1 00:00:00,440 --> 00:00:09,460 *prerol music* 2 00:00:09,460 --> 00:00:13,849 Herald: Our next Talk will be tackling how social media companies are creating a 3 00:00:13,849 --> 00:00:20,480 global morality standard through content regulations. This would be presented by 4 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:25,470 two persons standing here the digital rights advocate Matthew Stender and the 5 00:00:25,470 --> 00:00:31,220 writer and activist Jillian C. York. Please give them a warm applause. 6 00:00:31,220 --> 00:00:38,090 *applause* 7 00:00:38,090 --> 00:00:41,480 Matthew: Hello everybody. I hope you all had a great Congress. Thank you for being 8 00:00:41,480 --> 00:00:46,949 here today. You know we're almost wrapped up with the Congress but yeah we 9 00:00:46,949 --> 00:00:51,929 appreciate you being here. My name is Matthew Stender. I am a communications 10 00:00:51,929 --> 00:00:57,419 strategist's creative director and digital rights advocate focusing on privacy. 11 00:00:57,419 --> 00:01:02,000 Social media censorship and Freedom of Press and expression. 12 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:06,550 Jillian: And I am Jillian York and I work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I 13 00:01:06,550 --> 00:01:10,581 work on privacy and free expression issues as well as a few other things and I'm 14 00:01:10,581 --> 00:01:18,480 based in Berlin. Thank you. For Berlin? Awesome. Cool. Hope to see some of you 15 00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:22,410 there. Great. So today we're gonna be talking about sin in the time of 16 00:01:22,410 --> 00:01:27,140 technology and what we mean by that is the way in which corporations particularly 17 00:01:27,140 --> 00:01:31,320 content platforms and social media platforms are driving morality and our 18 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:36,630 perception of it. We've got three key takeaways to start off with. The first is 19 00:01:36,630 --> 00:01:40,430 that social media companies have an unparalleled amount of influence over our 20 00:01:40,430 --> 00:01:43,980 modern communications. This we know I think this is probably something everyone 21 00:01:43,980 --> 00:01:48,130 in this room can agree on. These companies also play a huge role in shaping our 22 00:01:48,130 --> 00:01:52,580 global outlook on morality and what constitutes it. So the ways in which we 23 00:01:52,580 --> 00:01:57,280 perceive different imagery different speech is being increasingly defined by 24 00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:02,100 the regulations that these platforms put upon us on our daily activities on them. 25 00:02:02,100 --> 00:02:05,780 And third they are entirely undemocratic. They're beholden to shareholders and 26 00:02:05,780 --> 00:02:10,170 governments but not at all to the public. Not to me, not to you. Rarely do they 27 00:02:10,170 --> 00:02:14,120 listen to us and when they do there has to be a fairly exceptional mount of public 28 00:02:14,120 --> 00:02:18,340 pressure on them. And so that's, that's our starting point that's what we wanna 29 00:02:18,340 --> 00:02:22,769 kick off with and I'll pass the mike to Matthew. 30 00:02:22,769 --> 00:02:28,170 M: So thinking about these three takeaways I'm going to bring it to kind of top level 31 00:02:28,170 --> 00:02:38,209 for a moment. To introduce an idea today which some people have talked about but 32 00:02:38,209 --> 00:02:44,400 the idea of the rise of the techno class. So probably a lot of people in this room 33 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:50,990 have followed the negotiations, leaks in part and then in full by WikiLeaks about 34 00:02:50,990 --> 00:02:58,050 the Trans-Pacific Partnership the TPP what some people have mentioned in this debate 35 00:02:58,050 --> 00:03:03,360 is the idea of a corporate capture in a world now in which that corporations are 36 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:09,220 becoming are maturing to this to the extent in which they can now sue 37 00:03:09,220 --> 00:03:15,270 governments that the multinational reach of many corporations are larger than that. 38 00:03:15,270 --> 00:03:21,620 The diplomatic reach of countries. And with this social media platforms being 39 00:03:21,620 --> 00:03:26,250 part of this that they, that these social media companies now are going to have the 40 00:03:26,250 --> 00:03:30,180 capacity to influence not only cultures but people within cultures and how they 41 00:03:30,180 --> 00:03:36,239 communicate with people inside their culture and communicate globally. So as 42 00:03:36,239 --> 00:03:40,989 activists and technologists I would like to propose at least that we start thinking 43 00:03:40,989 --> 00:03:45,099 about and beyond the product and service offerings of today's social media 44 00:03:45,099 --> 00:03:50,660 companies and start looking ahead to two - five - ten years down the road in which 45 00:03:50,660 --> 00:03:56,559 these companies may have social media services and serve as media social media 46 00:03:56,559 --> 00:04:00,709 service offerings which are indistinguishable from today's ISPs and 47 00:04:00,709 --> 00:04:05,910 telcos and other things. And this is really to say that social media is moving 48 00:04:05,910 --> 00:04:15,400 past the era of the walled garden into neo empires. So one of the things that is on 49 00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:20,298 the