Matthew Stender, Jillian C. York: Sin in the time of Technology

Technology companies now hold an unprecedented ability to shape the world around us by limiting our ability to access certain content and by crafting proprietary algorithm that bring us our daily streams of content.

Matthew Stender, Jillian C. York

prerol music

Herald: Our next Talk will be tackling how
social media companies are creating a

global morality standard through content
regulations. This would be presented by

two persons standing here the digital
rights advocate Matthew Stender and the

writer and activist Jillian C. York. Please
give them a warm applause.

applause

Matthew: Hello everybody. I hope you all
had a great Congress. Thank you for being

here today. You know we're almost wrapped
up with the Congress but yeah we

appreciate you being here. My name is
Matthew Stender. I am a communications

strategist's creative director and digital
rights advocate focusing on privacy.

Social media censorship and Freedom of
Press and expression.

Jillian: And I am Jillian York and I work
at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I

work on privacy and free expression issues
as well as a few other things and I'm

based in Berlin. Thank you. For Berlin?
Awesome. Cool. Hope to see some of you

there. Great. So today we're gonna be
talking about sin in the time of

technology and what we mean by that is the
way in which corporations particularly

content platforms and social media
platforms are driving morality and our

perception of it. We've got three key
takeaways to start off with. The first is

that social media companies have an
unparalleled amount of influence over our

modern communications. This we know I
think this is probably something everyone

in this room can agree on. These companies
also play a huge role in shaping our

global outlook on morality and what
constitutes it. So the ways in which we

perceive different imagery different
speech is being increasingly defined by

the regulations that these platforms put
upon us on our daily activities on them.

And third they are entirely undemocratic.
They're beholden to shareholders and

governments but not at all to the public.
Not to me, not to you. Rarely do they

listen to us and when they do there has to
be a fairly exceptional mount of public

pressure on them. And so that's, that's
our starting point that's what we wanna

kick off with and I'll pass the mike to
Matthew.

M: So thinking about these three takeaways
I'm going to bring it to kind of top level

for a moment. To introduce an idea today
which some people have talked about but

the idea of the rise of the techno class.
So probably a lot of people in this room

have followed the negotiations, leaks in
part and then in full by WikiLeaks about

the Trans-Pacific Partnership the TPP what
some people have mentioned in this debate

is the idea of a corporate capture in a
world now in which that corporations are

becoming are maturing to this to the
extent in which they can now sue

governments that the multinational reach
of many corporations are larger than that.

The diplomatic reach of countries. And
with this social media platforms being

part of this that they, that these social
media companies now are going to have the

capacity to influence not only cultures
but people within cultures and how they

communicate with people inside their
culture and communicate globally. So as

activists and technologists I would like
to propose at least that we start thinking

about and beyond the product and service
offerings of today's social media

companies and start looking ahead to two -
five - ten years down the road in which

these companies may have social media
services and serve as media social media

service offerings which are
indistinguishable from today's ISPs and

telcos and other things. And this is
really to say that social media is moving

past the era of the walled garden into neo
empires. So one of the things that is on

the slide are some headlines about
different delivery mechanisms in which

that social media companies and also
people like Elon Musk are looking to roll

out an almost leapfrog if not completely
leapfrog the existing technologies of

Russia broadcasting fiberoptics these sort
of things. So we now are looking at a

world in which that Facebook is now gonna
have drones. Google is looking into

balloons and other people looking into low
earth orbit satellites to be able to

provide directly to the end consumer, to
the user, to the handset the content which

flows through these networks. So one of
the first things I believe we're gonna see

in this field is free basics. Facebook has
a service it was launched as Internet.org

and now it's been rebranded free basics
and why this is interesting is that while

in one hand free basis is a free service
that it's trying to get the people that

are not on the Internet now to use a
Facebook's window Facebook's window to the

world. It has maybe a couple dozen sites
that are accessible it runs over the data

networks for countries reliance the
telecommunications company in India is one

of the larger telcos but not the largest.
There's a lot of pressure that Facebook is

putting on the government of India right
now to be able to have the service offered

across the country. One of the ways that
this is problematic is because a limited

number of Web sites flow through this that
people that get exposed to free basic.

