Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
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Sep 25, 2024
Privacy? What Privacy?
Whoever told you there was something called privacy - since the 1840s anyway - lied to you.
1870s – 1940s: Telephone
This timeline is provided to help show how the dominant form of communication changes as rapidly as innovators develop new technologies.
A brief historical overview: The printing press was the big innovation in communications until the telegraph was developed. Printing remained the key format for mass messages for years afterward, but the telegraph allowed instant communication over vast distances for the first time in human history. Telegraph usage faded as radio became easy to use and popularized; as radio was being developed, the telephone quickly became the fastest way to communicate person-to-person; after television was perfected and content for it was well developed, it became the dominant form of mass-communication technology; the internet came next, and newspapers, radio, telephones, and television are being rolled into this far-reaching information medium.
As with many innovations, the idea for the telephone came along far sooner than it was brought to reality. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. Bell began his research in 1874 and had financial backers who gave him the best business plan for bringing it to market.
In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation. Three years later, almost 49,000 telephones were in use. In 1880, Bell (in the photo below) merged this company with others to form the American Bell Telephone Company and in 1885 American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) was formed; it dominated telephone communications for the next century. At one point in time, Bell System employees purposely denigrated the U.S. telephone system to drive down stock prices of all phone companies and thus make it easier for Bell to acquire smaller competitors.
Alexander Graham Bell Using a TelephoneBy 1900 there were nearly 600,000 phones in Bell’s telephone system; that number shot up to 2.2 million phones by 1905, and 5.8 million by 1910. In 1915 the transcontinental telephone line began operating. By 1907, AT&T had a near monopoly on phone and telegraph service, thanks to its purchase of Western Union. Its president, Theodore Vail, urged at the time that a monopoly could most efficiently operate the nation’s far-flung communications network. At the urging of the public and AT&T competitors, the government began to investigate the company for anti-trust violations, thus forcing the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, an agreement between AT&T vice president Nathan Kingsbury and the office of the U.S. Attorney General. Under this commitment, AT&T agreed to divest itself of Western Union and provide long-distance services to independent phone exchanges.
During World War I, the government nationalized telephone and telegraph lines in the United States from June 1918 to July 1919, when, after a joint resolution of Congress, President Wilson issued an order putting them under the direction of the U.S. Post Office. A year later, the systems were returned to private ownership, AT&T resumed its monopolistic hold, and by 1934 the government again acted, this time agreeing to allow it to operate as a “regulated monopoly” under the jurisdiction of the FCC.
Public utility commissions in state and local jurisdictions were appointed regulators of AT&T and the nation’s independent phone companies, while the FCC regulated long-distance services conducted across state lines. They set the rates the phone companies could charge and determined what services and equipment each could offer. This stayed in effect until AT&T’s forced divestiture in 1984, the conclusion of a U.S. Department of Justice anti-trust suit that had been filed in 1974. The all-powerful company had become popularly known and disparaged as “Ma Bell.” AT&T’s local operations were divided into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies, known as the “Baby Bells.” AT&T became a long-distance-services company.
By 1948, the 30 millionth phone was connected in the United States; by the 1960s, there were more than 80 million phone hookups in the U.S. and 160 million in the world; by 1980, there were more than 175 million telephone subscriber lines in the U.S. In 1993, the first digital cellular network went online in Orlando, Florida; by 1995 there were 25 million cellular phone subscribers, and that number exploded at the turn of the century, with digital cellular phone service expected to replace land-line phones for most U.S. customers by as early as 2010.
World Changes Due to the Telephone
First Prototype of a PhoneWithin 50 years of its invention, the telephone had become an indispensable tool in the United States. In the late 19th century, people raved about the telephone’s positive aspects and ranted about what they anticipated would be negatives. Their key points, recorded by Ithiel de Sola Pool in his 1983 book “Forecasting the Telephone,” mirror nearly precisely what was later predicted about the impact of the internet.
