The Surgeon General sounds off on Social Media (shock)!
The Checkstep Round-Up is a monthly newsletter that gives you fresh insights for content moderation, combating disinformation, fact-checking, and promoting free expression online. The editors of the newsletter are Kyle Dent and Vibha Nayak. Feel free to reach out!
This month everyone seems to be worried about the children. The U.S. surgeon general, no less, has issued a lengthy report about the potential for harm to young people from using social media. The report urges parents to set guidelines and limit use while encouraging more conversational, family interaction. A significant group of lawmakers were also on the bandwagon promoting their proposed Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, apparently with the idea that parents aren’t up to the task on their own. In other news, Twitter continues to draw lots of media attention due to changes in rules and the platform experience since Elon Musk took over. Oh, and there’s Bluesky, did you forget about Bluesky? Read on and don’t let the online world pass you by.
Checkstep News
📣 We attended the Marketplace Risk this month, where our Head of Product, Yu-Lan Scholliers, spoke on a panel about “how generative AI is creating additional challenges to recognise inauthentic content or actors”.
📣 Couple of the Checkstep team members are also attending the TSPA EMEA Summit in Dublin. We’re looking forward to meet old and new friends!
📣 Last but definitely not the least, we’re super excited to partner with the Online Dating Association and Gratitude!
Moderating the Marketplace of Ideas
⛑️ Surgeon General Warns That Social Media May Harm Children and Adolescents (The New York Times)
The U.S. surgeon general (the top health official) issued a public warning in a report citing the risks of social media to young people. While acknowledging that social media can be beneficial to some users, the report pointed out that the effects of social media are not fully understood and that parents should guide their children’s social media use and enforce minimum age limits.
👩⚖️ Section 230 Just Survived a Brush with Death (The Markup)
It’s always a risk when the Supreme Court decides to weigh in on questions related to the internet. Two cases this term, Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh both threatened large changes to life online. However, the court left Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act untouched so far finding that platforms are not responsible for content they host under the Antiterrorism Act.
🗣️ Twitter Criticized for Allowing Texas Shooting Images to Spread (The New York Times)
Twitter is getting a lot of blowback for not limiting the spread of horrific images from yet another mass shooting (this time at a mall in Texas). Critics expressed concern about victims’ families and the risk of glorifying such crimes. Other commenters, however, pointed out the need to show the horrors of gun violence.
💸 Micropayments. Elon Musk thinks he’s got a “major win-win” for news publishers with…micropayments (Nieman Lab)
People have been saying for years they want an iTunes for news: the option to buy a single article rather than signing up for a full subscription. Elon Musk has announced plans at Twitter to do just that. Naturally, there is some skepticism due to his history of announcements, then reversals, then re-upping, then reversing… you get the idea. There’s also the matter of his limited experience and ability to run a social media platform.
💬 AI Chatbots Have Been Used to Create Dozens of News Content Farms (Bloomberg)
Low-quality content farms are turning to AI to generate bogus articles in their attempts to attract more ad revenue. In several instances, the AI they use generated completely fabricated news and falsehoods, which were published by the sites.
🔮 What Bluesky Tells Us About the Future of Social Media (The New Yorker)
A primary motivator for Jack Dorsey starting Bluesky is the problem of content moderation. The platform, one among several potential alternatives to Twitter, has been working to create an open and transparent social media network that is not controlled by any one company or individual, and that can evolve through the contributions of the community. The platform faces significant challenges, including the need to ensure the network is secure and accessible to everyone, and the humongous problem for all social media companies—achieving critical mass…
✉️ Please stop inviting heads of state to Bluesky (The Verge)
But Bluesky wants to limit its growth in at least one way. The new social media platform and would-be Twitter replacement sent a message to their invitation-only set of users that heads-of-state are not allowed on the platform yet. It’s not clear what (or who) prompted the announcement. They also asked that users give them a heads-up if invitations go out to any prominent personalities.