This might be their first time seeing the
Internet in some cases because an example

is interesting to think about is a lion
born into a zoo. Perhaps evolution and

other things may have this line dream
perhaps of running wild on the plains of

Africa but at the same time it will never
know that world Facebook free basic users

knowing Facebook's view to the window of
the Internet may not all jump over to a

full data package on their ISP. And many
people may be stuck in Facebook's window

to the world.

J: In other words we've reached an era
where these companies have as I've said

unprecedented control over our daily
communications both the information that

we can access and the speech and imagery
that we can express to the world and to

each other. So the postings and pages and
friend requests, the millions of

politically active users as well, have
helped to make Mark Zuckerberg and his

colleagues as well as the people at
Google, Twitter and all these other fine

companies extremely rich and yet we're
pushing back in this case. I've got a

great quote from Rebecca MacKinnon where
she refers to Facebook as Facebookistan

and I think that that is an apt example of
what we're looking at. These are

corporations but they're not beholden at
all to the public as we know. And instead

they've kind of turned into these quasi
dictatorships that dictate precisely how

we behave on them. I also wanted to throw
this one up to talk a little bit about the

global speech norm. This is from Ben
Wagner who's written a number of pieces on

this but who kind of coined the concept of
a global speech standard which is what

these companies have begun and are
increasingly imposing upon us. This global

speech standard is essentially catering to
everyone in the world trying to make every

user in every country and every government
happy. But as a result have kind of tamper

down free speech to this very basic level
that makes both the governments of let's

say the United States and Germany happy as
well as the governments of countries like

Saudi Arabia. Therefore we're looking at
really kind of the lowest common

denominator when it comes to sometimes
tone types of speech and this sort of flat

gray standard when it comes to others.

M: So Jillian just mentioned we have
countries in play. Facebook is another

organizations social media companies are
trying to pivot and play within an

international field but let's just take it
up for a moment a look at the scale and

scope and size of these social media
companies. So I just put some figures from

the Internet and with some latest census
information we have China 1.37 billion

people, India 1.25 billion people 2.2
billion individuals and practitioners of

Islam and Christianity. But now we have
Facebook with according to their

statistics 1.5 billion active monthly
users. Their statistics - I'm sure many

people would like to dispute these numbers
- but the same time with these platforms

are now large. I mean larger than - not
larger than some of religions - but

Facebook has more monthly active users
than China or India have citizens. So

we're not talking about - you know -
basement startups, we're now talking about

companies with the size and scale to be
able to really be influential in a larger

institutional way. So Magna Carta app the
U.S. Constitution the Declaration of Human

Rights the tree of masters the Bible the
Quran. These are time tested at least

longstanding principle documents. That's
how that place upon their constituents

whether it be citizens or spiritual
adherents a certain code of conduct.

Facebook, as Jillian mentioned, is
nondemocratic. Facebook's terms and

standards were written by a small group of
individuals with a few compelling

interests in mind. But we are now talking
about 1.5 billion people on a monthly

basis that are subservient to a Terms of
Service in which they had no input on.

Sort of pivot from there and bring it back
to spirituality why is this important.

Well spiritual morality has always been a
place for - for religion. Religion has a

monopoly on the soul. You could say, that
religion is a set of rules in which that

if you obey you are able to not go to hell
or heaven after an afterlife reincarnated

whatever the religious practice may be.
Civil morality is quite interesting in the

sense that the sovereign state as a top
level institution has the ability to put

into place a series of statutes and
regulations. The violation of which can

send you to jail. Another interesting note
is that the state is also, also has a

monopoly on the use of sanctioned
violence. Say that's the actors of

official actors of the states are able to
do things in which that the citizens

citizens of that state may not. And if we
take a look at this this concept of

digital morality I spoke about earlier
with services like free basic introducing

new individuals to the Internet well, by a
violation of the terms of service you can

be excluded from these massive global
networks. And really they, Facebook is

actually trying to create a if not a
monopoly a semi monopoly on global

connectivity. in a lot of ways. So what
drives Facebook and this is a few things.

