Posting Into the Void
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Setting the Record Straighter on Shadow Banning
Setting the Record Straighter on Shadow Banning Erwan Le Merrer, Benoˆıt Morgan, Gilles Tredan,´ Univ Rennes, Inria, CNRS, Irisa IRIT/ENSHEEIT LAAS/CNRS [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Shadow banning consists for an online social net- happens on the OSN side, collecting information about po- work in limiting the visibility of some of its users, without them tential issues is difficult. In this paper, we explore scientific being aware of it. Twitter declares that it does not use such approaches to shed light on Twitter’s alleged shadow banning a practice, sometimes arguing about the occurrence of “bugs” to justify restrictions on some users. This paper is the first to practice. Focusing on this OSN is crucial because of its central address the plausibility of shadow banning on a major online use as a public communication medium, and because potential platform, by adopting both a statistical and a graph topological shadow banning practices were recently commented. approach. Shadow banning and moderation techniques. shadow banning We first conduct an extensive data collection and analysis (SB or banning for short, also known as stealth banning [6]) campaign, gathering occurrences of visibility limitations on user profiles (we crawl more than 2:5 millions of them). In such is an online moderation technique used to ostracise undesired a black-box observation setup, we highlight the salient user user behaviors. In modern OSNs, shadow banning would refer profile features that may explain a banning practice (using to a wide range of techniques that artificially limit the visibility machine learning predictors). -
Big Data for Improved Health Outcomes — Second Edition — Arjun Panesar Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Big Data for Improved Health Outcomes Second Edition
Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Big Data for Improved Health Outcomes — Second Edition — Arjun Panesar Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Big Data for Improved Health Outcomes Second Edition Arjun Panesar Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Arjun Panesar Coventry, UK ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-6536-9 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-6537-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6537-6 Copyright © 2021 by Arjun Panesar This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. -
Preparing for a More Fractured Web the Central Services Under Siege Built Global-Scale Networks
Preparing for a More Fractured Web The central services under siege built global-scale networks. If policy trends hold, what comes next? Andrea O’Sullivan hat’s your worry about Silicon ad-based business model supporting much Valley? Most everyone has one. of big tech. Maybe you’re concerned about For some, it allows impolitic privacy. It could be a combination of many Wspeech to flourish online. If you’re like things. Whatever your persuasion, there me, you’re more bothered by the threat of is usually some good reason to resist big targeted content controls. Or you might American technology companies. fear that some companies have just gotten This essay will not debate the merits or a little too big. Maybe you dislike the entire demerits of any particular tech criticism. The JOURNAL of The JAMES MADISON INSTITUTE Readers can find many such commentaries These trends herald a future where data tailored to their own liking elsewhere on localization, which limits how information the world wide web. Instead, I will discuss can be used across borders, is the norm.5 how the many forces converging against Regulating data means regulating American technology companies may result commerce. Although framed as a way in a new web that is less, well, worldwide. to bring tech companies in line, data What might such an internet look like? regulations affect anyone who engages in We already have a good inkling. Most online commerce: that is to say, almost people have heard of one longstanding everyone with a computer and a connection. internet faultline: the so-called Great To a foreign retailer, for instance, data Firewall of China.1 Residents of China controls might as well be a trade control.6 cannot easily access major parts of the Then there are content controls. -
Analyzing Twitter Users' Behavior Before and After Contact By
