Medium Terms of Service | Copyright | Facebook

Jumping on Bandwagons

Some thoughts on recent “debacles” and the timeliness of a story

Imagine you’re trying to catch a ride on the back of a truck. The truck seems to be moving slowly. You hesitate. You leap. Only to land, face first, in the muddy ruts of the wheels as the truck speeds away.

This is the visual I get, watching people publish articles on old happenings — sometimes just one or two day old happenings, as the world moves quickly, whether we do or not. “Breaking news,” but three days late. You have to wake up and jump much faster than that if you hope to be a journalist.

Now, if you wrote about Medium’s new Terms of Service, or the recent content theft (there have been at least two wholesale, behind-the-MPP scrapings of Medium in the past month, alone — did you know that?), or the random and unreasonable Facebook block of Medium links, or any other outrage-worthy topic, have you gone back to check your facts and update your stories for new readers?

The TOS Up

You see, Medium was very responsive to their members’ concerns. Not only did they reply to most of us by email in under 24 hours, they published a blog post clarifying the rationale for their changes. When that wasn’t enough to satisfy us, they incorporated much of that into the Terms of Service. Not everyone is fully satisfied, even now — but it demonstrates that Medium does not view the relationship with its members as completely one-sided and “take-it-or-leave-it.” I understand the need for them to strengthen their terms; they understand our concerns as writers.

I wrote three stories on this, and as new information came in, I updated them all. I won’t leave outdated questions in people’s minds about issues I’ve raised that may make writers think twice before joining and contributing to this platform.

Bottom line: I’ve decided to stick around. As they say, “Your mileage may vary.” But please let’s not leave outdated outrage hanging around to hurt a platform we love. Update your stories!

Don’t Let ICHI Make You Twitchy

First, let me just say that the next writer who posts a story about copyright theft that basically mimics the old, “If rape is inevitable, just lie back and enjoy it” sentiment will get blocked by me. Go check your stories, if you care, because I won’t bother commenting first. This is the only warning shot.

You own your content, just like you own your car. If you think your car is an old clunker and want to leave the keys in the ignition, along with a sign on the windshield inviting the local kids to take it for a free joyride every night, you do that.

But don’t tell me to “chill” if I choose not to.

Now that we have that out of the way, I realize that going after some of these little fly-by-night hoodlums on the Internet may only serve to give them undue attention, and traffic for their stats. They are not worth that much attention. But your work, and mine, is worth protecting. So say it with me, folks:

• Even my sloppiest writing is mine, and mine alone, unless I choose to give it away or sell it.
• Even my worst crap, stuck to the Internet wall like a child’s scribbling on a fridge magnet, has value.
• IF my writing has enough value to steal, it has enough value for the thief to pay me for it. Or at least enough value that they must have the courtesy to ask permission, of me, before using it. Which I will give to them — in writing — should I agree.
• I will send a DMCA take-down notice if my work is stolen. At minimum…
• I will notify other writers if I find evidence that their work has been stolen, in order to facilitate their issuing of a DMCA take-down notice, whether I deem it worth my own time to send a DMCA take-down notice for my own content or not.
• Copyright violations are not “flattering.” They are theft, pure and simple.

If you don’t know how to deal with copyright theft on the Internet, see this story. (Be sure to click the links in it — there are specific instructions and updates on recent incidents buried in it! Some unlisted, in order to both avoid notice and test how deep a scrape may go.)

I see stories saying that “Medium doesn’t care,” or “Medium isn’t acting on these fast enough.” Of course they are, and they do! But they can only issue a DMCA take-down based on a “compilation copyright” — on the site itself. Only a copyright owner can legally issue a copyright violation complaint on specific stories. So why can’t the big guns at Medium go after pissant thieves on your behalf? Well, you were insistent on retaining copyright ownership, and insistent on that being spelled out quite clearly in the Terms of Service. So, technically and legally, it’s your job to go after thieves.

Does that “sublicenseable licensing” clause not give them the right to act on our behalf, regarding this? Maybe. But you retain ownership, so you doing it will get results.

The only reason, whatsoever, to write to Medium, is to give them a heads-up to let them know it’s happening, if it’s a wholesale scrape of the site. Every email I received from them on these two recent scrapes had two important things:

• “We’re on it!”
• “You need to be on it, too” — with instructions on who to send the DMCA take-down request to. (Hint: It’s never Medium. It’s never going to be Medium, but if you really think you’re among the first to notice it, do tell them — just as I’d hope you’d tell any author if their work is being ripped off. This is a professional courtesy.)

