We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

It’s been difficult to comment on the move given the extreme reaction by Twitter’s own community. Lots of “I told you so” from the conspiracy theorists who think that this is because of Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s stake in the company, compounded by the #occupy crowd continuing to claim their hashtag was censored in Twitter’s trending topics made me want to avoid the subject entirely. But alas.

Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law.  Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content.  Google lays out its orders in its Transparency Report.  Other companies are less forthright.  In any case, Twitter has two options in the event of a request: Fail to comply, and risk being blocked by the government in question, or comply (read: censor).  And if they have “boots on the ground”, so to speak, in the country in question?  No choice.

In the event that a company chooses to comply with government requests and censor content, there are a number of mitigating steps the company can take.  The most important, of course, is transparency, something that Twitter has promised.  Google is also transparent in its content removal (Facebook? Not so much).  Twitter’s move to geolocate their censorship is also smart, given the alternative (censoring it worldwide, that is) – particularly since it appears a user can manually change his or her location.

I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, represent a sea change in Twitter’s policies.  Twitter has previously taken down content–for DMCA requests, at least–and will no doubt continue to face requests in the future.  I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough situation…and I’ll be the first to raise hell if they screw up.

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in FCC v. FOX to determine whether regulation of “indecent” content on broadcast television violates the First Amendment. This case has been up to the Supreme Court before; in 2009, the Court held that the FCC’s decision to fine FOX for broadcasting profanity (called “fleeting expletives”) during live award shows (the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards) was not “arbitrary and capricious”, and so did not violate the Administrative Procedures Act that governs how federal agencies can make and change their policies. (CDT filed a brief in both the 2009 and 2011 cases.)

This time around, the Court is addressing a different question: whether FCC regulation of indecent (but not illegal) over-the-air content is consistent with the First Amendment. In the 1978 Pacifica case, the Court held that because broadcast media was “uniquely pervasive” in American culture, serving as the principle source for news and entertainment in a time before 500-channel cable packages, and acted as an uncontrollable “intruder” into the home, it was appropriate for the government to put some limits on what type of content could travel through the airwaves.

Regardless of whether this rationale made sense in 1978, it no longer applies in the media environment of 2012. As we argue in our coalition brief, the centrality of broadcast content has waned in the face of other content sources (including cable, video-on-demand, and the Internet). At the same time, parents have never had a greater ability to set their own limits and controls on the type of content they believe is most suitable for their families. As the court recognized in Reno v ACLU, user empowerment tools that give individuals the power to set their own content restrictions are a less restrictive means to achieve the goal of protecting children than broad government content regulations of constitutionally protected speech. As the Court considers the arguments it hears today, we urge it to consider the changed technological circumstances of the past three decades, and extend to broadcast content the same level of First Amendment protection afforded to other speech.

And with that, I give you this:

So, last week I posted about a debate in Los Angeles, as framed by the LA Times. Now, I’ll tackle a somewhat tangential issue: The use of commercial software by libraries, schools, and other government-funded entities and the implications of that usage.

Recently, the ACLU and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed suit against the Salem (MO) public library for unconstitutionally blocking access to websites discussing minority religions by improperly classifying them as “occult” or “criminal.” According to the ACLU:

Salem resident Anaka Hunter contacted the ACLU after she was unable to access websites pertaining to Native American religions or the Wiccan faith for her own research. After protesting to the library director, Glenda Wofford, portions of the sites were unblocked, but much remained censored. Wofford said she would only allow access to blocked sites if she felt patrons had a legitimate reason to view the content and further said that she had an obligation to report people who wanted to view these sites to the authorities.

Other sites blocked by the library’s Netsweeper software include the official webpage of the Wiccan church, the Wikipedia entry pertaining to Wicca, Astrology.com and The Encyclopedia on Death and Dying, which contains viewpoint-neutral discussions of various cultures’ and religions’ ideas of death and death rituals.

