Here for your information are only the starts of a series. Here is thelink to the source > https://www.techdirt.com/
Continuing our never-ending series of posts about the impossibility of content moderation at scale, let's take a look at just how impossible it is to handle misinformation in the age of COVID-19. Ben Thompson over at Stratechery has a truly wonderful post highlighting this problem with regards to Twitter's disinformation policies, and how things break down when the "misinformation" is coming form official sources. We noted this, to some extent, the other day when we called out Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo for saying that he was seeking to have anyone who posted false information online about COVID-19 prosecuted. During the press conference, he said to only listen to "your elected officials, or to your appointed officials." But, as we noted, our elected officials and their appointees aren't always right.
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How Do You Moderate COVID-19 Misinformation When It's Coming From Official Sources?
from the content-moderation-at-scale-is-impossible dept
Continuing our never-ending series of posts about the impossibility of content moderation at scale, let's take a look at just how impossible it is to handle misinformation in the age of COVID-19. Ben Thompson over at Stratechery has a truly wonderful post highlighting this problem with regards to Twitter's disinformation policies, and how things break down when the "misinformation" is coming form official sources. We noted this, to some extent, the other day when we called out Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo for saying that he was seeking to have anyone who posted false information online about COVID-19 prosecuted. During the press conference, he said to only listen to "your elected officials, or to your appointed officials." But, as we noted, our elected officials and their appointees aren't always right.
As Thompson points out, Twitter also took the seemingly reasonable position that in an effort to stop (widespread) COVID-19 misinformation, it would start taking down content that disagreed with official government statements:
________________________________________________________________Appeals Court Tells Baltimore PD To Start Coughing Up Information About Its Cell Site Simulators
from the no-more-hanging-around-in-the-shadows dept
The Baltimore Police Department was an enthusiastic early adopter of cell site simulator technology. In 2015, a Baltimore detective admitted the department had deployed its collection of cell tower spoofers 4,300 times since 2007.
The best estimate on how many of those 4,300 deployments ever showed up in court documents remains near zero. The Baltimore PD hid its deployments behind pen register orders, ensuring judges and defendants never knew the departments was using cell site simulators to track down suspects.
A little bit of information has reached the public domain in recent years, showing the Baltimore PD was more willing to toss cases than expose its use of Stingray devices. Judges were willing to toss cases too, once it was determined these secret deployments violated the Fourth Amendment.
There are now three Supreme Court rulings that directly affect Stingray deployments, with the most recent being the Carpenter decision. If the government needs a warrant to obtain historical cell site location info, it stands to reason a warrant should be required to engage in real-time tracking using Stingrays, even if the court did not specifically address this.
________________________________________________________________Democrats Being Blocked From Advertising On Trump's Failed COVID-19 Response Due To Content Moderation Rules
from the oh-fun dept
Here we go again: content moderation at scale is impossible to do well -- and, as we've discussed, things are especially tricky when it comes to content moderation and political advertising. Now, when you mix into that content moderation to try to stop disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and you run up against... politicians facing blocks in trying to advertise about Trump's leadership failures in response to the pandemic:
Prominent Democratic PACs in recent days have funneled millions of dollars into television ads accusing Trump of mishandling the coronavirus crisis. But staffers of several Democratic nonprofits and digital ad firms realized this week that they would not be able to use Google's dominant ad tools to spread true information about President Trump's handling of the outbreak on YouTube and other Google platforms. The company only allows PSA-style ads from government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and trusted health bodies like the World Health Organization. Multiple Democratic and progressive strategists were rebuked when they tried to place Google ads criticizing the Trump administration's response to coronavirus, officials within the firms told Protocol.
That anti-conservative bias sure is a pain, eh?
This wasn't just a one-off. Apparently other politicians have also been told they can't use Google's ad platform for those ads either:
One Democratic strategist said his digital firm had already gone live in recent days with several ad campaigns related to coronavirus on Facebook, which allows most political ads about the disease. "As we were getting ready to start broadening [the ad campaign] into Google, we reached out to Google to clarify what their rules were going to be," said one Democratic strategist who requested anonymity in order to maintain his relationship with Google. A Google ad representative told them they would not be able to place the ads.
But, of course, since federal government agencies are allowed to advertise on the platform, and this administration appears to view the entire apparatus of the federal government as solely part and parcel of the Trump re-election campaign, that basically means that Trump gets free reign over Google ads:
The Trump campaign and Republicans across the country also are not allowed to run advertisements right now. But the democratic strategists argue that the CDC and White House's messaging, which are permitted by Google, fall under Trump's purview."For Google to basically say that the Trump administration is the only entity that is allowed to talk about the most important issue in politics really puts their thumb on the scale of the incumbent president and against anyone who is really looking to challenge him," said Eli Kaplan, a founding partner of Rising Tide Interactive, a digital marketing firm for Democratic political organizations and progressive nonprofits.
This isn't to criticize Google, but to again highlight the straight up impossibility of the situation. More specifically, it's not hard to follow the very logical and reasonable thought process that leads to these rules being put in place. It wanted to limit people exploiting COVID-related panic for commercial reasons, and thus chose to limit COVID-related ads to government entities only. But, the issue comes down to distinguishing political ads from commercial ads, and it's easy (if you're not having to make that distinction) to just say that you'll allow the political ads, but not "commercial" ads, but suddenly that opens up a ton of other questions that all of the platforms have been dealing with regarding moderation of political ads:what is a political ad exactly? In some cases, it's more obvious, but in many cases, it's a big gray area.
