亚历克斯·琼斯的命运是在周末决定的，当时苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克和他的软件和服务副总裁艾迪·库伊（Eddy Cue）会面讨论此事。Dylan Byers在其每日通讯《太平洋》中如是说，该通讯首次报道了大多数主要技术平台是如何在一天内禁止Infowars主机的。拜尔斯继续说：

Hours after Apple announced its move, Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook made the decision to pull four of Jones’ pages from their platform. Zuckerberg only moved to remove these pages after learning about Apple’s decision, Facebook sources said. That is why the pages were removed at 3 a.m. Pacific Time.

我饶有兴趣地阅读了拜尔斯的报道，因为它回答了我在周一得知琼斯的禁令后一直遇到的一个问题。在为琼斯传播错误信息的权利辩护数月后，Facebook和YouTube为何在同一天决定禁止琼斯？

布赖恩·费尔德曼（Brian Feldman）代表我在推特上关注的许多记者推测，在苹果为这些平台提供空中掩护之前，这些平台一直不敢采取行动：

The reason that every other platform booted Jones is because Apple did it first. The swiftness with which Facebook and YouTube cast out Alex Jones does not indicate resp***ible moderation, and certainly is not a display of thoughtful moral leadership. These companies didn’t spend months deliberating a course of action and then decided this weekend. They saw Apple make its move, and they dusted off what must have been pre-written statements that had been sitting in someone’s drafts for months. Just a few weeks ago, the official Facebook Twitter account was insisting on “free speech” as the reason the company wouldn’t ban Infowars. What happened to that principled stand?

我理解这种做法的吸引力。在这种观点下，Facebook是一个天真的弱者，害怕在其平台上采取任何执法行动；另一方面，苹果是一个务实的公司，从一开始就从不假装拥护****。

然而，我想知道这种观点是否给了苹果太多的信任。因为在苹果禁止琼斯的播客的同时——可能给了其他科技巨头同样的勇气——苹果给琼斯留下了一条强大的生命线，那就是他的iOS应用程序。

拜尔斯报告称，库克和库伊“决定让琼斯的InfoWars应用程序在应用商店中继续使用，因为他们觉得这不违反他们的政策。”（谷歌，其子公司YouTube周一禁止了琼斯，也让Android版本的InfoWars保留在谷歌Play商店中。）

不出所料，Infowars的粉丝们蜂拥而至。我的同事Shoshana Wodinsky报道：

Infowars Official, the app named after Alex Jones’ controversial radio talk show, has become the fourth most popular news app in the United States that’s currently available in the iOS App Store, according to public rankings. It was the 47th most popular just two days ago.

The free app, which launched in June, streams live shows and written pieces from Jones and other c***ervative pundits. It also links to the Infowars store where visitors can buy T-shirts and skincare products. An Android version of the app is available in the Google Play Store; there, it jumped from being the 31st most popular news app to the 11th.

苹果在这方面看似矛盾的立场的解释可能是显而易见的。应用商店和它的播客平台有不同的规则；播客平台明确禁止仇恨言论，而应用商店（出人意料地）却没有。我怀疑这种情况会改变，可能很快就会改变——一旦改变，琼斯可能会发现自己在iOS上没有家。

不过，将苹果公司视为唯一一家有决心禁止琼斯的公司，而事实上苹果公司并没有这样做，这似乎有些奇怪。Infowars应用程序包含了与播客上相同的仇恨阴谋的直播节目；苹果只是将这些用户从一个平台转移到另一个平台。

虽然让苹果掌控局面的叙述依赖于时间顺序——平台在苹果之后才转移到ban Jones——但我以另一种方式解读了事件链。苹果并不是第一个对琼斯采取纪律处分的公司。YouTube今年早些时候首次对他发起攻击，今年夏天又再次发起攻击。Facebook随后也发起了自己的**。斯蒂克是第一个禁止琼斯的播客进入其平台的人；Spotify紧随其后。

也许库克和库伊确实推动这些平台采取了比其他平台更有力的行动。但我观察了这些事件，发现所有平台都在朝着相同的结论移动，尽管是暂时的。每次一方采取行动，都会强化另一方的相关决定。即使苹果公司可能导致大坝决堤，但很多人——包括科技公司的员工、积极分子和提供外部压力的记者——已经花了一段时间在这上面。

（我请Facebook谈谈其决策的时间顺序，但没有得到回复。）

民主

Infowars热情捍卫审查Infowars的权利

这是我的同事TC Sottek写的一篇非常有趣的短文，他在其中发现Alex Jones在发布信息战时采用的标准与他在技术平台上应用时所采用的标准相同。

YouTube并没有用准则审查Alex Jones的****

朱莉娅·亚历山大（Julia Alexander）带着许许多多抱怨《第一修正案》和审查制度的人讲述了为什么它不适用于这里。

Facebook被要求改变记者和学者的规则

据Charlie Savage报道，研究人员和记者要求Facebook改变其服务条款，为新闻收集提供新的补贴：

As examples of the kind of journali** research that could be conducted more freely if the rules were changed, the letter cited a Gizmodo projectthat explored how Facebook’s algorithm identifies people users may know and unintended problems; a New York Times article exposing a market in fake followers; a ProPublica investigation about how Facebook’s self-service advertising system enabled discriminatory housing practices; and a Columbia University digital journali** project that scrutinized the reach of Russian disinformation.