Let’s start here: CIPA, as I mentioned, requires the blocking of obscene content and content deemed ‘harmful to minors.’ The latter is problematic in its vagueness, particularly when dealing with libraries, where adults are commonly patrons of the Internet. Yes, CIPA allows for a user aged 18+ to request a site be unblocked, but that patron should not have to go to unreasonable lengths to make that happen. And if the allegations in the ACLU’s case are accurate, then Wofford seems to have gone far beyond the scope of her job in claiming that she was required to report the customer’s request.

But more problematic to me is the categorization of the sites requested. The ACLU case alleges that the Salem Public Library had classified sites about Wicca and Astrology as “occult” or even “criminal.” It’s unlikely, however, that Salem had anything to do with the former (or even, perhaps the latter). Rather, Salem likely bought their filtering software (in this case, from Canadian company Netsweeper) out of the box. If true, then all they had to do was choose which categories to block.

As you well know, this is a sensitive subject for me ever since Websense erroneously categorized this very site as pornography. I know how these things work: They’re part automated, part categorized by minimum wage staff. It’s a boring job and mistakes are bound to happen. But a whole occult category? What is this, 1956? But I digress…

What I find problematic is how much control these private companies–and particularly, though not only, Netsweeper–have over what we view. As Helmi Noman pointed out last year, Netsweeper’s categorization of Tumblr.com as a pornographic sites (apparently 50% of the pages hosted on Tumblr are pornographic in nature!) resulted in the blogging platform being blocked in four countries (and, most likely, the Salem Public Library too).

More alarming is that these filtering tools can easily be gamed. My blog was categorized by Websense as pornography because of one post with an outrageous amount of comment spam that included outlinks to porn sites. If I wanted to get your site blocked by the Salem Public Library, all I’d need to do is drop a bunch of porn on it, easy-peasy.

Again, I digress. And lest my line of commentary be perceived as too narrow, I stumbled upon a great post this afternoon by Jason Pitzl-Waters laying out the other implications of this case. Some of the comments are fascinating as well.

The first, a talk from my friend Ethan Zuckerman at the University of British Columbia:

I’ve tapped out–imperfectly–a few excerpts for those of you who don’t watch videos:

In reference to how the ‘Arab Spring’ began:

Thinking about social media by itself simply as a way to get information out there is probably inadequate … We have to start thinking about the ecosystem.  We have to start thinking about this idea that what participatory media does is make it possible for people to create media at very low cost, and then if they’re able to use that complicated network, it’s possible–sometimes and not always–to get that media out and get it amplified to the point where it reaches enough people that you’re able to have a coordinating function, where people in Tunisia are able to say ‘We’ve never seen this before.  We’ve seen protests, but not like this.  The fact that it’s spreading from one town to another is unprecedented and that’s something I want to be a part of’  That’s how it moves, from involving a small number of people in a town to being capable of taking down a government.  So if that story’s true–I believe it is, and it’s worth taking a close look at–it’s a way of explaining what is a really tough mystery–how something leaves a small town and reaches the world–we have to ask the question: ‘Is there something special about Facebook?’

On the purpose of social media:

The purpose of Web 2.0 is to share cute pictures of kitty-cats. And I say that, and you think I’m joking, but I’m not. It’s not epiphenomenal that the video of the cat flushing the toilet goes out on YouTube and everyone is laughing at it…that’s the point of Web 2.0.

And, in reference to the Malaysian online public sphere:

…The same tools that are helping other people share cute photos of cats are finding these people a way to have a digital public sphere…not the kind of space they can have in the real world, which is too dangerous…but online, there was a capability to carve out a space for free speech.

