Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere

the harm or had a home were a added more home so

what are some of the dark ages correlation with the cleric showing us on the yellow tool and school got good original about lined up sort of was the month and unchallenged in this message emotions they and understand and that's amazing minus harvested and it's a bit a minor league and in following Facebook right to Life model handling

multiple there from which such helped Facebook OK on them but using only XLE initiatives after the ship comments and Jillian C. York works for the Berkman Center and will move actually 2 sentences go in a couple weeks to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation Alex Trotman Frontier Foundation and she will talk about what happens at social media social media platforms with conduct that that the gets

taken down and also the you rights the fact that has so I think this will be a very interesting talk especially about the divide between using the service and trusting service

of this given 1 had to do in your car and the hello and so I'm glad he actually at my 1st question which is going to be how many of you on Facebook and I thought the 2nd question how many people

trust a book in my hand without well you couldn't see it but I don't so I to about a year ago I started writing this paper called believing content in the core of the public sphere the link to the paper there if you want to look at it later it's rather long time and the reason I got interested in this subject with at the time had a number of friends and from all over the world and I'm also part of the Global Voices community which been the last presentation and a lot of people were coming to me and saying and Facebook took away my account OK and then over here you to have to go in my account and so I started getting interested in investigating why that's happening on such a large scale and what I found with that it's really the means of policing content on the social media sites that causes that to happen excuse me for just 1 moment to the spring of separate out excellent OK so we think that the things Facebook Twitter and you to flicker all of these different social media sites we think about them in the public sphere so we write about politics we write about our life write about controversial subjects as assuming that we

have the same protections of free speech that we have in our own countries and so particularly in the West that for most of these companies are based at least the 1 I'm going to talk about we assume that were protected by the 1st amendment and a lot of people in other countries would assume that as well because you come back the companies exist in the US however these spaces are all owned by private companies and so these companies are allowed to create their own rules their own standards frankly and they can do whatever they want to if they don't like what you have to say they'll take it down and we've seen that in a few different cases where things that would normally be protected and certainly would be protected uh have been removed from different platforms because they didn't like it a really good example of this is on

Facebook and women had been hoping posting a photos of breastfeeding mothers the mothers were posting these photos were beautiful photos perhaps and to share with whomever they wanted to share them with and Facebook decided that and a mother breast-feeding her child with obscene now yes in a way this reflects that some American cultural attitudes toward feeding but that build something that protected online protected in the in free speech the speech not on Facebook and now so I wrote this paper a

year ago and the time he she was receiving very little attention but cut to 2011 and with what we've seen in Tunisia and Egypt Syria behind and in the Arab world and this has become even more relevant a few weeks ago there was a call from an Israeli minister to take down the facebook page for calling for a 3rd Palestinian Intifada uprising think but didn't take the page down initially but they monitored and after a couple of weeks decided that there was some sort of incitement on that page and removed now American is suing Facebook because they're

staying Facebook didn't take the content down soon enough I'm so you've got these different cases where people decide what they think it's free speech and then they

pressure companies with other things thing back with WikiLeaks in December of 2010 where Senator Joe Lieberman in my country in the called parameter to take down WikiLeaks content they said OK you know public pressure they bowed to a WikiLeaks of pulled from them on servers so what I don't have a strange moving forward so these 5 companies that I wrote

about Twitter flicker Facebook blogger and you to 5 different company they all have very different policies I each 1 however uses with similar method to look at content that community policing and so what we see is that you've got content on the site and any content any sort of speech and you got a set of terms of service and what happens is if I see something that I find offensive I commend report and click on little button and explain why and reporting it in some cases in other cases just flagging it and that report that content either comes down or goes into moderation queue for human to look at or stable now each of these states have a different method for doing that but we saw on Craigslist a few years ago that and regular and on how popular it is in Germany but at the site where you can put up apartments the find things to buy the etc. and I'm grateful to you and you could just click the Find button and the content would go down if enough people have done that there is no sort of human moderation involved a little bit differently than the other sites Facebook and I just realized my slides not apparent again we this selection technical

difficulties yeah it's not a matter making it to work we all right there we go OK so what I want my doing there we to the you know university of OK very good yes thank you

and so this method of community policing work differently it has a mind of its own the dog differently on

each side and the run down the different on the what we know about them on Twitter Twitter doesn't like to take down your

content this is good news coming people on Twitter and how many people trust Twitter OK fail me definitely more than interesting the London on Twitter they don't usually take a content down and in fact if you do find content that should be against their terms of service you

