Bad Faith Politicians Are Using Social Media Suspension To Boost Their Own Profiles

from the how-do-you-deal-with-this? dept

You may have heard that conspiracy theorist and nonsense-spouting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has, not for the first time, been temporarily suspended from Twitter for passing along conspiracy theory nonsense regarding vaccines. She's unable to tweet for 7 days. I, unfortunately, can't find the tweet now, but back in July when she was similarly suspended for just 12 hours, I saw someone jokingly note that temporarily suspending someone like Greene was the equivalent of Twitter throwing her a fundraiser, since she would immediately turn around, play the victim, and get her gullible, duped followers to throw more money at her. And, no doubt the same is true with this suspension as well. She's already put out a statement and the usual "conservative" media orgs are already talking about how "Twitter can't handle the truth" or some such nonsense.

And then, of course, you have people who are reasonably ticked off at Twitter "only" temporarily suspending Greene for spreading nonsense info, rather than permanently banning her.

So, in the end, you have both ends of the political spectrum mad about this setup, and trying to spin it to their own advantage. However, once again, it really seems to highlight the impossible nature of content moderation at scale, especially when some of the parties are clearly acting in bad faith.

Twitter has its escalation policies in place, and they're designed (reasonably!) to deal with good faith users, who might not realize they're violating the rules or spreading dangerous disinformation. In that world, an escalating penalty system makes sense. Getting suspended for a few hours or a week generally sucks for users who actually like to use the site but it's a sort of "cool off" period combined with a gentle nudge to be a better participant on the internet. But, of course, that system kind of breaks down when you have not just bad faith actors who are deliberately testing the boundaries of what they can get away with, but who actually benefit from the suspension and the press attention that comes with it.

At this point, some will say "well, that's a perfect reason to just suspend such people permanently." But, alas, that comes with its own challenges. Indeed, jumping straight to a permanent suspension only proves that the company would be treating some people differently, and would be treated by people like Greene as "proof" of "anti-conservative bias" (again, this would be bad faith, but it would allow the story to have some level of confirmation). So, Twitter can't do that without providing what a bunch of people will see as confirming evidence. So Twitter follows its rules, and continues to escalate the punishment (eventually MTG will get permanently suspended, it seems only a matter of time).

Looked at realistically, the fact that Twitter is following its stated escalation policies, rather than doing an outright ban should be seen as evidence that it is not "biased against conservatives," but is treating everyone the same. If you violate the company's policies about COVID vaccines, then you go through the escalation process -- whether you made a mistake in good faith or whether your a bad faith grifter. Of course, that's not how it will play out anywhere, because no one does nuance any more.

Some might argue that the obvious bad faith nature of MTG's arguments mean that Twitter should just have a policy of banning bad faith grifters. And that's certainly tempting, but how do you define bad faith grifter within a policy such that a large team of content moderation professionals can apply it consistently? The problem is that you really can't. The very nature of an escalation policy is that it does, eventually, take care of most bad faith grifters. It just takes time, and allows them to violate the rules a bunch of times before getting the final send-off.

Filed Under: bad faith, content moderation, politicians, social media
Companies: twitter

Why Congress Needs The Office Of Technology Assessment More Than Ever

from the bring-it-back dept

In 2015, following a tragic shooting in San Bernardino, California, Congress faced a difficult issue. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was in possession of a locked iPhone that belonged to one of the shooters, and it wanted to gain access to that phone as part of its investigation. Members of Congress found themselves in the middle of a contentious debate over whether Apple should be required to unlock the phone to give the FBI access to its contents. During this pivotal time, Congress did not have an unbiased source of information to turn to for an explanation of the technical feasibility and societal implications of requiring Apple to enable the FBI to bypass those protections. In the absence of such a source, we were forced to rely solely on the input of the FBI and of Apple—two players who had strong, conflicting interests at play in the debate.

