kathy hochul – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Report: Consumer Hardware Still Often Impossible To Repair Despite New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

There’s been significant progress, but many popular consumer electronics brands are still building hardware that’s often impossible to repair despite a flood in new state “right to repair” laws around the country. That’s at least the conclusion of this new report by the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

PIRG examined 21 different mainstream tech devices subject to New York’s recently passed electronics Right to Repair law, then graded them “based on the quality and accessibility of repair manuals, spare parts, and other critical repair materials.”

They found decidedly mixed results, with nine of the devices earning As or Bs (including all of the smart phones), three products receiving Ds, and six popular mainstream devices earning Fs. The devices that fared poorly, like the HP Spectre Fold foldable laptop, the Canon EOS r100 camera, or the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 VR headsets, usually did so because of a lack of spare parts or useful repair manuals.

New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, passed in 2022, requires that tech manufacturers provide tools, manuals, and parts to ensure affordable, easy repair of consumer electronics. But as we noted at the time, tech industry lobbyists managed to convince NY Governor Kathy Hochul to water the bill down to the point of near-uselessness by including ample loopholes. PIRG says they’d like this addressed:

“The New York Right to Repair Bill has had mixed success. It has gone a long way in pushing companies towards greater repair standards, but it has been surpassed by newer repair bills in other states like the recent passage in Oregon. In order for this bill to remain useful for the people of New York, it should be updated to bring it in line with newer repair standards, as well as provide greater enforcement to move companies towards full compliance in the future.”

PIRG Senior Director Nathan Proctor told me there’s been no enforcement action taken by NY on the law despite numerous companies failing to comply. All told, the report notes that the cellphone sector has made significant strides in terms of repairability and providing easy access to repair manuals and replacement parts. That’s offset greatly by sectors like VR headsets and cameras, where repairability remains mostly a mess.

Oregon recently became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York, Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering such bills in 2024.

But such bills are routinely at risk of being watered down by lobbyists keen to exclude the most problematic sectors (like medical equipment, game consoles, or agricultural gear). And the bills are only useful if they’re actually enforced, which isn’t likely to be a top priority in many well-lobbied states.

Filed Under: consumers, hardware, independent repair, kathy hochul, repair, right to repair

Gavin Newsom Jumps On Moral Panic Bandwagon To Ban Phones In School Despite Evidence Suggesting It Doesn’t Work

from the ban-grandstanding dept

We live in the age of performative lawmaking. Something must be done! This is something. We will do it. Who cares about the tradeoffs, nuances, or the evidence? Throw all that out the window and DO SOMETHING. And if you’re going to DO SOMETHING why not make it big, bold, and already proven ineffective? At least it will get you headlines.

The underlying concerns about kids and technology are often quite legitimate. It’s reasonable to worry about kids being distracted or spending too much time on phones or social media. But just because there are concerns, it doesn’t mean that an outright ban is an effective policy or necessary. It would be nice if policy making involved actually looking at the evidence rather than making calls based on gut decisions.

But apparently, that’s not how it works.

Last month, we had an article about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s wife pushing an evidence-free moral panic about kids and social media. The very next day, we had a story by two Australian professors who had looked at all research on the question of whether or not banning phones in school was effective. They found that the evidence simply did not support banning phones in school. They concluded “the evidence for banning mobile phones in schools is weak and inconclusive.”

Certainly, some studies showed small positive benefits to removing phones, but many also showed negative effects. As we discussed on our most recent podcast with another researcher in the field, such bans can cause other problems as well.

And, so, of course, California Governor Gavin Newsom has fully jumped on board with the idea of banning phones entirely in schools.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called on Tuesday for a statewide ban on smartphone use in California schools, joining a growing national effort to curb cyberbullying and classroom distraction by limiting access to the devices.

Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said he would work this summer with state lawmakers to dramatically restrict phone use during the school day in the nation’s most populous state.

Again, the actual evidence has shown that it’s not at all clear that an outright ban is effective, and it has failed in many places. New York City tried to ban phones in schools a decade ago and it failed, miserably. It was enforced unequally, often targeting kids in low-income communities, and parents wanted to know that in an emergency, their kids could call. At the time, NYC’s school chancellor said “lifting the cell phone ban is about common sense.”

Apparently, here in California, we no longer believe in common sense. Or evidence. We believe in the “feels” of the governor and his wife.

Of course, New York seems to be backsliding as well. Just a few weeks ago, New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul… also called for banning phones in schools, as if there wasn’t already evidence as to why such bans don’t work in her own state.

