Study Says Trump’s Truth Social Is Much More Aggressive, And Much More Arbitrary, In Moderating Content

Content Moderation

from the the-freeze-peach-site dept

As you’ll recall, the defining moment that lead to Donald Trump creating his Truth Social Twitter clone was his being banned from Twitter for potentially egging on further violence on January 6th. Even before Truth Social was started, Trump’s most vocal and loyal… well, let’s just call them “fans,” kept insisting that what was needed was a social media site that didn’t do any moderation at all — or, at the very least, did no moderation based on viewpoint.

Of course, as we’ve explained for years now, such a thing is literally impossible. And every new social media service that pops up promising no moderation learns this the hard way, often to hilarious results. There was Parler, which promised it would only moderate based on “the FCC and the Supreme court of the United States” until it realized that’s not actually a thing, and started banning people for all sorts of things, including “posting pictures of your fecal matter.” Its former CEO also bragged about “banning leftists,” something the website seemed to do with glee.

Then, there was Gettr, another Twitter clone started by former Trump aide (and SLAPP suit filer) Jason Miller with funding from a Chinese billionaire famous for suing news organizations (not very free speechy). Gettr also positioned itself as the “free speech” site that wouldn’t moderate the way Twitter did. Then, when the site was overrun with extreme white nationalists, the site suddenly started banning them. It also would ban users for suggesting its billionaire backer was a spy.

Over and over again, we see that these sites are not only not actually about less moderation and more “free speech” but we see that they’re worse at the moderation game — a lot less principled, and just generally a mess.

Enter Trump’s Truth Social. Announced to great fanfare, and with yet another habitual suer of news organizations, Devin Nunes, put in charge. As we’ve noted, Truth Social has also found it difficult to attract users and prospective users have admitted the site just isn’t that much fun. We’ve also highlighted how, from the beginning Truth Social has quite strict terms of service, and Nunes promised aggressive content moderation (even while framing the site as being more free speech supporting).

We’ve seen some of this play out — for example in banning people for truthing about the January 6th hearings (apparently, not that kind of truth is allowed).

Now, Public Citizen has released a report, looking more closely at Truth Social’s content moderation practices and concluding that content moderation on the site is extremely aggressive and quite arbitrary.

“Truth Social is far from the haven of free speech that Trump promised, as even conservative viewpoints and links have been shadow-banned,” said Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, a fellow for Public Citizen and author of the report. “It’s not at all clear how Truth Social determines which content will be labled as sensitive, why some content is censored after it’s posted, and why other content seems to be preemptively blocked from appearing on the platform at all.”

The report looked at a variety of types of content. Not surprisingly (to anyone paying attention to reality), more progressive messaging was regularly silenced. Again, while Trumpists love to insist that Twitter, Facebook and others are deliberately trying to silence conservative talking points, actual evidence suggests that’s just not true. However, it appears that Truth Social has no problem suppressing content based on political viewpoints:

In June 2022, Truth Social users reported that any post containing the phrase “abortion is healthcare” would automatically be shadow banned from the platform. Much of this report describes my firsthand experience on Truth Social. When I attempted to post the phrase “abortion is healthcare,” I received the standard notification that my “truth had been posted,” which would usually signify that my post would now be visible on my personal profile and on my feed. Instead, the post was nowhere to be found. I made a video explaining that my “truth” had seemingly disappeared into a black hole that went viral on Tik Tok with over 1.2 million views to date. Five days after I initially tried to post my “truth”, after my Tik Tok video attracted such significant attention, it suddenly appeared. As a result, the first interactions with the post including comments and likes are dated five days after the date of posting.

In July 2022, I attempted to post a response to another user’s “truth,” in which he argued that only those that know everything about firearms have the right to protest gun related issues. My response read, “And if you don’t own a uterus and know everything about women’s health, you have NO right to regulate abortion or birth control. When you think they can’t get any more hypocritical, this post says, ‘yes they can.’” That post was similarly blocked and also never showed up on my profile or feed. 

It wasn’t just left-leaning content that was blocked however, The report details tons of other content, including content that would normally be welcomed in the Trump universe that was also blocked.

Users also complained that links to articles on external websites were being blocked. One user suggested that they were unable a link to a Breitbart article claiming that former President Obama was responsible for an influx of crime committed by immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. When I tried to post the link, it never showed up on my profile or feed. Setting aside the merrits of the decision to deplatform the Breitbart article, it’s worth noting that the article doesn’t seem to violate any of their stated terms of service.

