Censoring political opposition online: Who does it and why

Ashokkumar, A., Talaifar, S.,  et al. (2020).

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 91

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104031

Abstract

As ordinary citizens increasingly moderate online forums, blogs, and their own social media feeds, a new type of censoring has emerged wherein people selectively remove opposing political viewpoints from online contexts. In three studies of behavior on putative online forums, supporters of a political cause (e.g., abortion or gun rights) preferentially censored comments that opposed their cause. The tendency to selectively censor cause-incongruent online content was amplified among people whose cause-related beliefs were deeply rooted in or “fused with” their identities. Moreover, six additional identity-related measures also amplified the selective censoring effect. Finally, selective censoring emerged even when opposing comments were inoffensive and courteous. We suggest that because online censorship enacted by moderators can skew online content consumed by millions of users, it can systematically disrupt democratic dialogue and subvert social harmony.

Highlights

• We use a novel experimental paradigm to study censorship in online environments.

• People selectively censor online content that challenges their political beliefs.

• People block online authors of posts they disagree with.

• When beliefs are rooted in identity, selective censoring is amplified.

• Selective censoring occurred even for comments without offensive language.

Conclusion

Contemporary pundits often blame the apparent increase in polarization on “the internet” or “social media.” Researchers have found some basis for such assertions by demonstrating that internet users are indeed selectively exposed to evidence that would lend support to their views. Our findings move beyond this literature by demonstrating that moderators employ censorship to not only bring online content into harmony with their values, but to actively advance their causes and attack opponents of their causes. From this vantage point, those whose political beliefs are rooted in their identities are not passive participants in online polarization; rather, they are agentic actors who actively curate online environments by censoring content that challenges their ideological positions. By providing a window into the psychological processes underlying these processes, our research may open up a broader vista of related processes for systematic study.

The research is here.

Google Employees Call Black Scientist's Ouster 'Unprecedented Research Censorship'

Bobby Allyn

www.npr.org

Originally published 3 Dec 20

Hundreds of Google employees have published an open letter following the firing of an accomplished scientist known for her research into the ethics of artificial intelligence and her work showing racial bias in facial recognition technology.

That scientist, Timnit Gebru, helped lead Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team until Tuesday.

Gebru, who is Black, says she was forced out of the company after a dispute over a research paper and an email she subsequently sent to peers expressing frustration over how the tech giant treats employees of color and women.

"Instead of being embraced by Google as an exceptionally talented and prolific contributor, Dr. Gebru has faced defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and now a retaliatory firing," the open letter said. By Thursday evening, more than 400 Google employees and hundreds of outsiders — many of them academics — had signed it.

The research paper in question was co-authored by Gebru along with four others at Google and two other researchers. It examined the environmental and ethical implications of an AI tool used by Google and other technology companies, according to NPR's review of the draft paper.

The 12-page draft explored the possible pitfalls of relying on the tool, which scans massive amounts of information on the Internet and produces text as if written by a human. The paper argued it could end up mimicking hate speech and other types of derogatory and biased language found online. The paper also cautioned against the energy cost of using such large-scale AI models.

According to Gebru, she was planning to present the paper at a research conference next year, but then her bosses at Google stepped in and demanded she retract the paper or remove all the Google employees as authors.

The info is here.

China Uses "Ethics" as Censorship

China sets up a video game ethics panel in its new approval process

Owen S. Good
www.polygon.com
Originally posted December 8, 2018

In China, it’s about ethics in video games.

The South China Morning Post reports that the nation now has an “Online Game Ethics Committee,” as a part of the government’s laborious process for game censorship approvals. China Central Television, the state’s broadcaster, said this ethics-in-games committee was formed to address national concerns over internet addiction, “unsuitable content” and childhood myopia (nearsightedness, apparently with video games as a cause?)

The state TV report said the committee has already looked at 20 games, rejecting nine and ruling that the other 11 have to change “certain content.” The titles of the games were not revealed.

The info is here.

Rogue chatbots deleted in China after questioning Communist Party

Neil Connor
The Telegraph
Originally published August 3, 2017

Two chatbots have been pulled from a Chinese messaging app after they questioned the rule of the Communist Party and made unpatriotic comments.

The bots were available on a messaging app run by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which has more than 800 million users, before apparently going rogue.

One of the robots, BabyQ, was asked “Do you love the Communist Party”, according to a screenshot posted on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

Another web user said to the chatbot: “Long Live the Communist Party”, to which BabyQ replied: “Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time?”

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The Chinese Internet is heavily censored by Beijing, which sees any criticism of its rule as a threat.

Social media posts which are deemed critical are often quickly deleted by authorities, while searches for sensitive topics are often blocked.

The information is here.

Twitter’s Great Porn Purge of 2015

By Aurora Snow
The Daily Beast
Originally posted May 16, 2015

Say it ain’t so! Don’t censor us Twitter, like all those other wildly profitable social media platforms.

According to SunTrust Robinson Humphrey tech analyst Robert Peck, Twitter is preparing to purge an estimated 10 million porn-posting users. Ditching such a large chunk of users sounds drastic until you do the math: Twitter claims to have 302 million monthly users, so getting rid of the explicit posters will only account for about 3 percent of its total—although that’s just counting the users and not their followers. Twitter is a one-stop shop for all your media needs, whether you want to catch up on news, message a celeb in real time, or browse explicit images posted by adult stars. Purging the porn will surely upset millions of users, and would certainly put a dent in Twitter’s hip freedom of speech reputation.

The entire article is here.

More transparency into government requests

By Dorothy Chou

Google Senior Policy Analyst

Originally posted June 17, 2012

About two years ago, we launched our interactive Transparency Report. We started by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we’ve been steadily adding new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries. And just a couple weeks ago, we launched a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results.

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This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

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We’ve rounded up some additional interesting facts in the annotations section of the Transparency Report. We realize that the numbers we share can only provide a small window into what’s happening on the web at large. But we do hope that by being transparent about these government requests, we can continue to contribute to the public debate about how government behaviors are shaping our web.

The entire blog post is here.

Thanks to Ed Zuckerman for this lead.