Again, I don’t think anyone believes that kids should be on their phones all day. But an outright ban is a blunt instrument that hasn’t worked all that well. Instead, it seems like there should be room for variability. Let parents, teachers, and school principals figure these things out on a more micro level, rather than implementing a flat out statewide ban.

But, alas, when we’re living in an age of moral panics, apparently such nuances and more focused approaches aren’t allowed.

Filed Under: california, data, evidence, gavin newsom, kathy hochul, kids, new york, phones in schools, schools

‘Today We Save Our Children’ Says Governor Hochul, Signing Bill That Will Not Save Anyone

from the legislating-by-grandstanding-moral-panics dept

New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s response to the horrifying shootings in Buffalo in 2022 was not to look for ways to limit access to guns or improve mental health care. It was not to look into why law enforcement ignored the threats that the shooter had made, which they were aware of. It was not to figure out why the 911 dispatcher who answered the first call about the shooting hung up on the caller after getting mad at them for whispering.

No, it was to blame the internet.

Blaming the internet is a very convenient scapegoat for politicians who are in over their heads with societal-level problems.

On Thursday, Hochul became the living embodiment of the “won’t someone please think of the children” meme. She gleefully signed an easily unconstitutional bill that will not protect children, and which will likely do real harm. She signed the SAFE For Kids Act, which bans algorithmic feeds for kids. In signing the bill she literally said:

“Today, we save our children.”

There are just a few problems with this, all of which Hochul’s office (and the sponsors of this bill) have been told about, only to be dismissed as “talking points from big tech.”

Problem 1: There remains no study showing that algorithmic feeds are somehow “addictive” or even a problem. It’s all based on vibes (and adults who seem unable to put down their own phones).

Problem 2: What actual studies show is that if you force chronological feeds on people, a few things happen, none of which “save our children.” First, users get annoyed because they see less of the stuff they go to social media for. This doesn’t make them use less social media, it just makes them switch to other social media. It also exposes those on the chronological feed to more untrustworthy content and disinformation. I’m not sure why Kathy Hochul thinks that exposing kids to more disinformation is “saving our children,” but someone should ask her.

Problem 3: This bill requires age verification, which has already been ruled to be unconstitutional by multiple courts. It is also a privacy nightmare, as has been described multiple times in the past. Creating a world that puts kids’ private data at risk is not “saving our children.”

Problem 4: The requirement about how websites can order content is just a blatantly obvious First Amendment infringement. I mean, just imagine if the NY legislature told a newspaper that it could no longer prioritize some headlines over others and had to lay out the newspaper in the order the stories were written? Everyone would immediately recognize the First Amendment problems with such a law. But this is no different.

Problem 5: Algorithms are a hugely important tool in keeping kids safe online, by minimizing or hiding more harmful or problematic content. And Hochul and the NY legislature are telling social media companies that such tools must be removed from their arsenal.

Hochul told a reporter, “we’ve checked to make sure, we believe it’s constitutional.” And, that’s just laughable. Checked with whom? Every attempt I saw to call out these concerns was brushed off as “just spewing big tech’s talking points.”

The Constitution is not a “big tech talking point.” What the actual research shows is not a “big tech talking point.”

I’m not against chronological feeds as a general concept. They’re great for those that want them. Lots of services already offer them as an option. But mandating them, and especially mandating them for certain ages (necessitating dangerous age verification), doesn’t solve any legitimate problem and makes it harder for trust & safety teams to actually help protect kids.

I recognize that this signing happened the same day that Hochul’s approval ratings and favorability hit all-time lows. So, it’s no surprise that she’s trying populist nonsense and embracing moral panics. But perhaps she should try actually doing things to actually help, rather than things already proven harmful?

Filed Under: algorithmic feed, algorithms, kathy hochul, new york, protect the children, safe for kids act

NY’s ‘SAFE For Kids Act’: A Lesson in How Not to Regulate The Internet

from the make-sure-you-only-read-this-article-in-chronological-order dept

We’ve written a few times about New York’s preposterously bonkers “SAFE for Kids Act” (SAFE standing for “Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation”). It’s an obviously unconstitutional bill that insists, without any real evidence, that basically all social media algorithmic feeds are somehow addictive and problematic.

Last week we posted a letter by a NY-based parent to his own legislators explaining why the bill would inherently do more harm than good.

But, no matter, the NY legislature passed a slightly modified version of the bill last week, which you can read here. The bill no longer has random, unsubstantiated bans on kids using social media in the middle of the night, but still bans algorithmic feeds for kids.

