You will recall the brief clusterfuck that occurred earlier this month in Georgia's Paulding County. The school district there, which opened back up for in-person classes while making wearing a mask completely optional, also decided to suspend two students who took and posted pictures of crowded hallways filled with maskless students. While the district dressed these suspensions up as consequences for using a smartphone on school grounds, the school's administration gave the game away by informing all students that they would be disciplined for any criticism by students on social media in general. That, as we pointed out, is a blatant First Amendment violation.

Once the blow-back really got going, the school district rescinded the suspensions. In the days following, students and teachers at the school began falling ill and testing positive for COVID-19. It got bad enough that the school decided to shut down. With so much media attention, it was a matter of who was going to get the FOIA requests in for documents on what led to the suspensions first.

Vice put a request in. However, because this district can't seem to stop punching itself in the gut, the school district is attempting to duck the FOIA requests entirely. Not through redactions. It just isn't going to give up any internal documents at all, even as it acknowledges it has documents in hand.

"The District is in possession of responsive documents," the response, signed by W. Thomas Cable in their role as the attorney for the Paulding County School District, reads. "However, pursuant to Georgia law, the following categories of information have not been produced, via redaction or removal, to the extent a statutory exclusion is directly applicable."

The public records request response also says the records are "specifically required by the federal government to be kept confidential." School districts often attempt to reject freedom of information requests on the grounds of student privacy, but districts and individual schools should be able to produce redacted records that protect privacy while still giving information about how specific decisions were made behind the scenes.

Without question, the district has the ability to disclose the documents requested without violating any student or faculty privacy. What this is instead is a fairly brazen attempt to refuse a records request that will almost certainly be embarrassing for the district. Due to this, the refusal has gotten the attention of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, which doesn't sound like the kind of group that is going to simply let this go.

The cover up is always worse than the crime, as they say. However bad those records would have made Paulding County School District look, it's now going to look all the worse with this attempt to bury the truth, should those documents eventually come out. And, given the speed with which the district retreated from the suspensions when challenged, you have to imagine a little bit of public pressure is all it's going to take here as well.

Summary: As is the case on any site where consumer products are sold, there's always the chance review scores will be artificially inflated by bogus reviews using fake accounts, often described as "sock puppets."

Legitimate reviews are organic, prompted by a buyer's experience with a product. "Sock puppets," on the other hand, are bogus accounts created for the purpose of inflating the number of positive (or -- in the case of a competitor -- negative) reviews for a seller's product. Often, they're created by the seller themself. Sometimes these faux reviews are purchased from third parties. "Sock puppet" activity isn't limited to product reviews. The same behavior has been detected in comment threads and on social media platforms.

In 2012 -- apparently in response to "sock puppet" activity, some of it linked to a prominent author -- Amazon engaged in a mass deletion of suspected bogus activity. Unfortunately, this moderation effort also removed hundreds of legitimate book reviews written by authors and book readers.

In response to authors' complaints that their legitimate reviews had been removed (along with apparently legitimate reviews of their own books), Amazon pointed to its review guidelines, claiming they forbade authors from reviewing other authors' books.

We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product. As a result, we've removed your reviews for this title. Any further violations of our posted Guidelines may result in the removal of this item from our website.

Multiple authors sought to have their legitimate reviews reinstated (including reviews of their books written by readers), but Amazon refused, insisting that authors reviewing other authors' books constituted a violation of its review guidelines, even if authors had no financial interest in the books they were reviewing.

Amazon's handling of reviews in response to sock puppet activity continues to be criticized periodically, most recently over the mass removal of one-star reviews for Hillary Clinton's 2017 book about her presidential election run.

Decisions to be made by Amazon:

• What characteristics do “sock puppet” reviews have, that make them distinct from legitimate reviews?
• Do more steps need to be added to the process of verifying reviewers?
• When targeting sock puppet activity, are options considered that might reduce the chance of negatively affecting legitimate reviews?
• Would more flexibility in moderation decisions help or harm efforts targeting abusers of the review system?
• Is the loss of goodwill towards the company by sellers an acceptable tradeoff for moderation efforts that remove possibly legitimate reviews of their products?
• Can moderation efforts be handled with more human interaction to reduce the number of legitimate reviews inadvertently targeted?

