Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Reviewing the 2006 FEC rules for bloggers
I’ve discussed the concerns in the past over personal
blogging about political candidates or even issues and some speculative
concerns before on whether that could run afoul of campaign finance reform
rules and laws.
I did find a detailed page on the issue by Electronic
Frontier Foundation recently. I don’t know
why I didn’t find it before. Back on
July 27, 2007, I had written a major blog post on how this issue accidentally,
by coincidence, filtered into a major incident when I was working as a
substitute teacher in northern Virginia. Here is the link.
The basic question: “Is it true that FEC rules from
2006 limit how I can blog about politics”.
The short answer is a “No, but …”
(Parents love this.) There is a
little bit of equivocation if the blogging leads to donations, maybe, or “campaign
blogs”. But in 2004 and 2005 there had
been some scare talk on this, and the FEC didn’t “get around” to narrowing its
administrative law implementation of court rulings about the 2002 law until it
learned there was a lot of confusion, in early 2006. My incident had already happened (in late
2005).
There is a general impression that Citizen’s United
and then McCuthceon weighed in on this (2010 and 2014), maybe with respect to
non-connected PAC’s. But most of the law
was set up in 2006.
The video above mentions speculative concerns about blogs
that act as “newspapers”. Apparently DailyKos had raised these issues.
It is true that, in today’s polarized political
climate, the political Left is more combative in its determination to defend
the interests of oppressed “groups” than are conservatives (except for a small fringe
on the alt-right) and views “gratuitous” speech about “personal responsibility”
by more fortunate individuals as kind of bullying of their members. This pressure is influencing tech companies,
especially overseas, beyond the concepts of US law. Patronage sites have drawn the most
controversy recent, but that could spread to all sites where material is “free”.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
I set up a "Minds" account and Facebook won't link to it!; also did Steemit
I have set up an account on Minds. The url is this.
I have placed one blog post, simply my April 1, 2018
video “A Dangerous Thought Experiment”, 4 minutes. I uploaded a copy of the video to Minds. (It was on my harddrive, but it was no longer
in Google Drive, don’t know why.)
I’ll refresh everyone’s memory on what is in this Thought
Experiment by re-embedding this video now.
I provided the link to the new account in a tweet, no
problems.
But when I tried to link it from a Facebook post,
whether with my own subaccount or not, Facebook threw up (figuratively) a
captcha and claimed that site is insecure and violates community standards.
The only explanation I get from friends is that Minds
is “competition”.
True, it dabbles in cryptocurrency and tokens (to
avoid payment processors and Patreon-like problems, perhaps). I haven’t yet set
up my “Ethereum wallet” or fully learned how to use the site. I’m not sure how the editor looks; it doesn’t
seem to be a Gutenberg block editor, which is what I would have expected (Medium’s does seem to be that.)
I’ll take a look at Steemit soon.
I also want to mention Alexandria Casio-Ortez's letter to some tech companies today for supporting LibertyCon2019 with it alleged propogation of climate change denial -- which I did not see when I attended it. Here is Bloomberg's article. Note that politicians seem to want to encourage tech companies to muzzle speakers who keep certain ideas in circulation, supposedly bad for the future common good, or particularly that would legitimatize ideas that could put more political pressure in the future on some intersectional minorities. My own position is that climate change is real and needs a systematic strategy.
And finally, note also criticism of an Obama era rule that took away the franchise business's equivalent to "Section 230", story in Hotair.
Update: Jan. 30
I also set up Steemit. It did go through the free verification process and the account was set up immediately (it did not take a week). There is just a shell blog there now.
I also want to mention Alexandria Casio-Ortez's letter to some tech companies today for supporting LibertyCon2019 with it alleged propogation of climate change denial -- which I did not see when I attended it. Here is Bloomberg's article. Note that politicians seem to want to encourage tech companies to muzzle speakers who keep certain ideas in circulation, supposedly bad for the future common good, or particularly that would legitimatize ideas that could put more political pressure in the future on some intersectional minorities. My own position is that climate change is real and needs a systematic strategy.
And finally, note also criticism of an Obama era rule that took away the franchise business's equivalent to "Section 230", story in Hotair.
Update: Jan. 30
I also set up Steemit. It did go through the free verification process and the account was set up immediately (it did not take a week). There is just a shell blog there now.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Click-bait goes both ways post-Covington; Business model problems for mid-sized media companies and indie journalists grow even more convoluted; what about minimum volumes?
