"Twitch Cracks Down on Hate Speech and Harassment" by Kellen Browning New York Times, Dec. 9, 2020
Twitch, the livestreaming platform popular among video game players, unveiled new guidelines on Wednesday aimed at cracking down on hateful conduct and sexual harassment on its site.
The site, which is owned by Amazon, said it had broadened its definition of sexual harassment and separated such violations into a new category for the first time so it could take more action against them. Under the new guidelines, Twitch will ban lewd or repeated comments about anyone’s physical appearance and expressly prohibit the sending of unsolicited links to nudity.
The company also said it would prohibit streamers from displaying the Confederate battle flag and take stricter action against those who target someone’s immigration status. Violators could receive warnings, temporary suspensions or permanent bans from the platform.
Twitch said the changes were its most significant policy updates in almost three years. They followed a nearly yearlong review that included consultations with streamers and academics who study cyberbullying, diversity and inclusion, the company said. The new standards will take effect in January.
“We need to ensure that anyone who shows up on Twitch feels safe and confident that they can broadcast without harassment,” Sara Clemens, Twitch’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “There are constituents on Twitch, particularly underrepresented minority groups, who experience a disproportionate amount of harassment and abuse online.”
For years, Twitch has been dogged by claims that viewers could easily harass streamers with sexually explicit comments and threatening messages. On the platform, people can broadcast themselves playing video games or just talking, and their audiences can interact with them through a text chat in real time. Twitch streamers themselves are largely responsible for ensuring their audiences follow the platform’s rules, such as by employing Twitch’s moderation tools in chats.
The company created stricter policies in 2018, but came under fire over the summer after dozens of gamers and streamers — mostly women — publicly shared that they had been sexually harassed and assaulted by others in the gaming industry, including on Twitch.
In June, streamers organized a one-day “Twitch blackout,” when some abstained from broadcasting on the platform to pressure it to investigate and address the accusations. The company said at the time that it would permanently ban severe offenders and improve its handling of reported harassment.
That same month, Twitch temporarily suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel for “hateful conduct.” The channel had streamed his rallies, which included comments that Mexico sent drugs, crime and rapists over the border, and that a “very tough hombre” broke into a woman’s house. Other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have also been under pressure to remove hate speech and misinformation.
Kenzie Gordon, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta who studies how games can be used to prevent sexual and domestic violence, said the new policies appeared to be “very thorough and comprehensive,” but how they are enforced, she said, will determine whether they are effective.
“By making creators responsible for moderating the policy on their own channels, they have put most of the work of enforcement onto people who were already vulnerable to abuse,” Ms. Gordon said of Twitch. “We’ll have to see how effectively they support streamers who are trying to stop abuse on their channels.”
Twitch has had a banner year. With the coronavirus pandemic forcing people to remain indoors, many have sought out online entertainment such as streaming video games. Twitch now averages 26.5 million daily viewers, up from 17.5 million at the beginning of the year, it said.
I'm started to twitch in agitation.
As the community has grown and become more global, Ms. Clemens said, it is important for Twitch to ensure that its policies reflect societal norms.
Many streamers earn a living from Twitch, with some making more than $1 million a year through subscriptions, donations and advertisements on the service. Because of that, Ms. Clemens said, Twitch users should keep a “workplace-style” approach in mind when considering what comments might amount to harassment.
Other changes include codifying and spelling out more explicitly the kinds of content and actions that were already unofficially prohibited. These include blackface, doxxing — publishing personally identifying information like someone’s phone number online — and hate group propaganda, such as symbols associated with the Nazi Party or white supremacist groups.
Twitch said it did not have policies on other categories of toxic content, such as coronavirus-related misinformation or the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, but the company said such content could fall afoul of its policies preventing hateful conduct and the encouragement of self-destructive behavior.
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Related:
The Federal Trade Commission issued sweeping demands for information to the companies, saying their use of consumer data is “shrouded in secrecy.”
Will Wonders ever cease?
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Also see:
The lawsuit against Facebook is a landmark antitrust offensive on Big Tech, and speaking of games:
"Tech Lab: From Oculus, the best VR headset yet" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, December 27, 2020
When did virtual reality headsets stop being the next big thing? I’d say a couple of years ago, when it became clear that few people were buying them.
The concept seemed irresistable — an entertainment system that lets players step inside three-dimensional 360-degree simulated worlds, but in practice, VR systems were too costly, too heavy, and offered too few good games and videos to be worth the trouble. So consumers gave up and walked away.
Facebook didn’t.
Six years ago the social media giant bought VR pioneer Oculus for $2 billion. Facebook has been trying to get VR right since, and is getting close. The new Oculus Quest 2 headset has its flaws, but overall it’s the most satisfying device of its kind, and the price is right; at $300, the Quest 2 costs the same as other hot video game consoles, such as Nintendo Switch or Microsoft Xbox Series S.
Only about one-fifth of Americans have ever tried a VR system, much less purchased one. That’s partly because many early versions had to be tethered to an expensive high-powered PC, or at least a Sony PlayStation 4 or 5.
I've heard that the PlayStation 5 is hard to get but worth the wait, while Microsoft’s new Xbox hits the spot and with its splendid graphics and blazing speed it is a superb choice for passionate gamers.
The Quest 2 is a standalone system, that is, the headset is the computer. This is made possible by a new computer chip from Qualcomm that’s got enough firepower for such tasks. Along with the headset, you get a pair of game controllers, one for each hand. When you’re inside a game, these controllers look like whatever you need them to be— a fist, a .45 pistol, or a light saber.