slide are some headlines about different delivery mechanisms in which 50 00:04:20,298 --> 00:04:24,980 that social media companies and also people like Elon Musk are looking to roll 51 00:04:24,980 --> 00:04:30,050 out an almost leapfrog if not completely leapfrog the existing technologies of 52 00:04:30,050 --> 00:04:36,530 Russia broadcasting fiberoptics these sort of things. So we now are looking at a 53 00:04:36,530 --> 00:04:41,240 world in which that Facebook is now gonna have drones. Google is looking into 54 00:04:41,240 --> 00:04:46,590 balloons and other people looking into low earth orbit satellites to be able to 55 00:04:46,590 --> 00:04:52,220 provide directly to the end consumer, to the user, to the handset the content which 56 00:04:52,220 --> 00:04:58,199 flows through these networks. So one of the first things I believe we're gonna see 57 00:04:58,199 --> 00:05:05,600 in this field is free basics. Facebook has a service it was launched as Internet.org 58 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:12,021 and now it's been rebranded free basics and why this is interesting is that while 59 00:05:12,021 --> 00:05:17,060 in one hand free basis is a free service that it's trying to get the people that 60 00:05:17,060 --> 00:05:21,590 are not on the Internet now to use a Facebook's window Facebook's window to the 61 00:05:21,590 --> 00:05:28,030 world. It has maybe a couple dozen sites that are accessible it runs over the data 62 00:05:28,030 --> 00:05:35,180 networks for countries reliance the telecommunications company in India is one 63 00:05:35,180 --> 00:05:41,550 of the larger telcos but not the largest. There's a lot of pressure that Facebook is 64 00:05:41,550 --> 00:05:48,320 putting on the government of India right now to be able to have the service offered 65 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:54,960 across the country. One of the ways that this is problematic is because a limited 66 00:05:54,960 --> 00:05:59,300 number of Web sites flow through this that people that get exposed to free basic. 67 00:05:59,300 --> 00:06:05,180 This might be their first time seeing the Internet in some cases because an example 68 00:06:05,180 --> 00:06:10,350 is interesting to think about is a lion born into a zoo. Perhaps evolution and 69 00:06:10,350 --> 00:06:16,889 other things may have this line dream perhaps of running wild on the plains of 70 00:06:16,889 --> 00:06:25,080 Africa but at the same time it will never know that world Facebook free basic users 71 00:06:25,080 --> 00:06:32,199 knowing Facebook's view to the window of the Internet may not all jump over to a 72 00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:37,380 full data package on their ISP. And many people may be stuck in Facebook's window 73 00:06:37,380 --> 00:06:41,190 to the world. 74 00:06:41,190 --> 00:06:44,740 J: In other words we've reached an era where these companies have as I've said 75 00:06:44,740 --> 00:06:48,530 unprecedented control over our daily communications both the information that 76 00:06:48,530 --> 00:06:52,460 we can access and the speech and imagery that we can express to the world and to 77 00:06:52,460 --> 00:06:55,880 each other. So the postings and pages and friend requests, the millions of 78 00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:59,620 politically active users as well, have helped to make Mark Zuckerberg and his 79 00:06:59,620 --> 00:07:02,770 colleagues as well as the people at Google, Twitter and all these other fine 80 00:07:02,770 --> 00:07:07,850 companies extremely rich and yet we're pushing back in this case. I've got a 81 00:07:07,850 --> 00:07:11,400 great quote from Rebecca MacKinnon where she refers to Facebook as Facebookistan 82 00:07:11,400 --> 00:07:14,610 and I think that that is an apt example of what we're looking at. These are 83 00:07:14,610 --> 00:07:19,280 corporations but they're not beholden at all to the public as we know. And instead 84 00:07:19,280 --> 00:07:23,190 they've kind of turned into these quasi dictatorships that dictate precisely how 85 00:07:23,190 --> 00:07:29,400 we behave on them. I also wanted to throw this one up to talk a little bit about the 86 00:07:29,400 --> 00:07:34,030 global speech norm. This is from Ben Wagner who's written a number of pieces on 87 00:07:34,030 --> 00:07:38,370 this but who kind of coined the concept of a global speech standard which is what 88 00:07:38,370 --> 00:07:42,930 these companies have begun and are increasingly imposing upon us. This global 89 00:07:42,930 --> 00:07:47,800 speech standard is essentially catering to everyone in the world trying to make every 90 00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:51,800 user in every country and every government happy. But as a result have kind of tamper 91 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:57,360 down free speech to this very basic level that makes both the governments of let's 92 00:07:57,360 --> 00:08:00,930 say the United States and Germany happy as well as the governments of countries like 93 00:08:00,930 --> 00:08:05,270 Saudi Arabia. Therefore we're looking at really kind of the lowest common 94 00:08:05,270 --> 00:08:09,870 denominator when it comes to sometimes tone types of speech and this sort of flat 95 00:08:09,870 --> 00:08:14,810 gray standard when it comes to others. 