Polmanteer 1

An Examination of Online Content Platforms and their Usage of Media Law

Grant Polmanteer

Professor Amy Sindik

BCA510
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Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Social Media - Twitter 4

Social Media - Facebook 8

Video - YouTube 10

Livestreaming - Twitch 13

Future and Conclusion 15

References 17
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Introduction

Media law governs the content piped through underground lines and over-the-air signals,

but one paramount method of communication is not regulated to the same degree. The Internet

and the content platforms that have grown into global superpowers on the World Wide Web are

the forefront drivers of mass communication for billions of humans across the world. In

America, content platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch are all ways in which

people receive entertainment, knowledge, and anything under the sun. However, these platforms

conduct themselves much differently than a local TV news station or a nationally-syndicated

radio show.

At one point, there was a proposal by former FCC (Federal Communications Committee)

chairman Tom Wheeler for the Internet to be considered a public utility. Gas, electricity,

telephone service – these things are all considered public utilities, and therefore fall under

heavier governmental scrutiny and regulation. As of 2019, Internet service is not currently a

public utility, according to the US Government, and therefore operates under a much different

structure to its content-delivery rivals in TV and radio. With this in mind, the content platforms

dominating the cyberspace have slowly crafted their own legality surrounding the content on

their platforms. With hefty Terms of Service agreements, privacy policies, and content

moderation, or lack thereof, ladened throughout the platforms, there has largely not been a

single, carefully enacted universal policy for all content platforms existing on the Internet. While

Safe Harbor laws and 1st Amendment laws can interact with content on the Internet, it is often at

the discretion of the content platforms in charge, as to what happens to the content on their

platform.
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Twitter

Twitter is a notorious platform, largely known for tweets, the democratization of

communication, and infamously a shaky moderation policy. On the platform, Twitter users can

reply to the President of the United States with an opinion, interact with a scientist talking about

climate change, and call for mass genocide, all in a swift 5 minutes. Twitter has largely

contained all of its content and security rules and actions via its Terms of Service1 and its

Privacy Policy2. According to Terms of Service; Didn’t Read3 (a non-profit organization that

analyzes online platforms’ Terms of Service policies), Twitter’s Terms of Service are broad-

reaching and not user-friendly. Twitter, as a platform, can remove any piece of content for any

reason without notification. The company can also sell off personal data in the event of

bankruptcy and can sell users’ personal data to third parties. These overarching powers that users

sign up for, allow for Twitter to be broad with their powers, and not limit themselves to

particular instances and things. This often can lead to the platform deciding (as a private

business) what content is allowed on their platform. Different cases of content moderation and

what kind of content is permissible on the microblogging service have risen, especially in recent

years with as intense scrutiny as ever.

An overwhelming part of Twitter revolves around the political sphere. For the purposes

of Twitter, these political focuses will stay within the realm of US politics. Out of fractured

political leanings have risen extreme left-wing and right-wing propagandists, that often thrive on

Twitter’s rough “ask for forgiveness, not for permission” content policies. The right-wing

propagandists often referred to as “alt-right” can be pervasive all across Twitter. JM Berger, in

1
https://twitter.com/en/tos
2
https://twitter.com/en/privacy
3
https://tosdr.org/about.html
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The Atlantic, details how the “alt-right” work on Twitter after taking a data sample of roughly

30,000 right-leaning Twitter accounts and analyzing the dataset: “The alt-right bloc synchronizes

activity that starts on the far-right edge of mainstream conservatism and continues through the

far reaches of genocidal white supremacy. There are common goals threaded through its various

factions, including undermining the purveyors of real information about the world with a barrage

of conspiratorial alternatives, eroding support for immigration within multiple demographic

groups, and, most visibly, providing political support to Trump,” (Berger). The lines blended

between the alt-right are often blending truth and opinion into a malformed hybrid, that often

relies on truth-bending and outright lying. Berger details the falsehoods that the alt-right

methodology builds upon, “Accounts for prominent conspiracy websites and their associated

personalities ranked among the top influencers. QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory, was the

third-most-tweeted hashtag in the data set, although this ranking was exaggerated by coordinated

tweeting activity by that theory’s adherents. An alternative-news ecosystem was shared by

people with sometimes very divergent views,” (Berger). Taking a look at Twitter’s Rules and

