Monthly Archives: August 2020

Why Keep Section 230? Because People Need To Be Able To Complain About The Police – Techdirt

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from the discourse-demands-it dept

The storm has passed and the charges have been dropped. But the fact that someone who tweeted about police behavior, and, worse, people who retweeted that tweet, were ever charged over it is an outrage, and to make sure that it never happens again, we need to talk about it. Because it stands as a cautionary tale about why First Amendment protections are so important and, as we'll explain here, why Section 230 is as well.

To recap, protester Kevin Alfaro became upset by a police officer's behavior at a recent Black Lives Matter protest in Nutley, NJ. The officer had obscured his identifying information, so Alfaro tweeted a photo asking if anyone could identify the officer "to hold him accountable."

Several people, including Georgana Szisak, retweeted that tweet. The next thing they knew, Alfaro, Sziszak, and several other retweeters found themselves on the receiving end of a felony summons pressing charges of "cyber harassment" of the police officer.

As we've already pointed out, the charges were as pointless as they were spurious, because they themselves directly did the unmasking of the officer's identity, which the charges maintained was somehow a crime to ask for. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh took further issue with the prosecution, and in particular its application of the New Jersey cyber harassment statute against the tweet. Particularly in light of an earlier case, State v. Carroll (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2018), he took a dim view:

N.J. Stat. 2C:33-4.1a(2), under which Sziszak is charged, provides, in relevant part,

According to the criminal complaint, the government's theory is that the post "caus[ed] Det. Sandomenico to fear that harm will come to himself, family and property."

But the Tweet (and the retweet) aren't "lewd, indecent, or obscene." ... [And] if the "lewd, indecent, or obscene" element isn't satisfied, N.J.S.A. 2C:33-4.1(a)(2) doesn't apply regardless of whether it was posted with the intent to "caus[e] Det. Sandomenico to fear that harm will come to himself, family and property."

These "cyber harassment" statutes are often problematic, targeting for punishment what should be protected and often socially valuable critical speech. Cases like these, where they get applied to criticism of state power, highlight the Constitutional concern. Being able to speak out against the state is at the heart of why we have the First Amendment, and laws interfering with that ability offend the Constitution. In this case, even if the New Jersey law had been drafted in a sufficiently narrow way to not be unconstitutional on its face by in theory only targeting speech beyond the protection of the First Amendment, applying it in this way to speech that should have been protected made it unconstitutional.

But while it's bad enough that the original tweeter had been targeted by the police for his speech, the aspect of the story that is most worrying is that police also targeted for prosecution people who had simply retweeted the original tweet. Section 230 should have barred such prosecutions. And before we so casually chuck out the statute, as so many propose, we need to understand why it should have applied here, and why it is so important to make sure that it still can in the future.

The First Amendment and Section 230 both exist to foster discourse. Discourse is more than just speech; it's the exchange of ideas. The First Amendment protects their expression, and Section 230 their distribution. Especially online, where speaking requires the facilitation of others, we need both: the First Amendment to make it possible to speak, and Section 230 to make it possible to be heard.

This case illustrates why it is so important to have both, and why Section 230 applies, and must apply, to more than just big companies. Here, someone tweeted protected speech to notify the community of concerning police behavior. Section 230 ensured that the Internet platform in this case, Twitter could exist to facilitate that speech. And it's good that Section 230 meant that Twitter could be available to play that role. But Alfaro only had 900 followers; Twitter helped him speak, but it was the retweeters who turned that speech into discourse by helping it reach the community. They had just as important a role to play in facilitating his speech as Twitter did, if not even more so.

It's important to remember that the statutory text of Section 230 in no way limits its protection to big Internet companies, or even to companies at all. It simply differentiates between whoever created the expression at issue (and can thus be held to answer for it) and who facilitated its distribution online (who therefore can't be). Given how important that facilitation role is in having meaningful public discourse, we need to ensure that everyone who performs it is protected. In fact, it may be even more important to ensure that individual facilitators can maintain this protection than the larger and more resourced corporate platforms who can better weather legal challenges.

Think about it: think about how many of us share content online. Many of us may even share far more content created by others than we create ourselves. But all that sharing would grind to a halt, if we could be held liable for anything allegedly wrong with that content. Not just civilly, but, as this case shows, even criminally.

And that chilling is not a good thing. One could certainly argue that people should take more care when they share content online and do the best they can in vetting it before sharing it, to the extent it is possible. Of course, it could also be fairly said that many people should use their right to free speech more productively than they necessarily do. But the reason we protect speech, even low-value speech, is because we need to make sure that the good, socially beneficial speech we depend on to keep our democracy healthy can still get expressed too. Which is also why we have Section 230: it is not possible to police all the third-party created content we intermediate, and if we want to make sure that the good, socially beneficial content can get through, to reach the people who need to hear it, then we need to make sure that we don't have to. When we snip away at Section 230's protection, or limit its application, we obstruct that spread and curtail the discourse society needs. We therefore do so at our peril.

