The Anti-Defamation League Has New Demands For Twitter And Facebook

ADL

This week, Twitter began taking steps to address the harassment problem that has plagued its platform for years. On Tuesday, it rolled out new anti-abuse tools, including an expanded mute feature and a more streamlined system of abuse reporting; later in the day, it controversially banned a number of notable alt-right accounts from the service.

But as Twitter navigates the precarious territory of trying to police its platform while holding true to its free speech roots, one of the country&;s best-known civil rights groups is pushing for it to do more. Today, roughly one month after its initial report on the rise anti-semitism on Twitter, the Anti-Defamation League published its recommendations for addressing internet harassment. Its conclusion: social platforms need better harassment reporting options; they need to improve their response times to those reports; they need to invest in new tools to curb harassment; and they need to be more transparent about their abuse and harassment review processes.

Last month&039;s ADL report found that between August 2015 and July 2016 roughly 2.6 million anti-Semitic tweets were broadcast on Twitter, creating more than 10 billion impressions across the web. Of those tweets, 19,253 were directed at journalists. Among its concerns, the Anti-Defamation League report suggested hate speech targeting journalists was creating a chilling effect that could hurt their freedom to report and investigate.

“We’re already seeing this spread into the real world and mainstreaming in a way we’ve never seen in our over–100-year history as an organization,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Johnathan Greenblatt told BuzzFeed News.

For social media platforms — the ADL singles out Twitter in particular — the report suggests the mechanisms for reporting must be more efficient and clear for users. This includes cultural context training to allow reviewers to keep up with the ever-changing tactics of trolls and better reporting systems that allows users to flag offensive content once, rather than every time it pops up. To Twitter&039;s credit, it has tackled both these issues in its most recent anti-abuse update, though critics still feel the mute filter is primitive and mostly cosmetic.

The report also recommends an appeals process, which would allow users to protest a denied hate speech or harassment report. Such a feature that would be welcomed: In September BuzzFeed News surveyed over 2700 users, with 90% of respondents saying Twitter didn’t do anything when they reported abuse.

The ADL report says platforms like Twitter invest in research and innovation and stress the need for “natural language processing and machine learning” that allow accounts to stay anonymous but also. Failing that, the ADL suggests that the platforms, most notably Twitter, “privilege” verified identities. This approach, which has been suggested before, would allow Twitter to expand verification and create a two-tiered system of verified accounts with accountability alongside a more lawless, mostly likely anonymous group of accounts.

Listed throughout the Anti-Defamation League report is a call for more transparency from platforms, including better explanation of internal abuse review processes as well as the guidelines for moderation “so they can better participate in the system.” Twitter, for example, has come under sharp criticism for its opaque reporting processes and policies, and while the company has clear and specific rules, users complain they are haphazardly enforced.

Pepe the Frog, a meme co-opted by white supremacists and the Alt-rRght

The company has been criticized for being slow to respond to cases unless they go viral or are flagged by celebrities, public figures, or journalists. And in an alarming number of cases, reports of clear rules violations are met with responses from Twitter suggesting the reported tweet or account was not in violation. This week, when Twitter user Ariana Lenarsky found what appeared to be promoted tweet in her timeline from a prominent Neo Nazi account with the hashtag, , Twitter banned the account but refused clarify whether the tweet was paid for by the account, suggesting instead that it may have been “photoshopped.” The confusion surrounding the promoted tweet, as well as Twitter’s reluctance to clarify the event, only complicate reporting processes for users. And as Twitter potentially begins the fraught process of banning accounts associated with a particular political movement (in this case, the alt-right as well as white nationalists), a lack of transparency may only serve to stoke the fires of hate speech and abuse on the platform.

For lawmakers, the ADL report suggests more research as well as new laws covering emergent forms of cyber abuse like “doxxing” (the unwanted publishing of personal information in public) and “swatting” (calling police to a residence on behalf of someone else when there is no problem). The report calls on policymakers to establish funding for better training of state and local law enforcement to handle online harassment, and urges funding of a “single national reporting center (along the lines of the Internet Crime Complaint Center)” that could collect and siphon serious reports to the proper authorities.