This means age verification will effectively become mandatory, despite claims to the contrary from bill supporters. If you will get in trouble for serving some type of content to those under 18, you need to have a system to determine how old they are. Thus, privacy-damaging age verification is effectively mandated.

But, even more important, the effective banning of algorithmic feeds is ridiculous. There is no evidence that the algorithmic nature of feeds has anything to do with any harm. It is all a fever dream by ignorant politicians. I know for a fact that when the sponsor of this bill, Andrew Gounardes, was asked by a constituent for evidence of the harms, he was dismissed as simply repeating “big tech talking points.” Gounardes seems absolutely convinced that any criticism of the bill must be from “big tech” lobbyists and refuses to consider the very real problems of this bill.

And the same is true for NY Governor Kathy Hochul, who cheered on the passage of the bill:

Governor Kathy Hochul today celebrated the legislative passage of two nation-leading bills to protect kids online. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act will restrict a child’s access to addictive feeds on social media, and the New York Child Data Protection Act will keep children’s personal data safe.

“New York is leading the nation to protect our kids from addictive social media feeds and shield their personal data from predatory companies,” Governor Hochul said. “Together, we’ve taken a historic step forward in our efforts to address the youth mental health crisis and create a safer digital environment for young people. I am grateful to Attorney General James, Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Speaker Heastie, and bill sponsors Senator Gounardes and Assemblymember Rozic for their vital partnership in advancing this transformative legislation.”

Remember, Hochul has been trying to blame social media for repeated failings of her own administration, so it’s little surprise she would celebrate this law.

But, again, to date, the research simply does not support the idea that algorithmic feeds are harmful or addictive. Studies have been done on both Meta properties and Twitter that find the only real difference between algorithmic and chronological feeds is that when forced to use chronological feeds, users see a lot more disinformation and junk they don’t want.

What Gounardes, Hochul, and lots of very silly people refuse to understand is that algorithmic recommendations not only give users more of what they want to see, but they also help remove the stuff they don’t want to see. And that’s kind of important.

But, really, just for the sake of comparison, if NY politicians are allowed to determine what content you see when you open a social media app, it also means they think they can control what content you see when you open a news story. What’s to stop them from similarly (falsely) claiming that editorial recommendations in the NY Times or the WSJ are “addictive” and all media sites need to only post articles in chronological order?

These requirements clearly violate the First Amendment, and it’s not a “big tech talking point” to say so.

It’s getting ridiculously exhausting to have to point out the problems with all of these clueless state laws from very foolish politicians, and for them to falsely insist that any critiques must come from “big tech.”

It would be nice if there were serious lawmakers out there willing to have serious discussions on the policies they’re thinking about. Tragically, New York has a bunch of clowns instead, just like tons of other states these days. It’s not partisan in any way. New York and California, both fairly blue states, have been pushing dozens of these kinds of laws. But so have Florida, Texas, Utah, Ohio, Arkansas and more.

Unfortunately these days, constitutionally infirm anti-internet legislation has become a bipartisan pastime. And the most likely result is that more taxpayer funds are going to be wasted while these nonsense bills are inevitably rejected as unconstitutional.

It seems that if you sponsor a bill that is eventually thrown out as unconstitutional, it should be grounds for impeachment.

Filed Under: algorithmic feeds, andrew gounardes, chronological feeds, free speech, kathy hochul, new york, protect the children, recommendations, safe for kids act

New York’s Watered Down ‘Right To Repair’ Bill Goes Live

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

Thu, Jan 11th 2024 01:19pm - Karl Bode

In late 2022, the state of New York finally passed new right to repair legislation after years of activist pressure. The bill, which went live this week, gives New York consumers the right to fix their electronic devices themselves or have them more easily repaired by an independent repair shop, instead of being forced to only obtain repairs through costly manufacturer repair programs.

In short, the bill requires that some manufacturers of some products provide consumers and indie repair shops access to the tools, parts, and manuals needed to repair some consumer tech products. Estimates by consumer groups are that it should save NY consumers somewhere in the ballpark of around $300 per year:

“For many years [repair shops have] been trying to cobble together all of those elements, but big manufacturers have clamped down on access to tools and parts,” Chuck Bell, a program director at Consumer Reports, said on WNYC’s “Morning Edition.” “They’ve made it really hard for consumers to do even simple repairs such as replacing a cracked screen, a battery or a hard drive.”

