What Would Aaron Swartz Think Of Reddit’s Ridiculous New Direction?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the closing-off-the-commons dept

Aaron Swartz was, perhaps by technicality, a co-founder of Reddit. The more complete story is that he was working on a different project, infogami, that got merged into Reddit, which was created by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, but it’s been said that part of the deal was that all three would get founder credit. Years later, Huffman insisted that Swartz wasn’t really a co-founder and shouldn’t be called such. But, still, Swartz’s views on access to information were certainly a compelling part of early Reddit’s existence.

As you likely know, Swartz believed in open access to information, which likely contributed to his efforts to free academic research, leading to his arrest and the ridiculous criminal charges against him, which likely contributed to his dying by suicide.

Given all of that, I do wonder what Aaron would think, over a decade later, of his former company that he helped grow, locking up information under new ridiculous API terms.

Seemingly taking a page from Twitter (and some other companies) seeing (1) API access as a possible revenue stream, and (2) ridiculously freaking out over generative AI tools being trained on their data, Reddit announced it April that it would begin charging for API access.

A few weeks ago, the developer of Apollo, a popular Reddit app, said that Reddit was pricing the new API in a way that would cost his firm $20 million per year, a price so ridiculous that Apollo has now announced it’s shutting down the app. In many ways this is reminiscent of Twitter cutting off all the popular third party apps that users relied on (and also the ridiculous pricing of Twitter’s new API).

Between this and Facebook instituting paid verification it feels like parts of the internet industry are copying Elon’s bad ideas.

Huffman did a Reddit AMA (natch) late last week, and doubled down on the API fees. Much of Reddit is up in arms over this. There are users, subreddits, and moderators who are all protesting the changes. And a few of the small subreddits I’m in are talking about decamping for other sites.

Huffman’s responses to the AMA also really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including making a bunch of claims about the developer of Apollo that felt unfair and mean-spirited.

And, really, this whole thing is ridiculous. I can understand efforts to offer a paid API for more direct access to certain features, but it should be standard practice to allow third parties to build apps that interact with your service. Hell, Reddit didn’t even have a mobile app for many, many years and was totally dependent on third party apps (or web access).

It feels like so many of these efforts are really about shutting down access to the open web, locking up data and information in their various siloes. It’s against the very spirit of Aaron Swartz, who helped create one version of RSS among other things, and believed in not just open access to information, but that the internet was designed so that people could build on-top of others’ work, enabling everyone to build better and better solutions.

Instead, we’re seeing companies like Twitter and Reddit looking to lock up information, joining companies like Meta which have long had a somewhat siloed view of how information should work.

Perhaps we need a “Bluesky-like” project for Reddit, building a more decentralized, open protocol for communities of interest. Arguably, that was Usenet/NNTP, but perhaps it’s time for someone to either reinvigorate that or create something new that is more modern, and can be more connected either in a federated manner or a truly decentralized one. There are, already, a few attempts at building a Reddit-like service on ActivityPub, including Kbin and Lemmy (which, because they’re both in the fediverse, interoperate). Incredibly, over the weekend (in another Elon-like move), Reddit temporarily banned a subreddit about Kbin, though as people started pointing out the hypocrisy, the subreddit was allowed to return.

Playing around with Lemmy over the weekend made me think it has real promise — and along those lines wonder what Huffman thinks he’s doing at Reddit. Yes, the company is desperate to complete it’s planned IPO, and yes, to do so he needs to look like the company can become profitable. But how’s he going to do that if the site’s most committed users are leaving?

Already, thousands of subreddits have gone dark, and while the blackout is supposed to be for 48 hours, some subreddits, including the massive r/music have said they’ll stay dark until the API issue is fixed:

So what would Aaron Swartz think of all this? I think he’d be out there leading the protest, spinning up a Lemmy server, and making sure that the information continues to flow, rather than get locked up.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, access to information, ai, api, federation, fees, lemmy, open information, protocols, steve huffman
Companies: reddit

Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment

Failures

from the screams-in-trust-and-safety dept

One of the most important tools for trust and safety efforts is the “block” feature, allowing a user to entirely block someone else from following them. Yes, on Twitter you can get around this by going into incognito mode, but overall, the feature is a very useful tool for those being harassed to limit access to their abusers. Indeed, one of the biggest criticisms early on of the (still in invite-only beta) Bluesky social media app was that it opened its doors to thousands of users before they had implemented a “block” feature (that has since been added). Lots of people argued that launching social media today without the “block” feature is malpractice.

Elon Musk, however, seems to be going in the other direction.

On Wednesday, in reply to someone on Twitter complaining about being blocked, Elon said that “blocking public posts makes no sense” and saying that “it needs to be deprecated in favor of a stronger form of mute.”

This also comes just weeks after Twitter’s adjusted API policy effectively killed one of the most useful 3rd party tools for users on Twitter to avoid harassment: BlockParty.

Block Party’s anti-harassment tools for Twitter will be on indefinite hiatus as of May 31. It’s been a privilege to help you set your boundaries for the last four years. Together, we blocked and muted millions of trolls. 

We’re heartbroken that we won’t be able to help protect you from harassers and spammers on the platform, at least for now; we fought very hard to stay, and we’re so sorry that we couldn’t make it happen. 

And, of course, all of this comes right after Twitter’s trust & safety boss (who wasn’t particularly experienced with trust & safety work) resigned. So it seems that, yet again, Musk is winging it, and making decisions based on what the worst of his fans want, rather than what actually is best for the ecosystem he manages.