Policies4 they have many policies that outline their stances on false information, abusive

behavior, and other strategies that are employed by extremist Twitter users. Jason Koebler and

Joseph Cox of Vice relay this overarching point into a summary that explains how content

moderation on Twitter largely works, “Rather than act decisively by banning certain types of

behavior and allowing others, Twitter's policy and engineering teams sometimes de-emphasize

content and allow users to hide content that may be offensive but not explicitly against the

platform's terms of service. In doing so, Twitter says it gives more freedom to users, while critics

argue it places more burden on users and more trust in software solutions (or in some cases,

4
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies#general-policies
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band-aids) to police hateful or otherwise violating content on the site,” (Koebler and Cox). With

the tools of blocking, muting, and reporting at-hand, Twitter content moderation is largely left

with the user to complete. This type of moderation, has muddied the waters on what is allowed,

and often allows for repeat offenders to continue promoting their content, as Twitter stays true to

the allowance of Freedom of Speech, as “Twitter has an unflinching commitment to being a

public space, where even highly offensive voices are allowed to be heard,” (Koebler and Cox).

The President of the United States has recently crafted a situation where many of

Twitter’s users question the ability of the President to infringe upon the platform’s Terms.

Twitter even had to go as far as explaining a policy towards world leaders on Twitter moving

into future elections5. Critics have largely called for the President’s removal from his largest

platform in his Twitter account for multiple infringements of spreading dangerous false

information and skating upon abusive behavior via tweets. In response, Twitter has largely

implied that world leaders will only be actioned against, if “...a Tweet from a world leader does

violate the Twitter Rules but there is a clear public interest value to keeping the Tweet on the

service, we may place it behind a notice that provides context about the violation and allows

people to click through should they wish to see the content.” A protection like this can be used in

many cases and offers a way for Twitter to justify the arguments for leaving the President’s

Twitter account active.

Furthermore, to stray away from political interference, CEO Jack Dorsey announced that

Twitter would be banning political ads outright globally6, an unprecedented move for Twitter

and social media platforms.

5
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/worldleaders2019.html
6
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952
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All of these actions by Twitter and their community, emphasize how an Internet content

platform is working in 2019. Most of the policy is justified in thought, but consistently seems to

be being failed upon in situations. Koebler and Cox interviewed Becca Lewis, a researcher of

white nationalism on Twitter, in which she said “Twitter’s responses, even those that move

beyond a binary approach, show how they are actually playing an active role in the type of

content that appears and surfaces on their platform...and hiding content instead of removing it

can lead to unintended consequences. Among other issues, it can generate a conspiratorial

mindset among content creators who feel that their content is being suppressed but cannot always

prove it. In short, it shows a lack of transparency that breeds distrust on the platform while still

failing to grapple with the root issues at work,” (Koebler and Cox). This clustered series of

actions and unclear principles has lead Twitter into a continually ravaging atmosphere as it enters

another presidential election cycle and the future of its own company as they know it.
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Facebook

Facebook is the unwavering face of social media and all it stands for. The company, with

net profits in the billions rely on a massive user base to create a revenue model via advertising. It

has proved successful to the continued tunes of billions of dollars in revenue. That has left

consequences, especially among the content that lives on the platform.

As many content platforms look to moderate the content that lives on their platform, they

often rely on outside consulting, especially with the company Cognizant. Casey Newton, a

reporter for The Verge, outlines in stark detail how these moderators plucked for reading right

from wrong on Facebook, have ultimately had brutal work conditions and even worse work

itself. Newton pens, “Collectively, the employees described a workplace that is perpetually

teetering on the brink of chaos. It is an environment where workers cope by telling dark jokes

about committing suicide, then smoke weed during breaks to numb their emotions. It’s a place

where employees can be fired for making just a few errors a week — and where those who

remain live in fear of the former colleagues who return seeking vengeance...it’s a place where, in

stark contrast to the perks lavished on Facebook employees, team leaders micromanage content

moderators’ every bathroom and prayer break; where employees, desperate for a dopamine rush

amid the misery, have been found having sex inside stairwells and a room reserved for lactating

mothers; where people develop severe anxiety while still in training, and continue to struggle

with trauma symptoms long after they leave; and where the counseling that Cognizant offers

