Big Tech Giant Companies Have A Private Meeting To Censor AmericaReps from up to a dozen of the US’s biggest tech companies plan to meet in San Francisco to discuss efforts to counter manipulation of their platforms.
Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.
Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.
The meeting, the Facebook official wrote, will have a three-part agenda: each company will present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations; there will be a discussion period for problems each company faces; and a talk about whether such a meeting should become a regular occurrence.
In May, nine of those companies met at Facebook to discuss similar problems, alongside two US government representatives, Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs and Mike Burham from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, created in November. Attendees left the meeting discouraged that they received little information from the government.
Tech companies, Facebook and Twitter in particular, have faced intense scrutiny for how slowly they initially reacted to reports that foreign intelligence and affiliated operations used their platforms to manipulate users ahead of the 2016 election, leading to drops in user confidence and a threat of regulation from lawmakers.
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office charged 13 people affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency — a “troll factory” where employees created personas across multiple platforms — with breaking laws in order to influence American voters. Since then, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube have each had at least one public purge of accounts believed to be foreign influence operations.
The meeting highlights tech companies’ recent efforts to be more proactive with governments’ use of their sites to achieve political goals. Several companies have announced operations this week where they partnered with other organizations to address such problems.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it had, for the 12th time since 2016, legally acquired control of a handful of web domains registered by Russian military intelligencefor phishing operations, then shut them down. The next day, after receiving a tip from the threat intelligence company FireEye, Facebook and Twitter announced they had taken down a network of fake news sites and spoofed users meant to create sympathy for the Iranian government’s worldview. Google made a similar announcement about YouTube on Thursday.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” on Thursday, which will repeal the agency’s 2015 net neutrality regulation.
Chairman Pai told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday, “I think what net neutrality repealed would actually mean is we once again have a free and open Internet. The government would not be regulating how anyone in the Internet service providers, how anyone else in the internet economy manages their networks.”
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom order will reclassify the Internet as an “information service” compared to the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality order, which regulated the Internet as a public monopoly. The order will also require Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or Verizon to release transparency reports detailing their practices towards consumers and businesses.
The FCC’s net neutrality repeal order will also restore the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) traditional authority and expertise to regulate and litigate unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive telecommunications practices without onerous regulations and increased cost.
On Monday the FCC and the FTC agreed to share the responsibility to police unfair ISP practices regarding unfair or deceptive practices to block, throttle, or promote web content.
Chairman Pai explained in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal why repealing net neutrality will preserve a free and open internet.
Pai wrote:
We have proof that markets work: For almost two decades, the U.S. had a free and open internet without these heavy-handed rules. There was no market failure before 2015. Americans weren’t living in a digital dystopia before the FCC seized power. To the contrary, millions enjoyed an online economy that was the envy of the world. They experienced the most powerful platform ever seen for permission-less innovation and expression. Next month, I hope the FCC will choose to return to the common-sense policies that helped the online world transform the physical one.
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order and Breitbart News’s Allum Bokhari argued that under net neutrality content providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have censored the internet, stifled conservative and alternative voices, and serve as a greater threat to free speech compared to ISPs.
Pai charged in a recent speech that Facebook, Twitter, and Google serve as a greater threat to free speech and an open internet.
“I love Twitter, and I use it all the time,” said Pai. “But let’s not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
In further comments, the FCC chairman specifically called out the censorship of Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s pro-life ad, which was blocked by Twitter for “inflammatory speech.”
Pai charged, “Two months ago, Twitter blocked Representative Marsha Blackburn from advertising her Senate campaign launch video because it featured a pro-life message. Before that, during the so-called Day of Action, Twitter warned users that a link to a statement by one company on the topic of Internet regulation ‘may be unsafe.’”
FCC Chairman Pai previously referenced Robert McChesney, the founder of Free Press, who remains a staunch supporter of net neutrality. Pai explained that McChesney openly bragged about taking over the internet. McChesney said, “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But, the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Robert McChesney even said, “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
To put McChesney’s influence on net neutrality in context, he was cited 46 times in the Obama net neutrality order.
Democrats and Silicon Valley companies argued that content providers cannot compete on an even playing field without net neutrality.
Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said on Tuesday, “All you have to do is look at what went on over the last 10 or 15 years to see how the [internet service providers] repeatedly sought to crush potential competitors and challenged the FCC’s previous net neutrality rules in court to understand why the Open Internet Order was needed — and to see what will happen if the Open Internet Order is repealed.”
Net neutrality protesters gathered outside the FCC on Thursday morning to rally against the FCC’s repeal of the agency’s 2015 Open Internet Order.
At the FCC meeting Pai charged:
This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems gave way to gigabit fiber connections. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world.
And this light-touch approach was good for consumers, too. In a free market full of permissionless innovation, online services blossomed. Within a generation, we’ve gone from email as the killer app to high-definition video streaming. Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the Internet far better than the clumsy hand of government ever could have.
Fellow Republican Commissioner Michael O’Reilly said, “No one can label more than a handful of examples of why we need this regulation.”
“Please take a deep breath. This decision will not break the Internet,” O’Reilly added.
Republican Commision Brendan Carr argued, “Americans will have robust Internet consumer protections.”
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said at the FCC meeting, “Net neutrality is internet freedom. I support that freedom. I dissent from this rash decision to roll back net neutrality rules.”
Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn announced that next Tuesday she will host a town hall meeting to discuss the future of net neutrality.
Chairman Pai and FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly have argued that Congres should enact a permanent, legislative solution to the issue of net neutrality.
Pai explained:
I think the best solution would be for Congress to tell us what they want the rules of the road to be for the FCC and the country when it comes to the digital world. Part of the problem is that we are consistently looking at 1934 laws and 1996 laws then we try to shoehorn our modern marketplace to some of those paradigms that frankly we didn’t anticipate a marketplace as dynamic as the internet. I really think that Congress, ideally looking at all the opinions, and all the constituencies they can come to a consensus. Because again as Commissioner O’Reilly pointed out we don’t want the regulatory winds to keep shifting every four or eight years we want to provide some level of consistency to the marketplace so that consumers and companies alike can enjoy the digital revolution.
Pai concluded his remarks at the FCC meeting, “Many words have been spoken during this debate but the time has come for action. It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015, it is time for us to restore Internet freedom.”
May blasts Trump for retweeting videos posted by the deputy leader of Britain First – including footage claiming to be ‘a Muslim man destroying a statue of Virgin Mary’ – but his invite for a State Visit STILL stands
Donald Trump has retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by far-right group
Videos posted by Britain First’s Jayda Fransen show ‘Muslims’ committing crimes
Labour MPs say Mr Trump is ‘not welcome here’ and call for invite’s withdrawal
Jo Cox MP was shot and stabbed last year by a man who shouted ‘Britain First!’
US President Donald Trump was ‘wrong’ to share anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right UK group, Downing Street said today.
Furious MPs insisted Mr Trump was ‘not welcome here’ following the Twitter posts but No 10 said his invite to come to Britain on a state visit still stands.
The storm over the posts – first shared by Britain First’s deputy leader – deepened as the widow of murdered MP Jo Cox accused him of ‘spreading hatred’.
The furious backlash came after the 71-year-old President retweeted content posted by Britain First’s Jayda Fransen.
Labour politician Mrs Cox was stabbed and shot outside her constituency office in Birstall, West Yorkshire, in June 2016 by a man who shouted ‘Britain First’.
The first video retweeted by Mr Trump was claimed to show a ‘Muslim migrant’ beating up a Dutch boy on crutches.
But Dutch media this afternoon said the video was ‘fake news’. The video features a born and raised Dutch man and no reports have detailed the suspect’s religion.
Mr Trump also retweeted a video of a Muslim man ‘destroy(ing) a statue of Virgin Mary’, and another where Ms Fransen wrote: ‘Islamist mob pushed teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!’ The provenance of the footage is unknown.
The row casts fresh doubt on the prospects for Mr Trump’s state visit, which has been repeatedly pushed back since Prime Minister Theresa May extended the invite in January.
Speaker John Bercow has already made clear he would block the President from getting the honour of addressing both Houses of Parliament if he does come.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Britain First sought to divide communities through its use of ‘hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions’.
‘It is wrong for the president to have done this,’ the spokesman said.
Despite the slapdown, Mrs May’s spokesman made clear that the controversial invitation for the president to make a state visit to the UK, made when Theresa May met Mr Trump in Washington in January, still stood.
‘The invitation for a state visit has been extended and accepted. Further details will be announced in due course,’ the spokesman said.