One is a protection stick protectionistic
legal framework. Ok. The control of

copyright violations is something that a
lot of platforms stomped out pretty early.

They don't want to be sued by the IRA or
the MPAA. And so there was mechanisms in

which copyright, copyrighted material was
able to be taken on the platform. They

also or limit potential competition. And I
think this is quite interesting in the

sense that they have shown this in two
ways. One: They've boughten they've

purchased rival or potential competitors.
You see this with Instagram being bought

by Facebook. But Facebook has also
demonstrated the ability or willingness to

censor certain context, certain content.
tsu.co was a news social sites and

mentions and links to this platform were
deleted or not allowed on Facebook. So

even using Facebook as a platform to talk
about another platform was was not

allowed. And then a third component is the
operation on the global scale. It's only

the size of the company it's also about
the global reach. So if Facebook maintains

offices around the world, as other social
media companies do, they engage in public

diplomacy and they also offer aid in many
countries and many languages. So just to

take it to to companies like Facebook for
a moment really an economics you have the

traditional multinationals the 20th
century Coca Cola McDonald's. The end

user. The end goal the goal for the end
user of these products was consumption.

This is changing now. Facebook is looking
to capture more and more parts of the

supply chain. And as a this may be as a
service provider as a content moderator

and responsible for negotiating and
educating the content disputes. At the end

of the day that users are really the
product. It's not for us Facebook users

the platform it's really for advertisers.
We take a hierarchy of the platform where

the corporation advertisers and then users
kind of at the fringes.

J: So let's get into the nitty gritty a
little bit about what content moderation

on these platforms actually looks like. So
I've put up two headlines from Adrian Chan

a journalist who wrote these for Gawker
and wired respectively. They're both a

couple of years old. But what he did was
he looked into he investigated who was

moderating the content on these platforms
and what he found and accused these

companies out of is outsourcing the
content moderation to low paid workers in

developing countries. In this case he
found the first article I think Morocco

was the country and I'm gonna show a slide
from that a bit of what those content

moderators worked with. And the second
article talked a lot about the use of

workers in the Philippines for this
purpose. We know that these workers are

probably low paid. We know that they're
given very very minimal amount of a

minimal timeframe to look at the content
that they're being presented. So here's

how it basically works across platforms
with small differences. I post something

and I'll show you some great examples of
things they posted later. I post something

and if I post it to my friends only, my
friends can then report it to the company.

If I post it publicly anybody who can see
it or who's a user of the product can

report it to the company. Once a piece of
content is reported a content moderator

then looks at it and within that very
small time frame we're talking half a

second to two seconds probably based on
the investigative research that's been

done by a number of people they have to
decide if this content fits the terms of

service or not. Now most of these
companies have a legalistic terms of

service as well as a set of community
guidelines or community standards which

are clear to the user but they're still
often very vague. And so I wanna get into

a couple of examples that show that. This
is just this slide is the one of the

examples that I gave. You can't see it
very well, so I won't leave it up for too

long. But that was what content moderators
at this outsource company oDesk were

allegedly using to moderate content on
Facebook. This next photo contains nudity.

So I think everyone probably knows who
this is and has seen this photo. Yes? No?

