If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

Say That Again

from the free-speech-is-not-that dept

One of the more frustrating things about the various “debates” regarding “free speech” lately, is how little they are actually about free speech. Quite often, they are actually about people who are quite upset about having to face social consequences for their own free speech. But facing social consequences has always been part of free speech. Indeed, it’s part of the vaunted “marketplace of ideas.” If people think your ideas aren’t worth shit, they may ignore or shun you… or encourage others to do the same.

Over at The Bulwark, Prof. Nicholas Grossman has a really good article exploring Elon Musk’s attempt at reframing the debate over free speech. It is well worth reading. The crux of the argument that Grossman makes (in great detail that you should go read to have it all make sense) is that when you break down what Musk actually seems to be thinking about free speech, his definition hews quite similarly to what a lot of trolls think free speech means: the right to be a total asshole without consequence.

The article highlights what many of us have said before (disclaimer, it does link to some of my writing on the subject), that the real underlying question is not actually about free speech, but where society should draw the line on what is, and what is not, acceptable in public company. And that’s really what this is all about. Free speech, as a concept, has to fall back on whether or not the government suppresses speech. For all the talk about social consequences of free speech, or whether or not there is a “culture of free speech” or “principles of free speech,” everyone has some level of internal voice that notes what kind of speech they feel goes too far for polite company — even if they don’t think such speech should be illegal.

But, then, the question becomes, if there is some speech that I, personally, don’t wish to associate with, should others be forced to do so? And that’s where the debates over content moderation actually live. In that space that says “where should the line be drawn” for what is acceptable and what is not. And when you look closely at the actual debate, it always comes down to “I want to be a disrespectful asshole to people I don’t like, and I don’t want to face any consequences for it.”

As Grossman aptly notes, a private company deciding whether or not to host your content, isn’t really a free speech issue at all. Every platform agrees that some moderation is necessary. Every platform that has tried to do otherwise, changes course, often within days.

Multiple Twitter alternatives have been tried, all vowing to be “free speech” platforms that don’t moderate content. Every one of them—Gab, Parler, Gettr, etc.—has ended up moderating speech and enforcing rules, because what their “unfettered free speech” resulted in was doxxing, promotion of violence, and various other depravities that underscored why content moderation became the norm on the internet in the first place. And all these alternative platforms have flopped as businesses because “Twitter for people who want to post things you can’t post on Twitter” isn’t appealing to most users.

For business reasons, if nothing else, Twitter under Elon Musk would still moderate content. It might, however, change which users it prioritizes.

On top of that, he demolishes the idea that content moderation is about “leftists” trying to “censor” conservative voices:

This supposed bias is an article of faith for large swaths of the right, but when serious researchers have gone looking for it, they don’t find empirical support. A 2021 study found that, across seven advanced democratic countries, Twitter’s algorithm boosts posts by right-wing politicians and parties a little more than posts by left-wing politicians and parties. Another 2021 study set loose some politically neutral “drifter bots” on Twitter and found strong evidence of conservative bias, but “from user interactions (and abuse) rather than platform algorithms.”

Content moderation decisions can be haphazard, not least because the Big Tech business model means a small number of employees rely on algorithms and user reporting to oversee far more content than they can possibly handle. Public perception of these decisions often derives from a few anecdotes repeated by interested parties, and doesn’t match the data. For example, a 2022 paper found strong support in the U.S.—from both Democrats and Republicans—for social media companies taking action against misinformation. Of accounts banned or suspended for misinformation, more were conservative than liberal, but there was no evidence of political bias in enforcement decisions. Every banned or suspended account had clearly violated terms of service, it’s just that people on the right happened to break misinformation rules more often.

So, if there’s no actual evidence of bias, and everyone (even Musk) recognize that there needs to be some level of moderation, what is this “debate” really about. As Grossman highlights, it basically all comes down to whether or not you can be a total asshole without having a social media site say “that crosses our line of what we feel is appropriate here.” He uses the example of the Babylon Bee, whose Twitter suspension for misgendering someone has been pointed to as the catalyst for Musk to decide to buy Twitter.

But is that actually a “free speech” issue?

Of course not. You can be an asshole all you want, and you can disrespect people in obnoxious ways, proudly highlighting your own moral degeneracy all you want. You just can’t expect everyone else to support you in doing it, and not tell you when they feel your behavior has crossed their specific line, their terms of providing service.

So, yes, Elon Musk can take over Twitter, and then he can have every right to change the rules to whatever he wants. Just like Gab and Parler and GETTR and Truth Social and others have every right to set their own rules as well. But none of those are actually battles about “free speech.” They’re battles about where private entities draw the line of what they feel is and is not appropriate on their own property.

And when you look at it that way, you realize that none of Musk’s arguments are actually for free speech. They’re for his desire to redraw the line to allow more assholes on one site, without consequence. And, as Grossman notes, this insistence that it’s about free speech, really really distorts the underlying principles of free speech.

Twitter is a private company, and its rules are up to its owners, whether that’s Elon Musk or anyone else. As a supporter of the First Amendment, I accept that, even if I don’t agree with their choices. But as someone who greatly values free speech—not just legal protections from government, but a culture that fosters expression and dialogue—I refuse to cede the concept of free speech to those who think a defining feature is trolls trying to drive trans people and other minorities off social media.

And that’s exactly right. I’ll fight more than anyone to actually protect the 1st Amendment, and your rights to say what you want and to be an asshole on your own property. But there is nothing “free speech” about just demanding that private entities draw the line for “what level of asshole do we allow” somewhere more assholish.

