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The Washington Post Thought It Might Be Nice To Provide Free Book Marketing To
Insurrectionist Josh Hawley
Techdirt Podcast Episode 281: Twitter, Free Speech, And Mob Behavior

OVERSIGHT BOARD TELLS FACEBOOK IT NEEDS TO SHAPE UP AND BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT
SILENCING MINORITIES SEEKING TO CRITICIZE THE POWERFUL

Content Moderation

FROM THE PAY-ATTENTION-TO-THIS DEPT

Tue, May 4th 2021 12:04pm — Mike Masnick

Tomorrow, the Oversight Board is set to reveal its opinion on whether Facebook
made the right decision in banning former President Trump. And that will get
tons of attention. But the Board came out with an interesting decision last week
regarding a content takedown in India, that got almost no attention at all.

Just last week, we wrote about an ongoing issue in India, where the government
of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has failed in almost every way possible in
dealing with the COVID pandemic, but has decided the best thing to focus on
right now is silencing critics on Twitter. That backdrop is pretty important
considering that the very next day, the Oversight Board scolded Facebook for
taking down content criticizing Modi's government.

That takedown was somewhat different and the context was very different. Also,
it should be noted that as soon as the Oversight Board agreed to take the case,
Facebook admitted it had made a mistake and reinstated the content. However,
this case demonstrates something important that often gets lost in all of the
evidence free hand-wringing about "anti-conservative bias" from people who
wrongly insist that Facebook and Twitter only moderate the accounts of their
friends. The truth is that content all across the board gets moderated -- and
often the impact is strongest on the least powerful groups. But, of course, part
of their lack of power is that they're unable to rush onto Fox News and whine
about how they're being "censored."

The details here are worth understanding, not because there was some difficult
decision to make. Indeed, as noted already, Facebook realized it made a mistake
almost immediately after the Oversight Board decided to look into this, and when
asked why the content was taken down, basically admitted that it had no idea and
that it was a complete and total mistake. Here was the content, as described by
the Oversight Board ruling:

> The content touched on allegations of discrimination against minorities and
> silencing of the opposition in India by “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh” (RSS)
> and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). RSS is a Hindu nationalist organization
> that has allegedly been involved in violence against religious minorities in
> India. “BJP” is India’s ruling party to which the current Indian Prime
> Minister Narendra Modi belongs, and has close ties with RSS.
>
> In November 2020, a user shared a video post from Punjabi-language online
> media Global Punjab TV and an accompanying text. The post featured a 17-minute
> interview with Professor Manjit Singh, described as “a social activist and
> supporter of the Punjabi culture.” In its post, Global Punjab TV included the
> caption “RSS is the new threat. Ram Naam Satya Hai. The BJP moved towards
> extremism.” The media company also included an additional description “New
> Threat. Ram Naam Satya Hai! The BJP has moved towards extremism. Scholars
> directly challenge Modi!” The content was posted during India’s mass farmer
> protests and briefly touched on the reasons behind the protests and praised
> them.
>
> The user added accompanying text when sharing Global Punjab TV’s post in which
> they stated that the CIA designated the RSS a “fanatic Hindu terrorist
> organization” and that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was once its
> president. The user wrote that the RSS was threatening to kill Sikhs, a
> minority religious group in India, and to repeat the “deadly saga” of 1984
> when Hindu mobs attacked Sikhs. They stated that “The RSS used the Death
> Phrase ‘Ram naam sat hai’.” The Board understands the phrase "Ram Naam Satya
> Hai" to be a funeral chant that has allegedly been used as a threat by some
> Hindu nationalists. The user alleged that Prime Minister Modi himself is
> formulating the threat of “Genocide of the Sikhs” on advice of the RSS
> President, Mohan Bhagwat. The accompanying text ends with a claim that Sikhs
> in India should be on high alert and that Sikh regiments in the army have
> warned Prime Minister Modi of their willingness to die to protect the Sikh
> farmers and their land in Punjab.
>
> The post was up for 14 days and viewed fewer than 500 times before it was
> reported by another user for “terrorism.” A human reviewer determined that the
> post violated the Community Standard on Dangerous Individuals and
> Organizations and took down the content, which also triggered an automatic
> restriction on the use of the account for a fixed period of time. In its
> notification to the user, Facebook noted that its decision was final and could
> not be reviewed due to a temporary reduction in its review capacity due to
> COVID-19. For this reason, the user appealed to the Oversight Board.

