SHORT FILM SKETCH FROM ME: 'COPPA IS JUST THE LATEST OF MANY PROBLEMS WITH USER-GENERATED CONTENT'

NOVEMBER 24, 2019

(This sketch is time-dependent and would be different now in 2022, so I am posting it as a previous 'news item').

I have filmed about 16 minutes of myself talking about the multiplicity of challenges facing people, like myself, who want to publish content online as a personalized vehicle for social and political participation, without necessarily joining other groups. I had addressed this before in my Dangerous Thought Experiment video here on April 18, 2018 (please visit that post and rewatch the 4-minute video). Think of this blog post as a short film sketch.

I ran into some technical issues Saturday with the uploads and YouTube processing. I had shot everything on my iPhone. I found it would crash and then get stuck at 0% forever processing. So I broke it up into shorter pieces. Some of the iPhone segments would load, and they are embedded. Some of them are given just as hyperlinks. It seemed that I had to move the camera around the room and give the video different pictures for the Youtube processing to work. Sorry, the condo is messy. (Yup, I know, David Pakman has an immaculate deep-cleaned apartment for his livestreams. So does David Rubin. I don't have the time or staff for that.)

In the future (to the extent that we can fix the COPPA and other related issues, for the next two years at least in my case) I'll have to get larger videos to upload and learn to set up the frame of myself (with beanie) in the lower left corner while I show text or other content.

Here is the chart that I created for the video. You can follow along and treat the video as a podcast.

VISUAL CHART:

Self-Broadcast speech, individualized, without permission of others;

Foundations in US:� Limit downstream liability exposure to platforms

DMCA Safe Harbor for Copyright Claims (1998)

Section 230 of 1996 Telecommunications Act, for most other torts (especially defamation), leads to �platform or publisher� controversy for modern social media companies

Free speech activism by some groups has been one issue at a time, often failing big and wasting capital

Social justice activism needs participation of moderates as parts of groups, not just as speakers

Citizen journalism 'keeps them honest' but who should get credit for being a real journalist? Analytics? Pay-own-way?

Threats:

(1) 1996 Communications Decency Act, struck down by SCOTUS in 1997. Ironically, Section 230 was kept

(2) 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA), finally struck down in 2007. I was a litigant. Age-gate�controversy

(3) 2001 Talk of steganography hacks by terrorists (after 9/11), died off

(4) 2005 Implicit Content Problem: unusual incident in my own workplace (teaching) caues attention to be focused on this, dies off ; relates to concerns about cyberbullying

(5) 2008 talk of requiring speakers to have media perils insurance, gradually died and forgotten. There were attempts by the NWU to offer it in 2001 which did not work out well

(6) 2011: Copyright troll Righthaven abuse (ended in 2013)

(7) 2013-2014 increased concern over cybersecurity for power grid, foreign attacks on companies (Sony), along with the increased concern over data breaches and hacks (My visit to Oak Ridge); increased attention to foreign recruitment onto radical movements

(8) 2016 Donald Trump elected, leading to accusations of social media algorithms vulnerability to bot-driven fake news

(9) 2018 repeal of network neutrality (after 2015), minimal effects so far (but https issue)

(10) 2018 increased attention to gross privacy violations by social media companies (Cambridge Analytica, etc.)

(11) 2018 FOSTA, erosion of Section 230 has resulted in increased street prostitution and street crime in Washington DC and other cities, unintended consequence

(12) EU Copyright Directive (Articles 11 and 13) poses dilemma of segregating EU users

(13) Late 2018: Major deplatformings of conservative speakers often falsely accused of connections to white supremacy, tech and financial companies collude under pressure from SJWs; cancel culture problem

(14) End of 2018: Executive Order issue

(15) 2019: Increased attention to the idea that large social media companies support stochastic radicalization toward domestic white supremacy, leading to YouTube Adpocalypse Now and gross demonetizations

(16) 2019:� repeated false DMCA abuse against independent platforms (Pakman)

(17) Case Act:� due process reform could be undermined by low friction and trolls (compare to patents)

(18) 2019:� YouTube TOS change and �commercial viability� clause (and my 2018 �Dangerous Thought Experiment�

(19) 2019:� COPPA, shared responsibility for kids, links to commerce

(20) NEW (not in video): Platforms ban re-publication of previously public information (whistleblower identity, from a few conservative publications)

(21)� NEW� a news consolidation issue � the HTTP 403 problem

Social credit systems

Conditionally compelled speech

Reverse transparency

Is self-publication a good thing? Revisited

The color code is as follows: Green means an issue largely resolved for now. Blue means somewhat problematic still. Orange means more problematic (like 'Orange man bad'). Red means possibly an existential threat to user-generated content now. Violet means possibly very serious but relatively obscure and ignored

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2a link

2b link

4a link

4b link

4c link

(Originally posted: Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 12 noon EST)