The Campaign To Dox Twitter Users In Islamic Countries For 'Blasphemy' And Supporting LGBT Rights

Free Speech

from the pure-evil dept

Nearly half a decade ago, we wondered publicly what a company like Twitter, a self-proclaimed advocate of free and open speech, would do if confronted by a government that is anything but. In that post, Mike discussed how Twitter had been used to rant against the government in Saudi Arabia, and wondered what would happen if Saudi Arabia decided to make such speech illegal. But what if it’s not direct government action but that of other users that threatens such speech? While we have seen some governments routinely punish internet speech they don’t like, we’re now seeing signs of non-government individuals getting into the racket as well, as a way to silence the kind of barely-progressive speech a company like Twitter would likely say it wants to protect.

Late Sunday night, Twitter user @old_gaes tweeted a screenshot of one of @Pharaohoe’s tweets from February, which had replaced the word “domain” in a verse from the Quran with a slang word for vagina.

“This is the end of another atheist and we should continue exposing every Arab atheist child to their parents who do not know of their atheism,” @old_gaes wrote in Arabic above the tweet.

Several friends of @Pharaohoe on Twitter told The Daily Beast that she is 16 years old and lives in Kuwait.

@old_gaes has apparently been making a habit of this sort of thing, seeking out citizens of countries that would severely punish speech deemed to be blasphemous or in support of the LGBT community and reporting any speech like that, or encouraging followers to report it, to the authorities. That appears to be the only kind of tweeting the account does, in fact. Where this kind of harassment has very real consequences in nations like the United States, those consequences are not nearly as severe as might occur in other countries. And, lest you think that this kind of doxing nonsense would go unseen by the Islamic governments in question:

Dubai’s verified police account tweeted back to @old_gaes on Monday morning, asking him to “kindly send the details” about potential blasphemy along to a specific email address.

On Monday, @Pharaohoe tweeted “they fucking found me,” “im gonna puke,” then “i’m deactivating guys.” She then deleted her account.

In addition, there are many followers of this Twitter account and others like it, creating a network of like-minded individuals who could potentially out those using Twitter as a platform for speech. The targets mostly appear to be women in Islamic nations who make statements of atheism or of a faith other than strict Islam, or who make any noises in support of LGBT rights. And, according to those witnessing this doxing, Twitter isn’t doing much about it.

“Twitter is absolutely useless. They don’t take this sort of thing seriously,” said the woman who asked to remain anonymous. “I don’t know what the solution is.”

“He’s so dangerous,” said Afra. “I don’t know how his account is still up.”

And, yet, what is Twitter to do? Certainly continued harassment can and should be addressed, but the fact is that Twitter operates internationally, including in countries where the law is not as friendly to secular values as it is in America. If the law in Dubai, for instance, is that blasphemous speech on Twitter should be reported and punished, then Twitter would be walking an interesting line in banning or blocking accounts for doing so. It could try to pull access from those countries, of course, but that would be technically challenging, wouldn’t be in its business interests, and would only result in denying those people any voice at all. That doesn’t seem like a likely solution. Attempts to get clarity from Twitter itself on how it would want to handle situations like this haven’t resulted in much information.

When The Daily Beast reached out to Twitter to ask how accounts like @Old_gaes were allowed to remain active despite consistent reports of harassment, a spokesperson said that “we do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.”

When asked to “better outline how Twitter assesses threats to personal safety” after a violation of the rules that could leave its users in danger, the company did not respond to repeated requests at press time.

And so we have a speech tool co-opted by those wishing to oppress speech, with the company behind the tool seemingly paralyzed as to what to do about it. The good news is that, whatever steps backwards like these may occur, the flourishing of options for free and open speech typically also results in often unexpected change, however slow that change might occur.

Filed Under: blasphemy, doxxing, middle east, social media
Companies: twitter

As Republicans Turn Off House Live Feed, Reps & C-SPAN Turn To Periscope And Facebook Live Video To Cover Sit In

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the we-all-are-the-media dept

So something fascinating happened in Congress today. No matter what your opinion is on gun control or the various legislative proposals around it that have been up for debate in the past week or so, it’s hard to fathom what Congressional Republicans thought they were doing today in shutting off the live video feed from the House floor. A bunch of Democrats decided to hold a sit in on the House floor to push for a vote on some gun legislation. That’s a bit of a stunt no matter how you look at it, but the Republicans shot back by helping that stunt get much more attention by not just gavelling the House out of session, but also turning off the live feed of the House floor that flows to C-SPAN and out to the rest of us. C-SPAN doesn’t control the cameras and is at the whim of Congress to access that feed, so when the GOP shut off the feed, C-SPAN was left without. This isn’t a stupid move that’s limited to the Republican side of Congress, apparently. Eight years ago the Democrats did the same thing when they controlled the House and were upset about Republicans trying to focus on a particular issue.