I wanted to continue yesterday’s discussion about the
tension between independent journalism and media companies, especially the
upstarts of the past few years.
NBC has reported, in a piece by Ben Collins, that some
persons on 4chan have been flooding laid-off journalists with threats in an ironic twist in the whole CovningtonGate narrative (we even had some
disagreements about this at church brunch today – I was told there was even
more to follow, and I guess they were talking about the NBC story).
Tim Pool comments about the “learn to code” (or maybe
wash dishes) meme and tweets (become a “prole”)
Pool has pointed out the business model flaws in the
venture capital that fed the mid-tier media companies. The newer companies could not make enough
money generating news so they tended to generate click bait. Journalism cannot grow with the economy like
“real products”.
Pool was critical of Collin’s for a conflict of interest
in his article (given his tweetstorm). I’ll let Pool explain this and not try
to restate it.
As I’ve indicated on some posts, I’ve wondered about
the idea of “free content” and how it plays into the problems today of misuse
of the opportunities for user generated content.
I’ve been told in private sessions that there could be
suspicion of sites or blogs with lower visitor counts, as possibly pointing to
future security risks. That’s one reason
why there has always been so much hype over using search engine optimization
products and to “play ball” with commercial interests. Hosts could look at analytics (visitors and bounce rates) for problems like this, although I haven't been told that they actually do. Click-bait could certainly complicate any such intentions now.
Some services have minimum volume requirements for
some features. (Adsense reserves the right to have one but doesn’t ever seem to
enforce one.) YouTube will not allow ads
without minimum number of visitors, and
Patreon and similar services have minimum subscriber counts. Generally services have not so far had minimum
requirements just to stay online, although it’s imaginable that in a world with
net neutrality gone, this could change.
In the POD book industry so far, Amazon and the POD companies themselves
don’t seem to enforce minimums, but it sounds reasonable to expect that this
could change.
One of the reasons for this would be ideological –
sort of the “skin in the game” idea (Taleb) – action, rather than talk, is
needed to solve real policy problems and inequality, and speakers need to fess
up and go to work and join up with activists – and provide a lot of community
engagement, and support solidarity, to get things done. I don’t know how much traction this idea has yet,
but the idea seems to be growing on the street.
Businesses have not generally followed “self-righteous”
social ideologies in the past, but in the past couple of years, as we have seen
with payment processors since Trump go into office (and particularly since
Charlottesville), this seems to have changed. The extreme right (compared even to radical
Islam a couple years ago) really has them scared.
But Pool’s reporting shows that “high volume” that
came from “playing ball” seems to be associated with hastily turning out click-bait
to get ad revenue. So the whole growing
controversy over free content is getting filled with contradictions indeed.
One aspect of opinion commentating remains
troubling: reporting an argument or extreme
policy proposal (such as one I blogged about today regarding the military
draft) to warn readers about it.
Activists, particularly from the Left, complain that this (when coming
from someone with no “skin in the game”) only makes the proposal more credible
and gain more future political traction. But the far right has made videos, for
example, wanting to repeal the 19th Amendment (women’s vote).
Pool has talked about the difference between
commentary and reporting (Ford Fischer’s videos of demonstrations are raw
reporting of provable facts) – but Pool often goes through news stories to
point out the logical flaws in activists’ thinking. I do it to “warn” people to
stay alert and not remain in their partisan bubbles, but to think for
themselves.
Conde Nast is introducing an innovation in the paywall
area (mixing it with ad surveys) that might provide more stability for some
media companies.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
For some of us, taking breaks from social media would finish our careers; here's why
On p. A11 of the weekend Wall Street Journal, Kate
Bachekder Odell lectures us, “It’s not too late to quit social media.” She
talks about a Georgetown University professor Cal Newport who has never had a
Facebook or Twitter account but has a method to “break the habit”.
Yesterday, on my TV blog, I presented a video on the
topic by Harvard undergraduate John Fish.
As I said there, the more you can accomplish in the
real world first, the better, especially for young adults (and students). That is, if it’s a legitimate
accomplishment. My own circumstances are
a bit unusual.
There’s been a lot of talk about “slowing down the
media” again, after the mainstream media scandal with the Covington school
teens.
