Facebook Follows Twitter In Recognizing A 'More Speech' Approach Is Best For Newsworthy Liars

from the it's-one-way-to-deal-with-it dept

As you may recall, a few weeks back, Twitter made a decision to add a fact check to some tweets by President Trump, and a few days later, to put a label on some of his tweets, saying that they violated Twitter's policies, and would normally be deleted, but Twitter decided that given the newsworthiness of the speaker, they would be left up (though without the ability to comment or retweet them). The president reacted about as well as expected, meaning he whined vociferously, and eventually issued a silly executive order.

Of course, the other end of this story was that Trump posted some of the same content to Facebook, and Facebook chose to do nothing. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg pulled out this ridiculous self-serving, sanctimonious nonsense about how Facebook would allow that content because he didn't want to be "the arbiter of truth." Except, of course, Facebook does fact checks and content moderation all the time. This seemed to be a lot more about currying favor with the president, than any principled stand.

It created a big fuss within (and outside) the company, and as with any situation in which a social media website says it's taking a hands-off approach, it eventually proves to be totally unworkable. It seems to have taken all of a month for Facebook to recognize this as well.

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a bunch of changes to Facebook's policies that appear to be pretty damn similar to what Twitter did a month earlier, which Zuckerberg originally pretended was a bad idea. Amidst a larger rollout of changes to fight voter suppression and misinformation, there was this:

A handful of times a year, we leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm. Often, seeing speech from politicians is in the public interest, and in the same way that news outlets will report what a politician says, we think people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms.

We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies.

To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence or suppresses voting. Even if a politician or government official says it, if we determine that content may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote, we will take that content down. Similarly, there are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I'm announcing here today.

Frankly, I think this is the best of a bunch of bad solutions. There really isn't a great answer here, even though people always assume there's "the right way" to do this. Among your options:

• Do nothing: What Zuckerberg initially claimed Facebook would do. But this then allows people -- including politicians -- to spread ridiculous lies, sometimes hateful, or violence inducing, without any way to stop it. It pisses off users of your platform, as well as advertisers.
• Take the content down: This pisses off the lying politicians, who are in a position to make your life even more miserable. See the response in Congress to Twitter doing just a little bit of moderation, in which victim-playing Republicans suddenly pretended that Twitter was "censoring them" and demanding revenge.
• Calling out newsworthy exemptions: More or less where both companies have ended up. This still leads to complaints from both sides, but is a form of a compromise -- and one that involves adding "more speech" to questionable speech, rather than completely erasing some speech or pretending that the original speech was perfectly acceptable.

Is this the "best" possible resolution? Almost certainly not. But it does show how the companies continue to struggle through this and adapt to try to come up with solutions that make the most sense in a world where every option has significant trade-offs.

Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, fact checking, free speech, labeling, more speech, newsworthy
Companies: facebook

Another Legislator Hops On Board The 'Violent Video Game' Bandwagon; Introduces Redundant Labeling Bill

from the Rated-M-for-'Moronic' dept

Recent events have returned video games (especially "violent" ones) back to their normal position as convenient grandstand/whipping boy (or girl, you sexist)/political football. Vice President Joe Biden recently met with representatives of the video game industry to inform them that they were just as responsible as the NRA for recent tragic events, and even if not, they'd be mentioned frequently in the same headlines. (The NRA also placed the blame on video games -- quite possibly the only issue on which it saw eye-to-eye with Biden.) New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently declared the M-rated "Call of Duty" games were not welcome in his home, quite possibly because he has four children and it's an M-rated game. And President Obama has called for a thorough study of any possible connection between gun violence and video games to be performed by the CDC.

So, it is with feigned shock that I pass on the news that a politician has introduced a bill aimed at violent video games -- one that looks to "implement" stuff we already have, only with Uncle Sam in charge.

In the wake of President Barack Obama's announcement that the CDC would study the effects of violent video games and other media, Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) has introduced bill H.R. 287, which would "require ratings label on video games" and "prohibit the sales and rentals of adult-rated video games to minors."

Ratings labels, eh? You mean like these handy things that have been slapped all over video games for the past 19 years?

Oh, and "prohibit the sales and rentals of adult-rated [?] video games to minors?" You mean the sort of thing that nearly every respectable retailer has been voluntarily doing for nearly as long?

I understand that politicians are generally allergic to terms like "voluntary" and "self-regulating" and are more partial to terms like "government oversight" and "mandatory" and "nanny state," especially when the prevailing winds favor doing a bit of "something" in response to tragedy. But to force a redundant system into use in order to enforce a standards system that has worked well for years is not only a self-serving, needless expansion of government power, it's just plain stupid.

