by Virgil Vaduva

Today Google proudly touted the release of Perspective, an AI-backed platform an API which will allow content publishers to in essence censor user input such as comments, notes and other similar data based on levels of “toxicity” as determined by their AI algorithm.  Marketed as an “anti-harassment tool” the API was released on Thursday by Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary and it was developed in cooperation with the New York Times, Wikipedia, The Economist and The Guardian.

Perspective was created by Jigsaw and Google’s Counter Abuse Technology team in a collaborative research project called Conversation-AI. Conversation AI product manager CJ Adams said, “We hope this is a moment where Conversation AI goes from being ‘this is interesting’ to a place where everyone can start engaging and leveraging these models to improve discussion.”

Adams said that until now, website managers only had a few options on how to manage content, such as up/down voting and black-listing key words but now, [Perspective] “gives them a new option: Take a bunch of collective intelligence—that will keep getting better over time—about what toxic comments people have said would make them leave, and use that information to help your community’s discussions.”

According to their documentation, Google and Jigsaw used content and comments from websites like New York Times and Wikipedia and then displayed the comments to groups of ten people, asking them to rate the “toxic level” of each comment.  This training process gave Google a large test sample they could use in training their machine-learning algorithm and start scoring and ranking real-life comments.

But is their methodology and process sound, and does it lead to a fair scoring, or is it in essence just another re-branded censorship platform that will end up being used to manipulate and censor online content found disagreeable by a majority of the population?

I ran a few tests myself on the Perspective website, which gives people the opportunity to type comments and determine their toxicity in real time.  The higher the score is, the more likely it is that your comment will be removed, blocked or censored by a website using Google’s platform.  I chose a few topics known to create controversial online exchanges and here are my results.

Hillary Clinton should have won the U.S. elections. (6%)

Donald Trump should have won the U.S. elections. (12%)

Hillary Clinton is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (6%)

Donald Trump is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (10%)

There is no racism in America. (39%)

White people often discriminate against blacks. (65%)

Black people often discriminate against whites. (63%)

Gun control is a great thing for America. (10%)

Gun control is a terrible thing for America. (42%)

America needs a tax cut. (13%)

America needs a tax increase. (4%)

There is no racism on America’s college campuses.(30%)

There is racism on America’s college campuses. (34%)

A gun is a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (20%)

A gun is not a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (18%)

Killing cops is morally wrong. (66%)

Killing cops is not morally wrong. (49%)

War is good for America. (11%)

War is not good for America. (18%)

After testing some controversial opinions and comparing various extremes, it’s easy to see that the Perspective platform can easily be used to censor controversial speech, whether that speech comes from the left or the right of the American political spectrum.  This evidence should be disturbing to anyone willing to experience slight discomfort reading “toxic” online comments while still maintaining some resemblance of balanced conversation.

Publishers willing to use Perspective can easily do so in an effort to manipulate the reader perception of weighted opinion on their websites; worse yet, advertisers will have even more limited knowledge about their audience and opinions held by users due to the fact that only opinions deemed appropriate by Perspective will be displayed to end users.

Content producers should remain extremely cautious about the Perspective platform. When users are no longer able to post comments like “Trump is an idiot” or “Hillary is a terrible human being,” they will create an environment empty of value, essentially a masturbatory pleasantry where everyone agrees with everyone, or so it may appear.

You too can test the Perspective platform and rank the toxicity of your own comments here: http://www.perspectiveapi.com/

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman has filed a complaint with the state Department of Public Safety after a veteran Alaska State Trooper pulled over a reporter last week and seized his camera memory card, saying news-gathering images of an arrest constituted “evidence.”

The Wasilla newspaper’s complaint says trooper Sgt. Mike Ingram’s actions violated constitutional protections of freedom of the press and against unlawful search and seizure.

The Department of Public Safety, which oversees troopers, says it is investigating.

The incident happened when Frontiersman reporter Brian O’Connor went to cover a reported shooting near the Parks Highway in Willow Wednesday morning, the newspaper wrote in a front page article published Sunday.

O’Connor took photos of a man being arrested from a public roadway about 100 yards away and then left in his personal vehicle, according to Frontiersman Managing Editor Matt Tunseth. O’Connor had twice identified himself as a journalist at the scene, the newspaper said.