For example, people said the telephone would: help further democracy; be a tool for grassroots organizers; lead to additional advances in networked communications; allow social decentralization, resulting in a movement out of cities and more flexible work arrangements; change marketing and politics; alter the ways in which wars are fought; cause the postal service to lose business; open up new job opportunities; allow more public feedback; make the world smaller, increasing contact between peoples of all nations and thus fostering world peace; increase crime and aid criminals; be an aid for physicians, police, fire, and emergency workers; be a valuable tool for journalists; bring people closer together, decreasing loneliness and building new communities; inspire a decline in the art of writing; have an impact on language patterns and introduce new words; and someday lead to an advanced form of the transmission of intelligence.
Privacy was also a major concern. As is the case with the Internet, the telephone worked to improve privacy while simultaneously leaving people open to invasions of their privacy. In the beginning days of the telephone, people would often have to journey to the local general store or some other central point to be able to make and receive calls. Most homes weren’t wired together, and eavesdroppers could hear you conduct your personal business as you used a public phone. Switchboard operators who connected the calls would also regularly invade people’s privacy. The early house-to-house phone systems were often “party lines” on which a number of families would receive calls, and others were free to listen in and often chose to do so.
Today, while most homes are wired and people can travel freely, conducting their phone conversations wirelessly, wiretapping and other surveillance methods can be utilized to listen in on their private business. People’s privacy can also be interrupted by unwanted phone calls from telemarketers and others who wish to profit in some way – just as Internet e-mail accounts receive unwanted sales pitches, known as “spam.”
Yet, the invention of the telephone also worked to increase privacy in many ways. It permitted people to exchange information without having to put it in writing, and a call on the phone came to replace such intrusions on domestic seclusion as unexpected visits from relatives or neighbors and the pushy patter of door-to-door salesmen. The same could be said for the Internet – privacy has been enhanced in some ways because e-mail and instant messaging have reduced the frequency of the jangling interruptions previously dished out by our telephones.
Past Predictions About the Future of the Telephone
President Rutherford B. Hayes to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 on viewing the telephone for the first time:
Bell offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union for $100,000 in 1876, when he was struggling with the business. An account that is believed by some to be apocryphal, but still recounted in many telephone histories states that the committee appointed to investigate the offer filed the following report:
As reported in the book “Bell” by Robert V. Bruce, Kate Field, a British reporter who knew Bell, predicted in 1878 that eventually:
Sir William Preece, chief engineer for the British Post Office, 1878, as reported in “The Telephone in a Changing World” by Marion May Dilts:
AT&T chief engineer and Electrical Review writer John J. Carty projected in his “Prophets Column” in 1891:
Carty also wrote:
In the 1912 article “The Future Home Theatre” in The Independent, S.C. Gilfillan wrote:
1870s – 1940s: Telephone
This timeline is provided to help show how the dominant form of communication changes as rapidly as innovators develop new technologies.
A brief historical overview: The printing press was the big innovation in communications until the telegraph was developed. Printing remained the key format for mass messages for years afterward, but the telegraph allowed instant communication over vast distances for the first time in human history. Telegraph usage faded as radio became easy to use and popularized; as radio was being developed, the telephone quickly became the fastest way to communicate person-to-person; after television was perfected and content for it was well developed, it became the dominant form of mass-communication technology; the internet came next, and newspapers, radio, telephones, and television are being rolled into this far-reaching information medium.
As with many innovations, the idea for the telephone came along far sooner than it was brought to reality. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. Bell began his research in 1874 and had financial backers who gave him the best business plan for bringing it to market.
In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation. Three years later, almost 49,000 telephones were in use. In 1880, Bell (in the photo below) merged this company with others to form the American Bell Telephone Company and in 1885 American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) was formed; it dominated telephone communications for the next century. At one point in time, Bell System employees purposely denigrated the U.S. telephone system to drive down stock prices of all phone companies and thus make it easier for Bell to acquire smaller competitors.
Alexander Graham Bell Using a TelephoneBy 1900 there were nearly 600,000 phones in Bell’s telephone system; that number shot up to 2.2 million phones by 1905, and 5.8 million by 1910. In 1915 the transcontinental telephone line began operating. By 1907, AT&T had a near monopoly on phone and telegraph service, thanks to its purchase of Western Union. Its president, Theodore Vail, urged at the time that a monopoly could most efficiently operate the nation’s far-flung communications network. At the urging of the public and AT&T competitors, the government began to investigate the company for anti-trust violations, thus forcing the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, an agreement between AT&T vice president Nathan Kingsbury and the office of the U.S. Attorney General. Under this commitment, AT&T agreed to divest itself of Western Union and provide long-distance services to independent phone exchanges.
