Content moderation

Facebook Mods Sign Letter Protesting Zuckerberg’s Stance on Trump Threats, Conspiracy Theories

A group of Facebook moderators has joined many of the firm’s staff in calling out CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his bullshit refusal to take actions against posts by Donald Trump that clearly violate its rules, the Guardian reported on Monday. Per the Guardian, the moderators—who work for the company as part of its army of…

Social Media Tom McKay

France to Platforms: Remove Terrorism and Pedophilia-Related Content in One Hour or Else

The nation of France has approved a new law that will force tech giants to delete terrorism and pedophilia-related content from sites in as little as an hour or be exposed to fines that could total up to four percent of global revenue, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Under the law, which also set up a…

Social Media Tom McKay

Facebook Announces Members of Its Oversight Board, Says Its Decisions Will be ‘Binding’

Since its inception, Facebook has been ruled more or less like an autocracy, with its majority shareholder, who also happens to be CEO, reigning supreme. As Facebook chronicler Steven Levy wrote in Wired earlier this year: “At Facebook, Zuck’s word is law.” But after 16 years of absolute authority, Mark Zuckerberg will soon see some…

Tech Policy Dell Cameron

YouTube’s Plan to Stop Recommending Conspiracy Theory Videos Is Actually Working

The YouTube algorithm is responsible for many a video-viewing rabbit hole—one that critics have pointed to as an effective digital megaphone for spreading wonky conspiracy theories. In January 2019, however, YouTube announced it would begin cracking down on “borderline content” in its recommendations. Well, a new study suggests that YouTube’s efforts have actually yielded some…

Tech News Victoria Song

Britain Appoints Content Cops for Social Media

Social media is a content minefield, and Britain’s had it. Today, the British government announced it will appoint its media watchdog Ofcom as a regulator for social media content in a bid to rein in platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, among others. The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport says the…

Tech News Victoria Song

YouTube’s Content Moderators Are Asked to Contractually Acknowledge the Job Can Give Them PTSD

The contractors charged with keeping YouTube clean from the vilest forms of content that surface on the platform are reportedly being coerced to sign agreements acknowledging that the job could have a severe impact on their mental health, seemingly making any job-related fallout the responsibility of those workers rather than the responsibility of Google or…

Tech News Catie Keck

YouTube Aims to Match Advertisers with ‘Edgier’ Content

YouTube’s experimenting with matching subject-appropriate advertising with YouTubers whose videos may not fit the bill of “family friendly content” according to the platform’s moderation policies. While YouTube’s (largely ineffective) rules are designed to weed out depictions of violence, hate speech, and extremist content, some creators argue these policies are too broad since they also flag,…

Tech News Alyse Stanley

Leaked Zuckerberg Audio Reveals Facebook’s Plan to Sue the U.S. Government If Elizabeth Warren Tries to Break Up Big Tech

Mark Zuckerberg is fully prepared to sue the federal government if someone like Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tries to break up Facebook into smaller companies, according to audio recordings obtained by the Verge. Warren has made breaking up Big Tech a signature promise of her presidential campaign. The audio recordings, which were…

Social Media Matt Novak

Facebook Has Banked Nearly $1.6 Million From SPLC-Designated Hate Groups Since May 2018

Facebook claims to be doing a lot to fight hate speech. But Facebook has also cashed nearly $1.6 million in ad money from organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center between May 2018 and Sept. 17, 2019, according to a Wednesday report by Sludge. The SPLC is considered one of the…

Social Media Tom McKay

YouTube Concedes Robot Fight Videos Are Not Actually Animal Cruelty After Removing Them by Mistake

Google subsidiary YouTube has admitted that it made a mistake when, citing its policies against “deliberate infliction of animal suffering” such as “dog fighting and cock fighting,” it removed several videos of robots fighting, per reports in Motherboard and the Verge. The videos are again available. According to Motherboard, the takedowns were first noted by…

Tech News Tom McKay

Report: Facebook Content Mods Say Company Therapists Were Pressured to Share Session Details

Adding to an already ridiculously long list of complaints, now Facebook’s content moderators say a higher-up asked company-appointed counselors to share information from their sessions, according to a new report from the Intercept. Numerous investigations have described this workforce as notoriously underpaid and overworked in crappy working conditions that require them to scan through some…

Social Media Alyse Stanley

YouTube’s Moderators Say It’s Not Your Imagination: Popular Creators Do Get Away With More

Content creators have a lot of complaints about YouTube, but one you’ll hear most often is how the platform seems to give its high-profile accounts more leniency when it comes to content moderation. But there’s a simple explanation for this: That’s because it does, according to nearly a dozen YouTube moderators interviewed in a Washington…