them ends the moment they quit — or are simply let go,” (Newton). Facebook’s content

moderation revolves around a manual review process by humans, and as a result the content they

see is often PTSD-inducing and ultimately disturbing. This dealing of media is a different way of

handling content than Twitter, who goes for a hybrid approach of artificial intelligence flagging,
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human content moderation, and user reporting. Queenie Wong, of CNET, goes on to flag five

different companies that have consulted with Facebook to offer moderation services: the

aforementioned Cognizant, PRO Unlimited, Accenture, Arvato, and Genpact (Wong). Each

contracted firm has been reported of often underpaying staff, maximizing productivity with little

breaks for moderators, and ultimately creating mentally unwell workplace conditions.

Facebook also had to make tough content decisions when its newly-launched Facebook

Live feature had been used for atrocities. In 2017, according to Samuel Gibbs of The Guardian,

Facebook had to hire nearly 3,000 outside content moderators to monitor their livestreaming

service alone. The climate in 2017 had bubbled to scalding conditions with, “...footage of

shootings, murders, rapes and assaults has been streamed on Facebook. The live broadcasts have

then been viewable as recorded videos by the social network’s users, often for days before being

taken down,” (Gibbs). With more content moderators viewing this type of content appearing on

Facebook Live, even more horror stories likely occurred as a direct result.

Facebook continues to deal with a multitude of complex issues surrounding the content

that lives on its services, and will continue to have to monitor its content in great detail as

governmental and user scrutiny pours in.

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YouTube

YouTube, a video streaming juggernaut owned by Google, empowers millions of creators

to upload user-generated videos to their own channels. YouTube creators can often garner

massive success if the right amount of virality, community, and ad-friendliness exists.

YouTube’s content moderation revolves around a notorious early-Internet concern:

copyright infringement7. With the ability for any user to upload any type of video, it’s bound to

cause a massive headache for YouTube with nearly 500 hours being uploaded to the service

every minute (a statistic that has likely risen since it was reported in early 2019). Tom McKay of

Gizmodo explains YouTube’s bevy of complexities and issues in a sentence or two: “The number

of issues plaguing YouTube at any one time boggles the mind, and range from accusations it

promotes extremist content to reports its nightmare algorithm recommended home videos of

children to the pedophiles infesting its comments sections. One of the less overtly alarming but

still widespread issues has been the shoddy state of its copyright infringement claims system,

which report after report have repeatedly indicated is trivially abused to file false claims, extort

creators, and generally make YouTubers’ lives hell,” (McKay). YouTube’s Terms of Service

were also examined by Terms of Service; Didn’t Read8, and the results largely indicated a lot of

power, predictably, being left to YouTube’s end. Most notably, the ability for any content to be

taken down on suspicion of copyright infringement. The video-sharing service can also remove

any content it deems infringing on its Terms of Service, and can retain deleted content that was

deleted by a creator or by YouTube itself. These terms ultimately signify a complex mechanism

protecting itself from potential lawsuits and governmental action. Susan Wojcicki, YouTube

CEO identified copyright infringement as one of its biggest focuses in 2019, including making it

7
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6005900?hl=en
8
https://tosdr.org/#youtube
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more creator-friendly9. A key change that Wojcicki identified involved making copyright claims

slightly harder to create without evidence: “Since so many creators have told us that the

community guidelines strike system felt inconsistent and confusing, we updated our policies to a

simpler and more transparent system. Every creator now gets a one-time warning that allows

them to learn about our policies before they face penalties on their channel. Each strike, no

matter if it comes from the videos, thumbnails, or links, gets the same penalty. On top of adding

new mobile and in-product notifications about a strike, our email and desktop notifications will

provide more details on which policy was violated.” Especially as YouTube uses products of its

own like YouTube Music to diversify its business strategy and content offerings, monitoring the

content on its platform for infringement on copyright grounds will be as important as ever.

