Internet Blackout: SOPA, Reddit, and Networked (Political) Publics

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This post has been cross-posted from Henry Jenkins’ blog.

If you don’t have time to read this article in full, the easiest way to skim information about this topic is to visit http://americancensorship.org/.

In the past year, we’ve dealt with various novel political moments around the world that have been enabled or augmented with networked technology, from Anonymous’ global “hacktivist” incidents to the numerous protests in the Middle East, topped off of course with the vibrant grassroots protests of the Occupy movement. Over the last few months, we’ve also seen another interesting case study taking place in American politics: rampant opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, dubbed as “the most important bill in Congress you may have never heard of” by Chris Hayes of MSNBC.com.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Watch Chris Hayes’ interview for a good introduction to the debate around SOPA.

SOPA, a bill currently making its way through the House of Representatives (along with its sibling PIPA, the Protect IP Act, currently in the Senate) has faced weeks of protest from Internet companies and users alike. Why? Well, on Google Plus, Sergey Brin — cofounder of Google — likened the potential effects of SOPA to the Internet censorship practiced in China, Iran, Libya, and Tunisia. Basically, to protect against international copyright infringement, SOPA allows the US to combat websites (such as file lockers or foreign link aggregators) that illegally distribute or even link to American-made media by blocking access to them. Theoretically, the bill has dangerous implications for websites that rely on user-generated content, from YouTube to 4chan. Many have already written about the worries that SOPA and PIPA cause, such as Alex Howard’s excellent, in-depth piece over at O’Reilly Radar. For more information on the bills, visit OpenCongress’s webpages, where you can see summaries of the legislation, which companies support and oppose them, and round-ups of by mainstream and blogged news: SOPA + PIPA. The bills are one more step in a long line of anti-piracy legislation, such as 2010′s Combatting online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).

Within the first few weeks since SOPA was introduced, http://fightforthefuture.org/ introduced the hyperbolic http://freebieber.org/ to illustrate the fears ordinary Internet users should have in relation to the legislation. In essence, SOPA would radically undermine many of the fan practices that Henry and others have analyzed on this blog. Fight for the Future also released the following video (which was my first media exposure to SOPA):

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31100268 w=400&h=225]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

However, for the most part, criticism — or even basic coverage — of SOPA remained an online phenomenon. While there have been a few online articles written on CNN and a couple other networks, the mainstream news coverage of the bills remain fairly nonexistent, reports MediaMatters, likely due to the fact that the television networks largely support the bill. The Colbert Report featured a pair of short segments on SOPA in early December.

The Internet, though, largely worked around that problem.

In his book, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, UCLA anthropologist Chris Kelty describes free software programmer-activists as a recursive public. Drawing from Michael Warner’s concept of “publics and counterpublics” from Habermas’s “public sphere,” Kelty illustrates these programmers as a group that is addressed by copyright and code, and who work to make, maintain, and modify their technological networks and code as well as the discourse with which they engage as a public. This “circularity is essential to the phenomenon.”

Especially over the past two months, we’ve seen an exceptional effort on the part of online companies to engage users with the political process to oppose SOPA. For instance, on 16 November 2011, Tumblr blacked out every image, video, and word on each user’s dashboard, linking at the top of the page to http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net, where users could call their local representative.

The effort set of thousands of shared posts and hundreds of hours of calls.

While other companies attempted similar experiments (like Scribd on 21 December), Internet leaders joined together to spread word and inform Congress (such as with this letter from Facebook, Google, and Twitter on 15 November, and later this letter by many others on 14 December) and even political opponents of SOPA reached out on social media, like when Senator Ron Wyden asked people to sign their names at so he could read the list at a filibuster. Other experts eventually spoke up too.

But perhaps the most intriguing political effort occurred within one specific online community: Reddit.com.

Reddit, founded in 2005, is a social news and discussion website where users submit and vote on content. According to Alexa.com, Reddit is currently the 53rd most-visited site in the United States. Due to its increasing popularity, Reddit’s slogan is “the front page of the internet” — pertinent, because when a link hits the front page of Reddit, it can lend hundreds of thousands of page views. Though members at times highlight the site’s immaturity and incivility, its vibrant community — combined with the hypervisibility of the front page, has particularly thrived over the past couple of years, especially in terms of political participation and charity. Co-founded Alexis Ohanian gave a TEDtalk about Reddit’s dedication to strange things online and when that translates into a sort of political participation:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Humorously, every activist-related post on the official Reddit blog is tagged with “do it for splashy.