Filed Under: assholes, content moderation, elon musk, free speech, nicholas grossman, trolling
Companies: twitter

GOP Social Media Experiments Fail (In Part) Because They Break The Troll/Amplification Cycle

Failures

from the don't-feed-the-trolls dept

We’ve noted for a while that Trump’s alternative social media platform, Truth Social, isn’t doing particularly well. Being a Trump product, the platform (surprise!) began with a lot of money slushing around that wasn’t spent in any coherent way. It’s also just generally glitchy and terrible. And it’s not helped much by the fact that after all of his whining about social media “censorship” (read: minimal accountability for saying stupid and sometimes dangerous things), Trump doesn’t even use the product.

Then there’s been the slow realization by the company that it still has to deal with the headaches of reality and content moderation at scale, which we’ve also noted isn’t going particularly well. If you want a platform that isn’t just a pit of bile and illegal content, you have to have moderation standards, which is why Parler, Gab, and now Truth Social (which muzzled some racist drivel by right wing dirty ops shitlord Roger Stone last week) have barred obnoxious people from doing dumb and sometimes illegal things.

Truth failed to gain traction even with the National Republican Senatorial Committee spamming its support for the platform like a feverish street corner huckster:

Putting the corruption, grift, and technical incompetence aside (and there’s a lot to put aside), when the political mainstream press discusses the struggles of Social and other GOP social media platforms, one of the top arguments explaining why they fail is because echo chambers are just no fun:

“I think the challenge that a lot of these newer ones have is to not be an echo chamber for people who hold similar beliefs,” said Alex Weber, a content creator who was embraced by conservatives online after posting videos criticizing mask mandates, vaccine mandates and the mainstream media. “I think why Instagram and Facebook and all these are so impactful is because you’ve got all different types of people.”

While that’s true to a point, it misses a key part of the failure. The problem isn’t just that such groups corral like-minded people into groups made specifically for them. Hell, huddling with like-minded people is 80 percent of the reason Reddit was created and a major reason for its success.

No, one of the major reasons such projects fail is because they break the GOP’s troll and inadvertent amplification cycle. How many times does a right wing personality say something grotesque, racist, or otherwise terrible on Twitter only to have it hate retweeted countless times by numerous people, usually partisan opposites, who think they’re dunking on, correcting, or punishing the content?

The entire success of modern GOP discourse is based on trolling. On any given day on Twitter and Facebook, there’s a ceaseless array of left wing and centrist accounts hate retweeting every idiotic and racist thing Fox personality Tucker Carlson says, expanding distribution of his viewpoints exponentially.

Right wing celebrities like Ann Coulter have paid their mortgage for 30 years by intentionally saying stupid and controversial things, then soaking up free advertising as the outraged amplify said stupid and controversial thing to a significantly larger audience that might have never seen it otherwise.

Twitter “dunks” work to amplify dodgy and shitty trolls in much the same way. There’s just a countless array of folks who think they’re “helping” by dunking on terrible takes, when they’re only really amplifying those terrible takes to a much broader audience. It’s utterly counterintuitive, and in some cases punished by engagement and ad engines (across both online and traditional cable media), to do anything else. Controversy sells. Nuance does not.

So while platforms like Truth Social are stumbling because they’re badly made by incompetent people who aren’t magically immune from the challenges of content moderation, they’re also stumbling because they break a cornerstone of online right wing discourse: trolling to amplify propaganda. A room full of terrible trolling propagandists has nobody to troll but themselves. And what fun is that?

Most of the Section 230 and “conservatives are being silenced” discourse is falsely framed as a conversation about free speech in punditry and the press. In reality, what the modern Trump GOP wants is the mandated carriage of propaganda. The dominant U.S. press simply can’t help but frame Trump GOP concerns of censorship as legitimate, which speaks to the propaganda’s effectiveness.

It’s why the GOP freaked out when DirecTV made the ordinary business decision to kick the conspiracy and fantasy channel off of its lineup. It’s why the GOP despises “big tech’s” belated and often sloppy attempt to clean up race-baiting GOP propaganda on their platforms. It’s why the party adores media consolidation at the hands of Sinclair, and the steady destruction of genuine local news reporting.

The modern Trump GOP can’t just come out and admit their goal is mandated carriage of bigoted propaganda designed to rile up low-information Americans, so they have to dress it all up as something grander, including the Trump GOP’s performative support of “antitrust reform” (read: an attempt to gain leverage over tech giants to mandate the carriage of, you guessed it, propaganda).

Shifting demographics and a fading (and dying) electoral base aren’t great news for the modern GOP, which increasingly alienates a big chunk of independent voters with unhinged behavior and positions. As a result, like many global authoritarian movements, they’ve been forced to embrace online propaganda, fabricated culture war, and victimization porn to agitate and befuddle the public.

The idea that doing absolutely anything to rein in race-baiting propaganda in online or traditional media is “censorship” or the “silencing of conservatives” is itself propaganda, and it would be lovely if the broader discourse and press would wake up to this fact before we’re all drowning in many of the even uglier aspects of rank authoritarianism.