YouTube has also dealt with severe, public outcries over what constitutes a strike or ban

based on their Terms of Service. In the Summer of 2019, Vox creator Carlos Maza had crafted a

compilation of conservative commentator Stephen Crowder’s insults of Maza. Within this

minute-long supercut, Crowder is disparaging Maza based on his gender identity, physical

demeanor, and political beliefs. It brought up a few key arguments: 1) can a compilation of

violating content be viewed the same as the content spread normally over many pieces of content

(as Crowder’s was)?; 2) what crosses the line of protected free speech to hate speech in online

content?; and 3) had Maza not gotten the public outcry behind him about this issue, would

YouTube had even heard? Benjamin Goggin of Business Insider, notes that Maza called that

Crowder infringed three separate points in YouTube’s community guidelines: Specifically, Maza

pointed to the following types of content that YouTube discourages in its harassment policy: 1.

Content that is deliberately posted in order to humiliate someone, 2. Content that makes hurtful

9
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/04/addressing-creator-feedback-and-update.html
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and negative personal comments/videos about another person, and 3. Content that incites others

to harass or threaten individuals on or off YouTube,” (Goggin). After reviewing the video and

content internally, YouTube identified that Crowder had not infringed against its community

guidelines, outlining their argument in a tweeted reply10: “Our teams spent the last few days

conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us, and while we found language that was

clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don't violate our policies. We've included more info below to

explain this decision. As an open platform, it's crucial for us to allow everyone–from creators to

journalists to late-night TV hosts–to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies.

Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don't violate our policies, they'll remain on our site.

Even if a video remains on our site, it doesn't mean we endorse/support that viewpoint. There are

other aspects of the channel that we're still evaluating–we'll be in touch with any further

updates." A day after YouTube’s findings, Goggin wrote that YouTube had actually reversed

course slightly, and decided to demonetize (remove advertising) Crowder’s videos11. This left

both sides, Maza and Crowder, largely unresolved in their feelings, and blurred the lines further

of YouTube’s guidelines enforcing, as well as how online platforms overall treat their users. Free

speech and hate speech were blurred in this case, and for other, future cases YouTube will have

to continue in unprecedented territory to make decisions that affect the future of their company

and the Internet as a whole.

10
https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1136055311486210048
11
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/02/preventing-harm-to-broader-youtube.html
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Twitch

Twitch is an online, livestreaming platform primarily focused on video game streaming.

The company was purchased by Amazon in 2014, and has since turned into a multi-billion dollar

company that has also received its fair share of content moderation cases.

As the Facebook Live debacle ensued, Twitch still is constantly dealing with multiple

public cases on a monthly cadence, as livestreamers continue to push the limits of Twitch’s

moderation. A recent case, involved streamer “Alinity”. The oft-controversial streamer, who is

known for pushing the boundaries on visual appearance to her Twitch viewers, and for often

making outrageous, hyperbolic statements to fellow Twitch streamers. In the summer of 2019, a

debate ensued over how Twitch should handle Alinity, after a July livestream captured an

angered Alinity throwing her cat from her computer desk to the back of her room. On top of this

single incident, viewers also drudged up videos of Alinity mouth-feeding vodka to the same cat,

as well as kicking her dog in a separate video12. Viewers and other streamers alike called for

action from Twitch’s moderation team, to which the moderation team never took action on. This

also created an extremely dangerous situation for Alinity herself, as outraged viewers revealed

her personal address, defamed her in numerous ways on social media, and reported her to animal

abuse organizations. Situations like Alinity’s continue to happen among Twitch’s most-viewed

and at-first affable streamers.

Popular Twitch streamer “Ninja” (who crafted a huge moment along from switching from

Twitch to newly-created streaming service Mixer), was angered in the summer of 2019 as well.

Tyler Blevins, Ninja’s true name, met Twitch with outrage as Twitch’s in-platform

recommendation algorithm recommended an illegal pornography stream on Blevins’ defunct

12
https://twitter.com/AlinityTwitch/status/1152303851929833472
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channel. This raised further questions to Twitch regarding how a stream such as this was made

popular, and how it stayed long enough on the platform to land a recommendation on one of

Twitch’s top-streamed channels ever.

