This tension between wanting to know if Snowden was a Wikipedia editor, and rules that say the identity of editors should not be revealed unilaterally, is explored in a fascinating -- and lively -- discussion underneath Wales's original post that's well-worth reading. His position on the matter is the following:

It is not 'outing' when the user ids in question are already published widely in the media in reliable sources. I looked for a couple of variant spellings and found nothing, so I asked to see if others could find anything. I think it is not only acceptable but highly desirable for people to openly discuss such matters. If someone discovers or knows something that they feel would be inappropriate to post publicly, then they should send it to me privately.

Snowden's relationship with Wikipedia remains a mystery; Wales's views on Snowden, by contrast, are pretty clear:

I personally think in general Snowden is an "innocent party" -- a hero, in fact.

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

Filed Under: ed snowden, editors, jimmy wales, wikipedia
Companies: wikipedia

Journalists And Key Engineers Who Built The Internet: Completely Opposed To SOPA

from the as-they-should-be dept

Another day, and another group of influential folks have come out against SOPA. First up, the more surprising one: the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), a large group of journalists and editors have spoken out against the bill. And these are people who SOPA supporters are including in their list of the "copyright intensive industries" and yet they don't want this bill, because they know it'll increase liability for doing what they do every day.

Separately, a who's who list of 83 internet engineers has come out against SOPA. This is basically everyone who built the core infrastructure that the internet is based on, and they're not at all comfortable with the bill. That should say something. Remember the House's SOPA hearing that didn't have a single technical expert on the panel? Perhaps they should have held a hearing that included some of these people, who all seem very opposed to the bill.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills -- SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly -- also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, editors, free speech, internet engineers, journalists, pipa, protect ip, sopa

Columnist Claims Italy's Google Verdict Makes Sense

from the someone-edited-that? dept

Ted Rall is a columnist/cartoonist, who, a couple years ago, wrote one of the most ridiculous opinion pieces we've seen in a long time -- suggesting that the answer to newspapers' current economic woes is that they should all take their websites down. That column was so full of economic and legal ignorance I thought there was a good chance that it was actually satire -- but people insisted he was serious. Now reader Mandy alerts us to a new column from Rall that again is so devoid of basic logic that I wonder if it's satire. This time he's standing way out on a limb arguing that Italy got it right in finding three Google execs criminally liable for a video some kids posted to Google Video.

Rall's reasoning once again defies logic. He seems unable to comprehend the difference between a publisher and a tool or service provider. Instead, he just insists that Google (and any other online service provider) should be forced to carefully review and fact check every piece of content uploaded before it can be available. Apparently, he doesn't quite recognize what he's asking for. On YouTube alone, more than 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute. And that's just YouTube. Rall also suggests that every blog post, every Tweet and every Facebook message should first be reviewed by an editor before it can be posted.

I think this really goes back to Rall's previous clueless column. He can't stand competition, so his solution is to put in place ridiculous free speech destroying rules and regulations to effectively kill off the internet, because someone might misuse it. His argument is based on the scenario that what if he ran a story falsely accusing you of being a drug-addicted child pornographer. He claims -- falsely -- that if he just published it online, there's nothing you can do about it. He later admits he's lying by saying you could sue him, but he brushes that off by saying no one would sue him because he has no money. Of course, people sue for libel all the time -- even those with no money.

But the really scary thing is that Rall seems to think that basically destroying the freedom to communicate and to express yourself online makes sense, just because the tool might possibly be used to spread a false statement. Does he not recognize the unintended consequences of this? Does he not realize that his "suggestion" for fixing the internet is effectively how much of China's internet censorship program works? Does he not think there might be more effective ways of dealing with such situations? For example, if Rall were to falsely accuse you of being a drug-addicted child pornographer, and it's clearly bogus, then you have an opportunity to fight back, and point out that Rall is wrong, destroy his reputation, and make sure he never gets another job again. Why not let free speech combat free speech?

Instead, Rall seems terrified of free speech, and would prefer that it only come from the "professionals" like himself.

Filed Under: communication, editors, filters, free speech, italy, ted rall
Companies: google

If The AP Is About Clear And Concise Reporting... Why Can't It Explain Its New Plan?

from the it-needs-an-editor dept

We've been discussing the Associated Press attempt to DRM the news using some technology it clearly doesn't understand. But the most infuriating part is that the AP simply hasn't been able to answer the myriad questions thrown at it about this silly plan -- and when pressed, suddenly announced it wasn't talking any more.

This seems especially ironic when you realize that the AP is supposedly in the business of explaining complex news events to the world. John Temple, a former newspaper editor, is pointing out, amusingly, that the AP really should have found an editor to go over its plan before it released it -- because that editor would have hopefully done a better job forcing the AP to explain itself:

So why do I say AP's planners needs an editor? Because editors make writing clear and understandable. And this "plan" is neither.

When reporters write news stories about the challenges an industry faces, it's important that they be clear -- and, of course, accurate -- about what the problems are and what steps are proposed to address them. The reporters' job is to help readers understand the problems and evaluate possible solutions. It's also important that reporters be clear about the potential industry or company conflicts that stand in the way of or complicate possible solutions.

The first paragraph of the AP document makes a bald assertion without the facts to back it up that a good editor would require of any reporter. It talks of news content being monetized without fair compensation and "rampant" unauthorized use of AP content on literally tens of thousands of Web sites. It says the problem is quickly spreading. The document goes on in this vein and seems to mix and muddle two concerns: unauthorized use -- the blatant stealing of entire stories or photographs -- and the use of headlines and snippets by search engines and others. It never makes clear how big the first problem is. Is there really that much revenue being stolen from the owners of content as a result of bloggers and others cutting and pasting AP stories? I don't know the answer from reading this document.

Of course, one might argue that the reason the document is so unclear is because the Associated Press itself doesn't understand it.

Filed Under: drm, editors, journalism, news
Companies: associated press