Of course, we now live in a modern technological age, where everyone has the power to broadcast live video in the devices we all carry in our pockets. Thus, despite House rules that forbid any sort of broadcasting from the floor, Rep. Scott Peters started broadcasting from the floor. And even as the Sergeant at Arms tried to stop the broadcasting, more people on the floor started using Periscope, Snapchat and Facebook Live, leading to C-SPAN rebroadcasting those feeds.

C-SPAN claims it’s the first time it’s done this (and let’s not even bother with the copyright questions related to all of this…). But it seems like yet another example of a form of the Streisand Effect. The sit in was designed to get attention, and it certainly would have no matter what. But shutting off the cameras and trying to shut down the entire process only seemed to drive that much more attention to what was going on, and modern technology helped let the story still come out, no matter what the “House rules” happened to say.

Filed Under: cameras, congress, democrats, facebook live, gun control, periscope, republicans, streaming, video
Companies: c-span, facebook, snapchat, twitter

Judge Doesn't Find Much To Like In 'Material Support For Terrorism' Lawsuit Against Twitter

Legal Issues

from the doubling-down-on-wrong-does-no-one-any-favors dept

The lawsuit against Twitter for “providing material support” to ISIS (predicated on the fact that ISIS members use Twitter to communicate) — filed in January by the widow of a man killed in an ISIS raid — is in trouble.

Twitter filed its motion to dismiss in March, stating logically enough that the plaintiff had offered nothing more than conclusory claims about its “support” of terrorism, not to mention the fact that there was no link between Twitter and the terrorist act that killed the plaintiff’s husband. On top of that, it pointed out the obvious: that Section 230 does not allow service providers to be held responsible for the actions of their users.

As reported by Nicholas Iovino of Courthouse News Service, the presiding judge doesn’t seem too impressed by what he’s seen so far from the plaintiff.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said the complaint fails to show a link between the social media network’s actions and the attack that took five lives in Jordan.

“I just don’t see causation under the Antiterrorism Act,” [Judge William] Orrick said. “There’s no allegation that ISIS used Twitter to recruit Zaid.”

That deals a blow to one of the lawsuit’s allegations. Orrick also didn’t find the plaintiff’s claim that Twitter direct messages are somehow different than regular tweets when it comes to Section 230 protections.

Orrick was not persuaded that companies like Twitter could be sued for messages sent by users.

“Just because it’s private messaging doesn’t put this beyond the Communications Decency Act’s reach,” Orrick said.

This was in response to the plaintiff’s lawyer’s assertion that because direct messages are not accessible by the public, Twitter couldn’t avail itself of Section 230 protections as a “publisher.” Twitter’s lawyer countered by pointing out email providers are still considered “publishers” and they can’t be held responsible for users’ communications, even though those messages are never made public.

It only took about 40 minutes for Judge Orrick to reach a decision, albeit one that doesn’t shut down this ridiculous lawsuit completely. The lawsuit has been dismissed, but without prejudice and with an invitation for the plaintiff to file an amended complaint.

Given the hurdles the plaintiff needs to leap (some logical, some statutory) to find Twitter responsible for the actions of terrorists halfway around the world, it’s unlikely that an amended complaint will fix the seriously misguided lawsuit. The only people truly responsible for the plaintiff’s husband’s death are those who took his life. While it’s an understandable emotional response to want someone to pay for the murder of a loved one, sometimes there’s no way to receive that sort of closure.

Twitter isn’t a closed platform developed solely for terrorists’ communications. It’s available to anyone with an email address… even terrorists. Twitter is routinely criticized for its handling of illicit material and abusive behavior, but the undeniable fact still remains: these unpleasant communications are created by users, not by Twitter. Any attempt to connect the dots between a terrorist attack and terrorist chatter is tenuous, and any attempt to hold platforms responsible for the actions of their users carries with it the potential to make the internet worse for millions of law-abiding users.