Obviously in this case Section 230 did not prevent the attempted prosecution. Nor did the First Amendment, and that the police went after anyone over the tweet was an unacceptable abuse of authority that imposed an enormous cost. Discourse was damaged, and the targeted Twitter users may now think twice before engaging in online discourse at all, much less discourse intending to keep state power in check. These are costs that we, as a society, cannot afford to bear.

But at least by having both of these defenses available, the terrible toll this attempted prosecution took was soon abated. Think about how much worse it would have been had they not been. And ask why that is a future we should be continuing to spend any effort trying to invite. Our sole policy goal should be to enhance our speech protections, to impose costs on those who would undermine public discourse through their attempts at abusive process. The last thing we should be doing is taking steps to whittle away at them and make it any easier to chill discourse than it already is, and cases like this one, where people were trying to speak out against abuses of power, illustrate why.

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Filed Under: criminal charges, georgana sziszak, kevin alfaro, new jersey, nutley, protests, retweets, section 230

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Why Keep Section 230? Because People Need To Be Able To Complain About The Police - Techdirt

US liquor giant hit by ransomware what the rest of us can do to help – Naked Security

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Third, they encrypt as many files on the network as possible, using a scrambling algorithm for which they alone have the key. The crooks typically copy the malware program across the network first, so that when they kick off the encryption process, it runs in parallel on all your devices, thus bringing maximum disruption in minimum time.How these stages evolved

As you probably know, the first two stages above are fairly recent developments in ransomware criminality.

When ransomware crooks started out back in 2013 when the infamous CryptoLocker gang were the kings of the ransomware scene it was all about stage 3: scrambling files and then using the decryption key as a blackmail tool: Send us $300 or your files are gone forever.

The crooks generally didnt target networks back then; instead, they went after millions of victims in parallel, with each infected computer ransomed independently.

The criminals targeted everyone from home users who probably didnt have backups of any sort and might be willing to spend $300 to get their wedding photos or the videos of their children back to big companies where 100 users might fall for the latest ransomware spam campaign and the business would need to spend 100 $300 to get the unique decryption key for each now-useless computer.

Stage 1 arrived on the ransomware scene when criminals realised that by going after entire networks one-at-a-time, they could cut their losses early in the case of a network that they didnt have much success with, and focus on networks where they could cause disruption that was both sudden and total.

Instead of pursuing thousands of individual computer users for hundreds of dollars each, the crooks could blackmail a single company at a time for tens of thousands of dollars a time.

Indeed, the early adopters of the all-at-once ransomware approach often took the cynical approach of offering two prices: a per-PC decryption fee, and an all you can eat buffet price for a master key that would unscramble as many computers as you wanted almost as if the crooks were doing you a favour.

The crooks behind the SamSam malware four Iranians have been identified and formally charged by the US, but are unlikely ever to stand trial even offered a staged payment service whereby you could pay half the ransom to receive half of the decryption keys (chosen randomly by the criminals).

If you were lucky, you might just end up with enough computers running again to save your business for just 50% of the usual price

but if not, you could pay the rest of the ransom, presumably now with considerable confidence that the crooks would deliver the decryption tools as promised.

You could even take a chance on paying the per-PC fee for your most critical computers typically $8000 a time to tide you over, and top up later, once you were confident in the criminals, to the master-key price, which was typically set by the SamSam crooks just below $50,000.

Whether they chose $50,000 at a guess, or because they found it represented a common accounting department limit in the US below which it was much easier for the IT manager to get the payment approved, we never found out.

As you can imagine, the exposure of the alleged perpetrators by US law enforcement pretty much drove the SamSam crooks out of business, albeit not before they had extorted millions of dollars from victims around the world, but ultimately didnt make much of a dent in ransomware attacks in general.

Sadly, the SamSam gangs fee of $50,000 a network turns out to be small by current standards.

A recent ransomware attack that took US GPS and fitness tracker giant Garmin offline for several days was apparently resolved when the company coughed up a multi-million dollar payment, supposedly negotiated downwards from $10,000,000.

That incident attracted controversy because the ransomware involved was alleged to have been the work of a Russian cybercrime outfit known as Evil Corp, and transactions with that group are prohibited by US sanctions imposed in December 2019.

And US travel company CWT is said to have coughed up $4,500,000 recently again, down from an opening demand of an alleged $10 million for unscrambling what the crooks claimed were 30,000 ransomed computers.

