X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has sued a group of researchers, alleging their work highlighting an increase in hate speech on the platform cost the company millions of dollars of advertising revenue.

The suit, filed late on Monday night in US District Court in California, accuses the nonprofit Centre for Countering Digital Hate of violating X’s terms of service by improperly collecting a vast amount of data for its analysis.

The suit also alleges, without offering evidence, that the organisation is funded by foreign governments and media companies who view X as competition.

The legal fight between the tech company, which was acquired by Elon Musk last year, and the centre could have significant implications for a growing number of researchers and advocacy groups that seek to help the public understand how social media is shaping society and culture.

With offices in the US and UK, the centre regularly publishes reports on hate speech, extremism and harmful behavior on social media platforms such as X, TikTok or Facebook.

The organisation has published several reports critical of Musk’s leadership, detailing an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech as well as climate misinformation since his purchase.

In its lawsuit, X alleges the centre violated its terms of service by automatically scraping large amounts of data from the site without the company’s permission.

X also claims the centre improperly accessed internal Twitter data, using log-on credentials it obtained from an employee at a separate company that has a business relationship with X.

Without naming any individuals or companies, the suit says the centre receives funding from foreign governments as well as organisations with ties to “legacy media organisations” that see X as a rival.

The suit claims the centre’s work has cost X tens of millions of dollars in lost ad revenue.

In response to the legal action, Imran Ahmed, the centre’s founder and chief executive, defended its work and accused Mr Musk of using the lawsuit to silence criticism of his leadership, as well as research into the role X plays in spreading misinformation and hate speech.

“Musk is trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights the toxic content on his platform rather than deal with the toxic environment he’s created,” Mr Ahmed said.

The centre’s 2021 tax forms show it took in 1.4 million dollars (£1.1 million) in revenue. A review of major donors shows several large charities, including the National Philanthropic Trust in the US and the Oak Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in the UK.

A spokesman for the group said the centre receives no funding from any government entities or tech companies that could be considered competitors to X. The identities of other donors is not revealed in public documents, and the centre declined to provide a list.

Mr Musk is a self-professed free speech absolutist who has welcomed back white supremacists and election deniers to the platform, which he renamed X last month.

He initially had promised that he would allow any speech on his platform that wasn’t illegal. “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Mr Musk wrote in a tweet last year.

Nevertheless, the billionaire has at times proven sensitive about critical speech directed at him or his companies. Last year, he suspended the accounts of several journalists who covered his takeover of Twitter.

Read more: Security Minister Calls for Social Media Companies to Tackle Radicalisation

A Twitter user accused of encouraging others to decapitate anyone who insulted Islam has told a jury he retweeted praise for a terrorist “just to have some more followers”.

Ajmal Shahpal told Birmingham Crown Court he did not believe that the killer of French school teacher Samuel Paty was “as brave as a lion” or that the victim “deserved to be killed” in France in October 2020.

Prosecutors allege Shahpal, of Birkin Avenue, Radford, Nottingham, encouraged others to commit, prepare, or instigate acts of terrorism in a series of retweets, including one containing an image of Mr Paty’s severed head.

Shahpal, 41, is also alleged to have tweeted messages backing a Pakistan-based political party which supported the “out-of-hand murder of those who it thinks have committed blasphemy”.

Under cross-examination from prosecutor Dan Pawson-Pounds on Monday, Shahpal, who is originally from Pakistan and was assisted by an Urdu interpreter, denied pretending to have a poor understanding of English to try to escape responsibility for his tweets.

Mr Pawson-Pounds told Shahpal, who passed a taxi exam and studied for a diploma in English and business management after coming to the UK in 2009: “The Crown suggests that you were a radicalised follower of extreme Islam and that you both supported and encouraged the murder of people for what you considered to be blasphemy.

“You used your Twitter account to encourage people to do this by saying on that account repeatedly that blasphemers should be killed and should be killed immediately.”