Questions and policy implications to consider:

• As the number of vendors and products continues to expand, how reasonable is it to expect reviewers to avoid violating the rule forbidding reviews of products by someone offering a competing product?
• How much moderation should be left to automatic mechanisms when dealing with suspected sock puppet activity?
• Does the inevitable collateral damage of these efforts raise or lower the legitimacy of the remaining reviews in the eyes of potential customers?
• Would more transparency on review moderation efforts lead to more or less abuse of the review system?
• Do mishandled moderation efforts harm buyers or sellers more? Which harm is more acceptable?

Resolution: Amazon reacted to news reports about sock puppet activity involving major authors by engaging in mass removals of anything that appeared questionable to moderators. Legitimate reviews/reviewers were caught up in the sweep, resulting in several authors publicly criticizing the company for not being more careful with its moderation efforts.

In today's insanity, Facebook's top lobbyist in India, Ankhi Das, has filed a criminal complaint against journalist Awesh Tiwari. Tiwari put up a post on Facebook over the weekend criticizing Das, citing a giant Wall Street Journal article that is focused on how Facebook's rules against hate speech have run into challenges regarding India's ruling BJP party. Basically, the article said that Facebook was not enforcing its hate speech rules when BJP leaders violated the rules (not unlike similar stories regarding Facebook relaxing the rules for Trump supporters in the US).

Das is named in the original article, claiming that she had pushed for Facebook not to enforce its rules against BJP leaders because it could hurt Facebook's overall interests in India. Tiwari called out Das' role in his Facebook post, and it appears Das took offense to that:

In her complaint to the police, Das asked for an investigation to be opened against Tiwari for sexual harassment, defamation, and criminal intimidation. If charged and convicted, Tiwari could face fines as well as up to two years in prison for sexual harassment, up to two years for defamation, and up to seven years in prison for criminal intimidation, according to the Indian penal code.

The complaint appears to allege that she's faced threats and harassment since Tiwari's post:

In her complaint, Das said: “Since August 14, I have been receiving violent threats to my life and body, and I am extremely disturbed by the relentless harassment meted out to me by the accused persons. The content, which even includes my photograph, is evidently threatening to my life and body and I fear for my safety as well as that of my family members. The content also maligns my reputation based on a news article and I am subjected to name-calling, cyber bullying and eve-teasing online.”

Even if this were true, teasing and name calling should not be criminal offenses. But, even more to the point, why is Tiwari being blamed for the action of others. He just posted a post, citing the WSJ article, and criticizing Das. Das has all the power in the world to simply... respond on Facebook (the company which she works for).

As the Committee to Protect Journalists notes, this is absurd. Das should drop these claims and apologize. I certainly recognize the impossible position Facebook is put in with regards to content moderation, and completely understand that there are multiple tradeoffs at play in how Facebook chooses to handle moderation of politicians around the globe. But none of that justifies taking out a criminal complaint. And Facebook's response here is utter nonsense:

A Facebook representative told CPJ via email that the social media outlet takes the safety and security of its employees seriously, but said it does not comment on individual employee matters.

Sure, the complaint was taken out by Das, not Facebook, but Das is a representative of Facebook and this action reflects directly on the company.

Tiwari has now filed a counter complaint back against Das, which is not a great look either. His argument now is sort of the mirror image of Das's, saying that since news of her criminal complaint has come out, he has faced threatening comments as well.

It seems like this is just a typical internet-style flame war, except the participants all think the police should be involved and their critics should go to jail. And that's crazy. Take a breath everyone, drop the criminal complaints, and move on.

On July 2nd,1999, Ricky Byrdsong was out for a jog near his home in Skokie, Illinois, with two of his young children, Sabrina and Ricky Jr. The family outing would end in tragedy. His children watched helplessly as their father was gunned down. He was the victim of a Neo-Nazi on a murderous rampage targeting Jewish, Asian and Black communities. Ten other people were left wounded. Won-Joon Yoon, a 26 year-old graduate student at the University of Indiana, would also be killed.

