Tag Archives: Moderation

World

Exclusive: Twitter exec says moving fast on moderation, as harmful content surges

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Dec 2 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety told Reuters.

Twitter is also more aggressively restricting abuse-prone hashtags and search results in areas including child exploitation, regardless of potential impacts on “benign uses” of those terms, said Twitter Vice President of Trust and Safety Product Ella Irwin.

“The biggest thing that’s changed is the team is fully empowered to move fast and be as aggressive as possible,” Irwin said on Thursday, in the first interview a Twitter executive has given since Musk’s acquisition of the social media company in late October.

Her comments come as researchers are reporting a surge in hate speech on the social media service, after Musk announced an amnesty for accounts suspended under the company’s previous leadership that had not broken the law or engaged in “egregious spam.”

The company has faced pointed questions about its ability and willingness to moderate harmful and illegal content since Musk slashed half of Twitter’s staff and issued an ultimatum to work long hours that resulted in the loss of hundreds more employees.

And advertisers, Twitter’s main revenue source, have fled the platform over concerns about brand safety.

On Friday, Musk vowed “significant reinforcement of content moderation and protection of freedom of speech” in a meeting with France President Emmanuel Macron.

Irwin said Musk encouraged the team to worry less about how their actions would affect user growth or revenue, saying safety was the company’s top priority. “He emphasizes that every single day, multiple times a day,” she said.

The approach to safety Irwin described at least in part reflects an acceleration of changes that were already being planned since last year around Twitter’s handling of hateful conduct and other policy violations, according to former employees familiar with that work.

One approach, captured in the industry mantra “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” entails leaving up certain tweets that violate the company’s policies but barring them from appearing in places like the home timeline and search.

Twitter has long deployed such “visibility filtering” tools around misinformation and had already incorporated them into its official hateful conduct policy before the Musk acquisition. The approach allows for more freewheeling speech while cutting down on the potential harms associated with viral abusive content.

The number of tweets containing hateful content on Twitter rose sharply in the week before Musk tweeted on Nov. 23 that impressions, or views, of hateful speech were declining, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate – in one example of researchers pointing to the prevalence of such content, while Musk touts a reduction in visibility.

Tweets containing words that were anti-Black that week were triple the number seen in the month before Musk took over, while tweets containing a gay slur were up 31%, the researchers said.

‘MORE RISKS, MOVE FAST’

Irwin, who joined the company in June and previously held safety roles at other companies including Amazon.com and Google, pushed back on suggestions that Twitter did not have the resources or willingness to protect the platform.

She said layoffs did not significantly impact full-time employees or contractors working on what the company referred to as its “Health” divisions, including in “critical areas” like child safety and content moderation.

Two sources familiar with the cuts said that more than 50% of the Health engineering unit was laid off. Irwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the assertion, but previously denied that the Health team was severely impacted by layoffs.

She added that the number of people working on child safety had not changed since the acquisition, and that the product manager for the team was still there. Irwin said Twitter backfilled some positions for people who left the company, though she declined to provide specific figures for the extent of the turnover.

She said Musk was focused on using automation more, arguing that the company had in the past erred on the side of using time- and labor-intensive human reviews of harmful content.

“He’s encouraged the team to take more risks, move fast, get the platform safe,” she said.

On child safety, for instance, Irwin said Twitter had shifted toward automatically taking down tweets reported by trusted figures with a track record of accurately flagging harmful posts.

Carolina Christofoletti, a threat intelligence researcher at TRM Labs who specializes in child sexual abuse material, said she has noticed Twitter recently taking down some content as fast as 30 seconds after she reports it, without acknowledging receipt of her report or confirmation of its decision.

In the interview on Thursday, Irwin said Twitter took down about 44,000 accounts involved in child safety violations, in collaboration with cybersecurity group Ghost Data.

Twitter is also restricting hashtags and search results frequently associated with abuse, like those aimed at looking up “teen” pornography. Past concerns about the impact of such restrictions on permitted uses of the terms were gone, she said.

The use of “trusted reporters” was “something we’ve discussed in the past at Twitter, but there was some hesitancy and frankly just some delay,” said Irwin.

“I think we now have the ability to actually move forward with things like that,” she said.

Reporting by Katie Paul and Sheila Dang; editing by Kenneth Li and Anna Driver

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Donald Trump Adviser Kash Patel Attacks Elon Musk’s ‘Moderation’ Approach On Twitter

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Donald Trump adviser Kash Patel went after Elon Musk on Saturday after the Tesla CEO closed the deal to buy Twitter and fired top executives at the company earlier in the week. Patel accused Musk of being in favor of censorship while he promoted Truth Social. “Hey Elon, you know what doesn’t have a free speech jail, Truth Social,” the Trump adviser wrote, referring to a Musk tweet where the sink-carrying new Twitter owner said: “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” “Get on Board the freedom train with Dan Scavino, Devin Nunes, and Dan Bongino [a]n[d] Donald Trump,” Patel continued while adding, “TruthOverTweets.” But it didn’t stop there. “Oh good, more moderation—thanks Elon, but that’s the oppsoite [sic] of free speech.” Elsewhere, Patel told a fellow Truth Social user that they shouldn’t return to Twitter. “Don’t need the blue bird,” he said. Patel didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Saturday. Patel—a MAGA-loving kid’s book author who believes Trump can stand over documents and declassify them with his mind—rose to prominence during the end of Trump’s tenure in office.



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Business

Planned cuts at Twitter likely to hurt content moderation, user security

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Twitter’s workforce is likely to be hit with massive cuts in the coming months, no matter who owns the company, interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post show, a change likely to have major impact on its ability to control harmful content and prevent data security crises.

Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.