have to go through the lengthy process for you find the terms of service and you find that for the system and you go through and you put in you type in your Twitter name you explain the situation most of the time they will come back to you and sorry we don't moderator content pretty cool I'm I tested without actually I want my report a whole bunch of different things from the truly offensive to the defamatory but to that I'm sorry Twitter if you're listening and didn't want to the you kind of somewhere in the middle they didn't take any of it down so in a sense this is great for free speech on the other hand you could see the implications if something genuine and genuinely offensive or illegal was put on Twitter but then again Twitter is just as speech there's no photos and videos with a little bit different than the other systems blogspot doesn't take a whole lot down either and that they have had a few instances where they've taken copyrighted material and as you know that the huge debate both here and in the US flicker coming at about 1 and a little bit of but they're moderation

system is actually a really sort of innovative compared to the others and they have some automated systems in place where if you post nudity for example it goes into a special Q for nudity in where people then people that members then manually look at it and determine whether it's able to be put on the flicker site so pornographic material cannot be posted on Flickr there but in they can they be totally fine but but you need to human to look at that because and there's no way an automated system can't tell the difference between portal babies presumably and then you got you to where they have been really great about and telling people to provide context on the system so if you upload something for example what we've seen recently in the Middle East if you upload a video that graphic and this has been happening in area and behind where people are getting shot and it's being captured on on cellphone cameras on Flickr cans and what have you people are uploading the video now if you took the the video and it doesn't have any contact no tags and no explanation of what's happening go probably remove but if you add this is you know what's happening in my country the massacre and this happened in X city and you put them tagged the absolute relevance to the situation flicker will most likely keep it on youtube sorry will most likely keep it up and I get to that a bit more detail don't you examples are not getting into it pretty clear here is an example of how this works on Facebook those we've got all these different options what happens when you try to report on individual persons page blackout of names you are that you can choose to remove them as a friend a block them so if you realize that what the posting is not against the rules but you just don't like it that's what you should be doing but then of the the other options were you can report somebody as having an inappropriate prop profile photo or inappropriate wall post or and this they're harassing a bullying once you click on the link and into more detail you can also report somebody for using a fake name you get to that in a

minute as well FIL in theory this should work if I thought something pornographic as the profile photo it you don't really want that very kids on the platform you could click that probably face that would take it down they probably wouldn't do that person the count but these systems are completely right for abuse and we see that happening more and more frequently now I'll get to the

but a different kind of way that this is abuse but 1st I wanna get into the rule about real name and on how well you can read this but I think of the role that states that users must use their real names there can be a portion of the names which is the nickname find Gillian but I could do Jill you work on but you absolutely cannot on the platform uses pseudonym no now after controversial question I hope nobody from the because here how many of you use a pseudonym on Facebook article we are coupled you're breaking the rules yes no

I don't care American reporting what happened why would you report somebody for for doing that I mean I'm not really a rule enforced there are not enough to believe what the purpose and doing that's the problem with this system is that the there is no really good reason the report committee for using a fake name unless perhaps the impersonating you but some people have discovered that by using that as this report feature for the real names tissue they can get profile but they don't like taking down and so is the image of a bunch of activist and a really good example here is Michael nt I assume many of you know we have a prominent Chinese dissident activist and be used to report for the New York Times now but did it again there we go Michael into FIL

Michael and is not his real name he was born in China has really is a Chinese name that I can't even remember because he doesn't use it even with the name Michael entered been his synonym for over 10 years he uses it at Harvard his Harvard e-mail address the 3 studied his Harvard e-mail address is Michael anti at whatever and easy use it when he wrote for The New York Times but the book that no faith but there's no you must use your real name because we wanna make sure that people are being authentic on our site so what this means for Michael is he got some enemies right he was in China where he speak out about the Chinese government and people have chosen to report him of course facebook for their part decided to verify this and what they did was they went to Michael and asked him to send in a copy of his government idea by e-mail as here laughter and I understand why that's ridiculous but it's completely inappropriate it completely and save and then on even acknowledge that this is happening so my goal of course could not verify that his real name was Michael and because it isn't and with thereby kicked off the face of approach platform now you will notice that he does have a different profile this is allowed to stay out because of the page and not a profile very you know important distinction they put it back if you wanna be on facebook but you need to remain anonymous you should do that I don't get it now on the other hand they do make a pretty compelling argument for why real names are important I don't know if I agree with that but this is what they said and they think that activists have come to that in the no we prefer that our that your users have to have a real names because it makes us feel safer and that means that the secret police the better etc. can get on the site create fake profiles and you know and then get into our information and trick us now the point except it completely false that then there's like 500 of them on the yeah I really I so think that have this system in place and they say that it's very important for maintaining a civil discussion and for