In terms of more prominent political activism, Reddit’s community — particularly it’s subreddit, /r/politics, and the emergent subreddit /r/SOPA — has unified around opposing SOPA, in line with the free-speech, utopian personality that pervades the site. For instance, a couple posts on /r/politics and r/technology that reached the front page [1, 2] helped bring rapid visibility to Senator Wyden’s filibuster initiative.

A more effective protest occurred in the form of a website boycott. GoDaddy, the domain register, was discovered to be a supporter of SOPA. After some discussion on Reddit, one r/politics thread reached the front page: GoDaddy supports SOPA, I’m transferring 51 domains & suggesting a move your domain day. Visibility of SOPA-related content was aided by a new subreddit, r/sopa, to which a global sidebar linked from the Reddit homepage. Less than 24 hours after the boycott started (even though, by numbers, it was deemed hardly successful), and with two more /r/politics threads that reached the front page [1, 2], GoDaddy reversed their stance and dropped support for SOPA.

SOPA debate continued to be fueled by various posts, including one by cofounder Alexis Ohanian: If SOPA existed, Steve & I never could’ve started reddit. Please help us win.. At the end of December, r/politics joined together to place pressure on SOPA-supporting Representative Paul Ryan; eventually, he reversed his position and denounced the bill.

Most notably, Alexis Ohanian recently announced on the Reddit blog that the entire site would voluntarily shut down on Wednesday 18 January 2012 for twelve hours, from 8am-8pm EST. Replacing the front page will be “a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action.” This blacking out of Reddit coincides with a series of cybersecurity experts’ testimonies in Congress, at which Ohanian will be representing and speaking.

In reaction to SOPA (and PIPA, to which the opposition is now growing, since the SOPA vote has now been shelved), a vigorous public emerged across the web and united around discourse about the bills, particularly on Reddit.com. But to return to Kelty: is this a recursive public? Do the political users of Reddit have enough power and agency to maintain and modify their public?

I believe this question gets at a deeper question of ontology: what does political participation mean in a 1) networked, and 2) editable age? For instance, some users are able to promote their skills for discourse — eg., My friend and I wrote an application to boycott SOPA. Scan product barcodes and see if they’re made by a SOPA supporter. Enjoy. — but in certain cases, participation in technological systems becomes participation in a recursive public because that participation helps modify the system. In the case of Reddit, participation can become political when content reaches extreme visibility. And this is particularly important when we reconsider that the mass media has barely covered SOPA as a topic: due to this conflict, participation on a network platform like Reddit becomes an inherently political action.

And out of these seemingly-innocuous actions emerge more political moves. In reaction to the black out, other websites have agreed to join the effort, such as BoingBoing.net. Perhaps the decision with the most impact came on Monday, when Jimmy Wales announced that Wikipedia — which receives up to 25 million visitors per day at the English-language portal — would also shut down, but this time for a full 24 hours, after a lengthy discussion on Wales’ personal Wikipedia page. Wales responded to the announcement on Twitter by saying, “I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday.”

In a recent New York Times article, Reddit’s political actions were noted. “‘It’s encouraging that we got this far against the odds, but it’s far from over,’ said Erik Martin, the general manager of Reddit.com, a social news site that has generated some of the loudest criticism of the bills. ‘We’re all still pretty scared that this might pass in one form or another. It’s not a battle between Hollywood and tech, its people who get the Internet and those who don’t.” Of course, Reddit isn’t the only platform that is part of this important recursive public, just as Twitter wasn’t the saving grace of the Arab Spring or the Iranian Revolution. The efforts of hundreds of activists around the country have contributed immensely to the anti-SOPA effort. But keep in mind that Reddit has reached a pinnacle of political participation in the last few months, and I have a feeling that — like YouTube in the 2008 presidential elections — Reddit may be the site to watch in 2012.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student at USC Annenberg, where he studies digital culture and networked technology. Recently, his work has focused on creative participation in immense online networks, examining global participatory phenomenon like Hatsune Miku and Minecraft. You can reach him on Twitter @alexleavitt or via email at aleavitt@usc.edu; to read more about his research, visit alexleavitt.com.