And finally, and this is key:

“[Some of the tools, like Tor, being built by experts are utterly essential but] I worry that we don’t take these ‘cute cat tools’ seriously enough. These tools that anyone can use, that are used 99% of the time for completely banal purposes, purposes that you and I may find incredibly boring unless it’s the exact interest we care about. There are some reasons why these ‘cute cat tools’–like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, any tool that allows people to create and share original content and have many millions of users–are important…

…When the assumption is that you just want to get cute cat pictures, you spend a lot of time making these tools very usable…which results in these tools being usable even if you don’t speak the language, even if you’re not the intended audience. And because these tools are used by hundreds of millions of people, there’s a good chance that when someone gets involved in activism, these are the tools they’ll use.

The second, an article from Forbes on how Twitter specifically affected corporate decisions in 2011. An excerpt:

It started last year, when Gap proposed a new logo that was universally derided on Twitter, Tumblr and more. Gap’s new logo, which featured a white background and a small blue square, was mocked and parodied on all forms of social media, prompting campaigns to restore the original logo. Within a week of introducing the new logo design, the company had returned to its traditional blue and white square. It set the tone for a 2011 full of company reversals, spurred by vocal online backlash.

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was once considered pornography, not just unsuitable for a library but illegal to sell in some countries a little more than half a century ago. Banning materials from the library because the majority of people find them distasteful is a dicey step. What might the majority find unsuitable next? Something that you want to read, perhaps? Yet all patrons to the library should be able to search for books and videos without patently offensive material shining across the room at them.

Whose rights matter more?

Now, thanks to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), K-12 schools as well as libraries that accept certain federal funding are required to have an Internet safety policy in place, which includes blocking obscene content, as well as content deemed ‘harmful to minors.’  And yet, the law also provides that a school or library may ‘disable the the technology protection measure concerned, during use by an adult, to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purpose,’ making the full range of Internet content available to adults in libraries. Libraries that don’t receive funding aren’t bound to CIPA, and I’m not sure the extent to which those libraries censor (or not).  The Times, then, is asking whether library Internet censorship (of lewd content) should become standard.

Here’s my take, in a word: No.  I have no real problem with CIPA, as it offers provisions for adults to access all content.  And in this particular case, of what I assume to involve a library not bound by CIPA, the masturbating library patron is already committing a crime, meaning that the individual–not the content–is the real problem.

It’s not that I think watching porn in a library is appropriate (to each their own, but I’m going to go with “no” on that question), but that I don’t believe there to be a filtering tool out there in the world that would censor pornography without having overreaching effects.  As the Times rightly points out, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was once considered pornographic; therefore, where would the line be drawn?  Would images of nude adults be blocked too?  Surely, that’s censorship.  What about content that provides sexual education?  Kids who grow up with parents who refuse to talk about sex need access to that kind of content in public libraries.

In other words, if someone could build a tool that would effectively block hardcore pornography in public libraries without having the effect of overblocking, I’d be willing to have this discussion.  Until then, no way.

Additional reading:

• The American Library Association (ALA) Bill of Rights.
• The ALA fact sheet on Internet use in libraries.

In fact, the list is so good that I’m going to risk my blog once again getting incorrectly categorized by content filters just so you can see the whole thing:

Content Filtering ENGLISH

You’re welcome.

Now, if you want to do something about it, see Bytes For All’s excellent article on moral policing in Pakistan.

When I was at ONI, we analyzed a number of trending topics that were controversial in some way or another and that people were claiming had been censored, including #Flotilla and#Wikileaks. In both cases, we found that, while the problem was likely algorithmic, it did seem odd that Twitter would choose not to interfere and set a genuinely newsworthy event to trend. Nonetheless, none of us felt it to be ‘censorship.’

Despite my work (or perhaps because of it), I find those calls to be somewhat obnoxious. First off, Twitter is a private company that has been transparent about their algorithms, like it or not. And they’re not denying you your right to speech, they’re simply not trending your speech. That’s like complaining about being left off Twitter’s recommended user list (*cough Scoble cough*).

