appa561 🏴‍☠️

Meta has suspended the Instagram organising account of Angie Nixon, Florida’s Democratic nominee for the US Senate, just 7 days before the midterm elections. According to Nixon, the account was taken down while her campaign was posting from a voter mobilisation rally in a Puerto Rican community, cutting off a critical channel for reaching Latino voters. Meta also suspended the No Kings movement’s Instagram account earlier this month, just as organisers were encouraging people to vote early. Meta blamed an automated error, an explanation I challenged through technical analysis, and 14 state attorneys general are now demanding answers. In Brazil, Meta censored Lula’s presidential campaign on Instagram while promoting his far right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro. I was asked by investigative journalists to provide technical analysis of that censorship. My testing demonstrated how easily Meta’s unequal treatment of political candidates could be exposed. Meanwhile, a New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found it misled people about its data practices in a case linked to Cambridge Analytica, which harvested Facebook data for political profiling and manipulation during the 2016 US election. As predicted, we’re now seeing political Instagram accounts restricted in the US at a critical point in another election. The common denominator in these incidents is that the accounts being restricted aren’t far-right. Zuckerberg needs to be asked the same technical questions I outlined in my Substack article about Meta’s censorship in Brazil. He should be forced to explain exactly how these accounts were restricted, who authorised it and why Meta’s technical explanations don’t stand up to testing. It shouldn’t matter which side of the political debate is being censored. Everyone should be outraged when tech companies interfere with democratic elections by suppressing political voices. When those restrictions consistently favour particular political interests, we have every reason to suspect an agenda. We will never know what agreements these companies have made with political leaders behind closed doors until it’s too late. @AngieNixon

Compulsory identity verification is designed to give governments and tech companies the ability to monitor everything people read, write and share online, who they communicate with and what political opinions they express. Governments are looking to outlaw online anonymity. Jonathan Haidt, a prominent American social psychologist is pushing legislation that threatens to make this possible under the pretext of protecting children online. I’ve challenged Haidt as a technical expert in online child safety, with experience across the entire technology stack and human behaviour. My experience in this field started 30 years ago this year. He’s a social psychologist, not an expert in the technology or technical consequences of the legislation he’s promoting. Haidt knows that all smartphones today already have extremely effective parental controls that allow parents to restrict apps, websites and services, set time curfews and control what their children can access. Millions of parents and schools already use them. Instead of encouraging parents to use these controls, he’s pushing legislation that would force people to verify their identity to access online services, threatening privacy and online anonymity. He also argues that parents and teenagers shouldn’t have to face peer pressure. Compulsory identity verification links everything people read, write and share online, and everyone they communicate with, to their real identity. This enables mass surveillance, tracking across accounts and permanent bans. When an account is linked to your real identity, or enough personal data to identify you, being banned would mean being banned for life. You can’t simply create another account with a different email address because the service can recognise you and block you again. This gives tech companies and governments the power to permanently exclude people from online services. The threat of being banned for expressing opinions about specific people, politicians, governments, religions or their actions encourages people to censor themselves out of fear of punishment, suppressing political dissent and creating a culture of fear, obedience and unquestioning loyalty to those in power. Haidt was also named on the leaked list of Peter Thiel’s secretive, invitation only Dialog network, which brings together powerful figures from politics, military, media, entertainment, psychology, religion, tech, and finance for private discussions. This doesn’t prove bad intent, but his motives deserve to be questioned when a behavioural psychologist spends so much time campaigning for legislation and compulsory technology mandates instead of behavioural solutions that protect children without sacrificing everyone’s privacy. When I challenged Haidt’s proposals on LinkedIn, his colleagues attacked my motives instead of identifying a single technical flaw in my analysis. If they understand the technology and believe their proposals are sound, they should be able to explain exactly where I’m wrong. Personal attacks don’t answer technical arguments. I don’t support Meta in any capacity. I believe it’s done more harm than good and has been a net negative for society. Social media should be treated as an adult environment that can be unsafe for children. Instead of trying to make adult services safe for every child, parents should be encouraged to restrict access based on their children’s age, maturity and capabilities. Opposition to Meta doesn’t justify governments using child safety as an excuse to impose mass surveillance legislation on everyone.