The underlying assumption here from Musk is that the only reason to use “block” is if you don’t want to hear from someone. But that’s wrong. That’s what the mute button is for. Block is an anti-harassment tool to help people avoid having stalkers, abusers, harassers, and the like being able to follow your every word without at least some level of friction.

Considering that Musk himself was so concerned with “doxing” of his public information, you’d hope he’d recognize that, but again Musk seems to view the safety of everyone on Twitter as if it’s identical to his own experience, and his own threat model.

Of course, there’s also the simple fact that the block feature is costly in terms of Twitter compute power:

So, even though he was, himself, an aggressive blocker for a while, more recently he’s urged people to stop using the block feature, and removed everyone from his own block list a few months back. Of course, it appears that even he went back on that promise, because there are reports of him blocking new people since his grand unblocking.

Separately, there’s the fact that there was the infamous “BlockTheBlue” campaign that sought to get Twitter users to block anyone who was subscribed to Twitter Blue, which has really pissed off Musk. Perhaps to the point that this is also a reason he wants to get rid of the block button?

Either way, this is yet another example of a situation where there’s a lot of actual expertise out there, but Musk ignores it all based on (1) his own gut instincts, (2) the requests of the terribly disingenuous people he follows, and (3) a desire to decrease Twitter server costs.

And all while making the website significantly less safe for a large segment of users.

Filed Under: block, elon musk, harassment, trust & safety
Companies: twitter

The Sanctions Hearing For ChatGPT Using Lawyers… Did Not Go Well

Legal Issues

from the did-they-get-chatgpt-to-testify? dept

By now you’ve heard of the lawyer who used ChatGPT for his legal research, and it made up fake cases. We’ll again remind you that Joshua Browder, the founder of DoNotPay insisted that this same underlying technology was so sophisticated that he offered $1 million to a lawyer who would let it make arguments in front of the Supreme Court.

Anyway, some stuff has been happening in the underlying case, in which the judge ordered the two lawyers associated with the case, Peter LoDuca and Steven Schwartz, from the law firm of Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to explain what the fuck they were thinking.

First off, both lawyers (smartly) lawyered up with lawyers from outside their own firm. Second, on Wednesday, they filed their required response to Judge Kevin Castel’s order to show cause, which was effectively the two lawyers throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. The shortest summary of the 29 page document is “we may be ignorant and stupid, but we’re not malicious — and sanctions should only be put on malicious lawyers” And also “we’re super duper sorry, and everyone’s mocking that, so isn’t that punishment enough?”

However, even within that filing there were some issues. When filing a legal brief, it normally includes a “Table of Authorities” which includes citations to every other case named in the document. In this case, though, that actually represented a kind of challenge, because (you’ll recall, though whoever created this document did not…) that the whole reason we’re in this mess is that Schwartz (under LoDuca’s signature) included citations to made up cases that ChatGPT had given him. And, this response, in explaining what happened, mentions some of those cases, with the main one being the entirely fictitious: “Varghese v. China Southern Airlines.”

But, because the response includes a discussion of ChatGPT providing that cite (and others) those fake cases are mentioned in the brief… meaning whoever put together the Table of Authorities included the fake cases that were mentioned. Really. The highlighted cases here do not exist:

There was at least one other such fake case in the Table of Authorities as well. On Thursday morning, LoDuca and Schwartz filed an amended reply, and while the docket does not mention the reason for the amendment, I note that the three non-existent cases have disappeared from the Table of Authorities.

Also on Thursday, though, was the courtroom hearing about all this, and Inner City Press’s Matthew Russell Lee covered the hearing in detail. It did not go well for either LoDuca or Schwartz.

My larger takeaway from their response to the OSC was that I’m sure that they’re telling the truth that they were largely ignorant and stupid, rather than malicious, but it’s still horrifically bad lawyering. You can blame “generative AI” all you want, but the real mistake here, for which there is no excuse, was their failure to actually check on the cases they referenced.

There’s a process lawyers are expected to go through whenever they cite cases in a filing, called “Shepardizing” the citations, which is the process of checking to see if the cases are still good citations: i.e., have there been more recent rulings that overrule or reverse the original rulings, or which make the older rulings no longer good law. That process, alone, should show if a case, say, doesn’t even exist. But these lawyers did not do that. And that’s 100% on them, not on ChatGPT or their lack of understanding for how ChatGPT works.

The lawyers’ excuse — that they used a tool called FastCase, but due to a billing snafu only had access to state court cases, not federal — is not particularly convincing. Because there are lots of other ways to find federal cases… including Google. And, on top of that, once they were notified that opposing counsel (and, it appeared, the judge) could not find the cited cases, pretty much anyone would search a little deeper than just going right back to ChatGPT.

And… more or less that’s what the judge was interested in discussing. First, the judge went after LoDuca, whose signature was on the docs, but who has now admitted that he was just signing everything that Schwartz put in front of him without really reviewing it (this was because LoDuca is admitted to the federal courts in the federal district, while Schwartz is not).

Already, this is questionable enough, in that LoDuca was signing stuff without really checking it over, but also the judge got him to admit that he had lied to the court regarding a vacation when asking for an extension of time (Schwartz was the one who was actually going on vacation). From Inner City Press’s transcription:

Judge Castel: Do you recall writing to me you were going on vacation? And the Court giving you until April 25?

LoDuca: Yes.

Judge Castel: Was it true you were going on vacation?

LoDuca: No, judge.

Lying to a judge is super bad. They don’t like that.

The judge also called out the many warning signs as to why LoDuca and Schwartz should have realized how things went wrong, and didn’t seem to be willing to just accept their “we were dumb, but not malicious” reasoning as acceptable.

