Overthrowing the dictator: a game-theoretic approach to revolutions and media

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In this paper, we study its role in mobilization. We assume that social media allow potential participants to observe the individual participation decisions of others, while traditional mass media allow potential participants to see only the total number of people who participated before them. We show that when individuals’ willingness to revolt is publicly known, then both sorts of media foster a successful revolution. However, when willingness to revolt is private information, only social media ensure that a revolt succeeds, with mass media multiple outcomes are possible, one of which has individuals not participating in the revolt. This suggests that social media enhance the likelihood that a revolution triumphs more than traditional mass media

Overthrowing the dictator: a game-theoretic approach to revolutions and media

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In this paper, we study its role in mobilization. We assume that social media allow potential participants to observe the individual participation decisions of others, while traditional mass media allow potential participants to see only the total number of people who participated before them. We show that when individuals’ willingness to revolt is publicly known, then both sorts of media foster a successful revolution. However, when willingness to revolt is private information, only social media ensure that a revolt succeeds, with mass media multiple outcomes are possible, one of which has individuals not participating in the revolt. This suggests that social media enhance the likelihood that a revolution triumphs more than traditional mass media

Protecting the right to identity against catfishing

Catfishing is a form of impersonation occurring on social media that interferes with a person’s right to identity. It involves creating a fake profile online using another person’s images. The facets of the right to identity are image, name, and likeness, among others. Catfishing affects a person’s right to identity and human dignity. Hence, the thesis aims to determine whether the right to identity adequately protects individuals against catfishing. This thesis is a desktop analysis considering the South African legal framework related to the right to identity, including the common law, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, and legislation. The thesis is also a comparative analysis assessing the adequacy of addressing catfishing through the right to identity. The study evaluates the right to identity’s adequacy by juxtaposing the South African legal framework with California and Oklahoma’s common law and statutory interventions. The study reveals that the right to identity protects South African social networking website users against catfishing. Like the common law right of privacy in California and Oklahoma, a person infringes the right to identity when they use another person’s identity facets to portray them in a false light, and like the statutory right of publicity in California and Oklahoma, a person infringes identity when they appropriate facets of another person’s identity for commercial gain. The infringement of the right to identity entitles a person to legal remedies, including a claim for damages, among other things. The thesis also considers principles of conflict of laws to determine the operative law in an instance where a victim resides in South Africa and the perpetrator resides in the US, or vice versa. The study recommends that developing the common law to recognise that identity can be infringed by mere appropriation not linked to a commercial purpose would be beneficial for addressing catfishing adequately in South Africa. Legal development contributes to the constitutional imperative to align the common law with society’s shifting needs and address novel legal issues, such as catfishing.Thesis (LLM) -- Faculty of Law, Law, 202

Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security

Harmful lies are nothing new. But the ability to distort reality has taken an exponential leap forward with “deep fake” technology. This capability makes it possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. Machine learning techniques are escalating the technology’s sophistication, making deep fakes ever more realistic and increasingly resistant to detection. Deep-fake technology has characteristics that enable rapid and widespread diffusion, putting it into the hands of both sophisticated and unsophisticated actors. While deep-fake technology will bring with it certain benefits, it also will introduce many harms. The marketplace of ideas already suffers from truth decay as our networked information environment interacts in toxic ways with our cognitive biases. Deep fakes will exacerbate this problem significantly. Individuals and businesses will face novel forms of exploitation, intimidation, and personal sabotage. The risks to our democracy and to national security are profound as well. Our aim is to provide the first in-depth assessment of the causes and consequences of this disruptive technological change, and to explore the existing and potential tools for responding to it. We survey a broad array of responses, including: the role of technological solutions; criminal penalties, civil liability, and regulatory action; military and covert-action responses; economic sanctions; and market developments. We cover the waterfront from immunities to immutable authentication trails, offering recommendations to improve law and policy and anticipating the pitfalls embedded in various solutions

Panel: Finding All Sides of the Truth: Investigating and Handling Employee Discipline (CLE)

Just Cause Discipline for Social Networking in the New Gilded Age: Will the Law Look the Other Way? (William Herbert and Alicia McNally

Just Cause Discipline for Social Networking in the New Guilded Age: Will the Law Look the Other Way?

We live and work in an era with the moniker of the New Gilded Age to describe the growth in societal income inequality. The designation is not limited to evidence of the growing gap in wealth distribution, but also the sharp rise in employment without security, including contingent and part-time work. This article examines the state of workplace procedural protections against discipline as they relate to employee use of social media in the New Gilded Age. In our times, reactions to the rapid distribution of troublesome electronic communications through social networking tend to eclipse patience for enforceable workplace procedures. The advent of social media and the decline of job security have created a perfect storm that raises the question of whether labor law will look the other way when it comes to the principles of workplace fairness and justice. The article begins with President William McKinley’s introduction of the doctrine of just cause discipline into American labor law in 1897, during the Gilded Age, at the same time that the common law at-will doctrine was continuing to gestate. McKinley’s unilateral executive action established principles that remain the cornerstone of just cause discipline: proper notice, a fair evidentiary investigation, an opportunity to be heard, and nondiscriminatory treatment. The article then turns to the development of just cause standards in the 20th Century, which added other elements such as notice of workplace policies and the use of progressive discipline. Lastly, the article examines how just cause principles should be applied to allegations of electronic misconduct in the New Gilded Age to ensure reasonable and prudent disciplinary results, employee acceptance of adverse employment decisions, and a decreased likelihood of litigated claims of unlawful discrimination

