LA Sheriff Threatens To 'Subject' City Council To 'Defamation Law' If They Won't Stop Calling His Deputies 'Gang Members'

from the pretty-much-the-legal-competence-you-would-expect-from-a-gang-leader dept

The man presiding over a law enforcement agency filled with gangs and cliques would prefer city officials stop referring to his employees as gang members.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has stated that there are no gangs within the Sheriff's Department, a claim he is obviously unable to back up with facts, because the facts make it clear that the LASD has been (and apparently still is) home to multiple gangs composed of deputies. There's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the gangs infesting the Sheriff's Department.

If you distrust the info on the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia page, there's also this comprehensive database compiled by journalist Cerise Castle for Knock LA -- one that pulls info from public records and court documents to list suspected and verified members of LASD gangs.

Sheriff Villanueva continues to claim there are no gangs within his department. He has also instituted a policy to address the problem he says doesn't exist, forbidding deputies from "joining any group that commits misconduct." You'd think this policy would forbid any deputy from being employed by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, but I guess that's not how Villanueva reads his edict.

As for Villanueva's claim gangs and cliques don't exist within his department? Well, let's take a look at what his employees say:

Hundreds of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said they have been recruited to join secretive, sometimes gang-like cliques that operate within department stations, according to the findings of a survey by independent researchers.

The anticipated study into the problematic fraternities — which L.A. County officials commissioned the Rand Corp. to conduct in 2019 — found 16% of the 1,608 deputies and supervisors who anonymously answered survey questions had been invited to join a clique, with some invitations having come in the last five years.

Well, all evidence to the contrary aside, Sheriff Villanueva is no longer going to stand idly by while city officials continue to make accurate statements about his problematic agency. He's issued a… well, not really a "cease and desist" letter [PDF] to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors demanding (but not really) they stop saying his department has a gang problem. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

The letter is a fun read, even more so because Sheriff Villanueva definitely did not want his vaguely threatening fluff to be considered enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. Behold the semi-coherent wrath of a pissed off public servant.

As the elected Sheriff of Los Angeles County, I demand you and other elected leaders, as well as your appointees, immediately cease and desist from using the derogatory term “deputy gangs” when referring to members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (Department). This willful defamation of character has injured both individuals and the organization. It also serves no purpose other than to fuel hatred and increase the probability of assault and negative confrontations against our people.

So, it looks like a cease-and-desist (it even uses the words!), but the Sheriff has no power to make this demand. And Villanueva is hopefully using the phrase "defamation of character" in the colloquial, no-relation-to-the-legal-meaning sense of the words, because there's plenty of evidence out there that would make any accusations about LASD gangs "substantially true" and, therefore, not defamation at all. I know we (and by "we," I mostly mean courts) don't expect law enforcement officers to be legal experts, which is good, I guess, because they clearly fucking aren't.

The letter continues in the same vein: Villanueva bitching, mostly ineffectively, that it's unfair to his department when city officials say bad things about him and his employees. The next paragraph of the letter basically says the Sheriff's Department has all the heroes and the Board of Supervisors has all the hypocritical assholes.

My personnel routinely place themselves in harm's way while serving our community and ask nothing in return, other than a paycheck and maybe a little respect for the tough job they perform. Elected officials have no problem attending the funeral of a peace officer killed in the line of duty and often fight for the opportunity to speak at the podium, but the manner in which some have enthusiastically branded my personnel as "gang members” every opportunity they get is disgusting.

It is completely possible for officials to show their respect for an officer killed in the line of duty while still suspecting the law enforcement agency they work for is home to groups of officers who commit serious misconduct while engaging in gang-like behavior: violent acts, tattoos/clothing/insignias/etc., codes of silence, et al. You know, just like it's possible for officers of the law to recognize the War on Drugs harms more than it helps.