The report also found that when content was blocked, there seemed to be no explanation or opportunity to appeal — two other things that Trumpists often insist social media should have.

Again, it shouldn’t necessarily be surprising to anyone that Truth Social is a heavily moderated garbage dump. As we’ve explained so many times, every such website needs to have some level of moderation or they quickly become absolutely useless. It’s also not really much of a surprise that Truth Social is overly aggressive, and somewhat arbitrary in its moderation. As we’ve explained, at scale (even the very small scale of a Truth Social) content moderation is impossible to do well. And, I’d argue it’s even more difficult to be coherent if you don’t fundamentally understand content moderation/trust and safety, and it’s quite clear that this is the case with Truth Social.

However, it would be nice if all the very confident, but very wrong, people who insisted (1) that there should be no moderation at all, and (2) that Trump’s site wouldn’t have any moderation would recognize that they were wrong. And maybe, just maybe, recognize that every time they flipped out over content moderation decisions on other platforms that they didn’t agree with — it was because you’re just not going to agree with how every moderation decision is made.

Somehow, I doubt it. I expect we’ll quickly hear more unproven nonsense about how Twitter and Facebook are obviously against conservatives (they’re not) and excuses for why Truth Social’s content moderation scheme is somehow acceptable (it’s laughable). But, rest assured, if you believe (incorrectly) that content moderation is censorship, then Truth Social is a hell of a lot more censorial than Twitter.

Filed Under: arbitrary, content moderation, donald trump, shadow banning
Companies: public citizen, truth social

Trump Says It’s Defamation To Call His Lying About The Results Of The 2020 Election ‘The Big Lie’

Defamation

from the oh-child dept

Donald Trump, whose supporters still pretend is a “free speech” champion, has regularly been known to sue news organizations that are mildly critical of him. You may recall that back in 2020 he hired notorious-lawyer-for-suing-media-companies (yes, he once was the lawyer in a case against us), Charles Harder, and sued both the NY Times and the Washington Post. The NY Times case was dismissed easily. The Washington Post case appears to somehow still be alive, though not much has happened in a while. It was, initially, assigned to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has since received two separate promotions, which took her off the case. Somewhere along the way, Harder left the case and was replaced by Harmeet Dhillon, who has been a favorite lawyer of perpetually aggrieved culture warriors.

Now Trump is again threatening to sue media orgs — but not via either Harder or Dhillon. Instead, he’s hired James Trusty of the formerly reputable Ifrah Law firm in DC to threaten CNN with a defamation lawsuit for… calling Trump a liar. The threat letter is all kinds of nonsense, but the underlying basic claim undermines the very argument of the lawsuit. It claims that you can’t call Trump a liar because he believes everything he says.

In this instance, President Trump’s comments are not lies: He subjectively believes that the results of the 2020 presidential election turned on fraudulent voting activity in several key states.

Yeah, so here’s the thing: by noting that it’s subjective as to whether or not he’s lying, that means it’s an opinion. And an opinion is not defamation. Only statements of fact are. So, we’re already kind of off to a bad start.

But, more importantly, for the most part, calling someone a liar is not defamatory. There are lots of cases where it’s been tried. And mostly failed. A few years back, there was an interesting law review article tracing the history of “the defamatory impact” of calling someone a “liar.” And it found cases going back centuries that say that calling someone a liar isn’t defamatory. Again, that’s not to say it’s universally the case, but in the rare cases where the word “liar” was found defamatory, there are usually some pretty distinguishing characteristics that imply something much more nefarious — or, more commonly, imply some level of specific knowledge, rather than just commenting on publicly available information.

This is… not that.

Perhaps the most well known case on this question is Milkovich, It more or less set the modern standards (though some have argued they’re a bit muddled) for separating fact from opinion in determining what counts as defamation and what does not. It requires that the claims be specific, rather than “loose, figurative, or hyperbolic.” But the references cited in this threat letter are pretty clearly opinion, figurative, or rhetorical speech.

And that’s not even getting to the question of truth.

Whether or not Trump “subjectively believes” something is really not the issue. CNN reporters may subjectively believe he’s lying. And saying so is their opinion — which is not defamatory.

And that’s not even touching on the question of actual malice.

Donald Trump is a public figure. A very public figure. To win a defamation case, he needs to prove actual malice. And as we’ve said many, many times before, that does not mean that “CNN hates Trump.” It means Trump will need to prove that CNN knew or at least greatly suspected that Trump was not lying. And, um, that’s not going to happen.