During World War I, the government nationalized telephone and telegraph lines in the United States from June 1918 to July 1919, when, after a joint resolution of Congress, President Wilson issued an order putting them under the direction of the U.S. Post Office. A year later, the systems were returned to private ownership, AT&T resumed its monopolistic hold, and by 1934 the government again acted, this time agreeing to allow it to operate as a “regulated monopoly” under the jurisdiction of the FCC.
Public utility commissions in state and local jurisdictions were appointed regulators of AT&T and the nation’s independent phone companies, while the FCC regulated long-distance services conducted across state lines. They set the rates the phone companies could charge and determined what services and equipment each could offer. This stayed in effect until AT&T’s forced divestiture in 1984, the conclusion of a U.S. Department of Justice anti-trust suit that had been filed in 1974. The all-powerful company had become popularly known and disparaged as “Ma Bell.” AT&T’s local operations were divided into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies, known as the “Baby Bells.” AT&T became a long-distance-services company.
By 1948, the 30 millionth phone was connected in the United States; by the 1960s, there were more than 80 million phone hookups in the U.S. and 160 million in the world; by 1980, there were more than 175 million telephone subscriber lines in the U.S. In 1993, the first digital cellular network went online in Orlando, Florida; by 1995 there were 25 million cellular phone subscribers, and that number exploded at the turn of the century, with digital cellular phone service expected to replace land-line phones for most U.S. customers by as early as 2010.
World Changes Due to the Telephone
First Prototype of a PhoneWithin 50 years of its invention, the telephone had become an indispensable tool in the United States. In the late 19th century, people raved about the telephone’s positive aspects and ranted about what they anticipated would be negatives. Their key points, recorded by Ithiel de Sola Pool in his 1983 book “Forecasting the Telephone,” mirror nearly precisely what was later predicted about the impact of the internet.
For example, people said the telephone would: help further democracy; be a tool for grassroots organizers; lead to additional advances in networked communications; allow social decentralization, resulting in a movement out of cities and more flexible work arrangements; change marketing and politics; alter the ways in which wars are fought; cause the postal service to lose business; open up new job opportunities; allow more public feedback; make the world smaller, increasing contact between peoples of all nations and thus fostering world peace; increase crime and aid criminals; be an aid for physicians, police, fire, and emergency workers; be a valuable tool for journalists; bring people closer together, decreasing loneliness and building new communities; inspire a decline in the art of writing; have an impact on language patterns and introduce new words; and someday lead to an advanced form of the transmission of intelligence.
Privacy was also a major concern. As is the case with the Internet, the telephone worked to improve privacy while simultaneously leaving people open to invasions of their privacy. In the beginning days of the telephone, people would often have to journey to the local general store or some other central point to be able to make and receive calls. Most homes weren’t wired together, and eavesdroppers could hear you conduct your personal business as you used a public phone. Switchboard operators who connected the calls would also regularly invade people’s privacy. The early house-to-house phone systems were often “party lines” on which a number of families would receive calls, and others were free to listen in and often chose to do so.
Today, while most homes are wired and people can travel freely, conducting their phone conversations wirelessly, wiretapping and other surveillance methods can be utilized to listen in on their private business. People’s privacy can also be interrupted by unwanted phone calls from telemarketers and others who wish to profit in some way – just as Internet e-mail accounts receive unwanted sales pitches, known as “spam.”
Yet, the invention of the telephone also worked to increase privacy in many ways. It permitted people to exchange information without having to put it in writing, and a call on the phone came to replace such intrusions on domestic seclusion as unexpected visits from relatives or neighbors and the pushy patter of door-to-door salesmen. The same could be said for the Internet – privacy has been enhanced in some ways because e-mail and instant messaging have reduced the frequency of the jangling interruptions previously dished out by our telephones.