OK. This is Kim Kardashian and this photo
allegedly broke the Internet. It was a

photo taken for paper magazine. It was
posted widely on the web and it was seen

by many many people. Now this photograph
definitely violates Facebook's terms of

service. Buuut Kim Kardashian's really
famous and makes a lot of money. So in

most instances as far as I can tell this
photo was totally fine on Facebook. Now

let's talk about those rules a little bit.
Facebook says that they restrict nudity

unless it is art. So they do make an
exception for art which may be why they

allowed that image of Kim Kardashian's
behind to stay up. Art is defined by the

individual. And yet at the same time that
you know they make clear that that's let's

say a photograph of Michelangelo's David
or a photograph of another piece of art in

a museum would be perfectly acceptable
whereas you know you're sort of average

nudity maybe probably is not going to be
allowed to remain on the platform. They

also note that they restrict the display
of nudity to ensure that their global..

because their global community may be
sensitive to this type of content

particularly because of their cultural
background or age. So this is Facebook in

their community standards telling you
explicitly that they are toning down free

speech to make everyone happy. This is
another photograph. Germans are

particularly I'm interested. Is everyone
familiar with the show the Golden Girls?

OK. Quite a few. So you might recognize
her she was Dorothea on the Golden Girls

this is the actress Bea Arthur and this is
from a painting from 1991 by John Curran

of her. It's unclear whether or not she
sat for the painting. It's a wonderful

image, it's beautiful it's very beautiful
portrait of her. But I posted it on

Facebook several times in a week. I
encouraged my friends to report it. And in

fact Facebook found this to not be art.
Sorry. Another image this is by an artist

a Canadian artist called Rupi Kaur. She
posted a series of images in which she was

menstruating, she was trying to
essentially describe the normal the

normality of this. The fact that this is
something that all women go through. Most

women go through. And as a result
Instagram denied. Unclear on the reasons,

they told her that had violated the terms
of service but weren't exactly clear as to

why. And finally this is another one. This
is by an artist friend of mine, I'm afraid

that I have completely blanked on who did
this particular piece, but what it was is:

They took famous works of nude art and had
sex workers pose in the same poses as the

pieces of art. I thought it was a really
cool project but Google Plus did not find

that to be a really cool project. And
because of their guidelines on nudity they

banned it. This is a cat. Just want to
make sure you're awake. It was totally

allowed. So in addition to the problems of
content moderation I'm gonna go ahead and

say that we also have a major diversity
problem at these companies. These

statistics are facts these are from all of
these companies themselves. They put out

diversity reports recently or as I like to
call them diversity reports and they show

that. So the statistics are a little bit
different because they only capture data

on ethnicity or nationality in their US
offices just because of how those

standards are sort of odd all over the
world. So the first stats referred to

their global staff. The second ones in
each line refer to their U.S. staff but as

you can see these companies are largely
made of white men which is probably not

surprising but it is a problem. Now why is
that a problem? Particularly when you're

talking about policy teams the people who
build policies and regulations have an

inherent bias. We all have an inherent
bias. But what we've seen in this is

really a bias of sort of the American
style of prudeness. Nudity is not allowed

but violence extreme violence as long as
it's fictional is totally OK. And that's

generally how these platforms operate. And
so I think that when we ensure that there

is diversity in the teams creating both
our tools our technology and our policies,

then we can ensure that diverse world
views are brought into those that creation

process and that the policies are
therefore more just. So what can we do

about this problem? As consumers as
technologists as activists as whomever you

might identify as. In the first one I
think a lot of the technologists are gonna

agree with: Develop decentralized
networks. We need to work toward that

ideal because these companies are not
getting any smaller. We're not gonna

necessarily go out and say that they're
too big to fail but they are massive and

as Matthew noted earlier they're buying up
properties all over the place and making

sure that they do have control over our
speech. The second thing is to push for

greater transparency around terms of
service takedowns. Now I'm not a huge fan

of transparency for the sake of
transparency. I think that these, you

know, these companies have been putting
out transparency reports for a long time

that show what countries ask them to take
down content or hand over user data. But

we've seen those transparency reports to
be incredibly flawed already. And so in

pushing for greater transparency around
terms of service take downs that's only a

first step. The third thing is, we need to
demand that these companies adhere to

global speech standards. We already have
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I don't understand why we need companies
to develop their own bespoke rules. And so

by..
applause

And so by demanding that companies adhere
to global speech standards we can ensure

that these are places of free expression
because it is unrealistic to just tell

people to get off Facebook. I can't tell
you how many times in the tech community

over the years I've heard people say well
if you don't like it just leave. That's

not a realistic option for many people
around the world and I think we all know

that deep down.
applause

Thank you. And so the other thing I would
say though is that public pressure works.