Even if Musk’s Twitter deal falls through — and there’s little indication now that it will — big cuts are expected: Twitter’s current management planned to pare the company’s payroll by about $800 million by the end of next year, a number that would mean the departure of nearly a quarter of the workforce, according to corporate documents and interviews with people familiar with the company’s deliberations. The company also planned to make major cuts to its infrastructure, including data centers that keep the site functioning for more than 200 million users that log on each day.

The extent of the cuts, which have not been previously reported, help explain why Twitter officials were eager to sell to Musk: Musk’s $44 billion bid, though hostile, is a golden ticket for the struggling company — potentially helping its leadership avoid painful announcements that would have demoralized the staff and possibly crippled the service’s ability to combat misinformation, hate speech and spam.

The impact of such layoffs would likely be immediately felt by millions of users, said Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter’s spam and health metrics and now CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI. He said that while he believed Twitter was overstaffed, the cuts Musk proposed were “unimaginable” and would put Twitter’s users at risk of hacks and exposure to offensive material such as child pornography.

“It would be a cascading effect,” he said, “where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.”

On Thursday evening, Twitter’s top lawyer Sean Edgett sent out a note to all employees saying the company did not have any confirmation from Musk about his plans. Twitter’s own, smaller-scale “cost savings discussions” were put on hold once the merger agreement was signed, Edgett said.

In internal Slack groups, Twitter employees reacted to the news with anger and resignation, supporting each other and making jokes about the turmoil of the past few months, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Twitter and Musk are expected to close the purchase by next Friday. Planning for the closing is moving forward in apparent good faith after months of legal battles, say people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. If the deal closes, Musk would immediately become Twitter’s new owner.

Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.

“The easy part for Musk was buying Twitter and the hard part is fixing it,” said Dan Ives, a financial analyst with Wedbush Securities. “It will be a herculean challenge to turn this around.”

Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert who is vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, said Musk was likely shopping ambitious plans to potential investors but will face challenges in implementing his proposals.

“He’s got to be able to show if he makes those cuts, what happens next?” she said. “What’s he gonna replace it with, AI?”

Company executives have repeatedly told employees that there are no immediate layoff plans during town hall meetings. In the one town hall that he attended, in June, Musk was pointedly asked a question about layoffs. He answered that he didn’t see a reason low performers should remain employed.

But the new details, which reflect conversations over the last few months, highlight the extreme nature of Musk’s planned transformation of Twitter amid the challenge of making the long struggling company more profitable. Twitter has never achieved the profit margins or size of other social sites like Meta and Snap. And Musk’s plan to take the company private — freeing it from having to please Wall Street — was a key reason former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey got behind Musk’s bid.

Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The months-long roller-coaster saga of Musk’s on-again off-again bid for ownership — coupled with a tense legal battle — has left Twitter battered and bruised. It faces significant worker attrition, slowed hiring, stalled projects and a volatile stock price.

Recently Andrea Walne, a general partner at Manhattan Venture Partners, a firm that has invested in the deal, told Business Insider that she thinks Twitter is worth only $10 billion to $12 billion and that other partners were trying to get out. Musk himself said that he and his investors were “obviously overpaying” for the site during Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday. Walne did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk has suggested he’ll loosen content moderation standards and favors restoring former president Donald Trump’s account (on Tuesday he posted a meme of himself, Kanye West and Trump each holding a sword for the social media company he owns or is in the process of purchasing).

Musk has told investors that he plans to double revenue in three years, and would triple the number of daily users that can view ads in the same period, though he’s offered scant details on how he would accomplish those goals.

Twitter estimates that its monetizable daily active users (MDAU), defined as the number of users eligible to see ads, is 237.8 million, up 16.6 percent compared with the same quarter last year. But documents that have emerged in Twitter’s court battle with Musk point to far lower numbers, with Musk’s side claiming, using Twitter’s own data, that fewer than 16 million users see the vast majority of ads.

Moreover, the time those users spend browsing Twitter declined 10 percent over the course of 2021 and only recovered slightly in the first quarter of 2022, according to the interviews.

Gutting and then reshaping the workforce through rehiring chosen people is a huge part of Musk’s ambitions, according to interviews and documents. Though Musk has previously indicated he would be open to cutting staff — legal filings show that he agreed with a friend over text that the company’s head count wasn’t justified by its revenue when compared with other tech companies — he has not offered specific numbers publicly.

In presentations prepared for investors and other interested parties, Musk’s optimistic business projections were fueled in part by steep jobs cuts across what was termed a “bloated” organization. One prospective investor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe Musk’s proposals, likened them to leveraged buyouts, where companies are made profitable through devastating cuts to labor and operations.

But Musk has told associates he thinks that dramatically slimming down the company is the first step to executing a turnaround strategy that would then involve bringing in more effective workers and profitable innovations. Those include expanding on new services that he has claimed could bring in more revenue, such as a subscription business where people pay to subscribe to exclusive content from powerful figures and influencers. (Twitter is currently experimenting with such a model, called Twitter Blue).

But Twitter’s own data has found that subscriptions may not bring in significant new revenue, according to the interviews. That’s because the users who view the most ads — roughly the top 1 percent of users in the United States — are also the ones most likely to join a subscription service. If they began paying a monthly subscription and went ad-free, the program could cannibalize the most lucrative part of Twitter’s current ad business.

Twitter’s budget for head count — roughly $1.5 billion last year — includes many highly paid ad salespeople and several thousand engineers. The company also spends hundreds of millions on contracting firms that pay people to review reports of hate speech, child sexual abuse, and other ugly and rule-breaking content on the internet. Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers.

Some of the planned cuts were put on hold pending the sale to Musk, which was announced in April.

The company is instituting a performance review system called stack ranking that requires managers to grade employees on a numerical curve, so that a set percentage of workers will always be marked as low performers, according to one of the company documents obtained by The Post. The move has been protested by staff members, but Twitter says other tech companies have the same practices.

