Former Reddit CEO: Content Moderation Teams Don’t Care About Your Politics, They Just Want You To Stop Being A Jerk

Content Moderation

from the basically-correct dept

Last week, about the same time I posted by giant post on all the things that Elon Musk didn’t understand about content moderation, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong posted a really long, but completely worth reading thread about content moderation on social networks. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but did want to point out some key points that are worth repeating.

As he starts out the thread noting, if Elon does take over Twitter “he is in for a world of pain. He has no idea.” That’s because almost everyone — especially techies — assume there’s some simple solution to the content moderation challenge. They’re wrong. What you’re trying to solve for with content moderation is human nature and societal level problems. And no one’s been able to solve those ever, and a guy building rockets doesn’t magically know how to fix those kinds of problems.

The key point that Yishan made (and which I also made in my post last week) is that many, many of the people in these companies — both at the executive decision making level and working on content moderation or trust & safety — don’t care about your politics and don’t want to touch your content. They don’t.

They DON’T CARE ABOUT POLITICS. They really don’t.

Donald Trump was not de-platformed for being right-wing.

I talk a bit about this in my thread about Omega Events: https://t.co/rktOKjr7ze

— Yishan (@yishan) April 15, 2022

While slightly simplified from reality, he notes that the people making these decisions just want you to behave and stop being a jackass. He says it’s about not “squabbling” but the squabbling is a result of people acting like jackasses, and it escalates.

They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.

— Yishan (@yishan) April 15, 2022

And, so, as he notes, if you don’t want to get moderated, stop being a jackass:

And, yes, he posts the perfect meme to explain how livid people get when they’re blocked, and I can assure you that, even on a small site like Techdirt, the following is true about the people who flip out when caught in our spam filter:

As he notes, the people screaming for open debate are not engaging in a civilized debate at all. They’re abusively spamming and harassing people they dislike.

There’s a lot more in the thread that is worth reading, so I’ll just leave it there and suggest you go read the whole thing. The only small thing I’ll push back on is this tweet, which claims that “there are no real principles. They are just trying to be fair because if they weren’t, everyone would yell LOUDER and the problem would be worse.”

There was a period of time when that was true — around the same time that Yishan was still at Reddit. However, in the eight years since he left, the whole trust & safety space has evolved significantly, and grown and professionalized to the point that many of the companies actually do have “real principles” that they use to set up their content moderation rules and enforcement.

The underlying concept, though, remains absolutely true. They just want people to stop being assholes all the time, and they’d like you to act nicer to one another, and they really, really, really want to treat people fairly.

The idea that there’s some grand conspiracy among these companies to silence this or that group is just not true. And no matter which “example” you name, I guarantee you, there’s another explanation for why that person or that piece of content was banned. And it might just be that it was being presented in a manner that was driving people crazy and causing more bad behavior. You can scream to heaven as loud as you want that your personal view on some controversial topic is the “right” one, or that you should be allowed to scream it, but if it’s creating a huge mess and causing more people to go even crazier, at some point, the website is going to cut you off.

The world would be a better place if people didn’t group up and become bigger and bigger assholes on social media. But, we’re not there yet, and Elon has no solution for that problem.

Filed Under: bias, content moderation, elon musk, politics, social media, yishan wong
Companies: reddit, twitter

Discord Takes Over Moderation Of r/WallStreetBets Server As Facebook Shuts Down Popular Stock Trading Group

Content Moderation

from the everything-is-content-moderation dept

Apparently every damn story has a content moderation angle these days. The still ongoing GameStonks! story keeps getting more and more fascinating in all sorts of ways. Yesterday, we noted as a side note, that Discord had shut down the r/WallStreetBets server that many of the subreddit users had used to communicate. Discord claimed — somewhat unbelievably — that it had done so at this very moment because of a long term “hate speech” problem on that server.

But, then, a day later, Discord said it had re-enabled the server… but that the company itself was helping to moderate the server.

Discord staff are actively working with the server?s team to help with moderation. At least one Discord staffer, who is now in the new WallStreetBets server, is also helping with infrastructure problems related to the rapid growth the community is experiencing.