But the real mess started when Schwartz was put under oath. The judge quizzed him about the tools he uses for research, and got him to admit that he has access to LexisNexis at the local bar association, but has never signed on to use it. He also admits that when he used ChatGPT he wasn’t just asking it for legal research, but he was asking it to effectively make his argument for him.

Judge: Did you prepare the March 1 memo?

Schwartz: Yes. I used Fast Case. But it did not have Federal cases that I needed to find. I tried Google. I had heard of Chat GPT…

Judge Castel: Alright – what did it produce for you?

Schwartz: I asked it questions

Judge Castel: Did you ask Chat GPT what the law was, or only for a case to support you? It wrote a case for you. Do you cite cases without reading them?

Schwartz: No.

Judge Castel: What caused your departure here?

Schwartz: I thought Chat GPT was a search engine

Judge Castel: Did you look for the Varghese case?

Schwartz: Yes. I couldn’t find it.

Judge Castel: And yet you cited it in your filing.

Schwartz: I had no idea Chat GPT made up cases. I was operating under a misperception.

I mean, all of that is problematic, but it’s basically the judge getting Schwartz on record that he didn’t do the most basic work that he should have been doing. So the judge pressed a little deeper, suggesting that any reasonable lawyer would do more to verify the cases:

Judge Castel: Mr. Schwartz, I think you are selling yourself short. You say your verify cases.

Schwartz: I, I, I thought there were cases that could not be found on Google.

Judge Castel: Six cases, none found on Google. This non existent case Varghese, the excerpt you had was inconsistent, even on the first page. Can we agree that’s legal jibberish?

Schwartz: I see that now. I just thought it was excerpts

Judge Castel: When Avianca said you cited non existent cases?

Schwartz: They said they couldn’t find them. I figured I’d go back – but I continued to be duped by Chat GPT. I wanted to be transparent to the court. I went to Chat GPT –

Judge: We’re not up to that.

And then things get really stupid. As the judge is exploring how a lawyer could get things this wrong, there is this ridiculously cringeworthy exchange:

Judge Castel: Avianca put your cases in quotations… You know what F.3d means, right?

Schwartz: Federal district, third department?

Judge Castel: Have you heard of the Federal Reporter?

Schwartz: Yes.

Judge Castel: That’s a book, right?

Schwartz: Correct.

Judge Castel: So how could you say you thought they were unpublished?

Schwartz: My unfamiliarity with Federal cases. The cite [site?] looked legitimate. I looked up the judge.

Judge Castel: Their reply was only 5 pages. What was your reaction?

Schwartz: The same

Okay, so Schwatz doesn’t practice in federal court, but, uh, it’s shocking that he appears unfamiliar with the Federal Reporter, or that “F.3d” means the third series of the Federal Reporter (also meaning that the case, in theory, if it existed, was published in… the third series of the Federal Reporter. It is not the “3rd department of the federal district”).

I’m trying to think of a more common analogy to explain how wrong this is, and it’s kind of like… asking a web developer what HTML stands for, and having them say it’s Hidden Treasure Mapping Logic.

Just saying: it’s bad.

The judge, who isn’t missing much, also called out that Schwartz’s affidavit used different fonts, and wondered how it was prepared such that the fonts changed throughout the document.

After the lawyers, again, begged for mercy, and Avianca reminded the court they just want the case dismissed, the judge closed the hearing and will issue a decision sometime soon.

One other side note: on Wednesday, someone also tried to file an amicus brief, trying to argue that the judge should be careful if he issues sanctions not to do so in a way that cuts off actual beneficial uses of legal AI tech. It’s a reasonable enough request, but district courts tend to hate amicus briefs, and in this case the problem with the lawyers was not their use of AI, but their failure to do basic lawyering around checking their cites.

Filed Under: ai, chatgpt, citations, generative ai, kevin castel, peter loduca, steven schwartz
Companies: avianca, levidow

US Patent Office Proposes Rule To Make It Much Harder To Kill Bad Patents

Patents

from the why-does-the-pto-want-more-bad-patents? dept

So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we’ve written plenty about the so-called “inter partes review” or “IPR” that came into being about a decade ago as part of the “America Invents Act,” which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the 2000s, patent trolls were running wild and creating a massive tax on innovation. There were so many stories of people (mostly lawyers) getting vague and broad patents that they never had any intention of commercializing, then waiting for someone to come along and build something actually useful and innovative… and then shaking them down with the threat of patent litigation.

The IPR process, while not perfect, was at least an important tool in pushing back on some of the worst of the worst patents. In its most basic form, the IPR process allows nearly anyone to challenge a bad patent and have the special Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review the patent to determine if it should have been granted in the first place. Given that a bad patent can completely stifle innovation for decades this seems like the very least that the Patent Office should offer to try to get rid of innovation-killing bad patents.

However, patent trolls absolutely loathe the IPR process for fairly obvious reasons. It kills their terrible patents. The entire IPR process has been challenged over and over again and (thankfully) the Supreme Court said that it’s perfectly fine for the Patent Office to review granted patents to see if they made a mistake.

But, of course, that never stops the patent trolls. They’ve complained to Congress. And, now, it seems that the Patent Office itself is trying to help them out. Recently, the USPTO announced a possible change to the IPR process that would basically lead to limiting who can actually challenge bad patents, and which patents could be challenged.

The folks over at EFF are rightly raising the alarm about just how bad this could be if it goes into effect.