Reflections of a “Book Pirate”

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Or, The Unintentional Consequences of Impersonal Social Media Systems

tl;dr – I was accused of being a book pirate for returning a book. (Picture of email below.)

Throughout the past semester — the first in my five-year PhD program — I’ve been trying to build out my personal Internet-and-digital-media-centric book library (inspired in part by the dozens of books my mentor, danah boyd has in her massive collection at Microsoft Research). Like most academics, I prefer physical copies of what I read, for the purpose of taking notes. The process of searching-and-buying has boiled down to me coming across interesting, new titles or texts I know I need to own but don’t and then going to Amazon.com to purchase a used copy (or new, if it’s below fifteen dollars).

I’m trying to be as frugal as possible, since I’ll probably end up buying dozens and dozens of books over the next couple of years; at the same time, I prefer clean physical copies, so if the new book is too expensive, I’ll scour the Used section for “Very Good” markers, making sure to note if the text has any folds or notes or highlights.

About a month ago, I remembered that I did not own a copy of Paul du Gay’s seminal media text, Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. While searching around, I also happened upon another book by du Gay, entitled Production of culture/cultures of production. This jumped out at me, because I’m doing a project on “open-source culture” and the production of digital creative works (see 1 and 2), and I figured this text might be relevant.

Without any further research, I (ignorantly) purchased the book: a “Used – Like New” copy for $6.79 with $3.99 shipping from tomweberfilms (5-star, 100% rating).

Eventually Poc/cop arrived; I flipped through the pristine copy. But I realized: it’s an undergraduate textbook. Fail.

Not that these types of books are necessarily bad: they’re actually really helpful for the citations at the end of each chapter. But a textbook with the sole purpose of occupying a place on an undergraduate syllabus isn’t the kind of material I’m willing to keep on my bookshelf.

So I waited a few weeks to return the book, since I had a handful of other items to return as well (in addition to the honest fact that I was busy at the end of the semester, plus being a bit lazy going about it, since the Amazon return policy is 30 days). Usually returning items on Amazon is fairly simple: you fill out a very short form stating the reason for returning the item and then print out a shipping label. Done. For example, if you return a piece of clothing that you buy via Amazon (or an Amazon affiliate), the options are:

  • Too small
  • Too large
  • Style not as expected
  • Ordered wrong style/size/color
  • Different from website description
  • Damaged during shipping
  • Different from what was ordered
  • Defective/Does not work properly
  • Arrived in addition to what was ordered
  • Better price available
  • Missed estimate delivery date
  • Accidental order
  • No longer needed/wanted

However, when you return an item to vendors that use Amazon to list and sell their items (but are not necessarily Amazon affiliates), you have to send them a message noting the reason for the return (literally “Submit for approval”) before they can endorse the transaction. When you select the reasons for a book, you get:

  • Accidental order
  • Better price available
  • Damanged due to inappropriate packaging
  • Missed estimated delivery date
  • Missing parts of accessories
  • Damaged during shipping
  • Different from what was ordered
  • Defective/Does not work properly
  • Arrived in addition to what was ordered
  • No longer needed/wanted
  • Unauthorized purchase
  • Different from website description

But none of these selections really fit the nuance of my situation: I simply realized after the purchase that I shouldn’t have ordered the book. Ultimately, I went with “No longer needed/wanted” and sent off the request for approval.

A day or two later, I received the following response:


Screenshot taken at 4:31pm PST, 18 December 2011

I got a refund… but if you didn’t catch it, let me cut out the important part:

Notes: You purchased this book three weeks ago and now you decide that you do not want/need the item. I believe you are taking advantage of the system. You had ample time to photocopy or scan the book at my expense. You may dispose of the book as you see fit.

… what? Was I just accused of being a book pirate? I was hilariously surprised, in response to this unexpected development (additionally unexpected because I still got the refund, including shipping), but also from a critical standpoint, with regard to the assumptions embedded in the response.

“I believe you are taking advantage of the system… at my expense.