?WallStreetBets members have set up a new server and we are working with them,? says a Discord spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. ?We will welcome the group back so long as they improve their moderation practices and follow our Community Guidelines. We have reached out to the moderators to provide them with support and advice, like we do for many of our large communities.?

This is kind of fascinating. We’ve always been interested in moderation setups at places like Reddit and Discord, because they show a different overall structure than the kind of content moderation questions we’re used to seeing at Facebook/Twitter/YouTube. In those latter cases, it’s one company who just sets the rules. But with Reddit and Discord, while there are company-wide rules, since those services are made up of mostly individual communities, the moderation is effectively left up to those who run those communities (the mods on Reddit or the server owner/admins on Discord).

But, here, Discord is stepping in to help with the moderating. And it’s interesting that the company claims that it has done this “for many of our large communities” as well. It appears to be something of a hybrid model, though that raises a bunch of other questions as well. Still, it’s interesting to see how these things evolve. And, at least at a first pass, this new setup appears to be working better than the old one:

There are now fewer people screaming in calls, using racial slurs, or blasting music to the hundreds listening in. The memes are now mainly emoji and text, rather than images that often included offensive material.

Meanwhile, the Stonks! trading content moderation questions are spreading. Facebook announced that it has shut down a popular stock trading group… but for a reason you might not have expected:

Allen Tran, a 23-year-old from Chicago who created Robinhood Stock Traders, said he woke up on Wednesday to a notification that Facebook had disabled the 157,000-member group. The notification, seen by Reuters, said without detail that the group violated policies on ?adult sexual exploitation.?

Wait… what? Tran notes that he cannot recall any “adult content” ever appearing in the group. It’s possible that someone at Facebook clicked the wrong button or something, but it’s still bizarre. And, at the very least, will contribute to the various conspiracy theories about big companies ganging up to shutdown retail investors who had suddenly found the loophole to make hedge fund folks sweat a little.

Filed Under: content moderation, stonks, wallstreetbets, wsb
Companies: discord, reddit

Robinhood App Decides To Stop Helping The Poor Steal From The Rich

The Market

from the everything-is-a-content-moderation-story dept

I had been meaning to do another story on the whole GameStop/Reddit/WallStreetBets story, because there’s a lot of really fascinating points on this, but my original story got pretty much wiped away this morning when Robinhood, the popular stock trading app that promotes itself as a way of democratizing stock trading and providing free trades — and which was the main app used by Redditors to drive up the prices of various stocks that a bunch of hedge funds were trying to short — announced that it was blocking the trades in all of the volatile stocks that Redditors were driving up. It did so in the most ridiculous of statements, claiming that they were pausing buying of those stocks to “[help] our customers navigate this uncertainty.”

Amid significant market volatility, it?s important as ever that we help customers stay informed. That?s why we?re committed to providing people with educational resources. We recently revamped and expanded Robinhood Learn to help people take advantage of the hundreds of financial resources we offer and educate themselves, including how to make sense of a volatile market. In 2020, more than 3.2 million people read our articles through Robinhood Learn.

We?re committed to helping our customers navigate this uncertainty. We fundamentally believe that everyone should have access to financial markets. We?re humbled to have helped many people invest in the markets for the first time. And we?re determined to provide new and experienced investors with the tools and resources to help them invest responsibly for their long-term financial futures.

Bull and Shit. The people buying into this stuff didn’t need help “navigating this uncertainty.” This was a protest. This actually was what happens when you “democratize finance” and stop letting the big giant firms abuse the system for profit. And it turns out that that’s not what Robinhood really wanted after all.

As incredible as it seems, it turns out that even this is a content moderation story.

Also, I can pretty much guarantee that Robinhood is going to be hit with a whole bunch of class action lawsuits, probably before the day is out. (Actually, they were hit by lawsuits before even this post was out!)

Many people have recognized that while there’s a lot going on here, at least some of what’s happening is legitimately smaller individual investors giving a big giant “fuck you” to the big Wall Street hedge funds that were treating the market as a plaything with which to get ever richer. I heard someone jokingly note yesterday that Reddit and Robinhood together accounted for more wealth distribution from the rich to the poor in the past week than the Democratic Party has in years.