Here’s the catch: relentless lobbying by numerous tech companies and manufacturers resulted in New York Governor Kathy Hochul aggressively watering down the law before it finally passed. As a result, it doesn’t actually cover many of the sectors where annoying repair monopolization efforts are the worst, including cars, medical devices, agricultural hardware, E-bikes, home alarm systems, or power tools.

The law also only covers any tech product sold in New York on or after July 1, 2023. Additional restrictions, added by industry and Hochul at the last second, force consumers to buy entire “repair assemblages” instead of individual parts. Hochul didn’t really bother to give a useful explanation as to why she lobotomized the law in such a fashion, but the action generally speaks for itself.

Still, any progress is notable for a movement that continues to see widespread, bipartisan public support. All told, Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, Minnesota, Maine and California have all passed some flavor of right to repair legislation, and the momentum shows no sign of slowing down, even if industry has had some notable success ensuring these laws aren’t quite living up to their full potential.

Filed Under: consumer rights, independent repair shops, kathy hochul, new york, new york state, right to repair

from the will-it-never-end? dept

It never ends with these moral-panic-driven, blatantly unconstitutional state bills “for the children.” The latest, from New York state Senator Andrew Goundardes and Assemblymember Nily Rozic was announced this week with direct support from NY Governor Kathy Hochul (who has been pushing for such unconstitutional bills for a while now, mainly to redirect attention away from her own failures as a governor).

The bills, the New York Child Data Protection Act and the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act (which doesn’t appear to have text live just yet), incredibly seem to be taking a page from equally censorial bills that have already been ruled unconstitutional in places like Arkansas and California. The SAFE bill is actually quite similar to a bill in Utah, which hasn’t been challenged yet, but I have to believe it will be soon, and it’s equally unconstitutional. Incredibly, the Data Protection Act itself cites the bill in Utah AND California’s Age Appropriate Design Code even though that bill has already been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge! Incredible.

When you’re introducing a bill by citing as inspiration a bill that has already been declared unconstitutional, you might just be a grandstanding fool.

Either way, this shows again how this issue isn’t a “red state” or a “blue state” issue, but politicians across the political spectrum are cynically stomping on the rights of children and adults to get headlines claiming (falsely) that they’re “protecting” the children.

As with Utah’s bill, New York’s SAFE Act will require parental consent for anyone under age 18 to have a social media account, which means that if you’re an LGBTQ+ child and your parent disapproves of your identity, they can cut you off from your community support. I understand why Republican governors like Spencer Cox might want that, by why are Democrats in New York pushing for such bills that will do such harm.

It will also require “default chronological feeds” rather than algorithmically generated feeds, even though a recent study of chronological feeds found that they expose users to more misinformation than algorithmic feeds.

So Kathy Hochul wants kids exposed to more misinfo?

As for the Data Protection Act, it will require age verification (since it says sites have to treat those under 18 differently), and, as we’ve seen with the rulings in California and Arkansas (not to mention multiple past Supreme Court rulings), that’s just blatantly unconstitutional as it ends up limiting adult access to content as well.

But it’s quite clear that the intent of this law is not about actually protecting kids, because any expert can tell you that these laws will do a great deal to harm kids. These laws are about getting the politicians pushing them positive headlines. And to that effect, it’s already working. The NY Times gave them a big old headline, without one ounce of skepticism that the bills might not actually protect kids.

Filed Under: age verification, andrew goundardes, arkansas, california, kathy hochul, new york, new york child data protection act, nily rozic, parental controls, protect the children, safe act

More Details On How Tech Lobbyists Lobotomized NY’s Right To Repair Law With Governor Kathy Hochul’s Help

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

Fri, Feb 17th 2023 05:27am - Karl Bode

The good news: last December New York State finally passed a landmark “right to repair” bill providing American consumers some additional protection from repair monopolies. The bad news: before the bill was passed, corporate lobbyists worked with New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to covertly water the bill down almost to the point of meaninglessness.

Grist received documentation showing how Hochul specifically watered the bill down before passage to please technology giants after a wave of last-minute lobbying:

Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization Repair.org reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by TechNet, a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assembly member and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist.

The changes all directly reflect requests made by Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM and other companies desperate to thwart the right to repair movement from culminating in genuinely beneficial legislation. All of these industry giants are keen on monopolizing repair to drive up revenues, but like to hide those motivations (and the resulting environmental harms) behind flimsy claims of consumer privacy and security.