I interpret "quitting social media" as equivalent to quitting Internet use altogether, except maybe for phone conversations. But a lot of my own use is with regular news sites, my own blogs, videos, some email, and business use (travel reservations, payments, etc). I'll even note the idea that when people are wired all the time, they may tend to become satisfied with "fan" connections with mostly younger and charismatic stars they admire than socialize in the real world with the more humdrum people available to them. This can indeed feed the polarization cycle.
But it isn’t feasible for me to take a breather – and that
would be a problem if I ever had a major lengthy hospitalization. I could lose
all I’ve done and never recover it. I
won’t get into the details now, but the basic plan is to make the content pay
its own way, which I described a strategic plan for on my DADT notes blog Oct.19. Then it would be possible for someone else to
support my stuff (or some of it, at least), and for an Executor to handle it
after my passing.
It’s also true that if it were possible to take longer
breathers, I could travel more easily. I
always travel prepared to get online (with hotspots and laptops). That could get more difficult with TSA issues. It could be very difficult in some parts of
the world, but if this were in third party hands, it might be easier to travel
to less democratic places. But my “online
reputation” could make travel in Russia, China, etc. risky.
We’ve heard a lot in recent months about the downside
(for common well being and democracy) of news moving too fast – and getting driven
into echo chambers, and the tendency now, in the current political climate, for
some user-generated content to reinforce tribal loyalty, which was certainly
not the intention of most speakers when the Internet opened up more than 20
years ago. We’ve covered the recent
problems of patronage channels (and the influence of payment processors,
skittish of association particularly now with right wing extremism).
I’ve also noted before (especially on a posting here
April 6, 2018) about the issues associated with free content. In private conversations, I’ve noted the
concern that platforms could start to examine the audience analytics of low-volume
sites for misuse by visitors, and did some detailed discussion here in
October. Following through on this from
a personal perspective can lead down a rabbit hole, and I can’t give a complete
“logical analysis” right now. I don’t have
an easy answer other than to try to make it more self-supporting. I don’t fit into other people’s social worlds
very well, and won’t wear their uniforms and speak for them or let them speak
for me. I think there is a difference between
being expected to being open to service (see issues blog, Jan. 23) and being
expected to promote it (or its beneficiaries) publicly. I can’t get much more into this today.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Twitter, like Facebook, has seen its business model turn into a runaway train
Who is worse on this echo chamber amplification,
Facebook or Twitter?
Farhad Manjoo has an op-ed in the New York Times, “Never
Tweet” He notes how the “carefree coffeehouse of journalism”
has turned into an information warground that has released the worst tribal
instincts of those addicted to group identarianism. Brian Stelter picked up on this on his own CNN column.
In the meantime Insider has banned Twitter at work.
Tim Pool keeps condemning Twitter and threatening to
get off it and stays on it. He also thinks journalists are more important than
op-ed commentators, who are getting laid off in droves, like at Buzzfeed. (Gaywonk – Carlos Maza -- tweeted that everybody in sub-establishment
media is on edge now.)
Pools’s Timcasts often pick apart news stories in
comparison. Is this original journalism
or is it commentary. I think it is the
latter, although there is no question Pool has paid his dues, at Occupy events
and other live happenings and direct interviews. I do worry about the ideological arguments
that can be made about political content offered for free, whether under
patronage or just assets accumulated from other activity.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
"CovingtonGate" shows just how easily inflamed an indignant public can get regardless of facts, adding to pressures to put brakes on the Internet
The American public seems to be like kindling for a
wildfire, from a single account on social media.
So it seems with Twitter’s finally suspended an
account @2020fight that supposedly offered a selectively edited 4 minute video
of the encounter between some Covington Catholic School students and American
Tribal Leader Nathan Phillipps at an American Indigenous Peoples Rally. Here is Danie O’Sullivan’s story. It seems likely this was a foreign bot.
I won’t belabor the consequences for the school in
Covington KY or for the teenagers. I
note in looking at the many videos that Nathan Phillipps was indeed scared of
the kids at first as he started playing music.
I do believe that Nick Sandman tried to quiet the other boys and his
facial expression was simply a matter of remaining still and calm to defuse a
tense situation until the bus came and the kids left. The many detailed news
accounts show how easily the facts could be manipulated for those who wanted to
find racism and white privilege (and Trumpism) in the boys’ conduct.