According to the sheriff's letter, the only reason board members might refer to deputies as gang members stems from a dismissed lawsuit brought by a former LASD deputy. The letter claims this is the only "evidence" anyone has ever had and that other research arriving at the same conclusions is completely undermined because a single source of information was declared to be untrustworthy by a court decision. That willfully ignores the years of data that shows deputies have formed cliques/gangs within the department. And while that may not be the sole contributing factor to large amounts of misconduct, it certainly hasn't helped neutralize the "us vs. them" mentality that is the root of so many casual abuses of rights.

From there it gets truly laughable, with Sheriff Villanueva again demonstrating his inability to understand speech-related laws before claiming that referring to LASD gangs is actually a form of bigotry.

Those who want to further undermine the perception of law enforcement use it as hate speech to promote their own agendas, such as defunding law enforcement and redirecting those funds to their own non-profit organizations, many of which are nothing more than sham corporations who operate with virtually zero accountability. Further use of the term will be evidence of your actual underlying intent, which appears to be a campaign to inflict harm upon the reputation of the Department and myself.

First off, calling someone a gang member or implying there are gangs in the LASD isn't hate speech. It's not even hate speech in the most ignorant sense of the word. Speech someone doesn't like is not hate speech, and that's all that's really happening here. The Sheriff and his deputies aren't a protected class, nor is being employed by the LASD an immutable characteristic that can trigger hate crime laws when derogatory language is used. The rest of this is no less stupid. "Further use… will be evidence of your actual underlying intent" to harm the Department. Whatever. This isn't legally binding and further use will be evidence of nothing.

So very stupid.

As the first fluently Spanish speaking Latino Sheriff in over a hundred years, who supervises a majority Latino workforce, I hope you can see the blatant racial inferences your conscious bias displays every time you choose to attack our Department with this derogatory term.

Um, people were saying the LASD was gang-infested long before you took office, Sheriff. That they're still saying it doesn't reflect on you or your multilingual skills. All it says is that the problem persists and it's now your problem, Sheriff.

Finally, the Sheriff appears to believe this somehow is a valid legal threat, despite the fact he's unlikely to prevail in a defamation lawsuit against city council members. Here's how the letter wraps up:

I openly challenge every elected leader, or their appointees, to provide facts to me and name individuals who they can prove are "gang members," as defined by California Penal Code Section 13670, and subject yourself to defamation laws if wrong.

LOL. Well, this shouldn't be too hard. Here's the relevant part of the California Code:

"Law enforcement gang" means a group of peace officers within a law enforcement agency who may identify themselves by a name and may be associated with an identifying symbol, including, but not limited to, matching tattoos, and who engage in a pattern of on-duty behavior that intentionally violates the law or fundamental principles of professional policing, including, but not limited to, excluding, harassing, or discriminating against any individual based on a protected category under federal or state antidiscrimination laws, engaging in or promoting conduct that violates the rights of other employees or members of the public, violating agency policy, the persistent practice of unlawful detention or use of excessive force in circumstances where it is known to be unjustified, falsifying police reports, fabricating or destroying evidence, targeting persons for enforcement based solely on protected characteristics of those persons, theft, unauthorized use of alcohol or drugs on duty, unlawful or unauthorized protection of other members from disciplinary actions, and retaliation against other officers who threaten or interfere with the activities of the group.

To sum up: the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is a gang associated with an identifying symbol that engages in all of the listed behavior. Therefore, it should be declared illegal under state law and disbanded.

There are few things more enjoyable than sternly-worded letters that are 50% bluster, 50% unintentionally hilarious. Recipients of this letter should take the Sheriff up on his dare and let him know just how many bad apples he's overseeing. If nothing else, council members should send Villanueva a "Thanks for the laugh. I really needed that." in response to his declaration of keyboard war.

Filed Under: alex villanueva, cease and desist, defamation, deputy gangs, gangs, hate speech, la, lasd

Turkey's Dictator Erdogan, Who Has Sued Thousands Of Critics, Jailed More, Now Claims That 'Social Media' Is A 'Threat To Democracy'

from the takes-one-to-know-one dept

In the past we've pointed out how western politicians' attacks on social media are only serving to play into the hands of authoritarians around the globe, justifying their crackdowns on free speech and critics. And that doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. The latest is Turkey's President repeating the exact lines that US/EU politicians have been using to slam social media as "dangerous to democracy" in order to justify even more draconian crackdowns on speech and the press in his country.