maintaining authenticity market activity leaving said that it is the sign of a lack of integrity to have more than 1 identity ball maybe in the US but what about what about active what about people in Egypt and behind in area and Tunisia were being completely public about your activism is not necessarily safe no we're not there yet some OK move on to different example parents yeah target really bad there we go OK this is a completely

different case from nothing to do with the real name issue this is the case of a Tunisian anti-censorship group called by and that basically means lever Internet along the Tunisian flank the group was started sometime last year I think come to protest

against the heavy Internet censorship that was happening in Tunisia now sometime midway through last year I get an e-mail from my friends you might know him names slim among you've emerging using ministry e-mailed me ministers I'm having a problem 1 of my friends and the administrator of this group and that he can update the page anymore it's gone pages still there touch it what's happening I probably shouldn't tell the story public women going to anyway so I wrote to them if they were and I think it was gone why is this happening and they said but that's too generic of the name OK they wrote to me in Fed our customers have said are users of that the that they don't like it when they're pages literature generic for example there shouldn't be a page for people

OK I mean yeah maybe people should have a page again it how many people are going to turn white people but the problem here but 1st of all I'm English and Arabic but it's not perfect but at the out of the the the language that people use to type that 70 of them like a half FIL it's not clearly Arabic but not English even tho really cool Facebook of making this decision and do they even know what it means now I didn't get them from that on I don't even the guy after but when it came down to would pay this is a popular thing in Tunisia people there know what that means just because you people of facebook don't you know doesn't mean you should be taking on the fight in the end they left it up to people got so you've decided to still there can look it up the great and I think that actually spelled differently you about OK here's another famous example you love the sun I'm sure everyone knows too that is by now right while going now he

became really famous in Egypt after the uprising because he directed and then he was relief and then the news came out that it turns out that he had been you know sort of behind the Egyptian revolution

now that obviously very uh hyperbolic statement but he did do 1 really important thing and that would be he started the group we're all solid phase no this is the stuff Facebook group that had been set up some time back in 2010 after and validated a young man from Alexandria was murdered at the hands of police so this group could become pretty popular and then back in

November of 2010 before any of the Revolution started the page went down

disappeared over Thanksgiving weekend in the US is when this happened and as you can imagine that the time when most of us are with the family of and not online public that me and you know and and so on the we heard that the page was gone and we're getting e-mails from friends in agent who were angry thing what what's happening here why the page gone I don't understand we didn't break the terms of service are pages various civil as it turns out while himself had been using a pseudonym somebody had reported him and his account had gone down taking a page down with him so not only more faithful deactivate your account but anything associated with it as

well and so in the end we got it back up but and I think we in talking about a loose sort of consortia of money conversion is sort of a group of friends who happen to be active this to happen to work in this space to happen friends in each of them is a lot of other people involved and I certainly don't take credit but eventually we got back up and but they were consistent that someone else take on the job of administrative so while transferred it to a friend of his in you US an Egyptian friend and she then became the administrator of the page and then it went through some other hand was well but but so that's another case where it's really really important speech not protected on Facebook because of this um here the favorite example 1 flicker a few years ago and this photographer Martin Dawes that don't think that kind of trade in goods depends on he had taken the photo in Romania of a young boy smoking of cigarettes flickered obviously for good reason has a rule against posting photos of of Minors drinking or smoking OK I get an even though minor has a different role in Italy and Germany even drink it up in the 1860

and I you at the 21 ridiculous but it obviously ten-year-old can smoke pretty much anywhere well flicker decided that probably after community reporting it happens that this photo should be removed and then just remove the photo they were removed Martin entire accounts which he

had paid for the proton and flicker 25 US dollars a year God all of the information God no warning nothing he contacted and as you can see this is part of the proton no censorship would be entered cigarette and he protested and actually forgot the the good news was after he wrote to flicker about the situation flicker said OK you know what you give enough contact this photograph is obviously as depicting a horrible situation that happening in another country you know children smoking that's terrible and will allow it and so he posted it back up and call table that the Romanian way and not really sure why I'm not going to that and the photos the sum of the good news and actually I would say about flicker that they've actually improve their properties and and created a set of robust community