Still, the indignation of those determined to attack white privilege wherever they can keeps an incident like this alive and likely to add to the likelihood of incidents, as Reason argues in a followup article. It looks like there will be libel lawsuits (James Barrett, Dailywire).
Frank Bruni has an op-ed about the dangers of the way
the Internet can feed mob mentality, and frankly it is getting to the point
that it could become perceived as a national security issue, as I noted
Saturday with other asymmetric issues.
Already, as I noted on Nov. 21 a movement to “slow down the Internet”,
limited downstream liability protection and user generated content.
That even needs to be viewed in the context that the
continued shutdown has weakened law enforcement and probably increased the risk
of some sort of incident that could justify Trump’s declaration of a national
security emergency. Rachel Maddow got
into that on MSNBC today (Issues blog) and David Hogg even mentioned it this
evening on Twitter.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
EU Article 13 seems to meet strong resistance at the last minute, before it gets "approved"
“BoingBoing” reports that the Trilogue vote on Article
13 (and the rest of the Copyright Directive) has apparently been delayed past
Jan. 21 and might hopefully be delayed considerably, preventing it from getting
implemented anytime soon in the various countries or even at all.
But the details of the story are dark indeed. Axel Voss is painted as the villain behind a
plan by big media companies to be forced to go out of business unless bought out
by media and newspaper companies. It’s
hard to imagine if this could happen to US companies. But, no doubt, they wanted to stop low-cost
media outlets and independent speakers from operating, claiming that independent
and micro journalists undermine the ability of professionals to make a living –
pure protectionism.
The killer seems to be that the largest American tech
companies were figuring out how to comply wit the directive, as Lior Lesig had
explained in some recent superchat videos on YouTube. YouTube’s Content-Id comes reasonably close,
after all. Boing also reports that a lot
of “dark money” was behind the proposal. As an indirect result, even the established legacy media businesses in Europe realize that they could actually be less profitable if it passes, however ironic and shocking this is to them.
There is also a belief, especially in the US, among Leftist
activists, that individualized micro media hurts them, because there is a lot less
solidarity and support for intersectional ideas, and less willingness among the
better off liberals (like cis white gay men) to help fight for POC, trans,
etc. If people have to be organized and
allow bureaucratic PAC’s speak for them, then the interests of the least well-off
are more likely to be included. In the
mean time, more moderate people simply give up in supporting political
campaigns in the manner expected in the past, and politics gets hollowed
out.
This seems to be happening in
Europe, too, with the shocking rise of white nationalism.
Cory Doctorow
has a similar story for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, here.
But Mitch Stolz wrote an article warning that the
music and movie industry wants to weaken DMCA Safe Harbor, for all its flaws,
in the US.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
My "I told you so" tweet, Milo-Dangerous; could "fake news" be deemed a "national security problem" and if so, which media could a rogue president shut down?
This morning, on the day that President Trump would
announce his “compromise” at 4 PM (covered on TV Reviews blog) Trump also issued another
“Enemy of the People” accusation at the media.
This was obviously related to the Buzzfeed story which
is becoming less credible all the time.
Tim Pool attacked it today.
I began to wonder if he was thinking about calling “fake
news” a nationals security emergency and would try to close down independent
media sites.
I wrote this Tweet, and then explained further in this
Tweet thread.
One of the points would be whether companies like “Buzzfeed”
are mainstream or “independent”.
Examination of Trump’s tweets shows he views Buzzfeed as mainstream. But other vloggers like Pool refer to
companies like this as independent.
But the true independent media outlets are like Pool’s
and similar video channels (like “Economic Invincibility”), and my own blog sites. Maybe we should be called “micro media”.
I suppose a tweet like this could give people ideas,
and people may think it was reckless of me to write it. On the other hand, there is a risk that it could
happen anyway, as I have pointed out in previous posts. This is the “I told you so” problem. No one has reacted to it yet, because there is
so much other distracting news.
Here's a hint: I do recall the Sony hack from North Korea in 2014, and could expand on the lesson from it. At the time, Google reaffirmed its commitment to "free speech" but I am wondering now. Both Trump and even Hillary Clinton mentioned the idea of an "Internet kill switch" in December 2015 (see Dec. 8, 2015 post). Even micro media could create an international incident,
even with a single blog or video post. Social media companies worry about algorithms
driving bots and fake news especially in non-democratic companies. The norms of speech that we’re finding lead
to de-platformings have to do with conditions overseas where there is no First
Amendment. Tech companies are migrating toward
global standards for acceptable speech (although they could try to wall off the
worst countries, like China right now, if China ever decided to let them in with special censorship
requirements). But even an individual
post (let alone algorithmic magnification) could pose an asymmetric risk (a
problem Taleb talks about in “Skin in the Game”).