When you distill someone's life down to their final minutes, it does a disservice to their humanity and how they lived. Though I didn't know Won-Joon Yoon, I met Coach Byrdsong — one of few Black men's head basketball coaches in the NCAA — through my father, who is also part of this small fraternity. As head coaches in Illinois in the late 90s, their names were inevitably linked to each other. They occasionally played one another. Beyond his passion for basketball, Coach Byrdsong's love of God, and his commitment to community and family shone bright.

Coach Byrdsong was the first Black head basketball coach at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. His appointment was a big deal: Northwestern is a private university in an NCAA "power conference," with a Black undergraduate population of less than 6%. I visited Northwestern's arena when my dad was an assistant coach at the University of Illinois. At 11-years old, I remember being surrounded by belligerent college students making ape noises. When I hear jangling keys at sporting events, I'm transported back to the visceral feeling of being surrounded by thousands of (white) college students, alumni and locals, shaking their car keys while smugly chanting "that's alright, that's ok, you will work for me one day."

Their ditty, directed towards a basketball court overwhelmingly composed of Black, working-class student athletes, seemed to say: you don't belong here, and you never will — a sentiment that still saturates the campus. This is the world that Neo Nazi Benjamin Smith came from. Smith was raised in Wilmette, Illinois, one of the richest and whitest suburbs in the country, less than five miles from where he killed Coach Byrdsong.

The digital boundaries that exist online, much like the neighborhood ones, carve up communities often by ethnicity, class, and subculture. In these nooks a shared story and ideology is formed that reinforces an "us against the world" mentality. It's debatable whether that's intrinsically bad — but in this filter bubble, it is hard to see our own reflection accurately, let alone others. This leaves both our digital and physical bodies vulnerable.

Matthew Hale, Smith's mentor and founder of the World Church of the Creator, was an early adopter of Internet technology. He was part of a 90s subculture of white nationalists that flocked to the web, stitching a digital hood anonymizing those who walk and work amongst us. Hale's organization linked to white power music, computer games, and developed a website "Creativity for Kids," with downloadable white separatist coloring books. They used closed chat rooms and internet forums to rile up thirst for a race war. They understood the importance of e-commerce as a vehicle for trafficking hate, and they experimented with email bombing and infiltrating chat rooms.

Beyond being tech savvy, Hale was also a lawyer, who in 1999 was being defended by the ACLU. The Illinois Bar Association had denied Hale's law license based on his incitement of racial hatred and violence against ethnic and religious groups. The ACLU has had a long run of defending white nationalists including Charlottesville "Unite the Right" organizer Jason Kessler. In 1978 they defended the organizers of a Skokie Nazi march, the same community where Coach Byrdsong was assassinated. At the time 1 in every 6 Jewish residents there was either a survivor, or directly related to a survivor of the Holocaust.

Hale's law license was rejected based on three main points:

1. That a lawyer's responsibility to uphold equal justice for all, is compromised when their sworn allegiance to one race comes before the greater good.

2. That freedom of speech did not offer protection from the consequences of speech, nor did it mean validation and accreditation for dangerous speech, which an approved law license would imply.

3. That the community standards, values and guidelines set by the law association gave the judging body the ability to define based on a set of socially accepted criteria, what goes outside the bounds of decency and morality. From their standpoint, being an avowed Klansman, given their history of lynchings and terrorism, clearly crossed that line.

But Hale felt entitled to the right to speech with impunity. And the ACLU mounted a vigorous defense of that. What rights we are owed by institutions, is a question that divides even those that are normally aligned. Though tech companies say their role is to ensure that all speech matters, free speech does not mean the right to content or user validation, amplification or freedom to incite violence. This is why groups that are deemed terrorist threats by companies don’t have the same stranglehold that white nationalists enjoy. That they remain so openly prevalent speaks more to a tacit societal acceptance of white nationalist ideologies than it does the matter of free speech.