Analyzing Twitter Users’ Behavior Before and After Contact by Russia’s Internet Research Agency UPASANA DUTTA, RHETT HANSCOM, JASON SHUO ZHANG, RICHARD HAN, TAMARA 90 LEHMAN, QIN LV, SHIVAKANT MISHRA, University of Colorado Boulder, USA Social media platforms have been exploited to conduct election interference in recent years. In particular, the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) has been identified as a key source of misinformation spread on Twitter prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The goal of this research is to understand whether general Twitter users changed their behavior in the year following first contact from an IRA account. We compare the before and after behavior of contacted users to determine whether there were differences in their mean tweet count, the sentiment of their tweets, and the frequency and sentiment of tweets mentioning @realDonaldTrump or @HillaryClinton. Our results indicate that users overall exhibited statistically significant changes in behavior across most of these metrics, and that those users that engaged with the IRA generally showed greater changes in behavior. CCS Concepts: • Applied computing ! Law, social and behavioral sciences; • Human-centered com- puting ! Collaborative and social computing. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Internet Research Agency; IRA; Twitter; Trump; democracy ACM Reference Format: Upasana Dutta, Rhett Hanscom, Jason Shuo Zhang, Richard Han, Tamara Lehman, Qin Lv, Shivakant Mishra. 2021. Analyzing Twitter Users’ Behavior Before and After Contact by Russia’s Internet Research Agency. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW1, Article 90 (April 2021), 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3449164 INTRODUCTION For many years, the growth of online social media has been seen as a tool used to bring people together across borders and time-zones. -
House of Representatives Staff Analysis Bill #: Hb 7013
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STAFF ANALYSIS BILL #: HB 7013 PCB COM 21-01 Technology Transparency SPONSOR(S): Commerce Committee, Ingoglia TIED BILLS: HB 7015 IDEN./SIM. BILLS: REFERENCE ACTION ANALYST STAFF DIRECTOR or BUDGET/POLICY CHIEF Orig. Comm.: Commerce Committee 16 Y, 8 N Wright Hamon 1) Appropriations Committee 19 Y, 8 N Topp Pridgeon 2) Judiciary Committee SUMMARY ANALYSIS A section of the Federal Communications Decency Act (Section 230) provides immunity from liability for information service providers and social media platforms that, in good faith, remove or restrict from their services information deemed “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” While this immunity has fostered the growth of certain parts of the internet, recently, there have been criticisms of the broad federal immunity provision due to actions taken or not taken regarding the censorship of users by internet platforms. Government regulators have recently investigated and initiated cases against certain platforms for antitrust activities. The bill provides that a social media platform must: publish standards used for determining how to censor, deplatform, and shadow ban users, and apply such standards in a consistent manner. inform each user about any changes to its user rules, terms, and agreements before implementing the changes and may not make changes more than once every 30 days. notify the user within 30 days of censoring or deplatforming. provide a user with information relating to the number of other individuals who were provided or shown the user's content or posts upon request by the user. -
Generating Counter Narratives Against Online Hate Speech: Data and Strategies
Generating Counter Narratives against Online Hate Speech: Data and Strategies Serra Sinem Tekiroglu˘ 1, Yi-Ling Chung1,2, and Marco Guerini1 1Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Sommarive 18, Povo, Trento, Italy [email protected],[email protected],[email protected] 2University of Trento, Italy Abstract the conversations (Bielefeldt et al., 2011; Jurgens et al., 2019). In this line of action, some Non- Recently research has started focusing on avoiding undesired effects that come with Govermental Organizations (NGOs) train operators content moderation, such as censorship and to intervene in online hateful conversations by writ- overblocking, when dealing with hatred on- ing counter-narratives. A Counter-Narrative (CN) line. The core idea is to directly intervene in is a non-aggressive response that offers feedback the discussion with textual responses that are through fact-bound arguments and is considered as meant to counter the hate content and prevent the most effective approach to withstand hate mes- it from further spreading. Accordingly, au- sages (Benesch, 2014; Schieb and Preuss, 2016). tomation strategies, such as natural language generation, are beginning to be investigated. To be effective, a CN should follow guidelines simi- 1 Still, they suffer from the lack of sufficient lar to those in ‘Get the Trolls Out’ project , in order amount of quality data and tend to produce to avoid escalating the hatred in the discussion. generic/repetitive responses. Being aware of Still, manual intervention against hate speech the aforementioned limitations, we present a is not scalable. Therefore, data-driven NLG ap- study on how to collect responses to hate ef- proaches are beginning to be investigated to assist fectively, employing large scale unsupervised language models such as GPT-2 for the gen- NGO operators in writing CNs. -
Countering Terrorism Online with Artificial Intelligence an Overview for Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism Agencies in South Asia and South-East Asia
