studies on the limits of "free" speech on FB?
Hi all, Apologies for a slightly irritated posting/inquiry - but I've discovered that FB recently removed a comment from my timeline that I made regarding events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anonymous, which not only "doxed" the alleged shooter, but also cut off Internet services within the local police department. (Going on memory here, sorry if all the details are not exact or complete.) My comment was something along the lines of: The is the second time I've seen Anonymous out the wrong person (and I'm not even keeping track very closely). As unhappy as I am with corrupt and over-militarized cops, etc. [really: my wife grew up some 15 minutes' walk from where the shooting took place] - I'm even less happy with a hacker underground that is neither transparent nor accountable to those of us it claims to "protect and serve" (irony intentional). I'm assuming it was FB that took this down, for whatever reason (i.e., not someone from Anonymous or elsewhere)? In any event: does anyone know of good studies - qualitative / quantitative - that attempt to document this sort of behavior on FB's part? It would be invaluable both for its own sake, as well as for my upcoming class on Internet regulation as caught between several poles, including freedom of expression as critical to democratic discourse, etc. Many thanks in advance, - charles ess
dear charles, i don’t know what happened in your case, but during the gezi protests local activists were following the way fb censors political content. what we could observe without further sophisticated analysis was that if somebody makes a complaint or fb decides on some other basis (e.g., agreements with states) that a content should be removed, then all copies of the content get removed, including "re-shares" from other people’s walls. this used to be absolutely intransparent to the users whose re-postings/shares were deleted (simple disappearance). they do by now have a mechanism for making their complaint and removal process more transparent, but i am not sure if that includes notifying people who re-share information: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-safety/more-transparency-in-reportin... maybe you can check. if not, i hope this is something other people on this list have looked into more systematically and i would love to hear more. s. On Aug 18, 2014, at 7:44 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Apologies for a slightly irritated posting/inquiry - but I've discovered that FB recently removed a comment from my timeline that I made regarding events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anonymous, which not only "doxed" the alleged shooter, but also cut off Internet services within the local police department. (Going on memory here, sorry if all the details are not exact or complete.)
My comment was something along the lines of: The is the second time I've seen Anonymous out the wrong person (and I'm not even keeping track very closely). As unhappy as I am with corrupt and over-militarized cops, etc. [really: my wife grew up some 15 minutes' walk from where the shooting took place] - I'm even less happy with a hacker underground that is neither transparent nor accountable to those of us it claims to "protect and serve" (irony intentional).
I'm assuming it was FB that took this down, for whatever reason (i.e., not someone from Anonymous or elsewhere)?
In any event: does anyone know of good studies - qualitative / quantitative - that attempt to document this sort of behavior on FB's part? It would be invaluable both for its own sake, as well as for my upcoming class on Internet regulation as caught between several poles, including freedom of expression as critical to democratic discourse, etc.
Many thanks in advance,
- charles ess
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Hi Charles - My Occam's razor reaction to this is that your text triggered some kind of automated comment screening algorithm designed to prevent spam or other unapproved content. I suspect it wasn't that your comment was about Ferguson or Anonymous per se, but that it included text deemed spammy or hazardous (perhaps mention of doxing?). A classic false positive. -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Associate Professor, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org On Aug 18, 2014, at 12:44 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Apologies for a slightly irritated posting/inquiry - but I've discovered that FB recently removed a comment from my timeline that I made regarding events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anonymous, which not only "doxed" the alleged shooter, but also cut off Internet services within the local police department. (Going on memory here, sorry if all the details are not exact or complete.)
My comment was something along the lines of: The is the second time I've seen Anonymous out the wrong person (and I'm not even keeping track very closely). As unhappy as I am with corrupt and over-militarized cops, etc. [really: my wife grew up some 15 minutes' walk from where the shooting took place] - I'm even less happy with a hacker underground that is neither transparent nor accountable to those of us it claims to "protect and serve" (irony intentional).
I'm assuming it was FB that took this down, for whatever reason (i.e., not someone from Anonymous or elsewhere)?
In any event: does anyone know of good studies - qualitative / quantitative - that attempt to document this sort of behavior on FB's part? It would be invaluable both for its own sake, as well as for my upcoming class on Internet regulation as caught between several poles, including freedom of expression as critical to democratic discourse, etc.