And, like every other time that gatekeepers’ walls are knocked down, the gatekeepers freak out. This is Hollywood freaking out about Napster all over again. Yesterday the big news was that Discord banned the r/WallStreetBets server, which was where many of the Redditors were gathering (outside of Reddit). The company claimed — somewhat ridiculously — that the ban was for hate speech on the server. But the timing of it made that look like a very weak fig leaf. Considering how many gamers use Discord (its original target market), I can assure you that other servers have a lot more hate speech than the WallStreetBets one did.

Then, last night, we had the totally expected old school “Hollywood reacting to Napster” response when NASDAQ’s CEO, Adena Friedman, said that they should halt trading in GameStop and the other targeted stocks to allow investors to “recalibrate their positions.”

Funny how they never seem to do that when it’s retail investors losing their investments.

As with other situations, the events of the past few days only serve to underline how the system itself is rigged to help the big guys on Wall Street, and the second that everyone else figures out how to game the system themselves, the gatekeepers freak out and look to reassert control.

Filed Under: content moderation, gatekeepers, hedge funds, retail investors, stonks, wallstreetbets
Companies: discord, gamestop, reddit, robinhood

Smaller Internet Companies Say They're Open To 230 Reform… To Keep Facebook From Being The Only Voice In The Room

Politics

from the no-good-options dept

Earlier this fall, Facebook was (not surprisingly) the first big internet company to cave and to tell Congress that it was open to Section 230 reform. I say not surprisingly, because it’s done this before. Facebook was the company that caved in and supported FOSTA, which was the first major reform of 230. We heard from multiple people who said that Facebook recognized that it could weather the storm much better than its smaller competitors.

Indeed, Facebook’s executive team seems to have recognized that reforming 230 is a strong anti-competitive weapon. It weakens smaller competitors, making them ripe for buying out, and scares off investors from funding new upstarts. It still strikes me as incredible that the same people who are demanding we dismantle 230 are also calling for antitrust actions — because those two things work in directly opposite ways. Undermining 230 will do serious harm to competition. But that’s why Facebook is so eager to jump on board. The company already admits that it spends more than all of Twitter’s revenue on content moderation. So, it’s not really relying that much on 230 anyway.

And, of course, it’s advocacy for FOSTA has already paid off. After FOSTA passed, a number of dating sites shut down… just in time for Facebook to launch its own dating site.

Of course, when Facebook caved on FOSTA, what happened was Congress announced that “tech” was on board — pretending that Facebook’s move suddenly meant every other internet company approved too (when the reality was that every other internet company was basically furious with Facebook).

So, this puts many other internet companies in an impossible position: if they continue to completely fight changing Section 230 (as they should), then Facebook becomes the only voice in any reform “negotiations.” And, seeing how Congress handled this last time, it likely means that Facebook gets to shape the “reform” in a way that helps Facebook and harms everyone else. But, Congress, of course, will pretend that Facebook’s blessing means the rest of the internet agrees as well.

The end result, then, is that smaller companies, which absolutely rely on Section 230, feel pressure to get into the negotiations as well. And that’s why the NY Times now has a story saying that Snap, Reddit and TripAdvisor have told Congress they’re willing to talk about reform options:

On Tuesday, a group of smaller companies ? including Snap, Reddit and Tripadvisor ? plan to say that they are open to discussing reforms, too.

This is disappointing, but understandable. All three companies have relied heavily on 230 in a variety of lawsuits over the years. Snap just recently needed 230’s help to get out of a really silly lawsuit. And TripAdvisor, which is a site that is made up almost entirely of 3rd party reviews, gets threatened with litigation over and over again, based on business owners angry about negative reviews. 230 is what enables Trip to remain in business, and the company has long been a strong advocate for 230’s existence. The fact that it now says it will come to the negotiating table is truly a sad statement on the position that the 230 debate is in today.