COUNTERING TERRORISM ONLINE WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AN OVERVIEW FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND COUNTER-TERRORISM AGENCIES IN SOUTH ASIA AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA COUNTERING TERRORISM ONLINE WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE An Overview for Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism Agencies in South Asia and South-East Asia A Joint Report by UNICRI and UNCCT 3 Disclaimer The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Unit- ed Nations, the Government of Japan or any other national, regional or global entities involved. Moreover, reference to any specific tool or application in this report should not be considered an endorsement by UNOCT-UNCCT, UNICRI or by the United Nations itself. The designation employed and material presented in this publication does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoev- er on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Contents of this publication may be quoted or reproduced, provided that the source of information is acknowledged. The au- thors would like to receive a copy of the document in which this publication is used or quoted. Acknowledgements This report is the product of a joint research initiative on counter-terrorism in the age of artificial intelligence of the Cyber Security and New Technologies Unit of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT) in the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) through its Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. -
Congressional Record—Senate S4658
S4658 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE August 3, 2020 The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without companies censor political viewpoints employ disturbing and familiar im- objection, it is so ordered. that they find objectionable. That was agery. COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT 2 years ago. It has only worsened in the According to the ESPN investiga- Mr. WICKER. Madam President, for 2 years since then. tion, one former league employee com- almost 25 years, the internet has grown These concerns come at a time when pared the atmosphere at the Xinjiang and thrived under the light-touch regu- tech companies wield unprecedented camp to ‘‘World War II Germany.’’ latory framework established by the power within our economy and our cul- An American coach, who worked at a Communications Decency Act. I hope ture at large, and no one can deny that. similar facility, described it as a we can continue that. I think some A bipartisan chorus of committee ‘‘sweat camp for athletes.’’ changes need to be made. members from the other body pointed Now, according to the investigation, Passed in 1996, the law that the Com- this out just last week. More and more almost immediately after the NBA munications Decency Act is a part of of our daily business is taking place launched this program back in 2016, helped create the internet. Section 230 online, and that trend is only accel- multiple coaches who were staffing the of that law gives broad liability protec- erating during the current pandemic. camps reported to high-ranking organi- tions to interactive computer services, As we near the 2020 election, Ameri- zation officials that they had witnessed such as Facebook, Twitter, and other cans have serious concerns about Chinese coaches beating and berating social media platforms. -
Netchoice V. Moody
Case 4:21-cv-00220-RH-MAF Document 77-2 Filed 06/14/21 Page 1 of 48 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA TALLAHASSEE DIVISION NETCHOICE, LLC, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. ASHLEY BROOKE MOODY, in her official 4:21-cv-220- RH-MAF capacity as Attorney General of the State of Florida, et al., Defendants. BRIEF OF INTERNET ASSOCIATION AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION Patrick J. Carome (pro hac vice pending) Peter W. Homer (D.C. SBN 385676) (FL SBN 291250) Paul R.Q. Wolfson (pro hac vice pending) HOMER BONNER (D.C. SBN 414759) 1200 Four Seasons Tower Ari Holtzblatt (pro hac vice pending) 1441 Brickell Avenue (D.C. SBN 1009913) Miami, Florida 33131 WILMER CUTLER PICKERING (305) 350-5139 HALE AND DORR LLP 1875 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006 (202) 663-6000 Case 4:21-cv-00220-RH-MAF Document 77-2 Filed 06/14/21 Page 2 of 48 DISCLOSURE STATEMENT OF AMICUS CURIAE INTERNET ASSOCIATION Amicus Curiae Internet Association is not a publicly held corporation, does not have a parent corporation, and has not issued stock. Therefore, no publicly traded corporation owns ten percent or more of its stock. None of the counsel for the parties in this litigation has authored this brief, in whole or in part. Furthermore, no party, party’s counsel, or outside organization has funded the research, writing, preparation, or submission of this brief. /s/ Peter W. Homer Peter W. Homer i Case 4:21-cv-00220-RH-MAF Document 77-2 Filed 06/14/21 Page 3 of 48 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DISCLOSURE STATEMENT OF AMICUS CURIAE INTERNET ASSOCIATION ............................................................................................... -
'Please Read the Comments': Commenting Cultures