Free speech as a red herring is used as a wedge to politicize universal rights conversations, falsely brand common sense content moderation policies as "anti-" speech, freedom, and liberties. It's an argument that's routinely manipulated to shield corporations that get rich off of if it bleeds it leads incentive structures but aren't willing to accept the responsibility that comes from being about that life. Moreover, it chills the ability of marginalized groups to advocate for safer spaces.

Already, indoctrination can occur organically by nature of the interest-driven algorithmic models that permeate the platforms and trap people into digitally segregated neighborhoods. I put these algorithms to the test when I started using a device to research white nationalist communities. I found that when the computer read my data profile, it fundamentally changed my user experience. "Hey you follow Mike Cernovich," Twitter would note, "try following David Duke or David Horowitz." Amazon would see I was looking up books about Lauren Southern and make sure I knew I could also buy Mein Kampf. I was bombarded with YouTube conspiracy videos about the deadly Blacks in Chicago. With no fact check mechanism in sight, my world was shaped by who the internet thought I was. Once relegated to that bubble, it was hard to get out.

Institutions like the Harvard Shorenstein Center and Data and Society document how hate groups build power online. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are over 1,000 hate groups active in the United States. Beyond these known hate groups there are many loosely organized factions and countless sympathizers that are one bad quarantine day away from unleashing.

In our constricted online universe ruled by clickbait gods and monsters, it takes a special type of disassociation to say that words have the power to change the world yet there should be no boundary to them. Every morning there is another father, mother, son, daughter, or person tying up their shoes to go out for a jog, a person who could be the next Ricky Byrdsong or Ahmaud Arbery. Somewhere online at this very moment another Benjamin Smith is being groomed for violence. So many of them exist that their story may never make it out of their community filter bubble. According to 2018 data from the FBI there were 7,120 hate crime incidents reported that year. Often hate crimes — particularly against women of color and trans people — go unreported. While there's a slight dip in the total number of hate crimes overall, according to the FBI, the severity of violence is getting worse.

In 2018 Change the Terms, a coalition of 50 civil and human rights organizations, released a set of model corporate principles for dealing with hate speech. Color Of Change helped develop the framework, which encourages transparency, right to appeal, and baseline criteria for defining hate speech. The coalition is composed of either represented constituencies disproportionately targeted for hate crimes, or organizations that emphasize racial, gender, identity or religious justice in their mission. While the organizations have helped lead a culture shift in Silicon Valley, there is still much work to be done.

Matthew Hale, the pied piper of amateur racists, uses his Internet platform to lure in people like Benjamin Smith. When testifying in support of Hale's petition for a law license, Smith told the court "He's given me spiritual guidance...When I first met him, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, what direction I was going to go." Weeks later Smith killed two people before committing suicide. From prison Hale churns out hate propaganda you can buy on Amazon.

The adage "I don't agree with what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it," is often used to prop verbal violence. But history shows that disproportionately Black and Brown bodies get sacrificed in the name of boundless white speech. For some, Matthew Hale is a cause worth theoretically dying for. Reminders of the lives he had a hand in snuffing out are often met with a digital shoulder shrug on Twitter. It's as though everyone murdered for simply existing are merely the proverbial spilt milk, splashed on the floor for the greater good of the communities left to mourn them.

Rarely have these free speech martyrs actually suffered the life and death consequences of their absolutism. I begrudge anyone their righteous cause who knows what it means to mourn yet still believe. But over Independence Day weekend in 1999, Coach Ricky Byrdsong and Won-Joon Yoon did die. The online legacy left by their assassin and his enablers would empower and inspire a killer to walk into Emanuel African American Methodist church and murder nine people, another one to massacre 11 in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and yet another to gun down 49 people in New Zealand in the Muslim community of Christchurch.

Each of them set in motion the real-world consequences of an online model that monetizes polarization. And all of them left behind digital breadcrumbs for the next monster. Coach Byrdsong is one of multiple stories I could share about someone I knew who was killed or assaulted because of their ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality or religion. For me, free speech can not truly be free when it operates on a sliding scale weighted against those with the most to lose, and it will never hold more intrinsic value than human lives.