This is a most unsettling puzzlement.
Friday, January 18, 2019
A new News Check rating app coming? Also a "freepress" site calls out people it wants all platforms to ban
There is a new product under development called the “NewsCheckTrust Index” It appears that this will become an app
which can score websites you visit for the quality of news displayed on it. This would expand on earlier ideas of website safety ratings (like "web of trust"). In an environment without guaranteed network neutrality, it sounds feasible that some day telecoms could refuse connection to sites with insufficient ratings. That's a reason to go to https, for starters.
This would probably be available at first only for
larger news groups and only later for smaller ones.
But it could provide both a hurdle and a boost to
independent media, depending on you how you look at it.
The side encourages visitors today to “enlist” for
updates and further information.
On Jan. 5 here, I discussed a site called “Change the
Terms”, which urges for international norms on terms of service (regardless of
the US First Amendment ) especially regarding hate speech. Although the Terms in the document sound
largely reasonable, the whole idea of hate speech is very subjective and seems
to be defined by the target which can be a very combative identarian group. Any gratuitous speech about the group by non-members
might be construed as “hate speech”, comparable to the Jyllends-Posten Cartoon
Controversy, for example.
Yet a group called “Freepress” (an ironic title), as
mentioned by Tim Pool in a post with extremely intersectional arguments (like POC
don’t have free speech) and is particularly targeting Alex Jones. (No, David Hogg is not an extraterrestrial,
although it wouldn’t matter to me if he was.)
I can imagine reasons that, with arguments extreme enough, I could be
banned, for my past “collusion” with the establishment back in the days of the
military draft. Even “manifest observable behavior” is a fluid concept.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
News2Share and Ford Fischer hold session on independent media at LibertyCon in Washington DC
Today I did get a preview of LibertyCon2019 by
attending a one-hour presentation by Ford Fischer and News2Share about the
importance of independent media, in a meeting room at the Marriott Marquis Hotel,
where the conference is to be held Friday and Saturday (Jan. 18 and 19). There
is an awards dinner (extra cost) tonight which I did not attend.
Fischer made the case that providing videos of
demonstrations and confrontations in public spaces (particularly between
extremes on the Left and “alt-Right”) provides factual documentation of exactly
what is happening, rather than opinions about the political philosophies of the
parties, who have indeed become combative.
Mainstream media tends to provide much less actual
footage than independent media can provide.
There was discussion of the Facebook Purge 3.0 back in
October, against numerous independent media channels for “political spam”. I was able to explain my own situation in
getting my own Facebook page (with its essay on power grid security) boosted,
and also the issue of Facebook’s repeatedly asking me to publicly raise money
for non-profits. (I must add that you
can supply your own non-profit or even a personal, like a medical, cause – so you
don’t have to use a “Facebook-approved” charity).
We did not have the time to discuss the recent
problems with patronage sites (Patreon) and the influence that payment
processors have on them, or the problems in Europe with the upcoming Articles
11 and 13, or the possible continuing problems with FOSTA (although Ford noted
that YouTube has marked much more content recently as 18+ -- even political combat
as well as sexual material -- which hinders audience and monetization). I have the definite feeling that you have to
consider how all these problems interact.
There was, however, an expression of the notion that
the big tech platforms are under pressure from legacy media to discourage
independent journalism as low-cost competition, that could conceivably lead to
job loss and layoffs at legacy media companies – call it protectionism. This is particularly the case in Europe, as
we can see with what is behind Articles 11 and 13. There is also the idea that when people speak
with their own voice, they “do” less for disadvantaged people and are less
willing to act in solidarity with “oppressed” groups. Independent media gradually pushes western
societies into libertarian to mainstream conservative (not alt-right) policy positions,
and probably does preserve a degree of intellectual elitism, which incurs
resentment.
You could say that we don’t have a culture war between
Left and Right as we used to, but between tribalists and anti-tribalists
(individualists). It is interesting, as Pool has said, that far Leftists have no shame about screaming and demonstrating, whereas conservatives feel that is beneath them. But it's really the anti-tribalists who feel this way.