Past Predictions About the Future of the Telephone
President Rutherford B. Hayes to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 on viewing the telephone for the first time:
“That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”
Bell offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union for $100,000 in 1876, when he was struggling with the business. An account that is believed by some to be apocryphal, but still recounted in many telephone histories states that the committee appointed to investigate the offer filed the following report:
“We do not see that this device will be ever capable of sending recognizable speech over a distance of several miles. Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their ‘telephone devices’ in every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it. Furthermore, why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States? … Mr. G.G. Hubbard’s fanciful predictions, while they sound rosy, are based on wild-eyed imagination and lack of understanding of the technical and economic facts of the situation, and a posture of ignoring the obvious limitations of his device, which is hardly more than a toy … This device is inherently of no use to us. We do not recommend its purchase.”
As reported in the book “Bell” by Robert V. Bruce, Kate Field, a British reporter who knew Bell, predicted in 1878 that eventually:
“While two persons, hundreds of miles apart, are talking together, they will actually see each other.”
Sir William Preece, chief engineer for the British Post Office, 1878, as reported in “The Telephone in a Changing World” by Marion May Dilts:
“There are conditions in America which necessitate the use of such instruments more than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys and things of that kind … The absence of servants has compelled America to adopt communications systems for domestic purposes.”
AT&T chief engineer and Electrical Review writer John J. Carty projected in his “Prophets Column” in 1891:
“A system of telephony without wires seems one of the interesting possibilities, and the distance on the earth through which it is possible to speak is theoretically limited only by the curvation of the earth.”
Carty also wrote:
“Someday we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary to all peoples the use of a common language or common understanding of languages, which will join all the people of the earth into one brotherhood. There will be heard throughout the earth a great voice coming out of the ether which will proclaim, ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men.'”
In the 1912 article “The Future Home Theatre” in The Independent, S.C. Gilfillan wrote:
“There are two mechanical contrivances … each of which bears in itself the power to revolutionize entertainment, doing for it what the printing press did for books. They are the talking motion picture and the electric vision apparatus with telephone. Either one will enable millions of people to see and hear the same performance simultaneously .. or successively from kinetoscope and phonographic records … These inventions will become cheap enough to be … in every home … You will have the home theatre of 1930, oh ye of little faith.”
Sep 17, 2024
Sep 14, 2024
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Aug 26, 2024
Jun 11, 2023
Today's Meme
Quick reminder:
If your position is that kids should be beaten because you were beaten and you turned out OK, then I've got news for ya, bubba - you did not turn out OK.
Jun 9, 2023
Mar 6, 2023
Today's "Conservative" Thing
I honestly don't understand what "conservatives" find so terribly wrong about that kinda thing - unless it's all part of some weird self-hatred syndrome, which makes it a projection of their own inner demons (?)
Is that why it seems so important for them to impose limits on people? Are they saying they can't possibly control their own potentially vile behavior, so they need to build a societal mechanism that imposes limits - by proxy - on themselves?
In the immortal words of Stan Marsh:
Oct 6, 2021
This New Way Is Nothing New
I'll start with this: "I really don't know what we should do about any of this."
I know we have to do something. I know we have to get better, as individuals, at sorting through the information landslide that hits us every fucking day in order to reject the bullshit which comprises the majority of it, and take whatever tiny nuggets of truth we can find, compare notes and see if we can make a little progress here and there.
But we've been making it a Buyer Beware proposition. And we're seeing what a fucked up world we get when we just throw it all up in the air and let nature take its course.
BTW - have you seen "nature" lately?
Without something human - something like honor and conscience and a solid grasp of the greater good in the context of an ethical framework, nature is a horrifying thing. It's fucking brutal. We all become nothing more than predators and prey, without regard for anything but our own immediate gratification.
And so we devolve - we revert to the crap we had to put up with on the playground in elementary school, where the tough guys ruled and anybody who crossed them took a beating.
We have to learn all over again to get out of the mindset in which we allow ourselves to be manipulated at a visceral level, which is what tough guys like Trump and Putin and Mussolini and Franco and Idi Amin and a thousand others have done forever.