Perhaps there’s some statement in the 282 page (?!?!?) threat letter (with exhibits…) that might somehow meet the definition of defamation, but if there was, you’d think that super lawyer James Trusty would, you know, lead with that, and not lead with claiming it’s defamation to call Trump a liar because he actually believes the false things he says.

Either way, this is laughable. And embarrassing for both Trusty and Trump.

As mentioned above, CNN is estimated to have used the “Big Lie” phrase or to characterize President Trump as lying roughly 7,700 times during broadcasted television shows and repeats of those shows. These defamatory comments have continued even after the new CEO of CNN apparently urged production teams to stop.

Accordingly, I hereby demand on behalf of President Donald Trump that CNN (1) immediately take down the false and defamatory publications, (2) immediately issue a full and fair retraction of the statements identified herein in as conspicuous a manner as they were originally published, and (3) immediately cease and desist from its continued use of “Big Lie” and “lying” when describing President Trump’s subjective belief regarding the integrity of the 2020 election.

I mean, that’s just pathetic and weak. Have some self-respect.

Assuming this actually proceeds to a lawsuit, which seems decently likely, it’s unlikely to work out very well for Trump (or Trusty).

In the meantime, apropos of nothing at all, I’ll just mention again, that every state should have a strong anti-SLAPP law, and we need a federal anti-SLAPP law as well. You know, like the one in Texas, that Donald Trump used to get out of a lawsuit by Stormy Daniels, after she sued Trump for… calling her a liar.

Just for the hell of it, I’ll end this post by quoting Charles Harder’s argument on behalf of Donald Trump. Might be fun for CNN to hang onto this for a future filing:

It does not matter that the President used strident language (“nonexistent,” “con job,” and “fake news”) in expressing his opinion doubting the veracity of Plaintiff’s allegation rather than using more genteel terminology. Rhetorical hyperbole is not actionable as defamation. Neely v. Wilson, 418 S.W.3d 52, 83-84 (Tex. 2013). Courts throughout the United States have routinely held that terminology similar to that used by the President is constitutionally protected opinion and non-actionable. See e.g., McCabe v. Rattiner, 814 F.2d 839, 843 (1st Cir. 1987) (“scam” not defamatory); Oilman v. Evans, 750 F.2d 970, 987 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc) (political columnist labeling a political figure a “Marxist” not defamatory); Letter Carriers v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264, 282-83 (1974) (use of term “scab” in labor dispute not defamatory); Buckley v. Littell, 539 F.2d 882, 893-94 (2d Cir. 1976) (labeling political writer a “fascist” not defamatory); Greene v. State, 21 So.3d 348, 352 (La. App. 2009) (labeling state employee “pathological liar” not actionable).

Any finding by the Court that the Comment has a defamatory meaning and is not protected opinion could have a chilling effect on political debate throughout the United States forever. Politicians frequently express their opinions about their political adversaries, often in strident and blunt terms. In 1964, for instance, Lyndon Johnson ran an advertisement that implied his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would start a nuclear war. John Kennedy campaigned against incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960 based on claims of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union that turned out to be grossly misleading. Bill Clinton allegedly misstated the budget deficit in his 1992 campaign against George H.W. Bush. None of these statements were anything more than opinions, and none could or should form the basis of a defamation suit.

Indeed, since the founding of our republic, politicians have often expressed their opinions by branding their opponents as “liars.” Doing so does not subject every such politician to a defamation claim. President Trump himself has expressed his opinions regarding multiple adversaries, sometimes referring to his opponents by colorful names such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” A defamation standard that turns typical political rhetoric into actionable defamation would chill expression that is central to the First Amendment and political speech.

Emphasis in that final paragraph added by me.

Filed Under: actual malice, defamation, donald trump, james trusty, liar, opinion
Companies: cnn

Why The GOP Wants To Break Your Spam Filter: GOP Candidate Tricked Gullible Voters Into Funding Him With Misleading Spam Emails

Email

from the the-gop-takes-you-all-for-suckers dept

Over the last few months we’ve been covering this bizarre story of how Republican politicians, pushed by their preferred spamming provider (which misrepresented a study on how email providers treat political spam), have been falsely claiming that Google is “censoring” their political emails. They’ve also been pushing a law that would require email providers not to label politician emails as spam. In response, Google caved a bit and proposed a new offering that would whitelist political campaigns, keeping them out of the spam filter (but including a button at the top asking the recipient if they want to unsubscribe from that mailing). Google asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC), to bless this idea (and specifically to note it wouldn’t be deemed to violate any campaign finance laws).