If true, $10,000,000 for 30,000 devices comes out at $333 each, a fascinating full-circle back to the $300 price point of the 2013 CryptoLocker ransomware, which was itself an intriguing echo of the first ever ransomware attack, way back in 1989, where the criminal behind the malware demanded $378. (With no prepaid credit cards, online gift cards or cryptocurrencies to use as a vehicle for pseudoanonymous payments, this early attempt at ransomware, known as the AIDS Information Trojan, was a financial failure. Indeed, it wasnt until the early 2010s that cyberextortion based on locking up computers or files worked out at all for the cyberunderworld.)

But the biggest tactical change in ransomware is stage 2 above.

By perpetrating data breaches up front, before unleashing the file scrambling component in Brown-Formans case, the breach allegedly includes 1 terabyte; in CWTs attack, the criminals claimed that 2 terabytes were thieved up front the crooks now have a double-barrelled weapon of criminal demand.

Youre no longer being extorted to pay for the crooks to do something, namely to send you a set of decryption keys, but also being blackmailed into bribing the crooks not to do something, namely not to go public with your data.

Early ransomware had more in common with kidnapping, though with jobs at stake rather than the victims life: the theory was that if you paid up and the crooks released a working decryption tool, you not only got your data back but also quite clearly ended the power that the criminals had over you.

For the crooks to ransom your data again (sadly, this happens), theyd need to break into your network again and essentially start from scratch, assuming that you worked out how they got in before and closed the holes they used last time.

But todays ransomware is turning into old-school, out-and-out blackmail: the crooks promise to delete the data they already stole, and thereby to prevent your ransomware incident turning into a publicly visible data breach, but you have no way of knowing whether they will keep their promise.

Even worse, you have no way of knowing whether the crooks can keep their promise, even if they intend to.

For all you know, the data they took illegally could already have been stolen from them remember that many of the cybercrime busts written about on Naked Security, including ransomware arrests, happened because of cybersecurity blunders made by the perpetrators that allowed their evil secrets to be probed, uncovered and ultimately proved in a court of law.

Or the criminals themselves may have been victims of insider crime, where one of their own decided to go rogue after all, weve also written about crooks getting busted not through operational blunders but through a falling-out among thieves, where one of the gang has ratted out the others or otherwise co-operated with the authorities to save themselves

Technically, or at least from a regulatory point of view, all ransomware attacks are data breaches, even if all they do is scramble your files in place.

After all, if an outsider is able to modify files they werent supposed to access at all, that clearly amounts both to unauthorised access (a crime in most jurisdictions) and to unauthorised modification (a yet more serious crime) and even though this makes you a victim of crime, it also means youve failed in at least some way at protecting information you were supposed to protect.

And ransomware crooks who steal your data before scrambling it are really in the pound seats when it comes to blackmail.

Even if you prevent the final stage of the attack and the file scrambling failed, or if you have reliable and comprehensive offline backups that allow you to repair and reimage all your computers without relying on the crooks for decryption keys, the crooks are going to squeeze you anyway, by threatening to make a bad thing (a provable data breach) much worse: a data breach that can actively be used against you, by other crooks, by unscrupulous competitors, by activists, by regulators, by anyone who is determined to make you look bad for any reason they choose.

The good news, in the case of the Brown-Forman attack, is that current reports suggest two important things:

All we can say to that is, Well done, and thanks for standing firm.

Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, a law firm that represents numerous high-profile celebrities, recently faced a demand similar to Brown Formans, where the ransomware criminals menaced company founder Allen Grubman in broken English with threats to auction off celebrity data in the cyberunderworld:

We have so many value files, and the lucky ones who buy these data will be satisfied for a very long time. Show business is not concerts and love of fans only also it is big money and social manipulation, mud lurking behind the scenes and sexual scandals, drugs and treachery. [] Mr. Grubman, you have a chance to stop that, and you know what to do.

The company famously likened the blackmailers to terrorists and refused to pay up. (The threatened auctions havent yet happened though no one knows whether thats because the crooks felt they couldnt trust their own or because the data stolen simply wasnt up to what the crooks claimed.)

To reward companies that are willing to say, We wont pay, and who help to break the feedback that keeps the ransomware cycle turning, we suggest that you repay them by making sure that if their data does get dumped by crooks

that you simply do not look.

No matter how useful it might seem; no matter what items that you feel are now both in the public domain and in the public interest; no matter how much you might argue that companies like Brown-Forman were themselves remiss in the first place for not protecting data that they ought to have, dont look.

We urge you, Just say no.

Brown-Formans breach is now a matter of public record and we assume it will be carefully investigated by law enforcement and the relevant regulators, so lets leave them to it.

As Sophos Cybersecurity Educator Sally Adam put it:

There is no end justifies the means discussion to be had here because this is nothing like the cases of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, where no matter what you think of their ultimate actions an insider identified something they perceived to be wrong. This is purely about extortion.