We've written about Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for years -- mostly covering his regular attacks on free expression. Erdogan has sued thousands of people for "insulting" him online. Even more serious is his regular practice of jailing journalists by falsely calling them terrorists. He's also lead aggressive campaigns to ban any website that portrays him in an unflattering light.

So, you'd think that maybe US/EU politicians might recognize the problems of someone like Erdogan using their own words to further push his agenda. This weekend, Erdogan announced that social media is a "threat to democracy" and pushed for new laws that would criminalized "fake news" being spread on social media.

“Social media, which was described as a symbol of freedom when it first appeared, has turned into one of the main sources of threat to today’s democracy,” Erdogan said in a video message to a government-organised communications conference in Istanbul.

He added: “We try to protect our people, especially the vulnerable sections of our society, against lies and disinformation without violating our citizens’ right to receive accurate and impartial information.”

I mean, that sounds nearly identical to claims made by people like Senators Amy Klobuchar, Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Warren, or Ted Cruz. Of course, there is no actual democracy in Turkey right now, and Erdogan is just using these claims to justify even greater suppression of speech that criticizes him. As we've highlighted over and over again hate speech laws always turn into a mechanism for the government to punish people they don't like.

As the article notes, Turkey has already moved to have much great control over social media companies, and this new move will ratchet up the pressure:

Turkey passed a law last year requiring social media platforms that have more than 1 million users to maintain a legal representative and store data in the country. Major social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, have since established offices in Turkey.

The new legislation would make the dissemination of “disinformation” and “fake news” criminal offences punishable by up to five years in prison, according to pro-government media reports. It also would establish a social media regulator.

It seems like those US social media companies may want to reconsider their local offices.

But, even more to the point, US and EU politicians going out of their way to exaggerate and slam social media as a "threat to democracy" might want to think a bit more about how their words are being used, almost verbatim, as a justification around the globe to suppress free speech and political criticism.

Filed Under: censorship, democracy, hate speech, recep tayyip erdogan, regulations, social media, turkey

Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well: Series About Antisemitism Removed By Instagram For Being Antisemetic

from the hate-vs.-reporting-on-hate dept

I've written a lot about the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale, and there are lots of reasons for that. But one of the most common is the difficulty both AI and human beings have in distinguishing hateful/trollish/harassing behavior from those reporting on that behavior. We've pointed this out over and over again in a variety of contexts. One classic example is social media websites pulling down human rights activists highlighting war crimes by saying it's "terrorist content." Another were the many examples of people on social media talking about racism and how they're victims of racist attacks having their accounts and posts shut down over claims of racism.

And now we have another similar example. A new video series about antisemitism posted its trailer to Instagram... where it was removed for violating community guidelines.

You can see the video on YouTube, and it's not difficult to figure out how this happened. The message from Instagram says it violates that organization's community guidelines against "violence or dangerous organizations." The video in question, all about antisemitism, does include some Nazi imagery, obviously to make the point that in its extreme form, antisemitism can lead to the murder of Jews. But, Instagram has banned all Nazi content, in part due to those who complained about antisemitism on Instagram.

And that leads to a dilemma. If you're banning Nazi content, you also have to realize how that might lead to content about Nazis (to criticize them and to warn about what they might do) also getting banned. And, again, this isn't new. Earlier this year we had a case study on how YouTube's similar ban took down historical and educational videos about the Holocaust.

The point here is that there is no easy answer. You can say that it should be obvious to anyone reviewing this that trailer (highlighting how bad antisemitism is) is different from actual antisemitism, but it's a lot harder in practice at massive scale. First you need people who actually understand the difference, and you have to be able to write rules that can go out to thousands of moderators in a simple enough manner that explicitly makes clear the differences. And, you also need to give reviewers enough time to actually understand the context, which is kind of impossible given the scale of the content that needs to be reviewed. In such situations the "simpler" versions of the rules often are what get written: "No Nazi content." That's clear and scalable, but leads to these kinds of "mistakes."