As we just noted, the public absolutely hates this idea, and their comments to the FEC reflect a visceral hatred towards (1) spam, and (2) politicians who seek to write laws that exempt themselves from laws against spamming.

In other words, this is a deeply unpopular idea that Republicans are pushing because their own digital marketing agency is so bad at crafting emails that don’t look like spam that they have to resort to special laws to keep spamming you.

Indeed, as we noted in some of our coverage, Republican politicians have a long history of especially spam-like emails, which seem designed specifically to dupe gullible people — often older people — out of money.

And now there’s a new story suggesting that this appears to be getting even worse. A Republican candidate for Congress in Florida, Erick Aguilar, has raised a tremendous amount of money by sending email spams pretending to be campaign emails from more popular politicians: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

Seriously.

In his pursuit of Florida’s 4th Congressional District, Aguilar has used WinRed, a popular platform Republicans employ to process campaign contributions, to send a flurry of fundraising emails. But the solicitations did not mention Aguilar’s campaign or his leading competitor in the Aug. 23 primary, state Sen. Aaron Bean, who has the support of much of the state’s GOP establishment.

Instead, the messages were written in a way that suggested donations would actually go toward more prominent GOP politicians, including the former president, the governor or Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.

“Governor DeSantis is always fighting back against Corrupt Left,” read one email that came under a logo using DeSantis’ name. “No matter how bad this country is the Fake News media and Biden Admin are OBSESSED with that [sic] Florida is doing.”

It added: “It is time to help America’s #1 Governor. Can we count on you to support DeSantis?”

It appears that these tactics have worked, with gullible Trump/DeSantis supporters filling Aguilar’s campaign coffers… without even realizing it.

The move appeared to have worked — particularly among retired older donors from across the country. Some of Aguilar’s WinRed emails, such as the one about DeSantis, went out in November, just before the Jacksonville-based candidate’s campaign saw nearly 16 times as much cash come in in December, campaign finance records show. Yet some of the people who sent contributions had no idea they were giving to Aguilar.

“I don’t know that name,” Pat Medford, an 88-year-old from Minnesota, said in an interview when asked about her donations to Aguilar. “I, of course, give to President Trump and DeSantis, but that’s really it. I don’t give to many others, and that name [Aguilar] is not familiar to me.”

Despite not knowing him, records show Medford gave 30 separate contributions to Aguilar’s campaign through WinRed, totaling more than $1,000.

So, let’s be clear here. Under the GOP bill proposed by John Thune and Google’s proposed pilot program, it appears these emails could not be filtered as spam. They are coming from a legitimate candidate for federal office. That they are misleading and extraordinarily spammy doesn’t much matter to these Republicans, it seems. That these Republicans have to resort to such scammy techniques to dupe gullible voters out of so much money doesn’t matter.

All that seems to matter is that they want more cash from their base, and they consider this the best way to keep Google from actually protecting people.

Filed Under: donald trump, dupes, erick aguilar, gop, john thune, ron desantis, scams, spam, spam filters
Companies: google, targeted victory

Paperwork Suggests Donald Trump Has Left The Board Of His ‘Tech’ Company; But Truth Social Says He’s Still There

Failures

from the the-art-of-the-deal? dept

It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s Trump Media and Technology Group — which was launched with big plans, but so far only has a total flop of a barely used social media app, Truth Social, to show for it — was struggling. But then came the news that the ponzi-scheme-esque reverse merger deal was actually leading to serious legal investigations, and it appears that Trump and some of his friends may have decided it was perhaps better to take a more “hands off” approach.

So, while Donald Trump himself had been on the board of TMTG, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune notes that Trump himself and a bunch of his entourage all left the board last month, just before subpoenas were delivered. Convenient, with the emphasis on that first syllable.

A total of six board members left. Other than Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr. and Kash Patel (a former Nunes staffer with close ties to Trump) left the board, along with Scott Glabe, Andrew Northwall and Wes Moss. Apparently there are just two board members left: Devin Nunes and Phillip Juhan, who is the company’s CFO. You can see on the filing that all six names are listed as being “removed” from the board:

But, as this story started making news, Truth Social (which is neither social, nor particularly truthful at times) claimed that Trump remains the chair of the board.

That… doesn’t actually clear things up. Perhaps there’s something else going on, or perhaps it’s a semantic change from listing him as just a director to chairperson? But, still, it’s not your usual filing.

