Although the change from Meta pushed further away from being “public squares”, there are still many real benefits to centralized platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) and YouTube. These platforms provide people access to connect with anyone around the world in an instant, acting as the largest public square ever created and allowing the spread of information easily. The Georgetown Free Speech Project recognizes that although these platforms can provide benefits, they can also be used to spread lies left unchecked and allow groups to come together and spread hatred and harassment. Currently, these platforms provide power to both the “good” and “bad” users of the platforms. The same power that allows people to come closer together and spread love, is also given to those wishing to harm others and spread hatred.
The question “What should we do?” or “Should we…” regarding the ownership of our conversations on social media platforms are all very complex, and one single change cannot provide an entire solution to the problem. Depending on the good will of their owners is not something that we can hope for to provide a positive change. Time and time again we have seen that the owners of these centralized sites do not prioritize users first, and that they have many other priorities that would come first in protecting if being threatened. That leaves us alone to come up with other solutions to fight against the power control that these platforms hold.
Looking for more decentralized environments can be a strong alternative. Although these platforms will offer less users and smaller communities, it would allow people to govern themselves and move further away from platforms that hold the power to change massive aspects of the platform in an instant. Government regulation, along with requiring centralized sites to offer the “portability” of conversations is another strong, potential way of fighting back. Giving users the ability to take all of their information, data, and conversations and “port” or transfer it somewhere else would give all of the power that a platform can potentially use against a user and give it back to the user themself. This would also mean that if a platform suddenly decided to make major changes, users could remove themselves from the platform entirely and would not be “forced” into staying on the platform.
Overall, the topic of social media platforms and centralized sites as “public squares” is yet another case in which the evolution of the technology has advanced so rapidly that the law has not caught up with it. We are at a point in which we cannot depend on the platforms themselves to provide positive changes and need to push for more system changes or regulations that protect the users on the platform.
]]>The next step in this process was to find an edit that I could make in the article. Something that stood out to me on the page was the “Style of play” section in the article.
This information about the player was not only out-dated as it was from 2023, but also left out crucial information about the player’s primary position and role as a left-back, or left defender. I decided that this section was where I would make my edit, including updated information about O’Reilly’s style of play. To do this, I first went to the “Talk” tab of the article to add a comment about the edit that I planned to make and why.
After adding my comment, I waited to see if any other users replied with their thoughts to my suggested edit. I did not think that anyone would respond, due to the article not being very popular. A while later, as expected, I did not receive any replies to my comment and decided to go ahead with the edit.
The final version of the additions that I made on the article appears as so below.
Overall, I think that this experience provided me with many new views regarding Wikipedia and has given me a better understanding of the editing process within the articles. The first thing that stood out to me was truly how easy it is to edit the information on a Wikipedia page, making me realize why Wikipedia is not allowed to be used as a source for many school assignments. With this, I also realized how difficult it can actually be to find a mistake or piece of incorrect information in these articles. As someone who was reading through many different articles trying to find mistakes or lacking information, many of the articles seemed to include almost all of the information on the topics without any major mistakes.
Link to edited article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico_O%27Reilly
]]>In this experiment, I opened up a ChatGPT prompt and asked, “In 250 words, tell me about the evolution of football tactics in the English Premier League.” I then read through the response and quickly noticed various mistakes in the factual statements provided in the text. While some of these factual errors were small or subtle, and may not have been noticed by someone that was not knowledgeable on the subject, they were not exactly difficult to see and could be easily fact-checked.
One of the main things that I learned during this exercise is that the information provided by ChatGPT is not always 100% factually correct. While I had already known that AI tools such as this one can often be incorrect, the information in the response to this prompt was not entirely incorrect. One example of this is shown in the response “By the early 2000’s . . . Arsene Wenger at Arsenal introduced a more technical, possession-based style . . . Around the same time, Jose Mourinho brought a stagmatic, defensively structured approach . . .” While the information about Wenger’s technical, possession based style and Mourinho’s stagmatic, defensive approach is correct, this response claims these events occurred in the early 2000’s, and claims that Mourinho’s style happened “Around the same time.” Although this statement may be somewhat correct, the real timing of the events is very different then what the ChatGPT response claims. Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal in 1996, which I would not call the early 2000’s. Jose Mourinho also arrived at Chelsea in 2004, an entire 8 years after Wenger’s arrival which I would say is not “Around the same time” as ChatGPT claims.
