Great steps. Propaganda machines are alive and well, and moves to limit their influence are a powerful sign for democracy. It's meaningful that a company would decline business in defense of a principle, so I'm proud of Twitter for taking a stand today.
I am generally suspicious of claims that policy enforcement is useless because it will just be circumvented. We hear it all the time, e.g. don't tax the rich because the rich will just find ways to avoid paying them. don't enforce fuel efficiency standards, because car companies will just cheat their way out of them. it goes on and on. don't bother with security because they'll find a way to get you if they really want you.
But in the end, the effectiveness of regulation is proportional to the degree of effort avoidance or circumvention requires. I say, "Twitter: good call." Let states speak for themselves.
In the US, the bar to repress a right requires more than a theory. You can't put restrictions on the right to vote because it might cut down on voter fraud.
Nation states however have no such right. Thus the ability to bar their propaganda is much lower, as it should be.
As few restrictions on the right to vote as there are, the comparison is inapt. What you may be missing is that there are plenty of constraints on the act of voting, as well as the process.
You can't pay for votes, you can't have someone sign their vote-by-mail ballot and fill it in for them, you can't vote in-person in someone else's stead (even though it doesn't create an extra vote), and so on. There are also plenty of restrictions (at least in the text of the law) on how to handle the ballots themselves.
None of these are restrictions on the right to vote.
A wise mantra is to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Those PACs were likely already going to propagandize. It's not like they suddenly become more powerful or concentrated because the state media promoted posts that happened to align with them disappeared.
Also in some instances like foreign influence (e.g. the HK protests and surrounding state ad campaigns from which this policy ostensibly stems), there may not even be a corresponding PAC. So shutting down that advertising could be surprisingly significant.
Yes, I'm sure it will be a meaningful difference. Will it eliminate all of the problems with political finance? No, and it's unreasonable to expect it to do so.
Studies have shown that in liberal democracies, state supported* [e: I forget the exact term used] media tends to be the least editorially biased (individual reporters and journalists still have biases) and most educational (e.g. BBC, NPR). I wonder what the word "state-controlled" means in this context.
I also wonder if they consider owned by the head of state to be state-controlled (e.g. RT, Al-Jazeera)
Keep in mind that this doesn't apply to content in general, only to ads. Ads represent a financial investment in targeted content that's designed to sway specific people's opinions. That's pretty much the definition of propaganda. I'm okay with even trustworthy news sources being prohibited from doing that.
Neither NPR nor the BBC are "state run". NPR is funded by the state as well as private donations (don't know as much about the BBC), but it's an important distinction, especially in this context.
Apparently the new rules dont apply to state funded independent media, just state controlled. So here in Australia for example, the ABC / SBS government funded (but independent) media would be safe.
> I also wonder if they consider owned by the head of state to be state-controlled (e.g. RT, Al-Jazeera)
That would effectively ban any publicly traded news like Fox, CNN, etc, wouldn't it? I'd assume most American politicians own shares or invest in indexes that do (like the S&P 500). Unless you define ownership as majority share or something.
No, it's not. Most of NPR's funding comes from member stations paying dues. Most of the money funding member stations comes from individual donations. A relatively small proportion of funding does come from government grants, but it's misleading to say that NPR is "state funded" (implying complete or majority funding form the state), much less state run.
"Sources include Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, the European Journalism Centre’s Media Landscapes Report, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and UNESCO's framework to assess media development and independence."
But Freedom House is US government funded, a lot of studies have shown it's biased toward countries that are aligned with us foreign policy.
But are Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, the European Journalism Centre’s Media Landscapes Report, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and UNESCO's framework also all US government funded with studies showing they’re biased towards countries that are aligned with US foreign policy?
It seems you're right... not sure what I was thinking. Still, it feels like we're on the precipice of something happening. I think 30 days from now the damage from the propaganda will have been done.
Agreed. I understand giving most organizations a 30 day grace period, but it would be great if they made an exception and cut off such a clear-cut offender immediately.
Recently I was shown a promoted tweet from Purdue Pharma (makers of OxyContin) about how they generously support drug abuse education. I'm not sure I immediately see the moral difference between state-sponsored propaganda and corporate propaganda.
Now that China is using historically corporate channels of propaganda, I hope that we can all realize that we need to close them, not just to foreign states but also to the corporations who were abusing them originally.
i tend to agree with the sentiment, however i’d say the important distinction is that a government has the ability to force things on people, a corporation only had the ability to influence “choice”... we can discuss whether that choice is truly a choice in many cases, but i think the initial difference is enough for it to stand on its own on the other side of a clear line in the sand
> This policy will not apply to taxpayer-funded entities, including independent public broadcasters.