guidelines to to help people and with you know what kind of content can be up there so for example their their community deadline things like do you play and that do moderator content link back to flicker when you use the Flickr photo on another site all the world not not legal terms not like that in a really long archaic 27 terms of service like an MIT and but simple rules for users to follow there's also a set of don't and this probably

can't read that from now I'm sorry and things like don't show nudity in your body icon pretty reasonable and

don't forget the children of the love that 1 don't forget the children you know I don't be creepy if did you know that guy don't be that guy I'm and then you got a whole bunch of other 1 was so although near pretty clear they're not perfect and there was a recent case but forever illustrated that Aribau he is an Egyptian activists journalists and his religious often allowing he obtained Flickr account approach counts and ends he'd been using it for years to document proton that he used it when you really you US to document things there and it is not really good comprehensive Flickr account and that i in I understand I used to look at the photo of all the

time and what happened in this case was hoping to get this right and they know that the Egyptians in the room on after the revolution Egyptians were able to break into the the sort of security apparatus and steal all sort of deal I take back and all sorts of documents about them and so there have been all sorts of things that have been kept over the years files on on individuals and active even on 1 of the things that was obtained during that procedure was these these 3 feeding the needs of photographs of security officers now how often got a hold of that those years and decided he was going to post them on Flickr the pretty brave thing to do especially when you know we're still they not totally settled in Egypt were still sort of moving toward democracy and so even with this unsettled he decided it was worth the risk posted the photographs to flicker he had a lot of detailed tags information about what he was doing and also had a detailed explanation that explain how he had obtained the photos and what he was doing with them and and as a result flicker took them down why you laugh because flicker has a rule that says only post content that the orders now as the copyright issue because if or copyright issues somebody would have had to sort of go in and use the you know the Digital Millennium Copyright Act you beginning into that the headache but but somebody would have had to use that process to complain and and have them taken out no in this case it was just by ordinary users presumably as content that but not belonging to the person posted it and I don't think I can read this well enough but it basically just that we have removed the photos and use that as as well as set itself do

not posted this content take a moment to review your account so not only do the photos come off line but he

also lost all the metadata associated with them all the time all the explanation of everything it also kind of putting more at risk in a way because he had gone to that effort you put them up there and then they were removed so he didn't have the photos to rely on if anyone came after him and he did have the photos luckily you still have them on the but he lost all of that time t but in the end he lost that brave actions he had taken and put there has been pretty responsible about the became they have a human rights director which is great they're actually somebody paying attention this stuff unlike some companies I might mention of excuse me you little probably I know he had you know the flickers human rights director the ballet could be harassed should actually on a panel about the same subject with me a couple of really really wonderful woman and she had done a lot of thinking on and wrote in oppose that she's open to ideas about how they can change the rules or maybe created different system for active than for human rights activists in particular so that's great news

mean flickers actually opened the hearing different ideas and if you look at post the link but if you look for that post but you can see in the comments section in a number of a pretty well known human rights activists have jumped in and share their ideas 1 was from the organization witness and he had shared a different way that clicker can handle this kind of content and so I'm hoping that there will be more discussion on that going forward but that the example of a company that really is kind of trying to do the right thing and here but at the same time should they've taken a content down I don't think so but I I I understand where they're coming from a little bit more than with some of the other examples that you to you to how many people

use or not use how many people uploaded videos to YouTube trying figure number how you to so

you choose which is similar to flicker in that they've been really sort of conscientious about creating context around content and then there's the organization what maybe you've heard of them they just 1 like 10 awards for everything there really often there that Tunisian blog collective and and they have been they've been working in Tunisia for years against Tunisia's censorship and all sorts of other different issues 1 thing that they did would be uploaded a video of some Tunisian kids children sniffing glue just like with like you to have a rule that says that minors cannot miners smoking and drinking cannot be posted on the site again why they do this I don't know if any of you have ever seen the video that managed to kind of slip through the cracks of like teenagers being drunk and it mean you don't really want that in there in perpetuity In this case you took down the content but because it was against the the terms of service and once again I don't know what went back to you to bring that hey wait a minute were doing this to show the dire situation of street children in Tunisia this is really important leave and the to that OK we'll put it back up no I mentioned before something about graphic material on you to especially in recent months how people have put up a different from a video showing really real true horrors death about the hands of police and so In a dead body in the

streets really horrific stuff sorry for the picture of

but this is due to the solution to that problem which I think is a really good 1 so you probably don't want to be like a bit later short link and then click it and all of a sudden the somebody dead on the ground but not exactly an idea of a good time I'm and kind of not just kind of awful I'm especially you at work you never know I and what you to they've they've put this interstitial where when you click on a video that contain that kind of content 1st you have to log into the site using your user account and 2nd you have to click a button that think that you are 18 and you want to see

