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Free Thinking Lets Fake News Run WildSocial media platforms have been roundly disparaged for failing to curb misinformation, fake news and hate speech. It is an expensive proposition for them, risking profits and share prices. The other risk, negative consumer opinion, can also be costly, particularly when lawmakers add to the rain on their parade. That free speech defense collapses when real lives are at risk from disinformation. When advertisers and telecoms, the financial backbone, are unwilling to put their own brands at risk social media platforms hit the brakes.
The typical howls of “censorship” and “political motives” were unleashed by Sky News Australia digital editor Jack Houghton (August 1). The YouTube decision, he offered, was a “disturbing attack on the ability to think freely.” The ranting videos in question were but “opinion content the tech giant disagrees with.” Sky News Australia is a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, principally owned by the Murdoch family. News Corp then upped its criticism of YouTube with a round of columns in its various newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal. When the suspension ended the YouTube postings returned under the headline: "Uncanceled: Sky News Australia Set Free.” “Australians are rightly worried about the promotion and dissemination of Covid lies and conspiracy theories that put lives at risk and undermine public health,” said Australian MP Sarah Hanson-Young, quoted by AFP (August 6). She has called to a hearing this coming week (August 13) representatives of Sky News, YouTube and media regulator Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA). “If information is too dangerous for the internet, surely it's too dangerous to be on our TV screens,” she explained. It is a daunting task for the social media giants to police their own platforms. To paraphrase the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, there are “billions and billions” of fake news purveyors. Twitter hoisted the “help” flag last week (August 2) with a new initiative with news agencies Associated Press (AP) and Reuters “to verify information as it emerges into widespread conversations on the platform.” The effort is only published in the English language, to the relief of many propagandists. “After months of trying everything else,” noted Poynter (August 5), Twitter has called in the professional fact checkers. Part of the plan aids the Birdwatch project - Twitter users submitting fake news and misinformation corrections. “This collaboration is just one way we’ll use to understand how Birdwatch is performing,” noted a Twitter spokesperson. “There’s no one perfect measure to understand this, so we’ll be gathering multiple inputs to give signal.” The AP and Reuters are signatories to the International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles. TicTok has already turned to fact-checking authorities for help weeding out coronavirus and election coverage misinformation. Earlier this year Dutch public broadcaster NOS disputed a YouTube decision to remove a posted segment from the Nieuwsuur (News Hour) program about the rise of online radicalization. The video showed several seconds of Christchurch, New Zealand murderer Brenton Tarrant’s live-stream in which he killed 51 people. In May, Google reitterated its policy of no video showing attackers with weapons, violence or victims. Last month Google offered to allow the video if several frames showing weapons in the murder’s automobile were deleted. The NOS declined saying those frames “showed context,” reported Villamedia (August 4). See also... |
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Video sharing portal YouTube, subsidiary of Google, subsidiary of Alphabet, recently suspended Sky News Australia from uploading anything for a week. There had been a content review over compliance with coronavirus guidelines, reported the (UK) Independent (August 2). “We have clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance, to prevent the spread of Covid-19 misinformation,” said a YouTube spokesperson to Australian public broadcaster ABC (August 1). “We apply our policies equally for everyone regardless of uploader and, in accordance with these policies and our long-standing strikes system, removed videos from and issued a strike to Sky News Australia’s channel.” The suspension was for one week, which is strike one.