The U.S. Patent Office has proposed new rules about who can challenge wrongly granted patents. If the rules become official, they will offer new protections to patent trolls. Challenging patents will become far more onerous, and impossible for some. The new rules could stop organizations like EFF, which used this process to fight the Personal Audio “podcasting patent,” from filing patent challenges altogether. 

The wording of the proposed changes seems to be written in a manner to be as confusing as possible. But there are a few different elements to the proposal. One part would limit who can bring challenges to patents under the IPR system, utilizing the power of the director to do a “discretionary denial.” For example, it would say that “certain for-profit entities” are not allowed to bring challenges.

Why? That’s not clear. But what difference does it make if the operation bringing the challenge to a bad patent is for-profit or not-for-profit? A bad patent is a bad patent, and often for-profit entities have the resources to actually hunt down the necessary prior art and to hire the best patent lawyers to bring a credible IPR challenge.

But the more worrisome change is this one:

Recognizing the important role the USPTO plays in encouraging and protecting innovation by individual inventors, startups, and under-resourced innovators who are working to bring their ideas to market, the Office is considering limiting the impact of AIA post-grant proceedings on such entities by denying institution when certain conditions are met.

Basically, if a patent holder is designated as an “individual inventor, startup” or “under-resourced innovator” then their patents are protected from the IPR process.

But, as anyone studying this space well knows, patent trolls often present themselves as all three of those things (even though it’s quite frequently not at all true). Patent trolling operations love to present themselves as the “small inventor,” even if they just got a terrible patent and sat on it waiting for someone to build something successful that — if you squint — can be presented in way that if someone doesn’t read carefully they might think violates the patent.

And, again, none of this should matter. A bad patent is a bad patent. Why should the USPTO create different rules that protect bad patents? If the patent is legit, it will survive the IPR process.

As EFF notes:

Many patent trolls would be exempt from IPRs altogether. The USPTO would prohibit anyone from challenging the patents of “small entities” and “under-resourced inventors.” But it’s trivially easy for even the most litigious patent trolls to portray themselves as “small inventors.” It happens all the time, and the USPTO rules buy into this sham. Many “inventors” are patent attorneys who have learned to game the system; they haven’t invented anything other than patents. Patent trolls that have sued hundreds of small businesses, and even public transportation systems, including Shipping and Transit LLC and various Leigh Rothschild entities, have claimed to be “inventor owned” businesses. 

If these rules were in force, it’s not clear that EFF would have been able to protect the podcasting community by fighting, and ultimately winning, a patent challenge against Personal Audio LLC. Personal Audio claimed to be an inventor-owned company that was ready to charge patent royalties against podcasters large and small. EFF crowd-funded a patent challenge and took out the Personal Audio patent after a 5-year legal battle (that included a full IPR process and multiple appeals). 

If you click through to the EFF page they show how you can provide comments to the USPTO on why it should not move forward with this plan, so if you’re concerned about giving patent trolls more power to abuse bad patents to stop innovation, please consider sending in a comment.

Filed Under: ipr, patent trolls, patents, uspto

OpenAI Sued For Defamation Over ChatGPT ‘Hallucination’; But Who Should Actually Be Liable?

Legal Issues

from the hallucinating-liability dept

Lots of people have been waiting for this, but it’s finally happened: someone has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI over an AI “hallucination” (i.e., confidently spewing out something that is blatantly wrong). The complaint, filed by Mark Walters, in state court in Georgia, argues that OpenAI made up false and defamatory claims about himself. From the complaint itself:

Fred Riehl is a third party who works for a media outlet as a journalist and who is a subscriber of ChatGPT.

On May 4, 2023, Riehl interacted with ChatGPT about a lawsuit (the “Lawsuit”) that Riehl was reporting on.

The Lawsuit is in federal court in the Western District of Washington, case No. 2-23-cv-00647, with short caption of The Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson.

The two defendants in the Lawsuit are Robert Ferguson, the Washington Attorney General, and Joshua Studor, the Washington Assistant Attorney General.

The plaintiffs in the Lawsuit are the Second Amendment Foundation and others, including Alan Gottlieb.

Walters is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in the Lawsuit.

In the interaction with ChatGPT, Riehl provided a (correct) URL of a link to the complaint on the Second Amendment Foundation’s web site, https://www.saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Dkt-1-Complaint.pdf. [I assume that he was using a ChatGPT plugin that allows users to feed PDFs into ChatGPT. -EV]

Riehl asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the accusations in the complaint.

ChatGPT responded that the document “[I]s a legal complaint filed by Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), against Mark Walters, who is accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the SAF. The complaint alleges that Walters, who served as the organization’s treasurer and chief financial officer, misappropriated funds forpersonal expenses without authorization or reimbursement, manipulated financial records and bank statements to conceal his activities, and failed to provide accurate and timely financial reports and disclosures to the SAF’s leadership. The plaintiff seeks various forms of relief, including the recovery of misappropriated funds, damages for breach of fiduciary duty and fraud, and removal of Walters from his position as a member of the SAF’s board of directors.”

Every statement of fact in the summary pertaining to Walters is false.

As already noted, Walters is not a party to the Lawsuit.

Walters is not accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation (“SAF”).

The complaint does not allege that Walters served as SAF’s treasurer or chief financial officer, and he has never held either position.

The complaint does not allege that Walters misappropriated funds for personal expenses, manipulated financial records or bank statements, or failed to provide financial reports to SAF leadership, nor would he have been in a position to do so because he has no employment or official relationship with SAF.

The complaint does not seek any relief from Walters.

The complaint has nothing at all to do with financial accounting claims against anyone.