96 00:08:14,810 --> 00:08:22,050 M: So Jillian just mentioned we have countries in play. Facebook is another 97 00:08:22,050 --> 00:08:26,080 organizations social media companies are trying to pivot and play within an 98 00:08:26,080 --> 00:08:30,490 international field but let's just take it up for a moment a look at the scale and 99 00:08:30,490 --> 00:08:35,799 scope and size of these social media companies. So I just put some figures from 100 00:08:35,799 --> 00:08:42,750 the Internet and with some latest census information we have China 1.37 billion 101 00:08:42,750 --> 00:08:48,020 people, India 1.25 billion people 2.2 billion individuals and practitioners of 102 00:08:48,020 --> 00:08:51,762 Islam and Christianity. But now we have Facebook with according to their 103 00:08:51,762 --> 00:08:57,610 statistics 1.5 billion active monthly users. Their statistics - I'm sure many 104 00:08:57,610 --> 00:09:01,520 people would like to dispute these numbers - but the same time with these platforms 105 00:09:01,520 --> 00:09:08,640 are now large. I mean larger than - not larger than some of religions - but 106 00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:15,040 Facebook has more monthly active users than China or India have citizens. So 107 00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:19,061 we're not talking about - you know - basement startups, we're now talking about 108 00:09:19,061 --> 00:09:26,940 companies with the size and scale to be able to really be influential in a larger 109 00:09:26,940 --> 00:09:42,790 institutional way. So Magna Carta app the U.S. Constitution the Declaration of Human 110 00:09:42,790 --> 00:09:49,130 Rights the tree of masters the Bible the Quran. These are time tested at least 111 00:09:49,130 --> 00:09:55,310 longstanding principle documents. That's how that place upon their constituents 112 00:09:55,310 --> 00:10:03,980 whether it be citizens or spiritual adherents a certain code of conduct. 113 00:10:03,980 --> 00:10:08,510 Facebook, as Jillian mentioned, is nondemocratic. Facebook's terms and 114 00:10:08,510 --> 00:10:12,990 standards were written by a small group of individuals with a few compelling 115 00:10:12,990 --> 00:10:18,540 interests in mind. But we are now talking about 1.5 billion people on a monthly 116 00:10:18,540 --> 00:10:27,240 basis that are subservient to a Terms of Service in which they had no input on. 117 00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:32,470 Sort of pivot from there and bring it back to spirituality why is this important. 118 00:10:32,470 --> 00:10:41,890 Well spiritual morality has always been a place for - for religion. Religion has a 119 00:10:41,890 --> 00:10:49,760 monopoly on the soul. You could say, that religion is a set of rules in which that 120 00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:55,860 if you obey you are able to not go to hell or heaven after an afterlife reincarnated 121 00:10:55,860 --> 00:11:02,560 whatever the religious practice may be. Civil morality is quite interesting in the 122 00:11:02,560 --> 00:11:07,610 sense that the sovereign state as a top level institution has the ability to put 123 00:11:07,610 --> 00:11:13,460 into place a series of statutes and regulations. The violation of which can 124 00:11:13,460 --> 00:11:18,570 send you to jail. Another interesting note is that the state is also, also has a 125 00:11:18,570 --> 00:11:24,670 monopoly on the use of sanctioned violence. Say that's the actors of 126 00:11:24,670 --> 00:11:28,080 official actors of the states are able to do things in which that the citizens 127 00:11:28,080 --> 00:11:35,570 citizens of that state may not. And if we take a look at this this concept of 128 00:11:35,570 --> 00:11:41,910 digital morality I spoke about earlier with services like free basic introducing 129 00:11:41,910 --> 00:11:48,459 new individuals to the Internet well, by a violation of the terms of service you can 130 00:11:48,459 --> 00:11:58,399 be excluded from these massive global networks. And really they, Facebook is 131 00:11:58,399 --> 00:12:04,050 actually trying to create a if not a monopoly a semi monopoly on global 132 00:12:04,050 --> 00:12:14,000 connectivity. in a lot of ways. So what drives Facebook and this is a few things. 133 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:20,870 One is a protection stick protectionistic legal framework. Ok. The control of 134 00:12:20,870 --> 00:12:25,360 copyright violations is something that a lot of platforms stomped out pretty early. 135 00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:29,899 They don't want to be sued by the IRA or the MPAA. And so there was mechanisms in 136 00:12:29,899 --> 00:12:36,641 which copyright, copyrighted material was able to be taken on the platform. They 137 00:12:36,641 --> 00:12:41,990 also or limit potential competition. And I think this is quite interesting in the 138 00:12:41,990 --> 00:12:47,220 sense that they have shown this in two ways. One: They've boughten they've 139 00:12:47,220 --> 00:12:52,140 purchased rival or potential competitors. You see this with Instagram being bought 140 00:12:52,140 --> 00:12:57,870 by Facebook. But Facebook has also demonstrated the ability or willingness to 141 00:12:57,870 --> 00:13:04,899 censor certain context, certain content. tsu.co was a news social sites and 142 00:13:04,899 --> 00:13:10,279 mentions and links to this platform were deleted or not allowed on Facebook. So 143 00:13:10,279 --> 00:13:16,480 even using Facebook as a platform to talk about another platform was was