Filed Under: antisemitism, community standards, content moderation, hate speech, nazi content, scale
Companies: facebook, instagram

Parler Was Allowed Back In The Apple App Store Because It Will Block 'Hate Speech,' But Only When Viewed Through Apple Devices

from the fracturing dept

Last month we noted that Apple told Congress that it was allowing Parler's iOS app to return to its app store, after the company (apparently) implemented a content moderation system. This was despite Parler's then interim CEO (who has since been replaced by another CEO) insisting that Parler would not remove "content that attacks someone based on race, sex, sexual orientation or religion." According to a deep dive by the Washington Post, the compromise solution is that such content will be default blocked only on iOS devices, but will be available via the web or the sideloaded Google app, though they will be "labeled" as hate by Parler's new content moderation partner, Hive.

Posts that are labeled “hate” by Parler’s new artificial intelligence moderation system won’t be visible on iPhones or iPads. There’s a different standard for people who look at Parler on other smartphones or on the Web: They will be able to see posts marked as “hate,” which includes racial slurs, by clicking through to see them.

Hive is well known in the content moderation space, as it is used by Chatroulette, Reddit and some others. Hive mixes "AI" with a large team of what it refers to as "registered contributors" (think Mechanical Turk-style crowdsourced gig work). Of course, it was only just last year that the company announced that its "hate model" AI was ready for prime time, and I do wonder how effective it is.

Either way, this is interesting for a variety of reasons. One thing we've talked about in the past with regards to content moderation is that one of the many problems is that different people have different tolerances for different kinds of speech, and having different moderation setups for different users (and really pushing more of the decision making to the end users themselves) seems like an idea that should get a lot more attention. Here, though, we have a third party -- Apple -- stepping in and doing that deciding for the users. It is Apple's platform, so of course, they do get to make that decision, but it's a trend worth watching.

I do wonder if we'll start to see more pressure from such third parties to moderate in different ways to the point that our mobile app experiences and our browser experiences may be entirely different. I see how we end up in such a world, but it seems like a better solution might be just pushing more of that control to the end users themselves to make those decisions.

The specific setup here for Parler is still interesting:

Parler sets the guidelines on what Hive looks for. For example, all content that the algorithms flag as “incitement,” or illegal content threatening physical violence, is removed for all users, Peikoff and Guo said. That includes threats of violence against immigrants wanting to cross the border or politicians.

But Parler had to compromise on hate speech, Peikoff said. Those using iPhones won’t see anything deemed to be in that category. The default setting on Android devices and the website shows labels warning “trolling content detected,” with the option to “show content anyway.” Users have the option to change the setting and, like iOS users, never be exposed to posts flagged as hate.

Peikoff said the “hate” flag from the AI review will cue two different experiences for users, depending on the platform they use. Parler’s tech team is continuing to run tests on the dual paths to make sure each runs consistently as intended.

Of course, AI moderation is famously mistake-prone. And both Parler and Hive execs recognize this:

Peikoff said Hive recently flagged for nudity her favorite art piece, the “To Mennesker” naked figures sculpture by Danish artist Stephan Sinding, when she posted it. The image was immediately covered with a splash screen indicating it was unsafe.

“Even the best AI moderation has some error rate,” Guo said. He said the company’s models show that one to two posts out of every 10,000 viewed by the AI should have been caught on Parler but aren’t.

I do question those percentages, but either way it's another interesting example of how content moderation continues to evolve -- even if Parler's users are angry that they won't be able to spew bigotry quite as easily as previously.

Filed Under: content moderation, hate speech, ios, platforms
Companies: apple, hive, parler

California Legislators Now Get Into The Pointless & Likely Counterproductive Content Moderation Legislating Business

from the bad-ideas-with-good-intent dept

Another day, another state house deciding that it needs to jump into the business of content moderation. This time it's California, and this bill (1) is not nearly as insane as many other states and (2) appears to be coming from well meaning people with good intentions. It doesn't make it a good bill, however. It was announced this week in a somewhat odd press release from Assembly Majority Whip Jesse Gabriel, who declares it to be "groundbreaking" as well as a "bipartisan effort to hold social media companies accountable for online hate and disinformation."

