Mediaboss Marketing

Google has just announced that it is establishing new guidelines to determine whichcontent is ineligible to receive advertising dollars on its YouTube platform. More than any of the otherdebatesabout fake news and bias in media, this kind of financial muscle (censorship) is whats really going to haveimpact on the content business in the long-term. And, at the moment, the real leverage is held by the very small number ofgatekeepers which control large scale distribution and major ad dollars on the internetchief among them Google and Facebook.

YouTubesnew clarificationwill prevent ad money from being allocated to content in which family entertainment characters (think Mickey Mouse)are shown engaging in violent, sexual,or otherwise inappropriate behavior. Hard to argue with that one, though some satirical news outlets might still ask how YouTubes algorithm can really determine context and nuance.

The updated guidelines also take cash away from content that isgratuitously incendiary, inflammatory, or demeaning. Specifically, no more money for videos that are gratuitously disrespectful or language that shames or insults an individual or group. Imagine applying that test to the mainstream political debate. Basically, a good portion of cable news, talk radio, and political punditry would be un-monetizable.

This might translate into defunding videos from CNN or The Young Turks in which pundits call President Trump despicable and disgusting and all sorts of other things which are undeniably hateful.On the other side, imagine if youre a hardcore member of the alt rightand the incendiary voices of Alex Jones or Glenn Beck are financially censored?

So who actually makes these decisions on what is acceptable, or rather how to program the algorithm of financial acceptability? Is it some crusty Capital J journalism professor hired as a consultant? Perhaps some actual practicing journalists? Or maybe a panel of voices from different economic backgrounds, geographies, and intellectual viewpoints as well as the more conventional definition of diversity including varying racial, ethnic, and gender make-ups?

No, not really. Its most often some well educated, perhaps well intentioned, Silicon Valley executive who has climbed thecorporate ladder enough to be trusted, or saddled, with this sort of issue, which is the opposite of what a tech company actually wants to be handling.

Enter the product manager.

While its not possible for us to cover every video scenario, we hope this additional information will provide you with more insight into the types of content that brands have told us they dont want to advertise against and help you to make more informed content decisions, VP of Product Management Ariel Bardinwrote in the blog post directed at publishers who choose to let YouTube sell their ad inventory in return for a cut of the proceeds. According to LinkedIn, Bardin is a Stanford and USC grad who has been at Google for the last 13 years working inAdwords, Payments, and now YouTube.Not the usual resume for a key arbiter of the national conversation.

Perhaps itsa good thing after all that its next to impossible for large news brands to earn enough money on YouTube to meaningfully sustaintheir businesses. But thats not the case for smaller upstarts and individuals who may well havecontent which is no more or less inflammatory than the stuff which gets slung around on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News.

Moreover, these same issues of objectionable content and the questions about the real value and placement of ad dollars have all existedfor adecade or more. Google is just now reacting to the howling of a bunch of advertisers.Companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, The BBC, The Guardian, Channel 4, Toyota, McDonalds, and even the British Government allwithdrew advertsfrom Google-owned sites, including YouTube, claiming tobe deeply concerned about their ads appearing alongside content on YouTube promoting hate.

In this case, the big brands, and the agencies that manage their ad spend, saw an opportunity for some leverage. If youre a big consumer brand and you want audience reach thats going to move the needle, Google and Facebook are currently capturing most of your dollars, so why not goose them a bit when you have the chance? Certainly they are entitled to allocate their marketing dollars as they see fit.

The bigger issue here is the advent of a truth algorithm. Thats not what Google says its doing. But in the end its the money that matters.

Steve Alperin is the CEO of DSA Digital Holdings

View post:
Youtube's Financial Censorship: the 'Product Manager' as Ultimate ... - Heat Street

(CNN)Many in the United States, including the President, are likely to welcome British Prime Minister Theresa May's suggestion that it is time to place restrictions on "safe space" Internet websites, such as Facebook and Google, that allegedly allow terrorist ideology to "breed."

Such a policy in the United States would clearly violate the First Amendment's sacred guarantee of free expression -- the very same principle that helped spur the American Revolution against British tyranny. This core American belief should not be tossed aside, even in the face of terrifying ISIS attacks.

The fight against "Islamist extremism" does require continued and even more aggressive military action in Great Britain and throughout the world, but that action should not take the form of restrictions on free political speech.

Such calls for censorship always emerge when terrorists, foreign and domestic, preach and kill in pursuit of their hateful ideology. Ironically the speech requiring the strongest defense is often the most hateful speech of all. But in these cases, those who believe in freedom must stand even more firmly. Otherwise all political expression will be in danger of censorship, depending on who runs the government at any point in time.