Human resources staff at Twitter have told employees that they aren’t planning for mass layoffs, but documents show that extensive plans to push out staff and cut down on infrastructure costs were already in place before Musk offered to buy the company. Musk would then have built on those plans by first targeting low performers — people the company’s human resources system designated as “not on track” or receiving below a 3 out of 5 rating — before moving to other phases of downsizing.

For weeks leading into the acquisition announcement, Musk and his attorney Alex Spiro pitched a who’s who crowd of elite investors in Silicon Valley and Wall Street on a deal that was billed as a chance not only to transform underperforming Twitter, but to work with the celebrated Musk. Not all potential investors received the same details from Musk’s team.

Some of Musk’s biggest partners in the deal, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Sequoia partner Doug Leone were also Trump supporters and self-proclaimed believers in the type of free speech ideology Musk promised to bring back to the platform. (Leone is no longer a Trump supporter but is said to take an expansive view of free speech). Hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, the second largest GOP donor in the current midterm cycle, also committed a smaller amount — under $20 million compared with $1 billion from Ellison — to the deal, The Post has learned.

But many potential notable funders passed.

Private equity giants T. Rowe Price, TPG and Warburg Pincus, who collectively control more than $1.4 trillion, all decided not to invest after being approached by Musk’s representatives, according to people familiar with the process.

And other prominent Silicon Valley heavyweights said no as well. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman helped connect Musk with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as part of the money-raising process, but decided not to invest himself, according to people familiar with the situation. Hoffman is a major Democratic donor, and Musk at the time was already talking about restoring Trump.

Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture firm founded by billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel, also said no. Thiel first worked with Musk in 2000 when the two merged their companies to form PayPal, and Thiel’s associates have said he is a fan of Musk running Twitter.

It’s unclear whether these parties didn’t buy into Musk’s lofty projection, or didn’t want to be involved politically.

Some passed after the company’s finances and Musk’s own predicament began to look less attractive.

One person who lost interest told The Post that he was alarmed after the market downturn and the cost of the deal began taking a toll on Musk’s finances and the crown jewel of his portfolio, Tesla.

It hasn’t helped that Musk relentlessly attacked Twitter and its leadership after announcing his takeover, pushing down its stock price. Musk’s latest turnabout only added to the sense of chaos.

“[It’s] like you bought a new car, you decided you didn’t want it, and then you crash it,” the person said. “And then you’re like ‘I’ll keep it.’”

Will Oremus contributed to this report.

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US

Federal appeals court upholds controversial Texas social media law restricting content moderation

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The Texas law, known as HB 20, does not violate the First Amendment rights of tech platforms by requiring them to host speech they find objectionable, according to the decision by a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” the judges wrote.

The decision is a defeat for the tech industry, which had sued to block the law, alleging it was unconstitutional. Earlier this year, another appellate court blocked a similar law in Florida from going into effect, citing the same arguments.

Texas officials passed HB 20 last year amid allegations that tech platforms unfairly censor conservative speech. Social media companies have widely denied the claims, but the Texas law imposes sweeping obligations on platforms, prohibiting them from moving to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”

Mainstream legal experts have said if HB 20 survives legal challenge, tech companies would be forced to host spam, hate speech, pornography and other legal-but-problematic material on their platforms in order to comply with the text of the law. It could also serve as a blueprint for other states. More broadly, they have said, letting the government force private parties to host speech would reverse decades of First Amendment precedent, which has held that the government may not compel private speech.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the court ruling in a tweet, saying: “I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan!”

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the technology trade groups that had sued to block the law, said it strongly disagreed with the court’s decision.

“Forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints on their platforms places foreign propaganda and extremism on equal footing with decent Internet users, and places Americans at risk,” said Matt Schruers, CCIA’s president. “‘God Bless America’ and ‘Death to America’ are both viewpoints, and it is unwise and unconstitutional for the State of Texas to compel a private business to treat those the same.”

With the Fifth Circuit having reached a different conclusion from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on similar questions, the stage is set for the issue to be decided at the Supreme Court.

In May, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked HB 20 from taking effect in an emergency decision as the litigation continued. The 5-4 vote sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit, resulting in Friday’s outcome upholding HB 20. The Fifth Circuit decision does not undo the Supreme Court’s move to place the law on hold.

In dissenting from his colleagues, however, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the litigation over HB 20 raises questions of “great importance” concerning a “ground-breaking” law that addresses “the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”



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Technology

Apple settles lawsuit over its App Store moderation and power

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Developer and App Store critic Kosta Eleftheriou has settled his lawsuit with Apple, according to a report from TechCrunch. The suit, filed in March 2021, argued that Apple made it difficult for him to sell his app, Flicktype, on the App Store, after it seemingly lost interest in acquiring the tech.

The lawsuit alleged that Apple used its monopoly power as maker of the iPhone and as the company in charge of the App Store to “crush” developers competing with it through “exploitive fees and selective application of opaque and unreasonable constraints.” Eleftheriou also accused Apple of doing little to stem the tide of copycat scam apps that tricked potential users of his app, a swipe-based keyboard for the Apple Watch. (This was, by the way, right around the time that Apple and Epic were also duking it out in court over how much power the iPhone maker should have over how software is distributed on iOS.)

The lawsuit, which you can read more about here, was dismissed at the request of Eleftheriou’s company, Kpaw, earlier this summer. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment about the settlement.

In an interview with The Verge, Eleftheriou said he wasn’t able to comment on the settlement or his feelings about it. However, he was able to offer some suggestions about what Apple could do to improve the App Store going forward. He said that most of the suggestions my colleague Sean Hollister made last year in his article “Eight things Apple could do to prove it actually cares about App Store users” were still on the table, and would be a start.

From that list, which includes bulking up the App Review team, making sure the top selling apps are on the up-and-up, and automatically refunding people who got scammed, Apple has actually made movement on two items since Eleftheriou filed his lawsuit. For one, it brought back the report button, which could help people who find obviously scammy apps. It’s also made changes to the auto-renew subscriptions system — which both Sean and Eleftheriou suggested should be removed, with users being prompted to renew every time a payment was coming due. Now, Apple will let subscriptions automatically renew even if there was a small price bump. (I didn’t say the company was moving in the direction we’d like to see.)