Among their asks: numerous cumbersome intellectual property protections, as well as the elimination of a requirement that manufacturers provide device owners and independent repair providers with “documentation, tools, and parts” needed to access and reset digital locks that impede the diagnosis, maintenance or repair of covered electronic devices.

Additional restriction added by industry and Hochul at the last second force consumers to buy entire “repair assemblages” instead of being able to buy just the independent parts they need, which advocates say further undermines the law (imagine being forced to buy an entire computer motherboard when just a single component is broken).

The bill already failed to include vehicles, home appliances, farm equipment or medical devices — all sectors rife with obnoxious attempts to monopolize repair via DRM or by making diagnostics either expensive or impossible. Between that and these last minute changes the bill is more ceremonial than productive, and yet another clear example of how normalized U.S. corruption cripples meaningful reform.

Filed Under: hardware, kathy hochul, legislation, new york, repair monopolies, right to repair, technology
Companies: technet

Activists Blast NY Governor Hochul For Screwing up State’s Right To Repair Efforts

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

Fri, Jan 20th 2023 12:08pm - Karl Bode

The good news: New York State recently passed landmark right to repair legislation that should improve consumer access to independent repair options. The bad news: despite passing the state assembly 147–2 and the senate 59–4, lobbyists managed to convince NY Governor Kathy Hochul to dramatically water down the legislation before it was passed, rendering it largely useless.

Needless to say, right to repair activists aren’t amused.

Paul Roberts is the founder of SecuRepairs, a coalition of IT and cybersecurity professionals who advocate for consumers’ right to repair. In an op-ed over in the Times Union, he lambasts Hochul for falling victim to industry’s claims that improved repair options and more transparent access to tools and documentation poses a threat to U.S. consumers:

As they have done on the road to burying more than 100 proposed pieces of repair legislation in 40 states since 2014, anti-repair groups argued – without evidence – that such information, if made available to owners and independent repair providers, would lead to cyberattacks and the theft of consumer data.

Had the governor and her staff had no other information to guide them in making their decision, we might forgive them for erring on the side of caution. But the governor and her staff knew that the manufacturers’ arguments were bogus. I should know: My group told them.

The original Digital Fair Repair Act required that manufacturers that already provide security codes and passwords to their authorized repair providers to also provide them at a reasonable price to the owners of covered devices and to independent repair providers.

Industry has long claimed that manufacturer-authorized repair options are more reliable and secure than independent repairs or repairs carried out by technology owners. Hochul bowed to these concerns, despite a recent FTC report making it clear these claims are completely false. Worse, non-transparent repair options make it more likely security threats won’t be noticed before they’re a problem.

Hochul listened to repair monopolists instead of experts, activists, and her constituents, and completely pulled the requirement that manufacturers provide device owners and independent repair providers with “documentation, tools, and parts” needed to access and reset digital locks that impede the diagnosis, maintenance or repair of covered electronic devices.

This is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things.

Filed Under: independent repair, kathy hochul, lobbying, new york, repair monopoly, right to repair, third party repair

Lobbying, Corruption Stall Landmark NY Right To Repair Bill

Thu, Dec 22nd 2022 06:24am - Karl Bode

Back in June New York state was the first state in the country to pass “right to repair” legislation taking direct aim at repair monopolies. The bill mandates that hardware manufacturers make diagnostic and repair information available to consumers and independent repair shops at “fair and reasonable terms.”

The final version of the bill enjoyed rare bipartisan support, passing the state assembly 147–2 and the senate 59–4. To make this happen, the bill doesn’t include vehicles, home appliances, farm equipment or medical devices — all sectors rife with obnoxious attempts to monopolize repair via DRM or by making diagnostics either expensive or impossible.

Activists had hoped to add such provisions later. But getting the bill as written into law has proven to be difficult. The bill has been parked for months without any movement on the desk of NY Governor Kathy Hochul. It seems likely that the bill will still pass, but lobbying has ensured that making that happen will apparently take as long as humanly possible:

The Digital Fair Repair Act, the first right-to-repair bill to entirely pass through a state legislature, is awaiting New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. But lobbying by the nation’s largest technology interests seems to have kept the bill parked on her desk for months, where it could remain until it dies on Dec. 28.

“Right to repair” gained an incredible head of steam thanks to public annoyance at repair monopolies. Whether it’s John Deere’s restrictive crackdown on tractor repairs, or the annoying, life-risking monopolies enjoyed by many medical device manufacturers, anger on this front is sustained, bipartisan, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Companies eager to build repair monopolies have spent the last five years lying about how such laws will somehow make the public less safe. Meanwhile, lobbying ensured that New York’s landmark bill was as weak as possible, and it’s still somehow laboring to find its way across the finish line more than half a year after it was passed with broad bipartisan support. This is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things.