Assumption: Users who purchase physical media on Amazon and return them (especially those who choose the “No longer needed/wanted” option) are clearly copying the object(s).
Assumption: The selection items in the return request accurately depict a motivation or intention of the consumer.
Assumption: The selection items over-empower the consumers and exploit the vendors.
Assumption: It takes three weeks to scan a 356-page book.

Perhaps the second point is the more interesting one to muse on: as a consumer, I don’t really think much about the option I choose as a reason for the return. But apparently, for the vendor, the reason provides a level of measurement regarding motivations and other unseen processes that elude Amazon’s merchant analytics dashboard.

The issue was resolved with a quick response email:

Me: Sorry about the lag in the return time. I understand the situation you described that the delay might imply. (Do you actually have a lot of experience with book piracy through Amazon? I wouldn’t have necessarily expected that, but I guess it makes sense…) I’d still like to return the book, if that’s an option.

Vendor: You sound like a good person and I’m sure you just didn’t get around to it. Sorry for the accusing tone of my e-mail, but I’m sure it happens that people buy books, scan them or make notes from them, and then return them. If you want to ship the book back to me, that would be appreciated. Whatever the lowest cost option is.

The piracy invocation still provoked a number of questions with regard to how unintended consequences can emerge from interactions in social media:

  • Does the vendor have a personal bias against media piracy?
  • Does the vendor have experience with book piracy through Amazon? If not, what is the motivation behind the accusation?
  • Has the vendor made these accusations to other customers in the past?
  • How does is the accusation situated in relation to the 5-star, 100% Amazon rating and (lack of negative) comments?
  • What does the vendor mean by “You may dispose of the book as you see fit?”

The situation, at least, provides a unique thought experiment about the role of social media — particularly socially-mediated systems, like Amazon, or more vaguely like ratings systems and response forms.

It seems like the current context of rapid and easy content circulation and the impersonal business-to-consumer relationships masquerading as social media consumer “engagement” has led to a conflux of hyperaware metrics (consumer tracking) with the uncertainty of social ingenuity (what some might call lifehacking). This is a situation that perhaps The Cluetrain Manifesto could not have predicted.

And it’s not like consumers are the only ones with the agency and power to exploit these systems. You’ve probably heard about Amazons’ $23,698,655.93 book about flies. More recently, on an episode of the GeekNights podcast, the hosts suggested that some vendors on Amazon are listing items that they don’t actually own (under the premise that they’ll buy the item for cheaper elsewhere in time to resell when the item is purchased).

Plainly, this incident is awkward, but at least it gave me a chance to sit down and think more about the role that social systems play in the coordination of communication, particularly in impersonal situations. I wonder if there have been other instances of assumptions embedded in or emergent from the use of neutral (more like “vague”) tagging systems to mediate transactions with the purpose of categorization, management, and metrics but from which materialize other unintended consequences. A cool study to do might be investigating the responses that vendors have to the types of form responses they receive — for example, do most vendors tend to have negative opinions of return requests they receive marked “no longer need/want”? How would reactions vary between the various possible drop-down responses.

It’s also interesting to weigh reactions like this against the cultural value of the ratings system. For instance, when I’m looking for a used book on Amazon, I’m mainly paying attention to the quality of the book. A difference of 100% and 90% in the stars-ratings of the store itself doesn’t necessarily faze me. Though I assume for the vendor, one negative review completely offsets their reputation within the marketplace (and I know that many eBay vendors have been particularly meticulous, even petulant, about grooming their ratings).

Oh, and of course an answer: no, I didn’t copy the book. (Though I have to admit, it’d be a pretty ingenious scheme, even if I’d probably use the library instead of Amazon.)

Edited 19 December 2011 for clarity.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student in the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he studies the internet. While he has actually never copied an entire book (and though he frequently scans chapters from dozens), he does ideologically support projects like http://www.diybookscanner.org/ that help disseminate values of free culture. For more frequent updates, you can find him on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

PhD in Internet

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There’s been a clear lack of updates for a while: sorry about that, just trying to get my Ph.D.

In reality, I’ve dug a hole for studying the Internet and digital culture at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where I’ve spent the last few months reading and researching as I begin a 5-year-long journey to a doctoral degree.

But I’m hoping to put a lot more content back into this blog over the next year. Look forward to a bunch of things you can actually read in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, you can always follow me @alexleavitt on Twitter.