Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#71

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:32 AM UTC

crummy wrote: post #59

bilbo0s wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously that screenshot/video together with electronic traces and your statement would then be stored wherever it is they store evidence, not just on FB/Twitter... Money quote. Twitter is not the evidence store. Twitter is the place the evidence is gathered from. Along with numerous other sources. And no, they don't simply take your word that the footage on your platform was recorded at place X at time Y and is v…

It seems like you're implying that twitter posts cannot contain evidence of crimes?

GP is arguing Twitter posts are of wrong colour[0]. No matter what a Tweet contains, by itself it's not evidence of anything other than its own existence.

Imagine you open Twitter and see a video of someone committing a crime. That could very well be a real photo of a real event. But the event might not have been a crime. Or it may not have been real at all. Or the footage might be from something else entirely. Remember that time few years ago around an air crash investigation when people believed they've seen footage from the plane breaking up, only it turned out someone just posted a scene from LOST? Or recall these one or two heart-breaking pictures of people suffering that surface on Facebook every time there's some fighting going on, always labeled "evil side $X did this in city $C"? Those are always the same pictures of some one event that happened long time ago, but people read them as "evidence" of new atrocities.

Now obviously courts don't view social media posts in a binary way. Enough investigators and expert witnesses can work on a social media post until it has the colour of evidence.

--

[0] - https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#72

Post by saiya-jin » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:33 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #60

tracer4201 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a surprise. Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict. The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America’s elite.

Curiously, I had much the same experience despite being from the UK — Americans were always the heroes. British too (e.g. colonialism, empire, and commonwealth presented as an unmitigated good thing), but if there was a conflict of any sort between the UK and the USA, the USA were almost always the good guys.

Yet in reality British colonialism was, being equal to other european countries colonialism (France, Spain, Portugal, Dutch, Belgium, Germany a bit), one of the greatest evils in mankind's history, probably the worst if you count all direct and indirect casualties. I would be properly ashamed of my ancestors if I was from one of the countries, yet people simply don't give a nanofraction of a fuck.

Much of the mess we are facing in last 20th century till now is due to that. Countries literally raped for centuries, all their wealth stolen. Generations raised as servants to powerful overlords. Promoting more submissive minorities into ruling classes. Afterwards some idiots in their tea club draw semi-random lines on the maps when creating new countries, creating perfect storm for future conflicts.

And what we have today? Colonialism with a modern face - continuous brain drain so that only poor uneducated or lazy stay in their home country. And of course resource drain never stopped, look at companies like Royal Dutch Shell or DeBeers and many, many others.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#73

Post by Quequau » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

Surely there's a difference between not publishing (to the general public) on their platform and not making such content available to the relevant authorities.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#74

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

bilbo0s wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously that screenshot/video together with electronic traces and your statement would then be stored wherever it is they store evidence, not just on FB/Twitter... Money quote. Twitter is not the evidence store. Twitter is the place the evidence is gathered from. Along with numerous other sources. And no, they don't simply take your word that the footage on your platform was recorded at place X at time Y and is v…

You're completely ignoring the public pressure needed to bring about enforcement of laws against connected figures. If you give your evidence against government officials to other government officials, good luck getting them bring a case that could hurt their career prospects by pissing off the wrong people. To get that rolling under those circumstances, you need public pressure. Which means you need to distribute th…

The problem is though that a video goes viral and then gets forgotten in a time shorter than anyone can verify its authenticity. Public pressure may end up getting applied incorrectly.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#75

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #25

tetrisgm wrote: post #6

The problem is that we've equated some platforms with a certain kind of media. Youtube is video, Twitter is news, Facebook is.. reality tv, I dunno. It's pretty debatable whether those platforms are the right place for the coverage of war crimes. I'm not going to start an argument about the media not doing their job right. However, this discussion would be moot if there was a news platform on par with the above, and…

You're right. The arrival of 'a news outlet that isn't driven by attention or clicks as a currency' is exactly what should happen and surely it will. Or will we have Facebook around in 2119?

If it were possible, an untied peer to peer platform. The problem then is shifted to trust and veracity.