Brandi Collins-Dexter is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and a senior fellow at Color Of Change. She is currently writing a book about Black participation in democracy and the US economy, with particular focus on the role technology and information integrity play in improving or deteriorating community health.

What appears to be a very combative divorce between two very combative people in Marin County, California has reached the point of criminal charges. Not justifiable criminal charges, but criminal charges all the same.

Melissanne Velyvis has been very publicly documenting everything about her divorce proceedings and her ex-husband's (Dr. John Velyvis) alleged domestic abuse. In an apparent attempt to silence her from discussing her personal life (which necessarily involved discussing his personal life), John approached a judge and secured a restraining order forbidding his ex-wife from publishing "disparaging comments." Here's Judge Beverly Wood making her feelings clear about Melissanne's divorce-focused blogging:

“I really came into this hearing not wanting to issue this order and really hoping that I wouldn’t have to issue this order, but it has to stop,” Wood said, according to a transcript of the proceeding. “It really has to stop. And I need to tell you that if you don’t stop this, this can become a criminal matter. I don’t think you want to go there.”

The order was expansive. It not only banned future "disparaging" posts but ordered the removal of everything fitting that description Melissanne had posted in the past.

I am making an order that you remove any posting on social media on Internet regarding Dr. John Velyvis and that you not post anything on social media regarding Dr. Velyvis or his children directly or indirectly. [...] I am going to order that you prevent disseminating any information about Dr. Velyvis to any parties absent a court order or subpoena.

Melissanne did not stop posting. Last December, Marin County prosecutors filed criminal charges over the violation of the restraining order. The prosecutor argued the prior restraint was Constitutional because the alleged harassment targeted by the order was unlawful.

Melissanne challenged the order. Seven months after being criminally charged for discussing her divorce and her ex-husband online, the restraining order has been dismantled by another county judge.

[Judge Roy] Chernus ruled on the petition on July 27. He agreed that the prior court order was an unconstitutional block on free speech, and said the criminal charge could not stand.

“In California, a court must find that ‘extraordinary circumstances’ exist in order to restrain the defendant’s right to share independently obtained information about another adult with other willing adults,” Chernus wrote. “The fact the public sharing of these comments might be humiliating to the targeted adult, or cause emotional distress or even cause harm to the subject’s professional reputation, does not rise to the level of a compelling or extraordinary circumstance.”

The ruling [PDF] (thanks, Volokh Conspiracy!) makes it clear the order is only unconstitutional as far as it applies to Melissanne's online postings. Other elements regarding "unwanted contact" still apply.

The court cites a handful of other divorce proceedings in which similar restraining orders were found unconstitutional. Just because one of the parties may feel harassed by the other party's discussion of ongoing acrimony doesn't make it unlawful for the party to engage in this speech. Unless the speech falls into narrow categories (like defamation or true threats), the speech is Constitutionally protected.

There is nothing on the face of the complaint, or in the Family Court judge's judicially-noticed findings of fact to indicate any of defendant's communications were previously found to be defamatory.

As stated in the DVPO, the Family Law judge found that defendant's statements about Dr. Velyvis were intentionally harassing, damaged his reputation and interfered with his personal relationships.

Based on the authorities discussed above, these reasons are insufficient to justify such a broad prohibition. The court finds that the portion of the DVPO restraining defendant from posting on the internet or communicating any information about defendant's ex-husband or his children is impermissibly overbroad and constitutes an invalid prior restraint under the federal and California constitutions.

Since the order is invalid, so is the criminal charge.

Violation of this portion of the DVPO, therefore, is not an actionable offense.

The protective order can still be violated but it can no longer be violated simply by posting content Dr. John Velyvis feels is disparaging or personally harmful. The First Amendment -- and California's own Constitution -- protects the right of divorce participants to make each other as miserable as possible. Which is as it should be, since divorce is just as much an American tradition as free speech itself.

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Late Monday, it came out that Oracle is one of the potential American acquirers of TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance, after President Trump ordered Bytedance sell TikTok out of spite. Microsoft has been the most talked about potential purchaser, though there were also rumors of a potential bid by Twitter.