not 144 00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:23,860 allowed. And then a third component is the operation on the global scale. It's only 145 00:13:23,860 --> 00:13:29,440 the size of the company it's also about the global reach. So if Facebook maintains 146 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:33,320 offices around the world, as other social media companies do, they engage in public 147 00:13:33,320 --> 00:13:41,720 diplomacy and they also offer aid in many countries and many languages. So just to 148 00:13:41,720 --> 00:13:47,450 take it to to companies like Facebook for a moment really an economics you have the 149 00:13:47,450 --> 00:13:53,490 traditional multinationals the 20th century Coca Cola McDonald's. The end 150 00:13:53,490 --> 00:14:00,610 user. The end goal the goal for the end user of these products was consumption. 151 00:14:00,610 --> 00:14:05,170 This is changing now. Facebook is looking to capture more and more parts of the 152 00:14:05,170 --> 00:14:11,339 supply chain. And as a this may be as a service provider as a content moderator 153 00:14:11,339 --> 00:14:21,070 and responsible for negotiating and educating the content disputes. At the end 154 00:14:21,070 --> 00:14:27,510 of the day that users are really the product. It's not for us Facebook users 155 00:14:27,510 --> 00:14:32,630 the platform it's really for advertisers. We take a hierarchy of the platform where 156 00:14:32,630 --> 00:14:38,510 the corporation advertisers and then users kind of at the fringes. 157 00:14:38,510 --> 00:14:41,899 J: So let's get into the nitty gritty a little bit about what content moderation 158 00:14:41,899 --> 00:14:46,399 on these platforms actually looks like. So I've put up two headlines from Adrian Chan 159 00:14:46,399 --> 00:14:50,149 a journalist who wrote these for Gawker and wired respectively. They're both a 160 00:14:50,149 --> 00:14:54,910 couple of years old. But what he did was he looked into he investigated who was 161 00:14:54,910 --> 00:14:58,899 moderating the content on these platforms and what he found and accused these 162 00:14:58,899 --> 00:15:03,100 companies out of is outsourcing the content moderation to low paid workers in 163 00:15:03,100 --> 00:15:06,779 developing countries. In this case he found the first article I think Morocco 164 00:15:06,779 --> 00:15:09,970 was the country and I'm gonna show a slide from that a bit of what those content 165 00:15:09,970 --> 00:15:14,050 moderators worked with. And the second article talked a lot about the use of 166 00:15:14,050 --> 00:15:17,110 workers in the Philippines for this purpose. We know that these workers are 167 00:15:17,110 --> 00:15:21,529 probably low paid. We know that they're given very very minimal amount of a 168 00:15:21,529 --> 00:15:25,200 minimal timeframe to look at the content that they're being presented. So here's 169 00:15:25,200 --> 00:15:31,199 how it basically works across platforms with small differences. I post something 170 00:15:31,199 --> 00:15:34,580 and I'll show you some great examples of things they posted later. I post something 171 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:39,070 and if I post it to my friends only, my friends can then report it to the company. 172 00:15:39,070 --> 00:15:43,430 If I post it publicly anybody who can see it or who's a user of the product can 173 00:15:43,430 --> 00:15:47,800 report it to the company. Once a piece of content is reported a content moderator 174 00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:51,420 then looks at it and within that very small time frame we're talking half a 175 00:15:51,420 --> 00:15:56,160 second to two seconds probably based on the investigative research that's been 176 00:15:56,160 --> 00:16:00,130 done by a number of people they have to decide if this content fits the terms of 177 00:16:00,130 --> 00:16:03,990 service or not. Now most of these companies have a legalistic terms of 178 00:16:03,990 --> 00:16:07,800 service as well as a set of community guidelines or community standards which 179 00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:12,740 are clear to the user but they're still often very vague. And so I wanna get into 180 00:16:12,740 --> 00:16:18,270 a couple of examples that show that. This is just this slide is the one of the 181 00:16:18,270 --> 00:16:21,290 examples that I gave. You can't see it very well, so I won't leave it up for too 182 00:16:21,290 --> 00:16:25,800 long. But that was what content moderators at this outsource company oDesk were 183 00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:33,880 allegedly using to moderate content on Facebook. This next photo contains nudity. 