Clearly, prevention is way better than cure.

Its important to have protection in place to stop stage 3 above (after all, not all ransomware attacks do follow this three-step process, and one-off scrambling attacks are still an ever present risk.)

Weve got plenty of advice on how to do just that, including our popular report:

But the earlier you block or spot the crooks, the better for everyone, including yourself.

So we recommend you review the following handy resources too, to keep ransomware crooks out right from the very start:

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US liquor giant hit by ransomware what the rest of us can do to help - Naked Security

Here’s the biggest news you missed this weekend – USA TODAY

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Editors, USA TODAY Published 4:46 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2020 | Updated 9:58 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the House to return into session later this week to vote on a bill that would prevent changes the Trump administration has made to the Postal Service, alterations Democrats say will cause a slowing of the flow of mail and potentially jeopardize the November election. Pelosi said Sunday that "American Democracy" is under threat from President Donald Trump, who last week said he opposed giving the USPS more money while at the same time acknowledging the lack of funding may hamper the office's ability to process mail-in ballots.Pelosi wants the House to vote later this week on Rep. Carolyn Maloney's Delivering for America Act, which prohibits changes to Postal Service operations in place on Jan. 1, 2020.

Hours before Pelosi's call to return to session, Democrats urged the postmaster general to testify before a House committee nearly a month earlier than initially requested, saying the "urgent" hearing is neededto address the"dangerous operational changes" to the United StatesPostal Service.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 05: A United States Postal Service (USPS) truck is parked on August 05, 2020 in New York City. The USPS, the nations national mail carrier service, is under increased scrutiny from politicians who are warning that the agency is not prepared to handle the tens of millions of mail-in ballots which are expected to be sent for the November election. President Trump in recent weeks has called the Postal Service a joke as the agency is experiences delays in mail delivery due to the coronavirus pandemic and financial pressures. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 775543359 ORIG FILE ID: 1264142090(Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's younger brother Robertdied Saturday of an undisclosed illness. He was 71. "He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,"the president said in a statement issued late Saturday. "He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever."The youngest of the Trump siblings, Donald Trump once described Robertas much quieter and easygoing than I am, and the only guy in my life whom I ever call honey.The White House announced Friday that Robert Trumphad been hospitalized with an undisclosed illness and the president visited him that afternoonin Manhattan.

Robert Trump (left) is pictured joining then real estate developer and presidential hopeful Donald Trump (right) at an event in New York. Robert Trump died on Saturday after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71.(Photo: Diane Bondaress, AP Images)

A saliva-based COVID-19 testdeveloped by researchers at Yale withfunding from the NBA and National Basketball Players Association was approved on Saturdayfor emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The method is called SalivaDirect and researchers say it isless expensive and less invasive than nasopharyngeal swabbing. Testing overall, however, has dropped nationwidedespite the virus picking up in many states. Daily nationwidecase counts appear to have dropped in the last couple weeks, butreduced testing in some states makes it hard to confidently determinethat infection rates are improving.

Nearly a week after aferocious derecho storm roared across the Midwest, Iowans are still reeling with the disaster left in its wake. Iowa homes, cornfields, utility companies and government agencies have losses estimated at nearly $4 billion from Monday's unusual storm, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Sunday as she announced she's filing an expedited presidential major disaster declaration with the federal government seeking that much money to rebuild and repair. The derecho, with hurricane-force wind gusts exceeding 100 mph, destroyed or extensively damaged 8,200 homes and 13 million acres of corn, about a third of the state's crop land, she said. More than a half million people were without electricity in the immediate aftermath of the storm. Utility companies reported about 83,000 people remained without power as of Sunday night.

Iowa Department of Transportation workers help with tree debris removal as grain bins from the Archer Daniels Midland facility are seen severely damaged in Keystone, Iowa, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020. A storm slammed the Midwest with straight-line winds of up to 100 mph on Monday.(Photo: Jim Slosiarek, AP)

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he's considering granting a pardonto whistleblowerEdward Snowden. Im going to take a look at that very strongly, Trump said during a news conference at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, has been living in exile in Moscow since fleeing the U.S. six years ago after leaking information on the nation's most secretive spy agencies and their programs. Trump said that he is not that aware of the Snowden situation but that people on both theleft and the right are divided over the former contractor.In late 2016, then-President Barack Obama said he wouldn't consider a pardon until Snowden stopped running from the law.

P.S. Like this round up of stories?We send it to inboxes every afternoon. Sign up for "The Short List" newsletter here.

This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network.Contributing: Associated Press.

