A Risk To Internet Freedom or True Clampdown On Objectionable Content?

A Risk To Internet Freedom or True Clampdown On Objectionable Content?

Well, Facebook have been battered from virtually every angle recently (especially from their stock price). From Cambridge Analytica scrapping to objectionable content to fake news, it has not been a good time for the company. If companies grow that large and have such power over the market, it is likely that you are going to get probed for your operation, especially as data equals profits. So how policies the Internet? And who really decides on the content which is suitable?

Last night I was on stand-by for BBC Newsnight forthe story about Facebook shutting down suspected sources of fake news around the US elections. But I explained to the journalist that I probably couldn’t give them what they wanted, and I would always say that there should general freedom of speach on the Internet, and that we need to be very careful in providing — in an open way — the evidence that would be required to stop someones postings on the Internet.

At the extreme, many one person’s terrorist, is another person’s freedom fighter. We should all thus fear a world of the “thought police” envisioned by George Orwell’s 1984, and where an agency filters news so that a nation only gets a distilled version of the news. I appreciate this is at the extreme end, but when taken too far, we might see the rights to free speech taken away from individuals and groups, and for it to be run by the major Cloud providers.

Luckily, for me, there was no time for my slot.

For the story, Facebook announced that they saved a forthcoming midterm election in the US, where it found found 8 pages, 17 profiles, and seven Instagram accounts that are accused of suspicious behaviour. The evidence at the current time is that they had names such as “Black Elevation”and ran a campaign funding $11,000 worth of ads, with 9,500 posts, and which targeted 290,000 accounts.

I find this slightly amusing as last week I listened to a BBC radio broadcast with a representative from YouTube (/Google):

Radio Presenter: “And how many moderators do you have in the UK?”

Ans: “We have many thousands of moderators around the World?”

Radio Presenter: “But how many moderators do you have in the UK?”

Ans: “We have them all over, including in Dublin”

Radio Presenter: “You do know that Dublin is not in the UK? How many in the UK?”

Ans: “None!”

I should say that I am a Professor of Cryptography and Cyber Security, and not a Professor of Politics, so don’t go looking for any political answers here …

Who decides?

So who decides what is possible to post on social media? Well, increasingly, it is a new police force … the social media moderators. As the print and broadcast press are under increasing regulation on the publishing of their content, the social media networks have generally been given a free rein on posts that would never be allowed on other forms of media. Most people now turn to Twitter whenever a serious new event happens, as the traditional media channels are often limited in the things they can broadcast.

Within the UK, MPs demanding change, and for a stricter regulation of social media. In the UK, politicians have even proposed that Facebook will be fined for objectionable content, which starts to move towards a censorship of the Internet.

To be seen to be doing something about the distribution of objectionable content, Facebook has reacted with the recruitment of over 3,000 moderators. In order to train them, the company has over 100 manuals which inform the moderator on posts that are too violent, sexual, racist, hateful, or which support terrorism.

A race?

Unfortunately, because of the sheer number of posts, the moderators only have seconds to decide if the post should stay or not. Facebook thus allows a post, until it is deleted, and does not support the method of waiting for approval of the post. It is thus often a race against time for the post.

In the Facebook manuals, there is detail on subjects such as hate speech, revenge porn, self-harm, suicide, cannibalism and threats of violence. With two billion users on Facebook, it is becoming increasingly difficult to moderate content, because of the throughput, and also from pressure from groups which support the open and free rights to publish on-line.

Police properly or fines?

Most automated methods use sentiment analysis, but those posting the content, can overcome this by using calming language. Facebook is also asking its users to become its policing force, and inform them about objectionable content. A recent study in the UK, found that, over a three week period, over 6,000 women in the UK received abusive and misogynistic tweets with terms such as”slut” and “whore”.

Recently, too, in the UK, the Labour MP Anna Turley proposed the Malicious Communications (Social Media) Bill, and where objectionable social media posts could carry a penalty of up to £2 million (or 5% of global turnover). In the Bill it was proposed that Ofcom would widen their scope, and regulate social media companies. Along with this it was proposed that there would be an automatic filter on social media for those under the age of 18, and that social media companies would have to verify the age of their users.

But what is objectionable?