I think there’s a question here though: How much do Trending Topics actually matter? First off, they have to represent one of two things: Either an intentionally-created hashtag (usually created with the purpose of trending) or a genuinely popular person or thing at that moment (e.g., a celebrity who has just died). In the case of the former, I think it’s a legitimate method of trying to get attention for a cause, but I don’t know that getting a hashtag on the sidebar matters all that much in the long run (I’ll elaborate in a moment). In terms of the latter, I think it’s certainly important – I wouldn’t have known when Farrah Fawcett (of Charlie’s Angels fame) died if it weren’t for spotting her name on the sidebar. Seriously.

But back to hashtags – As far as I can recall, #syria never really trended, but that hasn’t stopped people from using it, searching it, saving it as a search term, and following it. On the other hand, the ability of a well-worded tweet to go viral is proven: I once tweeted a pithy statement, only to find it retweeted 22,000 times.

I think that raises a bigger point: Trending Topics do not imply quality of content. There are certain hashtags full of valuable content all the time (think of some of the smaller, humor-focused ones, or even #ows or #occupywallstreet when they first started). Then there are other hashtags repeated ad nauseum for the sole purpose of getting the hashtag to trend – The #GiladShalit campaign and the #Gaza solidarity campaign have both done this at times, for example, filling up single tweets with only the hashtag. If I spot an interesting hashtag and click on it, only to find a bunch of garbage, chances are I’m not going to check back. On the other hand, if I spot a non-trending hashtag filled with quality tweets, I might save it as a search.

My point is that people complain about censorship, and there are certainly some valid criticisms of Twitter’s algorithm (I don’t like, for instance, that it’s different for different cities), but without much analysis of whether Trending a topic is actually that useful.

I would also add that I’ve been at several conferences where the hashtag of the conference trended locally – which really only implies (given that there were fewer than 500 people in attendance) that the cities in which those conferences took place had a low threshold for trending topics.

Lastly, a comment: Twitter does in fact censor profanity from the Trending list. Whether they did this with Jeff Jarvis’s #fuckyouwashington remains unknown, but I do find it rather absurd that a company that prides itself on free expression is for some reason abiding by unrequired FCC guidelines.

While I suggest you read the paper (or this excellent Wall Street Journal article reporting on it), I’d like to discuss briefly why my blog was categorized as pornography by Websense.  Frankly, I find it utterly fascinating: About a year ago, Helmi Noman–my co-author–discovered that this very blog was blocked in Yemen.  Upon further investigation, Helmi realized that the reason for the blockage was not political content or anything of the sort, but that my blog had been categorized–by Websense–as pornography.

After Websense barred Yemen from future software updates, I thought the problem had been solved until Luke Allnutt–who works at RFE/RL, which uses Websense in its offices–tweeted that he couldn’t get to my blog.

I quickly wrote to Websense, and received a fairly rapid reply, telling me that my blog had been reclassified as a personal site.  Great–I then pushed back a bit, asking how my blog had been categorized as a pornographic site in the first place.  My assumption was that their automated system was based on keywords, and that my blogging about Helmi Noman’s paper (“Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the ‘Arabian Countries‘”) had caused it; after all, it caused “Arab sex” to be the #1 search term for my blog.

Turns out, that wasn’t the case at all.  In fact, what happened was significantly more chilling.  Here’s the text of an email sent to me by Patricia Hogan, Senior Public Relations Specialist for Websense:

Hi Jillian,

Regarding your questions about blog classification, the problem seems to come from the comments, not the posts. Indeed, you appear to be the victim of comment spam (which often contains pornographic links or links to malware).

Look at the comments after this post: http://jilliancyork.com/2008/09/11/blog-strike-for-mohammed-erraji/. The last comment has pornographic links and the one preceding it has links to pharmacy spam, which often leads to malware. This is just one post that we looked at. You may have more.