Facebook has sometimes instructed journalists or researchers to stop similar projects as a violation of its terms, the letter said, and “the mere possibility of legal action has a significant chilling effect,” prompting some to downsize or abandon projects.

Facebook想让我们杀死这个调查工具

这里Gizmodo采用上一项中描述的字母。Giz开发了一个人们可以下载的工具，帮助网站了解Facebook的“你可能认识的人”工具是如何工作的。从那以后，Facebook一直在试图扼杀它。

新闻项目Compova开始在巴西出版新闻项目Compova开始在巴西出版

Comprova是一个记者联盟——第一个使用新WhatsApp商业API的这样的组织——它将揭穿导致巴西选举的错误信息。

The WhatsApp component is new for election projects facilitated by First Draft, which previously designed CrossCheck, its award-winning collaboration focused on the 2017 French election. The WhatsApp number will accept questi*** and tips from the public, and will facilitate the detection of trends in misinformation reported around the country. Researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School will be investigating how misinformation circulates on WhatsApp in the lead up to the election, and will be testing effective debunks on the platform. The findings will help inform newsroom best practices for requesting tips about misinformation as well as disseminating debunks to the public via WhatsApp.

对“机器人”的打击扫荡了经常发推特的人

一些推特账户非常糟糕，以至于人们认为它们是机器人。事实上，他们在推特上很糟糕，莎拉·伯内特报道：

Everyone in the room tweets their own material and also retweets everyone else’s. So a tweet that Tomasieski sends may be seen by her roughly 51,000 followers, but then be retweeted by dozens more people, each of whom may have 50,000 or more followers.

She says she’s learned some tricks to avoid trouble with Twitter. She’s careful not to exceed limits of roughly 100 tweets or retweets an hour. She doesn’t use profanity and she tries to mix up her subjects to appear more human and less bot-like.

西弗吉尼亚州将在中期选举中引入**投票

这不是一个真正的社会故事，但这个想法是如此大胆，我破例。西弗吉尼亚州（！）已与名为Voatz的初创公司签订合同（！！）让海外****使用**投票（！！！）并且正在区块链上记录他们的投票（！！！！）。Donie O'Sullivan报道说，选举安全专家们疯了：

“Mobile voting is a horrific idea,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told CNN in an email. “It’s internet voting on people’s horribly secured devices, over our horrible networks, to servers that are very difficult to secure without a physical paTper record of the vote.”

在别处

亚历克斯·琼斯的诉讼将重新定义****，无论胜负

在《信息战新闻》的其他地方，艾玛·格雷·埃利斯（Emma Grey Ellis）报道说，目前对琼斯的诽谤审判将开辟新的法律基础，无论它是如何决定的。

Thus far, Jones’ legal arguments remain embroiled in the nuances of free speech: Specifically, what kind of platform c***titutes a serious media institution, and what kind of acti*** signify a public figure. While it’s hard to sympathize with a man who spent years haranguing the parents of a murdered first grader, in a time when the modes and impacts of speech are being redesigned and renegotiated with every software update and platform policy, these are pressing questi***. Whether Jones wins or loses, his suit, according to First Amendment lawyers, will be a building block for the way we think of free speech in the age of the internet.

Snapchat的重新设计耗费了数百万用户

Snap beat估计了收入，但用户正在离开——问问Twitter，一旦社交网络崩溃，重新开始增长有多容易。Snap投资者-欢迎您，阿尔瓦利德·本·塔拉尔王子现在，我们不得不希望这是一个地狱般的硬件公司。

毒品交易和分手：Venmo Social Feed激怒了隐私倡导者

Venmo坚持认为，人们应该能够通过公开交易取笑和/或羞辱其用户，这似乎不太可能为任何人带来好结果(请注意，这位首席执行官也不经意地把他的妈妈扔到了公共汽车下面。）

Mr. Schulman, who is 60 years old, said he thinks the younger users who dominate Venmo have a good grasp of what they’re sharing. “If you think about the millennial generation, they really do understand this technology,” he said. “It’s not like my mom trying to figure out what to set these different defaults and share opti***.”