the the the set of them that the name of the video on the that

content may contain material flagged by you to the user community that appropriate and then it the to it verify the rate older and and if you would instead prefer to avoid this kind of content activator safety of so many of the great solution to a really

tricky problem something that adult content should be seen by adults I don't believe that it should be blocked or taken down but providing a warning is a really good way of getting around that problem and I wish I peeves would consider the same instead of blocking thing I don't know if you were at about halfway mark excellent OK that was up regret maybe we want

to kind of look at their and so if I didn't talk a will ever mention before a of West last month on the same subject of the panel discussion with the really great people and from the Committee to Protect Journalists from

Yahoo and and that very often and famous Rebecca MacKinnon with double lot of this thing work but on Chinese platforms and an American 1 stands out of illustrated which is kind of cool we talked about building human rights and your social sites and really to me that the problem is that a lot of these platforms are considering the implications when they restrict what you can post on them and so on I haven't mentioned are all sorts of different rules they cause the takedown account deactivations and removal of content to happen but there aren't really any the that of of the company that really listening and how to fix this problem and is going to go through a few examples without any slide I'm

what I talked about the a lot but 1 of the other issues of Facebook is if you come to their terms of service for the bottom of the page and you click on and you try to change

the language from whatever language you it's only available in 7 languages I'm not even sure Germans 1 of the fractional here's what did anyone and again don't Arabic and definitely not 1 of the tell you that so what this means is give users who speak Arabic I think and how many states

users in the Arab world now but I know that needed to be something that some ridiculously high numbers of and that hydrogen by imagine across the rest of the region similarly high if millions of users on facebook

using Arabic as their primary language they can use the flight neurotic because by then translated but they want the rules not that they can't get to them and and they wanna read them in English so I mean it legally it's right how many I can't read I certainly can't read legal language in any language but my 1st and even then it kind of tricky I'm and so I can imagine that native Arabic speaker would find it easy to go and read the terms of service and understand the rules now Facebook like flickers implemented a different set of Community guidelines that are a little bit less legal and more user friendly but they're really hard to find and I tried last nite actually to find them for slide I couldn't find the matter like 30 minutes of which

is the very helpful to users in the park maybe you wanna reconsider and before that 1 case where really and then

they need to be thinking more about who is using the platform and bring to the whole it's not just who in the world but also the whole of active I'm 1 of my other concern concerning there is appeal so I talked about all the different situations where somebody content has come down and the beta managed to get it

back up or not but it communicated with the company I think you probably noticed being that people like myself intermediaries sort always had something to do with getting

their content back up most of the things don't have rebuffed appeals properties where you can go and say OK I think of my my conscience been taken down an error could you please put it back up most have no option in fact with Facebook if they take a content down and send you an e-mail that says this decision is final and cannot be appealed even if it but ridiculous frankly I and so that's another issue where people are not just activist and the activity because they think that that for a lot of these issues are

happening I realized that the rest of us and are subject to be somewhat name rules as well but the reason is that so crazy to me is that I think that there should be some sort of process some sort of way that you can go to the site and you can say that you want to contact back up without having to go through an intermediary without having to reach out to a high-level Directorate company which not everyone has access to and so when you see the things going back up you see the example of of really well connected people who have some sort of connection to staff members of these companies can do that but that very few of us on another good example actually happened a few years ago i think 2007 the Egyptian blogger and video blogger while back had captured and videos like 3 4 years ago of and police fatalities need both of those 2 you to and this is when you trip started to change their property a little bit but he posted them YouTube and I think it took him week to finally connected somebody in you to to get that stuff put back and then that is when Google which owns YouTube had started thinking about how they could better implement human rights related policies

on the platform and and then they got a lot better at it and there are some sort of network that are working hard to kind of enforce these issues 1 he might have heard of the global network initiative and you that Google Microsoft and Yahoo they're all part of it along with academic investors and NGO the including some of the biggest human rights organizations in the US I don't remember if there are any outside of the US a look and it's called the Global Network Initiative even Human Rights Watch the Committee to pick journalists and the 2 organizations the 1 that leaving a woman going to use the Berkman Center and electronic frontier foundation and all sorts of other folks involved in this organization but the problem is that only 3 companies and so although those companies are held to a certain status and that the set of standards and by the Global Network Initiative partners you so that all these other companies both big and small out there in the world that at held any sort of standard at all on any the other issue there is that we as users are very unlikely to quit I mean so I known about this issue with Facebook for probably 2 years now and you think it's the other thing that accounts guilty and sending them about I'm almost ashamed to admit this 1 but I would like them to boycott on advantage of down WikiLeaks I'm so mad and I'm like the next only in need a book so all terrible submit admitted that you don't don't throw tomatoes so how many of you were economists and so you know the