Update: Jan. 20
There is a new journalism project "Report for America" which CNN's Brian Stelter reported on today. I did join with a monthly contribution. I attempted to create a "qualifying" fundraiser on Facebook and it did not meet their rules. There will be followup on this story. (See Jan. 15 post for background).
Update: Jan. 20
There is a new journalism project "Report for America" which CNN's Brian Stelter reported on today. I did join with a monthly contribution. I attempted to create a "qualifying" fundraiser on Facebook and it did not meet their rules. There will be followup on this story. (See Jan. 15 post for background).
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Independent journalists meet in Houston, propose forming a coalition
Ford Fischer from News2Share and Nicholas Bernabe
discuss the future of independent media and propose an informal Indie Media
Coalition at a gathering last Saturday, January 12, in Houston, TX.
Ford discussed Facebook Purge 3.0 on October 11 and
the problem of the “co-admin status” which Facebook as actually encouraged me
to use on my page to help me be identified (yesterday’s post).
At one point Ford made the observation that indie
media often is viewed as looking “bloggy”.
What would “Blogtyrant” have said about that (before last June)?
Bernabe said “we can’t count on third parties”. He reminds me of how the “United Artists”
movie distributor was founded decades ago.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
More on how Facebook now wants people to "play ball" when offering political speech on either pages or friending accounts
I’ve checked a little more into my situation with my
Facebook Page and the add button issue.
Although not everything is conclusive, it appears that
I would be expected to purchase ads to sell my three books through the page (or
my own associated site, which I have) and payment processor access, not depend
only on Amazon and BN (although in my case Kindle and Nook copies are much
cheaper). That could be followed by allowing a third party, probably in the
book industry, like a local independent bookstore, to have admin privileges on
the page (that helps identify me) and sell other books.
This sounds like the most promising plan. It may not be prudent to depend on Amazon etc
forever. It’s also, despite the recent
controversies with payment processors and patronage video channels (an issue
which appeared suddenly in early December 2018 but for which there had been some
warning signs last August) important to have a decent relationship with payment
processors (and not be considered associated with any hate groups, even
indirectly, which seems to happen all too easily right now).
Once all of this is done, I could add issue-oriented
(non-partisan and related to the books) posts to the page and have them
boosted, as I have been “identified” as in legitimate domestic commerce.
There is also the issue of the Facebook Add Donate
Button intrusions. It’s true that it is
worded as an “offer” for efficiency and absence of costs (although is
disagreement on that). In a friending
page, it will name Friends who have done it.
It also appears on your business page (with no mention of other people).
But it tends to appear after a post that mentions political issues, whether or
not there are links. It does not appear
after mere “check-ins”.
My position is this. First, I have a few non-profits
as beneficiaries on my Trust, but that does not imply I will become an agent to
speak for their political interests or to raise money for them. It is always OK to give a link to the non-profit site or FB page and let the non-profit use only its own button -- which means that the visitor is not prodded by my agency but makes up her own mind on visiting the actual original site.
However, it is
appropriate to add a direct donate button for a non-profit that serves the needs
of actual people (that can be artists, scientists, etc and need [and should] not
be minority or intersectional focuses) where I am committed to spending regular
time serving the needs of their clients. It will be difficult for me to make time
for this in the immediate future, at least until some medical tests are
completed.
However, it appears to be inappropriate for me to make
politically or issue-oriented posts on my Facebook account or page (either one)
without solving these issues first.
Facebook does not want to be a site for “amateur” or “independent “ journalism; it wants people to interact and meet
needs. It actually welcomes some partisan
or community-specific bias because that implies real personal needs might be
met. To ignore this would be “manifest
observable behavior”.
It will take some time for me to address these
problems, but at least I have a handle on them.
Twitter does not present these issues.
Monday, January 14, 2019
EU Copyright Directive appears to have critical action around January 21; EU residents seem to be poorly informed still
Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a post (Jan. 13) from Cory Doctorow,
has sent out a take-action post to resident in Europe, especially in Sweden,
Poland, Luxembourg, and Germany, regarding the progress of the Copyright
Directive, Articles 11 and 13.