You won’t be surprised to learn that you’ll have to connect the Quest 2 through a Facebook account. It’s probably not a dealbreaker. We’re signed up already, aren’t we?
Quest uses an array of four headset-mounted cameras to scan your surroundings and help you set up a safe playing area. Using a game controller, you “spraypaint” a boundary on the floor. If you cross it, the game disappears, replaced by live video of the room, so you won’t trip over the furniture. You can also activate this feature manually, by tapping the side of the headset.
The headset uses a motion detector and gyroscope to detect movements of your head and body. Look up, and, you see a star-filled sky, not your living room ceiling; glance over your shoulder, and there’s a monster sneaking up on you.....
VR might just be the next big thing.
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Or not:
"German regulators launched an investigation Thursday into Facebook over the company’s decision to link its Oculus virtual reality products to the social network, authorities said. The Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, said it had initiated abuse proceedings over Facebook’s plans to require users of the latest Quest 2 virtual reality glasses produced by Oculus to register with a Facebook.com account. In response to a request for comment, Facebook noted that it had already paused sales of its Oculus products in Germany this year. It has not detailed why it made the move, but said it was not related to the investigation launched Thursday."
What do you do if the Matrix, 'er, helmet doesn't fit?
"Facebook’s small advertisers say they’re hurt by AI lockouts" by Kurt Wagner Bloomberg, December 21, 2020
Small advertisers that rely on Facebook to spread marketing messages are up in arms over the social network’s automated ad systems, complaining that inflexible account blocking tools and a lack of customer assistance are hurting business.
One digital marketer, Chris Raines, was setting up an advertising campaign on Facebook last week when his account abruptly stopped working. Raines uses his account to manage ads for clients’ Facebook Pages. Without it, he couldn’t do his job.
The lockout was a nuisance, but then Raines noticed something more concerning: A $3,000-per-day ad campaign that he’d set up for a client before his account was locked continued to run even though he could no longer manage it. Raines was spending his client’s money without any way to control how.
Raines tried to confirm his identity using Facebook Inc.’s automated systems, but received an error message. Eventually, he called the advertiser and asked if they would make his wife an administrator to the company-owned Facebook Page. Using her account, he was finally able to log in and manage the Facebook ads, which includes adjusting details like who sees the ad and how much to spend.
“The actual injury, especially for advertisers and marketers, is immense,” said Raines, who runs a digital media company called Bullhorn Media. “Had I not had that workaround, my business would have went away.”
As he investigated solutions, Raines started hearing about other ad buyers in the same position. Harrison Kugler, an independent digital media manager in New Jersey, was similarly locked out while running ads for his client, a local comedy club. It took him 26 hours to get his account back, during which he estimates he spent $200 in Facebook ads without his usual level of oversight. In New Zealand, marketing consultant Sam Frost was frozen out of his account, and there were no other administrators linked to some of the Facebook Pages running the ads. He spent “a couple hundred dollars” before he was allowed back in.
“It’s not a king’s ransom, but it’s more the fact that to some businesses that might be a huge amount of money,” Frost says.
As Facebook has increasingly relied on automated tools to help rid its service of bad actors and inappropriate content, many rule-following users are complaining about being caught in Facebook’s net. Last month, some small business owners were shocked to find seemingly innocent holiday ads caught in Facebook’s filters, hurting their business during the most important time of the year.
One might be excused for thinking the Great Re$et is a vast conspiracy.
Unlike buying a TV commercial or a billboard, Facebook ads require more hands-on attention. That specificity is the core benefit of advertising with Facebook. The company’s immense trove of user data enables advertisers to tailor messages to very specific audiences.
The incidents highlight what is becoming an increasingly troubling theme for Facebook. The social network has never been more important to small businesses, given the push toward online interactions during the pandemic, but as that reliance has grown, Facebook’s struggle to support these businesses has begun to show. The company’s automated customer-service tools seem unable to support the number of businesses with issues. When Kugler first submitted his information in an effort to recover his account, including a photo of his ID, Facebook sent him an automated response that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be “unable to review your account.”
“I didn’t realize how dependent I was on Facebook’s platform,” Kugler said. “To get this sort of lack of accountability from a company that seems to empower employees and all this stuff is absolutely preposterous.”
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You better start facing up to AI and unfriending it.
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"YouTube on Wednesday announced changes to how it handles videos about the 2020 presidential election, saying it would remove new videos that mislead people by claiming that widespread fraud or errors influenced the outcome of the election. The company said it was making the change because Tuesday was the so-called safe harbor deadline — the date by which all state-level election challenges, such as recounts and audits, are supposed to be completed. YouTube said that enough states have certified their election results to determine that Joe Biden is the president-elect. YouTube’s announcement is a reversal of a much-criticized company policy on election videos. Throughout the election cycle, YouTube, which is owned by Google, has allowed videos spreading false claims of widespread election fraud under a policy that permits videos that comment on the outcome of an election. Under the new policy, videos about the election uploaded before the safe harbor deadline would remain on the platform, with YouTube appending an information panel linking to the Office of the Federal Register’s election results certification notice."
The Globe is of the idea that social media broke America, and that the way to fix it is some sort of obscure infringement claim that will eliminate bloggers like me thanks to the piece of $hit that Trump signed (good luck with that).