The Oracle rumor strikes many as particularly bizarre, for good reason. Oracle is pretty much an enterprise-only focused company. However, if it has one strength it is in buying up companies and integrating them into its cashflow generation machine. I'm still not sure I see the synergies here, but perhaps Larry Ellison is finally realizing that Oracle is the opposite of cool in Silicon Valley.

However, the thing that struck me most about all of this is that Oracle is one of the main companies behind the plot to undermine Section 230. Oracle has been a funder of a weird group of anti-Section 230 activists, and has been involved in multiple anti-Section 230 crusades. And, as we've pointed out in the past, it seems pretty clear why: Oracle has always been incredibly (to a petty level) jealous of Google and Facebook's success -- and seems to see Section 230 reform as a weapon it can use to attack those companies without harming itself, since Oracle doesn't really host much user generated content.

Of course, that would change if Oracle actually ended up buying TikTok. Suddenly, it would have a massive platform full of user generated content, and it would be fascinating to watch if Oracle changes its tune on 230 (or calls off its attack dogs who keep misrepresenting 230). That would certainly be interesting. Of course, the general rumor is that Oracle is really just doing this to drive up the price for Microsoft (who Oracle is losing to in the fight for "cloud" supremacy), but President Trump has given his blessing for an Oracle/TikTok deal, which isn't too surprising, given that Oracle's top execs have been sucking up to Trump and praising him since he was elected.

A coalition of cities has filed a desperate, and likely doomed, lawsuit (pdf) against streaming providers like Netflix and Disney. In it, the cities proclaim that they are somehow owed 5 percent of gross annual revenue. Why? Apparently they believe that because these streaming services travel over telecom networks that utilize the public right of way, they're somehow owed a cut:

"Defendants transmit video programming to Indiana subscribers using Internet protocol and other technologies. When doing so, Defendants transmit their programming through facilities located at least in part in public rights of way within the geographic boundaries of Indiana Units, including public rights of way located within Plaintiffs' geographic boundaries. Therefore, Defendants are required by the VSF Act to pay the Plaintiffs—and all other Indiana Units in which Defendants transmit video programming through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way—franchise fees."

To be fair, cities have long been solidly screwed by the telecom and cable industry, which in the early aughts effectively gutted most local (town, city level) franchise agreements. Basically, phone companies like AT&T and Verizon, looking to get into the TV business whined incessantly about how unfair it was to have to do things like expand broadband and TV service evenly, provide a few public access TV channels, and give local municipalities fair compensation for using city utility poles and public rights of way.

So, highlighting the very real occasions where city leaders made unreasonable demands (not to mention the hassle of striking numerous municipality agreements), they lobbied to shift most franchise control to the state level, claiming this would result in greater efficiency, more competition and lower prices for consumers. All things that certainly sound superficially reasonable. Especially since a minority of cities really were pains in the ass in terms of making difficult demands before telecom companies could secure a cable franchise agreement.

The problem: because state legislatures are more efficiently corruptible by AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast lobbyists, most of these new state agreements by and large screwed cities over, gutted most consumer protections, obliterated local franchise revenue, neutered most of the benefits more local agreements provided (like even broadband deployment), and resulted in new state agreements that were little more than telecom legislative wishlists. And, if you hadn't noticed, TV prices never dropped, which was purportedly the whole point. Incumbent telecom giants simply pocketed the proceeds and went on their merry way.

Fast forward to now, and cities are desperately trying to cling back some modicum of control (and lost revenues) in this lopsided equation. But as consumer rights lawyer Harold Feld tells Ars Technica, dumb lawsuits like this one aren't the solution, especially since any franchise agreements that do remain don't apply to streaming providers in the slightest:

"I find it extremely unlikely this lawsuit will prevail," Harold Feld, a longtime telecom attorney and senior VP of consumer-advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Ars. "The [federal] Communications Act defines terms such as 'cable system' and 'cable operator' in physical terms."

As Feld noted, US law defines a cable system as "a facility, consisting of a set of closed transmission paths and associated signal generation, reception, and control equipment that is designed to provide cable service." Local franchising rules and fees are based on cities' authority to manage their local rights of way.

