Soldier on sentry duty 25 miles north of Kandahar, December 2010. Photo US Army.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, who already got someInternet freedom advocates mad (but not me) over his call on Amazon to abide by its own TOS and not to host WikiLeaks, has got "The Internet" mad again over his call to ban the Taliban from Twitter.
Predictably, Boingboing.net has a post that makes it seem that this is only a propaganda problem:
Lieberman seems not be targeting terrorists who plan attacks using the service, but rather Taliban propagandists famous for political hysterics, gloating, and bickering with NATO counterparts. It makes no sense at all except as censorious weight-pulling for its own sake.
Well, geez, yeah, if we were going to start banning "propagandists famous for political hysterics," we'd have to start with Cory Doctorow himself at Boingoing.net, who is always running hysterical rants, i.e. against SOPA, claiming that "no technologists" were invited to the hearing, when the CEO of Google himself testified. So no, we can't do that!
But it is a serious issue, and the conservative Telegraph explains the broader implications:
The Taliban movement has embraced the social network as part of its propaganda effort and regularly tweets about attacks or posts links to its statements.
The information has ranged from highly accurate, up-to-the-minute accounts of unfolding spectacular attacks, to often completely fabricated or wildly exaggerated reports of American and British casualties
Oh, so it's not just Twit-fights with NATO, but actual enemy propaganda that may harm national security by making it seem as if casualties are worse, and the Taliban is stronger than it is.
So then should it be banned?
Well, no, I don't think so. If it were seizing the airwaves, i.e. taking over TV and radio, or seizing social media servers and broadcasting into everyone's account somehow, then you might make a case.
But if you don't like exaggerated reports of American casualties and boasting of attacks on innocents, then just don't follow those accounts?
That's the best the Twitter devs can suggest, and that's what I tell everybody who doesn't like something on Twitter. Just don't follow that account. That's all. Problem solved. Why block someone from following *you* easily in their stream just to be a bitch? They can always use global search and find your account and read it anyway. Twitter is nice that way. (Facebook isn't, and more on that in another post.)
Twitter doesn't have a Terms of Service like a lot of sites, especially news sites, various blogging platforms, etc. that say "thou shalt not publish libelous information" blah blah.
There are no defined speech offenses at all on the Twitter TOS. Yay! Twitter cares more about people trying to run automatic scripts on it or uploads of infringing content (so they can at least indemnify themselves) than speech -- it's actually different than it was in early days when they had that boilerplate legalese about libel and hate speech.
Actually, I was reading through Google Plus, and didn't find any there, either. That's the way to go. Again -- don't like something, don't follow, don't put in your circle. (There are larger issues to be discussed about that sort of filtration by the Influencers, but again, another topic.)
So, isn't it terrible that the Taliban -- the Taliban! -- can get on Twitter and victory-dance like griefers in MMORPGs about their griefing and killing? Yes it is. So start up a counter-account if you like, although counter-propaganda isn't always as interesting and you may not get as many followers.
BTW, if the Taliban starts using Twitter to coordinate attacks -- like Anonops and other Anonymous/LulzSec types do, or those looters and rioters did with the Blackberry messaging service in London some months ago, then law-enforcers might have a case for a court order to stop it, because it may be calling for imminent violence. "Imminent violence" definitions have been hammered out in Supreme Court decisions.
Basically, both Twitter and G+ tell you that they are not responsible for your experience, and that it changes.
And it's not as if you don't have organic law to work with. Libel law is libel law in the US. It doesn't matter the medium it takes place. Platform providers shouldn't be policing speech. Twitter seems the best in this regard -- they just got out of that business early on, and if you don't like something on Twitter you feel is libelous, you can call a lawyer (i.e. if it is false, and injurious to your livelihood).
Twitter would accommodate the issues raised by Sen. Lieberman that go beyond propaganda, however, as Jeffrey Rosen explains:
Google has also been under pressure from the U.S. government to remove terrorist videos from YouTube.
"They refused to remove all the videos because they said they were protected speech," Rosen says. "... More recently, Twitter was pressured by [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman to remove pro-Taliban tweets. And Twitter's even more pro-free-speech than Google — it doesn't have a terrorism exception; it will only remove content that is illegal or promotes violence. And since they concluded that these tweets were pro-Taliban newsfeeds that didn't promote imminent violence, they refused to remove them."
Currently, Google's lawyer can be woken up in the middle of the night and make a ruling like a circuit judge on the basis of Turkey's complaint that Greek soccer players are calling the founder of their state "gay". Of course, I'm wondering how it is that Google has to get involved in this transaction, and Turkey can't block things in their country that they'd rather block -- not that I suggest they do that.
Rosen then concludes:
At the moment, lawyers at Facebook and Google and Microsoft have more power over the future of privacy and free expression than any king or president or Supreme Court justice. And we can't rely simply on judges enforcing the existing Constitution to protect the values that the framers took for granted.
Oh, I'm not for ceding them that power by having scare stories like that.
Courts and precedent law still count and can adjudicate these cases, the idea that the Internet is a magical realm with special non-natural laws should be discarded -- it's a normal human venue where normal existing law can be applied.
Recent Comments