Overall, I found this experiment to be quite interesting and helped me learn a lot about ChatGPT and similar AI generators. I found it most interesting that the information provided was generally correct, but missed out on a lot of small details that impact the real story of what happened. I would say that I still generally “trust” this software and think it can be very useful, especially when seeking information on broad, well known topics. I think it is important to fact-check any information that ChatGPT provides, especially if you have no previous knowledge on the topic, as the facts can often be simplified or even completely wrong.
]]>Artificial Intelligence is completely changing the ways that we can consume and create content, but many people are unaware of the damage that this has caused. This short video explains generative AI systems and explores the methods of how these incredibly powerful tools were created and why it has sparked debates between AI companies and content creators.
Generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Grok are trained using massive amounts of data across the internet. These systems analyze text articles, images, videos, and more content, often without the knowledge or permission from the original creator of the content. This video explains how some massive companies such as the New York Times have taken action against AI companies, claiming that the use of their content by AI models violates copyright laws.
The second portion of this video talks about the tool Nightshade, allowing artists to embed their original images with invisible pixels before posting them online. If the images are then used by AI systems as training data, the invisible changes can cause the models to learn incorrect information.
The creation of tools such as Nightshade and the legal actions that have been taken against AI companies goes to show that creators are against their content being used by AI and are beginning to take action.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/technology/artificial-intelligence-models-chat-data.html
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Above is an image of the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery located in Milan, Italy. This picture was taken by me two years ago when I visited Italy. Below is a stock image from Unsplash, taken by Allesandro Rossi five years ago.
Stock images like this are allowed to be used because of the licensing permissions that the owner agreed to when uploading the image to the stock image website. The owner of the image keeps ownership of the photo they took, but they allow other people to use the image under certain rules.
The third image seen above was generated from ChatGPT’s Dall-E, created to resemble the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery seen in the previous images.
The article “Generative AI is a Minefield for Copyright Law” discusses the rapidly increasing advancements that are exposing flaws and gaps in current copyright frameworks. Copyright laws were originally designed with human creators in mind, looking to protect their original artwork from being incorrectly used or stolen by others. This framework is now becoming outdated, as AI models such as Dall-E and many others can now generate artwork in an instant.
One of the main focuses of this article is the issue of authorship. It is clear that when a human creates a piece of work, they are the author/owner of the piece. This ruling becomes complicated when discussing AI generated content, as the owner of the content, or author, is not clearly recognized. It can be argued that the user who created the prompt is the owner, or the creators of the model itself. No matter who you believe may be owed authorship, our current legal definitions do not cover these scenarios.
Another concern discussed in this article is how exactly the generative AI models came up with the content that they produced. AI systems are trained using data across the internet, even though much of it is copyrighted. For basic chat models such as Grok or ChatGPT, this is much less of a concern. For generative AI models such as Dall-E, the use of copyrighted images can heavily affect the original owners of the content.
Overall, the increase of generative AI models marks an important time for change when it comes to the frameworks of copyright law. These models have exposed issues that concern authorship and ownership that our current laws regarding copyright do not have capabilities to resolve.