Many thanks in advance,
- charles ess
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Charles and others, An MA student of mine wrote her thesis a couple of years ago on how the Kurdish diaspora use Facebook. Her informants talked about cases like these where the deletion was very clearly political - things like posting images of the Kurdish flag, but also things they hadn't expected to be seen as political. She also cited the manual for Facebook moderators that went around a few years back, which has a list of stuff to delete or block. Jacob, Kurdin. 2013. ‘‘Facebook is my second home’’. The Kurdish Diaspora’s Use of Facebook in Shaping a Nation. MA thesis in digital culture, University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/7629 Charles' post being deleted could be a false positive as Michael suggests but given Twitter deleted that Anonymous account pretty swiftly after they publicized the (wrong) name of the shooter I'd say it's entirely possible Facebook also deleted anything with keywords related to the anonymous post - actually, if Facebook allowed people to repost the falsely accused police officer's name, they might be used for slander or libel, right? And the post I saw on Twitter before @anonmessage or whatever the account was called was deleted included a screenshot of the alleged killer's Facebook page, so FB was very directly involved and no doubt aware of the situation. Jill Sent from my phone On 18. aug. 2014, at 16:08, Michael T Zimmer <zimmerm@uwm.edu<mailto:zimmerm@uwm.edu>> wrote: Hi Charles - My Occam's razor reaction to this is that your text triggered some kind of automated comment screening algorithm designed to prevent spam or other unapproved content. I suspect it wasn't that your comment was about Ferguson or Anonymous per se, but that it included text deemed spammy or hazardous (perhaps mention of doxing?). A classic false positive. -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Associate Professor, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu<mailto:zimmerm@uwm.edu> w: www.michaelzimmer.org<http://www.michaelzimmer.org> On Aug 18, 2014, at 12:44 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess@gmail.com<mailto:charles.ess@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi all, Apologies for a slightly irritated posting/inquiry - but I've discovered that FB recently removed a comment from my timeline that I made regarding events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anonymous, which not only "doxed" the alleged shooter, but also cut off Internet services within the local police department. (Going on memory here, sorry if all the details are not exact or complete.) My comment was something along the lines of: The is the second time I've seen Anonymous out the wrong person (and I'm not even keeping track very closely). As unhappy as I am with corrupt and over-militarized cops, etc. [really: my wife grew up some 15 minutes' walk from where the shooting took place] - I'm even less happy with a hacker underground that is neither transparent nor accountable to those of us it claims to "protect and serve" (irony intentional). I'm assuming it was FB that took this down, for whatever reason (i.e., not someone from Anonymous or elsewhere)? In any event: does anyone know of good studies - qualitative / quantitative - that attempt to document this sort of behavior on FB's part? It would be invaluable both for its own sake, as well as for my upcoming class on Internet regulation as caught between several poles, including freedom of expression as critical to democratic discourse, etc. Many thanks in advance, - charles ess _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org> mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Announcing a Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Anthropology Vol 25. No 2 Communication technology and social life: Jonathan Paul Marshall and Tanya Notley "Communication technology and social life: Transformation and continuity, order and disorder", pp.127-37. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12084 Alexandra Crosby and Tanya Notley "Using video and online subtitling to communicate across languages from West Papua", pp138-54. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12085 Heather A. Horst and Erin B. Taylor "The role of mobile phones in the mediation of border crossings: A study of Haiti and the Dominican Republic", pp 155-170. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12086 Inge Kral "Shifting perceptions, shifting identities: Communication technologies and the altered social, cultural and linguistic ecology in a remote indigenous context", 171-189. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12087 Jonathan Paul Marshall "The social (dis)organisation of software: Failure and disorder in information society", pp190-206. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12088 Makiko Nishitani "Kinship, gender, and communication technologies: Family dramas in the Tongan diaspora", pp 207-222. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12089 Borut Telban and Daniela Vávrová "Ringing the living and the dead: Mobile phones in a Sepik society", 223-38. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12090 Petronella Vaarzon-Morel "Pointing the Phone: Transforming Technologies and Social Relations among Warlpiri", 239-55. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12091 For anyone who is interested there is a related collection of papers, more aimed at social life on the internet, at Global Media Journal Australian Edition http://www.hca.uws.edu.au/gmjau/?issues=volume-7-issue-1-2013 Notely, Marshall, & Salazar "Guest Editorial" Crystal Abidin "Cyber-BFFs: Assessing women's 'perceived interconnectedness' in Singapore's commercial lifestyle blog industry". Rebekah Cupitt "Phantasms collide: Navigating video-mediated communication in the Swedish workplace". Elaine Lally "Creative interactions and improvable digital objects in cloud-based musical collaboration". Theresa Lynn Petray "Self-writing a movement and contesting indigeneity: Being an Aboriginal activist on social media". Rhian Morgan "Death in Space and the Piracy Debate: Negotiating ethics and ontology in Entropia Universe". Tanya Notley, Juan Salazar & Alexandra Crosby "Online video translation and subtitling: examining emerging practices and their implications for media activism in South East Asia". Jonathan Paul Marshall "The Mess of Information and the Order of Doubt". UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email.
participants (5)
-
Charles Ess -
Jill Walker Rettberg -
Jonathan Marshall -
Michael T Zimmer -
Seda Gurses