Normally when a board member leaves, a replacement is named, or it comes soon after. It’s pretty rare to see so many board members all leave at once. Or, at least to file something saying they’re leaving, even if others deny it.

It makes you wonder if Trump will be shifting to a role like in some of his other businesses where he’s mostly just selling naming rights, but has little oversight over the actual business. Either way, it’s not exactly the kind of thing that provides confidence that those in charge know what they’re doing.

Filed Under: andrew northwall, devin nunes, donald trump, donald trump jr., kash patel, management, scott glabe, wes moss
Companies: tmtg, truth social

Trump Doesn’t Want To Get Back On Twitter So Badly, He’s Appealing His Case To Get Back On Twitter

Legal Issues

from the say-what-now? dept

In April, Donald Trump insisted he had no interest whatsoever in getting back on Twitter (in response to questions about whether or not Elon Musk would allow him back, should he ever close his Twitter purchase). In May, Donald Trump lost his lawsuit trying to force Twitter to reinstate him. In June, Donald Trump (who again, insists he wouldn’t even go back to Twitter if he were allowed to) decided to appeal the loss in his lawsuit in order to try to force Twitter to reinstate him.

The fact that Donald Trump might state things contrary to the truth isn’t much of a surprise, of course. But at some point, you gotta wonder how much he wants to actually rack up legal bills for this nonsense victimization campaign.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised Trump jumped straight to appeal here. The district court judge had left it open for him to amend his complaint, and I figured Trump would take one more crack at that before jumping to appeal. However, maybe he’s feeling high because his hand-picked Supreme Court Justices have started to show less and less restraint in using their lifetime appointments to settle political grievances — so perhaps he feels the faster he can get in front of today’s SCOTUS, the better.

This case is a total loser, though, and it would take some seriously warped twisting of so much existing law, that even this court would likely find it difficult to force Twitter to reinstate Trump.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, appeal, content moderation, donald trump
Companies: twitter

Trump’s Truth Social Big Payday May Be Falling Apart

Failures

from the nice-try dept

Donald Trump promised to take the social media world by storm with his Truth Social Twitter-clone for the MAGA world. “Free speech!” he claimed as he banned anyone who criticized him. Of course, from the beginning, many suspected that this was all a very sketchy grift, using a SPAC to try to cash in on gullible MAGA folks willing to pump up a shell company stock well beyond what it could possibly be worth.

Except, everything continues to fall apart. Even with Trump himself finally starting to “Truth” it up during the January 6th hearings (which have been quite damning), the site is struggling to remain relevant. It’s even gotten to the point that the ban and block finger is so heavy that he’s blocking some of his biggest fans, and they’re not happy about it.

It’s almost as if it was never about “free speech” after all.

Oh, and also, Reuters has a giant report on how the company is having trouble attracting tech talent, and that other tech companies are steering way clear of partnering with the company as well, because it’s seen as such a toxic asset all around.

Truth Social last summer started recruiting tech talent. Executives sought to find ideologically aligned staffers, in at least one case scanning candidates’ social media and listening to their appearances on podcasts, according to a person familiar with company operations. But the company struggled to woo skilled tech workers, regardless of their politics, according to three people with knowledge of the recruiting efforts.

Those with the company’s preferred conservative politics, or at least a commitment to its stated free-speech mission, were in short supply, they said. And tech workers with liberal or moderate politics usually wanted nothing to do with the Trump company. One person approached by TMTG told Reuters it was an easy offer to refuse. Beyond a distaste for Trump’s politics, this person cited concerns about the former president’s history of business failures – the DWAC filing lists six Trump entities that have filed for bankruptcy – and about TMTG’s financing arrangements.

But, perhaps the bigger threat on the horizon is that the SPAC shell game with Digital World Acquisition Corp. may be in serious doubt. The SEC has ramped up its investigation into what’s going on here.

And, as Liz Dye at Wonkette points out, things seemed to get even worse, as DWAC is now facing a grand jury investigation as well:

The SEC investigation continues apace. But in the meantime, DWAC disclosed this morning that the company and its board members had all gotten subpoenas from a federal grand jury in the Justice Department’s office in the Southern District of New York. And that shark tank does not hand out investment capital.

The grand jury is seeking substantially the same information as the SEC, and it has specific questions about Miami investment firm Rocket One Capital. CNBC reports that DWAC board member Bruce Garelick resigned last Wednesday. Garelick is — or perhaps was — the chief strategy officer for Rocket One. We’d check his status, but as of this morning, the company’s website looks like this:

Probably just a coincidence, right?