Filed Under: cda 230, material support, section 230, terrorism, william orrick
Companies: twitter

Twitter, Facebook & Google Sued For 'Material Support For Terrorism' Over Paris Attacks

Legal Issues

from the like-suing-automakers-for-car-bombs dept

It’s an understandable reaction to tragedy. When faced with the unthinkable — like the death of a loved one in a terrorist attack — people tend to make bad decisions. We saw this recently when the widow of a man killed in an ISIS raid sued Twitter for “providing material support to terrorists.” Twitter’s involvement was nothing more than the unavoidable outcome of providing a social media platform: it was (and is) used by terrorist organizations to communicate and recruit new members.

That doesn’t mean Twitter somehow supports terrorism, though. Like most social media platforms, Twitter proactively works to eliminate accounts linked with terrorists. But there’s only so much that can be done when all that’s needed to create an account is an email address.

As difficult as it may be to accept, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are not the problem. Like any, mostly-open social platform, they can be used by terrible people to do terrible things. But they are not responsible for individual users’ actions, nor should they be expected to assume this responsibility.

Another terrorist attack and another death has prompted a similar lawsuit [PDF] from the father of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks. The lawsuit contains a number of allegations, but every single one can be countered by Section 230. Reynaldo Gonzalez claims that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube all provide “support” for terrorism by both refusing to take terrorist-related content/accounts down and not proactively policing their platforms for terrorist-linked users.

The lawsuit contains several quotes from pundits, terrorism experts, and government officials about ISIS’s successful use of social media platforms. What it doesn’t contain, however, is anyone offering support for the lawsuit’s position: that social media platforms should be held directly responsible for terrorist attacks. But that’s the sole purpose of this lawsuit: to make the platforms pay for a death they had nothing to do with.

There are calls from government and law enforcement officials for these platforms to “do more” contained in the lawsuit as well. But if there’s anything we’ll never run out of, it’s government officials calling for “x non-government entity” to “do more” in response to [insert latest tragedy here].

As was pointed out earlier, Section 230 immunizes the defendants against lawsuits of this sort. And the fact that there’s no direct connection between the terrorist attack and Twitter/Facebook/YouTube’s actions means there’s no way for Gonzalez’s father to seek damages from these defendants for a terrorist attack carried out on foreign soil, as Twitter pointed out the last time it was sued for “providing material support for terrorism.”

Whether or not Section 230’s protections will hold up remains to be seen. This case has been filed in the Ninth Circuit, which just recently handed down a decision opening up service providers to new levels of liability if they fail to warn users about other, possibly more dangerous users. This isn’t exactly the best fit for the bad en banc decision, but with the circuit leaning that direction thanks to recent precedent, lower courts may be more willing to reinterpret Section 230 in ways that will make the internet worse.

Filed Under: isis, material support, nohemi gonzalez, section 230, terrorism
Companies: facebook, google, twitter, youtube

Twitter Bans Obvious Putin Parody Account, Retreats After International Shaming

Free Speech

from the artificially-outraged dept

Twitter is getting the wrong kind of attention this week for its decision to ban a number of Russian parody accounts before the global internet shamed the company into restoring them. The @DarthPutinKGB account, which before it was deleted had more than 50,000 followers, was struck down mercilessly by the Twitter ban hammer on Tuesday. The account deletion came alongside a flurry of Twitter bans on several such accounts, including one making fun of Russian Ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko — and @SovietSergey, an account poking fun at Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Twitter’s move was quickly derided on the social networking platform and Internet at large, with users offering up their greatest hits from the temporarily-deceased parody account under the #NoGulagForDarthPutinKGB hashtag. Even Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves took some time out to highlight the stupidity of Twitter’s decision:

Twitter’s move comes as Putin himself has increasingly relied on Russian propaganda to defend the country’s aggressively homophobic laws and its recent not-so-subtle invasion of the Ukraine. Many of these employed trolls remain happily Tweeting — as it’s hard to differentiate them from the din of ordinary internet racism, homophobia, political infighting and stupidity, which is obviously quite by design. It’s very likely that’s Putin’s professional internet trolls and bots played more than a small role in inundating Twitter with requests to have the accounts banned.