After the defendant accepted that Mr Paty did not deserve to die and that the teacher’s killer was not “as brave as a lion” – contradicting statements in one of his retweets – Mr Pawson-Round asked him: “Why did you retweet a tweet saying all these things then?”

Shahpal responded: “As I have already told you, the reason behind this was just to have some more followers.

“At the time when I retweeted it, that picture (of a severed head) wasn’t fully open at that time on the feed of Twitter.

“So at the time I did not know what picture it was that I was retweeting.”

Claiming he had only read the first line of the message before retweeting it, Shahpal added: “I did not fully read it.

“What I have read, it did not say that his chopped off head was lying on the floor.

“A friend of mine who set up this account for me, he told me that if you do this, you are going to get more followers.”

Questioned about a further tweet which called for rapists to be stoned to death, Shahpal said it did not accord with his beliefs and he had “just copied and pasted” a message written in English “because the issue was ongoing” in Pakistan.

After Shahpal denied that he had intended to encourage terrorism, he was asked if he had realised there would be a risk that his tweets would encourage acts of terror.

Shahpal answered: “I was just posting them (tweets). I didn’t have a clue.”

Later in his evidence, asked about a tweet containing a call for someone to be “killed immediately”, Shahpal added: “My English is not that good. I just copied and pasted.”

The defendant denies two counts of encouraging others to commit, prepare, or instigate acts of terrorism, and two alternative charges of the same offence being reckless as to whether such acts would be encouraged.

The trial continues.

Twitter has limited access to a tweet by Turkey’s interior minister who referred to student protesters as “LGBT perverts”.

For weeks, students and staff at Istanbul’s prestigious Bogazici University have been protesting against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of Melih Bulu, a figure who has links to his ruling party, as the university’s rector.

They have been calling for Mr Bulu’s resignation and for the university to be allowed to elect its own president.

Late on Monday, police clashed with demonstrators who staged protests demanding the release of a group of students who were arrested over the weekend on charges of inciting hatred and insulting religious values for a poster displayed at Bogazici University, that depicted Islam’s most sacred site with LGBT flags.

Authorities said 159 people were detained in the clashes, although several were later released.

Turkey’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted on Sunday that “LGBT perverts” had been detained for “disrespecting the Great Kaaba”.

On Tuesday, he repeated the slur, saying on Twitter that the Turkish government would not tolerate “LGBT perverts who attempted to occupy the rector’s office”.

That prompted Twitter to place Mr Soylu’s tweet behind a notice warning that his message violated the social media platform’s rules about “hateful conduct”.

Twitter said, however, it had decided to allow people to click to view Mr Soylu’s tweet on grounds that it was in the public’s interest to have access to a tweet by the elected politician.

Mr Erdogan himself levelled criticism at the protesters during a speech on Monday, by praising the youth wing of his conservative and Islam-oriented party for not being like the “LGBT youth”.

Meanwhile, police in Istanbul used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a new demonstration to denounce Mr Bulu’s appointment, Halk TV television reported. The station’s reporter was slightly hurt in the melee.

Police in the capital, Ankara, also dispersed a demonstration by students who gathered near the city’s main square in a show of solidarity with the Bogazici students. At least 69 demonstrators were detained, Halk TV television reported.

Read more: Students arrested in Turkey over Mecca poster with LGBT flags

Twitter has locked the account belonging to China’s embassy in the US after a tweet stated that Uighur women in Xinjiang have been emancipated and are no longer “baby making machines”.

One of the final acts of the Trump administration this week was declaring that China’s policies and actions in regard to Muslims and ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang region constitute “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”.

A main reason for the declaration is widespread forced birth control among the Uighurs, which the Associated Press documented last year.

Another reason cited, Uighur forced labour, has also been linked by AP reporting to various products imported to the US, including clothing and electronic goods such as cameras and computer monitors.

Twitter said the January 7 tweet from the embassy in Washington violated its policy on dehumanisation.

According to that policy, “the dehumanisation of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, or ethnicity”, is prohibited.

There have been no tweets from the embassy’s account since January 8.