Eleftheriou also suggested that Apple could be more publicly transparent about why apps were removed. He said that when you visit an App Store URL for an app that’s no longer on the store, it should tell you why it was removed, whether it was because the developer took it down themselves, or because it violated some rule like the ones about fake reviews.

Eleftheriou has famously been finding and pointing out egregious scams on the App Store (something he’s still doing, according to TechCrunch), and he says that this sort of move would help the public get a sense of just how many scams were on the store, and how many get removed. While he doesn’t think Apple would release its own statistics, he says that public pages that say why apps were taken down could be mined for data from companies that monitor the App Store, giving us a rough idea of how prevalent various issues are.

As a user, that sort of info would let me know how careful I need to be while browsing apps. And while on first blush it seems like there’s not a lot of benefit to Apple, it could help the company prove that it’s getting better at stewarding the App Store. As the threat of antitrust regulation mounts, especially around Apple’s role as both the platform owner and the company in control of the store, that could be a valuable thing indeed.

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US

Supreme Court temporarily blocks Texas’s social media moderation law

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In an unusual alignment the five justices in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan was joined by conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, who would have denied the request.

The Supreme Court order is a loss for Texas. The state argued that its law, HB 20, which prohibits large social media firms from blocking, banning or demoting posts or accounts, does not violate the First Amendment.

The majority did not explain its thinking and Kagan did not lay out her own reasoning for her vote to allow the law to remain in place.

But Alito, writing for himself, Thomas and Gorsuch, was critical of the majority’s decision. He said the case raises questions of “great importance” concerning a “ground-breaking” Texas law that addresses “the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.” He stressed that he had not formed a “definitive view” on the novel legal questions that arise from the law, but that he would not have stepped in to block the law “at this point in the proceedings.”

“Texas should not be required to seek preclearance from the federal courts before its laws go into effect,” Alito wrote.

Opponents of HB 20, including the tech industry, argued that the legislation infringes on the constitutional rights of tech platforms to make editorial decisions and to be free from government-compelled speech.

The state argued that HB 20 does not violate the First Amendment because the law seeks to regulate tech platforms’ conduct toward their users, not the companies’ speech, and that it seeks to designate them as “common carriers” akin to railroads and phone companies.

The wider case is viewed as a bellwether for the social media industry and could determine whether tech platforms have to scale back their content moderation in more than just Texas, and to allow a broad range of material that their terms currently prohibit.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the groups behind the emergency petition, said the decision upholds more than 200 years of free-speech principles against government infringement on private speech.

“We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law,” said CCIA President Matt Schruers. “The Supreme Court noting the constitutional risks of this law is important not just for online companies and free speech, but for a key principle for democratic countries.”

Chris Marchese, counsel at NetChoice — another group behind the emergency petition — said the Texas law is a “constitutional trainwreck.”

“We are relieved that the First Amendment, open internet, and the users who rely on it remain protected from Texas’s unconstitutional overreach,” Marchese said.

CNN has reached out to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment.

In a separate dispute, a different federal appeals court kept on hold most of a similar law out of Florida, creating a circuit split on the issue. Often, the Supreme Court is more likely to wade into a dispute if lower courts are in direct conflict.

The Texas law is being challenged by advocacy groups representing the tech industry.

In court papers, the groups called the law “an unprecedented assault on the editorial discretion of private websites.” They warn it “would compel platforms to disseminate all sorts of objectionable viewpoints—such as Russia’s propaganda claiming that its invasion of Ukraine is justified, ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is war- ranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust, and encouraging children to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior like eating disorders.”

In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had argued that HB 20 does not infringe on tech platforms’ speech rights.

The legal battle attracted “friend of the court” briefs from interested parties including groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP who had urged the Court to block the law, arguing it will “transform social media platforms into online repositories of vile, graphic, harmful, hateful, and fraudulent content, of no utility to the individuals who currently engage in those communities.”

A group of states led by Florida also submitted a Court filing defending Texas’s law. The friend-of-the-court brief, which was authored by a dozen states including Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky and South Carolina, among others, reflects how the legal battle over HB 20 has nationwide ramifications.

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Technology

YouTubers are sick of comment spam, so YouTube is testing a stricter moderation system

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Many big YouTube creators have expressed frustration with an increase in comment spam on their channels in recent weeks, including Linus Tech Tips, Jacksepticeye, and MKBHD. The problem has been particularly acute for these high-profile creators, who often see more malicious commenters impersonate them in an attempt to scam their viewers.

“YouTube has a problem. Spam,” Linus Sebastian said to start a February 1st video on his Linus Tech Tips channel. “From crypto scams to health supplements to free Robux, it just keeps getting worse with each passing day.”

“YouTube comments spam has been next-level out of control for months,” reads the description for Marques “MKBHD” Brownlee’s April 1st video titled “YouTube Needs to Fix This.”

YouTube comment spam can take many forms. Major creators are often concerned about spam that impersonates them, promises viewers something good for messaging them, and then directs individuals off YouTube in some way to eventually scam them.

Other spam comments can be less overtly malicious but still annoying or potentially harmful. In a March 6th video, Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin discusses how his channel will get copy-pastes of genuine-looking comments, but they’ll be shared by users with names like “T[A]P Me!! To Have [S]EX With Me”. (If you see a profile with that name, do not click or tap on it.)

YouTube does have many tools to combat spammy comments, and it removes a huge amount of them automatically. Using machine learning and human review, the company removed “over 950 million comments for violating our policies around spam, misleading and scams” in Q4 2021 alone, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement to The Verge. “The vast majority” of those removals were first detected by automated flagging systems,” Choi said.