Defending hateful speech may appear to be a crazy academic or legal position until we look at the "slippery slope" toward fascist or socialist totalitarianism created when we adopt our own special bans on the free speech of others. Soon the ideological radicals are calling for their own "safe spaces" and censorship of what they define as "hate speech."

Those who oppose abortion as murder might seek to ban speech that advocates such "killings." "Right to choose" advocates on the other side of the argument might seek to ban anti-abortion talk as a form of gender-based discrimination. In the end, the free speech rights of all Americans would be determined by the ideological flavor of the party in power.

Once the censorship of political expression begins, everybody wants to impose his or her own particular definition of religious propriety, discrimination and political correctness. Opponents of the current majority view are then intimidated into silence by law and by the aggressively expressed moral or intellectual superiority of the majority. We are already seeing a lot of this on American college campuses.

UK PM raises terror threat level to critical 02:42

May's proposed Web regulation as well could lead to government regulation of the permissible parameters of Muslim faith discussions online. Those with "radical" tendencies beware. But what defines "radical" in the world of religion? Should the belief in Sharia law be banned as antithetical to the fundamental view that all religions are free to practice in a free secular democracy?

Does the advocacy of one of the diverse styles of Muslim female head-covering constitute a form of hateful gender-based discrimination that should be banned? Would the same ban apply to female head-covering by Roman Catholic women attending church on Sunday? This is where the "slippery slope" of speech censorship leads.

The nation's high court confirmed an important free speech doctrine that only "fighting words" can legitimately be banned without violating the First Amendment and that even the display of a Nazi swastika in a village occupied by numerous Holocaust survivors is permitted under the US Constitution. This forcefully confirmed prior precedent that banned speech must be akin to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

See British PM's full remarks on terror attack 08:00

In an age where overly sensitive college students and their supportive professors are seeking to ban unpopular speakers who advocate what they define as improper and "hateful speech," the Skokie case deserves to be added to the required reading list at American universities. There should be no "safe space" protection from free speech at any public forum in America, including college campuses and the Internet.

Intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities have the right to review and monitor public Internet postings that suggest a direct link to ISIS' terror-related activities. Such sites may actually be helpful in locating and destroying ISIS terror cells.

If probable cause is established by the content of such postings, US law already provides the mechanism to follow up with a court-sanctioned search warrant and the arrest of a suspected conspirator.

What we do not need is an abridgment of our freedom of speech in a misguided effort to ensure the nation's security. We already fought one revolution to establish and preserve our First Amendment right, and we don't need another, prompted by the latest brand of barbarism and insanity emanating from the Middle East.

Link:
Callan: We can't censor our way out of terrorism (Opinion) - CNN.com - CNN International

Tony Overman, The Olympian via AP Images

Students leave Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., last week after a threat prompted officials to evacuate the campus.

The turmoil at Evergreen State College where a professor is facing accusations of racism and demands for his resignation because he said white students should not be asked to leave campus for a day is only the most recent example of free-speech controversies roiling colleges across the country.

It is an illusion for minority groups to believe that they can censor the speech of others today without having their own expression muzzled tomorrow.

Free speech faces many challenges at colleges and universities these days, but none greater than the growing skepticism of some students especially those who feel particularly marginalized and disempowered in our society. Vocal elements of these groups increasingly question what the Supreme Court has celebrated as the countrys profound commitment to "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" public discourse.

Campaigns led by these students to silence and to exclude from their campuses speakers whose views they find offensive and odious has triggered a serious politicization of the principle of free speech, with "progressive" and minority students tending to condemn freedom of speech, and political conservatives suddenly waving the flag of free expression. This politicization of a fundamental right would be bad enough if it were to stay on campuses, but, as Evergreen State demonstrates, controversies at higher-education institutions are driving the polarization of free speech nationwide. It also poses a special danger to the interests of those very same minority students because, in the long run, it is they who most need the vibrant protection of freedom of speech as an essential and powerful weapon in our continuing struggle for equality.

It was not always this way. The civil-rights movement of the 1960s, for example, energetically embraced the principle of free speech. In April 1968 in Memphis, in the last speech he gave before he was murdered, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. provided a ringing endorsement of the central importance of the First Amendment for the civil-rights movement, when he declared that the freedom of speech is a central guarantee of "the greatness of America."

In a similar vein, the womens movement and the gay-rights movement were both made possible by the ability of courageous advocates for equality to challenge the accepted wisdom, to advance new ideas and understandings, and to shift the expectations and beliefs of countless Americans. Without a fierce commitment to freedom of speech, such progress would never have been possible.