But that wasn’t always the case. For more than twenty years we had the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), an independent, bipartisan agency set up to provide unbiased information on technology and its potential impacts. However, in 1995 the agency was defunded, stripping Congress of the ability to access unbiased tech advisors as we entered the digital age. Today, as Americans are feeling the effects of emerging technologies—including issues around data privacy and artificial intelligence—we are experiencing the repercussions of the decision to defund this vital piece of the Congressional support system.

Although some have suggested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s new Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team should fulfill the role of the OTA, or that the combination of GAO and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) can meet Congress’ technology expertise needs, relying solely on GAO and CRS for all of our technology assessment needs is a short-sighted solution. Despite the potential of GAO’s new STAA team and the fine tradition of CRS, neither of these two organizations—independently or combined—fill the void left by the shuttering of the OTA. In the ecosystem of Congressional support agencies CRS summarizes; GAO evaluates; and the OTA anticipates.

During the encryption debate following the San Bernardino shooting, CRS generated a report outlining the debate and summarizing existing knowledge and laws on encryption and law enforcement investigations. GAO could have initiated a study focused on analyzing what happened and how the situation could be handled in the future. However, only the OTA is set up to anticipate this issue and have the foundational expertise to inform Congress about both the technological and policy questions at play when the issue arose.

Americans are starting to take notice of the lack of effective lawmaking following some of the biggest technology scandals in recent times. Without the OTA’s forward-thinking approach, Congress’ ability to address the technological challenges of the present, and of the future, will fall short of what effective lawmaking during the ever-evolving digital age demands. A well-funded agency whose sole purpose is advising Congress on technology issues, free from the influence of corporate and special interests, is absolutely necessary.

Congress’ technology assessment needs will only continue to grow as we work to anticipate the potential benefits and effects of emerging technologies. As we consider the use of technologies such as AI, facial recognition, quantum computing, and emerging energy storage and generation in both the private and public sectors, it is increasingly important that Congress have unbiased assessments of what is on the horizon. While CRS and GAO are well equipped to look at what is known and what has already happened, and to identify questions and gaps, the OTA’s role is to chart the way forward by generating new knowledge that answers those questions and fills those gaps.

We must make strategic investments in our ability to encourage innovation, understand its benefits, and help constituents be best equipped for the challenges emerging technologies may bring. Technology is transforming our daily lives. We should not fear it; we should be well-prepared to deal with the changes it will create—the Office of Technology Assessment will help us do just that.

Filed Under: congress, office of technology assessment, ota, politicians, tech literacy

Federal Court Says Massachusetts' Wiretap Law Can't Be Used To Arrest People For Recording Public Officials

from the because-duh-this-was-decided-seven-years-ago dept

Seven years ago, the First Circuit Court of Appeals released its Glik decision. This decision found that recording public officials was protected by the First Amendment, overriding Massachusetts state law. The state wiretap law says recordings must have consent of everyone captured on the recording. The Appeals Court said recording police officers while they performed their duties in public was clearly covered by the First Amendment. The opinion also dealt with some ancillary Fourth Amendment issues, but seemingly made it clear these recordings were protected activity.

The law remained on the books unaltered. Thanks to legislative inaction, the law is still capable of being abused. Since the Appeals Court didn't declare the law unconstitutional, or even this application of it, it has taken another federal court decision nearly a decade later to straighten this out. (h/t Courthouse News Service)

The ruling [PDF] deals with two First Amendment cases. One deals with activists recording cops. The other deals with another set of activists -- James O'Keefe's Project Veritas -- and its secret recording of Democratic politicians. The specifics might be a bit different, but the outcome is the same: recording public officials is protected by the First Amendment. The state law is unconstitutional.

Consistent with the language of Glik, the Court holds that Section 99 may not constitutionally prohibit the secret audio recording of government officials, including law enforcement officials, performing their duties in public spaces, subject to reasonable time, manner, and place restrictions.

That just reiterates Glik's findings. The Massachusetts federal court goes further, though:

The Court declares Section 99 unconstitutional insofar as it prohibits audio recording of government officials, including law enforcement officers, performing their duties in public spaces, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The Court will issue a corresponding injunction against the defendants in these actions.