Filed Under: customers, drm, electronics, freedom to tinker, independent repair, kathy hochul, new york, repair monopolies, right to repair, self-repair

New York Wants To Destroy Free Speech Online To Cover Up For Their Own Failings Regarding The Buffalo Shooting

from the elect-better-people dept

Back in May, it seemed fairly obvious how all of this was going to go down. Following on the horrific mass murder carried out at a supermarket in Buffalo, we saw NY’s top politicians all agree that the real blame… should fall on the internet and Section 230. It had quickly become clear that NY’s own government officials had screwed up royally multiple times in the leadup to the massacre. The suspect had made previous threats, which law enforcement mostly brushed off. And then, most egregiously, the 911 dispatcher who answered the call about the shooting, hung up on the caller. And we won’t even get into a variety of other societal failings that resulted in all of this. No, the powers that be have decided to pin all the blame on the internet and Section 230.

To push this narrative, and to avoid taking any responsibility themselves, NY’s governor Kathy Hochul had NY Attorney General Letitia James kick off a highly questionable “investigation” into how much blame they could pin on social media. The results of that “investigation” are now in, and would you believe it? AG James is pretty sure that social media and Section 230 are to blame for the shooting! Considering the entire point of this silly exercise was to deflect blame and put it towards everyone’s favorite target, it’s little surprise that this is what the investigation concluded.

Hochul and James are taking victory laps over this. Here’s Hochul:

“For too long, hate and division have been spreading rampant on online platforms — and as we saw in my hometown of Buffalo, the consequences are devastating,” Governor Hochul said. “In the wake of the horrific white supremacist shooting this year, I issued a referral asking the Office of the Attorney General to study the role online platforms played in this massacre. This report offers a chilling account of factors that contributed to this incident and, importantly, a road map toward greater accountability.”

Hochul is not concerned about the failings of law enforcement officials, nor the failings of mental health efforts. Nor the failings of efforts to keep unwell people from accessing weapons for mass murder. Nope. It’s the internet that’s to blame.

James goes even further in her statement, flat out blaming freedom of speech for mass murder.

“The tragic shooting in Buffalo exposed the real dangers of unmoderated online platforms that have become breeding grounds for white supremacy,” said Attorney General James.

The full 49 page report is full of hyperbole and insisting that the use of forums by people doing bad things is somehow proof that the forums themselves caused the people to be bad. The report puts tremendous weight on the claims of the shooter himself, an obviously troubled individual, who insists that he was “radicalized” online. The report’s authors simply assume that this is accurate, and that it wasn’t just the shooter trying to push off the responsibilities for his own actions.

Incredibly, the report has an entire section that highlights how residents of Buffalo feel that social media should be held responsible. But, that belief that social media is to blame is… mostly driven by misleading information provided by the very same people creating this report in order to offload their own blame. Like, sure, if you keep telling people that social media is to blame, don’t be surprised when they parrot back your talking points. But that doesn’t mean those are meaningful or accurate.

There are many other oddities in the report. The shooter apparently set up a Discord server, with himself as the only member, where he wrote out a sort of “diary” of his plans and thinking. The report seems to blame Discord for this, even though this is no different than opening a local notepad and keeping notes there, or writing them down by hand on a literal notepad. I mean, what is this nonsense:

By restricting access to the Discord server only to himself until shortly before the attack, he ensured to near certainty that his ability to write would not be impeded by Discord’s content moderation.

Discord’s content moderation operates dually at the individual user and server level, and generally across the platform. The Buffalo shooter had no incentive to operate any server-level moderation tools to moderate his own writing. But the platform’s scalable moderation tools also did not stop him from continuing to plan his mass violence down to every last detail.

[….]

But without users or moderators apart from the shooter himself to view his writings, there could be no reports to the platform’s Trust and Safety Team. In practice, he mocked the Community Guidelines, writing in January 2022, “Looks like this server may be in violation of some Discord guidelines,” quoting the policy prohibiting the use of the platform for the organization, promotion, or support of violent extremism, and commenting with evident sarcasm, “uh oh.” He continued to write for more than three and a half more months in the Discord server, filling its virtual pages with specific strategies for carrying out his murderous actions.