Too many intellectually dishonest people have convinced Congress that Section 230 is a problem. And Facebook leapt in with wild abandon to help shape any reform in a manner that will most harm competitors. So now the smaller companies are put in the impossible position: continue to fight and be left out of the negotiations (where Congress will point to Facebook’s participation as “support from internet companies”) or agree to be a part of the process to push back on whatever awful ideas Facebook proposes for reform.

It’s ridiculous that these companies had to do this, and now the anti-230 crowd will cheer on this dismantling of their own protections.

Filed Under: competition, intermediary liability, negotiations, reform, section 230
Companies: facebook, reddit, snap, tripadvisor

FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies

Policy

from the this-could-have-been-helpful dept

On Monday, the FTC announced that it was issuing what’s known as 6(b) orders to nine social media and video streaming companies, demanding a fairly massive amount of information regarding their data collection and usage policies, as well as their advertising practices. To me, this is a huge missed opportunity. If the FTC is truly trying to gain a better understanding of data collection, privacy, and advertising practices, perhaps to better inform Congress on how to, say, pass a truly comprehensive (and useful?!?) privacy legislation, then there are ways to do that. But this… is not that. This looks like a weird fishing expedition for a ton of unrelated information, from an odd selection of nine companies, many of whom are in a very different business than the others. It leaves me quite perplexed.

First, let’s look at the odd selection of companies. The letters are going to:

• Amazon (apparently including Twitch)
• Bytedance (TikTok)
• Discord
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Snap
• Twitter
• WhatsApp (owned by Facebook)
• YouTube

Okay, so they’ve definitely focused on many of the big players, but they’ve also left out a ton as well. Where’s LinkedIn? Or Github? Or WeChat? Or Pinterest? Or Quora? They list Facebook and Whatsapp… but not Instagram? Where’s Zoom? Now it’s true that sometimes the FTC will randomly sample a bunch of companies in a particular industry to get a look at certain practices — but for that to make sense, you want to sample from a set of similarly situated companies. This is… not that.

For the smaller companies on the list, such as Reddit and Discord, the FTC demanding they file a ton of paperwork in a very short time frame is going to mean a tremendous waste of time.

The second concern is the broad nature of the requests. The “sample order” is massive. There are 53 separate requests, many with multiple sub-parts. They’re not just asking for specific information, but rather going on what appears to be an incredibly broad fishing expedition for information about a wide variety of practices at all of these companies — including broad demands for future strategies and plans. For example, beyond just information on the number of users, it demands all documents relating to “business strategies or plans,” “research and development efforts,” “strategies or plans to reduce costs, improve products or services…” It also seems to be demanding all “presentations to management committees, executive committees, and boards of directors.”

That feels like a fishing expedition, rather than an attempt to actually understand data collection and usage practices.

There are categories of information included here that I think it would be useful for the FTC to understand. But there’s just so much information requested that it seems likely to bury the useful information.

The one FTC Commissioner who dissented from this effort, Noah Joshua Phillips, raises important questions in his dissent:

Effective 6(b) orders look carefully at business practices in which companies engage in a manner designed to elicit information, understand it, and then present it to the public in way that is usable and can form a basis for sound public policy.

The first step is to select a group of recipients that will permit such examination, usually a group of firms engaged in conduct that can be compared. But the logic behind the choice of recipients here is not clear at all. The 6(b) orders target nine entities: Facebook, WhatsApp, Snap, Twitter, YouTube, ByteDance, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord. These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models. And the orders omit other companies engaged in business practices similar to recipients, for example, Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr, not to mention other firms the data practices of which have drawn significant government concern, like WeChat. The only plausible benefit to drawing the lines the Commission has is targeting a number of high profile companies and, by limiting the number to nine, avoiding the review process required under the Paperwork Reduction Act, which is not triggered if fewer than ten entities are subject to requests.

Phillips calls out the same broad demands I raised above regarding business plans, R&D and presentations, noting:

Such a request would be suited to an antitrust investigation. But as part of an inquiry ostensibly aimed at consumer privacy practices, it amounts to invasive government overreach. And that is just one of the order?s 50-plus specifications.

