On Friday, a conflict at the Lincoln Memorial captivated the country, moving quickly from viral tweets to the national news. Three groups — Catholic schoolboys in Make America Great Again hats, indigenous rights activists, and black nationalists — collided at the Capitol, and the ugly confrontation that followed has dominated the national conversation since.

What you take from the story will vary depending on how you identify, your politics, and what you make of the attending video footage. Most likely, you’ve made up your mind about it already.

My own feeling is that wearing a MAGA hat broadcasts a strong allegiance to a racist president and his racist policies, and to swarm around a Native American elder and block his path is to menace him. Even in the heat of the moment, when members of the national group known as the Hebrew Israelites were hurling slurs at the students, it seems unbelievable that the student’s chaperons didn’t intervene to stop them from jeering or making tomahawk gestures at a 64-year old tribal elder.

If you feel differently, I’m sure you’ll let me know. But one conclusion that seemed to be shared by parties on all sides of this drama is that our media and political ecosystem now seem engineered to produce more of these hyper-polarized conflicts. If that’s the case, what lessons can we take away?

I want to offer a few thoughts.

Conflicts can be “real” and “fake” at the same time. No one disputes the fact that the Covington Catholic conflict actually happened. But it’s also true that the account that tweeted the original viral video appears to have been using a false identity — and was likely amplified by bot networks of unknown origin. Donie O’Sullivan reports at CNN:

The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it. On Tuesday, a source familiar with Twitter’s investigation into the account said the company’s initial findings suggest that the account was run from the United States. The source cautioned, however, that determining which country a Twitter account is actually run from can be very difficult.

Just because secret bot networks are promoting a conflict doesn’t mean the conflict isn’t authentic. But I always think it’s worth considering how social networks thrive on outrage, and what the second-order effects of that are. (I hasten to add that outrage is often justified and necessary. Did you know we have child concentration camps in this country?)

You don’t have to have a take on day one. The Covington conflict cycle played out roughly like this: First, more liberal-leaning folks tweeted links to the original video protesting the aggression of the high school students. Later, conservatives tweeted links to other videos purporting to show that it wasn’t as bad for the students as it looked — prompting some members of the media to walk back their initial outrage. That generated a fresh round of yelling at media for being cowed into silence by bad-faith actors. (Laura Wagner’s piece here is in the latter camp, and is quite good.)

But I do think there was value in watching more video of the protests as it emerged before offering up a take. The more angles of the conflict that I watched, the more unsettled I was by the teens’ behavior — and by their chaperons’ inaction. Not everyone has the luxury of waiting until day four of a story to have a take. But a lot of members of the media ... do? And if you do, you might consider holding your tongue, at least for 24 hours or so. It’s here that Twitter’s incentive system deserves criticism — the earlier you tweeted the first video, and the more incendiary your view, the likelier you were to have it shot into the algorithmic stratosphere. (One Vulture contributor was fired over the weekend after saying that he wished the teens were dead.)

Yes, everything is Gamergate. In 2014, Kyle Wagner wrote a spot-on essay about how the lessons of Gamergate — the campaign of targeted harassment against mostly female journalists, cloaked in the language of press criticism — predicted much of our current moment. He writes:

There is a reason why, in all the Gamergate rhetoric, you hear the echoes of every other social war staged in the last 30 years: overly politically correct, social-justice warriors, the media elite, gamers are not a monolith. There is also a reason why so much of the rhetoric amounts to a vigorous argument that Being a gamer doesn’t mean you’re sexist, racist, and stupid—a claim no one is making. Co-opting the language and posture of grievance is how members of a privileged class express their belief that the way they live shouldn’t have to change, that their opponents are hypocrites and perhaps even the real oppressors. This is how you get St. Louisans sincerely explaining that Ferguson protestors are the real racists, and how you end up with an organized group of precisely the same video game enthusiasts to whom an entire industry is catering honestly believing that they’re an oppressed minority. From this kind of ideological fortification, you can stage absolutely whatever campaigns you deem necessary.

You see this kind of response in the conservative reaction to the Covington videos, which essentially says: these kids were just exercising their First Amendment rights, and the real issue here is that the intolerant left and mainstream media have come to demonize them and chill their free-speech rights. They also complained that the Native American elder, Nathan Phillips, had walked toward the teens initially — and not been sought out by them, as some had first reported. This is the basic mechanic by which the Covington teens can get a sympathetic audience on the Today show, and a possible invitation to the White House. If you’re a news consumer, it’s helpful to understand this playbook as you watch it play out during every major conflict. And if you’re a news producer, it’s helpful to understanding so that you don’t yourself get played.

But not all of this is new. Prominent conflicts that play out in the mass media have always served as a backdrop to debate our values. It’s the democratization of media production, paired with the viral sharing mechanics of social networks, that can make it feel as if these conflicts are happening more frequently than before. Certainly everything feels more exhausting than before.

I’m tempted to leave it all there — Twitter is a hell site, etc. — but for the fact that this sort of opinion takes it as a given that we would all be better off if we weren’t discussing racism, its connection to the current presidential administration, and the inroads it is making with high schoolers. You can feel exhausted by that conversation, or depressed. But it seems odd to suggest that it isn’t a conversation worth having.

Democracy

France fines Google nearly $57 million for first major violation of new European privacy regime - The Washington Post

Google got smacked over data privacy infractions in the first significant fine issued against a tech company for violating GDPR, Tony Romm reports:

France’s top data-privacy agency, known as the CNIL, said Monday that Google failed to fully disclose to users how their personal information is collected and what happens to it. Google also did not properly obtain users’ consent for the purpose of showing them personalized ads, the watchdog agency said. To French regulators, Google’s business practices ran afoul of Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation. Implemented in 2018, the sweeping privacy rules, commonly referred to as GDPR, have set a global standard that has forced Google and its tech peers in Silicon Valley to rethink their data-collection practices or risk sky-high fines. The United States lacks a similar, overarching federal consumer privacy law, a deficiency in the eyes of privacy rights advocates that has elevated Europe as the world’s de facto privacy cop.