The Psychology of Fake News

This volume examines the phenomenon of fake news by bringing together leading experts from different fields within psychology and related areas, and explores what has become a prominent feature of public discourse since the first Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election campaign. Dealing with misinformation is important in many areas of daily life, including politics, the marketplace, health communication, journalism, education, and science. In a general climate where facts and misinformation blur, and are intentionally blurred, this book asks what determines whether people accept and share (mis)information, and what can be done to counter misinformation? All three of these aspects need to be understood in the context of online social networks, which have fundamentally changed the way information is produced, consumed, and transmitted. The contributions within this volume summarize the most up-to-date empirical findings, theories, and applications and discuss cutting-edge ideas and future directions of interventions to counter fake news. Also providing guidance on how to handle misinformation in an age of “alternative facts”, this is a fascinating and vital reading for students and academics in psychology, communication, and political science and for professionals including policy makers and journalists

Warming Up to User-Generated Content

The most significant copyright development of the twenty first century has not arisen through any law enacted by Congress or opinion rendered by the Supreme Court. Instead, it has come from the unorganized, informal practices of various, unrelated users of copyrighted works, many of whom probably know next to nothing about copyright law. In order to comprehend this paradox, one must look at what is popularly known as Web 2.0, and the growth of user-generated content in blogs, wikis, podcasts, mashup videos, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Although users often create new works of their own, sometimes the works are remixed with copyrighted content of others. The growth of user-generated content challenges the conventional understandings of copyright law under which copyrights are understood largely as static and fixed from the top down. Under this view, copyright holders are at the center of the copyright universe and exercise considerable control over their exclusive rights. Obtaining prior authorization from the copyright holder is typically assumed to be necessary for others legally to re-use the copyrighted work, apart from a fair or other permitted use (which often is not easy to determine in advance). This Article challenges the conventional account of copyright law, particularly as applied to Web 2.0. The formalist understanding of copyright law ignores reality. The Copyright Act is riddled with gray areas and gaps, many of which persist over time because so few copyright cases are ever filed and the majority of those filed are not resolved through a judgment. My core thesis is that informal copyright practices - i.e., practices that are not authorized by formal copyright licenses, but whose legality falls within a gray area of copyright law - effectively serve as important gap-fillers in our copyright system. The informal practices related to user-generated content provide a compelling example of this phenomenon. These practices make manifest three significant features of our copyright system that have escaped the attention of legal scholars: (i) our copyright system could not function without informal copyright practices; (ii) collectively, users wield far more power in influencing the shape of copyright law than is commonly perceived; and (iii) uncertainty in formal copyright law can lead to the phenomenon of warming, in which - unlike chilling - users are emboldened to make unauthorized uses of copyrighted works based on seeing what appears to be an increasingly accepted practice. In the Web 2.0 world, warming may serve as a powerful counterforce to the chilling of speech

Warming Up to User-Generated Content

The most significant copyright development of the twenty first century has not arisen through any law enacted by Congress or opinion rendered by the Supreme Court. Instead, it has come from the unorganized, informal practices of various, unrelated users of copyrighted works, many of whom probably know next to nothing about copyright law. In order to comprehend this paradox, one must look at what is popularly known as Web 2.0, and the growth of user-generated content in blogs, wikis, podcasts, mashup videos, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Although users often create new works of their own, sometimes the works are remixed with copyrighted content of others. The growth of user-generated content challenges the conventional understandings of copyright law under which copyrights are understood largely as static and fixed from the top down. Under this view, copyright holders are at the center of the copyright universe and exercise considerable control over their exclusive rights. Obtaining prior authorization from the copyright holder is typically assumed to be necessary for others legally to re-use the copyrighted work, apart from a fair or other permitted use (which often is not easy to determine in advance). This Article challenges the conventional account of copyright law, particularly as applied to Web 2.0. The formalist understanding of copyright law ignores reality. The Copyright Act is riddled with gray areas and gaps, many of which persist over time because so few copyright cases are ever filed and the majority of those filed are not resolved through a judgment. My core thesis is that informal copyright practices - i.e., practices that are not authorized by formal copyright licenses, but whose legality falls within a gray area of copyright law - effectively serve as important gap-fillers in our copyright system. The informal practices related to user-generated content provide a compelling example of this phenomenon. These practices make manifest three significant features of our copyright system that have escaped the attention of legal scholars: (i) our copyright system could not function without informal copyright practices; (ii) collectively, users wield far more power in influencing the shape of copyright law than is commonly perceived; and (iii) uncertainty in formal copyright law can lead to the phenomenon of warming, in which - unlike chilling - users are emboldened to make unauthorized uses of copyrighted works based on seeing what appears to be an increasingly accepted practice. In the Web 2.0 world, warming may serve as a powerful counterforce to the chilling of speech