Note the article implies that for Article 13, the
provision would require filtering every content uploaded anywhere in the world
if viewable within the EU afterwards. It’s
unclear how Internet companies could segment themselves to avoid this. There has been almost no discussion from tech companies about this, as they are obsesses with all kinds of other issues (fake news, payment processor influence, politicization, FOSTA, weakening of US Section 230). In the US a recent court opinion in New York State weakened the safety of some hyperlinking (like Article 11). Ironically loss of US net neutrality hasn't been very important, relatively speaking.
What’s also noteworthy is the obvious protectionism of
Article 11: essentially, no publisher
has a right to offer content for free, because it undermines employment at
other publishers or newspapers!
I have contacted a few artists / filmmakers / computer
science professors in the EU. One of
them said he has to keep personal activism and his job separate but supports
the “pirate party”. Generally, they weren’t
as aware of what was going on until I contacted them (from the US).
The Verge has an article about Reddit from Sept. 2018.
The next trilogue occurs January 21.
YouTuberLaw has a short video on this dated Nov. 2018. I will look further into his work on this. He notes that YouTube, rather than the content poster, would have to secure the licenses in Europe. Makes no real sense. Below his video there is a link to his livestream which I will review soon.
YouTuberLaw has a short video on this dated Nov. 2018. I will look further into his work on this. He notes that YouTube, rather than the content poster, would have to secure the licenses in Europe. Makes no real sense. Below his video there is a link to his livestream which I will review soon.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Timcast looks at toxic masculinity and femininity; Introducing Niskanen (left-side libertarianism?)
George Gilder used to write that women are sexually superior
back in the 1980s, and that men tend to become parasites unless they marry and
have children.
Feminism was already happening. And these days the far
radical Left has been portraying all masculinity as toxic. The LGBT community struggles with the dichotomy
of fluidity – the desire to be free from gender obligation – and the upward
affiliation for masculinity experienced by most gay men.
Tim Pool gets into the idea of “toxic masculinity” in
his video today, and he even unintentionally ventures toward the Rosenfels
polarities.
Then he gets to “toxic femininity” (and intersectional
feminism) as helicopter parenting.
I also wanted to mention the Niskanen Center, which,
compared to Cato, is more amenable to “better regulation” of some big businesses
to maintain sustainability – prevent 2008, prevent environmental catastrophe,
and the like. The problem with pure
libertarianism is, in part, that the “corporate state” can take over if allowed
monopolies – that’s what is happening to many conservative speakers who are
getting deplatformed by the hidden biases of payment processors.
Brink Lindsey, of the Center, writes “We don’t need tobe so polarized: let’s be pro market and pro government”. It’s adapted from an
essay “The Center Can Hold: Public Policy for an Age of Extremes”.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Wrongful DMCA takedown notices against blog postings giving tech workarounds; Indie journalists wigwam in Houston
Kit Walsh of Electronic Frontier Foundation notes
another subtle misuse of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act when a company
making scooters, Bird, sent a takedown notice to a blog called “Boing Boing”
(it had started in 1988 as a zine) regarding an article posting explaining how to “hack”
a scooter with a motherboard replacement.
EFF explains that the workaround was not illegal under
Section 1201 of the DMCA.
But there’s a deeper issue. Normally takedown notices
apply to claims of actual copyright infringement. But this is about a
journalistic article that offers instructions as to how to do a hack (“jailbreak”)
that is purported to be illegal but turns out not to be.
This can be a problem for bloggers, especially in
tech, or YouTube videos, which offer advice on how to get around various issues
with all kinds of consumer products, especially tech products. We’re back to the issue that independent
journalism keeps challenging the establishment and its ability to make money
the old fashioned way.
Even hosting companies, normally counting on Section
230 protection, could start to get more antsy with their AUP’s, as they have
come under pressure ever since August 2007 over Charlottesville.
A problem like this could be bigger in the EU,
considering its planned tightening of copyright law.
Scooters, of course, have a bigger problem: the
batteries, and the issues of fires, and safe transport.
Also there is a meeting going on in Houston of
independent journalists developing strategies to stop the takedowns and to
organize indie journalists in some way.
Ford Fischer from News2Share speaks now.
This story will develop soon.
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
The Southern Border may not provide much of a genuine national security emergency, but the Internet could do so suddenly at any time, because of long-tail asymmetry
Saturday, I wrote a “book report” post on my Books
blog about presidential national security emergencies, and looked into whether
they could affect the Internet.