thing there's no large-scale actually happening to keep the companies and check this is done a little bit more

media attention lately and that I think that have a lot to do with the fact that I'm just infected about tweeting and calling journalists and being like they a talk about the leave of important but I also think you have a lot to do with how badly some of these companies have been behaving lately and particularly in light of the revolution is happening really every and so you know it's really hard to get the

companies to listen and they really have no reason to and so With this I'm going to get close to concluding and then I'll I'll leave a little room for questions to the degree of an that and if not then just run off and

and so there's 2 solutions there not great but you know I help me get there really get involved in it and so 1 solution is that the company's frankly should be considering human rights and considering not just human rights considering how their users are utilizing the state when they make the rules or when they're meant rules so you know don't constitutions for example

are written but then there are often amended as things change as changing that I couldn't vote in a hundred years ago in my own country but that's why we have amendment but you don't the the company amending the rules very often and so they need to be looking at what users are saying what they're doing and how they can fix this problem and another solution you have better community guidelines that an obvious 1 some of these companies like etc. trying to do this but I don't think the variants another question I have is if community policing really be and I mean look famous if I'm a Chinese them from Chinese human rights activists chances are like I said before I have a lot of enemies and the same thing from famous divine Lady Gaga and by the way they have said that lady gaga cannot be lady gaga on Facebook she has to be the new German are very important you know just in case you didn't know who she was this is the no that's a lot of interest thought period of but that some of things were really faith but look at how people are using your site look at what's

important flip around change make it accessible to users and and community policing if if you're famous or if you are an activist chances are you're more likely to be reported than if you just come some your regular joe who's going on facebook is hysterical and that's

really important that the user community policing efforts really sort of skewed toward the well known as an unfortunate circumstance that I think of these companies need to be looking at amending and of course the most important book community policing is probably the only scalable methods for a company with 500 million users like Facebook I don't think there's anything else they could do and I think an automated process at this point in technology of lifespan anyway it would be problematic even more problematic than letting users didn't do the work and so I think that for the robust properties appeal come and that's really important to have an option for appeal that there any you know people out there in the room building social media paper you should be thinking about all of these different factors and and so that's pretty much where I spend all this time I would love to open the subject questions if anyone has any multiple of more demand for of what but I'm at the evaluative like tap questions

the School of imagine water what you do question it would find that you right I yeah the other my my question what you have learned that solutions the edge of what they have solutions to be implemented by a certain Facebook which edges that has basically no reason to do that so what about the yeah what about government

action to to parts of is social the natural operators can actually implement something that and what about think was then employed to on you proposed that just having of a treaty like utilities like next week so someone on that that the research questions so there's 2 issues their 1 and government regulation and and the other is at training social media type like utilities from the draft in order that the first one regulations that that there is an act in the US that's been proposed and never managed to pass the Global Online Freedom Act and I believe that on and on and on on on that but I believe that there was some sort of provision there and for for companies to there are 2 bad things like this and the corporate responsibility and I think that I'm going to add another sort of tangentially related point which is that it's not just the social media sites that are really kind of screwing up in this state I think that there other companies that are doing even worse so you've got a lot of Americans believe the actually behind the filtering the Internet filtering censorship I blocking website I thought of American companies that are behind the filtering in China frame UAE study

Arabia I could go on like this for like you know 2 to feet to hand out it it you are companies that are doing that and I think that yeah I think that there is perhaps a role for the US government in the space to enforced certain things now but also tricky because you can really add anything into it and my concern there

is that some of the role of women and you know I hate to say that I don't trust my Government but the image of the government

