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The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing infor

The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent, as foreign influence campaigns typically attempt to magnify grassroots dissenting opinions (this is true also of US foreign intelligence efforts). There's many reasons why these kinds of apps, comments, and conversations are taken down due to their content. Fundamentally, being a gateway to information in a legal environment where the hosting the content as a curator puts you under risk creates deep incentives to whitewash content. Those forces are already present for companies which might accidentally sustain 9gag/4chan type cultures/commentary which contradicts however its productizing its platform. Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content, including content critical of or dangerous to its host's countries political and national security naratives. Twitter has started down that journey as well. It feels like we're experiencing the growing pains of social network and hosted content boom reinvented on web technology over the past couple decades. It's kind of amazing in retrospect how controversial some of the "mundane" applications of technology to society have been, whereas a couple decades ago most of the moral panic centered around concepts like "online dating", which to date have actually been relatively controversy scarce.

ehnto 7y ago
Australia lacks safe harbour laws which the US has had for some time. This has a chilling effect on certain types of platforms. Even something like a photo hosting site is very risk heavy in Australia as the type of content on your servers is your responsibility. I feel like those safe harbour laws in the US are at risk, at least in practice, as the idea of a content "conduit" begins being less plausible as platforms start moderating more and more. Now, I am all in favour of moderation. Real life communities are moderated, and all the strongest online communities have some kind of moderation. But there needs to be protections for companies who are moderating the best they can and still have evil content on the site. Else these platforms won't be sustainable and will be in heavy legal risk to boot. They won't make much sense anymore.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > I feel like those safe harbour laws in the US are at risk, at least in practice, as the idea of a content "conduit" begins being less plausible as platforms start moderating more and more. The way the US got the safe harbor to begin with was as follows. There was a court decision that essentially said that you weren't liable if you were just carrying bits, but if you did moderation then you were. The problem with this is obviously that you then either have to have no moderation at all or it has to be 100% perfect because you're liable for everything you get wrong, and getting everything 100% perfect isn't really possible. So the result would have been that nobody would do any moderation and everything would be overrun by trolls and spam. To prevent that, Congress passed a safe harbor that allowed platforms to do moderation without immediately ending up in court. The problem now is that the constitution and jurisdictional issues make it difficult for governments in the US to do the kind of censorship that a lot of people now want somebody to do. So they're trying to get in the back door by creating laws that will force the tech companies to do it, because on the one hand the companies have minimal stake in hosting any given information and will execute just about every takedown no matter how ridiculous if it will reduce their liability, and on the other hand they're not bound by the First Amendment when they over-block protected speech. So imposing any kind of liability on them that will cause them to execute spurious takedown requests is basically the censor's birthday wish, and even better if you can get them to over-block things ahead of time. But there are solid reasons for the First Amendment to be in effect, and "governments shouldn't be able to erase evidence of their crimes" is pretty far up there on the list. So this ploy to put the national censorship authority into the offices of Facebook and Twitter really needs to get shut down one way or another, or we're in for a bad future.
  - _0ffh 7y ago
    >The problem with this is obviously that you then either have to have no moderation at all or it has to be 100% perfect I'm not sure. You can let the users moderate themselves, then you're still just carrying bits. That's where a pluralistic organisation of the platform comes in handy. Things like Reddit or image boards are not just one community, but a plurality of communities. None of those suit you? Go ahead and open your own subreddit, splitter! Then you can moderate there as you please. The problem is of course, the bit carrier cannot expect an advertiser to agree with all the subcommunities. But that's a different, and solvable problem. You need better targeting for ads and you need to accept that some subcommunities will just not be attractive for any advertisers at all.
tracer4201 7y ago
Not a surprise. Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict. The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America’s elite.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Curiously, I had much the same experience despite being from the UK — Americans were always the heroes. British too (e.g. colonialism, empire, and commonwealth presented as an unmitigated good thing), but if there was a conflict of any sort between the UK and the USA, the USA were almost always the good guys.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I had the same experience being from and growing in Poland. I think I can give you a simple reason: Hollywood. Through movies and TV shows, America has been defining the mass culture for the past few decades, for almost the entire world.
    - camochameleon 7y ago