Yet today, minority students and their supporters too often see free speech as the enemy. It is certainly understandable that they see certain speakers and certain ideas as offensive and odious. It is certainly understandable that they would be tempted to want to silence speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley, Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna, and Charles Murray at Middlebury.

But it is also understandable that believers in creationism would want to silence supporters of Darwin in the 19th century, that supporters of the United States entry into World War I would want to silence critics of the war and the draft, that supporters of the belief that "a womans place is in the home" would want to silence supporters of the womens-rights movement, and that supporters of the view that homosexuality is sinful and immoral would want to silence supporters of the gay-rights movement.

Wanting to censor those whose views one finds odious and offensive is understandable. Actually silencing them is dangerous, though, because censorship is a two-way street. It is an illusion for minority groups to believe that they can censor the speech of others today without having their own expression muzzled tomorrow.

When students last year were asked in a Gallup survey sponsored by the Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute if they thought colleges and universities should restrict the expression of "political views that are upsetting or offensive to certain groups," 24 percent of white respondents and 41 percent of African-American respondents said "yes." But as Dr. King understood, a fierce commitment to freedom of speech is most important to those who lack political power.

Even from a short-term perspective, efforts by minority groups to censor the expression of offensive and odious speech often backfires, because it makes those they oppose into ever-more famous martyrs, giving them larger audiences and growing book sales. Little has helped the brand of the likes of Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos more than their exclusion from speaking on college campuses.

Although censoring others may appear to be a courageous sign of strength, it is actually an indication of weakness. Those who resort to censorship do so in no small part because they lack confidence that they can compete effectively with the ideas of their opposition. Allowing others to speak and then challenging them in a forthright and open manner with more persuasive ideas is the way to win in the long-term. It was for this reason that Dr. King in the speech later known as "Ive Been to the Mountaintop" said, "We arent engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody." Rather, he said, "we are going on."

As President Barack Obama observed in a commencement address at Howard University last spring, No matter how much you might disagree with certain speakers, "dont try to shut them down. Let them talk, but have the confidence to challenge them ... If the other side has a point, learn from them. If theyre wrong, rebut them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism" and stupidity "at every stage of your life."

It is through debate, argument, and courage not censorship that truth will win out.

Jeffrey Herbst, a former president of Colgate University, is president and chief executive officer of the Newseum. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

See the rest here:
The New Censorship on Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)

Facebook moderators have just seconds to decide whether to delete content. The company said the decision had been made in error. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Facebook censored a group of supporters of Chechen independence for violating its community standards barring organizations engaged in terrorist activity or organized criminal activity, the latest example of the social network mistakenly censoring government dissidents.

The Facebook group, Independence for Chechnya!, was permanently deleted by Facebook in late May, according to the group administrator, an Estonian human rights activist who asked to be identified by her initials, MP. She said she was shocked when she received a message from Facebook informing her of the deletion. We do not support terror, MP said. We support [a] political[ly] legal way for returning Chechen independence.

After the Guardian contacted Facebook about the group, it was reinstated. A company spokesperson said that the deletion had been made in error and pointed out that with millions of reports each week, the company sometimes gets things wrong.

The case is just the most recent example of how Facebooks mission of creating a more open and connected world can be compromised by its gargantuan task of policing billions of pieces of content.

In recent weeks, the company has censored a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for publishing a series of posts alleging corruption by Maltese politicians and an abortion rights organization for violating its policy against the promotion or encouragement of drug use. In all of those cases, Facebook reversed its decisions after it was contacted by the Guardian.

Facebook is also facing complaints from critics who argue the network is not censorious enough and is failing to stamp-out extremist or abusive content.

The Chechen independence group, which had about 6,000 members, had existed for almost a decade and was originally created by a resident of Chechnya, according to MP, who said she took over administration of the group after the original administrator was forced into hiding due to threats to his relatives. The group is supportive of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, an unrecognized government consisting of exiled leaders from the wars for independence.

While some Chechen separatist groups, such as the Caucasian Emirate, are considered terrorist organizations by the US government, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is not. Indeed, the group is specifically listed as not violating in a list of terrorist groups that the Guardian reviewed as part of the Facebook Files. One Facebook moderator told the Guardian that content reviewers have less than 10 seconds to make a decision about whether content should be censored or not, making the careful policing of extremist content a mission impossible.

MP said that her group was used to spread news about what Chechens really want and how they think because there is no real free media in Russia. My friends and me, we wanted to give the Chechen point of view.

Its a modest but difficult goal: press freedom is tenuous in Russia as a whole, and basically non-existent in Chechnya, a Russian republic ruled with an iron first by Ramzan Kadyrov.

