Facebook to Shield Ads From Offensive Content

In a message posted on its Web site, the company wrote: “Our goal is to both preserve the freedoms of sharing on Facebook but also protect people and brands from certain types of content.”
“We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action.”
Facebook said it would begin the manual review for pages containing sensitive content next week with a team of hundreds of employees in offices around the world.
The action comes a month after feminist groups campaigned for an improvement in Facebook’s process for identifying and removing pages that glorify violence against women. At the time, Facebook acknowledged that its procedures had not worked effectively. Activist groups sent more than 5,000 e-mails to Facebook’s advertisers and elicited more than 60,000 posts on Twitter, requesting the removal of pages featuring women who had been abused.
The protests caused Nissan and a number of smaller advertisers to temporarily withdraw their ads from the site. Other advertisers, including Zappos, Dove and American Express, stopped short of removing their ads but issued statements on digital media saying they did not support violence against women.
“The way you allocate your resources identifies what your priorities are,” said Soraya Chemaly, a writer and activist who was involved in the digital media campaign.
Ms. Chemaly said that since the protests in May Facebook had been “great” about removing content the groups flagged as offensive but that the procedure for removing such content had not been systematic. “Before you can remove the ads, you need to have an accurate assessment of what counts as controversial and that’s not happening now systemically,” she said.
Elisabeth Diana, a Facebook spokeswoman, said dealing with offensive content was something the company handled on a daily basis. “We take it really, really seriously,” she said, adding that the goal of the new procedure “won’t be as much content policing as there will be advertising policing.”
Removing the ads from such pages also removes a pressure point that activist groups have used to get media companies and advertisers to listen to their concerns. “They are hoping to dismantle the leverage,” Ms. Chemaly said. “From a business perspective that makes perfect logical sense.”
The company expects to automate the process of identifying such content after a manual review of thousands of its pages.
Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

What an NSA charm offensive looks like

Banged and bruised in the press over the NSA secrets liberated by Edward Snowden and serialized in the Guardian and the Washington Post, the national security establishment resorted to a little media offense earlier this week with a series of conversations with major news outlets.

As media blitzes go, it was sedate and vague. The "natsec" establishment made its first landing in the Washington Post‘s June 25 print edition, where two unnamed senior intelligence officials speculated about the damage done to U.S. national security by the leaks ("U.S. is worried about security of documents Snowden has").

The Post reported:

"Already, several terrorist groups in various regions of the world have begun to change their method of communication based on disclosures of surveillance programs in the media, the official said. He would not elaborate on the communication modes."

Later that day, two unnamed senior intelligence official presented to CNN a slightly less gauzy picture of the terrorist organizations revising their use of communication technology following Snowden's revelations ("Terrorists try changes after Snowden leaks, official says").

CNN reported:

"‘We can confirm we are seeing indications that several terrorist groups are in fact attempting to change their communications behaviors based specifically on what they are reading about our surveillance programs in the media,' a U.S. intelligence official told CNN."

The media tour included Reuters, which had a similar conversation with "two U.S. national security sources." Its piece, time-stamped two hours after CNN's, reported that "militants have begun responding by altering methods of communication." Like CNN, Reuters learned from the intelligence officials that both Sunni and Shi'ite groups had changed communications methods and that those changes might leave the U.S. blind to future attacks.

How, exactly, had terrorist groups modified their behaviors? Relying more heavily on encryption? Dropping out of chat rooms? Streaming "Zero Dark Thirty" to review Osama bin Laden's communications security faux pas? Resorting to carrier pigeons?

"The officials declined to specify what changes were spotted among militant groups," Reuters reported, "fearing that the more details provided on what was known about their behavior, the easier it would be for them to adapt."

Were the intelligence officials teasing Reuters with their explanation? Or were they inadvertently revealing valuable methods and sources? After all, even vague press accounts about terrorist groups changing the way they converse are likely to be read by the very terrorist groups who intelligence officials observed changing their use of phones and computers. Might not this disclosure also encourage hard U.S. signals collection by encouraging terrorist groups to change the way they are changing their communications practices? It essentially tells terrorist groups that U.S. intelligence just watched them changing or discussing a change in the way they communicate. The shorter form of this disclosure might be, "Hey, terrorist groups! You're communicating in a very sloppy and visible manner!"

The media barnstorming ended, at least temporarily, at the Associated Press, where a story ("Al-Qaida said to be changing its ways after leaks") time-stamped June 26, 3:27 a.m. EDT, also reported assertions by two "U.S. intelligence officials" that "al-Qaida and other terrorists … are working frantically to change how they communicate." Again, the nameless duo declined to provide any details beyond the self-evident.

