26 July 2021

Not Quite The Normal Manic Monday for Techdirt

There are things - right now there are four to read - to get-up-to-speed on: 7 hours after the first one here's a zinger,
There is a reason that the Constitution contains the provision, "Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech
The next action to take is yours at your fingertips > access the underlined links + READ MORE
 
1 from the nothing-to-see-here dept (34 comments)
"Netflix had a pretty good run there for a long while. Thanks to low prices and an innovative streaming system, the company simply hoovered up streaming video subscribers as the cable TV industry stumbled around in the dark, busy pretending the cord cutting phenomenon either wasn't real or would end once Millennials started procreating. As a result, there was a big long window where Netflix's only real competitor was a bunch of fairly terrible "me too" half assed offerings from the traditional broadcast and cable sector.

That was then, this is now. With cable giants finally figuring out this whole streaming thing (Comcast's Peacock, Dish's SlingTV, AT&T's HBO Max) after numerous face plants (Verizon's Go90, AT&T's HBOMaxUltraExtreme), and numerous movie studios and broadcasters going direct to consumer (Disney+, AppleTV+) Netflix is finally started to see its market share slowly eroded. In fact the company's latest earnings report indicates Netflix lost 430,000 subscribers in the US and Canada. Like clockwork, Netflix now has to turn from innovation to turf protection.

And like the countless companies before it, part of that process involves pretending that things aren't changing under their feet. . ."

 

"It's not a new thing that those without any experience in content moderation assume that it's somehow "easy" to just find and delete misinformation and disinformation online -- but it's often stunning how little they've thought through how all of this plays out. As the White House has stupidly been using its bully pulpit to pressure Facebook into deleting anti-vax misinformation, and elected officials are threatening legislation they must know is unconstitutional, none of them seem to recognize that it's not that easy.

Anyone who has done any work related to content moderation knows this. They know that the vast majority of misinformation is not that easy to spot. First of all, it's not clear what is misinformation. You could have someone who gets something inadvertently wrong. Or, perhaps they just misread something or misunderstand something. Is that misinformation that needs to be deleted? Also, there are things like sarcasm or criticism that frequently repeat the misinformation in order to respond to it. Then there are plenty of things that may seem like misinformation but tend to just be people posting stuff that is technically true, but without the necessary context. Does that need to also be deleted? There are tons of degrees involved in misinformation, and figuring out what should stay up and what should be taken down is not nearly as easy as many commentators make it out to be.

But, on top of that, there's the simple fact that those spreading misinformation know that they may face consequences for it, and thus they adapt their techniques. Ben Collins & Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News' two excellent reporters who focus on misinformation, are noting that anti-vax groups on Facebook are effectively trying to cover their tracks in advance of any possible crackdown on the nonsense and propaganda they spew: ..."

 

3 NSO Group Attempting To Distance Itself From Damaging Leak By Offering Up Contradictory Statements And 'Nothing To Fear' Platitudes

from the not-so-fun-when-you're-the-one-being-scrutinized-by-outsiders dept

"This truly is a pleasure to observe. Israeli malware merchant NSO Group -- the purveyor of powerful spyware capable of turning a target's phone into a spy agency's plaything -- is playing a whole lot of defense after leaked data seen by a number of journalists and activists appears to confirm that NSO's customers are targeting… activists and journalists. (And world leaders, religious leaders, NGO employees, and friends and relatives of all of the above…)

While the origin of this data remains unclear, it appears to be related to NSO and its customers. And although NSO claims to be very selective about who it sells this powerful spyware to, its customers include governments of questionable character, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

This has thrust Shalev Hulio, the CEO and co-founder of NSO Group, into the limelight. He's clearly unprepared to be there. His statements and responses to questions are, at best, contradictory. At worst, they're nothing more than deflections that aren't going to persuade anyone that the allegations made by several news agencies and rights groups are false.

Here's Hulio's attempt (in an interview with Calcalist) to explain that the list of 50,000 phone numbers couldn't possibly have anything to do with NSO Group: . .

 

This bill is so bad it was worth a second post.

There is a reason that the Constitution contains the provision, "Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech." And this new bill proposed by Senator Klobuchar (who really should know better) gets at the heart of it. Because what her bill would do is make a law that, at its core, pointedly interferes with freedom of speech by allowing the government to penalize certain expression. And there is absolutely no reason to believe that its choices for which speech to favor will be sound and healthy ones for society. In fact, given the performance of the previous presidential administration, there's plenty of reason to believe the result would be the exact opposite.

The mechanics of this interference are fairly straight forward. Her bill, "The Health Misinformation Act of 2021," would condition Section 230's platform protection to apply only to platforms that moderate user content as the government has decreed they should moderate it. The constitutional problems with this scheme should thus be readily apparent:

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