Wed, Mar 31st 2021 3:36pm
Copia Institute
Summary: For years, Google and YouTube have included a trusted flagger program by which certain entities that have shown they “are particularly effective at notifying YouTube” of content violations are given more powerful tools with which to do so.
This is used often in the copyright context, and companies with a good history may be given access to things like bulk flagging tools and priority review of flagged content. One such trusted flagger for copyright was a company called Topple Track, which offered an automated service for musicians, searching the internet for infringing works and dashing off automated DMCA notices.
Fri, Mar 12th 2021 3:41pm
Copia Institute
Summary: Google s ad service offers purchasers access to millions of users, including those viewing videos on YouTube. But its policies meant to prevent abuse, fraud, harassment, or targeting of certain demographics sometimes appear to prevent legitimate organizations from doing something as simple as informing others of their existence.
Chad Robichaux, the founder of Christian veterans support nonprofit Mighty Oaks, wanted to reach out to veterans who might need his services. But his attempt to purchase YouTube ads was rejected by Google s Ad service for a seemingly strange reason.
According to a screenshot posted by Robichaux to Twitter, Google forbade the use of Christian as a keyword. To Robichaux (and many responders to his tweet), this was evidence of Big Tech s bias against Christians and conservatives.
Wed, Mar 3rd 2021 3:41pm
Copia Institute
Summary: Formed as a more decentralized alternative to Twitter that allowed users to more directly moderate the content they wanted to see, Mastodon has experienced slow, but steady, growth since its inception in 2016.
Unlike other social media networks, Mastodon is built on open-source software and each instance (server node) of the network is operated by users. These separate instances can be connected with others via Mastodon s interlinked fediverse. Or they can remain independent, creating a completely siloed version of Mastodon that has no connection with the service s larger fediverse.
This puts a lot of power in the hands of the individuals who operate each instance: they can set their own rules, moderate content directly, and prevent anything the instance and its users find undesirable from appearing on their servers. But the larger fediverse with its combined user base poses moderation problems that can t be hand
Fri, Feb 26th 2021 3:35pm
Copia Institute
Summary: With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the large social media companies very quickly put in place policies to try to handle the flood of disinformation about the disease, responses, and treatments. How successful those new policies have been is subject to debate, but in at least one case, the effort to fact check and moderate COVID information ran into a conflict with people reporting on violent protests (totally unrelated to COVID) in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, there’s a notorious division called the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, known as SARS in the country. For years there have been widespread reports of corruption and violence in the police unit, including stories of how it often robs people itself (despite its name). There have been reports about SARS activities for many years, but in the Fall of 2020 things came to a head as a video was released of SARS officers dragging two men out of a hotel in Lago and shooting