But those systems clearly haven’t been enough, and YouTube seems to know it. Brownlee posted Friday about a new experimental moderation feature that will “increase strictness” of potentially inappropriate comments that get automatically held for review. YouTube began testing the enhanced feature in December 2021, spokesperson Mariana De Felice said, and she noted that the company first rolled out the feature to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review in 2016.

It sounds as if YouTube is watching the issue closely. “Given the evolving nature and shifting tactics of spammy content, we’ll continue to adapt our systems to stay current,” Choi said. And creators can also take comment spam into their own hands — both Sebastian and Brownlee mentioned the “YouTube Spammer Purge” tool made by YouTuber ThioJoe, which “allows you to filter and search for spammer comments on your channel and other’s channel(s) in many different ways AND delete/report them all at once,” according to the GitHub description.

But for YouTube creators who are fielding many spammy comments right now, it’s not clear if there may be a reprieve anytime soon.

Update April 8th, 5:09PM ET: Added additional context from YouTube on the “increase strictness” feature.



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Health

5 Best Healthy Cooking Oils, According to Nutritionists—and Which Ones to Avoid or Use in Moderation

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No matter your diet, you likely cook with some amount of oil: It’s often an essential ingredient in preparing vegetables, meats, eggs, sauces, and more, providing texture, lubrication, and taste, too. But not all cooking oils are created equal when it comes to nourishment.

“A healthy cooking oil is an oil that is predominately made of monounsaturated fatty acids or omega 3 fatty acids,” explains Kylene Bogden, R.D. and co-founder of the nutrition coaching group FWDfuel.

But an oil’s composition in the bottle is only part of the picture when it comes to its healthfulness. The other critical piece is its smoke point, or the temperature at which the oil is no longer stable. Oils have a range of smoke points, and you shouldn’t use them to cook at a temperature above this point. So depending on what you’re cooking, the healthiest cooking oil is also going to be one that stands up to high heat.

“Each oil has a different smoke point, which is the temperature at which the oil begins to break down and produce harmful compounds,” explains Noah Quezada, R.D.N. and CEO of Noah’s Nutrition. “It’s important to use oils with a high smoke point when cooking since overheating oils can lead to the release of harmful chemicals.”

Of course, to benefit from a cooking oil’s nutritive potential, you must actually want to use it. Wendy Bazilian, DrPH, R.D.N, recommends selecting your oils with this three-prong test: “Are they nutritive oils themselves and can they handle the heat? Not to mention do you like the flavor of them so you’d gain the benefits by actually using them?” She notes that tasty oils “can help make foods we need more of in the diet—like vegetables—more delicious and perhaps easier thus to eat more of.”

Read on to learn what nutritionists say are the best healthy cooking oils—as well as some oils to avoid.

What makes cooking oil healthy?

A healthy cooking oil is one that is low in saturated and trans fats, and high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. “When any of these replace a less healthy oil or are blended with another oil, that can be a win for health,” Bazilian explains.

The American Heart Association recommends choosing oils with less than four grams of saturated fat per tablespoon, and no partially hydrogenated oils or trans fats, notes Amy Adams, R.D.N.

The healthiest cooking oils to use

Olive oil

Extra-virgin olive oil is often considered a great oil for cooking because it is filled with heart-healthy monounsaturated fats, explains Dana Ellis Hunnes, a senior dietitian at UCLA Medical Center and the author of Recipe For Survival: What You Can Do to Live a Healthier and More Environmentally Friendly Life. These are anti-inflammatory and beneficial for lowering LDL cholesterol levels. “However, it does not have a high smoke point and is best used as a dressing on salad, or a topper for pasta, or for a low-slow cook,” she says. “Its low smoke point is due to the fact it contains more of the microparticles from the olives themselves—[resulting in] the greener color.”

Regular olive oil also is healthy, and is still full of monounsaturated fats, but not quite as anti-inflammatory as it has been processed more and some of those plant-nutrients (phytonutrients) have been removed. “It can however be cooked at a higher temperature, higher smoke point, and therefore is better for pan-frying and searing,” Hunnes explains.

Peanut oil

Especially popular in Asian cuisines, this is another healthy monounsaturated oil that has a very high smoke point and can be used to deep-fat fry, although such a preparation method would “negate its health benefits,” Hunnes says. “It is an oil that does not have much flavor, despite its peanut derivative,” she adds, and that can be desirable for taste neutrality and versatility in dishes.

Avocado oil

Refined avocado oil has a high smoke point of 520 degrees (and unrefined at 375 degrees). It’s also filled with monounsaturated fats, and it’s good for baking as it’s nearly flavorless.

“Avocado oil is a good cooking oil and carries along with it some, though certainly not all, of the nutrition that the whole avocado has,” Bazilian says. (As a practical matter, Adams adds, “though avocado oil is fine for sautéing, it is quite expensive.”)

Canola oil

Canola oil has a smoke point of 400 to 450 degrees and is low in saturated fat. And because it doesn’t have much flavor, Quezada says, “this makes it a good option for recipes that call for subtle flavors.”

Chia oil

This oil is less familiar to casual cooks in the U.S. but is starting to make its presence known, Bazilian says. She recommends it as a healthy oil because “it has a very high smoke point and is stable at high temps due to its high antioxidants that remain in the cooking oil.”

What makes an “unhealthy” cooking oil?

Although our reporting suggests plenty of subjectivity even among registered nutritionists, some oils are typically considered unhealthy because they contain high levels of saturated and/or unhealthy unsaturated fats. “Partially hydrogenated oils found in items like shortening are the most unhealthy because they usually contain trans fats,” Adams explains. “Trans fats are man-made fats created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil.”

Trans fats simultaneously lower your “good” cholesterol (HDL) while raising your “bad” cholesterol (LDL), and have been linked to heart disease. To determine if you are cooking with trans fats, look out for “partially-hydrogenated oil” on the ingredients list.