So, you had an ethnic minority -- one who had been attacked in the past --
warning about those currently in power. And Facebook took it down, refused to
review the appeal... until the Oversight Board turned its eye on it, and then
admitted it was a mistake, and basically threw its hands in the air and said it
had no idea why it had been taken down in the first place.

> According to Facebook, following a single report against the post, the person
> who reviewed the content wrongly found a violation of the of the Dangerous
> Individuals and Organizations Community Standard. Facebook informed the Board
> that the user’s post included no reference to individuals or organizations
> designated as dangerous. It followed that the post contained no violating
> praise.
>
> Facebook explained that the error was due to the length of the video (17
> minutes), the number of speakers (two), the complexity of the content, and its
> claims about various political groups. The company added that content
> reviewers look at thousands of pieces of content every day and mistakes happen
> during that process. Due to the volume of content, Facebook stated that
> content reviewers are not always able to watch videos in full. Facebook was
> unable to specify the part of the content the reviewer found to violate the
> company’s rules.

Got that? Facebook is basically saying "yeah, it was a mistake, but that was
because it was a long video, and we just had one person reviewing who probably
didn't watch the whole video."

Here's the thing that the "oh no, Facebook is censoring people" don't get. This
happens all the time. And none of us hear about it because the people it happens
to often are unable to make themselves heard. They don't get to run to Fox News
or Parler or some other place and yell and scream. And, this kind of
"accidental" moderation especially happens to the marginalized. Reviewers may
not fully understand what's going on, or not really understand the overall
context, and may take the "report" claim at face value, rather than having the
ability or time to fully investigate.

In the end, the Oversight Board told Facebook to put back the content, which was
a no-brainer since Facebook had already done so. However, more interesting were
its policy recommendations (which, again, are not binding on Facebook, but which
the company promises to respond to). Here, the Oversight Board said that
Facebook should make its community standards much more accessible and
understandable, including translating the rules into more languages.

However, the more interesting bit was that it said that Facebook "should restore
human review and access to a human appeals process to pre-pandemic levels as
soon as possible while fully protecting the health of Facebook’s staff and
contractors." There were some concerns, early in the pandemic, about how well
content moderation teams could work from home, since a lot of that job involves
looking at fairly sensitive material. So, there may be reasons this is not
really doable just yet.

Still, this case demonstrates a key point that we've tried to raise about the
impossibility of doing content moderation at scale. So much of it is not about
biases, or incompetence, or bad policies, or not wanting to do what's right. A
hell of a lot of it is just... when you're trying to keep a website used by half
the world operating, mistakes are going to be made.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for
everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time.
We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not
have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to
support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in
sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is
unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and
increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open
and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your
support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct
donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit
helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: appeals, content moderation, free speech, india, minorities,
mistakes, review, takedowns
Companies: facebook, oversight board

15 Comments | Leave a Comment

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
* Content Moderation Case Study: Tumblr's Approach To Adult Content (2013)
* University Of Hong Kong Wants To Remove A Sculpture Commemorating Tiananmen;
To Preserve It, People Have Crowdsourced A Digital 3D Replica
* House Democrats Decide To Hand Facebook The Internet By Unconstitutionally
Taking Section 230 Away From Algorithms
* LinkedIn Caves Again, Blocks US Journalists' Accounts In China
* Facebook's Nick Clegg Makes It Clear: If You're Looking To Undermine Section
230, That's EXACTLY What Facebook Wants

READER COMMENTS

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

* Anonymous Coward, 4 May 2021 @ 12:25pm

I would say that reviewers assuming there must be violations and just TLDR
blocking content that's too long or "complex" to actually review is
incompetence, or bad policies, or not wanting to do what's right.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* That Anonymous Coward (profile), 4 May 2021 @ 12:57pm

RE:

Or they are using machine learning to flag things & assume the machine is
always right & just pretend to go through the motions.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* MightyMetricBatman, 4 May 2021 @ 1:05pm

RE:

Also, there are often strict time limits on deciding the fate of the post.
It would not surprise at all if the time limit, whether imposed by Facebook
or the contracting company, is a fraction of the 17 minute video.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
* Anonymous Coward, 4 May 2021 @ 12:45pm

NOT SURPRISED

Big tech is always going to kowtow to a foreign government in order to get
market share. India's government gets protected over the little guy. China's
government will be protected over religious minorities. The corporations want
the market share.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* That One Guy (profile), 4 May 2021 @ 1:05pm

RE: NOT SURPRISED

... except in this case they admitted that they screwed up and put the
content back up.

I mean generally that seems to be the case, but posting that comment on an
article whey they didn't do that kinda undermines the argument and makes it
more difficult for people to take it serious, as at that point it reads
less as valid criticism and more 'big tech is always wrong'.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* Mike Masnick (profile), 4 May 2021 @ 4:30pm

RE: NOT SURPRISED

But this case did not involve a gov't request.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* nerdrage (profile), 5 May 2021 @ 10:37am

RE: NOT SURPRISED

Yeah, all these corporations are corporations. They can't be expected to
fight governments that can just boot them. Look at how China won't let
streaming companies like Netflix and Disney+ in, to begin with. They can
block any company that gets out of line. India could do likewise, assuming
the Indian population puts up with it. What if the Indian government
decided to boot Facebook and Twitter? Its up to people to fight back.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* Tanner Andrews (profile), 6 May 2021 @ 12:11am

RE: RE: NOT SURPRISED

> assuming the Indian population puts up with it

They really have little choice. The dictator there, Modi, does not appear
to be particularly tolerant of dissent. Look what happened in Kashmir,
even before the pandemic.

The tag #ModiInsultsIndia does not draw much government tolerance over
there. Of course, when the dictator essentially disconnects a great
portion of the country from the internet and phone service, not much
dissent arises to want tolerance.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
* That Anonymous Coward (profile), 4 May 2021 @ 12:54pm

"we just had one person reviewing who probably didn't watch the whole video"

We are always right, until the person effected manages to get the attention
of people who will watch the whole video and wonder what the fsck the one
person reviewing watched.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* Pixelation, 4 May 2021 @ 6:20pm

The only oversight is, Facebook won't listen to the oversight board.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* ECA (profile), 5 May 2021 @ 10:07am

HOW TO HOLD THE MIDDLE GROUND?

When you have to deal with 200 countries and All the laws of those areas, How
do you hold a middle ground?

the ruling classes?
The Rich?
Who do you let post? And NOT post and what NOT to post?

Show this to the repubs and the demo. I dont think they will get it either.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* nerdrage (profile), 5 May 2021 @ 10:35am

RE: HOW TO HOLD THE MIDDLE GROUND?

Government censorship will be an eternal drag on global platforms. This
also happens to companies like Netflix. Content producers in India are
self-censoring the content they make in anticipation of the Indian
government censoring it if they show something out of line like a Muslim
and a Hindu falling in love and kissing, oh horrors.

This censorship might only apply to Indian Netflix but it applies to
everyone since content that might have been made and shown to the world
will now never exist and what does exist will be silly soapy sitcoms and
other uninteresting fodder.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
* nerdrage (profile), 5 May 2021 @ 10:31am

THE BEST WAY TO THINK ABOUT TWITTER AND FACEBOOK

How about if everyone starts thinking about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc
this way: they are in effect magazines, with infinite numbers of pages to
fill, and a very wide-ranging editorial stance that takes articles, videos
and other contributions from millions of contributors. And in general they
don't pay their writers/video makers.

But that doesn't mean they can't have an editorial stance and decide that
they don't like this or that specific contribution, even when it is being
offered for free. They are private publications, regardless of how many
contributors they accept or how little they pay for contributions.