But Twitter’s response to media inquiries was initially notably sterile, the company only directing users to Twitter’s two primary conditions for parody accounts:

“Bio: The bio should indicate that the user is not affiliated with the account subject by stating a word such as “parody,” “fake,” “fan,” or “commentary,” and be done so in a way that would be understood by the intended audience.

Account name: The name should not be the exact name of the account subject without some other distinguishing word, such as “not,” “fake,” or “fan,” and be done so in a way that would be understood by the intended audience.”

An archived copy of the account indicates it did use the word parody in the byline, just apparently not clearly enough for the parody police at Twitter’s support department:

So the ban was somewhat consistent with Twitter’s policies in that @DarthPutinKGB didn’t scream parody in giant, neon letters loud enough for the dimmest to understand. But that Doesn’t make Twitter’s decisions or its rules any less ridiculous — something Twitter higher ups obviously agreed with given the reversal on the decision less than a day later. It also makes you wonder about the arbitrary nature of Twitter’s parody rules and how easily they can be abused, given Twitter’s selective enforcement of them — depending on whether or not the Internet at large gets annoyed enough.

The constant, obvious jokes — and the fact the account only had 57,000 followers (compared to the 3.2 million followers of the Kremlin’s official Twitter account) should have naturally clued most people in to the fact the account doesn’t actually belong to Putin. Though reversed, Twitter’s move was a senseless attempt at protecting humorless idiots from themselves, made all the more ironic by the fact the only people “offended” by the account — were likely professional Russian propagandists and bots flooding Twitter’s support systems in an attempt to stifle free speech.

Filed Under: abuse, darthputinkgb, parody, russia, vladimir putin
Companies: twitter

Top Internet Companies Agree To Vague Notice & Takedown Rules For 'Hate Speech' In The EU

Free Speech

from the who-defines-what-hate-speech-is dept

It’s easy to say that “hate speech” is bad and that we, as a society, shouldn’t tolerate it. But, reality is a lot more complicated than that, which is why we’re concerned about various attempts to ban or stifle “hate speech.” In the US, contrary to what many believe to be true, “hate” speech is still protected speech under the First Amendment. In Europe, that’s often not the case, and hate speech bans are more common. But, as we’ve noted, while it seems like a no brainer to be against hate speech, the vagueness in what counts as “hate speech” allows that term to be expanded over and over again, such that laws against hate speech are now regularly used for government censorship over the public saying things the government doesn’t like.

So consider me quite concerned about the news out of the EU that the EU Commission has convinced all the big internet platform companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft — to agree to remove “hate speech” within 24 hours.

Upon receipt of a valid removal notification, the IT Companies to review such requests against their rules and community guidelines and where necessary national laws transposing the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, with dedicated teams reviewing requests.

The IT Companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

In addition to the above, the IT Companies to educate and raise awareness with their users about the types of content not permitted under their rules and community guidelines. The use of the notification system could be used as a tool to do this.

In other words, it sounds a lot like these companies have agreed to a DMCA-like notice-and-takedown regime for handling “hate speech.” Let’s be clear here: this will be abused and it will be abused widely. That’s what happens when you give individuals the ability to remove content from platforms. Obviously, these companies are private companies and can set whatever policies they want on keeping up or removing content, but when they come to an agreement with the EU Commission about what they’ll remove and how quickly, reasonable concerns should be raised about how this will work in practice, what definitions will be used to determine “hate speech,” what kinds of appeals processes there will be and more. And none of that is particularly clear.

And, of course, very few people will raise these issues upfront because no one wants to be seen as being in favor of hate speech. And that’s the real problem. It’s easy to create rules for censorship by saying it’s just about “hate speech,” since almost no one will stand up and complain about that. But that opens up the door to all sorts of abuse — whether in how “hate speech” is defined, as well as in how the companies will actually handle the implementation. Two major human rights groups — EDRi and Access Now have already withdrawn from the EU Commission forum discussing all of this in protest of how these rules were put together:

Today, on 31 May, European Digital Rights (EDRi) and Access Now delivered a joint statement on the EU Commission?s ?EU Internet Forum?, announcing our decision not to take part in future discussions and confirming that we do not have confidence in the ill considered ?code of conduct? that was agreed.

Their main concern was that the whole thing was set up directly between the EU Commission and the internet companies behind closed doors — and when you’re talking about issues that impact human rights and freedom of expression, that needs to be done openly and transparently.