The court also points out the state government's response to the Glik ruling was wrong. The ruling did not limit itself to "openly" recording public officials. It said the First Amendment protected the recording of public officials performing public duties whether or not government officials knew they were being recorded.

In October 2011, the bulletin was accompanied by a memo from the Commissioner citing the Glik decision. The memo instructs officers that “public and open recording of police officers by a civilian is not a violation” of Section 99. The cover memo for the May 2015 recirculation “remind[s] all officers that civilians have a First Amendment right to publicly and openly record officers while in the course of their duties.”

[...]

But Glik did not clearly restrict itself to open recording. Rather, it held that the First Amendment provides a “right to film government officials or matters of public interest in public space.”

The court says siding with the government's interpretation would just result in more bogus arrests under the state's wiretap law.

But the training materials go beyond telling officers when it is impermissible to arrest; taking a narrow construction of Glik, they also communicate that it is permissible to arrest for secretly audiorecording the police under all circumstances. In other words, it gives the green light to arrests that, as the Court holds below, are barred by Glik.

This ruling should put an end to that. You'd think the last ruling would have done the job, but despite the Appeals Court never ruling that secret recordings of public officials were illegal, the state decided to interpret the decision this way, leading directly to the lawsuits requiring the record to be set one more time, seven years down the road.

Filed Under: 1st circuit, first amendment, first circuit, free speech, massachusetts, police, politicians, public accountability, recording

Rep. Kevin McCarthy Continues The Parade Of Stupid Anti-Internet Grandstanding

from the playing-to-a-dumb-base-is-dumb dept

In the last few months, we've seen a fairly astounding amount of idiotic grandstanding from both parties in Congress, basically trying to out stupid themselves in attacking internet companies. On the Democratic side, they've been peddling incomprehensible nonsense about how internet companies have to stop bad information from spreading (and also some misleading claims about antitrust). On the Republican side, they keep dragging internet companies up to Capitol Hill and making ridiculous and blatantly misleading claims about how they're "censoring" conservatives, which is a bunch of utter nonsense.

And here's the thing: most of the politicians spewing this stuff know it's pure nonsense. But, they also know that it's an effective money raising tactic. When Democrats and Republicans clash over an issue, all too frequently, it's really about riling up people for donations, rather than any actual policy agenda. And it appears it's not going away any time soon. Despite multiple hearings that have only served to make Congress look incredibly hypocritical and/or ignorant, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is now joining the fray, saying he wants Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify about Twitter's made up censoring of conservative voices.

And while I'm not sure whether or not some other members of Congress grandstanding on this issue actually understand what's going on, McCarthy of all people should know better. He actually has at least some history of understanding tech issues better than many of his colleagues. But, apparently, these days, the way to raise money is to make blatantly false or misleading statements against tech companies, and thus, McCarthy feels the need to join in on this silly dog and pony show. I'm sure we'll get another stupid hearing out of it that demonstrates to anyone just how clueless Congress is, but I guess if it gets a bunch of ignorant people to kick in to his re-election campaign, that's all good, right?

Filed Under: bias, censorship, content moderation, grandstanding, jack dorsey, kevin mccarthy, politicians
Companies: twitter

Bad Reporting, Grandstanding Congressmen, Tweeting President Combine For Clusterfuck About Twitter

from the what-a-mess dept

So... remember a couple weeks ago when I wrote about a House Judiciary Committee in which the supposedly "free market / free speech" supporting Republicans on the Committee were grilling private companies about how they need to be regulated as utilities to stifle free speech? Well, not surprisingly, the whole situation has gotten much worse and much, much stupider. It started, of course, with a bit of pretty bad reporting by a Vice reporter named Alex Thompson, who wrote an article incorrectly claiming that Twitter was "shadowbanning" Republicans.