Without even looking at the label or researching the ingredients, you can tell which oils contain saturated fat because they are solid at room temperature, Adams explains.

Bogden adds, “Oils that are less than ideal to use are very refined and contain a higher omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, a ratio that if consumed routinely can contribute greatly to inflammation.”

Cooking oils to use in moderation

  • Palm oil is high in palmitic acid, “a type of saturated fat that has been linked to increased risk for heart disease and other chronic illnesses,” Quezada explains.
  • Butter is high in saturated fat as well as trans-fatty acids, “which have been shown to increase the risk for heart disease,” he says.
  • Sunflower oil has a high smoke point, “but it contains a lot of omega 6 fatty acids,” according to Lisa Young, Ph.D. and registered nutritionist. “Too many omega 6s are considered pro-inflammatory, and eating too many omega 6s without balancing with omega 3s could lead to inflammation, so you may want to limit this oil.”
  • Margarine contains an unhealthy combination of saturated and trans fats.

    What’s the deal with coconut oil?

    Among the many dietitians who contributed feedback for this story, coconut oil was controversial. Some called it healthy; others didn’t.

    “Depending upon who you ask, some people love coconut oil while others think it should be avoided. This is because of its high saturated fat content,” Dr. Young explains. “Coconut oil is mostly saturated fat as compared to other plant oils. The American Heart Association advises replacing foods high in saturated fat like coconut oil with foods that are high in unsaturated fats like olive oil.”

    Because it has a high smoke point, it’s good for cooking—but because of its high saturated fat content, it should be consumed in moderation, she says.

    Bazilian agrees with the approach. “Coconut oil, which has received lots of attention, is actually a saturated fat, but shorter chain and can be used in moderation,” she says.

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    Health

    Australian alcohol guidelines: Experts reveal drinking in moderation could harm your health

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    Drinking what most might consider to be a moderate amount of alcohol could be harming your health and mental wellbeing, experts have found.

    New guidelines released by the Australian Drug and Alcohol Foundation advise both men and women to have no more than 10 standard drinks per week and no more than four standard drinks on any one day.

    Consuming more than the recommended amount has been linked to myriad health issues including cancer, heart and liver disease, Alzheimer’s, weight gain and premature ageing, as well as brain fog, anxiety, and depression.

    But researchers have warned a standard drink might be less than you think, with bottles of beer and glasses of wine often coming in well over the threshold.

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    Drinking what most might consider to be a moderate amount of alcohol could be seriously harming your health, experts have found (stock image)

    What is a standard drink in Australia?

    Spirits 40% alcohol, 30ml nip

    Wine 13% alcohol, 100ml average serving

    Sparkling wine 13% alcohol, 100ml

    Full strength beer 4.9% alcohol, 285ml glass

    Light beer 2.7% alcohol, 425ml glass

    Cider 4.9% alcohol, 285ml glass

    Source: Australian Drug and Alcohol Foundation

    Australian standard drinks contain 10g of alcohol and include a 285ml full-strength beer, a 100ml glass of wine, or 30ml of spirits such as vodka, whisky, or gin. 

    The recommendations, developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council, reiterate historic advice for under 18s and pregnant or breastfeeding women to abstain from alcohol to prevent damage to the brain and their babies.

    Drinking alcohol has been shown to impact brain development up until the age of 25, affecting their attention span, memory, and decision-making.

    But the damage doesn’t stop there.

    Alcohol accelerates the ageing process, impacting your appearance, blood pressure and your memory, not to mention increasing your risk of cancer, liver and heart disease.  

    Earlier this year, a study led by imperial College London revealed a startling connection between small volumes of alcohol and brain damage.

    Increased alcohol intake was linked to less grey matter in the brain, more fat in the liver and a larger mass in the left ventricle of the heart, the research which looked at MRI scans of 10,000 drinkers in late middle age showed.

    Brain shrinkage has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, while excess liver fat can lead to liver disease.

    The study suggests those who ‘drink responsibly’, below 14 units a week – the equivalent of six medium glasses of wine  – still damage their bodies.

    But the good news is that as little as four weeks of sobriety can dramatically improve your health and mental wellbeing –  provided the temporary abstinence leads to a more moderate and mindful approach to drinking in the long run.

    Dietitians and fitness experts claim even short periods without alcohol improves memory, mental clarity and sleep, as well as promoting weight loss and reducing pressure on the liver which starts to cleanse itself just one hour after your last drink.

    Going sober will also boost your bank balance, with the average Australian household estimated to save $1,778 a year simply by avoiding alcohol. 

    The good news is that as little as four weeks of sobriety can dramatically improve health and mental wellbeing – provided the temporary abstinence leads to a more moderate and mindful approach to drinking in the long run

    Five reminders that will help you stay sober

    When you drink alcohol… 

    1. You decrease the functionality of your executive brain and start listening to your primal brain. You become an animal searching for your next peak.

    2. You don’t care what’s in the substances you get offered because you just want to reach that peak. 

    3. Your body is hot and cold. Your eyes are fuzzy. Your mouth is dry and you can’t speak. You don’t care that your body isn’t functioning properly because you need to reach that peak.

    4. You make inappropriate calls at all hours and have inappropriate conversations because you need connection to feed that peak even more.

    5. You become powerless and lose control. You lose your true self and become this person who doesn’t care about anything but that peak.

    Source: It’s Not Me, It’s Booze

    Returns control of your life and enhances mental clarity  

    Doctors say abstaining from alcohol for as little as one month enhances concentration and decision-making, while also reducing the risk of mental health issues including anxiety and depression.

    Marketing manager turned sober life coach Melissa Lionnet, who gave up alcohol in 2020 after 10 years of daily drinking left her struggling to get out of bed, attests to this.

    ‘No question, 100 percent with both myself and my clients, I have seen clarity improve in a matter of weeks,’ Ms Lionnet told Daily Mail Australia.