And, finally, he highlights how this effort is just demanding way too much information to be of use for a comprehensive policy recommendation:

The biggest problem is that today?s 6(b) orders simply cover too many topics to make them likely to result in the production of comparable, usable information?yet another feature proper oversight and public comment could have flagged. Rather than a carefully calibrated set of specifications designed to elicit information that the agency could digest and analyze as a basis for informing itself, Congress, stakeholders, and the public, these 6(b) orders instead are sprawling and scattershot. Their over 50 specifications, most with numerous and detailed subparts, address topics including, but not limited to: advertising (reach, revenue, costs, and number and type); consumer data (collection, use, storage, disclosure, and deletion); as noted above, all strategic, financial, and research plans; algorithms and data analytics; user engagement and content moderation; demographic information; relationships with other services; and children and teens (policies, practices, and procedures).

Recipients of 6(b) orders typically negotiate to limit their productions, to tailor them in light of their specific business models and business practices. Perhaps the Commission will push back on attempts to do so, devoting additional lawyers to litigating the orders and having a federal judge oversee them, rather than OIRA. Or negotiation may reduce the burdens. But if that happens, each recipient will be responding to a different set of negotiated specifications. That certain of the companies in question have very different business models makes this even more likely. The end result of that is, say, the agency learning a lot about one recipient?s advertising practices, but not as much about its algorithms. For another recipient, the agency might receive information about privacy practices but very little about its plans to expand. Each of the nine recipients will produce differing, if any, amounts of information to each of the 50-plus specifications.

I actually think it would be a good thing for the FTC to better understand how these companies work and their practices. I think it could be useful for them to gain such an understanding, and then make recommendations on a comprehensive federal privacy law. But I don’t see how this fishing expedition does any of that. Instead, it just asks for basically everything and the kitchen sink from a somewhat random selection of companies, some of whom will have difficulty producing all of this information.

Filed Under: data, data collection, data protection, fishing expedition, ftc, privacy, social media, video streaming
Companies: amazon, bytedance, discord, facebook, reddit, snap, tiktok, twitch, twitter, whatsapp, youtube

Twitch And Reddit Ramp Up Their Enforcement Against 'Hateful' Content

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the content-moderation-is-a-process dept

On Monday, both Twitch and Reddit ramped up their efforts to deal with various forms of hateful content on their platforms — and both of them ended up shutting down some forums related to President Trump — which inevitably (but incorrectly) resulted in people again screaming about “anti-conservative bias.” Reddit kicked things off by announcing new content policies (which you can read here). The key change was an expanded rule against communities that “promote hate based on identity or vulnerability.”

Based on that, Reddit has permanently shuttered around 2,000 subreddits, including, most notably the r/The_Donald subreddit for Trump fans. However, as if they were expecting the bogus claims of anti-conservative bias to show up in response, Reddit also shut down r/ChapoTrapHouse, which might be considered the flip side to The_Donald subreddit, but from the left end of the traditional political spectrum. Both communities were known for their anger spewing wackos. Reddit painted its decision to suspend both as a way to show that it is applying the rules equally across all its subreddits:

All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we?ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users?through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.

Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.

To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit?but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception.

Of course, because content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, I’ve already seen plenty of complaints about other Reddit forums that the site failed to take down. And I fully expect that at some point a forum will be shut down by overzealous moderators. Because that’s the nature of content moderation.

Meanwhile, over on the Twitch side, the site has been coming under increasing attacks for enabling a lot of harassment. Since much of Twitch is live-streaming, it’s that much more impossible to monitor. Last week, the company promised to take harassment claims more seriously and began suspending some users. On Monday, that included a temporary ban of the president’s campaign account on the site. Apparently, the move was in response to comments made at recent Trump rallies, that Twitch claims violated its policies.

Twitch pointed to comments made at two rallies that led to its decision. At a campaign rally in 2016, which was recently rebroadcast on the platform, Trump said Mexico was sending over its bad actors, such as rapists or drug dealers. Twitch also pointed to Trump?s recent Tulsa rally, where he told a fictional story of a ?tough hombre? invading someone?s home.

?Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump?s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed,? a Twitch spokesperson told CNBC.

