Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Friday August 28 2020, @04:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the operation-google-2:-electric...google-fu dept.

One Database to Rule Them All: The Invisible Content Cartel that Undermines the Freedom of Expression Online:

Every year, millions of images, videos and posts that allegedly contain terrorist or violent extremist content are removed from social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. A key force behind these takedowns is the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an industry-led initiative that seeks to "prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms."

[...] Hashes are digital "fingerprints" of content that companies use to identify and remove content from their platforms. They are essentially unique, and allow for easy identification of specific content. When an image is identified as "terrorist content," it is tagged with a hash and entered into a database, allowing any future uploads of the same image to be easily identified.

This is exactly what the GIFCT initiative aims to do: Share a massive database of alleged 'terrorist' content, contributed voluntarily by companies, amongst members of its coalition. The database collects 'hashes', or unique fingerprints, of alleged 'terrorist', or extremist and violent content, rather than the content itself. GIFCT members can then use the database to check in real time whether content that users want to upload matches material in the database. While that sounds like an efficient approach to the challenging task of correctly identifying and taking down terrorist content, it also means that one single database might be used to determine what is permissible speech, and what is taken down—across the entire Internet.

Countless examples have proven that it is very difficult for human reviewers—and impossible for algorithms—to consistently get the nuances of activism, counter-speech, and extremist content itself right. The result is that many instances of legitimate speech are falsely categorized as terrorist content and removed from social media platforms. Due to the proliferation of the GIFCT database, any mistaken classification of a video, picture or post as 'terrorist' content echoes across social media platforms, undermining users' right to free expression on several platforms at once. And that, in turn, can have catastrophic effects on the Internet as a space for memory and documentation.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2020, @06:08PM (22 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday August 28 2020, @06:08PM (#1043438)

    Seriously, you don't. Stop pretending that you do, or complaining when somebody acts on that.

    1. The company, organization, or individual who controls the website you want to post on is choosing to allow you to post. They can kick you or delete your content for any reason they damn well please, or for no reason at all. Their servers, their rules.
    2. From their point of view, you aren't their customer, you're helping to create their product, namely the eyeballs for targeted ad impressions. They have zero legal responsibility to you whatsoever. They say so in the terms of service, which you contractually agreed to when you created an account on their website.
    3. Yes, all the activity they do allow can and will be read by the FBI. After all, you put that into an open public forum, which means that by definition there's no expectation of privacy, and that makes it fair game.
    4. I want you to ask yourself what company wouldn't err on the side of being overly restrictive, when the alternative would be risking lawsuits and/or criminal charges for any bad activities organized on their servers?

    If you want to have complete freedom to post whatever you want without interference, you need to use your own servers. If you want to have near-complete freedom, choose to use social media platforms with minimal rules like 8chan. But Youtube is no more obligated to host your video than CNN is obligated to interview you.

    And yes, I'm aware that by my argument, I have no right to complain if somebody mods me down to -1, or some admin at Soylent deletes this comment or my account or even permabans my IP address from ever commenting ever again.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @06:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @06:26PM (#1043447)

    No centralized platform is truly free. Only decentralized networks can host free discussion.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @06:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @06:32PM (#1043450)

    > I have no right to complain if somebody mods me down to -1, or some admin at Soylent deletes this comment or my account or even permabans my IP address from ever commenting ever again.

    Oh, boo hoo. I'm so sick of people ending posts with shit like, "go ahead, mod me down, I know it's coming!!" or beginning their posts with, "I'll probably get modded down for this."

    Enough. Say your piece and let people fairly judge your content. If you don't like it, STFU.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Friday August 28 2020, @07:01PM (8 children)

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Friday August 28 2020, @07:01PM (#1043473)

    No one's complaining. The KKK is free to hold gatherings and distribute literature as well. People are free to do as they want in their domain. We are also free to laugh at them and shit all over them in every way possible.

    I don't believe soylent deletes any content or bans accounts. When did this happen - it was the only reason I left slashdot and don't use reddit or hn. Are the random ramblings of the 10 users of techdirt the only free space left now? Seems like we don't need some huge database to censor speech then - people do that all on their own.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday August 28 2020, @07:15PM (#1043480)

      They have the legal right to delete users and/or their content, and their administrators have the technical ability to go into the database and delete users and/or their content. It's true that they have never, to the best of my knowledge, exercised that right, but that was a business choice Soylent made about their own policies, and they can change it any time they like for any reason they like.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by fakefuck39 on Friday August 28 2020, @08:44PM

        by fakefuck39 (6620) on Friday August 28 2020, @08:44PM (#1043508)

        And for some reason you have no right to complain if they do? People are free to do as they may, but why in the world do you think you have no right to complain about it? I definitely have a right to complain, shit on them, and not donate. The iphone doesn't let me own a device I paid for - I complain about it, I make fun of iphone users for not being to install an app I can install, and of course I don't buy an iphone.

        Are you a cuck of some kind? Do you enjoy watching your wife get railed by a big juicy blm monkey, but have no right to complain, because she prefers to actually get off once in a while, while you pay for the roof over her head?

        I kid, I kid. But seriously, are you a cuck of some kind?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2020, @11:15PM (5 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2020, @11:15PM (#1043544) Journal

      IIUC, they may be legally required to do that in certain instances. And they *do* have the capability. So the posting may be free, but have consequences later. If I were to post somebody else's banking information, I'm rather sure it would quickly be removed. So I was free to post it, but the first consequence was removal of the post, probably followed by many other unpleasant consequences.

