Alex Jones is no longer welcome at Apple. The trillion dollar company has removed five of the six podcasts produced by InfoWars, the conspiracy theory empire that Jones founded to spread misinformation. Podcasts like “The Alex Jones Show” and “War Room” have been pulled from all of Apple’s directories, but the company…
Streaming service Spotify has become the latest major web platform to find itself compelled to do something about oft-shirtless conspiracy theorist, lead-infused supplement peddler, and Infowars founder Alex Jones, removing several episodes of his podcast under policies against hate speech.
Although Facebook’s ability to track and remove terrorist content was one of his favorite talking points when CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress last month, a new report from the social media network shows that there’s still a lot of work to do. The company’s first content moderation report, released…
For a brief period on Tuesday morning, Facebook asked at least some of its users to report whether every single post in their feed contained hate speech. Right above where one would normally like or comment on a post, Facebook users were asked: “Does this post contain hate speech?” For users who saw this request…
Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days, so naturally we want to throw it at all of our problems. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that Facebook won’t have effective tools to filter hate speech for another “five to 10 years” seemed both dismissive and uninspiring. No doubt, it was classic Silicon…
In the midst of Mark Zuckerberg’s hours-long testimony before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, Reddit dropped its 2017 transparency report. It contained a list of nearly 1,000 user accounts the company believed were involved with the Russia-backed Internet Research Agency—and unlike other social media…
A Scottish YouTube comedian, Mark Meechan, was found guilty of a hate crime on Tuesday for posting a video of himself training his girlfriend’s pug, Buddha, to mimic a Nazi and respond to commands the court ruled anti-Semitic.
The government of Sri Lanka ordered internet and mobile service providers to temporarily block Facebook and its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as separate messaging service Viber, this week as part of a crackdown on what officials said was rampant online hate speech fueling real-life violence.
The European Union really wants tech companies to get their shit together when it comes to policing content on their platforms. On Thursday, it issued new guidelines for how companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook should handle illegal content on its European websites: quickly, proactively, and with human…
Earlier this afternoon, the crumbling hate circus we call Twitter rolled out some much-needed changes to its abuse report feedback system. This was, and is, welcome news. But contained in Twitter Safety’s example image was a subtle clue that undermines the whimsical Mario-verse.
2017 was the year public sentiment began to turn against massive tech conglomerates like Facebook and Google. But nowhere in the West has the backlash been bigger than Germany, which last year passed a sweeping anti-hate speech law requiring websites to promptly investigate reports of posts illegal under German law…
The European Union is still not satisfied with how leading tech companies are handling the removal of illegal content online. On Thursday, it released a new set of guidelines for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft, giving them just months to shape up—or face unspecified future regulation.
In recent years, Reddit has banned a bevy of far-right troll havens, including its board for the white supremacist “alt-right” and others used for the harassment of women, minorities and other people. The bans were a reversal of Reddit’s prior policy to not ban “questionable” content—and drew predictable outrage,…
Nearly all the major technology services we’ve come to rely on have been negligent in enforcing their own user protection guidelines. Repeated calls to act on the Terms of Service these companies outlined for themselves without any meaningful response has arguably emboldened the worst elements taking root on them—with…
Germany’s parliament passed a law on Friday that forces social media sites to quickly take down illegal and slanderous content or face a fine of 50 million euros ($57 million). The new rule affects Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites with more than 2 million users.
On Wednesday, ProPublica published dozens of startling training documents reportedly used by Facebook to train moderators on hate speech. As the trove of slides and quizzes reveals, Facebook uses a warped, one-sided reasoning to balance policing hate speech against users’ freedom of expression on the platform. This is…
On Sunday, the European Commission warned Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Microsoft that if the companies do not address their hate speech problems, the EU will enact legislation that will force them to do so.
If you’ve used Twitter long enough, you’ve probably run into this classic conundrum. You’re typing out a repulsive, potentially racist, thinly veiled death threat to send to an actor, political commentator, or the person you’re currently stalking. The tweet is looking pretty dang good. It checks all the boxes. Racial…
Reddit is a total fucking mess, but the new boss is laying down the law. The site’s CEO Steve Huffman opened a traditional Ask Me Anything session this afternoon with a fairly non-traditional type of announcement. Or at least it’s non-traditional for Reddit because CEO Steve is banning specific types of content.