The spokesman said that Britain First ’cause anxiety to law-abiding people’, adding that: ‘British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents – decency tolerance and respect.’
There have been claims Mr Trump has been dragging his heels on agreeing a date because he does not want to face protests – after more than 1.8million people signed a petition demanding the visit be cancelled.
Mrs May did not take PMQs in the Commons today because she is on a trip to the Middle East, but Downing Street said it would respond later.
Brendan Cox, the husband of Mrs Cox, who was killed during the EU referendum campaign last year, said: ‘Trump has legitimised the far right in his own country, now he’s trying to do it in ours.
‘Spreading hatred has consequences and the President should be ashamed of himself.’
Labour MP Mary Creagh posted: ‘Jo Cox’s killer shouted ‘Britain First’. (Trump) retweeting this hate criminal demeans his office. He is not welcome here.’
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who was embroiled in a spat with Mr Trump last year over his call for a travel ban on mainly-Muslim countries, said: ‘Britain First is a vile, hate-fuelled organisation whose views should be condemned, not amplified.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also urged Mrs May to take a tough stance against the President.
‘I hope our Government will condemn far-right retweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society,’ he said.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna told Sky News: ‘I don’t think the president of the United States, a president who has not only promoted bigotry, misogyny and racism in his own country, I don’t think he is welcome here.
‘I think the invite that has been made to him to come to our country in early 2018 should be withdrawn.
‘What we see here is the president retweeting and promoting the propaganda of a far right racist bigoted group members of which have been arrested and convicted for promoting hatred in this country.
‘I am absolutely astounded that a man – any person – in his position holding the office that he does should be promoting the propaganda of a far right British group.’
A tweet from Fransen’s account, which is verified by Twitter, appeared to celebrate the retweets by Mr Trump.
It said: ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN’S TWITTER VIDEOS! DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA!’
Britain First leader Paul Golding said: ‘We’ve never spoken to him (Trump) before. But the fact he’s shared his alarm at Jayda’s arrest means we’re going to reach out to him. Jayda is recording a video message directly to him later.
‘We’re looking forward to all the new followers and support we’ll get from Trump’s publicity.’
Last year, Ms Fransen was found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment after accosting a Muslim woman.
The charge stemmed from a January 2016 incident in which Fransen, wearing a political uniform and during a so-called ‘Christian patrol,’ accosted a Muslim woman named Sumayyah Sharpe in Luton, England.
Ms Fransen admitted that she told Sharpe, who was wearing hijab, that Muslim men force women to cover up to avoid rape ‘because they cannot control their sexual urges.’
‘That’s why they are coming into my country raping women across the continent,’ Fransen told Sharpe, according to the Independent. Ms Sharpe was in front of her four children at the time.
Ms Fransen, and Britain First leader Paul Golding, 35, also of Penge, are due to appear at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court today for a pre-trial review over allegations of religiously aggravated abuse in Canterbury and Ramsgate, Kent.
A trial is scheduled for January 29, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
She will also appear in court in Northern Ireland in December charged with using threatening and abusive language in connection with a speech she made at an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast on August 6.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd did not immediately respond in the House of Commons when Labour MPs Stephen Doughty and Yvette Cooper raised Mr Trump’s retweets as a point of order.
Mr Doughty said the videos were ‘highly inflammatory’ and Ms Cooper said the president had given Fransen a ‘huge platform’ as one MP shouted ‘Disgraceful’ and others said ‘Go on, stand up’ at Ms Rudd.
Brexit minister Lord Callanan said Mr Trump may have not been aware of the ‘appalling’ nature of Britain First, but said the incident showed the president should be ‘more careful’ in his tweeting.
The Conservative peer told BBC Radio 4’s World At One: ‘Britain First is an appalling organisation and there is no excusing the things they stand for.
‘I can only assume that he has made a mistake and that he did not realise who Britain First were. Most people in the UK don’t know who Britain First are.
‘I’m not excusing it. He clearly needs to be more careful what he tweets to 44 million followers. This is manna from heaven for them.
‘We are doing exactly what they want in publicising them and giving coverage to their awful views, and Trump has helped them in that.’
Britain First previously denied any involvement in the attack on Mrs Cox, and there is no suggestion that Mair was influenced by or in any way involved with the group.