      This is very deliberate. From 1911 to 2017, 800+ films and 1100+ television shows have received backing from the Pentagon and the CIA [1]. Several films received major script changes, primarily to create a certain perception of the US military and intelligence agencies. [1] https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-scenes-in-hollywood-goes-deeper-than-you-think-80587 https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-s...
      - jjgreen 7y ago
        As did Jackson Pollock [1] and other artists ... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
HNthrow22 7y ago
> Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content, I agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They go as far as shadowbanning users who bring up their lack of action to shine a light on their culpability, presumably to keep it off of mainstream journalists radar, thankfully it's now too late and enough good journalists have picked up the scent. Expect to see many great pieces about this in the near future. Reddit also scrubs the profiles and post history of mass shooters who were indoctrinated on their platform, one example is Elliot Rodgers the incel and Santa Barbara shooter from several years ago, truly disgusting and frightening behavior that denies researchers and journalists from understanding the reach and impact of the spread of ideologies and hatred on these platforms. Just last week in the wake of the Poway synagogue shooting the #1 post on /r/conspiracy was a holocaust denial post, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large that received 2x reddit gold.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  > agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They banned IRA_memes because IRA I guess and quarantined waterniggas because it had "niggas" in the title even though the whole sub was just about drinking water. They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like.
  - HNthrow22 7y ago
    > They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like. This could not be further from reality, see https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6ck/2018_reddit_review_a_year_of_hate_propaganda_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6... to get a small preview of the attitudes of their executive team and the kind of content they allow to proliferate and spread on their platform.
- 7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
>The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent >The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes Well, Apple is not some international beacon of progress and activism. It's a US-based company, run by people who feel US-patriots, and their differences with this or that sitting president aside, will do what's best for their country's "national interests". Same as Google, Facebook, etc. Which is why countries with any major claim to sovereignty and with their own interests and stakes, build their own equivalents of major search, social networks, etc (e.g. Baidu). >Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent I wouldn't say the latter was not part of their purpose. You can't have your country's own citizens dissent to the elite/bipartisan consensus. Trillions are at stake...
netcan 7y ago
We'll put. The big social media players underappreciate the areas that they've found themselves in, a major part of news media. Dealing with fake news, intelligence backed propoganda, and censorship of certain content are very difficult tasks. They aren't just "security" or "platform abuse" issues. These are editorial & fact checking issues. Ultimately, it will be impossible to deal with them via clear policies and software. The only way to do it is with human intelligence, decision making and judgement. A video of an isis execution could be snuff, critical news, isis propoganda, baathist propoganda... The types of organisations that do these kinds ds of jobs tend to have it baked into their DNA. Journalistic organizations for examlr, that have editorial philosophies embedded in their DNA the way Facebook has software development embedded into it's. In terms of online media, Wikipedia is the best example, imo. Dealing with this stuff is at it's core. I can't see FB ever becoming adequately capable of dealing with these types of issues. Even bans get I to tricky territory once you reach FB/twitter scale.
baybal2 7y ago
Things are much more simple I'd say. Those "algorithms" I'd say are very dumb, nor human flaggers that are better. Even very innocent family videos are being flagged all the time, you just have to speak a foreign language and look like a middle easterner. Some say that just speaking in elevated tone in Arabic and having a beard is enough to be flagged on big dotcoms. And if you are openly are a member of just any social organisation, your account deletion is pretty much a matter of time if you are a middle easterner, no matter if you are pro-regime, anti-regime, or have nothing to do with that. The Egyptian national symphonic orchestra was once banned by Facebook as a "terrorist organisation" This is ironic given that all big social networks including Facebook outsource content censorship to companies in obscure countries like Algeria or in Balkans.
- gdy 7y ago
  "The Egyptian national symphonic orchestra was once banned by Facebook as a "terrorist organisation"" I'd love to see a source for that bit :)
dillonmckay 7y ago
Online dating’s purpose is to facilitate ‘positive’ real-world relationships. The intent of these ‘mundane’ applications is much less admirable.
ngold 7y ago
The internet was founded on a military backbone, then grew to an information is everywhere backbone, now the fences of the garden have been contracting to a walled garden again. There is a scene in firefly where the dr. character gets a box. It was implied as a openish internet. Pretty sure that's where were headed. Information is free until the folks in the back of the courtroom make sure it's not.