Matheson's bill would make it mandatory for all games available for sale or rent to sport a rating label, something that nearly every commercially distributed game already features. (Many indie games distributed exclusively via download do not carry these labels, as they are rarely submitted to the ESRB.) Strangely, Matheson's bill relies on the ESRB to provide the rating, rather than turn it over to another agency.

(a) Conduct Prohibited- It shall be unlawful for any person to ship or otherwise distribute in interstate commerce, or to sell or rent, a video game that does not contain a rating label, in a clear and conspicuous location on the outside packaging of the video game, containing an age-based content rating determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

It also requires retailers to post rating information, as supplied by the ESRB. Again, most retailers already do this voluntarily. This goes beyond redundant and into some bizarre coattail-riding territory in which the government piggybacks its agenda onto an existing system and, presumably, rewards itself with raises and high-fives shortly thereafter.

The only difference between what exists now and Matheson's "bold" "vision" for the future is the weight of government enforcement.

It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or rent, or attempt to sell or rent--

(1) any video game containing a content rating of ‘Adults Only’ (as determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board) to any person under the age of 18; or

(2) any video game containing a content rating of ‘Mature’ (as determined by such Board) to any person under the age of 17.

Matheson turns this enforcement over to the Federal Trade Commission, adding an "up to $5,000" fine to any violations. Once again, the question is why? All this does is add a layer of unneeded regulation and fines to a system that a majority of game buyers and sellers feel is working just fine. This is just Matheson turning a system from voluntary to mandatory just so he can appear "tough on video games," which is a terrible plank for any platform.

On the upside (for us -- not so much for Rep. Jim Matheson), legislation tracking site, govtrack.us, currently gives the bill (as it stands) a 3% chance of getting past committee and only a 1% chance of being enacted. Part of this is due to the fact that many other states have tried (and failed) to enact government regulation of video games, something the Supreme Court declared violated the First Amendment. Another factor is the general inactivity level of our representatives (often considered "ideal" by small government types) which has resulted in only 11% of bills making it past committee and only 2% into actual law.

For now, it's more of the same old video game scapegoating, with this effort being surprisingly lazy in its approach. It's cyclical and repetitive, like EA's release schedule -- comforting in its familiarity and unsurprising in its lack of imagination.

Filed Under: free speech, jim matheson, labeling, video games, violent video games

DailyDirt: Printing Messages On Food

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Food labeling can be a controversial topic when it comes to getting everyone to agree what information should be included with various foods. That said, technology that just enables printing information on food can lead to some fun (not just informative) innovations. Here are a few cool ways to get a message across via food.

• A robot espresso machine can print short messages onto coffee foam -- and advertise for a text messaging startup at the same time. If this catches on, YouTube will inevitably have a video of someone printing "Marry Me?" in coffee. [url]
• The killer app for 3D printing could be chocolate printers. Printing Valentine's Day messages in chocolate is just the beginning. [url]
• Fruit labels usually leave sticky residues on your fruit that need to be washed away, so why not just make the label adhesives out of soap? Soaps are usually pretty non-sticky, though, but the idea of using more friendly adhesives on produce is a good thought. [url]
• Are generic corn flakes really a huge problem for Kellogg? What if each corn flake was individually labeled with a Kellogg's signature -- written by lasers? About 128 billion bowls of Kellogg's Corn Flakes are eaten every year, so that's a lot of laser printing... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: coffee, corn flakes, food, labeling, printing
Companies: kellogg

DailyDirt: Seriously, You Are What You Eat...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's still a lot people don't know about biology, and the way biological molecules can be transmitted. Eating food is an unavoidable way of consuming a whole range of biological compounds, and scientists are learning more and more about how foods can affect health. Here are just a few links on some interesting food science topics.

• Bits of RNA from rice have been found to survive digestion and possibly alter gene expression in mammals. MicroRNA pieces that could only have come from plants were found circulating in human blood, and mice experiments suggest that microRNAs could affect cholesterol levels and act as pharmaceuticals. [url]
• Food packaging labels could have a lot of unintended consequences, so it's not surprising that the food industry wants to try to control what they're required to print on their labels. For example, Nutrition Keys only took up 1.5 percent of the surface area of the packaging, potentially making the nutritional info less noticeable. [url]
• The FDA is supposed to start implementing food safety rules soon, but the complexity of creating effective policies (along with a reduced budget to do so) could delay the development of new food safety procedures. Writing the rules might be the easy part, too, compared to the task of actually enforcing them... [url]
• Analyzing the different types of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur in animal muscle tissue can determine the dietary history of farm animals -- which could be useful in verifying whether or not a cow was actually grass-fed its entire life (or just for its last meal). Hmmm. CSI techniques to prove how the farmer killed his cow? [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: cholesterol, food, food safety, labeling, microrna, rna
Companies: fda