YouTube will try to destroy you if you come against 2 sacred cows that they want protected. You can talk about these 2 so-called “holy-cows” but don’t get nasty with either or you will be brought down. I have been doing videos on Youtube for about 6 or 7 years. I have had 3 Youtube stations taken down with over 300,000 subs. I would have had even more if YouTube did not block and punish success. Below I want to give you links and stories that are on YouTube that do the same thing I do and worse but their videos are still up. Youtube hides behind their so-called “Community Guidelines” which is so damn vague it is laughable.
Here are some of their Guidelines:
Hateful content
Our products are platforms for free expression. But we don’t support content that promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity, or whose primary purpose is inciting hatred on the basis of these core characteristics. This can be a delicate balancing act, but if the primary purpose is to attack a protected group, the content crosses the line.
Notice some are reporting racism like I did on the video about Michelle calling GOP white men racist. Then others are really racist put YouTube does not take them down:
Links with hate:
Title: YG & Nipsey Hussle “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)”
YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it’s a video of yourself, don’t post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation.
Don’t post videos that encourage others to do things that might cause them to get badly hurt, especially kids. Videos showing such harmful or dangerous acts may get age-restricted or removed depending on their severity.
I could go on for months with examples of filth on YouTube: But the real reason that they took me off YouTube is because of Gays and Muslims. Others attack gays and muslims, but no one did it like me. Not that I attacked them but it is that I would not tone down how evil both were. Think about it it you will! The New York Times wrote and article about me and mention others on YouTube but it was about me. They were upset at the way I covered the Atheist Texas shooter who killed 27 people at theFirst Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs Texas. The writer of the New York Times Kevin Roose called me, and I have all the 4 or 5 conversations recorded and will be doing videos on this. He and other liberals are upset that I called the shooter a Bernie Sanders and Antifa supporter. Think about that! They are really not upset about the 27 people who were killed they are more upset about the piece of shit shooter being slandered, then what he did. Who is causing most of the damn violence in America at colleges and at these rally’s. It is liberals who support Bernie. Hillary and Left-Wing nuts. But that is another story altogether. I have been given more strikes and banned more times and now the 2nd time my stations have been terminated, because of gays and muslims.
Think about all of the so-called right-wing who attack muslims or gays! They will say bad things about them but I report any case on the left or the right and I don’t mix words. I know some who refuse to attack the “Gay Mafia” and have told me that I am too hard on both. Listen this is not about me hating gays or muslims, but I do hate a groups demanding I except there lies. At first it was strikes and Youtube jail because of reporting facts about gays and muslims. Then when I refused to stop doing that, I would get strikes for reporting a lesbian rapes a 14 year old, or a professor thinks it’s okay for whites to be assaulted because they have white privilege.
So I ask you; are the YouTube Guidelines fair and do they apply to everyone or just the conservatives? We must stop this assault on our country and freedoms. If you keep ignoring this it could be your rights next. Nothing that I said was proving to be a lie but they hate the damn truth. Truth is hate speech on Youtube and most media outlets. How racist is it for a black conservative christian to be taking off YouTube and all of the damn filth is left on. If you really expose the perverts for their agenda and refuse to back down. This is what they do. Many are not interested in facts or the truth. Hell they still to this day slander Joseph Mccarthy and he was right. He said “ Our job as Americans and as Republicans is to dislodge the traitors from every place where they’ve been sent to do their traitorous work”. He is correct and YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Goggle, CNN, ABC, and most of your Elected Officials are part of the problem. If your not part of the damn solution you are part of the problem. Look at those on YouTube that have large follows and see if they go after gays and muslim really hard for all the damage they are causing. Look at who works for YouTube and Facebook. Look at who runs Hollywood and News Outlets. Most are perverts and that hate America and Christians. We must hold these people accountable. YouTube almost has an Monopoly on the Video industry. Maybe our Government should go in and break it up. They are in bed with Google who owns Adsense and they will keep your money if YouTube says you have violated the “Community Guidelines”. How is this not Communism? You are guilty of having your money taken because a company like YouTube says you violated their vague community guidelines. You are guilty without a trial.
YouTube, Google, Facebook and all Companies are just like the NFL who is losing now. They love money but will suffer plenty to punish you until they realize it isn’t working. Please come over and join me in my new “Common Sense Nation” on Vimeo and help me get the word out. Please tell all your friends and have them join us also.