Shadowbanning, of course, is the well known moderation technique in which certain sites allow certain users to think they're participating, but really making it so that no one else can see their contributions. It's been shown to be fairly effective against trolls. Either way, Thompson's report was wrong on multiple levels -- which was disappointing. Vice has a whole separate site called Motherboard, which has some of the best tech reporters in the business, who likely could have set Thompson straight and prevented the company from running such a misleading story, but that did not happen. First of all, Twitter was not shadowbanning anyone. The issue at hand was that for some users, if you searched on their names, those accounts did not show up in the autocomplete. That's it. If you clicked return at the end of your search, the accounts still showed up. If you followed the users, you still saw their tweets. It was not shadowbanning by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, the issue was not partisan, even in the slightest, contrary to Thompson's reporting. As others showed, the failure to show certain users in autocomplete was impacting a bunch of people and not just Republicans. Indeed, Twitter admitted that there was a bug in its autocomplete feature which impacted hundreds of thousands of accounts including plenty of people in both major political parties. Twitter fixed this relatively quickly. Thompson's article at Vice is still not corrected. Instead, it has a note claiming that Twitter is "no longer limit[ing] the visibility of some prominent Republicans," which implies, completely falsely, that it was targeting Republicans.

But, alas, partisan stupidity is like no other stupidity, and this bad and incorrect story first got picked up by the President, who tweeted (of course) that Twitter was shadowbanning prominent Republicans -- even though it was not.

And, from there we were off to the races. Rep. Devin Nunes, picked up the story and claimed that he was considering taking legal action against Twitter. This is stupid on so many levels. First of all, if Twitter were actually moderating its platform in this manner, it has every legal right to do so. And, as we noted about that hearing earlier this month, it's very bizarre to see supposedly "free speech / free market" Republicans suddenly arguing for heavy regulation of both speech and industry. Second, there is absolutely no legal basis for any kind of legal action. It would get laughed out of court. Third, and again, this is kind of important, Twitter wasn't discriminating against Republicans and wasn't shadowbanning them. You would think that a Congressional Representative, preparing to take legal action against a company, would at least take the time to understand what happened.

And, he wasn't the only one. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was the star of our post about the Judiciary Committee hearing for being beyond wrong in claiming that Section 230 and the First Amendment are in conflict -- and also flat out misrepresenting what Twitter's representative said on the panel concerning Twitter's First Amendment rights -- has apparently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about Twitter. The details are scarce, but when appearing on Fox News late last week, Gaetz said the following:

I’m certain there were only four members of Congress who had their voices suppressed on Twitter: Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan Mark Meadows, and Devin Nunes. That would be one hell of a coincidence. My suspicion is that if people were effectively communicating a conservative message, they got caught in Twitter’s troll trap. The reason that I think that is illegal is because it gives advantages to our political opponents. It gives them access to the platform that we don’t have.

If Twitter was a billboard company and they gave Democrats access to their billboards and not Republicans, that would be an illegal corporate donation to the campaigns of Democrats. Here, instead of the billboard, it’s the auto fill-in function that’s a part of Twitter’s search feature that wasn’t available to me, Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows or Jim Jorden. And it’s available to Democrats.

Except, again, that's not at all what happened. There was no suppression. There was no shadowbanning. There was no targeting of Republicans. There was no targeting conservative messaging. There was no "illegal corporate donation." This is all grandstanding nonsense, that may play well to a certain set of very angry people, but has no basis in reality.

In the end, everyone comes out of this looking bad. Vice and Alex Thompson should post a correction to their article and apologize for what misleading crap it was. Trump should never have tweeted the nonsense, but you know that's not going to stop him. But Nunes and Gaetz certainly don't need to enable and further this nonsense, though, again, that appears to be well within their character. However, for politicians bleating on about fake news, it seems notable that they seem to be contributing to the spread of it. Of course, the real end game here is an attempt to effectively block Twitter, Facebook and Google from trying to improve the nature of discourse on their platforms. In short, this is a trollish effort to force platforms to allow trolling. It's phony outrage that should be ignored, but it won't be, because so much effort has been put into a totally fake claim that conservatives are somehow being targeted that platforms have to bend over backwards to make sure that anything they do to improve their platforms doesn't accidentally impact someone in conservative circles.