Selected Papers of #AoIR2020: st The 21 Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers D u b l i n Virtual, Irela nEventd / 2 8/ - 27-3131 Oc Octobertober 2 0202020 ‘PLEASE READ THE COMMENTS’: COMMENTING CULTURES ACROSS PLATFORMS Crystal Abidin Curtin University Platform-specific commenting cultures An old adage about the internet goes “Don’t Read The Comments”. It is a cynical word of caution from supposedly more experienced and savvy internet users, against a slew of negative, abusive, and unhelpful comments that are usually rampant online, stemming from trolling behaviour (Phillips 2015). “Don’t Read The Comments” has become an internet meme. Alongside parody websites (i.e. @AvoidComments n.d.), trawling through the comments section in search of ludicrosity has become an internet genre in and of itself. This comprises the likes of meme factory ‘The Straits Times Comment Section’ which collates absurd comments from users on a specific newspaper’s Facebook page (STcomments n.d.), as well as internet celebrity troll commentators like ‘American Ken’ M (Know Your Meme n.d.) and Singaporean ‘Peter Tan’ (Yeoh 2018), who post comments on a network of social media and fora in stealthily satirical ways that have even been co-opted for advertorials (Vox 2016). Such vernacular practice has in turn provoked a counter-genre of memes known as “I’m just Here For The Comments” (Tenor n.d.), in which users closely follow social media posts mainly for the resulting discussion and engagement in the comments section rather than the actual post itself. It is on this point of departure that this panel turns its focus to commenting cultures across platforms. -
Reframing the Crypto Wars
CONTENTS Introduction 1 A Highlights Reel of the U.S. Encryption Debate 2 The Early “Crypto Wars” and the Clipper Chip 2 The Encryption Debate Sequel: Snowden and Surveillance 3 Privacy and the Encryption Debate 3 Earn It: Encryption Controversy Over Section 230 3 The Current International Debate Around Encryption 4 The Impact of International Encryption Policy on Domestic Policy 5 Security Versus Privacy or Security Versus Security 5 Challenges to Making Progress on the Encryption Debate 6 The Increased Availability of User-friendly Encryption Services 6 A Lack of a Common Language 6 A Lack of a Whole of Government Approach to Cybersecurity 7 Disagreement About Backdoor Alternatives 8 Conclusion 9 About the Authors 10 R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 237 The debate was seemingly set to be answered by the courts in July 2021 2016, when Apple refused to craft new software at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that would allow the agency to access encrypted information on a phone belonging to one of the shooters in a 2015 terrorist attack on Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. REFRAMING THE CRYPTO WARS But the “going dark” encryption debate shares a key charac- By Kathryn Waldron and Sofia Lesmes teristic with the walking dead: no matter how many times you try to put it to rest, it keeps coming back. In October 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an international INTRODUCTION statement calling for companies to “[e]nable law enforce- ment access to content in a readable and usable format where or the past several decades, policymakers, law enforce- authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportion- ment, private companies, civil liberties advocates and ate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight.”2 Both cybersecurity specialists have been locked in a pas- at home and abroad, there are increased government calls to sionate yet seemingly unending battle over encryp- weaken encryption in the name of national security. -
Documents That Would Establish Malwarebytes’ Deep Relationship with Bleeping and Its Collaboration with Bleeping’S Efforts to Divert Sales from Enigma to 6
No. 19-1284 IN THE Supreme Court of the United States __________ MALWAREBYTES, INC., Petitioner, v. ENIGMA SOFTWARE GROUP USA, LLC, Respondent. __________ On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit __________ BRIEF IN OPPOSITION FOR RESPONDENT __________ CHRISTOPHER M. VERDINI TERRY BUDD ANNA SHABALOV Counsel of Record K&L GATES LLP BUDD LAW, PLLC 210 Sixth Avenue 120 Lyndhurst Circle Pittsburgh, PA 15222 Wexford, PA 15090 (412) 355-6500 (412) 613-2541 ([email protected]) July 27, 2020 QUESTION PRESENTED Whether the Ninth Circuit correctly held that 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2), titled “Protection for ‘Good Samaritan’ blocking and screening of offensive material,” does not provide immunity from liability for companies engaging in predatory practices that intentionally target competitors for anticompetitive reasons. ii RULE 29.6 DISCLOSURE STATEMENT Enigma Software Group USA, LLC is a Florida limited liability company with its principal place of business in Florida. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC is 100% owned by Globalist LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. Globalist LLC has no parent corporation, and no publicly held corporation owns 10% or more of its stock. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page QUESTION PRESENTED .......................................... i RULE 29.6 DISCLOSURE STATEMENT ................. ii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ........................................v INTRODUCTION ....................................................... 1 STATEMENT .............................................................