So quite probably no, since the BBC is an independent public broadcaster (much like NPR in the US) - it is state funded but not directly controlled by the state; it maintains editorial independence.
Of course conclusively defining editorial independence seems like quite a non-trivial task. It's made even more confusing by the fact that it goes on to state:
> This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state.
While the BBC and other taxpayer funded independent public broadcasters are not editorially controlled by the state, isn't being taxpayer funded synonymous with being controlled financially by the state?
That ... feels like a major loophole, still. It requires Twitter to be able to gauge which state funded media are "really" independent.
I can't really make a convincing case right now, I'll admit, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like a special exemption for (at least) one state-funded entity, for hand-wavy reasons. That seems like in practice it will translate into a policy of banning any PRC equivalent of the BBC, should it ever exist. (Is there currently something close?)
Edit: mjw1007 gives a sense in which the BBC may be more like Chinese state media in this context [1], while derefr gives a more concrete test for deciding which bucket to put the BBC in [2].
Depends on whether the state can politically afford to rescind the media entity's budget.
Compare these two scenarios:
• I, an advertiser, give YouTube $20. YouTube decides to not give the content-creator on whose media my ads ran that $20. That's up to them, because YouTube controls the relationship. I, as an advertiser, don't even really have a relationship with content creators; I just have a relationship with YouTube, and they have a separate relationship with YouTube, and sometimes YouTube chooses to pay out the content creator with money that I just paid in. But that's a policy choice, not an obligation. As an advertiser, I don't care what happens to my money as long as my ads run and people see them. They can do whatever they like with the money—pay content creators, pay themselves, burn it, whatever.
• I, a buyer, give PayPal $20. PayPal is obligated to give (most of) that $20 to the person I am buying goods from; the $20 is a liability on their balance sheet. Why? Because I (and a number of other people) would get quite cross with PayPal if they didn't give the money to the person I intended it for. That transmission-of-money-to-intended-recipient is their business model; it's the reason I trusted them with my money in the first place.
A "taxpayer funded" media entity like the BBC is presumably more like a PayPal-style relationship than a YouTube-style relationship: the taxpayers are giving the government money under the assumption that it is obligated to give that money to the BBC; effectively, the BBC is the one the public feels they owe the money to, and the government is just serving a role as the BBC's tax-collector. If the funds were spent somewhere else, people would be very cross with the government.
The license fee is a mandatory tax on all television ownership, regardless of whether you watch the BBC or not, whose amount and rules are set entirely by the government. When thinking about how much financial independence the BBC has, you can more or less just think of it as government funding. Also, the BBC World Service (which broadcasts news to the rest of the world) is partially funded by direct government payments as a form of "soft power" influence and used to be even more dependent on direct government funding.
It’s not a tax, as it isn’t collected by government. It’s also not ‘on all television ownership’ - you only need to pay the license fee if you watch public broadcast television as it airs, or you use the BBC iPlayer.
The BBC's domestic news is reasonably independent, but I'm not sure the same can be said for the World Service (which until recently was funded directly by the Foreign Office).
>So quite probably no, since the BBC is an independent public broadcaster (much like NPR in the US) - it is state funded but not directly controlled by the state; it maintains editorial independence.
I don't work in the BBC but it usually works like "you have editorial independence but if you don't say what we want you'll see what happens to your budget"
I do work at the BBC and the ‘budget’ isn’t controlled by the government to the degree you imply. Negotiations around the BBC’s funding situation and remit occur every 11 years [1], which somewhat transcends the political tit-for-tat you are alluding to.
I really don't understand why twitter, facebook, etc don't just state that commercially operated/controlled accounts are a direct violation of T&Cs which is a violation of CFAA, or breach of contract with monetary terms.
E.g. couldn't their t&cs start including "accounts controlled or instruction by a government, political, or commercial entity, or otherwise compensated for posted content, require explicit pre-authorization, and price negotiation. Non-negotiated fees are $ABC per tweet, and $XYZ per account, payable within 30 days". Or some similar terms.
Whether you could make such t&cs work, and whether you can make $GOVERNMENT actually pay is obviously another question: Governments love passing laws that make them immune to law suits domestically, while also providing other countries with immunity.
At least it might be able to resolve those "business intelligence" companies by immediately opening them up to huge costs.
That might be the context, but this is very clearly an attempt to prohibit any foreign influence in the upcoming US 2020 presidential election. I'm also not sure I trust Twitter to apply this fairly when the election kicks into high gear next year.
"This policy will not apply to taxpayer-funded entities, including independent public broadcasters" and "This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state" seem a bit contradictory to me: state media and taxpayer-funded entity are exactly the same! They can be independant as much as the politics allowed them to be. Most of the time, the people working there for some times know when to shut up and look elsewhere to save their own career or get a promotion... but are considered independant !!!!
