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Indiska regeringen försöker utöva nya kontroller över onlinetal

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Indiska regeringen försöker utöva nya kontroller över onlinetal

The Indian Government is taking more overt action to control what can and cannot be discussed online in the nation, with proposed new rules that would enable the government itself to dictate what’s true and what’s not, and force social platforms to remove false claims or risk fines or bans.

Indian authorities have been pushing social platforms to enforce their agendas for some time, with the government repeatedly calling on social apps to remove anti-government sentiment, in order to manipulate public opinion on several key fronts.

Which clearly oversteps the bounds of content moderation. But that the same time, the debate around what is and is not acceptable on this front continues to rage on, with free speech proponents calling for a more hands-off approach, and the platforms, in many cases, calling for external regulation to alleviate their control over such.

Because here’s the thing – at some level, everyone acknowledges that there needs to be a barrier of content moderation conducted by all social media platforms, in order to weed out criminal or otherwise harmful content. The secondary element is the debate – what constitutes ‘harmful’ in this respect, and what obligation do social platforms have to adhere to, say, government requests for the removal of ‘harmful’ posts, as they relate to government initiatives and/or other elements?

This is the key point that Elon Musk has repeatedly raised in his brief time at Twitter thus far. Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ expose, for example, purports to uncover government meddling, in order to control the messaging that’s being distributed to users via social apps.

But thus far, those revelations have only really shown that Twitter worked with government officials, from all sides of the political spectrum, in order to police illegal content, and/or content that could have impeded, for example, the rollout of the COVID vaccine, at a time when the expanded take-up of vaccinations was our only way out of the endless lockdowns and impacts.

At the time, government officials called on Twitter, and other social apps, to remove posts that questioned the safety of vaccines, or otherwise raised doubts that could stop people from getting the shot. Which opponents of vaccine mandates now say was in violation of their free speech – but again, in an evolving situation, these teams made the best decision they could at the time. Which may have been wrong, and could, inadvertently, have led to some incorrect suspensions or actions taken. But again, given the assessments before them, moderation teams are tasked with increasingly difficult decisions that could impact millions of people.

In this context, the principles those teams have adhered to is correct, and criticizing such process in retrospect is folly – but again, the core consideration is that, in some cases, there will always be a need for some level of moderation that not everybody is going to agree with.

Which is the truly difficult thing.

Meta, for example, has for years been calling for government oversight and regulation of social apps, in order to take moderation decisions about particularly sensitive topics out of its hands, while also ensuring that all platforms adhere to the same standards, lessening the censorship burden on individual platforms and chiefs.

But securing agreement on such, from all governments, is virtually impossible, and while Meta’s called on the UN to implement wide-reaching rules, even that wouldn’t cover all regions, and see all jurisdictions adhering to the same principles.

Because they don’t. Each nation has different levels of tolerance for different things, and none of them want to see their citizens held to the same standard as the other. They manage their own laws and rules independently, and any over-arching regulations would be too much – which is why it’s virtually impossible to secure consensus on what content should and should not be allowed, on a global basis.

And then, once you have a level of control over such, there are also authoritarian governments, like in India, which see an opportunity to exert even more control, in order to quell dissent and criticism. Which, again, is a step too far – but then again, how is that any different to blunting anti-vaccine messages in other regions, or seeking to supress certain stories or angles?

There are no easy answers, which is why this remains a key point of contention, and will be so for some time yet. Elon Musk is trying to shake things up in this respect, by subverting what he perceived as mainstream media bias – but within that, there also needs to be limits.

Citizen journalism, which Musk is touting as a key avenue for truth, can be even more easily manipulated, but if you’re going to accept that one conspiracy is true, then you also need to entertain the others, and that can lead to even more harmful outcomes when there’s no filter of truth or risk.

Ideally, there could be a universal agreement on content standards, and moderation rulings. But it’s hard to see how that comes about.

And while Musk would prefer to remove all moderation controls, and let the people decide, we’ve already seen where that path leads, and the harm that it can cause through manipulation of the truth.

But for some prominent voices, that seems to be what they want.

In Brazil, for example, ousted President Jair Bolsonaro recently sparked riots by questioning the results of the latest election, in which he lost by a significant margin. There’s no evidence to support Bolsonaro’s claims, he simply says that it can’t be true – and millions of people, with limited questioning, believe it.

The same as Trump – despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump still claims that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ via widespread voter fraud and cheating.

If you can make such claims, with no evidence, and spread them to a wide breadth of people via social apps, and they can be accepted as fact by that audience, that’s a powerful means to control whatever narrative you choose.

Musk, in particular, seems to be fascinated by this idea, and has admitted that, in the past, he’s announced major projects that will likely never work in order to manipulate government action.

Maybe, Musk’s whole ‘free speech’ push is simply another means of narrative control, enabling him to bend conditions in his favor, by simply saying whatever he wants, with less risk of being fact-checked or debunked.

Because those that would question such are liars, and he is the truth.

It’s the traditional authoritarian playbook, and without universally agreed terms, there’s no way to know who to trust.

