Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Suspends Users Who Tweet The Word 'Memphis' (2021)
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Summary: Twitter users who made the mistake of tweeting out an innocuous word -- 'Memphis -- found themselves suspended from the service for 12 hours for apparently violating the terms of use.According to messages sent to suspended users, the use of the Tennessee city name violated prohibitions on posting personal information.The inadvertent damage quickly spread across Twitter as users trolled each other, trying to get unsuspecting accounts to tweet the suddenly-forbidden word. The apparent flaw in the auto-moderation system went unaddressed for several hours as more and more users found themselves temporarily prevented from using the service. Although some users noticed certain accounts (mainly verified ones) weren't being hit with bans, it affected enough users that the ripple effect was not only noticeable, but covered by many mainstream media outlets.The bans were lifted several hours later with no explanation from Twitter other than that an unspecified "bug" had resulted in tweets containing the word "Memphis" being removed and features limited for those accounts.That explanation was not entirely clear. Given the "Memphis" bug's link to alleged violations of Twitter's policies against posting other people's personal information, it was speculated the ban on a single city name may have been the result of an erroneously-completed form on the moderation side. Systems security professional SwiftOnSecurity took a plausible stab at the possible root cause of this improbable series of moderation events.What's possible is a Twitter staffer tried to block a street address, but the postal syntax acted as an escape sequence, or the original was multi-line and they only pasted the city. If so, every use of the word "Memphis" was considered to be a post containing a full address Twitter had targeted for removal under its personal information policy.Decisions to be made by Twitter:- Should moderation of the posting of personal information be handled with automation, given the potential for errors to scale and compound?
- Should a better stop-gap process be put in place to head off future events like these?
- Should users be given better explanations when moderation-at-scale results in features being limited for users affected by moderation bugs?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Should a stop-gap measure be put in place to prevent errors like this from becoming multi-hour failures?
- Have Twitter's moderation efforts resulted in a noticeable limitation of the spread of personal info?
- Is all publication of personal information considered a violation of policy? Or are exceptions in place for information considered to be of public interest?
Resolution: Twitter restored accounts and tweets targeted by its "Memphis" bug within hours of its emergence. However, the company's moderation team has yet to explain exactly went wrong or what Twitter has done to prevent its recurrence.Originally posted to the Trust & Safety Foundation website.
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posted at: 12:00am on 03-Jun-2021
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A Conversation About Video Game Preservation In The Gaming Industry Is Long, Long Overdue
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There has been quite an uptick recently when it comes to the conversation around video game preservation. There are probably several reasons for this. First and most notably, the confluence of the trend toward the gaming public primarily purchasing digital games rather than shiny disks, and the emergence of the latest generation of video game consoles has brought the question of what happens to older games into stark relief for many in the gaming public. Second, America has been in something of a love affair over the last decade or so with all things "retro". And, finally, the concept of video games as works of creative art, rather than wastes of time to be sneered at, has found firm purchase within our society. All of this has combined to make the public much, much more interested in preserving antiquated video games. And, frankly, very disappointed at how often the gaming industry doesn't take preservation at all seriously.Well, it's happening again. In the near future, Electronic Arts will be shutting down the servers and online portions of several Need For Speed games.Today, via Reddit (while most the English-speaking world is on a holiday), it’s been announced that Need For Speed: Carbon, Need For Speed: Undercover, Need For Speed: Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed and Need For Speed: The Run will be “retired”. Which I suppose is an apposite word, given they’ll be limping off the tracks as they leave digital storefronts today, and their servers switched off come the end of August.The reasons given are the usual: that maintaining servers for the few remaining players is prohibitively expensive, and hey, look, they’ve released loads of (astoundingly poor) NFS games since then, so you could buy those instead! Note a couple of things on this. While the offline portions of the games will still be playable for those who have already purchased them, new buyers will no longer have a place to legitimately buy them. Also, while there is a single player component, a big draw of the games was and continues to be the ability to race against friends online. Finally, note that this announcement comes with absolutely no plan to make the game or online play available in any other way.Which is where the preservation conversation comes in. Once again, we have a game publisher that enjoys full rights controls over its property choosing to simply deprive the public of some or all of that property. A more perfect antithesis of the concepts of the public domain and copyright law generally probably can't be found. While EA explained away its decision to "retire" these games as the expense that comes along with maintaining servers and backend infrastructure for relatively fewer players -- along with a suggestion that disappointed gamers simply by new games in the Need For Speed series -- it's not like there aren't steps it could take to play nicely with its fans if it wanted to.It’s always this way. “Shrug! What else could we do?!” Well, here are some other things they could do:They could release the source code for the 10-15 year old games, and allow others to continue their development in the public domain. They could release the server code for the games, to allow enthusiasts to continue to host the few dedicated players remaining. They could offer to upgrade players to one of the many NFS games of the 2010s (although this may be crueller than just nothing at all). They could recognise that last year EA made a revenue of $5.5bn, and it’s likely they could just about afford to leave the servers on with minimal maintenance, without taking too big of a hitDelisting them from stores just seems... petty! Sure, they don’t offer all the available features when the servers are off, but come on. Quarter the prices—hell, be decent enough to make them free—and let people buy them as single-player artefacts of the past. In other words, either preserve the games for fans yourselves, EA, or let the fans do it for you. Either option is viable. But simply switching off the servers and making the games no longer available for purchase at any price is probably not so much a petty thing to do as it is a callous thing to do.And when a company starts acting callous towards its dedicated fans, well, that's not a good plan for building either goodwill or more buying fans.
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posted at: 12:00am on 03-Jun-2021
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