Oof. Anyway, at the very least, all of this is going to delay the SPAC deal, and it may delay it permanently. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight can’t even pull off the whole cashing out part of the grift for its social media site that barely works, is having trouble attracting a meaningful userbase, and is kicking people off for any kind of wrongspeak.

Filed Under: donald trump, grand jury, reverse merger, subpoena
Companies: dwac, truth social

Appeals Court: No, You Can’t Just Sue Twitter Because You’re Upset They Kicked Trump Off

Content Moderation

from the not-how-any-of-this-works dept

We’ve covered on here former President Donald Trump’s ridiculous lawsuit against Twitter for kicking him off the platform for violating its terms of service (a lawsuit that is not going well at all), but I had missed that some random person, Maria Rutenberg, had also sued Twitter for the same thing. No, not for kicking her off, but for kicking Trump off. She claimed (I am not joking) that it violated her 1st Amendment rights not to be able to respond to his tweets. I only wish I were joking. From the complaint:

This case is not about the free speech of Former President Trump – this case is about the free speech rights of Plaintiff Maria Rutenburg and millions of people around the country who have a First Amendment right to view, discuss, debate, comment, reply and respond to Former President Trump’s tweets.

As you might imagine, that case has also gone poorly. The district court quickly denied a request for a Temporary Restraining Order against Twitter (to force it to reinstate Trump), it then easily dismissed the case, pointing out that Twitter is not a state actor, and therefore could not violate her 1st Amendment rights.

In sum, Rutenburg has failed to demonstrate that Twitter is a state actor sufficient to trigger liability for an alleged deprivation of federal rights under Section 1983. Rutenburg conflates decisions finding that former President Trump’s usage of Twitter is a public forum, constraining his ability to summarily block critics, and impermissibly attempts to extend this underlying logic to Twitter. This fails where Twitter is not a state actor, and is not exercising any sovereign state authority. Rutenburg’s citations do not persuade, where such cases concern state actors, including elected state or local officials. Rutenburg otherwise fails to cite to a single case where a Court has found a private non-state actor liable under Section 1983 for alleged violations of constitutional rights in similar circumstances.

Undeterred by basic common sense, Rutenberg appealed the case to the 9th Circuit, where… it was also easily rejected because, once again (this time, with feeling), Twitter is not a state actor and cannot take away anyone’s 1st Amendment rights.

The district court properly dismissed Rutenburg’s First Amendment claim: She did not allege sufficient facts to infer that the defendants (collectively, “Twitter” or “the company”) engaged in state action when the company moderated or suspended the former President’s Twitter account. The First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause “prohibits the government—not a private party—from abridging speech.” Prager Univ. v. Google LLC, 951 F.3d 991, 996 (9th Cir. 2020) (citations omitted). Dismissal was proper because the complaint lacked “a cognizable legal theory” or “sufficient well-pleaded, nonconclusory factual allegation[s]” to state a plausible claim for relief. Beckington v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 926 F.3d 595, 604 (9th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)

So, just to make it abundantly clear: we already knew that people who, themselves, have been removed from a private social media platform cannot get a court to reinstate them by claiming their 1st Amendment rights have been violated, but now we can also note, with pretty clear certainty, that you also can’t claim that a social media platform removing someone else (even someone you really, really like) violates your 1st Amendment rights.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, content moderation, donald trump, maria rutenberg, state action, state action doctrine
Companies: twitter

Impossibility Theorem Strikes Again: YouTube Deletes January 6th Committee Video

Content Moderation

from the impossibility-theorem-never-fails dept

Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well says my impossibility theorem. And, basically every day we see more examples of this in action. The latest is that the NY Times reports how YouTube took down a video that the January 6th House Select Committee had posted to the site, detailing many of the lies Donald Trump made about the 2020 election.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has been trying to draw more eyes to its televised hearings by uploading clips of the proceedings online. But YouTube has removed one of those videos from its platform, saying the committee was advancing election misinformation.

The excerpt, which was uploaded June 14, included recorded testimony from former Attorney General William P. Barr. But the problem for YouTube was that the video also included a clip of former President Donald J. Trump sharing lies about the election on the Fox Business channel.

It’s not difficult to figure out how this played out. Back in December of 2020, YouTube changed its policies to ban videos that claimed there was election fraud. You can agree or disagree with this policy, but YouTube realized that disingenuous smear merchants were spreading nonsense conspiracy theories leading to real world harm, and decided, reasonably, that they didn’t want it on the site.

