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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.


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  • (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..