Monthly Archives: August 2017

PayPal this week banned at least 34 organizations for promoting hate, violence or racial intolerance, including Richard Spencers group and others apparently involved in the Charlottesville riot. PayPals announcement mentions KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups that have violated its acceptable use policy.

Its a private company (thats not yet regulated as a utility) so it can do as it pleases, and the Nazi/Klan creeps certainly arent going to evoke any sympathy. But as someone whos been at the receiving end of hate group smears, it would be good to know how such decisions are made. PayPals announcement notes that our highly trained team of experts addresses each case individually highly trained in what? Sniffing out heresy? (No one expects the PayPal Inquisition!) When PayPal goes beyond the objective standard of banning activity prohibited by law to banning those it simply doesnt like (however loathsome they might be), all dissenters are vulnerable.

PayPals highly trained experts havent yet targeted my organization, but Twitter has, albeit in a small way so far. You can pay them to promote a tweet thats already been posted, as a form of advertising, and here are three that we submitted for promotion that were rejected:

All three were rejected on the grounds of Hate:

They contain nothing hateful, obviously, but the common thread appears to be that all three refer to the costs to society of illegal immigration, and all three contain the word illegal two refer to illegal immigrants and one to illegal aliens.

When you look at Twitters Hateful content in advertising page, it looks like the very word illegal is indeed prohibited with regard to immigrants (as opposed to the U.S. Code, where its common). It mentions Hate speech or advocacy against a protected group or an individual or organization based on, but not limited to, the following including Status as a refugee and Status as an immigrant.

This is merely a nuisance for me, so far, but it does point to the broader issue addressed by Jeremy Carl in his piece on the homepage this week about regulating the big internet firmsas public utilities. Carl writes What is needed is not regulation to restrict speech but regulation specifically to allow speech regulation put on monopolist and market-dominant companies that have abused their positions repeatedly.

One internet company this week abused its position but at the same time practically begged for the government to step in. Cloudflare is a sort of middleman facilitator between users and the web sites theyre visiting. Because of the companys position in the infrastructure of the internet, its CEO, Matthew Prince, was able to simply shut down the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi website: Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet. He explained his decision by noting that the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes, which they no doubt are.

But to Princes credit, he continued: No one should have that power:

We need to have a discussion around this, with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg], that shouldnt be what determines what should be online, he said. I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I dont think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldnt be on the internet.

As Prince wrote in a blog post on the incident, Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.

The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific, illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery? Garbage pickup? Electric power? Water and sewer? (I hope Im not giving the SPLCs brownshirts any ideas.)

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More Internet Censorship - National Review

Wanting to ban the haters is understandable.

It was inevitable that the fallout from violent protests in Virginia organized by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups would extend to the virtual world of the web. The internet is our modern commons. But the past few days have shown how fast we can glide down the slippery slope to web censorship.

Facebook and Twitter were perfectly within their rights, legally and ethically, when they banned accounts of certain hate groups and their leaders. These are private companies enforcing their own rules about how their services and platforms can be used. Providers of web infrastructure, however, must be held to a stricter standard since they act as choke points that can prevent an individual or group from being able to express themselves online.

Soon after the Charlottesville events, domain name registrars GoDaddy and Google separately decided to no longer serve the Daily Stormer after the neo-Nazi site wrote a disparaging story about Heather Heyer, the woman who died after being struck by a car while protesting the Charlottesville rally. Registrars act as a sort of phone book for the internet by turning a raw IP address -- like 62.23.150.94 -- into a line of text, like "Bloomberg.com." Without GoDaddy or Google, it would be impossible for people to find the Daily Stormer online. Shortly afterwards, CloudFlare, which offers firewall services for websites to help them ward off attacks, kicked the Daily Stormer off its servers.

In a refreshingly candid email to his employees and blog post, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince admitted that his decision was "arbitrary" and "dangerous," and departed from years of maintaining strict neutrality about the content of the sites his company protected. As Prince told Gizmodo: I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I dont think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldnt be on the internet.

It's hard not to cheer Prince's courage and his motives. But his decision and those of the registrars have big implications for the debate over how the internet should be regulated. To reach web users, publishers of content small and large rely on a complex machinery of web hosts, domain registrars, transit providers, platforms, proxy servers and search engines.

While the companies that provide the back-end services of the web are less well known than the Facebook and Snapchats of the world, they're indispensable to its smooth functioning; they are effectively the plumbing that allows the whole system to function. When they take sides, everyone loses.

Many may be happy to see the Daily Stormer pushed into web oblivion, myself included, but we probably wouldn't feel the same way for publishers of content we agreed with. What if a dissident politician or a corporate whistle-blower got similar treatment?

Currently there are no U.S. laws or regulations to prevent web infrastructure providers from taking such actions. Under federal law, private corporations can deny service to groups or individuals, as long as it's not because of their race, religion or sexuality. Nor does the principle of "net neutrality" really apply since that just calls for broadband providers like Verizon or Comcast to treat all data equally.

We may need new rules in the U.S. that specifically bar web infrastructure providers from cutting off services to publishers based on their content. This would limit firms like GoDaddy's ability to use their terms of service to silence people with controversial views.

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It would be preferable to keep efforts to eradicate hate speech at the platform level and not among the providers of internet infrastructure services. After long resisting, platforms like Facebook and Twitter now acknowledge that they bear some responsibility for what people post.Since they are governed by local laws where they operate, they fall under the jurisdiction of elected officials with the legitimacy to regulate. Just look at Germany's tough new law that levies fines up to 50 million euro ($58.5 million) if social networks don't remove hate speech promptly.

