[Plura-list] Zuckerpunch; Good news about news co-ops

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Zuckerpunch: Don't trust Mark Zuckerberg to solve the Facebook problem.

* Good news about news co-ops: Save journalism, not media monopolies.

* This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🐈‍⬛ Zuckerpunch

A monopolist's first preference is always "don't regulate me." But
coming in at a close second is "regulate me in ways that only I can
comply with, so that no one is allowed to compete with me."

A couple hundred mil for compliance *sounds* like a lot but it's a
*bargain* if it excludes future competitors.

That's why Facebook and Youtube flipped and endorsed the EU plan to
mandate hundreds of millions of euros' worth of copyright filters in 2019.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/european-copyright-directive-what-it-and-why-has-it-drawn-more-controversy-any

Mark Zuckerberg may be a mediocre sociopath with criminally stupid
theories of human interaction that he imposes on 2.6 billion people, but
he is an unerring bellwether for policies that will enhance Facebook's
monopoly power.

Pay attention whenever Zuck proposes a "solution" to the problems he
caused (not just because creating a problem in no way qualifies you to
solve that problem) - the only "problem" he wants to solve is, "How do I
monopolize all human interaction?"

Today, Zuckerberg is testifying about his monopoly power to Congress.
Hours before he went on air, he released a proposal to "fix Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act."

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348238/zuckerberg-dorsey-pichai-section-230-hearing-misinformation

CDA230 is the rule that says that the people who publish unlawful speech
should be accountable for it - not the service providers that hosted the
speech (but it *does* allow online services to moderate speech it finds
offensive).

CDA230 is among the only good technology laws the US Congress ever
adopted, and without it, no one would ever host your complaint about a
business, your #MeToo whistleblowing, your negative reviews or your
images of official corruption or police violence.

The GOP hates 230 because it lets online platforms delete disinformation
and hate speech without obliging them to have a "fairness doctrine"
rebuttal (e.g. deleting both Trump's exhortations to inject bleach AND
messages from doctors saying *don't inject bleach!*).

The right hates 230 because their 40 year program to create unlimited
corporate power by nerfing antitrust law has created...unlimited
corporate power, which is sometimes wielded against them.

Rather than limiting corporate power, they want to make it possible for
rich people to sue Big Tech platforms for shadowbanning them. This is
standard cognitive dissonance nonsense, and par for the course for
Reagan's brainchildren.

But in a weird reversal, progressives have picked up on this, joining
hands across the aisle to demand the right to sue platforms for things
users say, despite the fact that this is a gift to giant corporations
and ruthless plutes who want to silence their critics.

Seriously. CDA230 is 26 words long. It's not hard to understand. if you
think abolishing CDA230 will hurt Facebook, you've been fooled. Just
read this:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml

If that doesn't convince you, consider this: Zuck wants to get rid of
CDA230, too.

Zuck does not propose rules that hurt Zuck.

Zuck is an unreliable narrator, but his regulatory proposals for
Facebook are unswervingly perfect indicators of "Things that benefit
Facebook."

Here's Zuck's proposal: CDA230 should only apply to platforms that use
"best practices" to eliminate bad speech. What's a "best practice?" It's
what the "industry leaders" do. Who's an "industry leader?"

Facebook.

Zuck's proposal then, is, "To solve the problems Facebook creates, we
should mandate that everyone do what Facebook is doing."

There's two big problems with this.

First, Facebook sucks. The "AI filters" and army of moderators its uses
to moderate content are tuna nets that catch entire pods of dolphins.

Consider three sentences:

I. "Shut up, you [racial epithet]!"

II. Then he told me, "shut up, you [racial epithet]!" and,

III. "The candidate is ending his campaign because it was reported that
he told a message-board user, 'shut up, you [racial epithet]!"

No filter can decide which of these to block. Indeed, human moderators
often get this wrong.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#deplatforming

If you hate Facebook's moderation, I invite you to consider that the
problem isn't that FB isn't trying hard enough - it's that making speech
judgments about the discourse of 2.6b people in 150 countries speaking
hundreds of languages is an impossible job.

Which brings me to the second problem with Zuck's proposal: it is
incredibly expensive, which means only companies that already as big as
Facebook would be allowed to compete with Facebook, and that means we
can only have services that are too big to moderate effectively.

Importantly, it means we have to kill proposals - like the 2020 ACCESS
Act - to allow new services to interoperate with FB, which would allow
groups of users to have the autonomy to make their own moderation
choices, booting out the toxic trolls and harassers FB welcomes.

Zuck's proposal to fix the problem of Facebook, then, is "We should fix
Facebook by not changing Facebook at all, and making it illegal to make
a service that interoperates with Facebook, starving it of the monopoly
rents it uses to evade real regulation."

This is such a shameless piece of self-serving bullshit, it should be
comic. But it's not. It's terrifying. It's exactly the kind of
"solution" that low-information lawmakers love - something that lets
them "get tough on a bad actor" without risking campaign contributions.

