[Air-L] studies on the limits of "free" speech on FB?

Jill Walker Rettberg Jill.Walker.Rettberg at lle.uib.no
Tue Aug 19 00:04:26 PDT 2014


Charles and others,

An MA student of mine wrote her thesis a couple of years ago on how the Kurdish diaspora use Facebook. Her informants talked about cases like these where the deletion was very clearly political - things like posting images of the Kurdish flag, but also things they hadn't expected to be seen as political. She also cited the manual for Facebook moderators that went around a few years back, which has a list of stuff to delete or block.

Jacob, Kurdin. 2013. ‘‘Facebook is my second home’’. The Kurdish Diaspora’s Use of Facebook in Shaping a Nation. MA thesis in digital culture, University of Bergen.
https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/7629

Charles' post being deleted could be a false positive as Michael suggests but given Twitter deleted that Anonymous account pretty swiftly after they publicized the (wrong) name of the shooter I'd say it's entirely possible Facebook also deleted anything with keywords related to the anonymous post - actually, if Facebook allowed people to repost the falsely accused police officer's name, they might be used for slander or libel, right? And the post I saw on Twitter before @anonmessage or whatever the account was called was deleted included a screenshot of the alleged killer's Facebook page, so FB was very directly involved and no doubt aware of the situation.

Jill

Sent from my phone

On 18. aug. 2014, at 16:08, Michael T Zimmer <zimmerm at uwm.edu<mailto:zimmerm at uwm.edu>> wrote:

Hi Charles -

My Occam's razor reaction to this is that your text triggered some kind of automated comment screening algorithm designed to prevent spam or other unapproved content. I suspect it wasn't that your comment was about Ferguson or Anonymous per se, but that it included text deemed spammy or hazardous (perhaps mention of doxing?). A classic false positive.

--
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
e: zimmerm at uwm.edu<mailto:zimmerm at uwm.edu>
w: www.michaelzimmer.org<http://www.michaelzimmer.org>

On Aug 18, 2014, at 12:44 AM, Charles Ess <charles.ess at gmail.com<mailto:charles.ess at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi all,

Apologies for a slightly irritated posting/inquiry - but I've discovered
that FB recently removed a comment from my timeline that I made regarding
events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anonymous, which not only "doxed" the
alleged shooter, but also cut off Internet services within the local
police department.  (Going on memory here, sorry if all the details are
not exact or complete.)

My comment was something along the lines of:
The is the second time I've seen Anonymous out the wrong person (and I'm
not even keeping track very closely).  As unhappy as I am with corrupt and
over-militarized cops, etc. [really: my wife grew up some 15 minutes' walk
from where the shooting took place] - I'm even less happy with a hacker
underground that is neither transparent nor accountable to those of us it
claims to "protect and serve" (irony intentional).

I'm assuming it was FB that took this down, for whatever reason (i.e., not
someone from Anonymous or elsewhere)?

In any event: does anyone know of good studies - qualitative /
quantitative - that attempt to document this sort of behavior on FB's
part?  It would be invaluable both for its own sake, as well as for my
upcoming class on Internet regulation as caught between several poles,
including freedom of expression as critical to democratic discourse, etc.

Many thanks in advance,

- charles ess


_______________________________________________
The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org> mailing list
is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
http://www.aoir.org/








More information about the Air-L mailing list