In the end, don't trust everything that you read online, and, for once, try to elect people who aren't ignorant, grandstanding morons.

Filed Under: content moderation, devin nunes, donald trump, grandstanding, matt gaetz, politicians, reporting, shadowbanning, social media
Companies: twitter

Court Rules Temporary Ban Of Facebook Commenter By Gov't Official Violates The First Amendment

from the restrain-yourself-from-restraining-others dept

A federal judge has ruled public officials can't ban the public from interacting with official social media accounts, something that obviously has implications for the recently-filed suit by Twitter users blocked by the president's account.

Brian Davison filed a pro se lawsuit against Phyllis Randall, the Chair of the Loudon County Board of Supervisors, after she banned him from her Facebook page and deleted his critical comments. The decision wasn't an easy one for the court, as Venkat Balasubramani points out. The court had to take into account several determining factors before arriving at its First Amendment violation conclusion.

The court’s findings of fact regarding the defendant’s social media activities include:

• She had a campaign page (“Friends of Phyllis Randall”), and the day before she was sworn into office, defendant asked her constituents to visit her official page;
• She created the Facebook page outside the County’s channels, and her page will not revert to the county after she leaves office;
• She’s listed as a “government official” in the about section;
• She routinely uses the page for official proclamations and encourages constituents to contact her through the page (so official records are kept);
• She addresses her constituents through her posts and also submits posts “on behalf of the Loudon County Board of Supervisors”;
• She engages with constituents in the comments section.

The court also had to determine whether Randall was acting in her official capacity when moderating comments on the Facebook page. The court found Randall was acting under color of law, which suggested banning of commenters (on a page where she directly asked for comments on issues) violated Davison's First Amendment rights.

Not every moderation move is a First Amendment violation -- even on official government rep pages and even when done under color of law. But the reasons behind Randall's banning of Davison's participation moved it into unconstitutional territory.

Specifically, the court says it’s clear plaintiff was banned because defendant was offended, and (citing Tam) this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Apparently, Defendant testified she banned Davison because she decided “decided at that moment that if [Plaintiff] were a type of person that would make comments about people’s family members, then maybe [Defendant] didn’t want [Plaintiff] to be commenting on [her] site.”

Randall said the violation shouldn't matter because it was brief: just a 12-hour ban. But the court reminds Randall that Constitutional violations are still violations, no matter how long they last. And the context of the banning harms the sort of speech the First Amendment is expressly designed to protect: criticism of government entities. From the decision [PDF]:

If the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence makes anything clear, it is that speech may not be disfavored by the government simply because it offends. Here, as discussed above, Defendant acted in her governmental capacity. Defendant’s offense at Plaintiff’s views was therefore an illegitimate basis for her actions – particularly given that Plaintiff earned Defendant’s ire by criticizing the County government. Indeed, the suppression of critical commentary regarding elected officials is the quintessential form of viewpoint discrimination against which the First Amendment guards.

This is the new reality for public officials. The internet is an amazing platform for two-way communication with constituents. But it's not something that can be treated as less "real" than press conferences or other real-world activities. Unconstitutional suppression of criticism is just as real when it's performed via Facebook moderation. Anyone assuming otherwise is likely going to find themselves in court.

Filed Under: block lists, first amendment, followers, free speech, politicians, social media

John Oliver's Story On Campaign Music And Copyright Is... Wrong

from the this-again? dept

Yes, let's start with the obvious: John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" is a comedy program meant to entertain and is not meant to be journalism. It's a point that Oliver himself has made repeatedly. But others disagree with him, pointing out that his show regularly does actual journalism. The fact that he's hired a bunch of journalists on his team kind of says a lot. Also, according to multiple people I know who have been interviewed for stories on his show, while his focus is on making things funny, his team also spends a lot of time making sure they get the details right. It's why we so frequently end up posting his videos on stories that relate to Techdirt topics -- because they're not only entertaining, but are also generally dead on in accuracy. It's why we've posted his videos on net neutrality, corporate sovereignty, encryption, surveillance, civil asset forfeiture and patent trolls.