The reporter had driven a couple of miles from the scene when Ingram pulled him over.

The trooper “demanded that O’Connor turn over either his camera or the digital memory card containing pictures of the arrest, saying it was potential evidence,” according to the newspaper’s published account of events.

O’Connor offered to share the images with authorities, but “Ingram said he had to take the card into his possession” and the reporter complied, the article said.

There was never any explicit threat of arrest and the exchange was cordial, Tunseth said.

Still, the reporter was ordered to give up his camera or memory card by a uniformed law enforcement officer.

“Brian’s understanding was that he had to do this,” Tunseth said.

After hearing about what happened, Tunseth and publisher Mark Kelsey contacted troopers to ask about the incident. Within a few hours, the memory card was returned.

None of the photos had been deleted, according to Tunseth, a former Alaska Dispatch News sports reporter who recently took the helm at the Mat-Su paper.

On Friday, after the paper filed its formal complaint, the newspaper was told an internal investigation was underway.

The newspaper is not asking for the trooper to be disciplined.

The editor and publisher spoke directly to the director of the Department of Public Safety, Col. James Cockrell.

“I have every assurance from Col. Cockrell that they are taking this seriously,” Tunseth said.

Cockrell declined to answer questions about the incident Sunday.

The department released a statement through spokeswoman Beth Ipsen saying it would have no comment until an investigation through the Office of Professional Standards had been completed.

“We will not be commenting further until we have had a chance to review the information to determine what happened and if any department policies were violated or if the actions of the troopers involved were warranted under the circumstances,” the statement said.

On Sunday, the newspaper ran a news article and editorial about the incident that praised the department as a “highly professional and distinguished group” but said it “acted contrary to the public’s trust” and needed to be held accountable.

“We’ve always had good relations with (troopers),” Tunseth said. “We just think this could have been handled a little differently.”

When failed discrimination plaintiff Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit last January, many predicted that it would herald a new age of censorship on the link-sharing and discussion site. Those predictions appear to have come true, as a number of communities on the site (known as “subreddits”) have just been unilaterally shut down.

The sudden move resulted in the removal of one popular subreddit, /r/fatpeoplehate, which until its closure was the 13th-most active community on Reddit. The subreddit was dedicated to mocking fat people and the “fat acceptance” movement, although it was not known for engaging in any off-site harassment. Other Redditors have cited the subreddit as an important source of motivation to maintain a healthier lifestyle.

The crackdown came after a week of censorship on Reddit, including the mass deletions of links to media stories and even satirical cartoons concerning CEO Ellen Pao. There was also a bizarre incident in which a moderator of a gaming community demanded a user write a 500-word essay on trans acceptance before being unbanned. The user’s crime was using the word “trap”: a common, but not derogatory, term of Internet slang to describe crossdressers. Despite protestations from transwomen who said they were not offended, the moderator refused to relent.

There are early indications that the Reddit admins may have finally crossed the Rubicon on the road to alienating their user base. User activity on their main competitor, Voat.co had been rising steadily since social media censorship became an issue during the #GamerGate controversy, but in the past few hours their figures have skyrocketed.  At the time of writing, there are over 3,700 active users on Voat’s alternative to /r/fatpeoplehate —almost double its number of subscribers.

An alternative to /r/fatpeoplehate has also sprung up on Reddit, although it is unclear how long it will be allowed to remain. Activity on /r/KotakuInAction, a #GamerGate subreddit with a reputation for anti-censorship, has also surged.

Reaction from Reddit’s user base appears to be overwhelmingly negative. The top-voted comment underneath the administrators’ announcement points out a number of other subreddits that have not been banned. These include the racist subreddit /r/coontown, and the notoriously pro-censorship /r/shitredditsays, which was recently found to be the “most toxic Reddit community”  (where toxicity was measured by comments attacking other users).

With only the vaguely-defined criteria of “harassment” to guide their actions and scant warning given to the banned subreddits and their users, the widespread perception of Redditors is that the admins are behaving arbitrarily. In just over an hour, over 2,500 comments have appeared underneath the admins’ announcement post, with the vast majority offering negative sentiments. Link submissions attacking the decision have also surged to the top of /r/all, the famous “front page of the internet”.