Filed Under: big tech, big tech censorship, censorship, conservative censorship, propaganda, section 230, silenced conservatives, social media, trolling, trolls
Companies: truth social

Public Fallout Over Take-Two Playing IP Troll Begins

Failures

from the is-this-worth-it? dept

Take-Two Interactive continues to find itself in the news for all the wrong reasons. The game publisher and parent company of Rockstar Games, the studio behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, had a reputation built for itself for making great AAA video game titles. More recently, its reputation centers more on its aggressive actions on all things intellectual property. The company has gone after its own modding community, seeing it as a threat to its release of a shitty anthology of past GTA games. The company has also found itself going after companies in totally unrelated industries over the silliest of trademark concerns. And, most recently, there was speculation that there was a threatened opposition to the trademark application filed by Hazelight Studios for its indie hit game It Takes Two, as though anyone were going to take that common phrase and confuse it with the much larger game publisher.

That was left to speculation because Hazelight abandoned the application without explanation, though now we find that it was at least partially done due to the threat from Take-Two.

Hazelight confirmed the news to Eurogamer today, after it was spotted that it had abandoned its efforts to trademark It Takes Two in late March. The team did not dispute that the abandonment came as a result of Take-Two’s actions, but didn’t comment on whether or not this affected sales or a possible sequel.

Which sucks because, again, there’s no real public confusion to be had here and therefore no trademark concerns. And many in the public saw that non-response as to whether the dispute is preventing a sequel or hurt sales as confirmation that it likely did both.

And many in the public are not happy about that.

Take-Two Interactive is back in the news for a trademark dispute and fans are fuming about it. For the past few months, Take-Two Interactive has been the talk of the town for trying to take down the modders community. But now, the parent company of the Rockstar Games is issuing trademark claims even more liberally. They’re targeting anyone who uses words or logos that are similar to any property of Take-Two Interactive. This news has shaken the entire gaming community and fans are absolutely not happy about it.

That Essentially Sports post goes on to list a bunch of Twitter responses to the news, all of which are quite critical of Take-Two. And, sure, it’s Twitter, where you can find people complaining angrily about every last silly thing, but the comments themselves are probably not the type of public reception that Take-Two would want. Some examples include:

• Take-Two are truly a very miserable company for going after Hazelight Games over them using a name “It Takes Two” for a bloody game. Get a grip for goodness sake. I swear your legal tactics are way over the top. Not even Nintendo pulls this shit off.

• Take-Two is almost impressively evil. Are they doing their best to become the most morally bankrupt incompetent entity in order to give Rockstar inspiration for a potential villian in GTA 6?

• ”it takes two” is literally a song by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston lol, they should sue Take Two for using their name instead

• Wooow, that’s actually pathetic. A new studio doing new things, and you got a multi billion dollar company being an actual bitch.

There are plenty more. Whatever Take-Two thinks they’re getting out of this type of aggressive action campaign, I sure hope it factored in the downside of a public backlash, however big or small it may be. Because people don’t like to support a company they view as a bully, generally speaking. And, yes, Nintendo still has its fans, but it also takes regular PR hits for its bullying.

Is that really where Take-Two wants to go?

Filed Under: ip trolling, it takes two, take two, trademark, trademark trolling, trolling
Companies: hazelight games, take two interactive

Take-Two Interactive Appears To Be Morphing From Game Publisher Into IP Troll

News

from the devolving-more-like dept

There is this thing that sometimes happens to companies that are wildly successful where they stop focusing so much on making the things that made them successful and turn instead to intellectual property trolling. Think Atari, for instance. Atari was once a behemoth in the gaming industry, but have since been reduced to trying to bully and/or sue everyone who comes even remotely close to referencing one of its properties, rather than making any real hay in the industry.

This process of devolving from competing business to grifting troll is at its most obvious in the end-state, where Atari is now. I won’t pretend that a company like Take-Two is anywhere near there just yet, but it is notable that we have seen a recent uptick in the company engaging in this restrictive and trollish behavior. Whether it’s fighting its own modding community to release shitty versions of its own older games or filing trademark oppositions for axe-throwing companies (yes, seriously), this just isn’t where the focus should be for a company known to make amazing AAA video game titles.

There is apparently more here than had been previously known. NME has a decent writeup discussing all the IP action Take-Two is getting involved in, some of which includes the examples mentioned above. However, it also includes a couple of other examples of trademark bullying I hadn’t seen previously. The first deals briefly with an opposition for a trademark application by Hazelight Studios for its game It Takes Two.

The owner of Rockstar Games has filed hundreds of trademark disputes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office over words and phrases like “2K”, “Rockstar” and “Take-Two”.

This included the publisher attempting to file a trademark dispute over It Takes Two with Hazelight Studios. After being published in May of last year, the trademark was abandoned on March 20 this year.

As the post notes, the application was abandoned by Hazelight Studios in March of this year. There is no detail on offer as to whether Take-Two’s threat of opposition was the reason for the abandonment, but that’s mostly besides the point. That point being: this is a silly opposition to begin with. The studio’s name being somewhat similar to the name of the planned game doesn’t really point to any serious concern about public confusion mixing up the two. This appears to be pure trademark maximalism, or bullying.

The second might be closer to a valid opposition, though it still all seems rather silly.

A more recent and open trademark filing from Take-Two concerns Max Pain, a business which according to opencorporates.com promotes Twitch streamers, Youtube content creators and Esports teams. Max Pain was given an incorporation date (the date it can commence business) of June 29 2020.

Whilst the US Patent and trademark office doesn’t appear to list what this specific trademark is over from Take-Two, it appears as though the publisher is filing in connection to Max Payne, the series developed by Rockstar. The trademark dispute has been extended, and appears to be ongoing.