Then along come these recent revelations about how Facebook has been used for the kind of brainwashing and radicalization that everybody and his fuckin' uncle have always known was happening, but that The Lizard King (aka Mark Zuckerberg) swears he either knew nothing about or that he was steadfastly standing up for the free speech rights of his user community blah blah blah.
Frances Haugen on 60 Minutes:
"It feels like a betrayal of democracy"
When we refuse to get together to acknowledge a premise based in verifiable fact, then we've made it all but impossible to do the work necessary to give us any chance to arrive at a conclusion that's true, which in turn makes a functioning democracy all but impossible.
My contention at this point is that The Lizard King has decided he's immune from the negative consequences of his complicity if the republic is toppled. I think he believes he'll be one of the plutocrats who gets to run the show - cuz that's pretty much what he's doing now - so he's convinced he wins no matter what else happens to the rest of us.
That's where our Clear-Eyed Pragmatic Both-Sides-Balanced-On-The-Knife's-Edge Capitalism has brought us.
And here's the big fat juicy rationalization they're using:
"Every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true."
Jun 27, 2021
A Very Fine Line
This is actually a really tough row to hoe.
Texas court: Facebook can be held liable for sex trafficking predators
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s land” and can be held liable for the conduct of people who use the platform to recruit and prey on children.
The justices ruled that trafficking victims can move ahead with lawsuits because Facebook violated a provision of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which was passed in 2009, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The ruling stems from three civil actions from Houston involving teenage trafficking victims who met the predators through Facebook’s messaging functions, according to the Chronicle. The plaintiffs sued the California-based social media giant for negligence and product liability, arguing that Facebook failed to warn about or try to prevent sex trafficking from occurring on its platforms, the newspaper reported.
The lawsuits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.
Facebook’s attorneys argued the company is shielded from liability under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that what users say or write online is not the same as a publisher conveying the same message.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company is considering what steps to take next.
“Sex trafficking is abhorrent and not allowed on Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue our fight against the spread of this content and the predators who engage in it.”
The justices, in their majority opinion, wrote that “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking.
“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
The lawsuits were brought by three Houston women who alleged they were recruited as teens via Facebook apps and were trafficked as a result of those connections, providing predators with “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children,” the Chronicle reported.
According to the Human Trafficking Institute, the majority of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in the U.S. in 2020 occurred on Facebook. The organization made the assertions in its 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report.
“The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites,” Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros told CBS News earlier this month. “Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”
One plaintiff said she was 15 in 2012 when she communicated with the friend of a mutual friend on Facebook, the Chronicle reported. She alleged that after the man offered her a modeling job, he posted photos of her on Backpage, an online platform that was shut down in 2018 because it promoted human trafficking. The woman claimed she was “raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,” the newspaper reported.
The second plaintiff said she was 14 in 2017 when she was contacted on Instagram, another Facebook property. The woman alleged that the man lured her with “false promises of love and a better future,” and then used Instagram to advertise her as a prostitute and set up “dates,” according to the Chronicle. The woman claimed she was raped numerous times and alleged that when her mother reported what had happened to Facebook, the company “never responded.”
The third plaintiff said she was 14 in 2016 when a man she did not know sent her a friend request on Instagram, the Chronicle reported. They exchanged messages for two years, and in March 2018 the man allegedly asked her to leave home and meet her, the newspaper reported. The man allegedly photographed the teen in a motel room and posted the images on Backpage, according to court records.
Facebook’s attorneys argued that Congress used “very broad terms” to preserve free speech, guard against censorship via threat of litigation and avoid inconsistent liability standards.
“When Congress decided to amend Section 230 to combat the scourge of online sex trafficking, it did so with a scalpel, not a hammer -- carefully enumerating precisely the types of claims that would be exempt from Section 230,” Facebook’s attorneys argued in a September 2020 brief to the court. “The balance Congress struck is embodied in the language it used. Congress is free to alter that balance by amending that language. But this Court doesn’t sit as a super legislature to rewrite the statute under the guise of divining legislative ‘purpose.’
