Electronic Frontier Foundation is advising (in a
story by Jeremy Malcolm and Maira Sutton) everyone that the United States is
insisting on a “no certification” policy as part of the trans-Pacific
partnership obligations, giving the US the right to “vet” another country’s
rules before its own obligations are in force, story here. The is a “No Certification” website. There is a concern that big legacy business
interests could wind up forcing terms that heavily punish ISP’s for not taking
down alleged piracy.
Hayley Tsukayama has a detailed story on the problem
of hate speech in social media, and the difficulties that companies have in
drawing the line. The article was partly motivated by run of offensive tweets sent to Zelda Williams about the death of
her father (actor Robin Williams). The
link for the story is here. Again, legally companies are protected from
liability for offensive user-generated content by Section 230. CBS also as a detailed story on the Williams family issue with social media, here.
Many people now only allow approved followers to see their "private life" accounts, whereas celebrities and professionals generally allow their accounts to be open to all (except known obvious abusers). Double lives are ever more difficult.
There is an app in beta testing called “Block
Together”, by Jacob Andrews-Hoffman (formerly with EFF) which would allow users
to block new Twitter users, or users with fewer than a given number of followers,
or allow sharing of block lists, link here. It’s
unclear what the minimum number of followers should be, or why that count is
important, because follower counts tend to get inflated by spammers.
Update: later Friday
The New York Times, in an article by Farhad Manjoo, explores the topic of deliberate incivility by "trolls", as the recent incident involving Robin Williams's death shows. Trolls might try to drive people, especially celebrities, off the web for sport.
Update: later Friday
The New York Times, in an article by Farhad Manjoo, explores the topic of deliberate incivility by "trolls", as the recent incident involving Robin Williams's death shows. Trolls might try to drive people, especially celebrities, off the web for sport.
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