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from the operation-google-2:-electric...google-fu dept.
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.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday August 28 2020, @07:20PM (8 children)
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)
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
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
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)
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
people are lazy whorish slaves.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday August 28 2020, @11:21PM (2 children)
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)
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
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..