“But regardless of what plaintiffs contend Facebook should have done about that third-party content -- prevent it, block it, remove it, edit it, flag it, or warn about it -- the purported duty to take action that undergirds plaintiffs’ claims derives from (Facebook’s) role as a publisher, which is why these claims are prohibited by Section 230.”
I have no love or sympathy or any regard in any sense for Facebook, except that they should be more or less free to do their thing as long it doesn't directly harm anyone, or facilitate harm to anyone.
And that, I think, is at the heart of this:
KIRO-TV7 (Seattle)
Texas court: Facebook can be held liable for sex trafficking predators
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s land” and can be held liable for the conduct of people who use the platform to recruit and prey on children.
The justices ruled that trafficking victims can move ahead with lawsuits because Facebook violated a provision of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which was passed in 2009, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The ruling stems from three civil actions from Houston involving teenage trafficking victims who met the predators through Facebook’s messaging functions, according to the Chronicle. The plaintiffs sued the California-based social media giant for negligence and product liability, arguing that Facebook failed to warn about or try to prevent sex trafficking from occurring on its platforms, the newspaper reported.
The lawsuits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.
Facebook’s attorneys argued the company is shielded from liability under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that what users say or write online is not the same as a publisher conveying the same message.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company is considering what steps to take next.
“Sex trafficking is abhorrent and not allowed on Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue our fight against the spread of this content and the predators who engage in it.”
The justices, in their majority opinion, wrote that “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking.
“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
The lawsuits were brought by three Houston women who alleged they were recruited as teens via Facebook apps and were trafficked as a result of those connections, providing predators with “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children,” the Chronicle reported.
According to the Human Trafficking Institute, the majority of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in the U.S. in 2020 occurred on Facebook. The organization made the assertions in its 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report.
“The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites,” Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros told CBS News earlier this month. “Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”
One plaintiff said she was 15 in 2012 when she communicated with the friend of a mutual friend on Facebook, the Chronicle reported. She alleged that after the man offered her a modeling job, he posted photos of her on Backpage, an online platform that was shut down in 2018 because it promoted human trafficking. The woman claimed she was “raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,” the newspaper reported.
The second plaintiff said she was 14 in 2017 when she was contacted on Instagram, another Facebook property. The woman alleged that the man lured her with “false promises of love and a better future,” and then used Instagram to advertise her as a prostitute and set up “dates,” according to the Chronicle. The woman claimed she was raped numerous times and alleged that when her mother reported what had happened to Facebook, the company “never responded.”
The third plaintiff said she was 14 in 2016 when a man she did not know sent her a friend request on Instagram, the Chronicle reported. They exchanged messages for two years, and in March 2018 the man allegedly asked her to leave home and meet her, the newspaper reported. The man allegedly photographed the teen in a motel room and posted the images on Backpage, according to court records.
Facebook’s attorneys argued that Congress used “very broad terms” to preserve free speech, guard against censorship via threat of litigation and avoid inconsistent liability standards.
“When Congress decided to amend Section 230 to combat the scourge of online sex trafficking, it did so with a scalpel, not a hammer -- carefully enumerating precisely the types of claims that would be exempt from Section 230,” Facebook’s attorneys argued in a September 2020 brief to the court. “The balance Congress struck is embodied in the language it used. Congress is free to alter that balance by amending that language. But this Court doesn’t sit as a super legislature to rewrite the statute under the guise of divining legislative ‘purpose.’
“But regardless of what plaintiffs contend Facebook should have done about that third-party content -- prevent it, block it, remove it, edit it, flag it, or warn about it -- the purported duty to take action that undergirds plaintiffs’ claims derives from (Facebook’s) role as a publisher, which is why these claims are prohibited by Section 230.”
My hang up is that I want Facebook kicked in the nuts really really really hard, but I don't want the Q-birds to take this as any kind of vindication that their stoopid fantasies have some tiny scintilla of rational justification.
Can't wait to hear more on that shit.
Aug 29, 2020
The Intertoobz
Like everything else in the world, some people are intent on turning the whole thing into one enormous cesspool - which, unfortunately, means there's money to be made on helping the bad actors float their shit.