184 00:16:33,880 --> 00:16:40,740 So I think everyone probably knows who this is and has seen this photo. Yes? No? 185 00:16:40,740 --> 00:16:46,389 OK. This is Kim Kardashian and this photo allegedly broke the Internet. It was a 186 00:16:46,389 --> 00:16:50,779 photo taken for paper magazine. It was posted widely on the web and it was seen 187 00:16:50,779 --> 00:16:55,459 by many many people. Now this photograph definitely violates Facebook's terms of 188 00:16:55,459 --> 00:17:00,380 service. Buuut Kim Kardashian's really famous and makes a lot of money. So in 189 00:17:00,380 --> 00:17:06,779 most instances as far as I can tell this photo was totally fine on Facebook. Now 190 00:17:06,779 --> 00:17:11,169 let's talk about those rules a little bit. Facebook says that they restrict nudity 191 00:17:11,169 --> 00:17:15,749 unless it is art. So they do make an exception for art which may be why they 192 00:17:15,749 --> 00:17:21,169 allowed that image of Kim Kardashian's behind to stay up. Art is defined by the 193 00:17:21,169 --> 00:17:26,128 individual. And yet at the same time that you know they make clear that that's let's 194 00:17:26,128 --> 00:17:30,420 say a photograph of Michelangelo's David or a photograph of another piece of art in 195 00:17:30,420 --> 00:17:34,210 a museum would be perfectly acceptable whereas you know you're sort of average 196 00:17:34,210 --> 00:17:39,090 nudity maybe probably is not going to be allowed to remain on the platform. They 197 00:17:39,090 --> 00:17:42,970 also note that they restrict the display of nudity to ensure that their global.. 198 00:17:42,970 --> 00:17:46,379 because their global community may be sensitive to this type of content 199 00:17:46,379 --> 00:17:50,120 particularly because of their cultural background or age. So this is Facebook in 200 00:17:50,120 --> 00:17:54,909 their community standards telling you explicitly that they are toning down free 201 00:17:54,909 --> 00:18:01,789 speech to make everyone happy. This is another photograph. Germans are 202 00:18:01,789 --> 00:18:07,480 particularly I'm interested. Is everyone familiar with the show the Golden Girls? 203 00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:10,929 OK. Quite a few. So you might recognize her she was Dorothea on the Golden Girls 204 00:18:10,929 --> 00:18:15,090 this is the actress Bea Arthur and this is from a painting from 1991 by John Curran 205 00:18:15,090 --> 00:18:19,289 of her. It's unclear whether or not she sat for the painting. It's a wonderful 206 00:18:19,289 --> 00:18:23,590 image, it's beautiful it's very beautiful portrait of her. But I posted it on 207 00:18:23,590 --> 00:18:28,180 Facebook several times in a week. I encouraged my friends to report it. And in 208 00:18:28,180 --> 00:18:36,010 fact Facebook found this to not be art. Sorry. Another image this is by an artist 209 00:18:36,010 --> 00:18:40,730 a Canadian artist called Rupi Kaur. She posted a series of images in which she was 210 00:18:40,730 --> 00:18:45,509 menstruating, she was trying to essentially describe the normal the 211 00:18:45,509 --> 00:18:49,580 normality of this. The fact that this is something that all women go through. Most 212 00:18:49,580 --> 00:18:56,909 women go through. And as a result Instagram denied. Unclear on the reasons, 213 00:18:56,909 --> 00:19:01,100 they told her that had violated the terms of service but weren't exactly clear as to 214 00:19:01,100 --> 00:19:06,039 why. And finally this is another one. This is by an artist friend of mine, I'm afraid 215 00:19:06,039 --> 00:19:09,951 that I have completely blanked on who did this particular piece, but what it was is: 216 00:19:09,951 --> 00:19:16,370 They took famous works of nude art and had sex workers pose in the same poses as the 217 00:19:16,370 --> 00:19:19,980 pieces of art. I thought it was a really cool project but Google Plus did not find 218 00:19:19,980 --> 00:19:23,919 that to be a really cool project. And because of their guidelines on nudity they 219 00:19:23,919 --> 00:19:30,909 banned it. This is a cat. Just want to make sure you're awake. It was totally 220 00:19:30,909 --> 00:19:37,629 allowed. So in addition to the problems of content moderation I'm gonna go ahead and 221 00:19:37,629 --> 00:19:41,290 say that we also have a major diversity problem at these companies. These 222 00:19:41,290 --> 00:19:45,509 statistics are facts these are from all of these companies themselves. They put out 223 00:19:45,509 --> 00:19:51,109 diversity reports recently or as I like to call them diversity reports and they show 224 00:19:51,109 --> 00:19:54,250 that. So the statistics are a little bit different because they only capture data 225 00:19:54,250 --> 00:19:59,249 on ethnicity or nationality in their US offices just because of how those 226 00:19:59,249 --> 00:20:02,710 standards are sort of odd all over the world. So the first stats referred to 227 00:20:02,710 --> 00:20:06,690 their global staff. The second ones in each line refer to their U.S. staff but as 228 00:20:06,690 --> 00:20:10,749 you can see these companies are largely made of white men which is probably not 229 00:20:10,749 --> 00:20:16,080 surprising but it is a problem. Now why is that a problem? Particularly when you're 230 00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:20,440 talking about policy teams the people who build policies and regulations have an 231 00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:24,499 inherent bias. We all have an inherent bias. But what we've seen in this is 232 00:20:24,499 --> 00:20:30,460 really a bias of sort of the American style of prudeness. Nudity is not allowed 233 00:20:30,460 --> 00:20:34,669 but violence extreme violence as long as it's fictional is totally OK. And that's 234 00:20:34,669 --> 00:20:39,221 generally how these platforms operate. And so I think that when we ensure that there 235 00:20:39,221 --> 00:20:44,779 is diversity in the teams creating both our tools our technology and our policies, 236 00:20:44,779 --> 00:20:49,200 then we can ensure that diverse world views are brought into those that creation 237 00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:56,479 process and that the policies are