Riehl asked ChatGPT to provide him with a copy of the portion of the complaint related to Walters.

ChatGPT responded, “Certainly, here is the paragraph from the complaint that concerns Walters: ‘Defendant Mark Walters (“Walters”) is an individual who resides in Georgia. Walters has served as the Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of SAF since at least 2012. Walters has access to SAF’s bank accounts and financial records and is responsible for maintaining those records and providing financial reports to SAF’s board of directors. Walters owes SAF a fiduciary duty of loyalty and care, and is required to act in good faith and with the best interests of SAF in mind. Walters has breached these duties and responsibilities by, among other things, embezzling and misappropriating SAF’s funds and assets for his own benefit, and manipulating SAF’s financial records and bank statements to conceal his activities.'”

Riehl then asked ChatGPT to provide the entire text of the complaint.

ChatGPT provided the text in Exhibit 1 to this Complaint.

Exhibit 1 is a complete fabrication and bears no resemblance to the actual complaint, including an erroneous case number.

None of ChatGPT’s statements concerning Walters are in the actual complaint.

As noted, the complaint includes an “Exhibit 1” with the fabricated lawsuit. Here’s just a clip of the “complete fabrication”:

Just to be even more clear, Walters has never been employed by the Second Amendment Foundation, though he is apparently a radio host who has a couple of “pro-gun radio shows.”

Of course, all of this raises a bunch of questions: Is this actually defamatory? Is there actual malice? If so, who is legally liable?

And I’m not sure there are really good answers. First off, only one person actually saw this information, and there’s no indication that he actually believed any of it (indeed, it sounds like he was aware that it was hallucinating), which would push towards it not being defamation and even if it was, there was no harm at all.

Second, even if you could argue that the content was defamatory and created harm, is there actual malice by Open AI? First off, Watson is easily a public figure, so he’d need to show actual malice by OpenAI, and I don’t see how he could. OpenAI didn’t know that the material was false, nor did it recklessly disregard evidence that it was false. The fact that OpenAI warns users that OpenAI may make up untrue things does not change that calculation, even as Walters’ complaint suggests otherwise:

OAI is aware that ChatGPT sometimes makes up facts, and refers to this phenomenon as a “hallucination.”

Being aware generally that the AI sometimes makes up facts is not the same thing as being aware, specifically, that it had made up facts in this case. And for there to be actual malice, I’m pretty sure they’d need to show the latter.

And then, even still, if this got past all those hurdles, is OpenAI actually liable?

I still have difficulty seeing OpenAI as the liable party here. Again, it just has created this sophisticated “auto-complete” system that is basing what it says on its prediction engine of what the next word should be. It knows nothing of Mark Walters. It’s just trying to craft a plausible sounding narrative based on the prompts provided by Riehl.

As such, you could almost argue that Fred Riehl, who prompted ChatGPT for these responses is more liable than OpenAI (not that Riehl should necessarily be liable at all either). Though, to be clear, I’m not at all sure on why ChatGPT would hallucinate any role at all for Walters, given that the actual lawsuit Riehl supposedly asked about had two named defendants, neither of whom was Walters.

And, really, if this makes OpenAI liable, it seems lots of people could just ask OpenAI to fabricate any story they wanted, and then sue OpenAI over it. And… that can’t be right. Especially in a case like this where there is literally no harm done at all. Only one person saw the output and that person knew it was false, and quickly checked to confirm that it was false.

There may be future cases with different fact patterns, but this one seems pretty straightforward, and I don’t see how the case should get very far at all.

Filed Under: ai, defamation, fred riehl, generative ai, liability, mark walters, section 230
Companies: openai

Jim Jordan Further Weaponizes His Subcommittee On The Weaponization Of The Gov’t To Chill Speech

Too Much Free Time

from the the-hypocrite's-hypocrite dept

Rep. Jim Jordan is at it again. You’ll recall that Jordan ignored subpoenas from the January 6th Committee and was referred to the House Ethics Committee for his failure to respond to those subpoenas. Of course, since being handed the keys to the brand new (created just for him) “Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Government,” Jordan has been furiously flinging spurious subpoenas left and right, and then threatening contempt proceedings for anyone who ignores them.

As we’ve highlighted in the past, nearly everything that Jordan accuses others of doing, and which he insists his committee is there to stop… he is actually doing himself (while those he accuses of “weaponizing the government” are not, in fact, doing that at all).

It is the absolute worst of the worst in terms of not just unadulterated hypocrisy, but doing so in a manner that unconstitutionally silences the speech.

The Washington Post has the latest details on how Jordan and his committee are threatening academics for the crime of researching disinformation.

Last week, Jordan (Ohio) threatened legal action against Stanford University, home to the Stanford Internet Observatory, for not complying fully with his records requests. The university turned over its scholars’ communications with government officials and big social media platforms but is holding back records of some disinformation complaints. Stanford told The Washington Post that it omitted internal records, some filed by students. The university is negotiating for limited interviews.

The push caps years of pressure from conservative activists who have harangued such academics online and in person and filed open-records requests to obtain the correspondence of those working at public universities. The researchers who have been targeted study the online spread of disinformation, including falsehoods that have been accelerated by former president and candidate Donald Trump and other Republican politicians. Jordan has argued that content removals urged by some in the government have suppressed legitimate theories on vaccine risks and the covid-19 origins as well as news stories wrongly suspected of being part of foreign disinformation campaigns.

Basically all of this is premised on the blatantly false claim that there is some “censorship industrial complex” in which researchers, government institutions, and social media companies are working together in a grand cork board conspiracy to silence conservatives. Literally none of that is true, as Twitter itself admitted in court just recently.