ehnto 7y ago

Australia lacks safe harbour laws which the US has had for some time. This has a chilling effect on certain types of platforms. Even something like a photo hosting site is very risk heavy in Australia as the type of content on your servers is your responsibility. I feel like those safe harbour laws in the US are at risk, at least in practice, as the idea of a content "conduit" begins being less plausible as platforms start moderating more and more. Now, I am all in favour of moderation. Real life communities are moderated, and all the strongest online communities have some kind of moderation. But there needs to be protections for companies who are moderating the best they can and still have evil content on the site. Else these platforms won't be sustainable and will be in heavy legal risk to boot. They won't make much sense anymore.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> I feel like those safe harbour laws in the US are at risk, at least in practice, as the idea of a content "conduit" begins being less plausible as platforms start moderating more and more. The way the US got the safe harbor to begin with was as follows. There was a court decision that essentially said that you weren't liable if you were just carrying bits, but if you did moderation then you were. The problem with this is obviously that you then either have to have no moderation at all or it has to be 100% perfect because you're liable for everything you get wrong, and getting everything 100% perfect isn't really possible. So the result would have been that nobody would do any moderation and everything would be overrun by trolls and spam. To prevent that, Congress passed a safe harbor that allowed platforms to do moderation without immediately ending up in court. The problem now is that the constitution and jurisdictional issues make it difficult for governments in the US to do the kind of censorship that a lot of people now want somebody to do. So they're trying to get in the back door by creating laws that will force the tech companies to do it, because on the one hand the companies have minimal stake in hosting any given information and will execute just about every takedown no matter how ridiculous if it will reduce their liability, and on the other hand they're not bound by the First Amendment when they over-block protected speech. So imposing any kind of liability on them that will cause them to execute spurious takedown requests is basically the censor's birthday wish, and even better if you can get them to over-block things ahead of time. But there are solid reasons for the First Amendment to be in effect, and "governments shouldn't be able to erase evidence of their crimes" is pretty far up there on the list. So this ploy to put the national censorship authority into the offices of Facebook and Twitter really needs to get shut down one way or another, or we're in for a bad future.
- _0ffh 7y ago
  >The problem with this is obviously that you then either have to have no moderation at all or it has to be 100% perfect I'm not sure. You can let the users moderate themselves, then you're still just carrying bits. That's where a pluralistic organisation of the platform comes in handy. Things like Reddit or image boards are not just one community, but a plurality of communities. None of those suit you? Go ahead and open your own subreddit, splitter! Then you can moderate there as you please. The problem is of course, the bit carrier cannot expect an advertiser to agree with all the subcommunities. But that's a different, and solvable problem. You need better targeting for ads and you need to accept that some subcommunities will just not be attractive for any advertisers at all.

tracer4201 7y ago

Not a surprise. Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict. The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America’s elite.

ben_w 7y ago
Curiously, I had much the same experience despite being from the UK — Americans were always the heroes. British too (e.g. colonialism, empire, and commonwealth presented as an unmitigated good thing), but if there was a conflict of any sort between the UK and the USA, the USA were almost always the good guys.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I had the same experience being from and growing in Poland. I think I can give you a simple reason: Hollywood. Through movies and TV shows, America has been defining the mass culture for the past few decades, for almost the entire world.
  - camochameleon 7y ago
    This is very deliberate. From 1911 to 2017, 800+ films and 1100+ television shows have received backing from the Pentagon and the CIA [1]. Several films received major script changes, primarily to create a certain perception of the US military and intelligence agencies. [1] https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-scenes-in-hollywood-goes-deeper-than-you-think-80587 https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-s...
    - jjgreen 7y ago
      As did Jackson Pollock [1] and other artists ... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