But this past weekend, he not only covered last week's Republican National Convention, but also, separately, the fact that representatives for both Queen and the Rolling Stones complained publicly about the RNC using their music in prominent parts of the convention. Oliver got together a bunch of famous musicians (many of whom have protested politicians using their music) to sing a song telling politicians not to use their songs, claiming that it's "stealing" and unauthorized because the politicians didn't reach out to get permission. This is flat out wrong in most situations. As we've pointed out again and again and again and again, in nearly all cases, politicians using music at an event have the proper licenses. They don't need to get permission from the musicians so long as either the campaign or the venue have ASCAP or BMI blanket licenses, which they almost always do. The whole point of ASCAP/BMI licenses is that you don't need to get individual permission from the artists or their publishers.

There are instances, occasionally, where politicians ridiculously don't have such a license, but it's pretty rare. And there may be a few other narrow exceptions, such as if there's an implied endorsement by the musicians, but that's rarely the case.

Unfortunately, the song from John Oliver and friends ignores all of that, even stating directly at one point that for a politician to use music, you first have to call the publisher. That's wrong. ASCAP and BMI already have taken care of that.

Perhaps this isn't a huge deal, but one would hope that Oliver would actually get the basic facts right on this too, because every election season this issue comes up and spreading more misinformation about it doesn't help.

Filed Under: copyright, john oliver, licensing, music, performance license, political campaigns, politicians
Companies: ascap, bmi

Twitter's Excuse For Shutting Down Services That Highlight Deleted Politicians' Tweets Is Painfully Ridiculous

from the that's-just-wrong dept

A couple months ago, we wrote about Twitter shutting down Politwoops, a service from the Sunlight Foundation that highlighted tweets that politicians had posted... and then deleted. This was a useful tool for transparency, showing what kinds of tweets politicians delete. Frequently it was silly things like typos, but sometimes it caught and highlighted really ridiculous statements by politicians that they should have thought more about first. Twitters reasoning behind this made no sense at all at the time, claiming that it was about "honoring the expectation of user privacy." That's wrong. If you tweet publicly, there is no "expectation of privacy." You have done something publicly.

This weekend, this whole situation got more attention, as Twitter similarly shut down a number of similar services, including foreign instances of Politwoops run by the Open State Foundation. Once again, Twitter gave a reason... that made absolutely no sense:

Imagine how nerve-racking – terrifying, even – tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable? No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.

This is worse than the original reason. First of all, that's not terrifying at all. That's how life is, every day. You say something, people hear it/see it and they can repeat it or call you out on it if they disagree. And you can have a discussion. And, of course, you can later change your words, admit you made a mistake, or, yes, delete your tweet. But people might notice that. And that's fine. It's not terrifying. There's nothing "immutable" or "irrevocable" about Politwoops highlighting things that actually happened.

As for the next two lines, again, it makes no sense. There is nothing in Politwoops that makes one user "more deserving" of any ability than any other. Anyone can delete tweets. And anyone who saw the original tweet can call it out and highlight it. Yet, for whatever reason, Twitter has decided that it wants to give extra special protections to some users, by claiming that it's an abuse to actually build a system to automate such things. This is the opposite of enabling free speech. It's stifling it.

And, yes, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user's voice -- as is having someone highlight what you deleted. That's how this works. This move is profoundly disappointing by Twitter -- a company that regularly positions itself as a champion of free speech and being engaged in the political process.

Politicians say stupid stuff all the time (as does pretty much everyone). And people call them out on it. And no one ever argues that's an invasion of their privacy... except, apparently, Twitter. Once again, this is a reminder of why we should be focused on protocols instead of platforms for the services that enable free expression. When we rely on platforms, we have to live by their rules.

Filed Under: censorship, politicians, politwoops, privacy, public statements, right to be forgotten
Companies: twitter