In short, the ?code of conduct? downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the ?leading role? of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression as legal but controversial content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take down mechanism.

I recognize why many people may cheer on this move, thinking that it’s a way to stop “bad stuff” from happening online, but beware the actual consequences of setting up an opaque process with a vague standard for pressuring platforms to censor content based on notices from angry people. If you don’t think this will be abused in dangerous ways, you haven’t been paying attention to the last two decades on the internet.

Filed Under: censorship, eu, eu commission, hate speech, internet, notice and takedown, platforms
Companies: facebook, google, microsoft, twitter, youtube

The DMCA Should Not Be An All Purpose Tool For Taking Down Content; And It's Espeically Bad For Harassment

Failures

from the so-dumb dept

Remember not too long ago when some internet dude was saying that the best way to deal with harassment on the internet was to basically create a DMCA for harassment, where people could issue takedowns? And remember how we pointed out that this would make things worse, because just as the DMCA is regularly abused to silence people, this new tool would actually be used as a tool to harass more people and silence their speech? Here’s just a little example of why a DMCA-like approach is a really, really, really bad idea as a way to deal with harassment or abuse online. Business Insider has a story about an unfortunate setup where a woman who is clearly being harassed was told by Twitter that she should file a DMCA notice, since some of the harassment involved using some of her photos. Following the sending of the DMCA notice, Twitter forwarded her notice to the folks harassing her, making them somewhat gleeful since it included her full contact info.

The Business Insider story doesn’t reveal who the person is, and we’re not going to do so either, because having looked at the details it’s not going to do anyone any good. Suffice it to say that the story is legit. It involves a “controversial” topic (that shouldn’t be controversial, if you’re even remotely informed) and I don’t want the comments on this story to devolve into an argument about said controversial topic. Either way, this is a clear story where some people on “one side” of this issue decided they were going to harass and intimidate someone on the other side. And this wasn’t just garden variety “disagreement on the internet” that someone claims is harassing. This was a dedicated plan to intimidate the person. And they were clearly happy about getting her info and planned to do more with it:

Elsewhere the same people discussed literally using the general controversy over the DMCA to create further harassment of the individual.

The person complained to Twitter about the harassment and it appears that someone from Twitter told her that since the people harassing her were using photos, she should make a DMCA complaint. This was mistake number one. The DMCA should never be used for things that aren’t really about copyright issues. It’s not designed for that kind of thing and Twitter deserves to be chided for one of its employees suggesting that. However, in looking at the commentary around all of this, a lot of people are angry that DMCA notices involve passing on the full notices. I saw someone complain that companies should never forward on DMCA notices because it only will be used for abuse. That’s a really bad idea.

There are good policy reasons for why we should want companies to forward DMCA notices on to the person who gets their work taken down. For one, given all the bogus takedown notices we talk about, things would be a lot worse if the people who were accused of infringement never were able to find out the details of who sent the notice. That’s part of the point of the DMCA, to create at least some channel of communication between the copyright holder and those accused of infringing. Obviously, in a harassment situation, things are totally different and it’s why the DMCA notice-and-takedown is exactly the wrong tool for this sort of thing, and any attempt to expand it in that direction is a really, really bad idea.

Furthermore, we should want DMCA notices passed on, including to places like Lumen Database, because that’s how we actually get some information about how the DMCA notice and takedown process is working — or not working. Worrying about censoring information in notices or not passing them along is not a good move. It just highlights why the DMCA process is a bad idea in contexts like harassment.

Now, the Business Insider article does make a good point that other companies, like Automattic and Github, are much clearer to people who are submitting DMCA notices that their details will be passed on to those who they’re accusing of infringement — and point out that you can have an agent file on your behalf. That’s also something that Twitter should do. But people complaining that Twitter should not forward on DMCA notices are confusing two separate issues. Twitter absolutely should forward on DMCA notices. That’s important. What they shouldn’t do is tell people to file DMCA notices over harassment issues.

Filed Under: abuse, copyright, dmca, harassment, stalking, takedowns
Companies: twitter

Self-Proclaimed 'Badass Lawyer' Loses Defamation Suit Against Parody Twitter Account

Defamation

from the Todd-Levitt-continues-to-hurt-the-ones-he-loves:-namely,-Todd-Levitt dept

Another defamation lawsuit against a parody account has failed, brought on by a lawyer who should have known better but didn’t. Todd Levitt — self-proclaimed “Badass Lawyer” — has a verifiable history of bad decisions that perhaps made this sort of bogus litigation a foregone conclusion, however.