Once you include ratings you're back to square one with just a tiny bit less external control and harder discovery.

Yes, this is Freenet again.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#76

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

deanclatworthy wrote: post #61

These platforms can do no right. If Facebook/Youtube leave a video online of a beheading of John Smith from then inevitably calls them out for promoting and hosting this "illegal" content. Now, they're being chastised for taking it down too. Maybe, just maybe, these companies have internal processes for handing over such materials to the relevant authorities, and don't need to rely on armchair detectives to investiga…

The actual question is if the process is used to silence lies or uncomfortable truth. Or more Machiavellian, shape the discourse in ways favorable to rulers without regard to either.

These processes are ran by greedy people, not out of anyone's goodwill.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#77

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:55 AM UTC

happytreefrens wrote: post #53

yoz-y wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It is simply not possible to have these platforms host this kind of content and it boils down to money. If you want Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the likes you need ads. Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content. If people were ready to pay for a platform with "raw" footage of others' lives there could be a place for it. So far the market has proven otherwise.

There is a market for a lot of kinds of content, but companies will gladly exchange some of their profit to push to silence certain kinds of messages and to keep competitors down. There's clearly a market for an uncensored social media network, but Gab has been deplatformed from payment processors, web hosts, registrars... Companies that refuse service to Gab will gladly host degenerate pornography and turn a blind e…

So far almost all private censorship I've seen can be chalked up to profit motive. Payment processors don't like adult content not because they're prudes, but because there's a significantly increased risk of chargebacks, so why bother. Enabling illegal activities while maintaining plausible deniability and making easy profit off it? Why companies wouldn't do that? On the other hand, being a neutral platform is only fun until the Twitter mob notices you, after which you can choose between losing neutrality or getting painted as a bad actor on the front page of newspapers (sometimes you get the latter anyway, which incentivizes others to abandon neutrality preemptively). And even if you don't care, advertisers do care, because getting a mass-market product ad next to politically incorrect content may cause them issues with the Twitter mob and front page of the news.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#78

Post by coldtea » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

subjoriented wrote: post #32

The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent, as foreign…

>The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent >The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes

Well, Apple is not some international beacon of progress and activism.

It's a US-based company, run by people who feel US-patriots, and their differences with this or that sitting president aside, will do what's best for their country's "national interests". Same as Google, Facebook, etc.

Which is why countries with any major claim to sovereignty and with their own interests and stakes, build their own equivalents of major search, social networks, etc (e.g. Baidu).

>Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent

I wouldn't say the latter was not part of their purpose. You can't have your country's own citizens dissent to the elite/bipartisan consensus. Trillions are at stake...

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#79

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

happytreefrens wrote: post #49

These tech companies decide, often in unison, to deplatform people, types of legal content, or political views. There is clearly coordination among news outlets, social media companies, and tech companies (everything from payment processors to web hosting). Who is doing this coordination? To what end? Is there a common thread in the deplatforming, smearing, and silencing campaigns?

There need not be a single "who" behind it in as much as a set of convergent processes with the same goal of control and power.

It is coordination of the kind of "going after the Joneses", because Chinese get away with it and gave useful results, so can we, ethics and long term effects be damned.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#80

Post by netcan » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

subjoriented wrote: post #32

The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent, as foreign…

We'll put.

The big social media players underappreciate the areas that they've found themselves in, a major part of news media.

Dealing with fake news, intelligence backed propoganda, and censorship of certain content are very difficult tasks. They aren't just "security" or "platform abuse" issues. These are editorial & fact checking issues.

Ultimately, it will be impossible to deal with them via clear policies and software. The only way to do it is with human intelligence, decision making and judgement.

A video of an isis execution could be snuff, critical news, isis propoganda, baathist propoganda...

The types of organisations that do these kinds ds of jobs tend to have it baked into their DNA. Journalistic organizations for examlr, that have editorial philosophies embedded in their DNA the way Facebook has software development embedded into it's.

In terms of online media, Wikipedia is the best example, imo. Dealing with this stuff is at it's core. I can't see FB ever becoming adequately capable of dealing with these types of issues.

Even bans get I to tricky territory once you reach FB/twitter scale.