Again, these platforms are in an impossible position — which we detailed in our post about the content moderation impossibility theorem. If they do nothing, tons of people will call out these platforms for inaction. But in pulling down these accounts, a bunch of other people will now be furious as well. And sooner or later these platforms will pull down other accounts that lots of other people (no matter what they’re political leanings) will get upset about as well. This is the nature of content moderation.

Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, hateful content, masnick's impossibility theorem
Companies: reddit, twitch

Well Then: Activision Issues DMCA Subpoena To Have Reddit Unmask Whoever Posted That CoD Image Leak

Legal Issues

from the the-nuclear-option dept

Well, okay then. We had just been discussing Activision’s silly attempt to DMCA to death a leaked image purporting to be the cover art or marketing material for a new Call of Duty game. The whole thing was idiotic in that once word got around that Activision was trying to bury the leak, it immediately caused everyone to think the image was for a real game, rather than some faked pretend leak, which is a thing that sometimes happens. From there, reporting and reproduction of the image in question went mildly viral. In other words, Activision Streisanded the leak it was attempting to bury. Pretty dumb.

But it turns out that Activision isn’t screwing around. There were some in our comments who posited that perhaps this was some marketing attempt to create virality of the image. That certainly doesn’t appear to be the case, as Activision has issued a subpoena to have Reddit unmask the user who posted the image.

In a filing on February 14, 2020 at a California district court, attorneys acting for Activision requested a DMCA subpoena against Reddit.

“Petitioner, Activision Publishing, Inc. through its undersigned counsel of record, hereby requests that the Clerk of this Court issue a subpoena to Reddit, Inc. to identify alleged infringers at issue, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), 17 U.S.C. § 512(h),” the request reads.

“The DMCA Subpoena is directed to Reddit, Inc. Reddit is the service provider to which the subject of the subpoena – Reddit user ‘Assyrian241O’ – posted infringing Activision content.”

At first, it’s hard to see how this makes any sense. Yes, it surely must be annoying to a content creator to have any plans for future content to be upended by a leak. On the other hand, first DMCAing that leak in a failed attempt to bury it, and then going to the lengths of unmasking a Reddit poster is surely the nuclear option when it comes to how to handle a leak of game art.

Except, it seems, this might not be about the Reddit post itself so much as where the leak originally came from.

Contrary to the initial claim, that the user “found this image online”, he or she later confessed to it being sent to them by an “inside source”. That raises the question of who Activision is more interested in – the Reddit user or the person who sent them the image, possibly from inside Activision or a related company.

In other words, this is all looking like an attempt to unmask the leaker of the image, not the Reddit user. Still, these are extreme lengths to go to combat a leak that would have barely been noticed had Activision not gone into legal rage mode.

Instead, the company could have chosen to try to use this all as a marketing opportunity, as comments on the previous post thought they had.

Filed Under: call of duty, dmca, dmca subpoena, leaks, subpoena
Companies: activision, reddit

Activision Tries To Bury Cover Art For New CoD Game Via Copyright Threat…So Let's All Look At It Together, Shall We?

Copyright

from the ready-fire-aim dept

Of all the dumb ways that the DMCA process has been misused in the very recent past, one of the most frustratingly stupid certainly has to be certain interests using it to try to bottle up leaks. From Nintendo to Universal to Marvel, among others, each and every time some content, often times unfinished, gets leaked onto the internet, the lawyers fire off a bunch of DMCA notices to try to get the content taken down. And each and every time, the whole thing backfires completely and instead this leaked content gets Streisanded into the public consciousness.

It’s with that in mind that we can all take a look at some art for the next unannounced Call of Duty game, entitled Warzone.

What is that image for and where does it come from, you ask? Well, according to a Reddit post from a few days ago, which has since been deleted, it’s the cover art for Activision’s new CoD game. In that original Reddit thread, a whole bunch of folks seemed to think that the uploader had created fake game art, which occasionally happens. Instead, Activision, in an attempt to stifle this leak to control its own messaging, confirmed the authenticity of the leak by issuing a copyright threat, thereby propelling interest in the image itself.

One Redditor says they received a notice from “Activision/Call of Duty” that this was a “copyrighted image containing key artwork for an upcoming video game Call of Duty: Warzone.”