Needless to say, the bill is neither groundbreaking, nor would it do much of anything to hold social media companies accountable for online hate and disinformation. Also, bizarrely, the press release does not link to the bill. That's just dumb. However, I will link to it, even though I'm not any of the elected officials supposedly pushing this bill that they do not want to link to. And then if you look at the bill, you can see it was actually introduced... back in early February, so it's not clear why they waited until now to do the press release.

The press release makes a lot of blustery claims that the bill cannot live up to (perhaps why they didn't link). Also, there's a key part in all of this that goes unstated: whether we like it or not, everything that the press release and this bill are complaining about -- hate speech, disinformation, extremism, and even a lot of harassment -- are still protected under the 1st Amendment. So, realistically there is not much that any bill on those topics can do without running afoul of the 1st Amendment. To be clear, this is not saying that any of those things are good or should be hosted on mainstream websites. Nor is it saying that the big social media companies shouldn't be constantly improving their moderation practices to deal with those things. It's just noting the reality of the 1st Amendment, and how this bill appears to mainly be upset about those 1st Amendment realities.

As for the actual bill, it is pretty limited. It only applies to "social media companies" that have over $100 million in revenue in the previous year:

(1) “Social media company” means a person or entity that owns or operates a public-facing internet-based service that generated at least one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000) in gross revenue during the preceding calendar year, and that allows users in the state to do all of the following:

(A) Construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system created by the service.
(B) Populate a list of other users with whom an individual shares a connection within the system.
(C) View and navigate a list of the individual’s connections and the connections made by other individuals within the system.

(2) “Social media company” does not include a person or entity that exclusively owns and operates an electronic mail service

So... uh... this covers Facebook/Instagram, Twitter... Pinterest, TikTok... and maybe Snap? I guess LinkedIn as well? I don't even think it would cover YouTube since I'm not sure if YouTube lets you "view and navigate a list of connections" within the system (or if it does, I've never seen it). I don't think Reddit would be covered for the same reason.

And what would it require of these companies? Transparency reports. Which most of these companies already do. The requirements would probably force them to make some more changes to the transparency reports they issue to focus more narrowly on the topics the bill seeks to "deal with" but not in a meaningful way. Twice a year, the company will have to submit to California's Attorney General "a terms of service report," which will include the current terms of service (the AG can't download a copy directly?!?), a list of any changes to the terms, and a description of "how the current version of the terms of service defines" a variety of things: hate speech, racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation, misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.

It will also require that the companies hand over rules or guidelines given to staff to handle that type of content, and any training material those staff are given.

Then, every quarter, companies will have to tell the AG how many bits of content have been "flagged" and how many bits of content have been "actioned," along with the number of times an "actioned item" was "viewed" or "shared." There's a lot more detail in there, but it's all just asking for numbers on how content was flagged, how the company dealt with it, how many people saw the content.

And again, for the most part, companies already do this. Here, for example, is Facebook's explanation of how much content it removed for harassment and bullying and for hate speech. Twitter's transparency report provides similar info. For example:

It's not all of the info that this law would require, but the basic info is all public and has been for a long time. And how is this possibly useful to the California Attorney General? The AG cannot take action against these companies for failing to take down content they dislike. That would violate the 1st Amendment. The only thing the AG can do is take action against these companies for failing to file such a report (and, arguably, Section 230 might even pre-empt this law and make it unenforceable anyway).

All of this, again, seems to be premised on the false belief that these large social media companies don't care and aren't doing anything to deal with misinformation, hate, etc. on their platforms. And that's just wrong. Each of the companies has tremendous incentive to keep their platforms clean of that stuff because it drives away users and advertisers.