In this case, Max Payne and Max Pain sound the same when spoken, except that the services rendered appear to be significantly different. Sure, streamers stream video games sometimes. Yes, eSports involve video games. But is anyone really looking at a promotion agency for streamers and eSports teams called Max Pain and thinking that this has anything to do with Take-Two’s video game franchise? That seems pretty unlikely.

But wherever you come down on these individual instances, it sure feels like Take-Two is becoming more and more focused on being the IP police rather than doing what made the company the giant it is in the industry: making outstanding AAA games. And that, in turn, feels like it could be the starting point for Take-Two Atari-izing itself.

And that would be a damned shame.

Filed Under: licensing, trademark, trademark trolling, trolling, trolls, video games
Companies: rockstar games, take two interactive

No, Getting Rid Of Anonymity Will Not Fix Social Media; It Will Cause More Problems

Free Speech

from the not-this dept

There’s an idea that pops up every so often among people who are upset about misinformation online but don’t actually understand the realities of online communities and the dynamics of how it all works: it’s the idea that “anonymity” is the root cause of many of the internet’s problems. We’ve spent years debunking this, though it’s been nearly a decade since there was a previous focus on this issue — and it’s now coming back.

Unfortunately, part of the reason it’s coming back is because a friend of Techdirt, Andy Kessler (who we’ve even published on Techdirt), wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal calling for the end of anonymity online. I will note, that a large part of the article is correct: the part that accurately notes that Section 230 is not the problem and reforming or repealing it will do a lot more harm than good. That is exactly right.

But then Andy goes off the rails and decides that getting rid of anonymity is the real solution.

He’s wrong, and we’ll get into why in a moment. But, tragically, his piece has picked up some supporters in high places. Senator Ron Johnson, one of the key enablers of spreading disinformation in Congress (under his own name, of course), tweeted a link to the article, saying that perhaps we should end anonymity online:

That says:

I’m concerned that Congress?s involvement in Section 230 reform may lead to more harm than good.

One solution may be to end user anonymity on social media platforms. Social media companies need to know who their customers are so bad actors can be held accountable.

The next day, Senator John Kennedy, another famed Senatorial spreader of disinformation under his own name, announced that he was going to introduce legislation to ban anonymity online. Specifically, he said social media companies would have to verify the legal identities of every user, and said that this would “cause a lot of people” to “think about their words.”

There are three big problems with this idea:

1. It’s unconstitutional.
2. It doesn’t work.
3. It creates real harms & puts marginalized and vulnerable people at risk.

Beyond those three things, it’s a lovely idea. Did I say lovely? I meant short-sighted and half-baked.

Let’s go through it bit by bit.

It’s unconstitutional.

Basically, throughout the 20th century, there were a series of cases that reached the Supreme Court on the question of anonymity and whether or not the government could force the revealing of names. The most notable was McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995, where the Supreme Court was pretty explicit:

Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority…. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation–and their ideas from suppression–at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.

Some people might argue that “this is different” thanks to social media, but the details of the McIntyre case suggest that is very much in line with what is happening today. Some may argue that since we’re often talking about speech trying to influence an election, it is different. Or what about to stop fraud? Or defamation? Literally all of that is covered in the McIntyre ruling:

The state interest in preventing fraud and libel stands on a different footing. We agree with Ohio’s submission that this interest carries special weight during election campaigns when false statements, if credited, may have serious adverse consequences for the public at large. Ohio does not, however, rely solely on §3599.09(A) to protect that interest. Its Election Code includes detailed and specific prohibitions against making or disseminating false statements during political campaigns. Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §§3599.09.1(B), 3599.09.2(B) (1988). These regulations apply both to candidate elections and to issue driven ballot measures…. Thus, Ohio’s prohibition of anonymous leaflets plainly is not its principal weapon against fraud…. Rather, it serves as an aid to enforcement of the specific prohibitions and as a deterrent to the making of false statements by unscrupulous prevaricators. Although these ancillary benefits are assuredly legitimate, we are not persuaded that they justify §3599.09(A)’s extremely broad prohibition.

As this case demonstrates, the prohibition encompasses documents that are not even arguably false or misleading. It applies not only to the activities of candidates and their organized supporters, but also to individuals acting independently and using only their own modest resources. It applies not only to elections of public officers, but also to ballot issues that present neither a substantial risk of libel nor any potential appearance of corrupt advantage. It applies not only to leaflets distributed on the eve of an election, when the opportunity for reply is limited, but also to those distributed months in advance. It applies no matter what the character or strength of the author’s interest in anonymity. Moreover, as this case also demonstrates, the absence of the author’s name on a document does not necessarily protect either that person or a distributor of a forbidden document from being held responsible for compliance with the election code. Nor has the State explained why it can more easily enforce the direct bans on disseminating false documents against anonymous authors and distributors than against wrongdoers who might use false names and addresses in an attempt to avoid detection. We recognize that a State’s enforcement interest might justify a more limited identification requirement, but Ohio has shown scant cause for inhibiting the leafletting at issue here.

Basically all of that would apply to social media as well.

Kessler’s WSJ piece suggests that this would be no different than Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements in the financial industry, but that is quite different. That is an explicit rule developed for determining fraud. It is easily distinguishable from what is being demanded here on two key points. First, social media involves tons of 1st Amendment protected speech, so any law attacking anonymity there would require strict scrutiny to make sure that it was narrowly targeted and the only effective way to meet a specific goal (which it is not). Separately, the goal of having a KYC setup for social media is not to stop fraud. As Kennedy himself said (revealing its unconstitutional purpose), it would be to make people “think about their words.”