Levitt tried to fire up his own reality show, which would have presumably covered such lawyeriffic behavior as singing karaoke with college students, inviting comparisons to TV’s sleaziest lawyer (Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad), creating a Top College Lawyers website solely for the purpose of awarding himself the title of “Top College Lawyer,” and somehow mistaking alleged defamation for a criminal offense.

Levitt sued the person behind the Todd Levitt 2.0 Twitter account, which parodied the original Levitt’s more “badass” qualities, like partaking in excessive amounts of drinking/drug use, as well as the lawyer’s Skill Crane-esque grasp on the nuances of the law. According to Levitt, the parody account, which clearly stated on more than one occasion that it was a parody account, was resulting in lost clients.

A Michigan court dismissed his lawsuit last February. Levitt appealed the decision only to find the Michigan Appeals Court no more sympathetic to his weak claims. (via The Volokh Conspiracy)

The court spends some time discussing Levitt’s own behavior, as it’s definitely relevant to the supposed “harassment” he “endured” at the hands of the short-lived, barely-followed parody account.

Todd Levitt is an attorney and a former adjunct professor at Central Michigan University (CMU). Allegedly, university students are a primary clientele of plaintiff law firm. Levitt was actively involved in marketing his law firm on various social media platforms, including Twitter. His since-deleted Twitter account represented that he was a “badass lawyer.” In addition to promoting his law practice on Twitter, Levitt admittedly made several posts which referenced marijuana and alcohol use. For instance, he posted a tweet about serving alcohol in a class he taught at CMU, and in another, stated that “Mr. Jimmy Beam just confirmed a guest appearance in class next week.” In other tweets, he reminisced about his days as a student at CMU, stating that he “tore it up” in the 1980s, and warning students not to “jump [while] drunk” in the elevators at a certain dormitory. He tweeted about being a guest bartender at a local bar and about throwing an end-of-semester party. He also referenced marijuana in several tweets; in one tweet he posted an ode to “mommy marijuana,” who “always put me at ease.” In addition, he tweeted that if marijuana were legal in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, the CMU “dorms would look like they were on fire.”

With this much ammo being provided by the plaintiff, it’s hardly surprising that a less-than-impressed CMU IT employee (Zachary Felton) would issue tweets like these from the Todd Levitt 2.0 account.

1. “What’s the difference between the internet and my tweeted legal advice? A: none. They’re both 100% accurate!”

2. “Buying me a drink at Cabin Karaoke will get you extra [credit], but it’s not like that matters because you are guaranteed an A in syllabus.”

3. “Partying = Defense Clients[.] Defense Clients = Income[.] If I endorse partying, will my income grow? It’s like a Ponzi scheme for lawyers!”

4. “@twebbsays should either meet me at 4/20 in my satellite office or take a hiatus from the medical card” and “#inToddWeToke” and “4/20 = Pot smoking holiday[.] Possession of marijuana = Client[.] Client = Income[.] In the words of Snoop Dogg: smoke weed every day. #inToddWeToke[.]”

Why these tweets would “attack Levitt’s credibility” more than anything Levitt himself had posted is something only Levitt comprehends. The Appeals Court, however, finds in favor the First Amendment and parody accounts — especially those clearly defined as parody accounts.

When read in context, defendant’s tweets are a parody and cannot reasonably be interpreted as coming from Levitt, an attorney and college professor. The cited tweets ridicule and demean the legal profession, as well as Levitt’s status as an attorney and a college professor. In particular, some of the tweets encourage followers to commit alcohol and drug-related offenses in order to further Levitt’s business. As aptly stated by the trial court, “[i]t would be quite foolish for an attorney to outright state by way of self-promotion that he wants college students to drink and use illegal drugs so that he can increase his income by defending them in court.” Other tweets suggest that Levitt’s students can earn extra credit in his class by buying him a drink. Surely this statement cannot be interpreted as coming from a college professor. As noted by the trial court, when the challenged tweets are read in the context of Levitt’s own tweets, a reasonable person would see defendant’s tweets as attempting to ridicule and satirize Levitt’s tweets about alcohol and marijuana use.