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Here's the biggest news you missed this weekend - USA TODAY

Conservatives self-censor, and it gets worse with more time spent in college – OCRegister

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A new public opinion survey conducted by the Cato Institute examines the relationship between political views and self-censorship. The poll of 2,000 Americans ages 18 and older found that most Americans who identify as conservative self-censor, and this self-censoring gets worse with more time spent in higher education.

According to the survey, 62% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive, up from 58% in 2017. While 77% of Republicans said they self-censor, only 52% of Democrats said they do.

Even more telling is that staunch liberals were the only political segment of whom a majority, 58%, felt they could share their political views freely. A majority of the other political groups self-censor52% of liberals, 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives and strong conservatives.

This new poll corroborates what most conservatives and Republicans already knowtheir views and opinions arent welcome in certain parts of society where woke liberalism has replaced the tradition of a free exchange of ideas.

Colleges are likely making this problem worse.

The higher an American rises in academia, the more likely she will self-censor her views if she is a conservative.

Among employed Americans, 32% worry that their careers would be harmed if their political views become known. That number jumped to 44% for Americans with post-graduate degrees. Interestingly, a large shift occurs among Republicans who attend college and graduate school. While about a quarter of both Republicans (27%) and Democrats (23%) with high school degrees worry their opinions will harm them at work, 40% of Republican college graduates and 60% of post-graduates worry. Only 25% of Democrats with graduate degrees expressed this concern. Republicans who have spent the most time in higher education self-censor the most.

This is no surprise for those who have followed what is happening on college campuses. For years, conservatives have pointed out the imbalance in political views of faculty and administrators and argued that this leads to bias against conservatives. A 2018 surveyof about 900 student-facing administrators found that liberal outnumber conservative staff by a ratio of 12-to-1. This is larger than a previous study finding a 6-to-1 ratio of liberal to conservative professors.

Many students self-censor because they are concerned about their grades, while others worry that their views will impact their social life. When the campus environment sends the message that conservative views arent welcome, this creates a strong incentive for conservatives to keep quiet.

In the book,Shes Conservative: Trials and Triumphs on Americas College Campuses, I collected stories from conservative college women. Many of the women self-censored for fear of how their views would be received on campus. One student tells the story of making the decision to keep her views quiet before she even stepped foot on campus.

COVID-19 has caused us all to rethink the role of major institutions and that should include higher education. While colleges help prepare some students for careers, they also undermine civil discourse when they teach students to shout down the other side rather than engage.

Those on the left who try to shut down conservative views are having an impact. They are silencing conservatives. This means fewer conversations between liberals and conservatives are happening, so there is less understanding of the other side.

Colleges and universities are facing financial challenges and must adjust to new pressures brought on by the pandemic. They should use this time as an opportunity to course correct when it comes to fostering an environment that values intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas.

Karin A. Lips is the founder and president oftheNetwork of Enlightened Women, which educates women on conservative principles. She is a senior fellow with the Independent Womens Forum and editor of Shes Conservative: Stories of Trials and Triumphs on Americas College Campuses. Follow her on Twitter@klips.

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Conservatives self-censor, and it gets worse with more time spent in college - OCRegister

Social media activists share stories on how their pro-BJP content was censored by Facebook even as some accuse Facebook of being pro-BJP – OpIndia

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A much hyped-up propaganda has been launched with the intention of portraying Facebook as pro-BJP. While the allegations appear hilarious on the face of it, liberals appear to have lost all sense of reality and proportion and embarked upon an Uninstall Facebook drive. The latest spell of delusion began after propagandists at the Wall Street Journal published a report alleging, without any real evidence, that Facebook was unfairly favouring the BJP.

The allegations are particularly ridiculous because Facebook, like almost all other social media platforms, is known to silence right-wing or conservative voices on social media. The Community Standards section on Hate Speech offers sufficient indication of the Left-wing bias built into the platform.

Facebook clubs gender identity, a term engraved deeply in left-wing political ideology, with very real concepts such as race, ethnicity, religious identity and other such identities. Thus, if a user is vocal against the concept that a man can be a woman if he merely claims to be one, then the user can be accused of having trafficked in Hate Speech and his account could be suspended. We are expected to believe that such an organisation has suddenly discovered fondness for a Hindutvavadi party.

There is also other very real evidence that the Facebook is not favourably disposed towards the BJP. It is known that prior to the General Elections in 2019, the tech giant engaged in a campaign against popular pages supportive of the BJP and suspended them from Facebook without any clear reason at all.

For instance, in April 2019, Facebook had announced that it had taken down 687 pages linked to the Indian National Congress for suspicious activity. When we remove one of these networks, the reason we remove them is because of their coordinated inauthentic behaviour, that they are using network of fake accounts to conceal their identity.to mislead whos behind them. Thats the basic reason for removal, Head of its Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher told the media.