Of course, that also makes things difficult when you have the January 6th Committee trying to show the kind of nonsense that Trump was spewing about the election, and they want that posted to YouTube. But, as YouTube notes, on a first glance, this content violates its policies.

“Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said in a statement. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the Jan. 6 committee channel.”

In other words, for all the claims of how “biased” these policies are, they also (once again) show how the same policies impact people across the political spectrum.

Of course, this kind of content moderation issue isn’t new. Indeed, one of the first big controversies around content moderation on YouTube came after Congress pressured the company to remove “terrorist” videos, with the end result being that those who were documenting war crimes found that their own accounts were shut down.

This is also why I wish that companies were more thoughtful in how they handled these decisions. While it’s understandable why a company would reasonably say it doesn’t want garbage election propaganda on its site, there are two associated risks with that. The first is that it removes people who are trying to document the speakers pushing that propaganda, as is the case here. And, of course, the second is that it may make it difficult in scenarios where there actually are problems with an election (which, to be clear, there remains no evidence for this in 2020), it will be that much more difficult to discuss it.

In other words, there is no easy answer here. And, yes, I know that supporters of Trump will insist that this is why YouTube shouldn’t takedown election propaganda under any circumstances, but their unfailing willingness to continue to push the completely baseless “big lie” is proof of why perhaps we shouldn’t be making it easier for gullible people to fall down that rabbit hole.

But, still, it does seem like there ought to be better ways of seeking out the difference between “promoting” dangerous behavior and “documenting” it.

Filed Under: big lie, congress, content moderation, donald trump, election disinformation, impossibility theorem, january 6th, january 6th committee, masnick's impossibility theorem
Companies: youtube

Trump’s ‘Free Speech’ Social Network, Truth Social, Is Banning People For Truthing The Truth About January 6 Hearings

Content Moderation

from the so-much-truth dept

In news that will surprise basically no one, Truth Social, Trump’s social network that was pitched as being about bringing free speech back and not doing any “viewpoint discrimination,” even as its terms of service promised it would be heavily moderated, is now banning users for trying to spread some “truths” about the January 6 hearings.

Tsk tsk. What has become of free speech?

I mean, this isn’t the first time people have noticed this. But it is worth calling out, especially as people keep insisting that sites like Twitter and YouTube should never moderate anything based on “viewpoint discrimination.”

So, will Texas AG Ken Paxton kick off an investigation into Truth Social’s moderation practices? Will Elon Musk insist that he needs to purchase Truth Social to bring free speech back? Will Trump supporters who insist that “big tech is censoring” their voices admit that little tech is now doing the reverse? Will Project Veritas catfish Truth Social employees and release misleading videos?

Will literally anyone who has been spewing nonsense about how any of this is about “free speech” admit that maybe they were wrong?

Or will everyone just go on culture warrioring, and pretending nothing at all happened?

Filed Under: content moderation, devin nunes, donald trump, free speech, january 6th
Companies: truth social

Elon Musk Has Got Content Moderation All Figured Out: Delete The “Wrong” And “Bad” Content, But Leave The Rest (And Reinstate Trump)

Content Moderation

from the i-can't-believe-we're-all-doing-this dept

Look, we’ve tried to explain over and over again that Elon Musk doesn’t understand free speech or content moderation. He also seems entirely clueless about the incredible lengths that Twitter has gone to in order to actually protect free speech online (including fighting in court over it) and what it has done to deal with the impossible complexities of running an online platform. Every time he opens his mouth on the subject, he seems to make things worse, or further demonstrate his ridiculous, embarrassing levels of ignorance on the topic — such as endorsing the EU’s approach to platform regulation (something that Twitter has been fighting back against, because of its negative impact on speech).

The latest is that Musk continued his trend of speaking nonsense at a Financial Times conference, where he said that he would reinstate Donald Trump’s account.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Mr. Musk said at a Financial Times conference on Tuesday.

If you’re into that sort of punishment, you can watch the whole thing here. I just warn you that it’s an hour and twenty minutes of your life that you will never, ever get back.

Now, there are plenty of principled reasons to argue for why Trump should be reinstated to the platform. And there are plenty of principled reasons to argue for why he should be kept off of it. When the ban first happened, I wrote a long piece analyzing the decision, noting that it’s not, in any way, an easy call, but there are reasons you can argue both sides.