WaPo:
Zuckerberg acknowledges Facebook erred by not removing a post that urged armed action in Kenosha
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in a video post Friday that the company erred by not taking down an event listing for a militia group that encouraged armed civilians to defend the streets of Kenosha, Wis., from civil unrest before the fatal shooting of two people this week.
Facebook removed the page for the “Kenosha Guard” and an event listing for “Armed Citizens to Protect Our Lives and Property” after the shootings Tuesday night in which Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, allegedly killed two men and seriously wounded a third.
Looking somber in a blue T-shirt and speaking in a slow, halting manner, Zuckerberg said the page and event listing violated Facebook’s policies and should have been removed after the company received numerous complaints about their violent nature. He called the error “largely an operational mistake.”
“The contractors, the reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to, didn’t, basically, didn’t pick this up,” Zuckerberg said. “And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that’s responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down.”
Zuckerberg didn’t say if the contractors had been disciplined for not removing the page and event listing or if Facebook would undertake additional training or consider changes to policies as a result of the event. He did not make an apology to the victims of the violence or their families in the video post.
Zuckerberg said there was no evidence that Rittenhouse followed the Kenosha Guard page or that he had been invited to the event page calling for an armed response to protests in the city.
There's his main defense - basically, "We just didn't know." And yes, I get it, with more than a billion user accounts, how do you police it all?
That's one of the big problems now though. Marketplace Consolidation has given rise to the SuperMegaGiant Company, and the Radical Libertarian business model makes for an atmosphere that encourages corporations to be a little lazy in holding up their end of the social contract.
But here's the thing: Corporations are considered people (according to SCOTUS). They have to be held to account when they fail in their obligations to a civil society.
If they can't or won't take real steps to put effective self-governing mechanisms in place for themselves, then they deserve the same fate as any other "person" under the law.
It's not unreasonable to expect Facebook to be investigated for possible indictment for Criminal Negligence, Reckless Endangerment and Accessory To Homicide.
At the very least, the families of Rittenhouse's victims are entitled to recompense for Wrongful Death and Malicious Wounding, etc.
"...with liberty and justice (ie: accountability) for all."
Nov 23, 2019
Apr 24, 2018
Progress
Maybe - we'll see if anybody picks it up and/or follows it up.
endgadget:
Early this month, Facebook announced it will change how political ads appear on the company's platforms. Anyone advertising about elections or issues would need their identity 'verified' before the messages go online, and the messages themselves would be labeled 'Political Ad' with disclosure of who paid for it. Ideally, this could make advertisements on Facebook much more transparent, though we'll start finding out as the platform began requiring US-based advertisers to get verified today. In the coming months, this will spread to ad buyers across the world.
Starting today, anyone based in the US running an electoral or issue ad will have to run through the authorization process to provide a government-issued ID and mailing address. Then Facebook confirms identity by mailing a letter with a unique access code that only the advertiser's Page admin account can use, like an old-school version of email verification. And then, of course, they'll have to disclose who paid for the ads before Facebook will put them up.
While the changes went into effect, Facebook posted a Q&A about what advertisers know about you. While the company maintains that they don't know as much about us as we feared, by default, advertisers are still targeting users based on their interests and browsing habits. At least after these changes, we know a bit more about them.
endgadget:
Early this month, Facebook announced it will change how political ads appear on the company's platforms. Anyone advertising about elections or issues would need their identity 'verified' before the messages go online, and the messages themselves would be labeled 'Political Ad' with disclosure of who paid for it. Ideally, this could make advertisements on Facebook much more transparent, though we'll start finding out as the platform began requiring US-based advertisers to get verified today. In the coming months, this will spread to ad buyers across the world.
Starting today, anyone based in the US running an electoral or issue ad will have to run through the authorization process to provide a government-issued ID and mailing address. Then Facebook confirms identity by mailing a letter with a unique access code that only the advertiser's Page admin account can use, like an old-school version of email verification. And then, of course, they'll have to disclose who paid for the ads before Facebook will put them up.
While the changes went into effect, Facebook posted a Q&A about what advertisers know about you. While the company maintains that they don't know as much about us as we feared, by default, advertisers are still targeting users based on their interests and browsing habits. At least after these changes, we know a bit more about them.
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