Part of the issue is that folks who are deep into the conspiracy theory world simply can’t comprehend that anyone would study disinformation for academic reasons, and they insist that it must be part of a secret plan to “censor” people. The truth, of course, is that while the academics in this field are trying to understand how misleading information flows, and also how it impacts beliefs and action (if at all!), it’s pretty rare to find “disinformation” researchers who think that “censorship” is an effective way of stopping the flows of information.

But, the conspiracy theory must be fed, and the repeated lies about the “censorship industrial complex” needs a villain… and Jordan has focused his attention on these academics. And, in the process, he is literally weaponizing the power he has as a government officials to chill speech and actually push people away from studying disinformation flows.

The pressure has forced some researchers to change their approach or step back, even as disinformation is rising ahead of the 2024 election. As artificial intelligence makes deception easier and platforms relax their rules on political hoaxes, industry veterans say they fear that young scholars will avoid studying disinformation.

Even if you worry that “disinformation” is often misclassified, you should still want the space to be studied, because that’s how we learn whether or not “disinformation” is actually a problem. I’ve long had my doubts about how effective disinformation actually is in changing minds or behavior, but I still want it studied. And Jordan’s weaponization of his Congressional subcommittee is making that much harder.

And, of course, that’s a large part of the goal. It’s become quite clear that the Jordan wing of the GOP (which has now become the core of the GOP, rather than the fringe it once was) has decided that the only way they can win elections is through blatant lies, propaganda, and nonsense, and therefore they need to suppress anyone who calls out their bullshit.

So, things like this are particularly laughable:

“Whether directly or indirectly, a government-approved or-facilitated censorship regime is a grave threat to the First Amendment and American civil liberties,” Jordan wrote.

The only one leading to censorship here is you. The “grave threat to the First Amendment and American civil liberties” is your stupid attempt to bring back a no frills McCarthy-style congressional committee designed to intimidate people into silence.

The hypocrisy is so loud and so stupid:

Jordan spokesman Russell Dye argued that the multitude of requests will build on evidence that shows an organized effort to tamp down conservative speech online. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans,” he said.

The censorship and First Amendment violations are coming from you, dude.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, chilling effects, free speech, jim jordan, subpoenas, weaponization subcommittee

The Daily Caller Says It Will Use Buffy Wicks’ Journalism Bill To Make Sure Google Pays It To Produce More Nonsense

Journalism

from the they're-not-even-hiding-it dept

It seems the propaganda peddlers are no longer even trying to pretend any more how they plan to abuse the bills being pushed by Democrats to “regulate” social media. It would be nice if some of the Democratic politicians actually listened to them. First, we had the story of how the Heritage Foundation, the main think tank of the GOP, flat out said they intended to use the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to censor LGBTQ content as “harmful” to children.

And now, we have the website Tucker Carlson created, the Daily Caller, coming out in support for California Rep. Buffy Wicks’ Journalism Preservation Act while directly admitting that the reason they’re doing so is that it will prevent tech companies from moderating their content when they publish misleading propaganda.

The main issue in the article is the Daily Caller is calling out a trade group representing some of the internet companies, the Chamber of Progress, for its recent study that highlighted that under the CJPA (Buffy Wicks’ bill to create a link tax that forces internet companies to pay the news providers for… letting users link to their content) the biggest beneficiaries would be nonsense peddling outfits owned by Rupert Murdoch.

We mentioned this study recently, while calling out that even if you don’t trust the source of the study, you should at least suggest what’s wrong in their analysis. Is it not true that under the CJPA, Democrat Buffy Wicks will literally be forcing California companies (some of which her constituents work for) to fund Rupert Murdoch’s news orgs? If it’s not true, then present the evidence.

But, here, the Daily Caller goes further. And that’s because one of the worst parts of the CJPA is that it has this non-retaliation clause, that basically says that if a news organization files with a covered internet website under the bill, it cannot have its content downranked or removed. Now, there’s some catchall language that allows Wicks to pretend this isn’t how the bill works. Because the bill still allows companies to “enforce its terms of service,” but simply by saying that such a site cannot retaliate means that any news org will claim retaliation for any attempt to downrank or remove its propaganda content.

And, that’s exactly what the Daily Caller calls out in noting why it and its friends are so excited about this bill. They know it becomes a sledge hammer to use a Democrat-sponsored bill, to allow them to force their content onto Google, Facebook and more:

Conservative publications and independent journalists are the most likely to be victims of censorship from the gatekeepers at Big Tech, and the CJPA would take a sledgehammer to that power by making them finally pay conservative outlets.

Are there any journalists left in Sacramento who are not working for news orgs who would get paid off by this Wicks bill who might ask Rep. Wicks why she’s supporting a bill where the website infamous nonsense peddler Tucker Carlson created, is eagerly stating how it will stop “big tech” from handling basic moderation tasks to limit propaganda and misleading bullshit, while also forcing those tech companies to pay the nonsense peddlers?

It seems like a question Wicks should answer.

Filed Under: buffy wicks, cjpa, content moderation, disinformation, nonsense peddlers, tucker carlson
Companies: google, the daily caller

Research Shows Twitter Was Missing Known Child Sex Abuse Material

Failures

from the this-is-bad dept

Soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he insisted that stopping child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was his top priority, and while some of his fans insisted that he had magically done so, the fact is that he fired nearly the entire team that was handling that issue, meaning that CSAM was running rampant on the site, and the company seemed to be doing little about it.