The border “crisis” hardly qualifies as a war-time security
threat in the sense that is normally understood – although there is some
evidence that in some areas more actual wall or fence construction is needed.
The Democrats are wrong to be so intransigent on this.
But my concern is that a national security agency
could go way beyond using funds to build the wall.
Andrea Pitzer gives a perspective
in the Washington Post on how these powers have been used in the past, and in
other countries.
Of greatest concern, as noted in the Book blog, is the
Internet. As such, it has little to do with the border crisis itself. But the whole world of user-generated content
that has built so many careers for “content creation” does pose asymmetric
risks of sudden catastrophes, much in the spirit of Nicholas Taleb’s “Skin in
the Game.”
After 9/11, when there was an emergency for a while,
one concern was steganography: the idea that hacker could place instructions
for future attacks to other conspirators as coded information on amateur
websites. My old “hppub” website was
hacked in April 2002, right in the middle of an essay (later from my DADT II
book) where I talk about suitcase nuclear weapons. A similar hack has not happened since.
Just like Charles Moskos’s idea of resuming
conscription (and simultaneously ending his “don’t ask don’t tell”), it got
forgotten. But it could have shut down
my participation online if people had noticed.
(I did report the 2002 hack to the FBI.)
A more relevant example now is the Sony hack by North
Korea, as a result of Kim Jong Un’s insult at a film “The Interview” in
2014. Google itself laughed at the
incident. But a more dangerous idea
could be that even an amateur post insults someone overseas and leads to
reprisal, even possibly back in the US, the idea of “to prove I can” entering. Even
one such incident, out of the blue, would create tremendous controversy. I can imagine the movie plots and screenplay
table readings on this idea right now. This
speculative idea seems to fit Nicholas Taleb’s idea of a “long tail” risk from
his “Skin in the Game”, where a relatively well-off speaker attracts attention
to other people whom the speaker has no stake in, and draws the attention of “enemies”. Still, this idea that one is morally
responsible for attracting risk to others seems to come right out of Mafia
culture.
Were there to be a single terror incident (especially foreign-sourced) anywhere in the US related to this risk, much of the Internet probably would get shut down as part of a successive emergency order, and the familiar world of user generated content might not ever return. The EU seems to be contemplating similar ideas (EFF has mentioned it but I haven't looked at it in detail yet.) So the whole idea of an emergency declaration of any kind now is "playing with matches".
Were there to be a single terror incident (especially foreign-sourced) anywhere in the US related to this risk, much of the Internet probably would get shut down as part of a successive emergency order, and the familiar world of user generated content might not ever return. The EU seems to be contemplating similar ideas (EFF has mentioned it but I haven't looked at it in detail yet.) So the whole idea of an emergency declaration of any kind now is "playing with matches".
Tuesday, January 08, 2019
Financial censorship has been a creeping problem for several years, to throw up on Patreon
Electronic Frontier Foundation has noted that
financial censorship from payment processors is not new. Paypal blocked a
couple of e-book sites for allowing books that went over the line with some
sexually explicit material, including bestiality and underage. Rainey Reitman had noted this back in 2012.
Payment processors are not in a position to judge the
artistic relevance of edgy material. But
social justice warriors may claim that the material encourages rape or male
domination or quasi-fascist personal values. In recent years, payment processors have been caught in a tug of war between tribalists on both extreme Left and Right claiming grievances, especially since Trump's election.
Remember, sometimes payment processors threaten platforms with complete denial of access if they don't remove just one targeted controversial content provider, and this has not been transparent.
Remember, sometimes payment processors threaten platforms with complete denial of access if they don't remove just one targeted controversial content provider, and this has not been transparent.
I have to be careful about this with some materials in
spots in my upcoming novel.
EFF also notes that SOPA would have allowed copyright
claims to disable people’s sources of income with no due process. In retrospect, Jack Conte's idea of "manifest observable behavior" (which would apply ti Trump!) seems to have been a phrase to duck the crossfire hitting his company. And Conte is a musician, an artist himself (look on Wikipedia).
The same is true of Article 13 now proposed for the
EU.
Amazon had been criticized by not banning white
supremacist products, but now is reported to stop selling some rugs with images
of Muhammad on them because the concept is offensive to some Muslims. I would be concerned if banning of some
products, especially books or films, were stopped over complaints from special
groups.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)