We saw last year with Facebook's real name
policy there are a number of drag

performers in the San Francisco Bay Area
who were kicked off the platform because

they were using their performance - their
drag names - which is a completely

legitimate thing to do just as folks have
hacker names or other pseudonyms. But

those folks pushed back. They formed a
coalition and they got Facebook to change

a little bit. It's not completely there
yet but they're making progress and I'm

hoping that this goes well. And then the
last thing is and this is totally a pitch

thrown right out there: Support projects
like ours I'm gonna throw to Matthew to

talk about onlinecensorship.org and
another project done by the excellent

Rebecca MacKinnon called
ranking digital rights.

M: So just a little bit of thinking
outside the box onlinecensorship.org is a

platform that's recently launched. Users
can go onto the platform and submit a

small questionnaire if their content has
been taken down by the platforms. Why we

think this is exciting is because right
now as we mentioned that transparency

reports are fundamentally flawed. We are
looking to crowdsource information about

the ways in which the social media
companies, six social media companies, are

moderating and taking down content because
we can't know exactly what kind of

accountability and transparency in real
time. We're hoping to be able to find

trends both across the kind of conduct has
been taking down, geographic trends, news

related trends within sort of
self-reported content takedown. But it's

platforms like these that I think that
hopefully will begin to spring up in

response for the community to be able to
put tools in place that people can be a

part of the poor porting
and Transparency Initiative.

J: We launched about a month ago and were
hoping to put out our first set of reports

around March. And finally I just want to
close with one more quote before we slip

into Q&A and that is just to save it. It's
reasonable that we press Facebook on these

questions of public responsibility, while
also acknowledging that Facebook cannot be

all things to all people. We can demand
that their design decisions and user

policies standard for review explicit
thoughtful and open to public

deliberation. But - and this is the most
important part in my view - the choices that

Facebook makes in their design and in
their policies or value judgments. This is

political and I know you've heard that in
a lot of talk. So have I. But I think we

can't, we cannot forget that this is all
political and we have to address it as

such. And for someone if that means you
know quitting the platform thats fine too.

But I think that we should still
understand that our friends our relatives

our families are using these platforms and
that we do owe it to everybody to make

them a better place for free expression
and privacy. Thank you.

applause

Herald: Thank you so much. So please now
we have a section of Q&A for anyone who

has a question please use one of the mikes
on the site's. And I think we have a

question from one of our viewers? No. OK.
Please proceed numer one.

Mike 1: You just addressed that I am sort
of especially after listening to your talk

I'm sort of on the verge of quitting
Facebook or starting to I don't know.

applause
Yeah, I mean and I agree it's a hard

decision. I've been on Facebook for I
think six years now and it is a dispute

for me myself. So, I'm in this very
strange position. And now I have to kind

of decide what to do. Are there any.. is
there any help for me out there to tell me

what would be.. I don't know what.. that
takes my state and helps me in deciding..

I don't know. It's strange.

J: That's such a hard question. I mean
I'm.. I'll put on my privacy hat for just

a second and say what I would say to
people when they're making that

consideration from a privacy view point
because they do think that the

implications of privacy on these platforms
is often much more severe than those of

speech. But this is what I do. So in that
case you know I think it's really about

understanding your threat model of
understanding what sort of threat you're

under when it comes to you know the data
collection that these companies are

undertaking as well as the censorship of
course. But I think it really is a

personal decision and I I'm sure that
there are - you know - there are great

resources out there around digital
security and around thinking through those

thread model processes and perhaps that
could be of help to you for that. If you

want to add?
M: No I mean I think it's, it's one of

these big toss ups like this is a system
in which that many people are connected

through even sometimes e-mail addresses
rollover and Facebook. And so I think it's

the opportunity cost by leaving a
platform. What do you have to lose, what

do you have to gain. But it's also
important remember that well the snapshot

we see of Facebook now it's not gonna get
any it's probably not gonna get better.

