Challenging barriers to free thought

Index on Censorship [via Eurozine Review 3/2019]



Index looks at the increasing barriers to free thought worldwide: including reports on journalistic self-censorship, freedom of expression for LGBT travellers, the roll-out of Chinese surveillance tech; and Germany’s latest spyware bill.

Index on Censorship looks at the increasing barriers to free thought worldwide. Reports from China, Germany, Hungary and the United States focus not only on increasing restrictions on free movement, but also the implicit demands that journalists self-censor and that LGBT travellers hide their identities when in countries where their very existence is illegal.

Full text (PDF 2pp)

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Knowledge is power: Mobile internet, government confidence, and populism

a column by Sergei Guriev, Nikita Melnikov and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Information and communication technology has no doubt had a positive economic impact globally, but its political bearing is less clear.

This column shows that the proliferation of mobile technology reduces citizens’ confidence in their current governments, especially in places where news broadcasting is censored but the internet is not. Furthermore, by reducing the cost of reaching voters, the internet has also led to increased support for both left-wing and right-wing populist movements.

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Facebook Shouldn't Give Politicians More Power Than Ordinary Users

an article by Kit Walsh and Jillian C. York for the Electronic Frontier Foundation with grateful thanks to 3 Quarks Daily

Amidst escalating rhetoric about alleged 'anti-conservative bias' on social media, Facebook has doubled down on its policies exempting (some) politicians from its ordinary fact-checking and from its hate speech rules. Facebook's policies amplify the harm that hateful politicians can do and are not necessary to advance its stated goal of ensuring that 'newsworthy' false or hateful comments are subject to robust reporting and debate.

Tilting the Playing Field

"Would it be acceptable to society at large to have a private company in effect become a self-appointed referee for everything that politicians
say? I don’t believe it would be." - Facebook's Nick Clegg

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Europe's highest court Facebook verdict hits a new low for technomagical thinking

a post by Cory Doctorow for the Boing Boing blog



In 2016, a Facebook user called the Austrian Green Party politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek “a corrupt oaf“, a “traitor“ and a member of a “fascist party“. Glawischnig-Piesczek secured an Austrian court verdict that held these remarks to be libellous, and Facebook took them down for Austrian users.

But Glawischnig-Piesczek was upset that these remarks were still visible outside of Austria, so she asked the EU's highest court, the CJEU, to order Facebook to block the post throughout the world, and to use some kind of technology to prevent other Facebook users from making “equivalent comments”.

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Is Instagram starting to take mental health seriously?

an article by Sarah Manavis published in the New Statesman

Another roll-out targeted at improving users’ mental health is a step in the right direction – but we should be careful about overpraising desperately needed changes.



Yesterday [18 September], Instagram announced one of the biggest content changes in its history: it will begin censoring dieting and cosmetic surgery posts for under-18s. It also announced that certain content would be removed altogether if deemed dangerous to the general public. These changes are the long-awaited response to calls from body-positivity activists, who claim Instagram has become rife with sponsored posts pushing flat tummy teas, diet pills, lip fillers, and dangerous cosmetic procedures.

Emma Collins, Instagram’s public policy manager explained: “We want Instagram to be a positive place for everyone that uses it and this policy is part of our ongoing work to reduce the pressure that people can sometimes feel as a result of social media… We’ve sought guidance from external experts, including Dr Ysabel Gerrard in the UK, to make sure any steps to restrict and remove this content will have a positive impact on our community of over 1 billion people around the world – whilst ensuring Instagram remains a platform for expression and discussion.”

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Regulating internet access in UK public libraries: legal compliance and ethical dilemmas

an article by Adrienne Muir, Louise Cooke and Claire Creaser (Loughborough University, UK) and Rachel Spacey (University of Lincoln, UK) published in Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society Volume 14 Issue 1 (2016)

Abstract

Purpose
This paper aims to consider selected results from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded “Managing Access to the internet in Public Libraries” (MAIPLE) project, from 2012-2014. MAIPLE has explored the ways in which public library services manage use of the internet connections that they provide for the public. This included the how public library services balance their legal obligations and the needs of their communities in a public space and the ethical dilemmas that arise.

Design/methodology/approach
The researchers used a mixed-method approach involving a review of the literature, legal analysis, a questionnaire survey and case studies in five public library authorities.

Findings
UK public library services use a range of methods to regulate internet access. The research also confirms previous findings that filtering software is an ubiquitous tool for controlling access to and protecting library users from “inappropriate”, illegal and harmful internet content. There is a general, if sometimes reluctant, acceptance of filtering software as a practical tool by library staff, which seems to contrast with professional codes of ethics and attitudes in other countries. The research indicates that public library internet access will be a valued service for some time to come, but that some aspects of how public library services regulate internet access is currently managed can have socially undesirable consequences, including blocking legitimate sites and preventing users from accessing government services. Education could play a greater part in helping the general population to exercise judgement in selection of materials to view and use. This does not preclude implementing stricter controls to protect children, whilst allowing public libraries to continue providing a social good to those who are unable to otherwise participate in the digital age.

Research limitations/implications
The response to the survey was 39 per cent meaning that findings may not apply across the whole of the UK. The findings of this study are compared with and supplemented by other quantitative sources, but a strength of this study is the depth of understanding afforded by the use of case studies.

Originality/value
This paper provides both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of how internet access is managed in UK public libraries, including how library services fulfil their legal obligations and the ethical implications of how they balance their role in facilitating access to information with their perceived role as a safe and trusted environment for all members of their communities. The findings add to the international discussion on this issue and stimulate debate and policy making in the UK.

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Censorship and deletion practices in Chinese social media

an article by David Bamman, Brendan O'Connor and Noah Smith published in First Monday Volume 17 Number 3 (March 2012)

Abstract

With Twitter and Facebook blocked in China, the stream of information from Chinese domestic social media provides a case study of social media behavior under the influence of active censorship. While much work has looked at efforts to prevent access to information in China (including IP blocking of foreign Web sites or search engine filtering), we present here the first large-scale analysis of political content censorship in social media, i.e., the active deletion of messages published by individuals.

In a statistical analysis of 56 million messages (212,583 of which have been deleted out of 1.3 million checked, more than 16 percent) from the domestic Chinese microblog site Sina Weibo, and 11 million Chinese-language messages from Twitter, we uncover a set a politically sensitive terms whose presence in a message leads to anomalously higher rates of deletion. We also note that the rate of message deletion is not uniform throughout the country, with messages originating in the outlying provinces of Tibet and Qinghai exhibiting much higher deletion rates than those from eastern areas like Beijing.

Full text: HTML

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Why the IWF was wrong to lift its ban on a Wikipedia page

via OUT-LAW.com on 11 December

"EDITORIAL: The Internet Watch Foundation faced a storm of criticism this week over its decision to add a Wikipedia entry to a blacklist of pages that ISPs block. Under pressure, the IWF removed the image from its blacklist. That decision was a mistake."

Full story

And I do recommend that you read Struan Robertson's thoughtful piece on this issue.

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