Comment spam has been hounding bloggers (and more recently Facebook users), so Websense developed tools to help keep blogs and readers safe from spam like this. We offer free plug-ins for many blog platforms to help prevent this type of comment abuse (go to http://defensio.com/downloads for more information). We don’t want you to be victimized again from unscrupulous posts, and our plug-in allows you to control what content you wish to appear on your site.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Sincerely,

PATRICIA HOGAN
Sr. Public Relations Specialist

WEBSENSE, INC.
ph: +1.858.320.9393
fax: +1.858.784.4393
www.websense.com

What Hogan is saying is that anyone can manipulate Websense software by spamming a blog’s comments section with porn outlinks. Let me say that again: Websense can be manipulated by anyone wishing to censor anyone else, just by adding a few links to porn in the comments section.

SmartFilter appears to have similar problems. A few months ago, blogger Sabina England reported that her blog was blocked in the UAE, which uses the software. While she may have a similar issue with “porn spam,” our suspicion at the time was that SmartFilter was detecting keywords, and had blocked England’s blog based on the use of the words “cunt,” “sexy,” and “whores” in a poem she had written.

I find this utterly chilling; now, I will say that Yemen has stopped using Websense and we’re not aware of any other countries–at least in the Middle East and North Africa–that use the software. Nevertheless, plenty of schools, libraries, and workplaces use Websense and other tools, and while their blocking of pornography may be justified, the mis-categorization of URLs by these technologies means that there are chilling effects, even to blocking porn.

The Telegraph’s report was just obscene–not only did they claim the Algerian Internet had been shut down, but their subheader also stated that, “Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria.” Really? Facebook accounts were deleted? The article doesn’t mention anything to back that up, so I have no idea what the intent was. Did users delete their accounts out of fear? Were they phished by the government and then deleted? Did Facebook delete the accounts of users utilizing pseudonyms? Did they really mean that Facebook was blocked?

Turns out, none of the above. In fact, the Internet didn’t go down at all, but that didn’t stop Mashable from parroting the Telegraph report. Algerian commenters quickly jumped in, however, to point out that the story had not been verified and that the Telegraph was Mashable’s only source.

Renesys, which was instrumental in reporting on the Egyptian Internet shutdown, explains the situation:

Algeria typically has about 135 routed network prefixes in the global routing table, and our data show that they are all still routed and relatively stable. Traceroutes inbound confirm that sites hosted in these prefixes are still alive, and spot checks of websites hosted in Algeria show that most are up and functioning normally. A few that we checked were unreachable, including the telecommunications regulatory authority (http://www.arpt.dz), the Prime Minister’s office (http://www.cg.gov.dz), and other sites hosted at Djaweb (Telecom Algeria’s hosting brand).

Now, there were indeed reports from some Algerians on Twitter that the Internet was intermittently off, which I see no reason to doubt. @EyesOnAlgeria, precise location unknown, reported earlier today that his (her?) Internet was unreliable.

As for the Facebook “deletions,” well…no evidence of any kind has surfaced as of yet.

I met Slim in December 2009 in Beirut, at the 2nd Arab Bloggers Workshop organized by Global Voices Advocacy and the Heinrich Boll foundation.  We immediately connected–over Al Maza, of course–and had many good conversations that week.  When I cried like an idiot at the end of the conference, Slim was the first to come over and hug me.  Over the past year, Slim has helped me immensely on a number of projects, often doing me huge favors by testing websites or explaining something technical to me.  He is one of those people endlessly saying “yes” to people, always helping friends.

With Slim, December 2009, Beirut

Last month, he was invited to speak at Yale and lucky for me, visited Cambridge for the afternoon.  I took him to the coffeehouse Algiers, which amused him as much as it did me.  He looked different, his hair was flying all over the place.  His colleague from Yale told me that he couldn’t cut it, it had become his trademark in Tunisia.

Slim’s “crime”?  Speaking openly, tirelessly, and fearlessly about censorship, as far as I know.  I call loudly on all of you to speak out against the pervasive Internet filtering in Tunisia, the arrests of journalists and of bloggers, and the lack of media attention being paid to these crimes, particularly in the United States (an ally of Tunisia).