In order to unlock the account, the embassy will have to delete the tweet.

The Chinese embassy in the US did not respond to a request for comment.

But on Wednesday, a day after outgoing US secretary of state Mike Pompeo classified China’s actions as “genocide”, China’s Foreign Ministry described Mr Pompeo as a “doomsday clown” and said the designation was merely “a piece of wastepaper”.

Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad defends his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying that they were taken out of context as he criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.

The 95-year-old sparked widespread outrage when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.

Twitter removed a tweet from Mr Mahathir containing the remark, which it said glorified violence, while France’s digital minister demanded the company also ban Mr Mahathir from its platform.

“I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog,” Mr Mahathir said in a statement.

He said critics failed to read his posting in full, especially the next sentence which read: “But by and large Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.”

He said Twitter and Facebook removed the posting despite his explanation, and slammed the move as hypocritical.

“On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of Prophet Mohammed … and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression,” he said.

“On the other, they deleted deliberately that Muslims had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past”, thereby stirring French hatred for Muslims, he added.

On Twitter, however, that sentence was not deleted. A staff member for Mr Mahathir said the entire posting was removed by Facebook.

Facebook Malaysia said in an email that it removed Mr Mahathir’s posting for violating its policies, adding: “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook and strongly condemn any support for violence, death or physical harm.”

The comments by the two-time prime minister were in response to calls by Muslim nations to boycott French products after French leader Emmanuel Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” and vowed to crack down on radicalism following the murder of a French teacher who showed his class a cartoon depicting the prophet of Islam.

His remarks also came as a Tunisian man killed three people at a church in the southern French city of Nice.

The US ambassador to Malaysia, Kamala Shirin Lakhdir, said on Friday that she “strongly disagreed” with Mr Mahathir’s statement, adding in a statement: “Freedom of expression is a right, calling for violence is not.”

Mr Mahathir has been viewed as an advocate of moderate Islamic views and a spokesman for the interests of developing countries.

At the same time, he has pointedly criticised Western society and nations as well as their relationships to the Muslim world, while he has been denounced in Israel and elsewhere for making anti-Semitic remarks.

Read more: New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

Demonstrations across France to pay tribute to murdered teacher

Labour MP David Lammy has told Twitter it must get “much faster at removing hate” after a delay to deleting racist abuse targeted at him.

The shadow justice secretary said on Monday that it took more than 13 hours for the social media giant to act before it suspended the perpetrator’s account.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said Twitter “must take decisive action against this sort of vile content much faster” following the “awful racist abuse”.

The latest criticism of Twitter comes after social networks were condemned for failing to act quickly enough over a series of anti-Semitic messages sent by grime artist Wiley.

Mr Lammy tweeted: “13+ hours later, the police are investigating and Mikolaos Nichaloliakos’ tweet calling me a ‘monkey boy’ and making threats about ‘hanging’ are still live.

“You (Twitter) need to get so much faster at removing hate.”

Scotland Yard said the tweet’s “contents are being assessed” after an allegation of malicious communication towards the MP on Sunday.

Twitter said: “Racist behaviour has no place on our service. We have policies in place that address abuse and harassment, violent threats, and hateful conduct.

“If we identify accounts that violate any of these rules, we’ll take enforcement action. This account in question has been suspended for violating our hateful conduct policy.”

Downing Street was among those to criticise Twitter and Instagram for not acting sooner over Wiley’s message, saying last week their response had “not been good enough”.

On Monday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “Social media platforms must be quicker at taking action against hate.”

New regulations on social media companies should be tightened to include more transparency around how firms target users online, an independent advisory board on artificial intelligence (AI) has said.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) has urged the Government to also focus on online targeting because the public is concerned about how the technology is being used.

In a new report, it said an analysis of public attitudes on the issue found that many appreciated the value of targeting – where platforms use people’s online habits to target them with content they believe will interest them – but were also concerned about the potential for such data to be exploited.