未来是。。。个人广告？

这是杰米·劳伦·凯尔斯（Jamie Lauren Keiles）关于Personals的迷人故事，这是一个为女***者建立的Instagram约会社区；双性恋、变性、***、两性和无性**；不符合性别要求的非二元人群：

The page, which has over 40,000 followers, works like this: Text-based personal ads are submitted once a month. Ms. Rakowski then publishes them as Instagram posts and tags the people who submitted them. Interested parties can get in touch directly.

Snapchat源代码泄漏并发布到GitHub

Snap很尴尬，但似乎没有重大后果。

YouTube与圣布鲁诺官员就改善总部安全问题进行了交谈

格雷格·桑多瓦尔说，YouTube总部正在采取新的安全措施：

Sources within the city of San Bruno told Business Insider that YouTube plans to upgrade security as part of a planned expansion of the video service’s headquarters. The move comes four months after a woman opened fire with a hand gun on YouTube’s campus.

发射

通过新的LinkedIn体验设计，让您的体验脱颖而出

你现在可以在LinkedIn上为你的工作添加多个职位，这似乎是应该在发布时提供的？？

拿

一些在线“暴徒”是邪恶的。其他人则完全理性。

阿曼达·赫斯（Amanda Hess）在一篇尖锐的文章中指出，有时候，我们在推特上称之为“愤怒的暴徒”的东西实际上只是关键共识的例子——而区别很重要：

Whether a group is labeled a “mob” often does have more to do with its aims than its tactics. The angry crowds coded as mobs are those whose acti*** are later condemned by history — the pogroms that murdered Jews in Russia or the lynch mobs of the Jim Crow South. Those whose ideas are eventually adopted and normalized become, in hindsight, revolutionaries.

Mob members are also often styled as an underclass, armed with a peasant laborer’s pitchfork and torch — as though the primal fear is that society’s discontents, a mass of people “beneath” you, will rise up, and not in a spirit of reason, fairness or mercy. Just about everyone, these days, seems eager to claim that underdog status — but there are those who lack institutional power because of discrimination, and then there are those who are kept out of polite society because they are amoral ghouls. The true nature of a mob becomes a lot clearer once you differentiate between the two.

禁止亚历克斯·琼斯的更好方法

大卫·弗伦奇认为，取而代之的是以诽谤和诽谤取缔琼斯，而不是以“仇恨言论”（一个狡猾的类别）取缔琼斯(这其中大部分都是法国人抱怨保守派人士被贴上极端分子的标签。）

To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims. It’s properly more difficult to use those laws to punish allegati*** directed at public figures, but even then there are limits on intentionally false factual claims.

It’s a high bar. But it’s a bar that respects the marketplace of ideas, avoids the politically charged battle over ever-shifting norms in language and culture and provides protection for aggrieved parties. Nor do tech companies have to wait for sometimes yearslong legal processes to work themselves out. They can use their greater degree of freedom to conduct their own investigati***. Those investigati*** would rightly be based on concrete legal standards, not wholly subjective measures of offensiveness.

亚历克斯·琼斯迫使科技巨头像媒体公司一样行事

皮特·弗农表示，琼斯禁令代表了科技平台看待自身的一个转折点：

Ultimately, the issues raised by Monday’s acti*** are far more important for what they say about the tech giants’ understanding of their function than what happens to Jones and Infowars going forward. Jones still has a presence on Twitter, an app in the iPhone story, and a website, meaning that he hasn’t been silenced, but his reach has been severely curtailed. The problems of fake news and hate speech that plague the big tech companies aren’t going away, and banning Jones is just the tip of the iceberg. But by (finally) taking action on Monday, they acknowledged that they need to take editorial ownership of their content.

最后。。。

《第一修正案》专家警告Facebook禁止信息战可能为****树立完全合理的先例

我已将此邮件发送给（许多）Infowars粉丝，他们今天一直在给我发电子邮件：

“If we allow giant media platforms to single out individual users for harassing the families of murdered kindergarteners, it could lead to a nightmare scenario of measured and well-thought-out public discourse,” said Georgetown law professor Charles F. Abernathy, cautioning that it was sometimes very easy for private organizati*** to draw a line between c***titutionally protected free speech and the slanderous ravings of a bloated lunatic hawking snake oil supplements. “What we see here really could be the beginning of a slippery slope towards a horrific ordeal in which any citizen who violates hate speech policies or blatantly spreads lies that cause other individuals to receive death threats will immediately be discredited and, perhaps, even asked to host their dem***trably false content on a website that they actually own.”

跟我说

向我发送问题、评论、提示和主题行电子邮件，全部内容为“****？？”[email protected]