Main image by Avinash Bhat/Flickr

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US state to require parental consent for social media

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Social media in Niger came under a massive disinformation attack in February, an AFP Fact Check investigation has found

Social media. – © AFP Denis Charlet

Utah on Thursday became the first US state to require social media sites to get parental consent for accounts used by under-18s, placing the burden on platforms like Instagram and TikTok to verify the age of their users.

The law, which takes effect March 2024, was brought in response to fears over growing youth addiction to social media, and to security risks such as online bullying, exploitation, and collection of children’s personal data.

But it has prompted warnings from tech firms and civil liberties groups that it could curtail access to online resources for marginalized teens, and have far-reaching implications for free speech.

“We’re no longer willing to let social media companies continue to harm the mental health of our youth,” tweeted Spencer Cox, governor of the western US state, who signed two related bills at a ceremony Thursday.

The bills also require social media firms to grant parents full access to their children’s accounts, and to create a default “curfew” blocking overnight access to children’s accounts. 

They set out fines for social media companies if they target users under 18 with “addictive algorithms,” and make it easier for parents to sue social media companies for financial, physical or emotional harm.

“We hope that this is just the first step in many bills that we’ll see across the nation, and hopefully taken on by the federal government,” said state representative Jordan Teuscher, who co-sponsored the bill.

Michael McKell, a Republican member of Utah’s Senate who also sponsored the bill, said it was a “bipartisan” effort, and praised President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union address, in which he raised the issue.

Biden last month called on US lawmakers to restrict how social media companies advertise to children and collect their data, as he accused Big Tech of conducting a “for profit” experiment on the nation’s youth.

California has already introduced online safety laws including strict default privacy settings for minors, but the Utah law goes further.

Lawmakers in states such as Ohio and Connecticut are working on similar bills.

Platforms including Instagram and TikTok have introduced more controls for parents, such as messaging limits and time caps.

At Thursday’s ceremony in Utah, McKell pointed to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which he said highlighted the toll social media apps can have on young minds.

“The impact on our daughters — and I have two daughters — it was incredibly troubling,” he said. 

“Thirty percent of our daughters from ninth grade to 12th grade had seriously contemplated suicide. That’s startling.”

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ChatGPT is being used to lure victims into downloading malware

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ChatGPT

Hackers are trying to capitalize on the enormous popularity of ChatGPT to distribute malware, security experts have warned.

A report from cybersecurity researchers CloudSEK has detailed an elaborate scheme that includes stolen Facebook accounts, groups, and pages, malicious Facebook ads, and fake ChatGPT software.

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Musk säger att från och med den 15 april kommer endast tweets från Twitter Blue-prenumeranter att rekommenderas i huvudflödet

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Twitter lanserar test av annonsinriktning baserat specifikt på sökfrågor i appen

With Twitter Blue take-up failing to reach expectations, Elon Musk is taking drastic action to drive more adoption, announcing today that, as of April 15th, the only tweets that will be displayed in the ‘For You’ tab – i.e. the main tab of the app – will be from paying, Twitter Blue verified accounts.

As Musk notes, voting in Twitter polls will also become a Twitter Blue exclusive option, which will severely restrict the reach of non-paying accounts, while also limiting general user functionality.

Twitter’s also removing ‘legacy’ blue checkmarks later this week, which will mean that, as of April 15th, your Twitter feeds are going to look a lot different, with the only blue ticks being from paying users, and only paying users showing up in For You feed recommendations.

You’ll still be able to view tweets from the accounts you follow in your ‘Following’ tab, and you’ll still be able to see tweets from non-Twitter Blue accounts in other areas, like Explore trends. But it will limit visibility, which could prompt more accounts to pay up, and boost Twitter’s revenue intake from subscriptions.

Twitter Blue, which, as of last week, is now available in all regions, currently has around 450k subscribers, which equates to 0.18% of Twitter’s total user base. The risk for Twitter is that this small group of users is also largely aligned with Musk, and his political and ideological stances, which could turn your For You feed into a very one-sided discussion, in relation to political and world events.

That could turn a lot of users away – because as Parler and various other right wing social media apps have shown, nobody really wants to engage in a partisan chatter fest. But brands, in particular, do want visibility for their tweets, and maybe, by restricting their exposure based on subscriptions, that’ll lead to a big uptake in Twitter Blue, which, by extension, as Musk notes, could help to combat bots and spam in the app.

The logic here is that spammers and scammers won’t be able to afford to pay $8 per account to run their schemes. Right now, a scammer can set up hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts, free of charge, then use those profiles to make certain opinions or angles trend, amplifying whatever side of an argument they choose to take.   

But if the majority of Twitter users pay for verification, that will eventually mean the only non-verified accounts will belong to spammers that can’t afford it. That, theoretically, will make these scams much easier to identify – but in order for this to be a viable approach, Musk will need really high take-up of Twitter Blue, which, thus far, is not even close to happening.

Which is why Twitter’s now taking steps to make paid verification a thing.

Will that work? I’m tipping the majority of users still won’t pay, while the potential downside is that it could make a lot of people less likely to tweet, and less likely to switch over to the ‘For You’ tab, hampering discovery, and thus usage.

But it seems like Musk is going to find out for himself.

At least he’ll know, definitively, if this is a workable option or not.  



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