But who decides what is objectionable? There’s a well-known quote from Kumi Naidoo which says:

The important thing to note about Hacktivism is that the viewpoint on the Hacktivist will often be reflected on the political landscape of the current time, and that time itself can change this viewpoint. While Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are still rightly seen as terror agents, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi are now seen as freedom fighters. Thus viewpoints often change and for some the Hacktivist can have the image of a freedom fighter.

Public and private?

The Internet does not respect borders, and many countries are struggling to cope with its control, and the old methods of regulation just do not work. It is difficult for traditional media outlets to cope with increasing regulation, while social media seems open, and self-regulated.

The world of social media is also not black-and-white, and increasingly users are moving towards more private social media applications, such as WhatsApp, and where it would be extremely difficult to apply any level censorship of content. While the distribution of objectionable content on public-focused networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are more open to detection, the detection within applications such as WhatsApp would possibly seriously undermine the privacy of users.

EU tries to suppress for good reason?

For many companies who host user-created content, 5 July 2018 goes down as a day when the Internet nearly had filters applied on the material that users can post. Wikipedia, for example, had a clear message for its UK readers:

Overall the EU is trying to create a fair digital market-place — a common digital market — and where the abuses of major Cloud providers — such as Google scanning books without the permission of authors or publishers — can be addressed, and to harmonise laws across the EU. But it actually risks taking away the freedoms of users, and for the Internet to be policed by the major Cloud providers, and stop smaller EU-businesses from hosting content.

On 5 July 2018, the European Parliament will vote on a law related copyright rules (Article 13). Within it, content hosting companies, such as Google and Microsoft, will have to install filters which block copyrighted material. While the law aims to improve the payments to the creators of copyrighted material, many feel that it will put barriers in place to the freedom to publish on the Internet. The articles include:

• Article 3. An exception of copyrighting for data mining and for scientific research.
• Article 4. This includes an exclusion for teaching, and where educational institutes can use copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. Many worrying here that the term “education institutes” could be too limited, and may cut-out third sector organisations.
• Article 11. With this publishers of content will have direct copyright over press articles. Areas exempt include academic/scientific work, and focuses on press publishing rather than academic publishing. The focus of this is to stop organisations who use “news aggregators” — such as Google — but it is likely to suppress a range of organisations who regularly post news items (as they will now need a licence for posting). For many the press benefit from the exposure of posting, and that this article could suppress the dissemination of news.
• Article 13. With this on-line content platforms will be responsible for receiving permission from copyright owners for uploaded content. Excluded from this are files uploaded for user’s/business’s own usage, and educational and scientific repositories. It is this article which could apply automated filters on a large-scale basis, and that this will benefit large companies with the resources to apply these filters, and damage many smaller businesses, along with suppressing collaboration on social media from the scientific community.
• Article 15. This focuses on digital content creators being supported for increasing their remuneration in areas where it is currently low. Many publishers saw digital content as an add-on to existing royalties from printed content, and reduced the sharing of the income. In this article, authors would have the right to cancel agreements where it is proven to be disadvantageous.

Those posting on social media would thus have to be careful in adding pictures of film stars or movies, as these could be -and are likely to be — copyrighted. Some internet leaders, including Tim Berners-Lee and Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), have defined that the new copyright rules will be a backward step, and that Internet will become a place of automated surveillance, and where content is controlled.

Many feel also feel that the large US cloud content providers — such as Facebook and Youtube — will be able to afford the new filtering methods, but that smaller companies will find it difficult to police, and that the growing monopoly of large social media companies will actually increase, and thus stifle innovation. Academic experts across Europe have also criticised the article and that it would:

“likely impede the free flow of information that is of vital importance to democracy”

Another provision in the proposed law defines that Cloud Content providers must pay a tax on new items shared as a link (Article 11), and where even the sharing of a title to a news link would require a licence to share. While aimed at the likes of Google who have mass harvested news stories, it is likely to affect a wide range of journalists and freelancers, and suppress non-institutional creators and producers of news. Each country in the EU would decide on the link tax that would be applied, and, again, this could create a barrier for companies operating within these countries.

You can read more here:

Conclusion

It could be one of the greatest debates of the 21st Century. Who should police the Web, and who says what is and isn’t allowed to be published?