It doesn’t work.

Proof? Facebook already requires real names.

I really shouldn’t need much more than that, but just to humor you: back in 2016 we wrote about a huge study involving half a million comments online and found that trolls tended to be even worse when using their real names.

Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.

This is not to say all people using their real names are overly aggressive. Or that all anonymous users are lovely. But the idea that anonymity is the problem is just… not supported by the facts.

And, just to point out something important: the storming of the Capitol was pushed for by a ton of people using their real names. They didn’t do it thinking they were anonymous.

It creates real harms & puts marginalized and vulnerable people at risk.

Back in 2011 we had a post talking about the damage that can be done by requiring people to identify themselves on social media. It included a list from another site of reasons people gave for wanting to use pseudonyms, and you’ll realize there are some really good ones. The original link is now gone, but I’ll repeat them here:

• I am a high school teacher, privacy is of the utmost importance.
• I publish under my nom de plume, it’s printed on my business cards, and all of the thousands of people I know through my social networks know me by my online name.
• I have used this name/account in a work context, my entire family know this name and my friends know this name. It enables me to participate online without being subject to harassment that at one point in time lead to my employer having to change their number so that calls could get through.
• I do not feel safe using my real name online as I have had people track me down from my online presence and had coworkers invade my private life.
• I’ve been stalked. I’m a rape survivor.
• I work for a private club. I have to carry a card around which states I will not share any element of the club with any sort of media. So, If I want to talk about work (and I do) on the net, I have to use an alias.
• I’ve been using this name for over 10 years in the “hacking” community. There are a nontrivial amount of people who know me *only* by that name.
• As a former victim of stalking that impacted my family I’ve used [my nickname] online for about 7 years.
• Under [this name] I am active in a number of areas of sexual difference for which it would not be wise for me to use my flesh legal name.
• My actual real name is utterly non-identifying, as 1) it is the name of a character in a movie, and that overwhelms google search results 2) it’s not unique at ALL.
• [this name] is a pseudonym I use to protect myself. My web site can be rather controversial and it has been used against me once.
• I started using [this name] to have at least a little layer of anonymity between me and people who act inappropriately/criminally. I think the “real names” policy hurts women in particular.
• I use the pseudonym to maintain my online anonymity because I am polyamorous and have no desire for professional acquaintances to discover this.
• I enjoy being part of a global and open conversation, but I don’t wish for my opinions to offend conservative and religious people I know or am related to. Also I don’t want my husband’s Govt career impacted by his opinionated wife, or for his staff to feel in any way uncomfortable because of my views.
• I have privacy concerns for being stalked in the past. I’m not going to change my name for [social media]. The price I might pay isn’t worth it.
• We get death threats at the blog, so while I’m not all that concerned with, you know, sane people finding me. I just don’t overly share information and use a pen name.
• This identity was used to protect my real identity as I am gay and my family live in a small village where if it were openly known that their son was gay they would have problems.
• I go by pseudonym for safety reasons. Being female, I am wary of internet harassment.

Such a list can go on and on. As Danah Boyd has written, requiring people give their real names is itself an abuse of power. And, just to back that up, note that the people now calling for it are the powerful.

The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. ?Real names? policies aren?t empowering; they?re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.

Boyd notes that in collecting data on teen use of social media, she found that people of color were significantly more likely to use pseudonyms, while white teens were more likely to use their real names.

And, of course, none of this discusses what a total pain this would be for most sites. We’ve always allowed people to comment anonymously on Techdirt. If we were required to verify every commenter, we’d most likely shut down the comments — which remain such a key part of the site here. It’s also where we learn so much, often from anonymous or pseudonymous commenters. I have no idea the identity of nearly all of our best commenters, and I don’t want or need to know.

So, please, can we dump this silly idea? Anonymity doesn’t solve the problems you think it would, and it would put people at risk.

Filed Under: anonymity, john kennedy, ron johnson, social media, trolling

Ninth Circuit Dumps Sentencing Enhancement Handed To Defendant For Opening Social Media Accounts For ISIS Sympathizers

Legal Issues

from the decades-in-jail-for-sock-puppet-construction dept

The FBI is still creating terrorists — finding loud-mouthed online randos to radicalize by hooking them up with undercover agents and informants seemingly far more interested in escalating things than defusing possibly volatile individuals.

The Ninth Circuit Court has, fortunately, decided to roll back a ridiculous sentencing enhancement added to another one of the FBI’s homegrown extremists. The terrorism enhancement in this case was triggered by this: the defendant’s opening of six social media accounts for alleged ISIS sympathizers.

The details of the case — contained in the court’s reversal [PDF] of the sentencing enhancement — show Amer Alhaggagi was a bit of a troll. The son of Yemeni immigrants, Alhaggagi was born in California but spent a lot of his life traveling back and forth to Yemen to spend time with his mother. He was raised in a Muslim home but that upbringing didn’t really make him a Muslim. He didn’t seem to have much interest in adhering to the religion’s rules and instead drifted towards the internet, where he developed a “sarcastic and antagonistic persona.”

This is how things were going before the FBI got involved:

In 2016, at the age of 21, Alhaggagi began participating in chatrooms, and chatting on messaging apps like Telegram, which is known to be used by ISIS. He chatted both in Sunni group chats sympathetic to ISIS and Shia group chats that were anti-ISIS. He trolled users in both groups, attempting to start fights by claiming certain users were Shia if he was in a Sunni chatroom, or Sunni if he was in a Shia chatroom, to try to get other users to block them. He was expelled from chatrooms for inviting female users to chat, which was against the etiquette of these chatrooms, as participants in those chats followed the Islamic custom of gender segregation.