Later in the talk, Musk basically clarifies his point, repeating something he’s said before, that he basically does not like permanent “bans” but does support other forms of moderation, including deleting content or making it “invisible.” And, again, there is an argument for that as well — in fact, Jack Dorsey has said he has agreed, though in slightly different framing, noting that getting to the point that the company felt Trump needed to be banned represented a failure for Twitter, and reiterating why Twitter should be an implementation of a social media protocol, rather than a centralized hub. And, also, similarly, Facebook’s own Oversight Board questioned the permanent nature of the ban on that platform, and Facebook responded by saying that the ban would be reviewed every two years (though, I’m realizing that two years passed earlier this year, and I don’t recall any commentary on that…).

So, again, there is some level of reasoning behind moving away from bans. But, Musk’s position again appears to be not based on any principled argument, or understanding of what actually happened, but just random thoughts firing through his head. He continues to (falsely) claim that Twitter’s moderation is biased in favor of “leftists” (evidence points in the other direction, but details, details…). The fact that he says the banning of Trump “alienated a large part of the country” leaves out the fact that Trump himself alienated a large part of the country, and returning him to Twitter would do the same. But, oddly, Musk doesn’t seem to care about alienating those people.

His other point, that it “did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice” is just… weird? No one ever argued that Twitter removed Trump to stop him from “having a voice.” Indeed, part of the argument many of us made that one reason why it’s not so bad that he was removed was because he still had the ability to speak out in lots of other places including (these days) on his own Twitter-wannabe. All the removal was doing was saying that Twitter did not want him directly using their site to cause more havoc.

Even more ridiculous though, is that Musk then went on to talk about, hell, let’s call it, his content moderation “philosophy.”

“If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension, a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban.”

Wrong and bad, huh. I am reminded of what Facebook’s earliest content moderators said was the initial policy at that company, when it was all much smaller: “does this make us feel icky?” But they learned, almost immediately that such a setup does not scale, not even slightly.

It’s also just inherently and obviously ridiculous. “Wrong” and “bad” are just fundamentally subjective terms. Again, this is a point that we’ve raised before: lots of social media companies start off with this kind of simplistic view of content moderation. They say they want free speech to be the touchstone, and that they will only have to push back on the most extreme cases. But what they (and Elon) don’t seem to grasp is that there are way more challenging cases than you can predict, and there is no easy standard that you can set up for “wrong” or “bad.”

Then, as you’re (in theory) trying to scale, you realize that you need to set policies with standards for what constitutes “wrong” and “bad.” It can’t be left up to Elon to decide every one. And from there you quickly learn that for every policy you write, you’ll quickly find way more “edge” cases than you can imagine. And, on top of that, you’ll find that if you have ten different people comparing the edge case to the policy, you may get ten different answers of how to apply it.

And, again, this is actually one thing that Twitter has spent years thinking about: how do you operationalize a set of policies and a set of enforcements to make them as consistent and as reasonable as possible. And you can’t just simply look at it say “bad stuff goes, good stuff stays” because that’s just nonsense and not any way to set up an actual policy.

If he wants to bring back Trump, that’s certainly his call. Trump has claimed he wouldn’t come back, even if Elon lets him back on, but then again, he’s technically still suing Twitter to force the company to let him back on (the judge just dismissed the case, but has left it open for Trump to file an amended complaint, so the case is not yet officially closed).

But Musk is being ridiculously unfair to pretend (as a bunch of Trumpist propagandists have for years) that the decision to ban Trump was because of some “leftist ideology” and an attempt to silence his voice. It was the culmination of a very long series of events, including multiple other types of interventions, including trying to fact check his false claims and limit the spread of them (things you’d think that Musk would appreciate), but which failed to stop Trump from seeking to use the platform to egg on violence that was part of an effort to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

That Musk keeps insisting that democratic values are so important (saying elsewhere that he’d want to follow speech laws, since they represent the will of the people), you’d think he’d recognize that efforts to overturn an election might, well, raise some questions. It did for the people inside Twitter, who thought deeply about it and argued back and forth how to handle this. And that discussion and debate was a lot more serious and deserves more credit than Musk gives it.

At this point, though, it’s clear that Musk’s view of the world is simplistic and child-like. And that seems unlikely to change. Given how we’ve seen this play out on other websites, I don’t imagine it will be good for long term business, but it’s not my billions on the line.

Filed Under: bans, content moderation, content policy, donald trump, elon musk
Companies: twitter