I’m guessing that all of the stories about this resulted in the folks at the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) researching how well Twitter was handling known CSAM images. As you may know, the “standard” for most big sites is to use a tool managed by Microsoft called PhotoDNA, which has hashes of a large database of known CSAM images, as determined by the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). PhotoDNA has its issues, but the one thing it’s generally pretty good at is catching and stopping attempts to reupload images in its database.

So, SIO ran an experiment, in which they hooked up a PhotoDNA system to search Twitter and see if it found any such known images. The team at SIO wasn’t checking the images, but had them sent to NCMEC.

Making sure you have no PhotoDNA matches on your site is basically table stakes for any decently large internet platform that hosts images or video. If you can’t stop images in PhotoDNA, you’re failing, badly. And Twitter failed badly.

In just over two months, from March 12 to May 20, the researchers’ system detected more than 40 images posted to Twitter that were previously flagged as child sexual abuse material, based on a data set of roughly 100,000 tweets, said David Thiel, chief technologist of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a co-author of the report.

The appearance of the images on Twitter was striking because they had been previously flagged as child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, and were part of databases companies can use to screen content posted to their platforms, the researchers said. “This is one of the most basic things you can do to prevent CSAM online, and it did not seem to be working,” Thiel said.

Dealing with CSAM beyond PhotoDNA is a much bigger challenge, but the fact that the company couldn’t even do the basics correctly is terrifying.

In a thread on Bluesky, Renee Diresta, who worked on the research noted that they tried to reach out to Twitter to alert them that their PhotoDNA setup was missing stuff, but initially couldn’t find anyone to talk to, which is another strikes against Elon’s trust & safety team, as basically every mid- to large internet company has at least someone who knows people at SIO. It’s bad if a company doesn’t.

Eventually, the SIO team had to find a “third-party intermediary” to reintroduce them to Twitter, and somehow that finally got someone at the company to pay attention and fix the issue.

Having no remaining Trust and Safety contacts at Twitter, we approached a third-party intermediary to arrange a briefing. Twitter was informed of the problem, and the issue appears to have been resolved as of May 20.

Again, there are reasons why you have a strong trust & safety department, and that includes being able to deal with illegal content like CSAM. Yet, despite Musk claiming it was the company’s top priority, they completely fell down on the job.

Filed Under: csam, ncmec, photodna, sio, stanford
Companies: twitter

Possible Reasons Why YouTube Has Given Up Trying To Police 2020 Election Misinfo

Content Moderation

from the maybe-not-the-end-of-the-world dept

Judging by the number of very angry press releases that landed in my inbox this past Friday, you’d think that YouTube had decided to personally burn down democracy. You see, that day the company announced an update to its approach to moderating election misinformation, effectively saying that it would no longer try to police most such misinformation regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election:

We first instituted a provision of our elections misinformation policy focused on the integrity of past US Presidential elections in December 2020, once the states’ safe harbor date for certification had passed. Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape. In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm. With that in mind, and with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections. This goes into effect today, Friday, June 2. As with any update to our policies, we carefully deliberated this change.

The company insists that its overall election misinfo policies remain in place, and the direct forms of dealing with misinformation like doing things such as trying to trick people into not voting remain in place:

All of our election misinformation policies remain in place, including those that disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes.

The company seems to be trying to walk a fine line here, which is unclear if it will work. But in talking this over with a few people, I came up with a few reasons why YouTube may have gone down this path, and it seemed to be worth discussing those possibilities:

1. Realizing the moderation had gone too far. Basically, a version of what the company was saying publicly. They realized that in trying to enforce a ban against 2020 election misinfo was, in fact, catching too much legitimate debate. While many are dismissing this, it seems like a very real possibility. Remember, content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and it frequently involves mistakes. And it seems likely that the mistakes are even more likely to occur with video, in which more legitimate political discourse is mistaken for disinformation and removed. This could include things like legitimate discussions on the problems of electronic voting machines, or questions about building up more resilient election systems which could be accidentally flagged as disinfo.
2. Realizing that removing false claims wasn’t making a difference. This is something of a corollary to the first item, and is hinted at in the statement above. Unfortunately, this remains a very under-studied area of content moderation (there are some studies, but much more research is needed): how effective are bans and removals on stopping the spread of malicious disinformation. As we’ve discussed in a somewhat different context, it’s really unclear that online disinformation is actually as powerful as some make it out to be. And if removing that information is not having much of an impact, then it may not be worth the overall effort.
3. The world has moved on. To me, this seems like the most likely actual reason. Most folks in the US have basically decided to believe what they believe. That could be that (as all of the actual evidence shows) that the 2020 election was perfectly fair and Joe Biden was the rightful winner or (as no actual evidence supports), the whole thing was “rigged” and Trump should have won. No one’s changing their mind at this point, and no YouTube video is going to convince people one way or the other. And, at this point, this particular issue is so far in the rearview mirror that the cost of continuing to monitor for this bit of misinfo just isn’t worth it for the lack of any benefit or movement in people’s beliefs.
4. YouTube is worried about a Republican government in 2025. This is the cynical take. Since 2020 election denialism is now a key plank of the GOP platform, the company may be deciding to “play nice” with the disinformation peddling part of the GOP (which has moved from the fringe to the mainstream) and has decided that this is a more defensible position for inevitable hearings/bad legislation/etc.

In the end, it’s likely to be some combination of all four of those, and even the people within YouTube may not agree on which one is the “real” reason for doing this.