One can only imagine what would have happened to Alhaggagi if the FBI hadn’t decided to step in. Probably something way less interesting than what happened when it did. The internet is full of trolls, even the parts of the internet most people don’t access. But an FBI source happened to be hanging out in a chatroom when Alhaggagi attempted to stir up the crowd there with some extremist chatter.

In one Sunni chatroom, in late July 2016, Alhaggagi caught the attention of a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI when he expressed interest in purchasing weapons. In chats with the CHS, Alhaggagi made many claims about his ability to procure weapons, explaining that he had friends in Las Vegas who would buy firearms and ship them to him via FedEx or UPS. Alhaggagi also made disturbing claims suggesting he had plans to carry out attacks against “10,000 ppl” in different parts of the Bay Area by detonating bombs in gay nightclubs in San Francisco, setting fire to residential areas of the Berkeley Hills, and lacing cocaine with the poison strychnine and distributing it on Halloween. He claimed to have ordered strychnine online using a fake credit card, of which he sent a screenshot to the CHS, bragging that he engaged in identity theft and had his own device-making equipment to make fake credit cards.

In isolation, this sounds horrifying. Given the context of Alhaggagi’s internet trolling, it was just more bullshit. As the court notes, his online persona was not especially well-crafted and prone to delivering contradictory claims during the same chatroom conversations.

One minute his persona was selling weapons, the next he claimed to need them, all in the same chatroom. His persona allegedly had associates in Mexican cartels who could get him grenades, bazookas, and RPGs, offered to join a user in Brazil to attack the Olympics, and was considering conducting attacks in Dubai.

This isolated braggadocio led to 24-hour surveillance by the feds and the insertion of an undercover agent into Alhaggagi’s life. The FBI’s confidential informant pushed Alhaggagi to meet with the undercover agent and things kind of took off from there. The pair discussed bomb-making and visited a storage space to supposedly be used to store bomb stuff. Alhaggagi said other ridiculous things, like detailing a plan to become a cop so he could obtain more weapons. On the third visit, the FBI stocked the storage space with fake explosives. On the drive back, Alhaggagi pointed out good locations for bombs.

Then he stopped meeting with the undercover agent. Alhaggagi claimed seeing the explosives in the storage space made it clear he’d taken this too far. From that point on, he never contacted the undercover agent again.

The FBI searched his home in November of 2016, finding evidence showing Alhaggagi was back to trolling, rolling into ISIS-related chatrooms to say bad things about the US government. It also found that he had opened up Twitter and Gmail accounts for some people in the chatroom, who were alleged ISIS sympathizers. Some of these accounts were later linked to ISIS’s propaganda organization. Agents also found online searches related to bomb-making, strychnine, and flammable devices/substances.

The “material support” alleged here was the opening of social media and email accounts. But the court doesn’t find the government’s arguments persuasive. The government had the burden of proving Alhaggagi knew these accounts would be used to “intimidate or coerce” the US government or “retaliate” against it via violent acts.

The lower court simply shrugged and said there was no other possible use for the accounts, given that they were created for people in a pro-ISIS chatroom. But that shrug of indifference added decades to Alhaggagi’s sentence. The probation office’s pre-sentencing report suggested 48 months. The government countered with its terrorism enhancement, asking for a 396-month sentence. That’s a difference of 29 years. The court settled on 188 months with 10 years of supervised release.

The Appeals Court reminds the government that the enhancement doesn’t automatically apply to material support for terrorism charges. It also notes the government fell short on the burden of proof.

The district court’s conclusion rests on the erroneous assumption that in opening the social media accounts for ISIS, Alhaggagi necessarily understood the purpose of the accounts was “to bolster support for ISIS’s terrorist attacks on government and to recruit adherents.” Unlike conspiring to bomb a federal facility, planning to blow up electrical sites, attempting to bomb a bridge, or firebombing a courthouse—all of which have triggered the enhancement— opening a social media account does not inherently or unequivocally constitute conduct motivated to “affect or influence” a “government by intimidation or coercion.” 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(A). In other words, one can open a social media account for a terrorist organization without knowing how that account will be used; whereas it is difficult to imagine someone bombing a government building without knowing that bombing would influence or affect government conduct.

The lower court stretched the definition beyond credulity to add more than a decade to the defendant’s sentence.

The district court’s “cause and effect” reasoning is insufficient because the cause—opening social media accounts—and the effect—influencing government conduct by intimidation or coercion—are much too attenuated to warrant the automatic triggering of the enhancement. Instead, to properly apply the enhancement, the district court had to determine that Alhaggagi knew the accounts were to be used to intimidate or coerce government conduct.

The FBI found a malcontent wandering the internet and when the troll refused to keep participating in the “blow shit up” charade, it raided and arrested him for material support. Then, for the crime of opening social media accounts, the government wanted to lock him up for more years than he’d been alive. And, for all the effort — the 24-hour surveillance, the undercover agent, and the confidential informant — the FBI came no closer to heading off a terrorist attack or taking down a terrorist organization.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, amer alhaggagi, fbi, isis, own plots, own terrorists, sentencing enhancements, social media, trolling, trolls

Twitter Blocks Animated PNGs After A Bunch Of Shitbirds Spend National Epilepsy Month Harassing Epileptics

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the you'll-never-go-broke-underestimating-the-quality-of-humans-on-the-internet dept

Assaulting someone with a tweet can be a criminal act. It takes a whole lot of specifics to make it a crime, but some asshole named John Rivello managed to do just that when he sent strobe gifs to Kurt Eichenwald and apparently sent him into a seizure.