I’m overweight and was frequently offended by FPH on Reddit, so I blocked it. It being banned is ridiculous.

— Markus Persson (@notch) June 10, 2015

Minecraft creator Markus Persson comments on Reddit’s censorship.

Reddit’s turmoil will surely please web culture bloggers who have at times appeared hellbent on the site’s destruction. BuzzFeed blogger Ryan Broderick has previously cited Reddit as part of the “white male Internet” that needed to be “bulldozed.” The Washington Post‘s Caitlin Dewey, who has cited Broderick as a source, also seems rather keen on on the downfall of Reddit. This is to say nothing of Gawker Media, which has been trashing the site for years. These columnists have much in common with /r/ShitRedditSays, a controversial community that built its reputation by attacking the culture of the wider Reddit community.

The danger for Reddit now lies in the rapid mobilisation of its large constituency of anti-censorship users. If the membership surges on Voat and the anti-censorship subreddits can be converted into an organised boycott movement, it may cause Reddit’s status as the “front page of the Internet” to quickly become a passing memory.

After months of quietly smoldering resentment from her user base, Ellen Pao’s relentless march towards a more censorious Reddit has sparked a digital riot. The question that observers of web culture will be asking is: could it turn into a long-term revolt on the scale of #GamerGate?

I, for one, wouldn’t bet against it. The direction taken by Reddit’s leadership is fundamentally at odds with the values of its userbase —and no amount of “Ask Me Anything” sessions will bridge the gulf.

Follow Allum Bokhari @LibertarianBlue on Twitter. 

Sheriff Bill Gore is trying to overcome a reputation of being an outsider as he seeks reelection.

Dimitrios Karras filed a lawsuit against the County of San Diego after the Sheriff’s department censored his comments from their Facebook page. Last week, it was announced that Karras settled the lawsuit with the city for $23,000 in legal fees and a symbolic $20.

Karras, owner of Ares Armor, is known locally and in the gun rights community for standing up to ATF agents who were trying to secure a list of all of his company’s client list. The ATF eventually raided his business and secured a list of all of his clients.

According to Brian Doherty at Reason, Karras tells me that “I demanded at the very beginning of the settlement talks that I only want to be paid $20 for myself. I did not want the message to be muddled with financial gain.”

The original comments in question left by Karras on the Facebook page referenced San Diego’s highest ranking Sheriff, William Gore. Gore has a controversial past, which includes a leading role in the FBI team that was responsible for the Ruby Ridge catastrophe that left three dead.

He (Karras) thinks the attempt to censor discussion of Gore’s role in Ruby Ridge is “one of those things where they are so afraid of actual truth” that attempting to hide it just got more people talking about it. Karras thinks it likely their censorship attempts on Facebook did more to spread that information than merely letting the comments sit on the page would have.

Documents show that FBI snipers were given “shoot to kill” orders at Ruby Ridge, which is illegal.

“Under the law, police agents can use deadly force to defend themselves and others from imminent attack, but these snipers were instructed to shoot any adult who was armed and outside the cabin, regardless of whether the adult posed a threat or not. The next morning, an FBI agent shot and wounded Randy Weaver. A few moments later, the same agent shot Weaver’s wife in the head as she was standing in the doorway of her home holding a baby in her arms. The FBI snipers had not yet announced their presence and had not given the Weavers an opportunity to peacefully surrender.”

The exact role that Sheriff William Gore played in this incident is unclear — he plead the 5th and refused to speak to investigators in the Congressional hearing following the incident. However, he was the bureau chief of the FBI office in charge at Ruby Ridge, and likely played a prominent role in the decision making process. The Sheriff’s Department’s abrupt and aggressive censorship of Karras’ posts referencing the Ruby Ridge connection makes us all the more suspicious that he committed wrongdoing.

Gore’s past, as Karras suggests, may explain why he is also a very trigger happy head Sheriff of San Diego. In 2013 Gore’s officers responded to what was initially a domestic disturbance, which they quickly escalated and resulted in the death of one man and two Sheriff’s injured. They were quick to deploy their newly acquired armored Bearcat and a heavily militarized response, even using tear gas against a man who was hiding in his mother’s home.