On Sunday afternoon, when Elmer T. Williams’s wife told him that a mass shooting had taken place at a church in Texas, he leapt into action. First, he skimmed a handful of news stories about the massacre. Then, when he felt sufficiently informed, he went into his home video studio, put on his trademark aviator sunglasses, and hit record.
Roughly an hour later, Mr. Williams, 51, a popular right-wing YouTube personality who calls himself “The Doctor of Common Sense,” had filmed, edited and uploaded a three-minute monologue about the Sutherland Springs church shooting to his YouTube page, which had roughly 90,000 subscribers. Authorities had not yet named a suspect, but that didn’t deter Mr. Williams, who is black, from speculating that the gunman was probably “either a Muslim or black.”
Later, after the shooter was identified as a white man named Devin P. Kelley, Mr. Williams posted a follow-up video. He claimed that Mr. Kelley was most likely a Bernie Sanders supporter associated with antifa — a left-wing anti-fascist group — who may have converted to Islam. Despite having no evidence for those claims, Mr. Williams argued them passionately, saying that photos of Mr. Kelley circulating online suggested that he was a violent liberal.
“Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a person’s picture,” Mr. Williams said.
I came across Mr. Williams’s videos several hours after the massacre, when one of them appeared prominently in YouTube’s search results about the shooting, alongside other videos making unverified claims that had been posted by pages with names like TruthNews Network and The Patriotic Beast.
YouTube has long been a haven for slapdash political punditry, but in recent months, a certain type of hyper-prolific conspiracist has emerged as a dominant force. By reacting quickly and voluminously to breaking news, these rapid-response pundits — the YouTube equivalent of talk radio shock-jocks — have successfully climbed the site’s search results, and exposed legions of viewers to their far-fetched theories.
In a phone interview from his home in Houston, Mr. Williams told me that he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos over an eight-year period, posting as many as 20 monologues per day, and racking up estimated 200 million views.
His hit productions have included fact-challenged videos like “Barack and Michelle Obama Both Come Out The Closet,” which garnered 1.6 million views, and “Hillary Clinton Is On Crack Cocaine,” which had 665,000. He was admitted to YouTube’s partner program, which allows popular posters to earn money by displaying ads on certain types of videos, and claims to have made as much as $10,000 a month from his channel.
“I like to call myself a reporter who reports the news for the common person,” Mr. Williams said.
Whether motivated by profit or micro-celebrity, the success of sensationalists like Mr. Williams has become a vexing problem for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube.
These companies sort and prioritize information for their users, and most have built ranking systems that boost news from mainstream outlets over stories from less credible sources. But those algorithms can be gamed in breaking news situations by users who work fast, uploading their videos in the valuable minutes between when news breaks and when the first wave of legitimate articles and videos appears.
“Before reliable sources put up stories, it’s a bit of a free-for-all,” said Karen North, a professor studying social media at the University of Southern California. “People who are in the business of posting sensationalized opinions about the news have learned that the sooner they put up their materials, the more likely their content will be found by an audience.”
Elmer T. Williams said he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos, posting as many as 20 monologues per day on hot-button topics.
The phenomenon is not limited to YouTube. After last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, a Facebook safety check page featured a story from a site called “Alt-Right News” that made false statements about the gunman, and Google’s search results displayed a conspiracy theory from 4Chan, the notoriously toxic message board. After last month’s terrorist attack in New York City, a trending topic page on Twitter briefly featured a story from Infowars, a conservative site that is popular among the conspiracy-minded.
Conservatives have argued that YouTube unfairly targets their videos while allowing liberal channels, such as The Young Turks, to post heated political commentary. And some dispute that there is any conscious gaming going on.
“There is absolutely no strategy,” said Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Infowars and a popular YouTube personality who has 1.1 million subscribers. On the day of the Texas church shooting, one of Mr. Watson’s tweets appeared as a result in Google searches for the shooter’s name, although it has since disappeared.
Tech companies, already under fire for the ease with which they allowed Russia to interfere in last year’s election, have also vowed to take a harder stance on domestic misinformation. Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, told congressional investigators last week that the company would take steps to keep false stories from being featured on trending topic pages.
“It’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that,” Mr. Edgett said.