🤷 State-controlled media experience sudden Twitter gains after unannounced platform policy change (DFR Lab)
Twitter is no longer limiting the reach of actual state-affiliated media. DFR Lab reports that actual state-run media outlets from Russia, China, and Iran have been gaining followers recently. DFR Lab believes that Twitter changed their algorithms for these types of accounts to no longer filter them from recommendations and promotions. Twitter also removed a sentence from their policy that previously said, “Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people.”
🔐 Twitter’s Encrypted DMs Are Deeply Inferior to Signal and WhatsApp (Wired)
It’s never easy to retrofit security onto an existing technology, but Twitter’s attempt to add end-to-end encryption on direct messages might face more challenges than most. In fact, as Wired describes the situation, it “seems almost like a laundry list of the most serious flaws in every existing end-to-end encrypted messaging app, now all combined into one product—along with a few extra flaws that are all its own.”
🕵️ TikTok Tracked Users Who Watched Gay Content, Prompting Employee Complaints (Wall Street Journal)
An internal dashboard at TikTok could reveal users who watched “gay” content on the platform. TikTok classifies content into categories including one for LGBTQ+ material. Employees at TikTok brought their concerns to managers, saying they were concerned that employees could share the data with outside parties, or that it could be used to blackmail users. TikTok says that this access has since been removed from the dashboard.
🛑 Twitter Appears to Limit Bellingcat After Elon Musk Called It 'Psyop' (Insider)
The main account of Bellingcat, a leader in open source intelligence investigations, no longer shows up in search results following Elon Musk’s questioning Bellingcat’s assertion that the Allen, Texas mall shooter had Nazi tattoos and posts about being a white supremacist.
🧒 Thorn Joins the Spotify Safety Advisory Council (Spotify)
Thorn, the organization dedicated to fighting online child sexual abuse, is joining Spotify’s Safety Advisory Council. Spotify was already working with Thorn as a user of their Safety platform. The Safety Advisory Council helps Spotify evolve its policies and products but does not make enforcement decisions.
😵💫 Crossing jungle and desert, migrants navigate a sea of misinformation (The Washington Post)
Don’t believe everything you read, especially if you’re hoping to immigrate to the U.S. from South or Central America. As the U.S. is ending pandemic immigration policies to restore the pre-COVID rules, misinformation is running rampant on social media. Would-be immigrants are getting conflicting stories in widely shared videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Regulatory News and Update
🇬🇧 The UK’s Online Safety Bill, explained (The Verge)
An opinion piece from Jon Porter at The Verge calls into question the effectiveness of the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill. The bill has ballooned since its inception and has become a catch-all for ministers’ pet peeves. It continues to leave important concepts ill-defined and doesn’t realistically address significant online challenges.
🇧🇷 Brazil pushes back on big tech firms' campaign against 'fake news law' (Reuters)
Brazilian lawmakers are none too happy with Big Tech’s efforts to influence legislation in that country. As the legislature prepares to debate the Fake News Law, tech firms have been campaigning against its passage. The justice minister gave Google two hours to remove a link they added to search results pointing to blogs arguing against the bill. Google complied, but they’re not happy about it. Wired has a take on this one too.
🇺🇸 We are senators from both parties. It’s time to protect kids on social media (The Washington Post)
A group of senators, Democrats and Republicans, wrote an op-ed promoting their proposed Protecting Kids on Social Media Act. The bill would limit kids' time on social media, and try to rein in algorithms used by Big Tech to keep those kids engaged. The bill also requires age verification and parental permission for children under 18 to create social media accounts.
⚖️ The Misbegotten War Against Curation (Lawfare Blog)
Meanwhile, Jane Baumbauer, a professor of law at the University of Arizona, argues against this and other proposed regulations. She maintains that regulations will have unintended consequences and prove to be anti-competitive. Although sympathetic to the conservative view that their voices do not get equal treatment, she believes even Republican proposals for regulation are misguided.