]]>Private internet companies and social media platforms such as Instagram/Facebook, YouTube, and X (Twitter) provide users with the ability to share their voices and thoughts with people worldwide. This is a clear benefit as it allows people to rapidly share information with other users, though this benefit also has its limitations. The companies that provide these platforms face pressure to ensure that harmful content is moderated, which at first does not appear as a harmful idea for the platforms, but the way that the potentially harmful content is moderated is done so incorrectly. These platforms use broad policies and are inconsistent in the way that they moderate the potentially harmful content. In the article “How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media,” Jack Balkin explains that these platforms are now “information fiduciaries,” extending their responsibilities beyond ordinary measures and shaping public discourse themselves. An example of these problems can be seen in the Facebook Oversight Board Case (2021) which reviews the suspension of Donald Trump. The board criticized Facebook for its “indeterminate” penalty that did not directly follow its own rules. This example highlights the issue that the moderation process that platforms use often lacks transparency and does not provide specific standards. To help safeguard free expression, these platforms need to improve many aspects of their moderation process to allow for free expression to be protected. Clearly stated policies, increased oversight, improved appeal processes, and transparent standards are just a few of the ways that platforms can improve to help safeguard free expression.
Governments and policymakers are also important groups in protecting free expression by providing the legal framework around it. This sector provides benefits such as preventing censorship and making sure companies do not overly moderate their platforms. Though, government intervention can also bring additional problems. In the article “If Lawmakers Don’t Like Platforms’ Speech Rules, Here’s What They Can Do About It. Spoiler: The Options Aren’t Great” Daphne Keller argues that many proposed regulations either moderate too much. or compel platforms to keep harmful content up. The focus of governments and policymakers should be on preserving rights and providing transparency. The major blind spot of governments is failing to find the balance between over-moderation and none at all.
Civil society organizations and third-party researchers provide free expression with crucial watchdog functions and accountabilities. This sector highlights gaps in policies and investigates potential harmful moderation practices, advocating for user’s rights on platforms. An example of their work can be seen in the Facebook Oversight Board’s Policy Advisory Opinion on Sharing Private Residential Information, which used external experts’ evaluation on Facebook’s doxxing policies to determine that its safety protections did not over-restrict journalism reports. The blind spots for civil society groups and third-party researchers comes from their limited access to platform analytics. This sector can improve free expression safeguarding by calling for better transparency and access to platform data.
The media and news industry remains to be an important role model for free expression. The role that journalists fill informs the public of potential concerns, investigates power abuses, and pressures companies to address important issues. Though, journalists face political pressure, harassment, censorship and even violence for reporting on crucial issues. While protections for journalists exist, media outlets can often be affected by political pressure and sensationalism, weakening their trust with the public. For the media and news industry to safeguard free expression, they must continue to rigorously fact-check their reports as well as provide complete transparency in their sources. The main blind spot in this sector is the degradation of public trust, as a result of the spread of misinformation.
]]>The current state of the internet and the online media that comes with it makes it so that many of the cases and rulings on previous, older media regulations are outdated or incorrect. In today’s time, the limited channels that existed in the past are no longer as the access to a wide variety of online platforms has grown as well as peoples’ ability to access these platforms. Online content has also changed in the way that unexpected exposure, as discussed in the FCC v. Pacifica Foundation case, is almost nonexistent as television content is not randomly broadcasted into homes in the way it was in the past. The internet has given users the ability to seek out and select the content that they wish to view, rather than selecting from a handful of channels.