Moreover, the idea that the tweets were a parody is soundly reinforced by several disclaimers posted to the imposter account stating that the account was indeed a parody. At the outset, the account itself was styled as “Todd Levitt 2.0,” which has come to be commonly accepted jargon for describing an upgrade of an original concept. Thus, “Todd Levitt 2.0” signals that the account was identifying itself as a superior or upgraded version of Levitt, which hints at the notion that it is a spoof. Further, defendant’s tweets expressly stated, on multiple occasions, that the account was intended as a parody. For instance, one tweet read that the account was “[a] badass parody of our favorite lawyer . . . .” Another gave a “gentle reminder to potential seekers of Todd Levitt: This is not him. This is a parody account. You can find the real Todd(ler) @levittlaw.” (Emphasis added). In light of these statements, a reasonable reader could not have interpreted the account as stating actual facts about Levitt.

Levitt’s worst enemy isn’t a parody Twitter account. It’s himself. And it’s been that way since long before a CMU student started mocking his outlandish behavior on social media. Levitt is still pursuing a defamation lawsuit against Digital First Media for its coverage of his Twitter lawsuit and, at one point, had Felton’s lawyer listed as a defendant. That lawsuit is currently awaiting a decision from the Court of Appeals.

Filed Under: badass lawyer, defamation, free speech, parody, social media, todd levitt
Companies: twitter

Why Is Twitter Sending Legal Letters Warning People About Tweeting About The Gagged Topic Of A 'Celebrity Threesome'

Free Speech

from the don't-let-the-sun-on-sunday-reveal-me... dept

For years we’ve written about the troubling practice in the UK of so-called super injunctions, which bar the press from discussing certain topics. It seems that these super injunctions are most frequently used to stop any discussion in the media of embarrassing situations involving the rich and famous. Of course, social media — and Twitter in particular — have become a real challenge to making those super injunctions have any meaning at all.

Apparently, one such super injunction was recently granted to a “celebrity couple” who added a third person to add a “trois” to the “menage.” The threesome doesn’t want their extracurricular activities to be discussed publicly, and the courts have obliged, with the UK Supreme Court upholding the super injunction, while the UK’s the Sun on Sunday tabloid sought to break the media gag order. I’m not exactly a fan of media reporting on the personal activities of what celebrities do in their bedrooms, but it still seems troubling to have courts completely bar the media from discussing the situation at all (they can discuss that the super injunction exists, but not much beyond that).

But, again, there’s social media. So it seemed doubly odd that people who had been tweeting about the “celebrity threesome” started receiving emails from the Twitter legal department alerting them that they may wish to be cautious about tweeting such things.

An email from Twitter?s legal team, seen by the Guardian, does not explicitly ask users to delete the tweets but hints that there could be consequences for not doing so.

The email reads: ?The complainant requests that the following tweet, allegedly in violation of local law in the UK, be removed immediately from your account. Please confirm whether you will voluntarily comply with the request.?

It also includes a reminder that Twitter?s rules require that users ?comply with all local laws regarding their online conduct and acceptable content?.

From that, it actually appears that lawyers for at least someone involved in the threesome reached out to Twitter to complain about specific tweets and argued that the super injunction applied there as well. Of course, the super injunction applies to media, which raises the question of whether or not random Twitter users qualify as “media.” At the very least, the Attorney General for England and Wales is similarly warning that even those tweeting the names may be prosecuted:

The attorney-general has warned Twitter and Facebook users may face prosecution if they name the celebrity at the centre of a privacy injuction banning the reporting of his alleged extramarital activities.

Jeremy Wright QC said in a statement that anyone who breached the order, not just newspapers, could have contempt of court proceedings brought against them.

So, perhaps the email from Twitter was just trying to protect its UK userbase from facing such legal actions.

Still, it appears the lawyers trying to silence these details are going after anything online they dislike. Last month they claimed that a random blogger violated the super injunction as well, and have also sought to use Europe’s “right to be forgotten” rules to remove search references as well.

Of course, all this activity seems to only be fueling even more interest on social media in leading people to figure out who the suspected celebrities are. Apparently tabloid publications outside of the UK have freely published the details of the story, so it’s not like anyone in the UK has to look very hard to find the details, and that was one of the arguments used against allowing the super injunction to continue — but apparently the Supreme Court was not convinced. Either way, even if Twitter argues it’s doing this to protect its users from possible charges (as ridiculous as those might be), there does seem to be something quite troubling when a company like Twitter is basically telling people to “watch what they say” for fear of potential legal consequences.

