Content Moderation Case Studies: Misleading Information From Official Sources (2020)
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Summary: With news breaking so rapidly, it's possible that even major newspapers or official sources may get information wrong. Social media sites, like Twitter, need to determine how to deal with news tweets that later turn out to be misleading -- even when coming from major news organizations, citing official government organizations.With widespread protests around the United States calling attention to police brutality and police activity disproportionately targeting the black community, the NY Post tweeted a link to an article discussing an internal communication by the NY Police Department (NYPD) warning of concrete disguised as ice cream cups that were supposedly found at some of the protests, with the clear implication being that this was a way to disguise items that could be used for violence or property destruction.The article was criticized widely by people who pointed out that the items in fact appear to be part of a standard process for testing concrete mixtures, with the details of each mixture written on the side of the containers. Since these were found at a construction site, it seems likely that the NYPD's alert was, at best, misleading.In response to continuing criticism, the NY Post made a very minor edit to the story, noting only that the markings on the cups make them resemble concrete sample tests commonly used on construction sites. However, the story and its title remained unchanged and the NY Post retweeted it a day later -- leading some to question why the NY Post was publishing misinformation, even if it was accurately reporting the content of an internal police memo.Questions for Twitter:- Should it flag potentially misleading tweets when published in major media publications, such as the NY Post?
- Should it matter if the information originated at an official government source, such as the NYPD?
- How much investigation should be done to determine the accuracy (or not) of the internal police report? How should the NY Post's framing of the story reflect this investigation?
- Does it matter that the NY Post retweeted the story a day after the details were credibly called into question?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Do different publications require different standards of review?
- Does it matter if underlying information is coming from a governmental organization?
- If a media report accurately reports on the content of an underlying report that is erroneous or misleading, does that make the report itself misleading?
- How much does wider context (protests, accusations of violence, etc.) need to be considered when making determinations regarding moderation?
Resolution: To date, Twitter has left the tweets up, and the NY Post article remains online with only the very minor edit that was added a few hours after the article received widespread criticism. The NY Post tweets have not received any fact check or other moderation to date. There are, however, many replies and quote tweets calling out what people feel to be misleading aspects of the story (as well as plenty from people taking the content of the story at face value, and worrying about how the items might be used for violence).
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posted at: 12:00am on 01-Aug-2020
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DOJ And Florida Officials Announce Arrests Relating To Twitter Hack
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This seemed fairly inevitable, after it became quite clear that the Twitter hack from a few weeks ago was done by teen hackers who didn't seem to do much to cover their tracks, but officials in Florida announced the arrest of a Florida teenager for participating in the hack, followed by the DOJ announcing two others as well -- a 19 year old in the UK and a 22 year old in Florida.As for why the first announced was separate and done by Florida officials, it appears that it involved a 17-year-old, and apparently it was easier to charge him as an adult under state laws, rather than under federal law, as with the other two.Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed 30 felony charges against the teen this week for scamming people across America in connection with the Twitter hack that happened on July 15. The charges he's facing include one count of organized fraud, 17 counts of communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to computer or electronic device without authority.Hillsborough County Jail records show Clark was booked into jail shortly after 6:30 a.m. Friday.Warren's office says the scheme to defraud stole the identities of prominent people and posted messages in their names directing victims to send Bitcoin to accounts that were associated with the Tampa teen. According to the state attorney, the scheme reaped more than $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day. Once again, it's looking like we got incredibly lucky -- that it was just some young hackers mostly messing around, rather than anyone with serious ill-intent and the ability to plan something bigger. It now appears that Twitter's internal security controls were kind of a mess. Over 1,000 employees had access to the control panel that would allow people to make the changes that enabled the hack -- and even that some staffers and contractors somehow made it a game to abuse their powers to spy on users.Once again, it seems that Twitter needs to fix up a lot of things on the security side, including figuring out how to do end-to-end encryption for direct messages.
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posted at: 12:00am on 01-Aug-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
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