An example of this change is clearly demonstrated in the United States, et al. v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc (2000) case. The court recognized that digital media environments require a more clear First Amendment protection and ruled that a federal law that required cable operators to limit sexually explicit programming to only late-night hours or completely scrambling the signal was unconstitutional against the First Amendment. The emphasis of this ruling was that adults have a right to access lawful content and that the government must take action to find less restrictive practices rather than completely suppressing the content altogether. The principles found by the court in this case can be found in popular platforms used today such as YouTube, TikTok, and X. These platforms allow users to have their own control over the content they wish to view, and the restrictions imposed by the government are much less than they were in the past, partly thanks to cases such as United States, et al. v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc (2000)
With the current state of the internet and its popularity, a ranking of values and rights may be useful for identifying resolutions in cases that concern free expression versus privacy and safety. This ranking should be broad to make sure it can adapt to keep up with the progression of technological advancement and the constant changes that are introduced to the internet. At the top of this ranking should be freedom of expression as it is the foundation of the First Amendment and keeps the ability for people to freely express themselves safely. Following this could be the right to access information/privacy rights. The purpose of freedom of expression is so that people can express themselves without the fear of facing suppression for doing so. A major aspect of this is peoples’ right to access the information, as long as the content they are viewing is not breaking the rights of someone else’s privacy. This loose ranking of values can be useful for establishing what is important when discussing the protections and rights that people have when using the internet themselves
]]>I believe that these recent trends are concerning as they seem to be an attempt at suppressing the freedom of expression or giving the government more control over the spread of information. In the Hague v. CIO (1939) case, the Supreme Court established that historically, public parks and public streets have been open to the public for whatever expressive activities they may be interested in doing, and stated that the government may not restrict the public’s ability for assembly or political advocacy in these historically public spaces. The court also ruled that the foundations of a democratic government and participation in democracy are built on this freedom of expression, therefore any bills or laws that restrict this freedom goes against the First Amendment. The recent new laws that attempt to restrict the usage of these public spaces for political advocacy or protests as well as attempts to restrict certain educational contents may be concerning for the protection of freedom of expression.
These recent trends that aim to narrow the restrictions of elements of freedom of expression become more problematic when governments overstep their power and attempt to define what speech is acceptable and which is not. In Gooding v. Wilson (1972), the Court ruled that a Georgia statue that made it a crime to use “opprobrious words or abusive language” invalid due to the vagueness of the statute, claiming that it was not narrowed down to only punish abusive language and would likely result with negative reactions. This case reinforces the key framework of the First Amendment, that any laws or regulations which wish to regulate or restrict speech must be clear and precise as to not punish any speech for simply being “offensive.” Although these cases and many others provide examples of how bills such as these should be handled, many recent state laws contain similar restrictions that can be seen as going against the First Amendment.
Whether or not policy is an appropriate avenue to regulate freedom of speech is a more delicate question that depends mostly on where you stand on the question. I believe that policy is an appropriate avenue for the regulation of freedom of speech, but needs to be very narrow as to only target very specific actions and make clear which actions are not allowed. Regulations should also only be used when additional protections are required as a response to the public’s misuse of their right to freely express themselves. In this article by the American University Law Review, it talks about when, in 2018 “two sets of trespassing charges were filed in southern Louisiana in connection with the Bayou Bridge pipeline. . .” The first charges were filed against pipeline protesters, and just two weeks earlier, a new law had been passed by Louisiana’s legislature that heightened protections for “critical infrastructure”, which included sites such as water treatment facilities and power stations. I believe that this example provides an insight on when policy is an appropriate avenue to regulate freedom of speech, as protests that disrupt critical infrastructure may be viewed as exceeding the rights of the First Amendment. In the “Arresting Dissent” article, it is further explained how many of the recent bills that have been introduced are intended to create “new penalties or harsher sentences for protesters.” While I do believe that policy can be appropriately used to regulate freedom of speech, I believe that the process in which it happens must be a slow, carefully constructed process to explicitly state which actions are prohibited while still protecting the basic rights of freedom of expression.
]]>The question of what instances should reporters and news outlets be shielded by the First Amendment and if it should not be used as a shield in certain instances depends on whether or not the reporters or news outlets are acting in good faith. I believe that journalists should always be protected by the First Amendment when they are reporting on legitimate issues that the public need to be aware of. While this idea may seem to be dependent on individuals’ belief on certain topics, there have been many cases that serve as examples of when an issue is an actual concern of the public. This can be seen in the Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936) case when the Supreme Court established that the role of the press, being to inform the public, should not be interfered with by the government, whether that be by censorship or taxes.
Another case that assists in establishing protection for reporters and news outlets is the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) case. In this case, the court favored the freedom of the press by ruling that public officials cannot win a libel lawsuit unless proof is provided that the statements against them were created with “actual malice.” This case also stated that honest reporting errors must be tolerated to allow debate upon public affairs. The precedent set in this case remains important today as it ensures that reporters and news outlets can call out and debate powerful groups without the fear of facing massive lawsuits for small factual mistakes.