Rivello did all of this under the horrible (and stupid) alias of @jew_goldstein. He also left behind a nice digital paper trial for investigators, which tied the account he used to send the strobe gifs to Eichenwald. Rivello may have used a Tracfone card to set up the accounts he used to harass Eichenwald, but these were all linked to his iPhone and his iCloud account, which helpfully included a photo of Rivello holding up his drivers license.

On top of that, investigators found a bunch of DMs to other Twitter accounts stating his intent to send Eichenwald into a seizure in hopes of killing him. So, it can be a crime to send strobe gifs to epileptics, but it takes a whole lot of work to make it a chargeable offense.

The Epilepsy Foundation is hoping law enforcement can find similar statements of intent elsewhere. During National Epilepsy Month, a bunch of people who are using far more oxygen than they deserve sent out hundreds of tweets containing strobe gifs and videos, utilizing the Foundation’s Twitter handle and related hashtags. The Foundation points out that only a small percentage of epileptics are photosensitive, but any triggered seizure can carry the risk of serious injury or death.

The Foundation’s post doesn’t say where these complaints have been filed or provide any other details. It obviously poses some First Amendment issues in that it’s asking for the prosecution of speech, but if there’s enough evidence indicating some of these dirtbags were actively seeking to harm other people, First Amendment concerns will be minimal.

This brings us to another attack vector, albeit one that wasn’t used in these attacks: animated PNGs. These series of images stitched together to form an animated whole would allow harassers to route around protections photosensitive epileptics used to protect themselves, like preventing autoplay of video or gif content. Twitter may not be able to do much to prevent the uploading of video and gifs containing strobe images, but it can block APNGs, which is what it is now doing.

Twitter is banning animated PNG image files (APNGs) from its platform, after an attack on the Epilepsy Foundation’s Twitter account sent out similar animated images that could potentially cause seizures in photosensitive people.

Twitter discovered a bug that allowed users to bypass its autoplay settings, and allow several animated images in a single tweet using the APNG file format.

The APNG bug has been exploited in the past, mainly to animate avatars. It apparently was not used to target epileptics during this particularly nasty exhibition of human nature, but degenerates who may have considered it a future option no longer have this exploit to work with.

No doubt someone with too much time and not enough moral fiber will find some other way to attempt to provoke seizures using nothing more than 1s and 0s, but for now, the most popular options are either closed off by built-in options or Twitter’s brand new APNG blockade.

Filed Under: animated pngs, epilepsy, harassment, trolling
Companies: twitter

Twitter And Instagram Both Begin Experiments In Decreasing The More Socially Questionable Incentives Of Their Platforms

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the fascinating-to-see dept

Two separate news reports last week highlighted how both Twitter and Instagram appear to be taking to heart arguments made about how both of those platforms may (inadvertently) encourage questionable behavior. Instagram will begin hiding “likes” from users in the US to cut down on the dopamine rush of trying to maximize those bits of pointless social validation:

Months after the company tested hiding “like” counts in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand, CEO Adam Mosseri announced today at WIRED25 that some Instagram users in America can expect their like counts to vanish from public view.

The company will begin testing next week, at first rolling out the change to a limited number of accounts.

Meanwhile, Twitter is going to begin experimenting with some small nudges to not rush in to attack people as a first response. The moves here are a lot more subtle than Insgram’s hiding of likes and involve encouraging the use of emoji.

In a meeting at its San Francisco headquarters in late October, Gasca and Suzanne Xie, director of product management at Twitter, showed off two experiments among several that will go live in the coming weeks: In the first, Twitter will add an emoji to a retweet, giving people a chance to quote-tweet without going into the compose field. Gasca and Xie want to find out if this feature might encourage people to express more nuanced emotions, putting a damper on dunking and mindless retweeting.

In the second experiment, Twitter will automatically suggest people use an emoji in their replies. If you like something, you could use the heart-eyes emoji. If you don?t, you could use the red circle with a line going through it. But if you pick a negative emoji, Twitter will ask, ?Why do you disagree?? ? which it hopes will prompt a more thoughtful reply, rather than a flame war.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how or why this would work to decrease negative responses — though at least popping up the interstitial question of “why do you disagree” (as per the second experiment) might drive at least some people to think twice before rushing to dunk on someone.

I’m not sure either of these moves will really change the overall incentives or how these platforms are used, but I find both fascinating for different reasons: a much more clear acknowledgement from both platforms that overall incentives matter, and that small design choices can have outsized influence on how the platforms are used. Given that, it’s fascinating to see both platforms then choose to experiment with the little nudges built into the design of their platforms to see how it will play out in terms of usage — especially regarding socially questionable activities on both platforms.

Of course, I can imagine how their could be some pushback as well, concerning how these are the kinds of subtle paternalistic moves that some people fear will be used to influence behavior in manners that some might not like. I think it’s pretty clear that, in both cases above, the sites are aiming to improve the overall “user health” levels on their platform, but I can see how some might (or absolutely will!) claim that they’re being used to tamp down on certain viewpoints or ideas — which, to some extent, highlights why there are no “win” conditions for platforms making these decisions. Every move will be criticized in one way or another.

