Twitter House Oversight Hearing and Seattle Sues Kia and Hyundai
Twitter House Oversight Hearing and Seattle Sues Kia and Hyundai
Five hours I'll never get back and a tale of two public nuisance cases
In This Issue:
Thoughts regarding the Twitter Congressional Oversight hearing
Public nuisance complaint by same firm that filed the Seattle Public School’s Complaint, but this one is for City of Seattle and related to cars.
Poem for 2023.02.10
Out and About Photo for 2023.02.10
House Representatives Upset Over 2020 October Surprise Hold Hearing to Gripe and Promote Rumors
I watched the nearly 5 hour hearing regarding Twitter thanks to C-Span.
I thought it was a mostly missed opportunity to gain a better idea about moderation decision making at a large social media company like Twitter. Most of the focus was on trying to rekindle grievance for the temporary suspension of a NY Post article back in 2020. It is a bit strange that the Republican House majority members are taking this track considering 2016-2020 was a time when Republican Donald Trump was President of the United States in charge of the executive branch. Trump was also a prolific Twitter poster (and currently posts a lot on his own social media platform), and his posts featured in the January 6th Insurrection Committee hearings (my writing on those hearings in the link).
I would recommend taking a look at my prior writing on Twitter to help understand why a lot of the discourse regarding Twitter is moot from a First Amendment standpoint. Not that there aren’t philosophical conversations to be had regarding free expression more broadly, or what’s the best terms of service for a platform that maximizes that as a goal.
There were a couple e-mails presented that showed contact with federal employees, but no evidence of actual coercion or quid-pro-quo. The unspoken premise is what I suspect is feigned (or actual?) ignorance about the day-to-day existence of an international social media company that has to figure out practical ways to apply its moderation policies based on its terms of service policies.
All of the people questioned by the Committee were former Twitter employees that no longer had access to their prior company email accounts. Yet, these congressmen were asking them things that would need to be corroborated using that access. I found this annoying, and thought it showed a lack of preparedness on their part, because they likely could have subpoenaed these records from Twitter and use them as part of their questioning. The congress-critters did make repeat reference to The Twitter Files, which was when the newest Twitter owner, Elon Musk, had company documents ingested into an ediscovery platform, and then picked journalists that appear to have near-zero familiarity with ediscovery platforms to ‘find’ documents to release via Twitter.
I kept wondering with all the references to The Twitter Files, why they didn’t also subpoena Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and/or Elon Musk. What ediscovery platform and methods did they use? What search terms were used? What was the doc universe composed of (amount, custodians, dates, etc)? Speaking as someone who has done a bunch of these, and listening to interviews these reporters have given since then, they make it sound like it was a clusterf**k crunched for time. This kind of non-transparent process does not inspire a lot of confidence with me, especially when it seems like there is a lot of working backwards from conclusions, along with a lot of read between the lines sort of talk.
The committee hearing was mostly preoccupied with the NY Post Twitter account grievance. There was a lot of referencing to a laptop, that supposedly the FBI took possession of under President Trump, and which Rudolph Giuliani and Steve Bannon apparently also have copies of its harddrive. Copies that they’ve been sitting on for over a couple years now, and haven’t had too much to say about apart from rumoring that it’s a “smoking gun” on the current President’s son. Usually people don’t sit on those for this long, hence I think the bullshit detectors are understandably going off for some people and some of the ridicule is deserved. [In writing this piece I found a sarcastic takedown of this position via The Twitter Files last December from The Defector that some may find funny.]
Why not subpoena Bannon or Guiliani? Why not subpoena the laptop? Has any forensic analysis been done and by whom? What is the chain-of-custody of the material? These are the basic questions one might have if one were actually sincere about the purpose of this committee.
Instead, we got to see congressmen gish-galloping, and others that have a potential body-movement/neurological disorder, which made it hard to follow at times. Representatives Boebart and Greene, took time to demand exactly who it was that limited the reach of their posts on the platform, or otherwise cited their tweets for various terms of service violations. They didn’t care so much why their posts may have been a violation, they just seemed personally pissed. Boebart made a remark to Section 230 protections, which would really devastate Twitter and other social media platforms (including this one), but the statement didn’t really develop beyond an idle threat (accusation of acting as editors rather than merely publishers).
I did learn that when Chrissy Teigen called then President Donald Trump a “Pussy-Ass Bitch” in response to his heckling, the former President complained directly to Twitter for them to censor Teigen’s post. Twitter apparently has a list of the former President’s compatriots in government also pressuring Twitter while in office regarding posts they wanted censored.