Although each outlet on the tour added additional reporting beyond what the duo disclosed, and each has done fine work since Snowden dropped his bomb, the stories reek of official spin, of news by press release, of a government handout, and of a coordinated propaganda push. And the unnamed duo's disclosure was a tad redundant. More than two weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on NBC News to say the Snowden leaks would "obviously give our enemies a ‘playbook' of how to avoid detection."

Of course you will rarely hear beat reporters complain about special briefings like these in which the sources request anonymity and do not say much. If anything, reporters are more likely to file a protest with the unnamed sources if excluded from the whistle-stop because their editors do not want to be beaten on any story, even obvious — as Clapper would put it — stories like this. Besides, it's as likely as not that the two intelligence officials who were the sources for this week's stories are regular intelligence sources for the major news outlets, and it's a time-honored journalistic practice to keep regular sources satisfied if not happy.

You might guess that I find this kind of water-carrying by the press corrupting. I do, but not absolutely corrupting. I'm fairly certain that the reporters who filed the stories cited here have broken stories that have angered the two unnamed intelligence officials and will gladly do so in the future.

Reporters, no matter what beat they cover, work with their government sources at the same time they work against one another, just like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog in the Warner Bros. cartoons. As long as I don't have to read too many vapid accounts from unnamed intelligence officials, I won't gripe too much.

Less cynical readers have every right to object, and the consumer adviser in me would instruct the unnamed intelligence officials to call a press conference and put their names to their warnings if the news is that urgent. I'd also have intelligence beat reporters and their editors affix warning labels to stories like these to signal readers that the story did not come from their initiative. I want intelligence beat reporters to come clean with their readers when government officials aggressively peddle a story line to the media but will not take personal and professional responsibility for the peddling.

I single out intelligence reporters for abuse here, but the practice exists on every beat. Sometimes the story isn't the story — the meta-story is. When it is, reporters have no excuse not to say so.

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

CineEurope: Universal Declares 'Kick-Ass 2' 'Irreverent, Dark and Often Offensive'

BARCELONA – Universal Pictures International executive vp marketing Simon Hewlett promised Tuesday that Kick-Ass 2 provides a "bigger, badder, more ballsy adventure."

Hewlett's comments at CineEurope, the annual convention of foreign exhibitors in Barcelona, came just one day after Jim Carrey -- who plays a bat-wielding crime fighter in the R-rated superhero pic -- withdrew his support of the movie, saying he couldn't support its level of violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings.

"I did Kick-Ass 2 a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart," Carrey said in a tweet.

PHOTOS: 20 Stars Who Dissed Their Own Movies

Hewlett didn't address Carrey's tweet during his presentation before theater owners, but noted that the movie is controversial. "It's irreverent, dark and often offensive," he said.

The executive said that while the original Kick-Ass, released in 2010, didn't do well in every foreign territory, it did huge business on DVD across the international marketplace. It also was heavily pirated.

CineEurope attendees reacted very favorably to footage of Kick-Ass 2, and Universal believes the sequel, with Chloe Moretz and Aaron Taylor-Johnson returning in the title roles, will do strong business both domestically and internationally. The first film, released by Lionsgate in the U.S., quickly turned into a sleeper hit in North America, grossing $48.1 million. Overseas, the movie also did $48.1 million, doing its best in the U.K., France and Australia.

The sequel, based on the comic books by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., begins its worldwide rollout in August.

STORY: Jim Carrey Condemns Violence in 'Kick-Ass 2'

Millar, responding on his official forum to Carrey's tweet, said: "[I'm] baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay 18 months ago. Yes, the body count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin. A sequel to the picture that gave us Hit Girl was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much.

"Like Jim, I'm horrified by real-life violence (even though I'm Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn't a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction … and avoids the usual bloodless body count of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence, whether it's the ramifications for friends and family or, as we saw in the first movie, Kick-Ass spending six months in hospital after his first street altercation. Ironically, Jim's character in Kick-Ass 2 is a Born-Again Christian and the big deal we made of the fact that he refuses to fire a gun is something he told us attracted him to the role in the first place."

Hewlett promoted a slew of other upcoming Universal international releases, including Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert Redford's All Is Lost. He also previewed footage of the studio's upcoming summer tentpole R.I.P.D., starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, Richard Curtis' fall film About Time, starring Rachel McAdams and Domhnall Gleeson, and Keanu Reeves' 47 Ronin, which Universal releases worldwide in December.

Following the presentation, Universal bowled over theater owners with a screening of upcoming animated tentpole Despicable Me 2.