Even worse, it's possible that this kind of bill could easily backfire and do much more damage to the very people the bill's supporters suggest it's designed to protect. As we've discussed many times before, "transparency" regarding moderation sounds great in theory, but is very thorny in practice. Especially when dealing with bad actors. Trolls love to game the system, and the more transparency that is given around moderation standards and practices, the more they are likely to toe the line and/or cry foul when their obviously trollish behavior is "actioned." There doesn't appear to be that much required in this bill that would help adversaries, but time and time again I am amazed at how far adversaries are willing to go to twist things to their advantage.

Also, like so many other bills about rapidly changing technology, this bill seems to assume that certain things will always remain as is. That is, it assumes a world in which "bad" content is "flagged" and then "actioned" by the company in some way. But, imagine there were a system where users were given more control over their own parts of a social media ecosystem -- and could make use of different algorithms. This is the world that Twitter claims it's moving towards, but then how would it handle demands like the ones in this bill, when "flagged" and "actioned" would likely mean very different things. Or, what if a social media system that worked more like Wikipedia or Reddit appeared -- in which the community itself handled the moderation. How would that platform comply with this law?

Finally, because this is a state law, and other states are considering similar bills, it could create a real compliance mess if every state requires different information and different reporting in different formats. This really isn't the kind of thing the state should be regulating in the first place.

In the end, all this kind of bill would do is create a compliance headache for these companies, and do very little to deal with the actual realities on the ground of content moderation. It may make politicians in Sacramento feel good so they can put out silly press releases about how they're "doing something," but it's generally performative nonsense that won't make any real change, nor have any real impact.

Filed Under: california, content moderation, disinformation, hate speech, jesse gabriel, section 230, state laws, transparency

It's Not Just Republican State Legislators Pushing Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bills

from the pointing-the-finger-at-the-other-side-of-the-aisle dept

Over the last month we've written quite a few times about various state legislatures (and Governors) picking up on the nonsensical and unsupported statements that (1) "conservatives" face too much bias in social media content moderation decisions and (2) that Section 230 is somehow to blame for this. They've pushed a whole bunch of blatantly unconstitutional state laws that would seek to limit how social media companies can moderate content -- effectively compelling them to host content they disagree with (which would violate the 1st Amendment). Of course, as we've noted for quite some time now, both Republicans and Democrats seem to be very mad at Section 230, but for totally contradictory reasons. Republican bills seek to make social media companies moderate less content, while Democratic bills seek to make social media companies moderate more content.

Both approaches are unconstitutional violations of the 1st Amendment. While most of the fights over the past few years have happened in Congress, now with these bad bills moving to the state legislators, it appears that Democrats don't want to be left behind. Over in Colorado, Colorado Senate president pro tempore Kerry Donovan would seek to force companies to moderate "hate speech," "fake news," and "conspiracy theories."

The full bill is really, really bad. Websites would need to register (for a fee) with a "digital communications commission" in Colorado, and that Commission would accept complaints against social media websites if they were used for hate speech, undermining election integrity, disseminating intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news. There's a big problem with this: most of that is protected under the 1st Amendment. I know that many people don't like that those things are protected speech, but you actually should like it. Because if "fake news" or "undermining election integrity" was not protected under the 1st Amendment, just imagine how the Trump administration would have abused both things.

After all, it spent four years arguing that any criticism of the administration was "fake news" and claimed, repeatedly (despite the total lack of evidence) that the processes and procedures that helped make the 2020 election fair actually "undermined election integrity." This is why we don't let the government punish people for speech around those issues, because the government will define it in ways we dislike.

As Eugene Volokh notes, beyond the fact that all of this is pretty clearly unconstitutional, the bill doesn't even bother to define "hate speech." Or "undermine election integrity." Or "fake news." Or "conspiracy theories." Or "intentional disinformation."

Kerry Donovan is now running for US Congress as well (against conspiracy theorist Lauren Boebert). One would hope that she would have first learned how the 1st Amendment works before seeking to run for Congress. We might agree that Boebert clearly doesn't belong anywhere near Capitol Hill, but that's no excuse for misunderstanding some fairly basic principles in the Bill of Rights.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, disinformation, election integrity, fake news, free speech, hate speech, kerry donovan, lauren boebert, social media