I also learned from the hearing that Twitter changed their moderation policy to be more accommodating of the former President’s tweet behavior, particularly when it came to disparaging immigrants. It sounded like it was a bit of not wanting to lose a golden goose. This kind of allowance seems to track with prior research that algorithms on Twitter have a bias to surfacing rightwing politicians and news outlets (I suspect it’s more to do with outrage baiting than being ideological per se).
What are the policy recommendations supposed to come out of this exercise? Current Twitter owner, Elon Musk, stated he’s not going to let Twitter descend into a free-for-all “hellscape.” Musk has also demonstrated his own capacity to be capricious towards his perceived opponents, and otherwise bends the knee to other government’s speech standards. Even if one contends that Twitter (or social media companies broadly) should be treated akin to a public utility, it still is going to have terms of service. It’s still going to have moderation issues. Concerns about how they balance those decisions with regards to speech and public safety, are valid concerns, but it is still likely going to be groups of people attempting to apply a company policy, and it won’t be perfect. I suspect on average, it will probably be better than a moderation policy that goes by whim alone.
City of Seattle sues Kia and Hyundai for exporting versions of cars that can be stolen with a screwdriver or USB
Last issue I wrote about the Seattle Public School District filing a claim of public nuisance against multiple social media conglomerates. I’m skeptical of its ability to succeed as a public nuisance claim.
Since then, the City of Seattle filed suit against Kia and Hyundai under a claim of public nuisance. I am more optimistic about the prospects for this public nuisance claim.
The main difference is that the city v. cars lawusit does not have the procedural and substantive issues that the school district v. social media lawsuit has.
The social media suit is complicated by having to thread the needle with Section 230 (content) and algorithmic advertising, and because the public area at issue are school grounds. Plus, the nuisance is the social media companies via student behavior that is arguably not a nuisance off school grounds. There are also some issues with the studies used and areas of non-specificity when it comes to content. As someone informed me, one area is that a lot of people use YouTube like a radio station, and listen to music (or podcasts) when they do other things. Myself included, shoutout to LoFi beats to relax/study to:
The schools also have parental-like powers to exert over students while on campus, so it’s not like they don’t have a recourse, and this is further complicated if this behavior is being done using school computers (district not mitigating via I.T. blocking such applications).
With Kia and Hyundai, these cars are on the roadways/public right-of-ways, which is more where the bulk of law is at regarding public nuisance in Washington State. From the complaint:
Defendants’ conduct has led to the “obstruct[ion] or encroach[ment] upon public highway[s], private ways, streets, alleys, commons, landing places, and ways to burying places” and also has interfered with the flow of municipal transit vehicles and public traffic, as well as generally interfering with the provision or use of public transportation services, thus constituting a nuisance of the kind specifically enumerated and prohibited under RCW 7.48.140(4).
Essentially, among all cars currently on the roadways, they are incredibly easy to steal because they lack industry standard anti-theft technology. The anti-theft technology IS INCLUDED in other markets like Canada and Europe. Plaintiffs allege a clear remedy available to the manufacturers:
Once vehicle theft of Hyundai and Kia models skyrocketed, further expanding the public nuisance, Defendants could have easily abated the public nuisance by issuing a recall and/or spending approximately $500 per vehicle to install immobilizer devices.
It is such a deviation from prior models that insurance companies have stopped providing coverage to certain Kia and Hyundai models.
Since 1966 there have been standards put forward on passenger vehicles sold in the USA that would cover the Kia and Hyundai models at issue in the complaint. There is one specifically regarding theft protection (as cited in the complaint):
S5.1
Theft Protection
S5.1.1 Each vehicle must have a starting system which, whenever the key is removed from the starting system prevents: (a) The normal activation of the vehicle’s engine or motor; and (b) Either steering, or forward self-mobility, of the vehicle, or both. . . .
S5.2.2 Except as specified in S5.2.4, the vehicle must be designed such that the transmission or gear selection control cannot move from the “park” position, unless the key is in the starting system.1
Hyundai requested an exemption for vehicle theft prevention standards for its ‘non-premium’ models for some of its cars, claiming that they’d be at least as effective as GM and Ford cars. Apparently, they were not.2
Nothing is 100% certain in any lawsuit, but in terms of public nuisance complaints the one filed by the City of Seattle appears to be in a much stronger plaintiff position than the social media suit filed by the Seattle Public School District.
Poem for 2023.02.10
Near gale shifts high walls
Blast of rain hits metal roof
Darkened rooms echo
Out and About Photo for 2023.02.10
This is not a spy satellite.
Page 26 of the Complaint