If you can get past that, however, I think it’s a good thing that the platforms are moving to explore how these kinds of tweaks can improve their platforms and how people interact with them.

Filed Under: behavior, emoji, likes, social behavior, social media, social networks, trolling, tweaks
Companies: instagram, twitter

Ex-Googler Recently Held Up As A 'Whistleblower' And 'Proof' Of Anti-Conservative Bias At Google, Actually Supported Richard Spencer, Racist Skinheads

Failures

from the maybe-slow-down-in-picking-your-heros dept

When we recently wrote about the myth of anti-conservative bias at the various internet platforms, we got a lot of angry responses from people who insist (very loudly, often with lots of insults and anger, but rarely with any facts or data) that we’re full of shit. We’d be open to believing it if there was any actual support for these claims. But none is ever forthcoming. Indeed, amusingly, some people pointed out that a recent WSJ article about an alleged fired “conservative” engineer at Google, described as a “whistleblower,” was more “proof” that the company has it in for conservatives. Tucker Carlson even had the engineer, Kevin Cernekee, on his show last week to continue to feed the narrative.

And, of course, other Fox News characters, such as Lou Dobbs, played up Cernekee’s claims as well, which even got President Trump to retweet Dobb’s segment about Cernekee as “proof” that Google is trying to influence the 2020 election.

However, as we’ve pointed out concerning most of the “conservatives” who have had content removed or been banned from social media platforms (as is true in similar situations with liberals and other non-conservatives) there is almost always more to the story — and that “more” is often that these people are not banned or fired or otherwise held back because of their general political views, but because of something much worse. And, in the case of Cernekee, people finally realized that maybe it wasn’t that he was a conservative, but that he wanted to fundraise in support of one of the US’s most well known white supremacists, Richard Spencer.

?[A] well? known conservative activist was sucker punched on camera in DC while giving an interview,? Cernekee wrote on the Free Speech listserv in January 2017, referring to Richard Spencer, probably the most famous white nationalist in America.

Two days later, he posted to the same listserv to suggest that members of the free speech listserv at Google should raise money for a bounty to find Spencer?s assailant. The bounty was offered on WeSearchr, a site founded by Charles Johnson.

To be fair to Tucker Carlson, who had Cernekee on his show and played up his claims, it was also his Daily Caller that exposed Cernekee’s actual internal postings.

But, yeah, the guy who Trump is holding up as proof that there’s anti-conservative bias at Google is maybe not the best messenger if you’re trying to convince the world that “conservatism” is not the same thing as “white nationalism.” Oh, and it gets worse. The Daily Caller article shows that, despite Cernekee claiming in the WSJ that he was a “mainstream Republican” who “disagrees” with white supremacy, within an internal Google listserve, Cernekee suggested that racist skinheads consider rebranding:

The term ?skinhead? has a lot of unfortunate baggage and allows members to be painted as aggressors even in cases where the opposite is true. Why not rename themselves to something normie?-compatible like ?The Helpful Neighborhood Bald Guys? or ?The Open Society Institute? instead of trying to change the near?-universal negative perception of their old label (which is futile)? This would make it much easier to form alliances with other supporters of liberty and civil rights. The only thing I could figure is that they value having an edgy badass image over mainstream acceptance.

Meanwhile, another “conservative” engineer who was also fired from Google, Mike Wacker, has written a barnstormer of a blog post detailing the fairly typical trollish behavior by Cernekee. It’s pretty damning:

I will say, though, that there is more to Kevin than his troubling posts. Another aspect of Kevin is his willingness to play dirty: his willingness to act manipulatively, tell half-truths, and sometimes outright lie. (For whatever influence he had, he certainly did not achieve it by winning over the hearts and minds of Google?s conservative employees in a free and fair exchange of ideas.) Both aspects of Kevin ? his questionable viewpoints and his questionable tactics ? are necessary to understand his story.

As one example of his questionable tactics, in a discussion about Richard Spencer, one Google employee wrote, ?I don?t think that assaulting someone is justified, but why on earth would we want to *help* him?? In his response to that person, Kevin deleted that sentence, and then he wrote, ?Interesting argument, so are you saying it is OK to sucker punch somebody because you disagree with their politics?? Kevin claimed in an op-ed that he is ?merely opposing Antifa violence,? when in reality one of his postings fabricated a claim that his coworker supported Antifa violence.

There’s a lot more in there demonstrating rather trollish tactics (some of which will be familiar to people who read the comments here — because they’re used by lots of trolls on the internet).

Google, as a company, almost certainly employs a lot more people who identify as liberal than who identify as conservative (as I’ve noted in the past, I don’t count myself among either group — though plenty of others have lumped me into both at times, usually whenever they disagree with me and feel the need to align me with those they disagree with). But if you’re going to claim that there’s “proof” of anti-conservative bias at these companies, it probably helps to show up with actual proof, not the trollish behavior of a guy who has talked about fundraising on a platform that once tried to raise funds for The Daily Stormer, and to have done so in support of an infamous white supremacist, and who appears to have engaged in trollish tactics.

So here’s a challenge to anyone rushing to jump into the comments here and call me names. For every insult you want to throw at me, how about you balance that out with actual evidence? And that is not just an example of someone who identifies as conservative being banned or limited in some way, and not quoting someone out of context, but actual proof of someone being limited for actual conservative views. I’m still waiting to see it.

Filed Under: anti-conservative bias, bias, kevin cernekee, richard spencer, trolling
Companies: google