    ‘People just back themselves, they make quicker, clearer decisions and trust their instincts much more so than when they were drinking.’

    Sydney sobriety coach Melissa Lionnet (left, with a glass of alcohol-free wine in 2021 and right, in 2019) quit drinking after more than a decade of abusive consumption

    Improves sleep and gives you more energy 

    After a night of binge drinking, studies show the body is woken by a shot of adrenaline and cortisol – the stress hormone – which wreaks havoc with the natural sleep cycle.

    Binge drinking is defined as drinking five or more drinks for men, and four or more drinks for women, within a two-hour period.

    Of 800 Australian ‘Dry January’ – the UK equivalent of Dry July – participants in 2018, 71 per cent reported sleeping more deeply and feeling more refreshed in the morning throughout their month of abstinence.

    This improvement is linked to the depressive effect alcohol has on the nervous system, which includes significantly reduced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the restorative stage where the body repairs cells and dreams occur.

    While Ms Lionnet agrees that giving up alcohol will improve your sleep in the long run, she warns it could take a few weeks for your body to adjust to going to bed sober.

    Since quitting alcohol, Ms Lionnet (pictured in 2021) feels more motivated than she has in years and no longer struggles to get out of bed in the mornings

    ‘It really depends on how much you drink,’ she said. 

    ‘Alcohol reduces the quality of sleep, but if you have it in your head that you need to be drunk to sleep, you could be restless and distressed so you’ll need to start by unwiring that thinking.’

    For this reason, Ms Lionnet advises heavy drinkers to enlist the help of a therapist or sobriety coach before embarking on a challenge like Dry July.

    She also recommends joining a sober support group on social media to meet like-minded friends who will help you to stay on track.

    Accelerates weight loss and reduces cravings for junk food

    Drinking contributes to weight gain by reducing the body’s ability to burn fat, accelerating appetite and inhibiting our ability to make healthy food choices.

    Alcohol ‘physiologically makes you crave certain foods’, Australian personal trainer and nutrition coach Sarah Hopkins warns, which opens the flood gates to overeating even when you weren’t hungry to begin with.

    ‘If there is a bowl of chips in front of you and you don’t feel like them, you won’t eat them,’ Ms Hopkins said in an episode of the Elevate podcast in December 2019.

    ‘If you have a glass of wine you will eat that whole bowl because it increases your appetite. It makes you eat more.’ 

    James Swanwick, 45, founder of Alcohol Free Lifestyle, said he lost five kilos in the space of one month when he quit alcohol in 2010, while Melissa Lionnet reported losing four kilos in the same time frame.

    She said her hair also thickened and her skin became ‘so much brighter’.

    Australian personal trainer and nutrition coach Sarah Hopkins (left) says alcohol psychologically causes us to crave food, even when we’re not hungry

    Benefits to gut health is the primary reason Australian yoga and Ayurveda teacher Amanda Nog supports the concept of a month on the dry.

    Ms Nog said part of the reason we feel anxious and depressed after drinking is because of the effect alcohol has on the neurotransmitters – particularly serotonin – produced in the gut. 

    Serotonin is one of the most important hormones in the human body, responsible for stabilising mood and promoting happiness as well as supporting communication between brain cells and other cells in the nervous system.

    It also plays a vital role in digestion, sleep and blood sugar regulation – meaning any sort of deficiency is guaranteed to harm overall well-being in a major way.

    Benefits to gut health is the primary reason Australian yoga and Ayurveda teacher Amanda Nog (pictured) supports the concept of a month on the dry

    Detoxifies the blood and liver

    While knocking back red wine may be marketed as an attractive way to increase your antioxidant intake, Sydney dietitian Lee Holmes says any nutritional value of alcohol is cancelled out by the damage is does to your health.

    ‘At its core, alcohol is a depressant, which means that when it reaches the brain, it slows down the body’s systems,’ Ms Holmes told Daily Mail Australia.

    ‘Because alcohol is difficult for the body to process and is absorbed quickly, even in the short term it places extra pressure on the liver, as the liver can only process one drink per hour.’  

    Blood samples taken from drinkers who abstained from alcohol for 31 days showed a reduction in blood cancer proteins, lower blood pressure and a reduction in fatty tissue around the liver, a 2018 study from the British Medical Journal found.  

    Mr Swanwick – the creator of Project 90, a sobriety programme which helps people quit drinking for at least 90 days – said his doctor found a drop in his blood pressure, cholesterol and resting heart rate just 30 days after he stopped drinking.

    Sydney dietitian Lee Holmes (pictured) says any nutritional value of alcohol is cancelled out by the damage is does to your mental and physical health

    Australia’s growing sober scene

    While many are rapt to return to the pub after gruelling lockdowns in NSW and Victoria, almost two million Australians are now living an alcohol-free lifestyle.

    Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal more than a quarter of Australians (28.9 per cent) are mostly abstaining from alcohol, while a further 9.5 per cent are drinking less than they were this time last year. 

    The number of ex-drinkers in Australia is estimated to have risen from 1.5million to 1.9million over the past four years.

    This growing sober scene is largely fuelled by hordes of Instagram influencers including fitness mogul Kayla Itsines, 30, who says she hasn’t touched a drop since the age of 19.

    Kayla Itsines (pictured) has been famously teetotal since the age of 19 after having nothing but negative experiences with hangovers and sickness

    Also riding the sober train is Olympic beach volleyball star, Mariafe Artacho del Solar, who rarely drinks alcohol because she feels ‘comfortable’ in her own skin and has ‘just as much fun without it’.

    The right-side defender, 27, who won a silver medal with partner, Taliqua Clancy, 29, at the Tokyo games in August, says she has never been a big drinker and can count on one hand the number she has in a year.

    ‘Personally I’ve just never really found the enjoyment. I don’t mind having one or two every now and then, but I don’t need it for confidence,’ she told Daily Mail Australia in October.