On the other side: how independant are journalists in a news group when the top boss is a friend of the president and helped him to get elected (true in every democracy)? No need for a direct (and obvious) control to control the press: money is enough
Lastly: it only shows that Twitter is just making rules to target some specific actors (China) without naming it. But, using these rules, Twitter is "weaponizing" informations as much as China.
It is inevitable that social media platforms will get into the business of shaping discourse. The fact that various platforms are controlled by private parties is a little nerve-racking. We can only hope for judicious use of their power to best serve the public interest.
Social media's entire business model is peddling influence at massive scale. They've always been in the "shaping discourse" business but most refused to realize it.
I think the business model is mostly based on ad revenue. They only care to influence to the extent that it increases the amount of time spent on the platform, maximizing the amount of ads shown, raising ARPU.
> The fact that various platforms are controlled by private parties is a little nerve-racking.
What’s the alternative though? If it’s not private the only alternative is State control, and I don’t think that the Trump administration or XJP offers less harm than Twitter does right now. If you want the US government to control what Twitter says, that means you trust Trump more than you trust Twitter. That seems like a faustian bargain.
The media used to be more closely regulated in the US. Consider the Fairness Doctrine (1949-2011) [0].
It's the size and number of news organizations that's concerning. Private ownership is fine. But when very few platforms exist, the control of the narrative by any one platform increases.
In the US, the problem is most of our large media is owned and operated by large corporations with a few (usually right-wing leaning) owning individuals. These corporations are also the defacto power behind our government (see $ spent on lobbyists, campaign donations, Citizens United, etc). Unfortunately these media sources aren’t going to be effected by this new policy.
But they could be! The same organizations that Twitter is using to define “state run media organizations” also keep track of US media corporation ownerships and could be tracked against ones that are attempting to slant public discourse via story selection, etc.
I don't think there's any valid argument that Fox News is a state-controlled media organ. Whether the United States is a media-controlled state, however, remains an open question.
From the article, which doesn't directly address your question but does address it in the meta:
How will we define state-controlled media in this context?
This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state. It has been informed by established academic and civil society leaders in this space. Sources include Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, the European Journalism Centre’s Media Landscapes Report, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and UNESCO's framework to assess media development and independence.
I'm a huge critic of Fox News, but this is a totally empty accusation. Fox News is the exact opposite of state media: it's a capitalistic organization designed to be as inflammatory as possible, towards one particular segment of the population, in hopes of making lots of money. Like Trump himself, its motivations are nothing so elaborate as trying to push a sinister ideology: it just wants attention.
Yeah. Fox News has been consistent to their own ideals throughout political changes. They hated Obama because he was a Democrat and love Trump because he's a Republican. If a Democrat is elected in 2020, I don't foresee them being a mouthpiece for her. They like their Republicans. The majority of electoral college members switch it up from time to time, but Fox News doesn't change at all.
> If a Democrat is elected in 2020, I don't foresee them being a mouthpiece for her.
I wouldn't be so certain about the Democrats putting up a woman against Trump.
1) A woman would be a prime target for utterly vile sexist campaigning - Trump himself has resorted to that in the past ("blood coming out of her wherever"), and his fan base is orders of magnitude worse. I believe that women will (unfortunately) be voted out in the primaries as voters will want to spare a candidate from this sort of treatment.
2) Centrist Democrats are going for people who voted Trump in '16 but maybe willing to switch (especially frustrated white older men in rural/"flyover" areas) - for that demographic, a "strong man" has it easier to gather support than a woman (or, for that matter, also male candidates with a harsher view on gun regulations, or supporting the right to abortion and LGBT equality).
If I were the Democrat leader, I'd put up a moderate middle-aged white male for the '20 election who (w/c)ould fix the most urgent mess resulting from the current Presidency, and building up a promising left-leaning, progressive woman candidate for 2024.
To get slightly off-topic, this is why Trump isn't really a white-supremacist. He's a Donald Trump-supremacist, and he plays the part of an America-supremacist because it makes lots of people clap for him and give him more power. And it just so happens that actual white-supremacists get inspired by that kind of rhetoric, and he doesn't care enough about anyone other than himself to bother disavowing them, because they're just more people clapping for him.
Ultimately I don’t think it matters much. I’ve only very rarely seen promoted news stories in my feed from media companies - I don’t think spending money to promote links to articles is very widely used at all.
When even Donald Trump thinks Fox News is conspiring against him, I don’t think there is even a fringe argument to made in support of Fox News being state media.
Does this include the BBC? This is probably overly broad and easy to circumvent .. maybe better just ban russian accounts ... but that can be circumvented too ...well its a global connected world