Filed Under: celebrity threesome, censorship, media, social media, super injunction
Companies: twitter

French Student Group Sues Twitter (Again) For $50 Million (Again) Over Tweets It Doesn't Like

Free Speech

from the how-do-you-say-publicity-stunt-in-french? dept

Three years ago, we wrote about a crazy story in which the Union of Jewish French Students (UEJF) was suing Twitter for $50 million, claiming that the fact that an anti-semitic hashtag started trendng violated some sort of anti-hate speech law in France. Twitter, somewhat ridiculously, actually agreed to remove the tweets in question, saying they were offensive. Even after that, UEJF demanded that Twitter also reveal the identities of everyone who tweeted the hashtag… and won (not the money, but Twitter was told to hand over the user info)! Yeah, France is not a big supporter of free speech, we get it, but this is still ridiculous.

At the time, Twitter claimed that the whole thing was really a publicity stunt for UEJF:

“We’ve been in continual discussions with UEJF,” a Twitter spokesperson told CNET. “As yesterday’s new filing shows, they are sadly more interested in grandstanding than taking the proper international legal path for this data.”

Apparently, it’s time to ramp up the grandstanding again, as reports are now spreading that the same group has now sued Twitter yet again, and once again for $50 million, and (somewhat incredibly) in all of the tech press coverage I’m reading of this, none seem to mention the lawsuit from three years ago. Of course, this time it’s not just Twitter, but YouTube and Facebook that are also being sued for $50 million. And it’s not over a trending hashtag, but rather just a bunch of obnoxious tweets:

In this “first mass test of social networks,” the groups uncovered 586 instances of content that was “racist, anti-Semitic, denied the Holocaust, homophobic (or) defended terrorism or crimes against humanity,” the joint statement said.

Only a fraction of these postings were deleted by the host organisations within a “reasonable time,” as required under a 2004 French law: four percent on Twitter, seven percent on YouTube and 34 percent on Facebook.

Look, there are a lot of terrible people who say terrible stuff on the internet. That’s kind of a thing that happens on the internet. And, no, it’s not very nice. But it takes an incredible leap in logic to take that fact and say… “Hey, let’s sue the internet companies for this.” In the US, of course, such a lawsuit would be immediately laughed out of court for infringing on the First Amendment. You can say ignorant stuff in America and it won’t lead to $50 million dollar lawsuits against the technology you used to say your ignorant stuff. Now, as we’ve discussed in the past, American companies should be protected from these kinds of ridiculous lawsuits by the SPEECH Act, which rejects foreign judgments that wouldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny in the US. But, of course, that won’t do much good for internet giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — all of whom have a strong presence in France, including employees. The courts can still target all of that.

But, really, UEJF is being completely idiotic here:

“It’s a mystery whether moderating teams in social media are actually working,” said Sacha Reingewirtz, president of the UEJF.

Dominique Sopo, head of SOS-Racisme, said the social media giants were hypocritical.

“These platforms seem more shocked about content with bare breasts, which is swiftly censored, than about incitement to hatred,” Sopo said.

“Our legal step aims at getting the authorities to apply the law so that these organisation submit to it in full.”

First of all, the quote from Reingewirtz is ridiculous. It’s something someone says when they have absolutely no sense of the sheer scale of what these companies deal with. They don’t scan every new post or video because that’s simply impossible. And while Sopo at least has a point about Facebook’s prude sensibilities, that doesn’t necessary apply to the other platforms… and also, is a very different thing. And, really, if you’re trying to get platforms to broadly censor a class of content, it seems like a rather strange way to go about it by then mocking the very same companies for blocking a class of content that you don’t happen to find offensive.

Who knows where this ends up, though given that France is the same country that once declared Yahoo’s CEO to be a war criminal, because someone used Yahoo’s auction service (yes, children, Yahoo once competed directly with eBay in auctions) to auction off some Nazi memorabilia, it may not end well for those companies. The whole thing is ridiculous though. Even if you think saying stupid, ignorant, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic things should be against the law, at the very least focus on the people who actually said that stuff, rather than the technologies people used to say them.

Filed Under: censorship, france, free speech, intermediary liability, publicity stunt, tweets, uejf
Companies: facebook, twitter, uejf, youtube