While there have been many instances that serve as examples of when the First Amendment should be a shield for reporters and news outlets, there have also been cases that highlight when it should not be a shield. In the Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) case, the court clarified that although public issue debate is protected, private individuals have a greater protection against false statements. This case serves as an example that reporters and news outlets are not protected by the First Amendment when the statements they release could cause reputational harm.
As of recent, weaponized defamation lawsuits against members of the media have been increasingly more common and have been used in attempts to silence reporters and journalists. These cases are described as “weaponized” due to the fact that they are often used not to win in court, but to drag cases on and exhaust time and money from the defendants during litigation. These weaponized defamation lawsuits against members of the media are concerning as reporters and news outlets cannot function properly in calling out or debating powerful groups if they are in fear that they will be faced with financial burdens. These weaponized lawsuits may also appear as blocking the protections set by the First Amendment, as journalists that are threatened by a potential lawsuit may be turned away from reporting on important topics.
Although weaponized defamation lawsuits may be a concern, there are still some counterarguments that plaintiffs would want to address before bringing a defamation suit against someone. Counterarguments such as the fact that false reporting can harm reputation and damage careers are completely true. Defamation lawsuits can serve as important tools to make sure that false claims against individuals are not allowed and should be punished. The concerns with weaponized lawsuits and the counterarguments that support them are only able to be solved by the court’s ability to distinguish between reports that are made in good faith and reports made with malicious intent.
Anti-SLAPP statutes are a massive help in defending against improperly used defamation lawsuits. These statutes allow reporters and news outlets to preemptively warn courts about any potential incoming defamation lawsuits that may be used to silence their reports. This allows reporters to potentially avoid dealing with the long, costly litigation that comes from weaponized defamation cases and be protected from powerful groups.
In conclusion, history has provided us many examples of when the First Amendment should be used as a shield, as well as examples of when it should not be. These cases serve as principles that continue to protect reporters, journalists, and news outlets and allow them the ability to properly inform the public while also making sure that private individuals are protected from any malicious reporting.
]]>While free expression provides massive societal value, this concept also provides deeply personal values. On a personal level, free expression allows individuals to explore their own personal identity, values, and beliefs. This creates a world in which people can feel free in exploring their own lives and trying out their own personal ideas and improving on their own self-development. “Free expression gives people the freedom to explore their unique talents and share them with others, helping both personal growth and societal progress. This freedom inspires individuals to follow their passions and take on meaningful work that suits their strengths.” (Stand Together)
Free expression can also be credited for its contribution to both public and personal identities. When people speak publicly, they are expressing their own viewpoints, actively participating in their community and claiming their citizenship within that community. This idea relates to the term “Parrhesia” which has been talked about and explained in our readings. This reading by Michel Foucault explains ” ‘Parrhesia’ is ordinarily translated into English by ‘free speech’ . . . The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind : he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the thinker speaks.” The parrhesia model shows that the truth-speaker, or the “parrhesiastes”, speaks upon their own thoughts in a public manner, creating a public identity of independence.
As for private identity, free expression is part of one’s process of discovering their own personal beliefs. This personal dialogue allows people to become who they are through their own truth-telling and personal identity discovery. The ability to speak freely is not solely about being heard by others but is also about hearing one’s own personal thoughts and reflecting upon the ideas within those thoughts.
The protection of free expression is vital as free expression is the key to our societal progress and innovation and also for our own personal ability to think freely and grow on an individual scale. Without the protection of free expression, our ability to think freely, challenge ideas, and engage in meaningful debates becomes at risk. Limiting free expression does not only affect societal aspects, but also silences personal growth and harms the identities of individuals that makes all of us different. Without the ability to freely express our own thoughts, ideas, or beliefs, we may simply become a group of people living in fear of discovering who we truly are.
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