It's probably gonna be more invasive and
in coming into different parts of our

lives so I think from the security and
privacy aspect it's really just up to the

individual.
Mike 1: Short follow up - if I am allowed

to - I don't see the.. the main point for
me is not my personal implications so I am

quite aware that Facebook is a bad thing
and I can leave it, but I'm sort of

thinking about it's way past the point
where we can decide on our own and decide:

OK, is it good for me or is it good for my
friend or is it good for my mom or for my

dad or whatever? We have to think about:
Is Facebook as such for society is a good

thing - as you are addressing. So I think
we have to drive this decision making from

one person to a lot, lot, lot of persons.
J: I agree and I'll note. What we're

talking about..
applause

- I agree. What we're talking about in the
project that we work on together is a

small piece of the broader issue and I
agree that this needs to be tackled from

many angles.
Herald: Ok, we have a question from one of

our viewers on the Internet, please.
Signal Angel: Yeah, one of the questions

from the internet is: Aren't the
moderators the real problem who bann

everything which they don't really like
rather than the providers of the service?

Herald: Can you please repeat that?
Signal Angel: The question was if the

moderators sometimes volunteers aren't the
problem because they bann everything that

they don't like rather than the providers
of a certain service?

J: Ahm, no I mean I would say that the
content moderators.. we don't know who

they are, so that's part of the issue, as
we don't know and I've - you know - I've

heard many allegations over the years when
certain content's been taken down in a

certain local or cultural context
particularly in the Arab world. I've heard

the accusation that like oh those content
moderators are pro Sisi the dictator in

Egypt or whatever. I'm not sure how much
merit that holds because like I said we

don't know who they are. But I would say
is that they're not.. it doesn't feel like

they're given the resources to do their
jobs well, so even if they were the best

most neutral people on earth they're given
very little time probably very little

money and not a whole lot of resources to
work with in making those determinations.

Herald: Thank you. We take a question from
Mike 3 please.

Mike 3: Test, test. OK. First off, thank
you so much for the talk. And I just have

a basic question. So it seems logical that
Facebook is trying to put out this mantra

of protect the children. I can kind of get
behind that. And it also seems based on

the fact that they have the "real names
policy" that they would also expect you to

put in a real legal age. So if they're
trying to censor things like nudity: Why

couldn't they simply use things like age
as criteria to protect children from

nudity. While letting everyone else who is
above the legal age make their own

decision?
J: You wanna take that?

M: I think it's a few factors one: It's I
guess on the technical side what on the

technical side, what constitutes nudity.
And in a process way if it does get

flagged as when something is flagged do
you have a channel or two boxes to say

what sort of content I could use a system
in which that content flagged as nudity

gets referred to a special nudity
moderator and then the moderator says:

"Yes is nudity" then filter all less than
- you know - legal age or whatever age.

But I think it's part of a broader more
systematic approach by Facebook. It's the

broad strokes. It's really kind of
dictating this digital baseline this

digital morality baseline and we're
saying: "No". Anybody in the world cannot

see this. These are our hard lines and it
doesn't matter what age you are where you

reside. This is the box in which we are
placing you in and content that falls

outside of this box for anybody,
regardless of age or origin, that these

this is what we say you can see and
anything that falls out that you risk

having your account suspended. So I think
it's a mechanism of control.

Herald: Thank you so much. I think
unfortunately we're run out of time for

questions. I would like to apologize for
everyone who's standing maybe you have

time to discuss that afterwards. Thank you
everyone and thank you.

applause

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