      Free expression doesn't work in a large group. Sorry, but it doesn't. You always need rules about what it permissible. And breaking the rules will have consequences, if only some of your prior friends refusing to talk to you. (Here I'm thinking about some of the early bulletin board systems.)

      And it turns out, the larger the group of communicators, the clearer and more enforced those rules need to be. Because SOME member of the group will always be pushing against the boundaries, either mildly or strongly, and in a larger group, there will be more extreme communicators.

      And then there's dimensions of flexibility. You don't use EBCDIC on a UTF8 system. You adhere to proper timing, etc. The analogies in human communication are largely built-in by biology. Social distancing, though, is cultural, and we're currently experiencing how difficult that is to change. But it has effects that echo back into biology. Cultures that have greater social distance are emotionally colder. This echo probably accounts for a lot of the resistance that requirements for social distancing are meeting.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:09PM (4 children)

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:09PM (#1043733) Homepage Journal

        Aren't there UTF-8 encodings for EBCDIC symbols? And even for the symbols in all the variants of EBCDIC that have appeared over the ages?

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 29 2020, @08:49PM (3 children)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 29 2020, @08:49PM (#1043928) Journal

          If you encode EBCDIC in some other coding, it's no longer EBCDIC. EBCDIC specifies a bit pattern to symbol correspondence.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:55AM (2 children)

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:55AM (#1044017) Homepage Journal

            Correct.

            But EBCDIC also consists of a number of different character sets. Converting from some popular EBCDIC variants (such as the one for the TN print chains) to other character codes was difficult before Unicode and UTF-8.

            • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 30 2020, @03:41AM (1 child)

              by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 30 2020, @03:41AM (#1044065) Journal

              I always wanted to use the TN print train.

              --
              Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
              • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:41AM

                by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:41AM (#1044131) Homepage Journal

                I got to use the TN print chain for my Phd thesis back in 1974. I think mine may have been one of the first Phd theses at the university to have been produced by a document compiler.

                Nowadays of course I'd use a laser printer with TeX or some other free software.

                -- hendrik

  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday August 28 2020, @07:20PM (8 children)

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2020, @07:20PM (#1043481)

    Corollary: No public body should use a social media platform as their sole means of communicating with mempbers of the public, as it forces people to accept a third party's terms and conditions in order to get in touch.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2020, @07:36PM (4 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday August 28 2020, @07:36PM (#1043489)

      Absolutely! And that isn't limited to political groups either: If you're involved in running the Rotary Club, a local religious congregation, a junior sports league, a business, a college or university, a professional meet-up, etc, you should be communicating via your own platform, have backup communications plans (e.g. phone trees and snail-mail lists) for when email or social media doesn't work the way you want, and treating any social media presence as one of a number of possible marketing tools.

      It's not just an issue of the platform shutting you down or something like that: Services can and do fail, and you want to be ready for that before you need to be.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2020, @11:49PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2020, @11:49PM (#1043550) Journal

        Your analysis of the benefits is valid, but you also need to consider the costs of the backup system. Sometimes you need to pick the cheap/ugh(quality) system, like distributed flyers, as the backup system, and hope you'll never need it.

        The point, however, stands that the choice should be consciously made.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:25AM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:25AM (#1043610)

        Exactly how much more in dues are you willing to pay to your local Rotary Club chapter (which probably only has one or two dozen members, most seniors) for all these IT services?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:12AM (1 child)

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:12AM (#1043671)

        Yeup.

        When my wife helped run a local parent and toddler group, I set up a wordpress-based website for them to post weekly announcements on, in parallel to their facebook page. Two years back she handed the reins over to a new group of parents, so I got a year's hosting paid in advance, and forwarded all the account details to them. They never touched the website, and just rolled back into the facebook fold.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:25PM (#1043909)

          people are lazy whorish slaves.

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday August 28 2020, @11:21PM (2 children)

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday August 28 2020, @11:21PM (#1043547) Journal

      Really, we have a nice big .gov, and the damn politicians are on Twitter, and then complain when they don't get what they want!

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:30PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:30PM (#1043770)

        When you post on Twitter, you get the infrastructure of a commercial advertising platform to promote your 140 chars. You think Twitter *hates* the publicity of Trump's tantrums? No, they promote it. If he had to bring traffic to a .gov on his own budget, he'd have no audience.

        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:38PM

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:38PM (#1043776) Journal

          he'd have no audience.

          Wouldn't that be a treat!

          We know twitter likes it, but we should demand that all government communications and business be conducted on official, verifiable, and public government facilities, and sanction them when they try to circumvent the requirements of an open and transparent system.

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:01AM (#1043621)

    "But Youtube is no more obligated to host your video than CNN is obligated to interview you."

    Well, CNN is on cable and cable benefits from govt granted cableco monopolies. Any media outlet that benefits from a govt granted broadcasting or cableco monopoly is part of the establishment and their self centered nature that goes with that is very apparent. Media monopolies are not something we should allow to happen.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:05AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:05AM (#1043637) Journal
    You do have a right to use social media sites. Because they gave you that right. Because they're social media sites.

    And that's terrible advice to not complain when said social media comes up with stupid rules for withholding that right that they gave you earlier. How else are you ever going to correct their behavior? Just because courts won't back you up in some imaginary freedom of speech lawsuit, doesn't mean that the complaining tactic doesn't work.