Local media works according to one principle: Do not make Kadyrov angry, an anonymous Chechen journalist wrote in the Guardian last year. Today, I do not know a single journalist here who would agree to work on a story that was anything other than positive about life in post-war Chechnya.

Kadyrov was selected to lead Chechnya by Vladmir Putin, and he has been linked to the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemstov and accused of various human rights violations, including the reported detention and torture of hundreds of gay men.

The Chechen leader has a particularly authoritarian attitude toward social media. He enthusiastically documents his lifestyle to his 2.7m followers on Instagram, while retaliating harshly against Chechens who voice even mild dissent on social networks. A favored tactic is public humiliation forcing those who wrote negative comments to appear on local television to renounce their views and apologize.

While the Chechen group has been restored, the case raises concerns for press freedom advocates about how Facebook is wielding its power to censor. Not every group of dissidents will catch the attention of a news organization or advocacy group, said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of free-speech advocacy group PEN America, and that seems to be a much more reliable means of redress than Facebooks official system for appealing censorship decisions.

If that dissident group doesnt have the channels or access to power to get through to Facebook at a higher level, they may just find themselves silenced, said Nossel. What is necessary is a more accessible, transparent, timely process of individual appeal and the provision of rationale that make this incredibly powerful hand that Facebook and other platforms wield something that is more understandable and can be a subject of public debate.

Read more:
Facebook blocks Chechnya activist page in latest case of wrongful censorship - The Guardian

Andy Rain/EPA/NewscomYou'd think Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself was the driver of the van that plowed into pedestrians on London Bridge Saturday, the way U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is talking about the attack. He isn't, but everybody across the world, not just in the United Kingdom, needs to pay close attention to how May wants to respond to the assault.

May believes the problem is you and your silly insistence that you be permitted to speak your mind and to look at whatever you want on the internet. And she means to stop you. And her attitude toward government control of internet speech is shared by President Donald Trump (and Hillary Clinton), so what she's trying to sell isn't isolated to her own citizenry.

In a speech in the wake of this weekend's attack, May called flat-out for government authority to censor and control what people can see and access on the internet:

We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breedyet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements to regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.

Note that May appears to be trying to narrowly pitch a regulatory regime that focuses entirely on censoring speech by terrorists. One might argue that even America's First Amendment would not protect such speech, since such communications involve planning violence against others.

But May and the Tories really want to propose much broader censorship of the internet, and they know it. May is using fear of terrorism to sell government control over private online speech. The Tories' manifesto for the upcoming election makes it pretty clear they're looking to control communication on the internet in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with fighting terrorism. BuzzFeed took note:

The proposalsdotted around the manifesto documentare varied. There are many measures designed to make it easier to do business online but it's a different, more social conservative approach when it comes to social networks.

Legislation would be introduced to protect the public from abuse and offensive material online, while everyone would have the right to wipe material that was posted when they were under 18. Internet companies would also be asked to help promote counter-extremism narrativespotentially echoing the government's Prevent programme. There would be new rules requiring companies to make it ever harder for people to access pornography and violent images, with all content creators forced to justify their policies to the government.

The manifesto doesn't seem to acknowledge a difference between speech and activity, Buzzfeed adds:

"It should be as unacceptable to bully online as it is in the playground, as difficult to groom a young child on the internet as it is in a community, as hard for children to access violent and degrading pornography online as it is in the high street, and as difficult to commit a crime digitally as it is physically."

New laws will be introduced to implement these rules, forcing internet companies such as Facebook to abide by the rulings of a regulator or face sanctions: "We will introduce a sanctions regime to ensure compliance, giving regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies that fail in their legal duties, and to order the removal of content where it clearly breaches UK law."

The United Kingdom already has some very heavy content-based censorship of pornography that presumes to police what sorts of sexual fantasies are acceptable among its populace. Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown has written repeatedly about the British government's nannying tendencies in trying suppress pornography.

In a manner similar to this censorship push, May and the British government sold the Investigatory Powers Actalso known as the Snooper's Charterto the public as a mechanism to fight terrorism. But the massive legislation, now in place as law, actually demands that internet companies store users' online data to investigate all sorts of activities that have nothing to do with terrorism at all.

The European Union is also hammering out regulations that would require social media companies to censor their services. But the E.U. plan is currently much more limited than what the ruling party in the U.K. is demanding. The European Union wants to force companies only to delete videos that contain hate speech or incitements to violence.

So be warned: This isn't even a slippery-slope risk that a government that claims the authority to censor terrorist communications might broaden that scope to other areas. May and her government already want those broader powers. They're just using the fear of terrorism to sell the idea.

Link:
Theresa May's Call for Internet Censorship Isn't Limited to Fighting Terrorism - Reason (blog)