If I write a article and submit it to the New Yorker magazine, I don't expect
that they must publish this article and decide my free speech is being
infringed if they reject it. Same goes for social media, all of which are
profit-motivated corporations just like the New Yorker.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* Annonymouse, 6 May 2021 @ 11:23am

FACEBOOK AND ITS TOS

When it comes to commentary posts using Facebook, they tend to let quite a
bit of questionable content sit for ages unless there enough people willing
to flag the offending posts. On the flip side merely mention a protected
political group in a negative light in any form and be prepared for an
account suspension.

I actually ran face first into that when my account got locked for 24hr for
posts not acceptable to the tos or some such. I was all huh? No access to
said posts highlighting the bad words so I couldn't vet how bad some of the
invective was. Then it hit me. There was mention of the CCP that day and an
ongoing discussion before the ban hammer hit. A search of posts showed up
nothing mentioning that group. So suspicion confirmed.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

* John Lafave, 25 Jun 2021 @ 4:38pm

BANNED FOR NO REASON

Yesterday, I posted about people spinning out in my driveway. A friend of
mine commented and said" roofing nails do wonders" meaning I should put
roofing nails in my driveway. I responded with these exact words." yeah but
then I will run over them" meaning That I don't want to get a flat tire. FB
banned me for 30 days saying it was hate speech. I have appealed , but they
won't listen to one thing I say. What idiots they have running the site. It's
ridiculous to say the least. I'm very frustrated. Anyway, thought I would
share this with everyone.