Here’s an interesting wrinkle, by the way, when it comes to site scraping and copyright violation — beware the apps and scripts you run on your own site:

Not all copyright infringement is intentional. That doesn’t excuse it, but make sure to update any articles alleging a violation to include — or focus on — the real offender. And remove references to domains once a satisfactory solution is in place, unless they are deliberate, repeat offenders.

The Facebook Ban

Who knows what’s going on, here? Facebook appears to be somewhat randomly banning Medium links. Is it your publication? Is it you? Is it something you wrote? Yesterday, I wrote the following (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) story claiming responsibility for the ban:

Author Sharon Hurley Hall had a more troublesome take on this — particularly troublesome, as it appears that content censorship on multiple platforms is suppressing Black voices in a time when they most need to be heard:

I’m convinced it’s really just a badly-coded algorithm, not unlike what we saw as an overly-broad change to the Medium Terms of Service, as humans struggle to keep up with the propaganda and disinformation challenges of 2020 — a contentious election year in the U.S., and politically charged powder-keg worldwide, sprinkled with the spice of nihilistic trolls and armies of annoying bots. We thought we were ahead of the digital age, but the Internet has steam-rolled over us and is now laughing in our faces. Some days, I think the only solution is to pull the plug from the wall.

Oh, right — there is no wall. Nor do most of us want there to be one.

I bitch about Facebook (a lot, and with no remorse), but I also feel a little sorry for their rank-and-file employees. I do not feel sorry at all for Emperor Zuck, advisor to Presidents and other heads of state. He made his bed of nails, and I hope Congress and serious businesses sit on him while he lies on it. But see:

Is Facebook proactively blocking Medium posts because, as a large and popular self-publishing “blogging” platform, they can’t police the contents? Do they not have the means to scan our stories for content they’ve chosen to block? If that’s the case, I can’t say I blame them.

UPDATE: I found this, while digging around this afternoon for clues:

And, on the same day, Twitter announced their new Transparency Center:

I have, so far, had luck with sharing my stories — and Sharon’s “While Black” stories — using the sharing buttons at the top of each Medium story. So they may have just found the means to avoid anything that looks like automated posting or wholesale dumping of Medium links. Unfortunately, that also means we may not be able to share Friend links there.

Things I do know:

• The Facebook ban does not affect any single publication. It is not “just ILLUMINATION” or “just MuddyUm,” two publications I know have been affected.
• The Facebook ban does not always affect us in the same ways. For a while, I could share a link that had /@[username] in it, but others have reported that that does not always work, either.
• MORE TROUBLESOME: Sharon Hurley Hall has mentioned that some of her stories have posted successfully, only to disappear later. See the “UPDATE” above — I cannot imagine anything Sharon writes being lumped in with extremists, so at best, Faceberg is attempting to solve the problem of a crooked nail by taking a sledgehammer to its own house. At worst, they’ve decided that #BlackLivesMatter is an extremist position.

Meanwhile, I sent Medium Support some screenshots of the blocks I was getting from Facebook, and they responded:

Thanks for the info. We will try to contact FB on this, but this is all their decision.

So we are urging people to protest the filter, and appeal directly to Facebook so that some humans look at this.

In the meantime, we will try to reach out to our contacts there to see what is going on.

Again, they’re on it. But we need to help them, in order to bring this to the attention of “some humans” at Facebook.

Let’s not sit on our thumbs, but let’s not hold our breath while we wait.

Conclusions

Update your “newsworthy” stories, cub reporters! It’s your journalistic obligation.

Theft is not a “compliment.” Don’t tell others to “chill” if they’re not flattered.

Feeling put-upon? Algorithms don’t care about our feelings. Hell, they don’t have feelings and can’t begin to empathize. The humans commanding the Army of Bots may not fully understand how the bots — not possessed of human intelligence and capability of making judgment calls — will interpret a new and unanticipated situation. Or the humans may just be lazy generals, playing poker and not minding their monstrous armies as they run amok. But what’s the saying? Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. The social media “bans” may be nothing more than a bad bit of code.

Or then again… they could be a plot to silence us. No, they really could be. But let’s try not to assume things without a few more data points.

Communication is important and Medium can’t act on a problem if they’re not aware of it. The same is true of publication editors, writers, and even Facebook. Mind readers are as rare as Unobtainium. Don’t just assume anyone knows everything, even if you’ve been posting stories about it. They don’t read everything! Do you?