What escaped notice was the fact that numerous pages supportive of the BJP were also taken down, without any good reason, and the popularity of almost every single one of these pages far exceeded that of the cumulative reach of the Congress pages put together. One of the pages that suffered the axe was The Chaupal page which currently has close to 10.8 million likes on Facebook.

The monetisation of the page was suddenly rescinded on the 22nd of March, as per the admins of The Chaupal and they were told that it will be restored in 90 days. However, it was not restored even after 120 days had passed. Now, The Chaupal has a verified blue tick on Facebook. It was suspected even then by the page that they suspect they were targeted because of their right-wing political inclinations.

On the 1st of April, 2019, Facebook pages with a cumulative likes of around 150 million were removed. We page owners have no say after our pages are penalised. We are subjected to automated mails with no positive outcome, they complained. They also complained that they could not add new administrators and editors to their pages.

Speaking to OpIndia, Vikas Pandey, social media influencer and administrator of various popular Facebook pages said that although numerous Congress pages were deleted and their umber was greater in absolute numbers, the cumulative likes on them was far lesser than the BJP pages that were removed. We were told that the reason that was provided was that a Facebook administrator or editor on the page had a fake profile, he said.

Facebook claimed that some pages were removed because one of the IDs of the admins was fake. Many people use more than one accounts and it is very normal to protect ones identity. Such accounts were deleted arbitrarily. All this happened right before elections in April 2019. he said.

We were told that it is a very common practice for admins of pages to create alternative profiles for their Facebook pages. Sometimes, these profiles have names that are similar to the name of the page itself or have the same names as other administrator accounts. BJP-supporting Facebook pages were removed on the basis of such silly reason.

A popular Facebook page, The Frustrated Indian, suffered similar action after they shared from a syndicated news feed. Independent fact-checker Boom Live marked one of their articles as fake. Interestingly, it was a post that was from news agency IANS. When the administrator tried to reach out to Facebook to resolve the issue, he could not get through to him.

Similarly, another Facebook page Nation Wants NaMo was deleted abruptly just ahead of elections. The page admin, speaking to OpIndia said that there was no strike, a warning, before Facebook deleted their page. It was targeted to be deleted, the former page admin said.

Another such Facebook account which is regularly targeted is Political Kida. Ankur Singh, admin of Political Kida, while speaking to OpIndia said how Facebook policies are still unclear and used arbitrarily to silence their pages. They say that their memes and jokes are fact-checked and reported to be fake, videos that target the Congress party are removed before they go viral. The pages are selectively removed without any intimation and information and when an appeal is made, they are met with an automated response without any further response, he said.

Numerous such Facebook pages with great reach such as Doval Fan Club, I Support Ajit Doval, I Support Zee News with likes of 4.1 million, 1.8 million, 2.2 million respectively were censored by Facebook as well. There are a lot of other Facebook pages supportive of the BJP that suffered the same fate.

Under such circumstances, it is utterly preposterous to claim that the social media platform is somehow unfairly favouring the BJP. If anything, it is deliberately engaging in malpractice against the party and engaging in electoral malpractice. The current liberal rage against Facebook appears to be motivated by Facebook not bending to their will as absolutely as they so desire. Facebook, for its part, has rubbished such allegations.

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Social media activists share stories on how their pro-BJP content was censored by Facebook even as some accuse Facebook of being pro-BJP - OpIndia

Universities won’t defeat racism with censorship – Washington Examiner

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Amid a revival of resistance to racial injustice, progressives at Tulane University in New Orleans should have taken great pride in a campus event featuring award-winning author Edward Ball and his new anti-racist book Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy. The work has been highly praised as an important story about the history of white supremacy in the South by scholars such as Ibram X. Kendi and Saidiya Hartman. The event was even to be moderated by University of Kentucky professor of African American and Africana Studies Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, whose research areas include racial capitalism as well as prison abolition and feminist and queer politics.

Rather than praise Tulane for tackling the tough subject of white supremacy in the South, more than 500 students revolted in the comments section of the (now deleted) Instagram post announcing the event. Students insisted that the event was harmful and offensive and would advance white supremacy. Tulanes student government (in which I served one uneventful semester) released a statement calling the event "violent toward the experience and work of Black people" and demanding that it be canceled.

Tulane quickly caved to demands and indefinitely postponed the event in an apology posted on Instagram. In the statement, Tulane apologized for causing distress for many in our community and promised to incorporate [black, indigenous, and people of color] voices from our community in the next iteration of the event. Students seeking to cancel the discussion, however, were not satisfied with the apology, arguing that even including voices from people of color would do nothing to promote or influence an anti-racism atmosphere.

This raises the question: If speakers with resumes like Ball and Pelot-Hobbs advance white supremacy even when directly speaking against its horrors, then who can reasonably speak on the subject?