Gore’s San Diego Sheriff’s department has no shortage of militarized equipment in their hands thanks to all the surplus gear flowing into local law enforcement from the military. They have deployed an LRAD sound cannon in the past and have also been pursuing (possibly securing) surveillance drones.

Published on theantimedia.org by Nick Bernabe.

by Virgil Vaduva

UPDATE 15:52:

It appears that the Lima Police Department chose to take down their Facebook page completely instead of doing the right thing and allowing all users to verbalize their opinions freely.  This took place literally within minutes of TruthVoice filing a public records request about Lima PD’s censorship of comments and content.

The page is back up and they are back to removing comments from users.

UPDATE 14:40:

Since the publishing of this article, the Lima PD posted an ominous warning on their Facebook page in which they stand their ground on the removal of critical articles.

To make matters worse, they even issued a subtle threat of arrest or prosecution to users, stating “Facebook users who post about their involvement in any criminal activity may be subject to criminal prosecution. ”

Original story:

The police department of Lima, Ohio which is known for several instances of police brutality, abuse and lying are now actively deleting critical comments made by users on their Facebook page, something which appears to be a direct violation of users’ first amendment rights, as the Facebook page is owned, run and maintained by a governmental entity and monitored by government employees.

Lt Andy Green, Lima Police Department public relations officer

After the recent news of Lima police losing their bid to prosecute a 19 year old beaten unconscious by a group of their officers, users have taken it to Facebook to voice their opinions and displeasure with the behavior of these officers and the decision of the city to prosecute someone who was almost killed by their cops.  Comments on Facebook however started disappearing, especially comments critical of the police department or the cops in general.

In a call with Lt. Andy Green who is the public relations officer for the department, TruthVoice was told that all comments made on the Lima Police Department Facebook page are subject to the Terms and Conditions posted on the page. Lt. Green stated that comments critical of police are not deleted, but only comments that use profanity or violate the conditions are, something which is in fact blatantly false as TruthVoice was provided evidence of screenshots showing that this is not true.

Lt. Andy Green can be contacted at (419)227-4444.

Lt. Green did not explain who created the “Terms and Conditions” listed on the page, which is a document that appears to be manufactured to give the Facebook page an appearance of support from the general public, while removing any critical comment whatsoever.  One clause in the document states,

The Lima Police Department reserves the right to remove any posts, or comments that are deemed to be offensive in nature. This could include uses of profanity, threats, or any posts or comments that could be potentially damaging to members of the public

In other words, the employees of the City of Lima have given themselves full authority to decide on the spot what to remove from the page, for any reason that they may seem “damaging to the public.” This apparently includes links to news reports which may not present their cops in a positive light.

Lt. Green stated that the page is monitored 24/7 by several individuals and was not apologetic about the deletion of comments; in fact he appeared to be annoyed by the fact that he was being questioned about this topic at all. He directed additional questions to the Lima City Law Director, Anthony Geiger. Geiger can be contacted at (419) 221-5183.

Over the weekend one of our own editors posted a short warning to the Lima PD reminding them that what they are doing is a violation of free speech rights.  Another user posted a link to a Cop Block article about the beating of the 19 year old Tyler Paxson by Lima cops, however both comments were removed shortly thereafter.

Screenshot of Facebook comments removed by Lima PD from Facebook, comments not using profanity and not in violation of Facebook Terms and Conditions

More screenshots of comments were sent to us, one showing a user stating “Fuck the police!” who had the comment removed immediately.  One of our own editors posted a comment under a picture of several Lima cops asking “Are these the same cops that beat the 19 year old” and another user posted another link to an article from Cop Block reporting on the case of Paxton.

It is very clear that Lima PD is engaged in a serious violation of the free speech of Americans and continue to be unapologetic in their ways.  The brutality and violence propagated on the streets of Lima by their cops is now transferred into the digital world where they are censoring and removing all aspects of criticism from what is clearly a “public forum,” as the page is managed by the city.

Criticism of government is a long-standing American tradition.  Lima PD has taken their “public service” to a new low and they appear to be readily willing to continue to do so.

TruthVoice is currently considering all available legal options, including a civil rights lawsuit, in order to remedy this situation.

If you have been wronged by Lima PD in any way, either physically, or online, please contact me at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.