Regulators will make mistakes and may even overreach. But they have more standing to make tough calls on free speech than the internet's plumbers.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Leila Abboud at labboud@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net

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Keep the Internet's Backbone Free From Censorship - Bloomberg

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said private industry has a right to censor opinions but its a very dangerous business.

The First Amendment restrains the government. It reads Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Congress has now been interpreted [that] to mean no government shall abridge the freedom of speech, Napolitano said during a Fox and Friends interview Thursday. And Facebook and the other high tech companies are not owned by the government so they are free to censor. They can do whatever they want, but censorship is a very dangerous business.

They will lose market share, they will lose a lot of customers. They will lose their identity as a marketplace for ideas and then these hateful ideas will go somewhere else.

Napolitano argued that although hate speech is detestable and wrong, its better to suffer through it than to sacrifice the right of free expression.

Which is worse in the American icon of values? Hate speech or censorship? I would argue that censorship is worse, he said. The remedy for hate speech is not censorship. Its more speech. Its speech to challenge and expose it.

He added he doesnt believe it will be easy to change the minds of those who peddle hate speech, but its preferable to driving them into hiding and obscuring the threat.

I am not naive. I dont think that we could all stand on a street corner and talk to a bunch of haters and change their minds. Some of them, a legion of angels coming from heaven telling them theyre wrong would not change their minds, he said. But it is better we know who they are, where they are, and what they say, than they be driven underground.

Once we get into the censorship business it will just keep getting worse. So if they can censor something that I say because its hate to them, it might be music to your ears, he concluded.

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judge Nap: Censorship Worse Than Hate | The Daily Caller - The Daily Caller

The Vegas Golden Knights announced in April that Lotus Broadcasting would be the official radio broadcast partner and radio home of the NHL expansion team for the next few seasons.

This meant they opted not to go with CBS Radio Las Vegas, home to six highly-rated stations including CBS Sports 1140am. Which did not set well with Tony Perlongo, senior vice president and market manager for CBS Radio in Vegas, who instructed everyone on air not to ever mention the hockey team, going forward.

From Perlongo, in an email published by Ron Futrell:

A decision has been made that effective immediately, there are to be no further mentions of the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team on any CBS/LV radio stations or any of our social media platforms. This includes, but not limited to, on sale ticket mentions, player/coaches interviews, plugging locals to sing national anthem, TV broadcast schedule, etc. It is now the responsibility of the Golden Knights chosen radio partner to help accomplish their goals, not ours.

Now, you may ask yourself how a Las Vegas sports radio station intended to ignore the inaugural season of the first major professional team to play in the city, and honestly we dont have a clue. Other than that its hockey, which means its probably not being discussed on an American sports talk radio station to begin with.

Anyway, Futrell reached out to Perlongo to find out if this giant crybaby act-as-professional guidelines thing was in fact accurate, and he confirmed that it was.

We have a lot of other things to cover, the Knights dont work into our coverage, said Perlongo. We support their (the Golden Knights) success in the marketplace, but that will depend on their partnership that theyve already developed.

This censorship lets call it what it is went more viral than an off-the-strip motel pool, and the backlash was harsh.So Perlongo informed the Washington Post on Wednesday evening that the Golden Knights will in fact be mentioned and discussed on his sacred airwaves:

With six radio stations in Las Vegas we have always prided ourselves on informing, educating and entertaining listeners and supporting the local communities we serve. However, we missed the mark in an internal email that instructed our stations to no longer report on certain aspects of the Golden Knights, the citys first and only major league sports team, Tony Perlongo, CBS Radio Las Vegas senior vice president and market manager, said in a statement provided to The Post. This was an error in judgement on our part and we deeply regret it. We will of course cover the team, first and foremost on Sports Radio 1140 and on our music and news/talk stations as it makes sense for those formats and audiences. We apologize to the Golden Knights, their fans and our listeners and look forward to rooting the team on when the puck drops in a few weeks.

And an apology to boot!

Look, this idiotic decision was bound to be short-lived, but we didnt expect it to have the lifespan of your average White House Communications Director.

The swift reversal of policy speaks to three things: That ignoring a local team, especially one with that new car smell, is bad business; that public shaming for said idiocy is a handy way to affect change; and that we wish hockey fans would take a lesson from this and realize that if you arent happy with the amount of coverage your sport gets from a given station in a given market, let your voices be heard.

It may not forceJimbo and The Goofball to stop talking about LaVar Ball or whatever long enough to preview the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but it could annoy the program director just enough to carve out a little time for our beloved sport here and there. And thats a start.

Greg Wyshynskiis a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him atpuckdaddyblog@yahoo.comorfind him on Twitter.His book,TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK,isavailable on Amazonand wherever books are sold.

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Vegas radio station apologizes to Golden Knights for censorship - Yahoo Sports

The Trump campaign accused CNN Tuesday of censorship for refusing to broadcast a paid advertisement highlighting President Trumps achievements.

Today, CNN provided further proof that the network earns this mistrust every day by censoring President Trumps message to the American people by blocking our paid campaign ad, said Michael Glassner, executive director of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Clearly, the only viewpoint CNN allows on air is CNNs.

The commercial says Democrats are obstructing the presidents agenda, and the media are attacking him.

The presidents enemies dont want him to succeed, the ad states. But Americans are saying Let President Trump do his job.

CNN refused to air a previous Trump campaign ad in May after the campaign declined to change a reference in the commercial to fake news. Mr. Trump again called the network fake news Monday in a showdown with a CNN reporter at the White House.

Mr. Glassner said one reason so many Americans support Mr. Trump is because of their complete mistrust of the mainstream news media, and the presidents refusal to allow their biased filter to interfere with his messages.

While CNNs censorship is predictable, this will not stop or deny our message that President Trumps plan is working for the American people, he said.

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Team Trump accuses CNN of censorship - Washington Times