I know then you you can be adding things into the rule that just like in many other countries would restrict certain types of speech and that's my concern there and so I don't know I cannot now and the 2nd question no which was a the utility thinking and yesterday and avoid as who I'm sure many of you have heard of she she talked a lot about this stuff as well and he was actually kind of 1 of the early people to focus on this issue as well she suggested that the government regulate Facebook like utility now that I top 1 and I think that's where we come into the the title of this paper which I wrote which is called the leaving content in the quality public spheres we were talking about a base that the former town hall the town square the public faith outdoors and give now based on 20 bloggers Canada then there is there's precedent for this and you got the example of a company town which some of you may have heard of the US there's been a number of cases in the past where and for example in malls in a shopping mall you can't just going to a shopping mall a teacher that those who need a good example of profanity in on at Bush right that President Bush you can't walk into a mall the teacher that that that and you can vary get kicked out that the people who contact and things like that and then there are a few different cases where they successfully contested things like this and in interstate so it's not a nationwide federal legislation and but 1 of those things with

anti-war protesters handing out pamphlets at a shopping mall they took that of course they were able to do that and you know not lawyers I'm I'm terrible at legal language and talking about this stuff that was the case where yes indeed they managed to win that right and so I do think that there are cases 3 regulating the state but I don't know I don't know the utility example the best 1 tough questions any other questions yeah we'll go 1st decide

on site not well but there is another thanks for your talk very interesting very intriguing and he said that all these appeal cases should be looked at eventually based human beings on give any insight into how what resources events on stand on dealing with these appeals to

600 million users must be enormous amount of work to actually look at all the appeal right so I don't know with most of these companies because most of them were very private about the systems they could actually will give me a straight answers but anyway that's a lot of what I said about the a book and a lot of very actual of course because we have evidence of a lot of that I don't have I don't know what happened in the background cause things to to happen and in terms of resources what these companies put into that and they know that they would have a dedicated team in the US and that

handles language content I know that the Arabic

or person I think kind of incremental near 1 another and they have a very small Arabic team located of all

places in Dublin in Ireland like OK really there's 1 very because there but but then you know they've got other teams for different language content I couldn't tell you numbers and then do another there are human eye looking at all of the new to is actually a great example they have that member who oversaw the use of whole team in different languages that there and 1 of the central offices in California and they they have a whole dedicated team that looks at the incoming content and the person over the that produce the curry grand and she she changes the rules when they need to she looks at all the she's the 1 who sort of reviews the properties actually spoken on a panel with her to and I think you know I think a lot of it has to do with the company's orientation toward human rights and toward and that kind of leadership but when you see someone like back in that role really make a difference and I wish I could give you more precise and the icon although there we have to question think 1 question so do your if

positions from a from activist perspective and however that might be a sign that the community moderated individual and community and that the problem we there uh have quite often is of people trolling and posting inappropriate content and there was calling the community

experience for a lot of people so when you see the or is the way to go and solve the tension between protecting free speech on the 1 hand and another along the trolls to take over yeah I so I think I think it's hard to compare any of these platforms to that kind of platform and the reason is that if I run my own blog or community and any of the content that is posted on it is absolutely relevant to me because I'm moderator I need to take on a constant basis but if not I would say not a community of the platform and so if somebody on my wall and their trolling my wall items can right off my wall if they're group doing and I think economic group and but I don't think Facebook to come in and do that for me because it's my responsibility and I think that sort of where the difference between the 2 things is they do agree and I

you know I'm very intense censorship and I'm probably a free-speech absolutist to the like and degree but I moderator comments on my blog because I've got a troll who won't leave me alone and I think we all do that and tho you know I don't I don't look at that and today censoring from 1 because she got the rest of the Internet to fade I don't want it on my blog so I do

understand we're coming from a yes it is thank you for your talk to cells get your all very but how this works point if

you're looking at the boys like Facebook and YouTube and because on of as use I have pretty much no other

choice to to other except the stuff from that looking at some smaller communities avoid now and and a lot of policies in that way you think what happen people 1 of the community so do you see all the you have any guidance for for balance between tests policies and the people in yeah I yeah that this question and I think you know facebook as I mentioned before is not have a problem you know people will stay on the that I lose all of their users because of the nerve and town the boycott movement of her face commit there's been you know there are people who boycotted because the privacy policy the people boycotted because they allow the Muhammad cartoons to stay out there people avoid Canada the intifada page that I mentioned beginning when he was not company that I think that