This isn't about bias and it isn't about malice. It's about the simple fact that if you do content moderation, almost every "policy" you put in place will come back to bite you when you realize that, in practice, something will happen that seems insane even when you have a perfectly logical policy in place.
Filed Under: ads, content moderation, content moderation at scale, covid-19, democrats, political ads
Companies: google
Companies: google
Virginia Court Reaffirms The Right To Give Cops The Finger
from the not-all-protected-speech-is-prudent-speech dept
It's pretty well established that giving the finger to cops is protected expression. Stopping or detaining someone for flipping you off violates their rights and the usual law enforcement excuses for unconstitutional behavior tend to perform poorly when examined by a federal judge.
In 2018, a Virginia federal court denied qualified immunity to Officer Rob Coleman for his stop of Brian Clark, who made a gesture that "was crude, but not criminal." Officer Coleman claimed he was "concerned" by Clark's hand gesture and was just doing some community caretaking by pulling over the car Clark was riding in. Literally unbelievably, the officer claimed he viewed the hand gesture as a sign of distress, as only a person "under the influence" of alcohol or drugs (or "suffering from some sort of mental illness") would dare do such a thing.
Of course, Coleman never made any inquiries about distress, mental illness, or intoxication during the 20-minute stop. The court denied Coleman's request for qualified immunity, stating it should have been clear stopping someone for throwing the bird would violate both the First and Fourth Amendments.
The case went to trial. Somehow the jury managed to find in favor of the cop who had violated two rights with his traffic stop. The jury said Coleman did not lack reasonable suspicion to stop and detain Clark for allegedly giving the officer the one-finger salute.
Clark challenged this verdict, asking the court to overturn the inexplicable decision by the jury to go against its own interests by saying it's ok for cops like Coleman to engage in retaliatory stops of people who've offended them.
The court agrees with Clark: this is indeed some bullshit. (via The Newspaper)
From the decision [PDF]:
After a review of the applicable law and relevant evidence, the court GRANTS Plaintiff Brian Clark’s motion to set aside the jury verdict and enter judgment for the plaintiff. ECF No. 141. The law plainly prohibits that which occurred here, and the jury’s verdict cannot stand.
There's no gray area for the court to explore. This was a violation of Clark's rights.
The law is this area is well-settled. The Fourth Amendment “prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by the Government, and its protections extend to brief investigatory stops of persons or vehicles that fall short of traditional arrest.”
The jury may have returned a verdict. But a jury isn't allowed to condone the violation of Constitutional rights, even if every juror reached the same conclusion.
At trial, the jury was instructed that a traffic stop was a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and that a stop is “reasonable if the officer had reasonable suspicion to believe the plaintiff had committed or was committing a crime.” Jury Instruction No. 15, ECF No. 137. Even taking the facts in the light most favorable to Coleman, displaying one’s middle finger is not illegal, nor does the gesture “on its own create probable cause or reasonable suspicion that [Clark] violated any law.” [...] Here, Coleman based the stop solely on Clark’s display of an offensive gesture. On that basis, the stop was not grounded in reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Nor does the "community caretaking" warrant exception apply here. The officer's own testimony undermined his own reliance on this exception.
[C]oleman’s traffic stop is not “totally divorced” from investigative functions, based on his own representations. [...] Similarly, Coleman argued that there existed reasonable suspicion to believe Clark was violating Virginia’s public intoxication statute, which forecloses reliance on the community caretaker doctrine to justify his actions. [...[ Because Coleman contends he was investigating a potential violation of Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-388, the community caretaking exception cannot justify his actions.
The verdict is set aside. It's still a violation of rights to instigate a traffic stop and detain someone for engaging in protected speech.
The evidence establishes Coleman effectuated a seizure of Clark without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, and that his actions, under color of law, amount to a constitutional violation. Because the evidence does not reveal any reasonable basis for the seizure of Clark following his constitutionally protected speech, however crude, inappropriate, and unwarranted it may have been, the jury’s verdict is contrary to law and must be set aside, and the court will direct judgment be entered for Clark.
Unfortunately for Clark, the judgment won't amount to any real money. Clark also asked to be allowed to pursue monetary damages if the verdict was reversed. The court says he's entitled to damages. But it doesn't believe Clark is owed much of anything for this 20-minute violation of his rights.
The court sees no reason to empanel a new jury on the issue of damages, because Clark did not demonstrate at trial the existence of any compensable injury.[...]Upon balancing the factors, the court finds plaintiff is eligible for attorney’s fees. The first factor instructs the court to compare the amount of compensable damages sought to the amount awarded. Id. at 206. While an award of nominal damages may appear limited relief, Clark never specified the damages he sought, primarily seeking a liability finding, condemnation of the officer’s behavior, and punitive damages.
Clark's lawyer will get paid. So will Clark, but the award is strictly symbolic.
The court DENIES Clark’s motion for a new trial on the issue of damages, instead awarding Clark nominal damages of $1 and attorney’s fees.
There's no money to be had but Clark still got the win -- a ruling that says cops can't violate people's rights just because their feelings have been hurt.
Filed Under: brian clark, middle finger, police, rob coleman, virginia