therefore more just. So what can we do 238 00:20:56,479 --> 00:21:00,840 about this problem? As consumers as technologists as activists as whomever you 239 00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:04,940 might identify as. In the first one I think a lot of the technologists are gonna 240 00:21:04,940 --> 00:21:08,779 agree with: Develop decentralized networks. We need to work toward that 241 00:21:08,779 --> 00:21:12,409 ideal because these companies are not getting any smaller. We're not gonna 242 00:21:12,409 --> 00:21:16,279 necessarily go out and say that they're too big to fail but they are massive and 243 00:21:16,279 --> 00:21:20,479 as Matthew noted earlier they're buying up properties all over the place and making 244 00:21:20,479 --> 00:21:25,399 sure that they do have control over our speech. The second thing is to push for 245 00:21:25,399 --> 00:21:29,830 greater transparency around terms of service takedowns. Now I'm not a huge fan 246 00:21:29,830 --> 00:21:33,210 of transparency for the sake of transparency. I think that these, you 247 00:21:33,210 --> 00:21:36,509 know, these companies have been putting out transparency reports for a long time 248 00:21:36,509 --> 00:21:42,379 that show what countries ask them to take down content or hand over user data. But 249 00:21:42,379 --> 00:21:48,330 we've seen those transparency reports to be incredibly flawed already. And so in 250 00:21:48,330 --> 00:21:51,529 pushing for greater transparency around terms of service take downs that's only a 251 00:21:51,529 --> 00:21:55,809 first step. The third thing is, we need to demand that these companies adhere to 252 00:21:55,809 --> 00:21:59,260 global speech standards. We already have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 253 00:21:59,260 --> 00:22:03,950 I don't understand why we need companies to develop their own bespoke rules. And so 254 00:22:03,950 --> 00:22:10,509 by.. *applause* 255 00:22:10,509 --> 00:22:13,679 And so by demanding that companies adhere to global speech standards we can ensure 256 00:22:13,679 --> 00:22:17,519 that these are places of free expression because it is unrealistic to just tell 257 00:22:17,519 --> 00:22:21,029 people to get off Facebook. I can't tell you how many times in the tech community 258 00:22:21,029 --> 00:22:26,230 over the years I've heard people say well if you don't like it just leave. That's 259 00:22:26,230 --> 00:22:29,519 not a realistic option for many people around the world and I think we all know 260 00:22:29,519 --> 00:22:32,229 that deep down. *applause* 261 00:22:32,229 --> 00:22:38,690 Thank you. And so the other thing I would say though is that public pressure works. 262 00:22:38,690 --> 00:22:42,940 We saw last year with Facebook's real name policy there are a number of drag 263 00:22:42,940 --> 00:22:46,899 performers in the San Francisco Bay Area who were kicked off the platform because 264 00:22:46,899 --> 00:22:50,090 they were using their performance - their drag names - which is a completely 265 00:22:50,090 --> 00:22:54,739 legitimate thing to do just as folks have hacker names or other pseudonyms. But 266 00:22:54,739 --> 00:22:58,849 those folks pushed back. They formed a coalition and they got Facebook to change 267 00:22:58,849 --> 00:23:04,239 a little bit. It's not completely there yet but they're making progress and I'm 268 00:23:04,239 --> 00:23:09,119 hoping that this goes well. And then the last thing is and this is totally a pitch 269 00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:13,249 thrown right out there: Support projects like ours I'm gonna throw to Matthew to 270 00:23:13,249 --> 00:23:16,970 talk about onlinecensorship.org and another project done by the excellent 271 00:23:16,970 --> 00:23:21,289 Rebecca MacKinnon called ranking digital rights. 272 00:23:21,289 --> 00:23:25,320 M: So just a little bit of thinking outside the box onlinecensorship.org is a 273 00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:31,630 platform that's recently launched. Users can go onto the platform and submit a 274 00:23:31,630 --> 00:23:36,590 small questionnaire if their content has been taken down by the platforms. Why we 275 00:23:36,590 --> 00:23:39,460 think this is exciting is because right now as we mentioned that transparency 276 00:23:39,460 --> 00:23:45,169 reports are fundamentally flawed. We are looking to crowdsource information about 277 00:23:45,169 --> 00:23:49,090 the ways in which the social media companies, six social media companies, are 278 00:23:49,090 --> 00:23:53,940 moderating and taking down content because we can't know exactly what kind of 279 00:23:53,940 --> 00:23:57,159 accountability and transparency in real time. We're hoping to be able to find 280 00:23:57,159 --> 00:24:03,999 trends both across the kind of conduct has been taking down, geographic trends, news 281 00:24:03,999 --> 00:24:08,350 related trends within sort of self-reported content takedown. But it's 282 00:24:08,350 --> 00:24:12,710 platforms like these that I think that hopefully will begin to spring up in 283 00:24:12,710 --> 00:24:18,370 response for the community to be able to put tools in place that people can be a 284 00:24:18,370 --> 00:24:21,539 part of the poor porting and Transparency Initiative. 