Don't be bamboozled. Please. The answer to Facebook will not come from
Facebook. You can't fix something from the inside that shouldn't exist
in the first place.

Facebook doesn't have a "Nazi problem" or a "disinformation problem." It
has a *Facebook problem*.

The answer to Facebook is giving the public technological
self-determination. Use interoperability so  FB can't hold our friends
hostage anymore. Force breakups so FB can't use predatory acquisitions
to deprive us of choice. Block mergers.

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

But don't address Big Tech by making Bigness a requirement to simply
operate online.


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🐈‍⬛ Good news about news co-ops

Today, the Global Investigative Journalism Network reprints The
Nonprofit Quarterly's exciting story "A New Business Model Emerges: Meet
the Digital News Co-op," by Tom Stites.

https://gijn.org/2021/03/25/a-new-business-model-emerges-meet-the-digital-news-co-op/

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/a-new-business-model-emerges-meet-the-digital-news-co-op/

Stites documents the rise-and-rise of national news co-ops in Germany,
Italy, Switzerland and Mexico, and the rapidly proliferating local
co-ops in Canada, Uruguay and the UK.

A news co-op is a news organization owned by its readers, whose
membership fees pay for open access journalism - no paywall - usually
organized as nonprofits (an IRS rule-change lets for-profit newspaper
convert to nonprofits).

The reader-owners of the co-op get to read the news, vote on the co-op's
policies, elect its board, ensure their communities are being reported
on, and get members' access to private forums where the co-op's business
is discussed.

Co-ops court advertisers for inclusion in a supporter's business
directory, and ads in a news co-op's publications demonstrate a
business's connection to its community to both the co-op's members and
the community-wide readership.

Stites draws a comparison to the credit union movement, which is larger
- in aggregate - than Wells Fargo, but whose control is decentralized
among 5,133 community-oriented financial institutions (I love my credit
union).

US news co-ops are on the rise, including The Devil Strip and The
Mendocino Voice. Stites describes how his nonprofit Banyan Project
serves as an incubator for news co-ops:

https://banyanproject.coop/

The much-lamented local newspaper industry was an historic accident:
newspaper families connected sports-score-hungry readers with local
appliance store ads, and spent some of the profits that generated to
cover city hall and the state-house out of a sense of patrician duty.

Long before Craigslist, long before the Googbook ad duopoly, these
weird, contingent structures were crumbling, as newspaper families sold
out to vulture capitalist raiders who gutted the papers and looted their
rainy-day funds.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#big-news

The news part of newspapers was never a standalone business,
irrespective of whether readers paid for the news or got it free - for
general news, there's always been a cross-subsidy that was a mix of
market forces (appliance ads) and civic duty (patrician news families).

The news co-op model acknowledges that news is, in part, a public good -
news that isn't widely available is not "news," it's a "secret." The
premise that paywalls and ads will give us back the local news that
covers readers' liveaday issues has not been borne out.

Paywall success stories are a mix of specialized news, often catering to
the ultrawealthy (WSJ), superstar news orgs focused on specific national
and international news (NYT) or news with billionaire backstops (WP).

The civic function of news is not met by any of these models. But
reader-supported, open access news, like Canadaland and The Halifax
Examiner are filling in the gaps. The co-op model is a most welcome
adjunct to these success stories.


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🐈‍⬛ This day in history

#15yrsago Kleptones new mashup double-CD free to download: “24 Hours”
https://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_24h.html

#15yrsago Monks in Wisconsin refill printer cartridges
https://web.archive.org/web/20060324043723/http://lasermonks.com/

#10yrsago Wisconsin GOP uses sunshine laws to harass prof who speculated
about links with pressure group
http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/24/open-records-attack-on-academic-freedom/

#5yrsago STUCK: Public transit’s moment arrives just as public spending
disappears
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnxjwb/the-immobile-masses-why-traffic-is-awful-and-public-transit-is-worse

#1yrago Posties are key to America's emergency response
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#going-postal

#1yrago Toilet paper separator
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#single-ply

#1yago Doctors hoard choloroquine
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#choloroquine

#1yrago Trump's Bible study teacher thinks coronavirus is God's wrath
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#church-and-state

#1yrago Kaiser threatens to fire Oakland nurses who wear their own masks
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#insubordiation

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🐈‍⬛ Colophon

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 539 words (119798 total).

* A short story, "Jeffty is Five," for The Last Dangerous Visions.
Yesterday's progress: 304 words (10131 total) (FINISHED)

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Yesterday's
progress: 1091 words (39444 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Free Markets
https://craphound.com/podcast/2021/03/22/free-markets/

Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for Brian David Johnson's Future You (Powell's Books), Mar 30,
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5716148038801/WN_psgDGchIRfaUQOJyvLnvzw

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

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provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion
Guy" DeVilla

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