[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

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working at the same time; turned out the two ISA cards were overlapping in
their default interrupt request ranges, and by the time I learned hexadecimal
numbers so I could set them to ranges not in conflict, it was too late, I was
a computer geek now...
* Yeah, the "News" app for Nextcloud, it has a pretty decent web interface then
in the Nextcloud web interface, although I often use an Android app, or on
the desktop there are applications like RSSGuard that will sync with it
too—hell, there's a good client app for SailfishOS, even. (Over the years now
I've even gotten some Android ereaders, so I can read my RSS feeds out in the
sun too!)
* John Roddy: All right, help me out...
* For *years,* I've been trying to efficiently map out the blueprint of my
house, and Autodesk makes me sad face. What are some alternatives worth
checking out for 2D CAD like this?
* Mike Masnick: Can I admit I'm unfamiliar with Nextcloud? Should I be using it
* keithzg: I think Nextcloud is pretty neat but it might not be worth it if
you're not running your own instance or using a friend's? It's essentially a
self-hosted alternative to stuff like GApps (or whatever Google's current
branding is), so there's file sync like Dropbox, Contacts and Calendar apps,
etc etc
* mildconcern: Yeah. I already run a private server in a colo facility for
various reasons, so putting Nextcloud on there and getting rid of Dropbox was
a no brainer. But if I didn't already have a machine in a colo I controlled,
I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort unless you *really* did not trust
Dropbox et al.
* Samuel Abram: Is NextCloud user-friendly?
* I mean, I did web dev, but I use a Mac, but I also use Windows 10, and I have
a Mint laptop I don’t use anymore, so I guess I want something
versatile-yet-idiot-proof.
* Basically, I’m an idiot.
* mildconcern: Hah. I find it user friendly. The most critical component for me
is the Dropbox replacement file sync part, and that works just about as
transparently as Dropbox itself does. Syncs in the background and I never
think about it after having set it up
* There's a whole universe of other apps and services that can replace things
like Google Docs or Tweetdeck or an RSS reader apparently, which I haven't
explored or used nearly so much.
* But generally when I have poked at them they feel decently well put together
and polished, esp for an OSS package.
* Samuel Abram: Nice. Thank you, @mildconcern!
* mildconcern: _tips cal_
* *tips cap that is.
* Mike Masnick: poor cal, what did he ever do to you @mildconcern
* mildconcern: I have a friend named Cal I was just chatting with. I should
apologize to him for tipping him over.
* unless it was a tip in the sense of giving someone money. He might like that.
* Samuel Abram: Cal tipping?
* mildconcern: What's funny about that is said friend Cal is very short and
spare. it would be considerably easier to tip Cal than a cow.
* But less tragic for him. He'd have much less trouble getting back up.
* Samuel Abram: I think Facebook's outage is fuel for @Mike Masnick's
"Protocols, not Platforms" thesis.
* Maybe Mike could write a post making that argument.
* or not. it's his web site.
* Mike Masnick: Ha! I was just explaining to a friend who is missing FB
messenger that if it was all a protocol, they'd be fine...
* Samuel Abram: At least with TikTok you could save your videos
* Mike Masnick: speaking of protocols and platforms:
https://twitter.com/senatorshosh...
https://twitter.com/senatorshoshana/status/1445145254697570312
* Samuel Abram: facebook's back
* Mike Masnick: Did you really have to kill off the good vibes and tell people
that? 😉
* Samuel Abram: I'm sorry. 🥺
* John Roddy: Big IRC has been plotting its revenge for quite some time now.
* mildconcern: I have been facebook free for nearly five years, and enjoyed
today a great deal. And I was facebook ID number 2500 or something like that.
* Kat W. (mindspillage): I too was a facebook early adopter turned
conscientious objector. Signed up as soon as my undergrad got it and promptly
joined (and created) a bunch of groups with really stupid names, mostly about
food or band nerds. I still miss *that* Facebook.
* Samuel Abram: Anyway, here’s the GOG page for _Star Trek: Voyager - Elite
Force_. Notice the most favorited review: [link]
https://www.gog.com/game/star_trek_voyager_elite_force
* That is, it’s from the script writer of the game. Why am I sharing this?
Because I want to make the point that the ©️ owners are not always the
creators nor do they always have the same interests.
* However, I guess I could have made that point better…
* gavron: HELLO ROOM! <-- things people used to AOL said on IRC years ago 😉
* mildconcern: I shudder. Who else remembers Eterrnal September?
* keithzg: I essentially logged onto the internet first in 1995 or maybe 1996,
so although I faintly recall the Eternal September starting it was by being
of that cohort...
* Mike Masnick: i am calling for an eternal October... [link]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210718/01065747196/eternal-october-bringing-back-tech-optimism-without-naivety.shtml
* mildconcern: There really is a techdirt article for everything
* Mike Masnick: no, that's xkcd
* mildconcern: True enough.
* John Roddy: *spins the wheel o' corporations*
* And who will be the lucky winner of *today's* catastrophic data leak?
* Ah yes! The company named after the exact thing that everyone in management
did when they got the news of the leak.
* Timothy Geigner: [gifv]
https://tenor.com/view/yum-yummy-eat-food-pooh-gif-5121413
* More to come 🙂
* Lord knows I'm on the Twitch beat....
* John Roddy: Well if history has taught me anything, it's that these leaks
definitely never turn out to be worse than what the company originally admits
to.
* So I'm sure it'll only get better'
* TNSe: whose sarcasm is slowing down my computer
* katana: [article]
https://thenextweb.com/news/just-0-003-percent-ev-charge-points-uk-accessible-disabled-drivers