The CDEI has published three sets of recommendations as part of its research, urging the Government to hold any companies which use online targeting to a higher standard of accountability, as well as calling for transparency of online targeting systems to be increased and more control be given to users to edit how they are targeted.

A number of high-profile internet and social media platforms, including Google and Facebook, use different forms of online targeting to show users adverts or other content which they believe will interest users.

CDEI chairman Roger Taylor said: “Most people do not want targeting stopped. But they do want to know that it is being done safely and responsibly. And they want more control.

“Tech platforms’ ability to decide what information people see puts them in a position of real power. To build public trust over the long term it is vital for the Government to ensure that the new online harms regulator looks at how platforms recommend content, establishing robust processes to protect vulnerable people.”

Last year, a White Paper on online harms published by the Government proposed stricter regulation for internet and social media companies, including a statutory duty of care and measures to increase web safety, particularly in protecting young and vulnerable people from illegal content, while making tech giants liable to fines or criminal prosecution if they breach their responsibilities.

According to the CDEI report, only 29% of people trust platforms to target them in a responsible way, and 61% said they were in favour of greater regulatory oversight of online targeting.

Only around a third of those asked (34%) trust internet companies to change their settings when they ask them to.

Last month, a separate report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists said social media giants should be forced to hand over data and pay towards research into their potential harms.

In response to the CDEI research, Dr Bernadka Dubicka, chairwoman of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We completely agree that there needs to be greater accountability, transparency and control in the online world.

“It is fantastic to see the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation join our call for the regulator to be able to compel social media companies to give independent researchers secure access to their data.”

Twitter has removed almost 5,000 accounts it believes are linked to the Iranian government with the aim of manipulating conversations about political and social issues.

The social network has been cracking down on state-backed information operations as part of an effort to clean up its platform of fake news.

In its latest disclosure, Twitter removed more than 1,500 accounts which tweeted nearly two million times with global news content angled to benefit the diplomatic and geostrategic views of the Iranian state.

Another 2,865 accounts originating from Iran were taken down for using false personas to target conversations about political and social issues in Iran and globally, while another 248 accounts were banned for participating in discussions related to Israel specifically.

“We believe that people and organisations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service are not advancing healthy discourse but are actively working to undermine it,” said Yoel Roth, head of site integrity at Twitter.

“Our site integrity team is dedicated to identifying and investigating suspected platform manipulation on Twitter, including potential state-backed activity.”

The company also suspended 130 accounts linked back to Spain, which it discovered were directly associated with the Catalan independence movement, spreading content about the Catalan referendum.

Only four accounts linked to Russia were taken down this time round – down from the 518 Russian accounts it reported back in November – as well as 33 from Venezuela engaging in platform manipulation.

The move comes at a critical time for social networks, as they look to shake off accusations of not doing enough to tackle misinformation and the spread of harmful content, such as terrorism-related posts and hate speech.

Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust and safety lead, Vijaya Gadde, recently admitted that she has “no doubt” that content on Twitter and other social networks could contribute to radicalisation, while revealing that 1.6 million accounts have been taken down related to terrorism.

According to the executive, 90% of terror-related content taken down is detected by Twitter’s own technologies proactively without any users reporting it.

]]> 8484 https://www.faith-matters.org/pakistan-critics-fear-rise-of-islamists-as-new-minister-bans-vulgar-billboards/ Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:47:23 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7911

Punjab’s new information minister, Islamist politician Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on “vulgar” movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Since Khan’s party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the grave of a man sentenced to death for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011, and with critical remarks about Nargis, a popular Pakistani singer and actress.

“If any vulgar billboard is found at any cinema in Punjab after three days, there will be a fine in first place, and if any one didn’t comply, that cinema will be shut down,” Chohan told a public meeting in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Is there any humanity that you print half-naked women and put them on big billboards?” he said.

Khan’s election victory in July was helped by strong support from Islamist parties. Chohan joined Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Justice Movement from the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.

“It’s pure moral policing,” the left-leaning politician and rights activist Ammar Rashid said on Twitter.

British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.