HNthrow22 7y ago

> Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content, I agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They go as far as shadowbanning users who bring up their lack of action to shine a light on their culpability, presumably to keep it off of mainstream journalists radar, thankfully it's now too late and enough good journalists have picked up the scent. Expect to see many great pieces about this in the near future. Reddit also scrubs the profiles and post history of mass shooters who were indoctrinated on their platform, one example is Elliot Rodgers the incel and Santa Barbara shooter from several years ago, truly disgusting and frightening behavior that denies researchers and journalists from understanding the reach and impact of the spread of ideologies and hatred on these platforms. Just last week in the wake of the Poway synagogue shooting the #1 post on /r/conspiracy was a holocaust denial post, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large that received 2x reddit gold.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
> agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They banned IRA_memes because IRA I guess and quarantined waterniggas because it had "niggas" in the title even though the whole sub was just about drinking water. They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like.
- HNthrow22 7y ago
  > They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like. This could not be further from reality, see https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6ck/2018_reddit_review_a_year_of_hate_propaganda_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6... to get a small preview of the attitudes of their executive team and the kind of content they allow to proliferate and spread on their platform.
7y ago

coldtea 7y ago

>The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent >The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes Well, Apple is not some international beacon of progress and activism. It's a US-based company, run by people who feel US-patriots, and their differences with this or that sitting president aside, will do what's best for their country's "national interests". Same as Google, Facebook, etc. Which is why countries with any major claim to sovereignty and with their own interests and stakes, build their own equivalents of major search, social networks, etc (e.g. Baidu). >Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent I wouldn't say the latter was not part of their purpose. You can't have your country's own citizens dissent to the elite/bipartisan consensus. Trillions are at stake...

netcan 7y ago

We'll put. The big social media players underappreciate the areas that they've found themselves in, a major part of news media. Dealing with fake news, intelligence backed propoganda, and censorship of certain content are very difficult tasks. They aren't just "security" or "platform abuse" issues. These are editorial & fact checking issues. Ultimately, it will be impossible to deal with them via clear policies and software. The only way to do it is with human intelligence, decision making and judgement. A video of an isis execution could be snuff, critical news, isis propoganda, baathist propoganda... The types of organisations that do these kinds ds of jobs tend to have it baked into their DNA. Journalistic organizations for examlr, that have editorial philosophies embedded in their DNA the way Facebook has software development embedded into it's. In terms of online media, Wikipedia is the best example, imo. Dealing with this stuff is at it's core. I can't see FB ever becoming adequately capable of dealing with these types of issues. Even bans get I to tricky territory once you reach FB/twitter scale.

baybal2 7y ago

Things are much more simple I'd say. Those "algorithms" I'd say are very dumb, nor human flaggers that are better. Even very innocent family videos are being flagged all the time, you just have to speak a foreign language and look like a middle easterner. Some say that just speaking in elevated tone in Arabic and having a beard is enough to be flagged on big dotcoms. And if you are openly are a member of just any social organisation, your account deletion is pretty much a matter of time if you are a middle easterner, no matter if you are pro-regime, anti-regime, or have nothing to do with that. The Egyptian national symphonic orchestra was once banned by Facebook as a "terrorist organisation" This is ironic given that all big social networks including Facebook outsource content censorship to companies in obscure countries like Algeria or in Balkans.

gdy 7y ago
"The Egyptian national symphonic orchestra was once banned by Facebook as a "terrorist organisation"" I'd love to see a source for that bit :)

dillonmckay 7y ago

Online dating’s purpose is to facilitate ‘positive’ real-world relationships. The intent of these ‘mundane’ applications is much less admirable.

ngold 7y ago

The internet was founded on a military backbone, then grew to an information is everywhere backbone, now the fences of the garden have been contracting to a walled garden again. There is a scene in firefly where the dr. character gets a box. It was implied as a openish internet. Pretty sure that's where were headed. Information is free until the folks in the back of the courtroom make sure it's not.