"Netflix is clearly not a cable operator" and is therefore not subject to local franchising rules, Feld said. "Furthermore, because broadband is not considered a cable service, Netflix does not offer video programming 'over a cable system,' which would be required to make it a cable operator."

At this point the state and federal legislative and regulatory field has been shifted so completely in favor of the biggest corporations (be they Netflix or AT&T), municipalities often find themselves increasingly powerless by design. And as COVID-19 decimates budgets, this desperation is more and more likely to result in "creative" efforts to claw back revenues. Unfortunately, that shipped sailed quite some time ago, and without significant state and federal lobbying/influence reform (not to mention a massive Congressional shakeup), isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Earlier this year we noted that the Australian government was setting up a you're-too-successful tax on Google and Facebook which it planned to hand over to media organizations. We should perhaps call it the "Welfare for Rupert Murdoch" tax, because that's what it is. Murdoch, of course, owns a huge share of media operations in Australia and has been demanding handouts from Google for years (showing that his claimed belief in the free market was always hogwash).

In response, Google has now released an open letter to Australians pointing out that this plan to tax Google to funnel money to Murdoch will have massive unintended consequences. In particular, Google argues, under the law, Google would be required to give an unfair advantage to big media companies:

You’ve always relied on Google Search and YouTube to show you what’s most relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law. The law would force us to give an unfair advantage to one group of businesses - news media businesses - over everyone else who has a website, YouTube channel or small business. News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result. We’ve always treated all website owners fairly when it comes to information we share about ranking. The proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you.

Even more to the point, in a cynical demand for "transparency" the law would actually create privacy problems for Australians by forcing Google to cough up info on its users to Australian media businesses:

You trust us with your data and our job is to keep it safe. Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses.

Australia's "competition watchdog" who was tasked with creating this legislation in the first place claimed that the letter was "misinformation."

“Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.”

The ACCC also reiterated that Google will “not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news business unless it chooses to do so”, as is outlined in the code.

“The draft code will allow Australian news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists’ work that is included on Google services,” the watchdog added.

Of course, if you look at the details of the draft code, it's actually the ACCC that is spreading misinformation here, and Google's concerns seem entirely substantiated. First, it's notable that the ACCC flat out says that the law is designed specifically just to impact Facebook and Google, though other companies could be added if bureaucrats in Austalia decided those companies got too big. This is astounding in its own way. In the US Congress isn't supposed to create laws that explicitly are designed to deal with a single company, but Australia has no apparent problem with that. Similarly, this kind of law would violate the 1st Amendment. That's because it's set up to benefit news organizations -- but only news organizations that the Australian government deems to "adhere to appropriate professional editorial standards." In other words, if the government doesn't like you, you might not qualify.

But the details in the draft also very much support Google's publicly stated concerns. It would require Google (and Facebook) to give these specially privileged news organizations all sorts of information (some of it quite crazy):

• give news media businesses at least 28 days’ notice of:
  • algorithm changes likely to materially affect referral traffic to news;
  • algorithm changes designed to affect ranking of news behind paywalls; and
  • substantial changes to display and presentation of news, and advertising directly associated with news, on digital platform services;
• give news media businesses clear information about the nature and availability of user data collected through users’ interactions with news on their services;
• publish proposals to appropriately recognise original news on their services;
• provide flexible user comment moderation tools for news media businesses; and
• allow news media businesses to prevent their news being included on any individual digital platform service

First off, the idea that Google would need to alert media orgs to any algorithmic change is crazy. At the very least, it gives those organizations the ability to game the system. As Google said, it gives an unfair advantage.

Second, giving news businesses "clear information about the nature and availability of user data" is an issue. While the draft proposal tries to suggest that this doesn't violate privacy because it's not giving the news orgs the actual underlying user data, just (effectively) the metadata of what is collected, that's not at all accurate either. As we've discussed in the past regarding government surveillance, the metadata about the data can be just as, if not more, valuable.

I know it's trendy to hate on Google, but this proposal in Australia is downright insane. It truly is welfare for Rupert Murdoch because he's jealous of the success of Google and Facebook, and that's just nuts.