* Samuel Abram: MasterCard is making new rules for Adult content that is making
it onerous: [article]
https://www.xbiz.com/news/262128/mastercards-new-rules-webmasters-express-concerns-about-report-abuse-forms
* I think this is extremely relevant to the "content moderation at the
infrastructure level" discussion
* Mike Masnick: Yeah, Samuel, I saw that... have that in my list to write up...
if I can get to it.
* Samuel Abram: Nice!
* atxstranger: Interesting study on conspiracy theories and how they spread son
social media: [article]
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448211045666.
From their abstract: Using data from a crossnational dataset based on a
two-wave online survey conducted in 17 countries before and after the onset
of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Twitter has a negative effect on
conspiracy beliefs—as opposed to all other platforms under examination which
are found to have a positive effect.
* Mike Masnick: Huh. Very interesting.
* Vidiot: From a quick read, it looks like the authors differentiate "socially
homogeneous" platforms like Facebook -- "These are my friends, and I believe
them..." --- from "asymmetric" platforms like Twitter -- "Here is my
proclamation." (characterizations mine)
* atxstranger: yep I read it the same way, I am hoping to have time to dive in
deeper today with my day off
* Samuel Abram: Just watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. @KBode would
love what Oliver said about AT&T, and @Mike Masnick may be interested in
Oliver’s main story about Misinformation in diaspora communities in languages
other than English and the additional challenges to content moderation they
bring.
* KBode: thanks, yeah that whole bit is good, he even tethers misinformation to
Free Basics and Facebook's attempts to conflate "the internet" with Facebook
in a lot of developing nations via local cellular partnerships, a connection
lots of folks don't seem to make
* John Roddy: Probably helps that Facebook's *entire* infrastructure crumbled a
few days ago, and the Internet at large was mostly fine.
* Then again, Facebook's internal network infrastructure is so insanely complex
that it's almost an entire "Internet" in its own right.
* And I really wish more people would push questions like that one judge in the
Florida social media case did: where do intranet setups fall in all of this?
* Mike Masnick: Is no one going to comment on how we, the supposed "tech
shills" have stories today bashing Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft?
[link]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211009/10260647722/google-amazon-microsoft-are-using-third-party-companies-to-sell-surveillance-tech-to-ice-cbp.shtml
and [link]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211013/10060247743/facebooks-nick-clegg-makes-it-clear-if-youre-looking-to-undermine-section-230-thats-exactly-what-facebook-wants.shtml
and [link]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211003/11181747687/linkedin-caves-again-blocks-us-journalists-accounts-china.shtml
* mildconcern: It's clearly a front just to lull us into complacency
* John Roddy: But the journalists who are definitely not being funded by Oracle
say that you receive funding from Google.
* mildconcern: More specifically, anyone who's followed UK politics in the last
decade has a long list of people you shouldn't trust, and Nick Clegg will
rank high on them
* I had rather hoped he'd do for Facebook what he did for his party. But not
yet anyway.
* John Roddy: As a longtime fan of Mock the Week, I'm well familiar with the
work of Nick Cleg.
* You know how if you define an array in most programming languages and print
it, you just get empty brackets?
* That's Nick Clegg.
* Timothy Geigner: Those big tech checks to us must have bounced....
* herzigma: I dunno - does anyone see Google or Facebook online? Maybe GOOG is
ponying up $5 a month for the insider program!
* BentFranklin: [article]
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/missouri-teachers-social-security-numbers-at-risk-on-state-agencys-website/article_f3339700-ece0-54a1-9a45-f300321b7c82.html
* Dumbshit is launching a criminal investigation to cover his ass:
https://twitter.com/GovParsonMO/...
https://twitter.com/GovParsonMO/status/1448697768311132160
* Mike Masnick: Yeah, in the middle of a post on all of that...
* herzigma: Krebs has a solid read: [link]
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/10/missouri-governor-vows-to-prosecute-st-louis-post-dispatch-for-reporting-security-vulnerability/
* mildconcern: $50 million to fix a site that shows SSNs publicly? Jesus.
* like.... $50k seems steep
* atxstranger: you forgot to account for the government markups, both in the
budget and the bids 🙂
* Vidiot: Probably cheaper to commission and deploy a piece of malware that
puts a big "X" across the "view source" box. Problem solved!
* herzigma: Is there some damages threshold where Gov Parson can have them
charged with a larger offense?
* BentFranklin: This is like the government broadcasting secrets in Pig Latin
and prosecuting anyone who "decoded" it.
* John Roddy: No. It's like them broadcasting on standard FM radio and
prosecuting anyone who tunes into the right frequency.
* mildconcern: I think one of the most offensive elements to me was referring
to HTML as code.
* Samuel Abram: It isn't?
* I mean, doesn't HTML mean **H**yper**T**ext **M**arkup **L**anguage?
* I'm a former web developer, so I'd be surprised to find out if HTML weren't
code...
* Maybe I'm interpreting this too literally
* atxstranger: in reading his comments, he is using the word code in the sense
of it had to be decoded which implies some sort of other activity to read the
SSN's. Not what is happening but I could imagine someone told the Governor
that "the website is https, or secured, therefore it has to be decoded to be
seen".
* or he is disingenuous, which is maybe a higher likelihood
* John Roddy: Even pseudo code is still code.

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