This is all relatively solid indication that the Warzone name is real, and refers to battle royale. Ghost’s appearance in the image ties it closely to Modern Warfare, and the fact that a ‘classified’ option has joined that game’s main menu suggests it will be available inside Call of Duty proper.

And, so, instead of one Reddit thread that half the readers distrust, Activision has created for itself dozens of internet articles about the image, the forthcoming game, and its own actions in trying to copyright a leak to hell. Meanwhile, as you can see above, the image the company attempted to nuke from the internet is still very, very much available.

Maybe someone needs to create Call of Duty: Modern Internet Warfare?

Filed Under: call of duty, confirmation, copyright, dmca, leaks, overreacting, takedowns, warzone
Companies: activision, reddit

Bogus DMCA Notices Still A Huge Problem As Apple Gets Unfairly Blamed For Reddit Takedown

Copyright

from the nice-website-you-have-there dept

As we’ve discussed in the past, the DMCA system is enforced in such a way as to make it wide open for abuse. One of the chief problems is that, while the DMCA does include potential punishments for filing bogus notices under 512(f), the courts have traditionally appeared to have forgotten that this part of the law even exists. The end result is that anyone looking to censor or extort others by either filing or threatening to file bogus DMCA notices is mostly free to do so without risk. The times when 512(f) actually gets a spotlight are so few and far between as to be news when it happens. This has been going on, and has been pointed out by various publications, for years.

And yet it still goes on. Earlier, Mike wrote about Apple sending a questionable DMCA takedown to Twitter regarding a tweet, but there was a separate part of that story. Beyond the takedown to Twitter — which everyone (including Apple) recognized as coming from Apple — there were other takedowns sent to Reddit, leading the subreddit /r/jailbreak to go into lockdown. This followed the removal of several posts discussing how that Apple encryption key was taken down (as explained in the earlier post). Many leapt to the conclusion in both the media and wider internet that Apple was behind the shuttering of /r/jailbreak as well.

Since Apple was behind the takedown on Twitter and the most obvious culprit in respect of the DMCA takedowns on Reddit, many fingers were pointed towards the Cupertino-based company. However, despite the best efforts of the moderators on /r/jailbreak, Reddit’s admins would not provide the necessary information to identify who filed the DMCA notices or on what grounds.

With uncertainty apparently the order of the day, moderators of the discussion forum took the drastic decision to put their platform into lockdown.

“Locking down the subreddit to prevent new threads is one of the ‘standard’ responses moderators take to show the admins that the mod team isn’t playing, and that they are serious and ready to remedy the issue,” a post from the mods reads. “Too many DMCA notices eventually end up with a warn and a ban (or just a ban) from the admins to whatever subreddit these notices are being sent to.”

Part of the problem when it comes to this sort of thing with Reddit is that the site isn’t at all transparent about the DMCA notices it receives. Due to that lack of transparency, the logical conclusion to which everyone leapt wasn’t immediately countered by the documented reality. Because, as it turns out, the DMCA notice Reddit received which led to all of this was a fake. And a poorly constructed one at that.

And, according to fellow developer ‘axi0mX’, the fake notice wasn’t particularly well constructed either.

“We reviewed it and confirmed that it was someone impersonating Apple. It was not sent from their law firm, which is Kilpatrick Townsend. There are issues with grammar and spelling,” he revealed.

“This notice was obviously not submitted in good faith, and it was not done by someone authorized to represent Apple. Not cool. They could be sued for damages or face criminal charges for perjury.”

There are multiple issues here. The DMCA is by nature open to a non-zero sum of abuse. That non-zero sum gets higher and higher due to the courts and government not bothering to enforce the parts of the law that punish the abuse and fraud. Finally, the law creates a situation where sites like Reddit can decide against transparency when it comes to these DMCA notices, meaning that the fraud works all the better in creating a public backlash against a victim that, in this case, didn’t deserve it.

If we’re going to have a DMCA at all, it sure would be nice if it could be properly enforced.

Filed Under: bogus takedowns, dmca, dmca 512, dmca 512f, takedowns
Companies: apple, reddit