you actually hear that sort of 2 choices 1 is you create rules for your community and so you make them designed for whatever you want so if you're if you're a muslim community online Christian community online maybe you will make the rules so that they apply just to your constituents and brand it that way that's fine like I said there's a million other places on the internet and the real thing but I the Facebook differently because Facebook really in the the public sphere 500 million people is bigger than the country and so it's different than when you got a small company where they can sort of twist and bend the rules to fit their users but if the company gets bigger the need to consider what users are doing that right there that there should be some flexibility in changing the guidelines I hope that answered your question this is so 1 question actually I mean there's a good reason why there are guidelines in place simply because the platforms such as Facebook for example don't want to be I mean once you start the political and once you start to say OK posting useful as a cable posting this was not located you make a political statement and you start something where you really have to and not just produced guidelines but basically in ethical Codex if you if you like so and the key question is do you see that we're in on many platforms going into this direction that we are moving away from strict guidelines and into something like ethical code X in the future where for example I don't know what Facebook in the future could say a fan page 4 the company for example producing weapons might be OK if it produces this type of weapon and selling into these kinds of people while producing these kinds of weapons loaded the really interesting question tho your 1st point at which was and thinking about entering the

2nd 1 and forgot the first one was your mind you is the beginning of the world we don't have enough and so you know I think actually that's a really good point and I'm going to bring up a little bit of a controversial answer to that and I apologize if I offended anyone on I think that that the face the page that I mentioned at the very beginning of my talk calling for a 3rd Intifada and health and actually the perfect example of this because at the same time you have hundreds hundreds upon hundreds of pages calling for what is essentially Israeli violence and so you got to 5 and you can see this other examples well I bring up this 1 because it was so recent and you get to decide that 1 is deemed OK and the other deemed not OK I think what can I

I find that to be a really questionable in that case the same thing kind of we're talking about their time but I really wish I remember the 1st will be the 1st question was about or the 1st call was about to start

the political coastal yeah OK so the other thing that was really the labels you know but I think actually probably have very good reason not to be political not because they're still walked in China kind of a huge market and maybe of news this week that basically divided and then this of unconfirmed

and by the way they decided to try to enter the Chinese market but they're going to go in sensor just like Google that back in 2000 2nd you know facebook and they our political platform that they're making a political decision when they choose to going to China with censorship and so you know I I I think the

only real incentive for them to do that is money and that's where I think it's really unfortunate because they do think that ethically speaking of free speech should be the number 1 priority the site my opinion is fictional

mean can you be on political can you be analytical well if you're platform kind of I mean it's not a

content creator I think that there are some places than some social media faith even and where they are curious content in some sort of way and so like Global Voices for example which is the last presentation will like that covers blogs we write about different stuff and were not political perspective but were curating content and so obviously we will have some sort of biased another even if it from the individual level will think about you're trying a platform were virtually anyone can go on and put the content and so I think that can they be absolutely 100 per cent on political probably not but I think that they could tell pull back into a much better home we have 2 last questions 1st of all of I'd like you to clarify 1

thing and because I didn't understand where there was just meant as a humorous remark when you use that example QQ flanking content and then having that image in between that tells people that there might be graphic violence depicted or something like that he said he wished that I you realize he would go on to that instead of looking at things but the infrastructure you need for warning signs is exactly use image and you will get back to be fair I don't actually mean that

I meant that it would be a better solution than to block the page but frankly I don't wish for either just to be clear the model with no no I I don't agree with the solution and the trust me I don't I know that was the point of

making 1 and that there was joking with sort of 1 of those throwaway comments with they rather than blocking light and take it completely offline I would rather be I would rather rather being a very relative term here's the and sort of a warning that I don't actually wish for that because I think that frankly when it comes to content like that I think that it up

to the individual and when it comes to children short blocking system on your home computer for your kids I really don't care that your choice of the parent but at the at the the level I do believe that there should be no filtering thanks to the inserts to and uh I would like to come back to the establishing a federal Community guidelines um I would like to know can you imagine a scenario where non-governmental organizations like the Electronic Frontier

Foundation could be involved in um developing better community guidelines so with international corporations that's a great question actually comes from working on a paper on that right now with somebody else of with yeah I think that that would actually be great I think that there are a lot of organizations that are doing them in global network initiative is 1 of them but then there's the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington DC they've been working on that kind of thing advising companies on creating better community guidelines and I think the Berkman Center maybe talk to companies as well and yet they

do you think that that would be an excellent move and I think that you know I think we should be looking at this more globally than the last and 1 I know I talked about the year after that provide understand the and this is happening on other platforms in other countries as well and the I think that that would be a great solution to have the and can work with companies to create more human rights oriented framework

during that was brilliant I think what if you're the way which

you would want to go back to the US so I can be found in

the morning and the interior of a non patent so that some people would like to have a launch of that you can get a hold of me and actually like if you haven't been getting on the internet much but you can find me all the here thank you very much that was great a you and

I every year the

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