Worse yet, is Twitch’s movement into an all-”IRL” section, meaning in-real-life streams

of real people interacting in the real world. As Facebook Live’s conundrum indicated,

livestreaming civilian life has proven its troubles. Notorious streamer Ice_Poseidon, whose real

name is Paul Denino, paved the way for questionable content among this section on Twitch. Julia

Alexander of gaming publication Polygon writes that Denino was the first true test for Twitch in

this realm, as the streamer gained notoriety for boundary-pushing interactions and cultivating a

troll-like atmosphere among his viewers. It culminated in a situation of “swatting” (where a

stream viewer anonymously calls the local police to report an intense violent crime at the spot of

the streamer, to have a SWAT team attend to the premises of the streamer). Repeated instances

of situations like this led to Denino’s banning from the platform outright, even though many said

that he hadn’t actually broken Twitch’s terms of service. “Ice’s ban sparked one of the biggest

complaints Twitch members in and outside of the IRL community have sent to the company

since the section was launched: The rules aren’t clear enough. In Ice’s follow up video, the

streamer noted that Twitch doesn’t outline what’s really against its terms of service, arguing that

the rules are too vague for specific cases, like swatting,” (Alexander).

Twitch will continue veering into cases unlike any of its peers on Twitter and YouTube,

as livestreaming continues to craft unusual scenarios that involve copyright infringement, terms

of service violations, and more.

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Future and Conclusion

What does the future of content moderation look like on the Internet? It is not clear. As

evidenced by each of the aforementioned platforms, their actions on the content living in their

platforms are varied. It seems to be the early days of content moderation still, where the most

effective ways of combating prohibited material off of the Internet are still being discovered.

However, this also raises the question of free speech and how user generated content based

companies interact with their content. The argument some have taken is that because the

companies largely are based in the United States and are often used like a public utility, free

speech protections should apply. On the other side though, arguments are that each company is

its own private business responsible for its own actions, and every single user technically has

signed the user agreements they are met upon when creating an account on each platform.

It is my opinion that the current system will likely stay the way it is in the next decade.

While the surge of a platform in the United States that is based in China, in TikTok, might affect

the government’s consideration of content platforms’ power and regulation, I believe that

companies like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube will have permission to continue the way they

have, dealing on a case-by-case basis with the public cases they face, and attempting to squash

the next possible public case through moderation methods. The GDPR, a European Union law,

will force companies to continue working towards better practices surrounding data, privacy, and

content, and its likely that further legislation that takes action against content platforms on the

Internet will undoubtedly come from Europe, before the United States. Seeing as how each

platform has already dealt with issues among the attention of millions, and even tens of millions,

the only true change that would occur would likely be from the United States Government

changing their line of thinking of how they approach the Internet as a whole.
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References

Alexander, Julia. “Twitch's Contentious IRL Section Sparked the Platform's Biggest Debate

in 2017.” Polygon, Polygon, 3 Jan. 2018,

https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/3/16845362/twitch-irl-iceposeidon-trainwrecks-female-

streamers.

Berger, J.M. “Trump Is the Glue That Binds the Far Right.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media

Company, 31 Oct. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/trump-alt-

right-twitter/574219/.

Downes, Larry. “On Internet Regulation, The FCC Goes Back To The Future.” Forbes,

Forbes Magazine, 15 Mar. 2018,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2018/03/12/the-fcc-goes-back-to-the-

future/#48ea17345b2e.

Gibbs, Samuel. “Facebook Live: Zuckerberg Adds 3,000 Moderators in Wake of Murders.”

The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 May 2017,

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/facebook-live-zuckerberg-adds-

3000-moderators-murders.

Goggin, Benjamin. “YouTube's Week from Hell: How the Debate over Free Speech Online

Exploded after a Conservative Star with Millions of Subscribers Was Accused of

Homophobic Harassment.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 9 June 2019,

https://www.businessinsider.com/steven-crowder-youtube-speech-carlos-maza-explained-

youtube-2019-6.
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Koebler, Jason, and Joseph Cox. “How Twitter Sees Itself.” Vice, 7 Oct. 2019,

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35nbj/twitter-content-moderation.

McKay, Tom. “YouTube Announces Some Changes to Its Infamously Awful Copyright

Infringement System.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 10 July 2019, https://gizmodo.com/youtube-

announces-some-changes-to-its-infamously-screwe-1836233860.

Newton, Casey. “The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America.” The Verge, The

Verge, 25 Feb. 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-

content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona.

Wong, Queenie. “Murders and Suicides: Here's Who Keeps Them off Your Facebook Feed.”

CNET, 19 June 2019, https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-content-moderation-is-an-

ugly-business-heres-who-does-it/.