There are many "reputation management" companies that do this sort of thing, via various sorts of tricks, which are most often bogus copyright or legal claims.
I can't say what happened in this case, but there's a report from the NY AG[1] about companies running an astroturfing anti net-neutrality campaign, so nothing surprises me at this point.
I understand the desire for takedown requests on truly infringing content. But there will always be people who exploit those tools for bad faith takedowns, and because this kind of moderation is a loss leader for companies like Google and Bing it seems like they will forever be disincentivized from doing a good job. (We constantly hear similar stories about Youtube copyright strikes.)
We have a legal system that's subject to public scrutiny and supposed to handle cases of "law-breaking." In its current incarnation there's no way for it to handle every single claim, but I wonder if investment there wouldn't be better incentivized than having a bunch of tech companies trying to reduce expenses by always choosing the "easiest" option whenever they receive a takedown request.
It seems pretty straightforward to me that if you want to reduce false or flimsy take down requests that there need to be actual costs when those requests are found to be fair use, parody, what have you. In the current environment there is basically zero reason for a rights holder to not claim content on YouTube (cited both because it's what I'm most familiar with, and because it's rampant issue on the platform) and literally claiming copyright on any video by a rights holder is a completely risk free action:
* YouTube seemingly does not weight the claim based on previous claims, i.e. if you've made hundreds of claims that have later petered out into nothing, you can still make claims that still have the same weight and assumption of good faith applied to them. So if one of your interns flips through a video and sees a frame of your show or game or whatever, claim it.
* As I've complained about here previously: videos make the vast majority of their revenue in the first few days of publication, so if you manage to snipe a newly posted video, either by way of keeping an eye open for yourself or via automated tools, you can claim it, have the video's monetization redirected to you, and again, even if the claim is later found to be bogus or unsubstantiated, you keep the money.
* Lastly, there is NO mechanism whatsoever for the creator to seek any form of justice on the platform. In theory a creator could sue an IP holder for filing a bogus claim, but there's little court precedent for that, and to even attempt it would require them to retain their own attorney. Any attorney worth their money would tell them not to try it because it will be an uphill battle with an organization who's legal account dwarfs their own.
This is basically a system that is directly incentivizing bad actors. It's no surprise at all that it's being abused by companies looking to manage their image/PR by quelling criticism, by organizationally inept companies who's left hands can't keep track of what the right hand is doing, and by companies that see it as a cynical way to juice their revenue in an ethically dubious but also basically risk free way. And we now have a new strata of yet more middle men organizations: companies that manage the IP of other companies and make claims on their behalf, sometimes even using shoddy AI recognition to manage it.
What does the legal system have to do with companies deciding whats happening on their platforms?
Do you want to force all companies to treat all content the same if it's not illegal?
I think a nice rebuttal to this would be a search engine for pages reported removed from google lol
so I'm guessing the guys who own the data from the webcrawls are the critical path, guess you need big resources for that. great chart thing here --> https://www.searchenginemap.com/
This is no surprise. It's what we get with a free market and capitalism driving it:
Monopolization. And then we can only access what those mono/oligopolies deem profit increasing or at least not hurting.
How would a regulation be like, that in this case, without significant detriment to investment, makes things better? Because I cannot imagine one (not saying there is not, just that myself cannot find it)
I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU.
The author did not compare against the findability of other articles which aren't about net neutrality. So his conclusion that it's about the content of his article isn't supported by his analysis.
Not everything in life is a scientific experiment that fits into an
undergraduate "research methods" model of the world.
What does it even mean to conduct a sampling of "findability" within a
system whose results depend on when you search, who you are, where you
search from, and the subject on which you're searching? We're way
beyond Schrodinger's cat level of uncertainty with these
non-deterministic systems and their hidden actors explicitly
manipulating the results (as "guardrails", "moderation", whatever).
Search (and AI) is a principal agent problem and there are insoluble
trust issues around information technology today that make a
"scientific" approach rather naive.
The article is not about net-neutrality either, it's about pieces of information silently disappearing from the public internet, without even the authors being notified. The contents of the specific article are not the focus here.
supriyo-biswas|1 year ago
I can't say what happened in this case, but there's a report from the NY AG[1] about companies running an astroturfing anti net-neutrality campaign, so nothing surprises me at this point.
[1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oag-fakecommen...
anarchonurzox|1 year ago
We have a legal system that's subject to public scrutiny and supposed to handle cases of "law-breaking." In its current incarnation there's no way for it to handle every single claim, but I wonder if investment there wouldn't be better incentivized than having a bunch of tech companies trying to reduce expenses by always choosing the "easiest" option whenever they receive a takedown request.
ToucanLoucan|1 year ago
* YouTube seemingly does not weight the claim based on previous claims, i.e. if you've made hundreds of claims that have later petered out into nothing, you can still make claims that still have the same weight and assumption of good faith applied to them. So if one of your interns flips through a video and sees a frame of your show or game or whatever, claim it.
* As I've complained about here previously: videos make the vast majority of their revenue in the first few days of publication, so if you manage to snipe a newly posted video, either by way of keeping an eye open for yourself or via automated tools, you can claim it, have the video's monetization redirected to you, and again, even if the claim is later found to be bogus or unsubstantiated, you keep the money.
* Lastly, there is NO mechanism whatsoever for the creator to seek any form of justice on the platform. In theory a creator could sue an IP holder for filing a bogus claim, but there's little court precedent for that, and to even attempt it would require them to retain their own attorney. Any attorney worth their money would tell them not to try it because it will be an uphill battle with an organization who's legal account dwarfs their own.
This is basically a system that is directly incentivizing bad actors. It's no surprise at all that it's being abused by companies looking to manage their image/PR by quelling criticism, by organizationally inept companies who's left hands can't keep track of what the right hand is doing, and by companies that see it as a cynical way to juice their revenue in an ethically dubious but also basically risk free way. And we now have a new strata of yet more middle men organizations: companies that manage the IP of other companies and make claims on their behalf, sometimes even using shoddy AI recognition to manage it.
master-lincoln|1 year ago
cowboylowrez|1 year ago
so I'm guessing the guys who own the data from the webcrawls are the critical path, guess you need big resources for that. great chart thing here --> https://www.searchenginemap.com/
xnx|1 year ago
nonrandomstring|1 year ago
squarefoot|1 year ago
immibis|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
Craighead|1 year ago
[deleted]
onetokeoverthe|1 year ago
The pdf is the #1 result on a well known non-US search engine.
Stopped updating my millions hits/month blogspot after google insisted blogger's content must be hosted on their servers.
TheChaplain|1 year ago
anticensor|1 year ago
master-lincoln|1 year ago
f1shy|1 year ago
I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU.
aaron695|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
gisssop|1 year ago
nonrandomstring|1 year ago
What does it even mean to conduct a sampling of "findability" within a system whose results depend on when you search, who you are, where you search from, and the subject on which you're searching? We're way beyond Schrodinger's cat level of uncertainty with these non-deterministic systems and their hidden actors explicitly manipulating the results (as "guardrails", "moderation", whatever).
Search (and AI) is a principal agent problem and there are insoluble trust issues around information technology today that make a "scientific" approach rather naive.
Maken|1 year ago
JdeBP|1 year ago