What are we talking about, when we talk about transparency? It's time for civil society, researchers, technologists and others to figure out -- before an unprecedented moment of political opportunity passes us by. A new blog post from me. cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/03/s…
By the way, here was my list of questions I wanted content moderation transparency data to answer as of a couple of years ago.
And on over-removal under legal notice and takedown regimes specifically, we have scads of data. See updated list of studies here cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/02/e…
Poland’s case arguing that the “upload filter” provisions of DSM/Copyright Directive Article 17 violate Internet users’ fundamental rights, which has been quietly sitting before the CJEU for months, is a ticking time bomb. 1/
One day the ruling is going to come out and change everything. Or maybe nothing. 2/
This thread is about that case, and how it relates to some other looming political and legal questions about filters. 3/
I respect the Facebook Oversight Board and wish them the best. but “sucked into the private power vortex” is a good description of what’s going on. Do we want to support and reinforce pseudo-governance with pseudo-rights protections designed by Facebook?
US lawmakers may be stuck accepting this kind of private governance (to go with our private prisons and private military contractors etc.) bc the 1st Am prevents Congress from setting the rules Internet users mostly want. Lawmakers’ hands are tied on this side of the Atlantic.
Probably I’m in that camp. If a few years pass and they prove super legit and useful I’d be open to the conversation. Bringing it up now is... Gauche? Gross? Creepy? Forfeiting credibility and goodwill? Something along those lines.
It’s also hard not to read this as policy advocacy. So many governments are looking for dispute resolution models that are cheaper than courts but more legitimate than platforms. And look who’s offering their services.
I am *really* excited about the Brazilian Supreme Court's Right to Be Forgotten case. I can't wait for Brazilian experts to weigh in and tell us more about the details, but the bottom line is that it's a constitutional rights-based rejection of RTBF claims. 1/
Brazil, like most countries, has cases where a personal privacy claim overrides the speaker's expression rights (or listeners' rights to access information). So I don't think the point is to say that can't happen. 2/
Rather, it's that the *process* for weighing privacy and expression rights matters. The Inter American Human Rights framework is particularly strong on this, and on expression rights generally. 3/
An easier example is a Googlebomb. When pranksters used SEO tactics to make the White House homepage be the first result for searches on "miserable failure" for example. searchengineland.com/google-kills-b… 2/
The problem isn't that the white house page was bad content or needed to be removed/demoted based on Google's disapproval of its message. It was that it wasn't the most relevant result, so changing ranking to move it down improved product functionality or search quality. 3/