YouTube, whose community guidelines prohibit hateful and threatening content, has begun using artificial intelligence to help identify offensive videos. But conspiracy theories don’t announce themselves, and machines can’t yet handle the complicated business of fact-checking.
In Mr. Williams’s case, human intervention seems to have been necessary. On Tuesday, shortly after I asked YouTube some questions about Mr. Williams’s account, all of his videos disappeared, and his profile was replaced by a message saying, “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech.”
Mr. Williams, who said he had recently left his job as an operations manager at a hazardous materials plant to focus on full-time punditry, has tangled with YouTube’s hate speech policies before. The company shut down one of his previous accounts for similar infractions, which he claimed cost him 250,000 subscribers and a lucrative income stream.
“If YouTube didn’t punish me,” Mr. Williams said, “I could easily be making over $30,000 a month.”
In a statement, YouTube said that Mr. Williams’s account was banned “as soon as it was flagged to us,” because its terms of service prohibit repeat rule-breakers from opening new accounts. It also said that its terms prohibit advertising from appearing on videos featuring “controversial and sensitive events, tragedies, political conflicts, and other sensitive topics.”
Even before this week’s crackdown, Mr. Williams was branching out. He sells cellphone ringtones on his website, and was considering starting his own paid streaming service. Tuesday night, just hours after he was banned by YouTube, Mr. Williams posted a video on Vimeo, another video-hosting platform. He pledged to keep insulting his favorite targets — Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama — and not shy away from controversy, no matter what the policies said.
“I don’t want to be on YouTube anymore,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s too communist.”
Twitter announced new anti-harassment measures on Wednesday, the latest in a series of features the platform has added in recent months in response to heated criticism of the ease with which rampant abuse festers in the social platform’s depths. With the help of algorithms, the company has begun finding and taking action against people who harass fellow users, even if harassers haven’t been the subject of specific abuse reports.
This proactive step could relieve users who’ve been targeted for abuse of some of the need to file individual reports for every threatening tweet they get. In a blog post, Twitter’s vice president of engineering, Ed Ho, wrote that the company’s software will flag likely harassers—users that regularly tweet at accounts that don’t follow them back, for instance—and block those users’ tweets from being seen by anyone but their own followers for a set period of time. “We aim to only act on accounts when we’re confident, based on our algorithms, that their behavior is abusive,” Ho wrote, promising that the company will regularly update and improve the new feature as it learns what works.
Twitter is also rolling out a tool that lets users filter out notifications from certain kinds of accounts more likely to be trolls, such as ones that don’t have a photo or verified contact information. Another change will give people using the “mute” feature the ability to keep themselves from seeing certain words, phrases, or conversations for a limited time period—a welcome option for someone who’s at the center of an angry tweetstorm about penguins, say, but wants to resume seeing penguin tweets after the storm has passed.
It wasn’t until November 2016 that Twitter expanded its mute function to allow users to mute certain words and phrases (as they can on Facebook and Instagram), one of its most effective strategies in the fight against targeted harassment. Last month, Twitter unveiled a few other anti-abuse features: automatic collapsing of tweets that are likely to be abusive or “low-quality” in conversations; the ability to report harassment from a user who has blocked you; better monitoring of users who jump from one suspended account to a newly created account to continue their abuse; and the end of users getting notifications when someone replied to a conversation started by someone they’d blocked.
The new initiative to wield machine-learning against repeat harassers is the most interesting development in the platform’s struggle to address the problem that’s driving many cultural leaders and prolific tweeters, like writer Lindy West, to close their Twitter accounts altogether. The idea that lines of code may someday take over the soul-draining job of internet moderators is a popular one these days. Jigsaw, a tech company owned by Alphabet, released a public API last week called Perspective. The Ringer reports that Perspective claims to use artificial intelligence to flag “toxic” comments online by running them against a database of old comments, which have already been deemed toxic by human beings, from sources including Wikipedia and the New York Times.
If Twitter can calibrate its program properly, preemptive flagging may be the boost its existing moderators need to address harassment faster and more effectively—though it’s likely to raise concerns among people concerned about free-speech implications. Blanket muting and restrictive notification filters are blunt instruments that can block out the good stuff with the bad. Targeting repeat, committed offenders is harder to do, but, by monitoring problem users before they can amplify their abuse, Twitter’s new approach is way more likely to punish harassers instead of restricting the Twitter experience of their victims.
