e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

October 2020
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       


Content Moderation Case Study: Ask.fm Responds After A Teen's Suicide Is Linked To Bullying On The Site (August 2013)

Furnished content.


Summary: After a UK teen took her own life in response to bullying on social networking site, ask.fm, her father asked both the site and the UK government to take corrective measures to prevent further tragedies. This wasn't an isolated incident. Reports linked multiple suicides to bullying on the teen-centered site.Ask.fm's problems with bullying and other abuse appeared to be far greater than those observed on other social media sites. Part of this appeared to be due to the site's user base, which was much younger than more-established social media platforms. This -- combined with the option to create anonymous accounts -- seemed to have made ask.fm a destination for abusive users. What moderation existed before these problems became headline news was apparently ineffective, resulting in a steady stream of horrific stories until the site began to make serious efforts to curb a problem now too big to ignore.Ask.fm's immediate response to both the teen's father and UK Prime Minister David Cameron's criticism (Cameron called for a boycott of the site) was to point to existing moderation efforts put in place to deter bullying and other terms of service violations.After major companies pulled their advertising, ask.fm pledged to assist police in investigating the circumstances behind the teen's suicide, as well as consult with a law firm to see if moderation efforts could be improved. It also hired more moderators and a safety officer, and made its "Report" button more prominent.More than a year after ask.fm became the target of criticism around the world, the site implemented its first Safety Advisory Board. The group of experts on teens and their internet use was tasked with reducing the amount of bullying on the platform and making it safer for its young users.More significantly, ask.fm's founders -- who were viewed as unresponsive to criticism -- were removed by the site's new owners, InterActiveCorp (IAC). IAC pledged to work more closely with US law enforcement and safety experts to improve moderation efforts.Decisions to be made by ask.fm:

  • Should anonymous accounts be eliminated (or stop-gapped by gathering IP address/personal info) to limit abusive behavior?
  • Does catering to a younger user base create unique problems not found at sites that skew older?
  • Would more transparency about moderation efforts/features nudge more users towards reporting abuse?
  • Should the site directly intervene when moderators notice unhealthy/unwanted user interactions?
Questions and policy implications to consider:
  • Given the international reaction to the teen's suicide, does a minimal immediate response make the perceived problem worse?
  • Does having a teen user base increase the risk of direct regulation or unfavorable legislation, given the increased privacy protections for minors in many countries?
  • Are moderation efforts resulting from user reports vetted periodically to ensure the company isn't making bullying/trolling problems worse by allowing abusive users to get others suspended or banned?
Resolution: When immediate steps did little to deter criticism, ask.fm formed a Safety Committee and, ultimately, dismissed founders that appeared to be unresponsive to users' concerns. The site made changes to its moderation strategies, hired more moderators, and made users more aware of the features they could use to report users and avoid unwanted interactions.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 01-Oct-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Burger King Fights Proxy War Against McDonald's Over Hungry Jack Trademark Dispute

Furnished content.


As one of the largest private employers in the world, it probably shouldn't come as too big a surprise that McDonald's is fairly protective of its trademarks. The company, large legal coffers though it has, is not undefeatable, however. It was only a year or so ago, for instance, that McDonald's famously lost its "Big Mac" trademark in Europe when another chain, Supermacs, got it cancelled as it expanded into more European markets.Well, now Mcdonald's is facing another trademark issue in Australia. Down Under, there is a fast food chain called Hungry Jack's, which is actually a part of Burger King. Burger King, of course, is McDonald's chief global rival. There is something of a proxy war currently being waged over Hungry Jack's "Big Jack" sandwich, with McDonald's crying trademark infringement over its "Big Mac" trademark.

McDonald's Asia-Pacific filed Federal Court proceedings on August 28 against Hungry Jack's over its rival's new burger trademark, which it claims is "substantially identical with or deceptively similar" to its own Big Mac trademark.Hungry Jack's has been the owner of the registered trademark "Big Jack" since November last year but McDonald's says the trademark "is liable to be cancelled, and should in the exercise of the court's discretion be cancelled" on a number of grounds, including that it is "likely to deceive or cause confusion" among consumers.
So let's stipulate immediately that the rival for McDonald's absolutely constructed a sandwich burger that has a lot of similarities to a Big Mac. The construction of the food is similar and the names both have the word "Big" in them, and then culminate in designators for the companies selling them, but those names rhyme. Big Mac. Big Jack. You get it.So, with all of that stipulated, is this trademark infringement? Well, as always, that comes down to the question of whether there will be public confusion as to the source of the products. And Hungry Jack's is apparently prepared to argue that there won't be.
In a defence filed in the Federal Court on Friday, lawyers for Hungry Jack's said consumers were "well aware" of the "competitive rivalry between Hungry Jack’s and [McDonald's]" and it had not infringed the latter's trademarks. Consumers would not be deceived into thinking the Big Jack was a McDonald's product, they said.Hungry Jack's said it was entitled to use the Big Jack trademark, which played on the company's name and the name of "its founder and current owner, Jack Cowin". The word Jack was "closely associated by consumers with Hungry Jack's' goods and services", the company's lawyers said.
Add to the above that much of the complaints McDonald's lodges aren't relevant in a trademark dispute. The recipe for the sandwich doesn't really matter, unless McDonald's has trademarked this construction. If it has done so, it certainly hasn't said as much. The word "Big" in the name of each product basically doesn't matter, since it is both descriptive and in common use in trademarks all over the place. Instead, this is going to come down to whether "Jack" is too similar to "Mac", sufficiently so to lead to public confusion.Which is where Hungry Jack's point is made. The rivalry between these two is as famous in Australia as Burger King versus McDonald's is in America. Given that notoriety, and the simple fact that the dispute is over two words that very specifically designate the origin of the product, it's hard to imagine the public being confused by any of this.In other words, it would seem that McDonald's would need to bring instances of actual confusion to court to make this lawsuit successful.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 01-Oct-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



October 2020
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1049)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (164)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com