During my four years on campus, I organized over a dozen events, including a lecture featuring a leader in Hong Kongs protest movement, a discussion led by a North Korean defector and a Holocaust survivor, and an award-winning conference on criminal justice reform. I even started a student-led think tank to create further discussion around justice reform and other important causes.

Attendees at every single event I organized during my time at Tulane came from varying racial, economic, and ideological backgrounds. Thanks to my ability to speak freely, I was able to organize events I cared about, and students were able to discuss tough topics.

Tulane empowered me to take control of my education and engage with students, professors, and the New Orleans community through free expression. But the campus culture now demanded by student activists and seemingly agreed to by my alma mater would leave open discourse at Tulane precarious at best and seriously diminished at worst.

I graduated this May as a white Hispanic American, and I wonder whether I would be allowed to speak if invited to Tulane to discuss my work to advance criminal justice reform. Would my fathers personal experience as a man of color in the South give me the right to speak on campus? What about the work I have done to reform Louisianas broken justice system? Would these things be enough for the student government I served in to allow me to speak?

With todays campus culture, who knows?

The fact that these questions are raised at all is proof that my alma mater, which I love dearly, is dangerously close to following the national trend of chilling discourse on campus. Rather than advancing open discourse, which has been the catalyst for so much social change, Tulane risks capitulating to students who reject those principles entirely.

One of the greatest features of the American university has been the hospitable home it provides to radical open discussion and free speech. I hope this incident becomes a learning experience for Tulane and its students of what happens when those principles disappear.

Tulane still has much to do to make the university a better place for many students, particularly low-income students and students of color. Canceling speech cannot be the way forward, and it sets everyone back in their work to advance social progress. I would urge Tulane to host both speakers, and I would urge students to attend, ask tough questions, and bring their own speakers to campus. That is what made Tulane unique during my time there, and it would be a disservice to the student body if it gave up those values.

Marcus Maldonado is a recent graduate of Tulane University and founder of the Wave Center for Policy and Enterprise, Tulanes student-led think tank.

Excerpt from:

Universities won't defeat racism with censorship - Washington Examiner

Review: A new voice from Texas rips it but tests the censors – Associated Press

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Kolby Cooper, Vol. 2 (Combustion Music)

Kolby Cooper could add a fresh voice to country radio if he could only get past the censors.

The 21-year-old fire breather from the piney woods of East Texas offers relief from the parade of inauthentic junk laden with John Deere tractor references thats still way too pervasive these days.

Hes edgy, thats for sure.

On Vol. 2, a new five-song EP, Cooper doesnt take long to start the beat-down. One of the songs, 2 Words, begins with a 15-second banjo intro and then drops hard into a breakup song as emphatic as any you will ever hear. And the two words its built around are enough to take commercial radio off the table.

Thats probably OK with Cooper, who still lives in Bradford, Texas, not far from Palestine, a little farther from Dallas. He has the look of a guy who might pump your gas at one of those East Texas stations that still hasnt converted to pay-at-the-pump.

His music pulsates with the give-a-care vibe of someone still kicking dust off his jeans.

Coopers first EP, 2018s Vol. 1, was followed by his only full-length album, Good Ones Never Last, which helped make him a word-of-mouth sensation. His previously best-known breakup song, It Aint Me, registered more than eight million Spotify streams.

Yes, breakup songs are a specialty. But Cooper, who married early, says neither song is autobiographical.

I showed the song to my wife, he says. And she was like, Oh sure, thats a good song. But are we OK?

The answer was yes. And Cooper shows his range and depth on new song Cannonball, a ballad about commitment thats original in its own way.

Versatile and fearless, Cooper is the kind of voice that could redeem country music if only his songs can be cleared for airplay.

View post:

Review: A new voice from Texas rips it but tests the censors - Associated Press

BJP MP Tejaswi Surya To Take Up Complaints Of Facebook Censoring Pro-Hindu And Nationalist Voices – Swarajya

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29-year-old BJP MP from South Bangalore Tejaswi Surya has asked netizens to send him written complaints of Facebook allegedly censoring pro-Hindu and nationalist voices.

Surya said that many have complained about Facebook unfairly censoring many nationalist, pro-India or pro-Hindu voices and he as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT will take it up the matter in an appropriate forum.

This initiative by Surya was soon backed by Delhi BJP leader Kapil Mishra who alleged that there are "thousands of examples where Facebook has unfairly censored, suspended, stalled the reach of pro India, pro Hindu voices" and at the same time allowed the Islamist agenda to continue.

This step against Facebook comes about a year after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was summoned by an Anurag Thakur led parliamentary panel following allegations of Twitter's left-wing bias. The committee wanted to understand from Dorsey whether the social network is a "technology-driven platform or a content controlling platform".