Tech News Alyse Stanley

Guy Who Built Twitter’s Retweet Button Admits Maybe That Was a Really Bad Idea

The man behind Twitter’s “Retweet” button—which is pretty much the foundation of the whole site—now thinks he screwed up big time, telling BuzzFeed News in an interview that he recalled thinking, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.” “That’s what I think we actually did,” added Chris Wetherell, the developer in question.…

Tech News Tom McKay

Saving an Ice Shelf, Lunar Conspiracies, and the Butterfly Effect: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

The third week of July 2019 is past us—and if you live in much of the Midwest or the East Coast, it’s been one helluva hot one with a heat wave breaking one-day temperature records in NYC and conditions in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati compared to Death Valley and Nairobi respectively. And while it’s difficult…

Tech News Tom McKay

Trump’s Racist Tweets Aren’t Racist, Twitter Decides

President Trump’s attack this Sunday on four first-term congresswomen was widely viewed as one of the most racist he’s ever produced. Not everyone agrees, however. Twitter, whose platform serves as a catapult for Trump’s bigoted attacks on migrants, has ruled internally that Trump’s words on Sunday were not racist at all—at least, insofar as its…

Tech Policy Dell Cameron

How American Corporations Are Policing Online Speech Worldwide

In the winter of 2010, a 19-year-old Moroccan man named Kacem Ghazzali logged into his email to find a message from Facebook informing him that a group he had created just a few days prior had been removed from the platform without explanation. The group, entitled “Jeunes pour la séparation entre Religion et Enseignement” (or…

Tech News Jillian C. York

Civil Rights Groups Mostly Unimpressed by New Twitter Policy Against ‘Dehumanizing’ Language

Civil rights organizations were, somehow, both pleased and exasperated with Twitter on Tuesday after the social network announced the latest update to its rules against “hateful conduct,” a change characterized by the New York Times, which first broke the news, as a “scaling back” of the company’s policymaking to focus solely on banning speech “insulting…

Tech Policy Dell Cameron

YouTube Is Finally Giving You More Control Over the Videos Its Algorithm Puts In Your Face

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm doesn’t have the best track record. It’s been caught mixing up inappropriate videos featuring popular kid’s entertainment characters, pushing home videos of children to pedophiles, and even radicalizing youths toward extremist politics. Against that backdrop, the video platform announced it’s going to start giving users greater control over what content pops up…

Tech News Victoria Song

The Life of a Facebook Moderator Sounds Even Worse Than You Imagined

For years, reports have emerged detailing the toll moderating online content takes on those tasked with cleaning up the websites of the most powerful tech companies. Facebook announced in May that it would make some changes so that a chunk of this moderator workforce (though not all of it) would be paid a little more…

Social Media Melanie Ehrenkranz

Twitch Sues To Identify People Who Uploaded Christchurch Shooting Video

The popular livestream website Twitch is suing anonymous users to find out the identities of 100 people who recently violated its terms of service by uploading content including the deadly Christchurch terrorist shooting and hardcore pornography. The lawsuit, first reported by Bloomberg, is against a group described as “John and Jane Does 1-100.” You can…

Commerce Patrick Howell O'Neill

Facebook Mods Sign Letter Protesting Zuckerberg’s Stance on Trump Threats, Conspiracy Theories

France to Platforms: Remove Terrorism and Pedophilia-Related Content in One Hour or Else

Facebook Announces Members of Its Oversight Board, Says Its Decisions Will be ‘Binding’

YouTube’s Plan to Stop Recommending Conspiracy Theory Videos Is Actually Working

Britain Appoints Content Cops for Social Media

YouTube’s Content Moderators Are Asked to Contractually Acknowledge the Job Can Give Them PTSD

YouTube Aims to Match Advertisers with ‘Edgier’ Content

Leaked Zuckerberg Audio Reveals Facebook’s Plan to Sue the U.S. Government If Elizabeth Warren Tries to Break Up Big Tech

Facebook Has Banked Nearly $1.6 Million From SPLC-Designated Hate Groups Since May 2018

YouTube Concedes Robot Fight Videos Are Not Actually Animal Cruelty After Removing Them by Mistake

Report: Facebook Content Mods Say Company Therapists Were Pressured to Share Session Details

YouTube’s Moderators Say It’s Not Your Imagination: Popular Creators Do Get Away With More

Guy Who Built Twitter’s Retweet Button Admits Maybe That Was a Really Bad Idea

Saving an Ice Shelf, Lunar Conspiracies, and the Butterfly Effect: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Trump’s Racist Tweets Aren’t Racist, Twitter Decides

How American Corporations Are Policing Online Speech Worldwide

Civil Rights Groups Mostly Unimpressed by New Twitter Policy Against ‘Dehumanizing’ Language

YouTube Is Finally Giving You More Control Over the Videos Its Algorithm Puts In Your Face

The Life of a Facebook Moderator Sounds Even Worse Than You Imagined

Twitch Sues To Identify People Who Uploaded Christchurch Shooting Video

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