But it does strike me that the out-and-out freakout among some, claiming that this proves the world is ending may not be accurate. I’m all for companies deciding they don’t want to host certain content because they don’t want to be associated with it, but we’re still learning whether or not bans are the most effective tool in dealing with blatant misinformation and disinformation, and it’s quite possible that leaving certain claims alone is actually a reasonable policy in some case.

It would be nice if YouTube actually shared some of the underlying data on this, rather than just asking people to trust them, but I guess that’s really too much to ask these days.

Filed Under: 2020 election, content moderation, election denialism, election misinformation, masnick's impossibility theorem, misinformation
Companies: youtube

Welcome To Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, No One Wants To Advertise On Your Terrible Platform Any More

Failures

from the pretend-captain-on-a-sinking-ship dept

On Monday of this week, new CEO Linda Yaccarino officially became CEO of Twitter. Of course, basically no one believes that she’s actually the CEO. Everyone knows that Elon Musk, who in the past has mocked the “CEO” title anyway, is still in charge. He still owns the company and is executive chairman, meaning that he can still fire Yaccarino whenever he wants. And he’s still managing the company and its products. Any honest look at what’s happening here would recognize that Yaccarino’s role is somewhere between “VP of Marketing & Advertising” and “the person we sent to meetings when Elon has pissed off someone important.” At best, she’s poised atop that glass cliff, awaiting the inevitable shove from Elon.

Still, Yaccarino, who had just interviewed Elon on stage in front of advertisers a few weeks before she was hired, spent years leading NBC’s ad sales. She has tons of relationships in the ad business, and it seems obvious that her entire role is to try to sell ads. Because it’s obvious by now that Elon’s best skill at Twitter is scaring away advertisers by being completely clueless and ignorant of how to be a good human being. We’ve written about how Elon himself has admitted to driving away 40% of the company’s advertisers. But more recently he claimed the advertisers were mostly back.

Discussing Twitter’s finances, Mr Musk said the company is now “roughly breaking even”, as most of its advertisers have returned.

Except… that’s bullshit. First of all, the company was “roughly breaking even” before he took over. But at a much higher revenue run rate (approximately $5 billion a year). Elon came in and added approximately $1.3 billion per year in debt interest payments, and then drove away a huge number of advertisers. He did cut costs by firing basically anyone who knew how to do anything, but that’s hardly a recipe for success

As for the advertisers returning? Nope. On Monday the NY Times got its hands on an internal document saying that Twitter’s ad revenue had dropped 59% year over year. And even its internal sales projections are falling short, meaning that it can’t even meet the lowered expectations the company is setting for itself:

But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said.

And, a few hours after that story came out, Elon effectively admitted that he had just lied to the BBC in claiming the advertisers came back. In trying to make himself sound noble during his ridiculous discussion with conspiracy theory nonsense peddler RFK Jr., Elon admitted that advertisers haven’t actually been coming back.

In a Twitter Spaces conversation with long-shot presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Twitter CEO said it was “frankly a struggle for Twitter to break even” because of the loss of ad dollars since he took the helm. More than half of Twitter’s top advertisers suspended ads this winter, but this is the first time Musk has publicly acknowledged the extent of the damage….

Musk tried to frame this as the “cost” of supporting free speech, but as we’ve shown over and over again, Musk doesn’t care one bit about “free speech.” He cares about spreading the speech he supports. Also, the advertisers aren’t leaving because of Elon’s “commitment to free speech.” They’re leaving because he’s a liability to their brand.

The NY Times report notes that even the big advertisers who are still on Twitter are spending a lot less:

Some of Twitter’s biggest advertisers — including Apple, Amazon and Disney — have been spending less on the platform than last year, three former and current Twitter employees said. Large specialized “banner” ads on Twitter’s trends page, which can cost $500,000 for 24 hours and are almost always bought by large brands to promote events, shows or movies, are often going unfilled, they said.

Twitter has also run into public relations snafus with big advertisers like Disney. In April, Twitter mistakenly gave a gold check mark — a badge meant to signify a paying advertiser — to the @DisneyJuniorUK account, which Disney doesn’t own. The account posted racial slurs, leading Disney officials to demand from Twitter an explanation and assurances that it wouldn’t happen again, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

And of course it doesn’t help that the person at Twitter who had been in charge of “brand safety and ad quality” quit last week.

The report also notes that, in Elon’s desperate need for revenue, the company is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel of advertisers:

In one week last month, four of Twitter’s top 10 U.S. advertisers were online gambling and fantasy sports betting companies, according to one presentation. Twitter has also started allowing ads for cannabis accessories, including “bongs, vapes, rolling paper,” as well as erectile dysfunction products and services, according to internal emails.

Adult content, which is permitted on Twitter, has become a concern among the company’s sales staff. When some employees tried to drum up interest from advertisers for Mother’s Day, they found that potential sponsored search terms, like “MomLife,” surfaced pornographic videos, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

Again, literally none of this had to go this way. Every single bit of this is due to terrible decisions by Elon, starting with overpaying for the site in the first place, then trying to back out of the deal, then saddling his new company with $13 billion in debt (which, by the way, now almost equals the amount that Fidelity claims the entire company is worth). Elon didn’t need to fire everyone. He didn’t need to make irrational, spontaneous decisions that pushed the worst content to the forefront of his site and drove advertisers away. He didn’t need to undermine the safety of the site’s highest profile users and advertisers.

But he did all of those things.

And now he thinks Linda Yaccarino will clean up the mess he’s still making, and which it’s still clear he doesn’t realize is entirely due to his own terrible decisions.

Filed Under: advertisers, advertising, elon musk, linda yaccarino
Companies: twitter