He used it as a scratchpad. How do you blame Discord for that?!? If he’d done the same thing in a physical notebook, would AG James be blaming Moleskine for selling him a notebook? This just all seems wholly disconnected from reality.

The report also blames YouTube, because the shooter watched a video on how to comply with NY gun laws. As if that can lead to blame?

One of the videos actually demonstrates the use of an attachment to convert a rifle to use only a fixed magazine in order to comply with New York and other states’ assault weapons bans. The presenter just happens to mention that the product box itself notes that the device can be removed with a drill.

The more you read in the report, the more it becomes obvious just how flimsy James’/Hochul’s argument is that social media is to blame. Here’s the report admitting that he didn’t do anything obviously bad on Reddit:

Like the available Discord comments, the content of most of these Reddit posts is largely exchanging information about the pros and cons of certain brands and types of body armor and ammunition. They generally lack context from which it could have been apparent to a reader that the writer was planning a murderous rampage. One comment, posted about a year ago, is chilling in retrospect; he asks with respect to dark-colored tactical gear, “in low light situations such as before dusk after dawn and at nighttime it would provide good camouflage, also maybe it would be also good for blending in in a city?” It is difficult to say, however, that this comment should have been flagged at the time it was made

The report also notes how all these social media sites sprung into action after the shooting — something helped along because of Section 230, and acts as if this is a reason to reform 230. Indeed, while the report complains that they were still able to find a few images and video clips from the attack, the numbers were tiny and clearly suggest that barely any slipped through. But, this report — again prepared by a NY state gov’t which had law enforcement check on the shooter and do nothing about it — suggests that not being perfect in their moderation is a cause for alarm:

For the period May 20, 2022 to June 20, 2022, OAG investigators searched a number of mainstream social networks and related sites for the manifesto and video of the shooting. Despite the efforts these platforms made at moderating this content, we repeatedly found copies of the video and manifesto, and links to both, on some of the platforms even weeks after the shooting. The OAG’s findings most likely represent a mere fraction of the graphic content actually posted, or attempted to be posted, to these platforms. For example, during the course of nine weeks immediately following the attacks, Meta automatically detected and removed approximately 1 million pieces of content related to the Buffalo shooting across its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Similarly, Twitter took action on approximately 5,500 Tweets in the two weeks following the attacks that included still images or videos of the Buffalo shooting, links to still images and videos, or the shooter’s manifesto. Of those, Twitter took action on more than 4,600 Tweets within the first 48 hours of the attack

When we found graphic content as part of these efforts, we reported it through user reporting tools as a violation of the platform’s policy. Among large, mainstream platforms, we found the most content containing video of the shooting, or links to video of the shooting, on Reddit (17 instances), followed by Instagram (7 instances) and Twitter (2 instances) during our review period. We also found links to the manifesto on Reddit (19 instances), the video sharing site Rumble (14 instances), Facebook (5 instances), YouTube (3 instances), TikTok (1 instance), and Twitter (1 instance). Response time varied from a maximum of eight days for Reddit to take down violative content to a minimum of one day for Facebook and YouTube to do so.

We did not find any of this content on the other popular online platforms we examined for such content, which included Pinterest, Quora, Twitch, Discord, Snapchat, and Telegram, during our review period. That is not to say, however, that it does not exist on those platforms.

In other words, sites like Twitter and Facebook took down thousands to millions of people reposting this content and single digit reposts may have slipped through the content moderation systems… and NY’s top politicians think this is a cause for concern?

I mean, honestly, it is difficult to read this report and think that social media is a problem. What the report actually shows is that social media was, at best, tangential to all of this, and when the shooter and his supporters tried to share and repost content associated with the attack, the sites were pretty good (if not absolutely perfect) about getting most of it off the platform. So it’s absolutely bizarre to read all of that and then jump to the “recommendations” section, where they act as if the report showed that social media is the main cause of the shooting, and just isn’t taking responsibility.

It’s almost as if the “recommendations” section was written prior to the actual investigation.

The report summary from Hochul leaves out how flimsy the actual report is, and insists it proves four things the report absolutely does not prove:

Fringe platforms fuel radicalization: this is entirely based on the claims of the shooter himself, who has every reason to blame others for his action. The report provides no other support for this.
Livestreaming has become a tool for mass shooters: again, the “evidence” here is that this guy did it… and so did the Christchurch shooter in 2019. Of course (tragically, and unfortunately) there have been a bunch of mass shootings between now and then, and the vast, vast majority of them do not involve livestreaming. To argue that there’s any evidence that livestreaming is somehow connected to mass shootings is beyond flimsy.
Mainstream platforms moderation policies are inconsistent and opaque. Again, the actual report suggests otherwise. It shows (as we highlighted above) that the mainstream platforms are pretty aggressive in taking down content associated with a mass shooting, and relatively quick at doing so.
Online platforms lack accountability. What does accountability even mean here? This prong is used to attack Section 230, ignoring that it’s Section 230 that enabled these companies to build up tools and processes in their trust & safety departments to react to tragedies like this one.