285 00:24:21,539 --> 00:24:24,269 J: We launched about a month ago and were hoping to put out our first set of reports 286 00:24:24,269 --> 00:24:29,059 around March. And finally I just want to close with one more quote before we slip 287 00:24:29,059 --> 00:24:33,740 into Q&A and that is just to save it. It's reasonable that we press Facebook on these 288 00:24:33,740 --> 00:24:37,409 questions of public responsibility, while also acknowledging that Facebook cannot be 289 00:24:37,409 --> 00:24:41,159 all things to all people. We can demand that their design decisions and user 290 00:24:41,159 --> 00:24:45,950 policies standard for review explicit thoughtful and open to public 291 00:24:45,950 --> 00:24:50,200 deliberation. But - and this is the most important part in my view - the choices that 292 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:54,549 Facebook makes in their design and in their policies or value judgments. This is 293 00:24:54,549 --> 00:24:57,929 political and I know you've heard that in a lot of talk. So have I. But I think we 294 00:24:57,929 --> 00:25:01,700 can't, we cannot forget that this is all political and we have to address it as 295 00:25:01,700 --> 00:25:06,460 such. And for someone if that means you know quitting the platform thats fine too. 296 00:25:06,460 --> 00:25:09,139 But I think that we should still understand that our friends our relatives 297 00:25:09,139 --> 00:25:13,349 our families are using these platforms and that we do owe it to everybody to make 298 00:25:13,349 --> 00:25:17,969 them a better place for free expression and privacy. Thank you. 299 00:25:17,969 --> 00:25:23,780 *applause* 300 00:25:23,780 --> 00:25:28,629 Herald: Thank you so much. So please now we have a section of Q&A for anyone who 301 00:25:28,629 --> 00:25:36,110 has a question please use one of the mikes on the site's. And I think we have a 302 00:25:36,110 --> 00:25:44,259 question from one of our viewers? No. OK. Please proceed numer one. 303 00:25:44,259 --> 00:25:48,859 Mike 1: You just addressed that I am sort of especially after listening to your talk 304 00:25:48,859 --> 00:25:55,499 I'm sort of on the verge of quitting Facebook or starting to I don't know. 305 00:25:55,499 --> 00:26:00,200 *applause* Yeah, I mean and I agree it's a hard 306 00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:07,200 decision. I've been on Facebook for I think six years now and it is a dispute 307 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:12,729 for me myself. So, I'm in this very strange position. And now I have to kind 308 00:26:12,729 --> 00:26:18,389 of decide what to do. Are there any.. is there any help for me out there to tell me 309 00:26:18,389 --> 00:26:26,269 what would be.. I don't know what.. that takes my state and helps me in deciding.. 310 00:26:26,269 --> 00:26:28,950 I don't know. It's strange. 311 00:26:28,950 --> 00:26:33,639 J: That's such a hard question. I mean I'm.. I'll put on my privacy hat for just 312 00:26:33,639 --> 00:26:38,809 a second and say what I would say to people when they're making that 313 00:26:38,809 --> 00:26:41,389 consideration from a privacy view point because they do think that the 314 00:26:41,389 --> 00:26:44,849 implications of privacy on these platforms is often much more severe than those of 315 00:26:44,849 --> 00:26:49,390 speech. But this is what I do. So in that case you know I think it's really about 316 00:26:49,390 --> 00:26:54,249 understanding your threat model of understanding what sort of threat you're 317 00:26:54,249 --> 00:26:57,799 under when it comes to you know the data collection that these companies are 318 00:26:57,799 --> 00:27:01,850 undertaking as well as the censorship of course. But I think it really is a 319 00:27:01,850 --> 00:27:04,989 personal decision and I I'm sure that there are - you know - there are great 320 00:27:04,989 --> 00:27:09,460 resources out there around digital security and around thinking through those 321 00:27:09,460 --> 00:27:12,859 thread model processes and perhaps that could be of help to you for that. If you 322 00:27:12,859 --> 00:27:17,210 want to add? M: No I mean I think it's, it's one of 323 00:27:17,210 --> 00:27:21,059 these big toss ups like this is a system in which that many people are connected 324 00:27:21,059 --> 00:27:26,369 through even sometimes e-mail addresses rollover and Facebook. And so I think it's 325 00:27:26,369 --> 00:27:30,059 the opportunity cost by leaving a platform. What do you have to lose, what 326 00:27:30,059 --> 00:27:34,619 do you have to gain. But it's also important remember that well the snapshot 327 00:27:34,619 --> 00:27:40,350 we see of Facebook now it's not gonna get any it's probably not gonna get better. 328 00:27:40,350 --> 00:27:44,440 It's probably gonna be more invasive and in coming into different parts of our 329 00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:49,710 lives so I think from the security and privacy aspect it's really just up to the 330 00:27:49,710 --> 00:27:54,019 individual. Mike 1: Short follow up - if I am allowed 331 00:27:54,019 --> 00:28:03,369 to - I don't see the.. the main point for me is not my personal implications so I am 332 00:28:03,369 --> 00:28:08,929 quite aware that Facebook is a bad thing and I can leave it, but I'm sort of 333 00:28:08,929 --> 00:28:13,649 thinking about it's way past the point where we can decide on our own and decide: 334 00:28:13,649 --> 00:28:17,520 OK, is it good for me or is it good for my friend or is it good for my mom or for my 335 00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:23,629 dad or whatever? We have to think about: Is