Fresh insights for content moderation, combating disinformation, fact-checking, and promoting free expression online
Moderating the Marketplace of Ideas
This month, following QAnon and other mobs organizing online, we’re seeing continuing calls for social platforms of all kinds to take safety seriously including protecting children. Karen Hao’s article in MIT Technology Review is a must read if you’re curious about what’s going on inside Facebook. In global news, multiple governments have had ongoing face-offs with Big Tech, notably in Australia and India. If you’re into reading political tea leaves, President Biden’s picks for the Federal Trade Commission and elsewhere in his administration could signal his own antitrust face-off with Big Tech. Finally, as the vaccines roll out, offering a hope that maybe, one day, we can get back to normal, social media companies are working hard to reign in the growing anti-vaxx messaging.
📱📈 He got Facebook hooked on AI. Now he can't fix its misinformation addiction
Must-read piece by Karen Hao from the MIT Tech Review, who spent several months interviewing Facebook AI top scientists to understand if they felt responsible for the algorithms they programmed considering their tendencies to spread misinformation faster.
The article resonates deeply with members of CheckStep’s team who previously worked at Facebook. A follow-up Twitter thread is also very informative, including a failed attempt by Yann LeCun, AI super-star, Facebook VP and Chief Scientist to discredit the journalist Karen Hao, who is not known to be anti-Big-tech.
📈 🖥️ How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire
Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev writing in The Atlantic take on the mess created by algorithmic mediated conversations and information consumption. Also--they think we can fix it.
🗣 💻 From QAnon to WallStreetBets: The rise of the online mob
As the power of online collective action rears its head, experts wonder if message boards are doing enough for safety. Several experts are calling for more accountability.
⚖️ 🚨 India Threatens Jail for Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Employees
India upped the stakes for America’s big tech companies by citing jail time for local employees of such companies for failure to comply with the new reforms introduced within the Indian Technology Act.
📰 Facebook Australia: PM Scott Morrison 'will not be intimidated' by tech giant
Facebook blocked all news-related content for all of its Australian subscribers in retaliation for the proposed “News Media Bargaining Code” thus, giving room to the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
🌐 The worldwide web as we know it may be ending
The emergence of a “splinternet” due to the increased content moderation regulations, could limit the flow of free information and the very idea of an “open internet”.
⚽ Twitter and Facebook told to 'go further' by football authorities
A firm letter urging the Big Tech to get their act together by The Football Association, after multiple racist incidents with leading players and their families.
🔞 Omegle: Children expose themselves on video chat site
Child safety issues concerning websites and apps that enable minors to engage with strangers.
♨️ Full-face hot-wax TikTok videos prompt warnings
Dangerous acts or pranks, featured on video communities such as TikTok, to feel “socially” accepted could have fatal end results.
Remedying Covid-19 and Vaccine Misinformation
🦠 💉 Some evangelical Christians say covid vaccine is the mark of the beast
Religious evangelicals are among the groups with the highest vaccine skepticism in the USA. Anti-vaxx and religious imagery are swirled into dangerous health misinformation cocktails that target Christians.
🚫💻 Twitter’s permanent ban for Covid-19 lies
Twitter will be calling balls and strikes on pandemic information; five strikes and you are out. The new strike system follows December’s announcement that Twitter will remove harmful misinformation related to coronavirus vaccines.
Regulatory News and Updates
🇺🇸 POLITICO Playbook: Scoop: Biden taps another Big Tech trustbuster
Well-known Big Tech critics were recently added to the Biden administration, suggesting possible reforms to Section 230.
🇮🇳 Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Face New Rules in India
The farmers riots in India have pushed for stringent content moderation policies. The country recently made reforms to the Indian Technology Act, asking for local representatives of social media firms to ensure compliance with Indian laws.
🇦🇺 Australia passes new media law that will require Google, Facebook to pay for news
Australia introduced a law called “News Media Bargaining Code” that requires Social Media companies to pay local publishers for their news content.
CheckStep News
📣 The CheckStep CheckPoint publication has a new article by Kyle Dent discussing “who decides what stays on the internet” and governments’ subsequent regulatory actions.
📣 Two preprints of survey papers from CheckStep’s research team are available now on arXiv:
“Detecting Abusive Language on Online Platforms: A Critical Analysis” offers an insight into the dichotomy between types of abuse prevalent online & research efforts to automatically detect abusive language.
“A Survey on Stance Detection for Mis- and Disinformation Identification” explains how stance detection has been framed in different ways: as a fact-checking component or as a stand-alone task, and points out the lack of surveys that consider the relationship between stance and disinformation detection holistically.
📣 CheckStep is co-organising the Conference for Truth and Trust Online 2021. The call for papers, inviting both technical papers and talk proposals from scholars, activists, developers, lawyers, ethics experts, fact-checkers, public servants, journalists, and researchers alike, is now available.
📣 Jonathan Manfield and Isabelle Augenstein from CheckStep presented on content moderation in a DIKU Business Club webinar on 18 March about ‘Fighting Harmful Content on the Web’.
To know more about CheckStep, please click here.