This second half of the ADL&039;s report comes at a pivotal moment in the tech industry&039;s handling of online harassment. Just days into Trump’s victory, alt-right trolls across the internet are gearing up for an ideological war, fought with false information and aggressive harassment on Twitter. ““We must do everything we can to ensure that the Internet remains a medium of free and open communication for all people,” Greenblatt said of its new report. “We look forward to working with the social media platforms, policymakers, and others to implement these recommendations as quickly as possible.”

You can read the full report here.

Quelle: <a href="The Anti-Defamation League Has New Demands For Twitter And Facebook“>BuzzFeed

Promoted Tweet For Nazi Site Highlights Twitter's Opaque Enforcement Policies

Writer Ariana Lenarsky was scrolling through her Twitter feed at 6:08 P.M. last night when she says she came upon a tweet from new_order_1488, a Neo Nazi account. “&;New Article: The United States Was Founded as a White People&039;s Republic&039; on NEW ORDER website,” it read. The hashtag followed.

Racist and white supremacist content is nothing new on Twitter, which has long been a home to the internet&039;s political underbelly. But this tweet was different — Lenarsky hadn&039;t followed the account. The tweet displayed in her timeline appeared to be one of Twitter’s Promoted Tweet ads — ad units that can be purchased, targeted and placed into timelines of selected users.

Lenarsky was outraged; she took a screenshot and tweeted it with the caption, “@twitter I can&039;t believe anything still surprises me, but why the fuck am I seeing nazi ads on this website.” The tweet went viral.

Twitter&039;s ad policy explicitly states that the company “prohibits the promotion of hate content, sensitive topics, and violence globally,” which would apparently exclude an ad from @new_order_1488 whose logo features a swastika, and whose account links back to a well-established Nazi web site.

When BuzzFeed News reached out to Twitter — around 10:00 P.M. last evening, Twitter spokesperson Nu Wexler emailed that the company does not comment on individual accounts and noted, “but it looks like the screenshot in that tweet is either old or photoshopped.”

Lenarsky told BuzzFeed News via email, “I don&039;t know what &039;old&039; means, but it&039;s definitely not photo-shopped (I don&039;t own or know how to use photoshop).” She said she took the screenshot just after 6:00 P.M. Two separate users also confirmed to BuzzFeed News that they had seen a similar promoted tweet from @new_order_1488 that evening.

After being contacted by BuzzFeed News, Twitter sent a link which showed the company had suspended the account. When asked if @new_order_1488 ever ran a promoted tweet, Wexler did not reply. Nor did Wexler respond to multiple requests to speak on the phone for attempts to clarify, or return voice and text messages.

This came on the same day that Twitter rolled out its new harassment tools, including updated reporting workflow and an expanded mute keyword filter. In the past 24 hours, Twitter has also banned several prominent alt-right accounts.

But even that is fraught. As Twitter tries to combat harassment, it faces criticism for purging accounts associated with a particular ideology, rather than explicit harassment, an argument that contradicts Twitter&039;s decade-long, staunch commitment to maximalist free speech. The confusion surrounding the @new_order_1488 promoted tweet, and Twitter&039;s reluctance to clarify what happened, illustrate that the company&039;s struggle to highlight the opaque procedures around reporting and policing harassment and hate speech.

Though the offending account has been suspended, Lenarksy is still frustrated with Twitter&039;s failure to police hate speech. “Twitter is normalizing, promoting, and profiting off of Nazi white supremacy propaganda. That is beyond the human scope of acceptability, especially now. Twitter must publicly condemn this behavior and make a statement reassuring users that they understand why this is unacceptable,” she wrote to BuzzFeed News. “It&039;s one thing to allow Nazis to have their own twitter accounts (which is still embarrassing from a private company) but to promote their message is unconscionable.”

Quelle: <a href="Promoted Tweet For Nazi Site Highlights Twitter&039;s Opaque Enforcement Policies“>BuzzFeed