Original post:

BJP MP Tejaswi Surya To Take Up Complaints Of Facebook Censoring Pro-Hindu And Nationalist Voices - Swarajya

Facebook’s Alleged Bias Towards BJP: The Media Leftists Are Not Asking For Transparency, They Want Control Over Newsfeeds – Swarajya

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The modern day publishing industry suffers from multiple power asymmetries. Publishers have lost control over distribution - nobody knows how the algorithms work on any of the major social media platforms. Publishers have also long since lost control over their online advertisement.

Now we hear that the cancel culture brigade wants to add to the powerlessness of publishers even more.

They seem to want control over what publishers and politicians can say on their social media channels, and they want only a select group of chosen individuals to decide what will be acceptable - transparency, well defined criteria and other best practises be damned.

They have sought to do this by cleverly insinuating that the individuals involved with content censorship at Facebook have been partisan in their decision making. Although reports suggest that many individuals at high levels in the technology giant have been actually connected with the Congress party, an allegation has been made that decision makers are not censoring hate content for fear of the BJP government.

Here is the thing. Anyone interested in a healthy democratic dialogue on social media would stay far away from making allegations that amount to saying 'they refused to take down content I disliked!'.

What would they ask if they were really interested in making Facebook's content oversight truly healthy?

First, they'd ask for Facebook to address the complete asymmetry Facebook enjoys with respect to content discoverability and distribution. There is no way for publishers, including politicians and opinion makers, to know that the content they produce and publish on Facebook receives equal treatment.

A simple change in Facebook's algorithms have the power to promote political ideologies, personalities, views - we're talking about being able to reach tens of millions of people in a day. During election periods, having such powers in your hand through an opaque algorithm is the ultimate undemocratic set-up.

Second, where unnamed sources have gone after one individual they should have asked that there be more clear rules, more transparent ways of exercising content censorship. Why not make the content censorship set up a multi-party arrangement?

Third, apropos of comments of politicians being censored or not censored - there is no reason why Facebook or any other social media platform cannot put all the censored information and the metadata for the post/content, in a public repository for everyone to see.

This will serve the purpose of transparency - I will know if the other party is being censored for the same set of standards that are applied to me.

This repository will not be part of the main feeds on Facebook so there is no harm done to public discourse.

There are many more ways of making social media platforms more democratic and open - these include more meaningful ways of sharing ad revenues, being more transparent about what algorithms are doing to our reading habits and so on.

But those crying about Facebook's alleged partisanship aren't talking about any of these ways to fix the problem.

All they seem to want is to appropriate the right to censor their ideological opponents, capture big tech's content filtering processes and continue with what they have been doing on mainstream media: shutting down other voices.

Originally posted here:

Facebook's Alleged Bias Towards BJP: The Media Leftists Are Not Asking For Transparency, They Want Control Over Newsfeeds - Swarajya

Review: Kolby Cooper — a new voice from Texas — rips it but tests the censors – Chicago Daily Herald

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Kolby Cooper, "Vol. 2" (Combustion Music)

Kolby Cooper could add a fresh voice to country radio -- if he could only get past the censors.

The 21-year-old fire breather from the piney woods of East Texas offers relief from the parade of inauthentic junk laden with John Deere tractor references that's still way too pervasive these days.

He's edgy, that's for sure.

On "Vol. 2," a new five-song EP, Cooper doesn't take long to start the beat-down. One of the songs, "2 Words," begins with a 15-second banjo intro and then drops hard into a breakup song as emphatic as any you will ever hear. And the two words it's built around are enough to take commercial radio off the table.

That's probably OK with Cooper, who still lives in Bradford, Texas, not far from Palestine, a little farther from Dallas. He has the look of a guy who might pump your gas at one of those East Texas stations that still hasn't converted to pay-at-the-pump.

His music pulsates with the give-a-care vibe of someone still kicking dust off his jeans.

Cooper's first EP, 2018's "Vol. 1," was followed by his only full-length album, "Good Ones Never Last," which helped make him a word-of-mouth sensation. His previously best-known breakup song, "It Ain't Me," registered more than eight million Spotify streams.

Yes, breakup songs are a specialty. But Cooper, who married early, says neither song is autobiographical.

"I showed the song to my wife," he says. "And she was like, 'Oh sure, that's a good song. But are we OK?'"

The answer was yes. And Cooper shows his range and depth on new song "Cannonball," a ballad about commitment that's original in its own way.

Versatile and fearless, Cooper is the kind of voice that could redeem country music -- if only his songs can be cleared for airplay.

See more here:

Review: Kolby Cooper -- a new voice from Texas -- rips it but tests the censors - Chicago Daily Herald