Facebook as such for society is a good 336 00:28:23,629 --> 00:28:28,409 thing - as you are addressing. So I think we have to drive this decision making from 337 00:28:28,409 --> 00:28:34,529 one person to a lot, lot, lot of persons. J: I agree and I'll note. What we're 338 00:28:34,529 --> 00:28:36,809 talking about.. *applause* 339 00:28:36,809 --> 00:28:41,399 - I agree. What we're talking about in the project that we work on together is a 340 00:28:41,399 --> 00:28:45,049 small piece of the broader issue and I agree that this needs to be tackled from 341 00:28:45,049 --> 00:28:49,179 many angles. Herald: Ok, we have a question from one of 342 00:28:49,179 --> 00:28:51,999 our viewers on the Internet, please. Signal Angel: Yeah, one of the questions 343 00:28:51,999 --> 00:28:55,500 from the internet is: Aren't the moderators the real problem who bann 344 00:28:55,500 --> 00:29:02,729 everything which they don't really like rather than the providers of the service? 345 00:29:02,729 --> 00:29:05,789 Herald: Can you please repeat that? Signal Angel: The question was if the 346 00:29:05,789 --> 00:29:10,799 moderators sometimes volunteers aren't the problem because they bann everything that 347 00:29:10,799 --> 00:29:15,169 they don't like rather than the providers of a certain service? 348 00:29:15,169 --> 00:29:19,899 J: Ahm, no I mean I would say that the content moderators.. we don't know who 349 00:29:19,899 --> 00:29:23,190 they are, so that's part of the issue, as we don't know and I've - you know - I've 350 00:29:23,190 --> 00:29:27,149 heard many allegations over the years when certain content's been taken down in a 351 00:29:27,149 --> 00:29:30,799 certain local or cultural context particularly in the Arab world. I've heard 352 00:29:30,799 --> 00:29:34,629 the accusation that like oh those content moderators are pro Sisi the dictator in 353 00:29:34,629 --> 00:29:39,249 Egypt or whatever. I'm not sure how much merit that holds because like I said we 354 00:29:39,249 --> 00:29:44,869 don't know who they are. But I would say is that they're not.. it doesn't feel like 355 00:29:44,869 --> 00:29:48,529 they're given the resources to do their jobs well, so even if they were the best 356 00:29:48,529 --> 00:29:53,080 most neutral people on earth they're given very little time probably very little 357 00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:58,509 money and not a whole lot of resources to work with in making those determinations. 358 00:29:58,509 --> 00:30:01,419 Herald: Thank you. We take a question from Mike 3 please. 359 00:30:01,419 --> 00:30:06,229 Mike 3: Test, test. OK. First off, thank you so much for the talk. And I just have 360 00:30:06,229 --> 00:30:12,039 a basic question. So it seems logical that Facebook is trying to put out this mantra 361 00:30:12,039 --> 00:30:16,749 of protect the children. I can kind of get behind that. And it also seems based on 362 00:30:16,749 --> 00:30:20,530 the fact that they have the "real names policy" that they would also expect you to 363 00:30:20,530 --> 00:30:25,560 put in a real legal age. So if they're trying to censor things like nudity: Why 364 00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:30,719 couldn't they simply use things like age as criteria to protect children from 365 00:30:30,719 --> 00:30:34,239 nudity. While letting everyone else who is above the legal age make their own 366 00:30:34,239 --> 00:30:38,149 decision? J: You wanna take that? 367 00:30:38,149 --> 00:30:43,769 M: I think it's a few factors one: It's I guess on the technical side what on the 368 00:30:43,769 --> 00:30:48,339 technical side, what constitutes nudity. And in a process way if it does get 369 00:30:48,339 --> 00:30:53,100 flagged as when something is flagged do you have a channel or two boxes to say 370 00:30:53,100 --> 00:30:57,589 what sort of content I could use a system in which that content flagged as nudity 371 00:30:57,589 --> 00:31:02,499 gets referred to a special nudity moderator and then the moderator says: 372 00:31:02,499 --> 00:31:10,019 "Yes is nudity" then filter all less than - you know - legal age or whatever age. 373 00:31:10,019 --> 00:31:14,809 But I think it's part of a broader more systematic approach by Facebook. It's the 374 00:31:14,809 --> 00:31:22,320 broad strokes. It's really kind of dictating this digital baseline this 375 00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:26,769 digital morality baseline and we're saying: "No". Anybody in the world cannot 376 00:31:26,769 --> 00:31:30,519 see this. These are our hard lines and it doesn't matter what age you are where you 377 00:31:30,519 --> 00:31:34,249 reside. This is the box in which we are placing you in and content that falls 378 00:31:34,249 --> 00:31:38,559 outside of this box for anybody, regardless of age or origin, that these 379 00:31:38,559 --> 00:31:43,459 this is what we say you can see and anything that falls out that you risk 380 00:31:43,459 --> 00:31:47,549 having your account suspended. So I think it's a mechanism of control. 381 00:31:47,549 --> 00:31:50,729 Herald: Thank you so much. I think unfortunately we're run out of time for 382 00:31:50,729 --> 00:31:53,880 questions. I would like to apologize for everyone who's standing maybe you have 383 00:31:53,880 --> 00:32:01,259 time to discuss that afterwards. Thank you everyone and thank you. 384 00:32:01,259 --> 00:32:08,279 *applause* 385 00:32:08,279 --> 00:32:19,281 *postrol music*