The actual recommendations bounce back and forth between “obviously unconstitutional restrictions on speech” and “confused and nonsensical” (some are both). Let’s go through each of them:

Create Liability for the Creation and Distribution of Videos of Homicides: This is almost certainly problematic under the 1st Amendment. You may recall that law enforcement types have been calling for this sort of thing for ages, going back over a decade. Hell, we have a story from 2008 with NY officials calling for this very same thing. It’s all nonsense. Videos of homicides are… actual evidence. Criminalizing the creation and distribution of evidence of a crime seems like a weird thing for law enforcement to be advocating for. It’s almost as if they don’t want to take responsibility. Relatedly, this would also criminalize taking videos of police shooting people. Which, you know, probably is not such a good idea.
Add Restrictions to Livestreaming: I remind you that the report mentions exactly two cases of livestreamed mass murders: this one in Buffalo and the one in 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand. That is not exactly proof that livestreaming is deeply connected with mass murder. The suggestion is completely infeasible, demanding “tape delays” on livestreaming, so that… it is no longer livestreaming. They also demand ways to “identify first-person violence before it can be widely disseminated.” And I’d like a pony too.
Reform Section 230: Again, the actual report shows how the various platforms did a ton to get rid of content glorifying the shooter. Yes, a few tiny things slipped through… just as the shooter slipped through New York police review when he was previously reported for threatening violence. But, Hochul and James are sure that 230 is a problem. They demand that “an online platform has the initial burden of establishing that its policies and practices were reasonably designed.” This is effectively a repeal of 230 (as I’ll explain below).
Increase Transparency and Strengthen Moderation: As we’ve discussed at length, many of these transparency mandates are actually censorship demands in disguise. Also, reforming Section 230 as they want would not strengthen moderation, it would weaken it by making it that much more difficult to actually adapt to bad actors on the site. The same is likely true of most transparency mandates, which make it more difficult to adapt to changing threats, because the transparency requirements slow everyone down.

I want to call out, again, why the “reasonably designed” bit of the “reform 230” issue is so problematic. Again, this requires people to actually understand how Section 230 works. Section 230’s main benefit is the procedural benefit of getting frivolous, vexatious cases tossed out early. If you condition 230 protections on proving “reasonableness,” you literally take away the entire benefit of 230. Because, now, every time there’s a lawsuit, you first have to go through the expensive, and time consuming process of proving your policies are reasonable. And, thus, you lose all of the procedural benefits of 230 and are left fighting nuisance lawsuits constantly. The idea makes no sense at all.

Worse, it again greatly limits the ability of sites to adapt and improve their moderation efforts, because now every single change that they make needs to go through a careful legal review before it will get approved, and then every single change will open them up to a new legal challenge that these new policies are somehow “unreasonable.” The entire “reasonableness” scheme incentivizes companies to not fix moderation and to not adapt and strengthen moderation, because any change to your policies creates the risk of liability, and the need to fight long and expensive lawsuits.

So, to sum all this up: we have real evidence that NY state failed in major ways with regards to the Buffalo shooter. Instead of owning that, NY leadership decided to blame social media, initiating this “investigation.” The actual details of the investigation show that social media had very, very little to do with this shooting at all, and where it was used, it was used in very limited ways. It also shows that social media sites were actually extremely fast and on the ball in removing content regarding the shooting, while a very, very, very tiny bit of content may have slipped through the filtering process, it was hugely successful.

And yet… the report still blames social media, insists a bunch of false things are true, and then makes a bunch of questionable (unconstitutional) recommendations, along with recommendations to effectively take away all of Section 230’s benefits… which would actually make it that much more difficult for websites to respond to future events and future malicious actors.

It’s all garbage. But, of course, it’s just politicians grandstanding and deflecting from their own failings. Social media and Section 230 are a convenient scapegoat, so that’s what we get.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, blame, buffalo, content moderation, kathy hochul, letitia james, livestreaming, mass murder, new york, section 230
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