    And it seems the hospitality industry is taking note.

    Australian Olympic volleyball star Mariafe Artacho del Solar (pictured) rarely drinks alcohol because she feels ‘comfortable’ in her own skin and has ‘just as much fun without it’

    Australia’s first-ever non-alcoholic bar Brunswick Aces opened its doors in Melbourne on May 1, pouring a menu of more than 100 alcohol-free beers, wines and cocktails to teetotal punters.

    But while many coped with lockdown by turning away from the bottle, more than 18 months of restrictions has sent a worrying number of Australians into a spiral of heavy drinking.

    Household alcohol spending skyrocketed across Australia after coronavirus turned normality on its head, with Aussies dropping a staggering $2billion more than usual on booze last year.

    Drinkers spent an average of $1,891 per household on alcohol in 2020 – an increase of $270 on the 2019 total, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.

    The alarming trend worsened in the winter of 2020 when Melbourne’s five million residents were forced into a type of protective custody during the world’s harshest lockdown which lasted more than four months.

    Victoria’s alcohol services experienced a surge in demand as locked-down residents turned to the bottle, with a survey from the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association revealing alcohol featured either ‘a lot more’ or ‘a bit more’ as a drug of concern.

    A former drinker’s top three tips for giving up alcohol 

    1. Connect with the sober community

    ‘This can be done in whatever way works for you, but whether it’s AA, a local support group or an online forum, you need to be reaching out and talking to people,’ Ms Lionnet said.

    2. Learn about alcohol

    One of the things Ms Lionnet believes has kept her from relapsing is educating herself about what alcohol consumption really does to the human body.

    Books she recommends include Holly Whitaker’s ‘Quit Like A Woman’ and ‘Annie’s Naked Mind’ by Annie Grace.

    3. Simultaneous self-discovery

    Ms Lionnet believes you need to understand why you are drinking if you want to stop.

    ‘You need to find out what experiences have caused you to drink and resolve them at the root,’ she said.

    This can be done through therapy, participating in alcohol-free challenges or anything that works on transforming your beliefs to align with your true moral values, Ms Lionnet says. 

    Source: It’s Not Me It’s Booze

    Bingeing is already taking a toll on the nation’s health.

    A revolutionary health calculator developed by AIA Vitality recently claimed Australians are ageing a staggering nine years faster than they should be.

    The free five-minute test gives an alarming insight into the true ‘health age’ of Australians by analysing the answers to a range of behavioural questions about diet, exercise and most importantly, alcohol consumption. 

    A 2019 study funded by St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne found excess alcohol consumption causes more harm to Australians’ physical and mental wellbeing than any drug, surpassing both crystal methamphetamine (ice) and heroin.

    For support for alcohol-related problems and addiction you can contact Turning Point Services, or one of the many other services available, speak to your GP, local health service or call a helpline. 

    There are trained telephone counsellors available in all Australian states and territories.



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    Business

    Facebook VIP Program Allows Celebs to Avoid Moderation

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    Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)

    For years, Facebook has operated a little known program called “XCheck,” which allows celebrities, politicians, and other members of America’s elite to elude the kinds of moderation policies that the average user is subject to, a new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals.

    Though the company has frequently professed to treat everybody equally, the program suggests Facebook has a tiered system of treatment for users that, much like the rest of American society, allows certain powerful, well-to-do individuals to basically play by their own rules.

    Also known as “cross check,” the program was ostensibly created as a “quality control” mechanism for moderation, meant to add an extra layer of review to incidents involving high-profile users. However, in reality, it has functionally worked as a means of side-stepping actual enforcement in such cases—thus avoiding unwanted “PR fires.”

    Since its inception, Facebook has struggled to define its approach to moderation. With some 2.8 billion users and overrun by an ongoing deluge of troubling content, misinformation, and other issues, the social media giant has spent recent years hiring small armies of contractors to monitor and moderate the content that pops up on its platform. Banning or punishing a user for their content becomes more tricky the more prominent they are.

    So while kicking a rowdy celebrity or politician off its platform can be a big, risky undertaking, XCheck essentially allows the company to stall or forego taking such enforcement actions, thus avoiding controversy altogether.

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    This process has apparently morphed into a system that, today, protects “millions of VIP users” from the same kind of scrutiny as normal, everyday users, the Wall Street Journal reports. Many such users are “whitelisted,” basically making them immune from enforcement—and allowing them to post inflammatory content, such as misinformation or “posts [that] contain harassment or incitement to violence,” the likes of which would get a normal user booted.

    Recipients of such privileges have included former President Donald Trump (prior to his 2-year suspension from the platform earlier this year), his son Donald Trump Jr., rightwing commentator Candace Owens, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, among others. In most cases, individuals who are “whitelisted” or given a pass on moderation enforcement are unaware that it is happening.

    Employees at Facebook seem to have been aware that XCheck is problematic for quite some time. “We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” company researchers said in a 2019 memo entitled “The Political Whitelist Contradicts Facebook’s Core Stated Principles.” “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences.”

    When asked for comment on the recent report, Facebook referred Gizmodo to comments recently made by the company’s communications officer, Andy Stone, via Twitter. Stone pointed to previous comments Facebook had made about its program, arguing that the program didn’t represent a bifurcated system of justice but, rather, a work-in-progress that admittedly needs some revamping.

    “As we said in 2018: “‘Cross-check’ simply means that some content from certain Pages or Profiles is given a second layer of review to make sure we’ve applied our policies correctly.” There aren’t two systems of justice; it’s an attempted safeguard against mistakes.”

    Stone further added that Facebook knew the program needed to be improved. “We know our enforcement is not perfect and there are tradeoffs between speed and accuracy,” Stone went on. “The WSJ piece repeatedly cites Facebook’s own documents pointing to the need for changes that are in fact already underway at the company. We have new teams, new resources and an overhaul of the process that is an existing work-stream at Facebook.”



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