Facebook’s WhatsApp Limits Message Forwards to Rein in Fake News

I’m on record saying that messaging apps should get to have end-to-end encryption, or viral sharing mechanics, but not both. So Facebook’s decision to limit message forwarding worldwide — a move intended to reduce the spread of hate speech and misinformation — is very good news. Saritha Rai reports:

“Starting today, WhatsApp will be implementing this change globally,“ a spokeswoman said in a statement Monday. “This will continue help keep WhatsApp focused on private messaging with close contacts.”

Facebook Faces Potential Record U.S. Fine on Privacy Violations

David McLaughlin reports that the Federal Trade Commission is getting closer to fining Facebook over violations of its 2011 consent decree. (That “record fine” will still probably represent an amount of revenue that Facebook generates in a day or two, though.)

The size of the Facebook fine couldn’t be learned. It’s also not clear whether the agency has settled on how much to seek from the Menlo Park, California-based company or whether it will also require changes to Facebook’s data collection and sharing practices. Still, the likelihood of the penalty seems to indicate officials have determined there was a violation of the 2011 settlement. The agency opened it’s investigation after the disclosure that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica gained access to information on about 70 million Facebook users in the U.S. The company has denied the incident was a violation.

Stung by criticism, Facebook’s Sandberg outlines new plans to tackle misinformation

At DLD in Munich, Facebook’s chief operating officer mentioned a new partnership with the German government. I’d like to see a lot more details on this, if anyone wants to dig in or has read about it elsewhere. How exactly does Facebook hope to guide policymaking inside Germany?

Today, she said Facebook was announcing a new partnership with the German government’s information security office to help guide policymaking inside the country and across the EU ahead of its parliamentary elections this year.

Why these young tech workers spent their Friday night planning a rebellion against companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook

Shirin Ghaffary attends a meeting of politically minded tech workers in Brooklyn. Among their objectives: derailing Amazon’s regional office in New York:

Most of them make their living on the payrolls of companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber, and many are increasingly disillusioned and in disagreement with the actions of their employers on key political and moral issues. Plucked from the last few months of tech news headlines, their concerns range from how to curb sexual harassment to the ethical use of artificial intelligence to the working conditions of contract employees. The tech industry has widely been considered to be relatively apolitical (and even antisocial). But the growing popularity of grassroots organizing events like this one in major tech hubs like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle is a sign that tech workers — even those with six-figure salaries and generous benefits — are aware of the disparities between their colleagues and frustrated with the societal consequences of the tools they’re building.

One month after controversial adult-content purge, far-right pages are thriving on Tumblr

Luke Barnes reports that Verizon has taken a much stronger stance against porn than it has against Nazis, on Tumblr at least:

This subtle creep of white nationalism into Tumblr is made easier by the website’s emphasis on aesthetics. Multiple pages examined by ThinkProgress effectively straddle the fence with a mix of content. A good portion of it is standard Tumblr fare, such as pictures of historical figures, nature, and attractive men and women. But mixed in are obvious dog-whistles to far-right political movements.

President Trump Posts Altered Photos to Facebook and Instagram That Make Him Look Thinner

Is this Matt Novak story (a) darkly hilarious, (b) a terrible portent of things to come, or © both?

In recent months, Trump’s official Facebook and Instagram accounts have published photos of the president that have been manipulated to make him look thinner. If it only happened once you might be able to chalk it up as an accident. But Gizmodo has discovered at least three different retouched photos on President Trump’s social media pages that have been published since October of 2018.

This is what Google says search will look like under EU copyright laws

Google is telling the European Union that if it passes the Copyright Directive, which is now being finalized, it could kill Google News within EU borders. James Vincent reports:

Google has issued a warning about the damage the directive might do in an unusual format: an empty search results page. To be more precise, it’s an empty search results page for news. One of the most controversial segments of the Copyright Directive is Article 11, which gives publishers the right to demand paid licenses for using snippets of their stories. From Google’s point of view, that gives it two choices: start paying for licenses or don’t show snippets at all.

Russia Accuses Facebook, Twitter of Failing to Comply With Data Laws

Just after Facebook removed a Russian propaganda network, the country’s communications watchdog said it would enforce rules requiring the company to store data about Russian users in Russia. (The move also applies to Twitter.) Are US social networks cruising down a path that will eventually see them blocked in Russia, or is their existence inside Russia valuable to the Putin regime for other reasons? Ann M. Simmons:

Communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, the federal executive body responsible for censorship in media and telecommunications, said the social-media networks hadn’t submitted any formal and specific plans or submitted an acceptable explanation of when they would meet the country’s requirements that all servers used to store Russians’ personal data be located in Russia. Roskomnadzor said it had sent the companies a letter on Dec. 17 advising them of the need to comply with the law and giving them 30 days to provide “a legally valid response,” Russian news agency Interfax reported. As such, “Today, Roskomnadzor begins administrative proceedings against both companies,” the watchdog said.

India wants social media platforms to remove content it deems ‘unlawful’

Makena Kelly covers the Indian government’s proposal for new rules to curb the spread of fake news and misinformation. The rules could break end-to-end encryption around the world:

The proposed rules would amend Section 79 of India’s IT Act, the primary law in the country concerning online commerce and cybercrime. The IT Act works in a similar manner as the US’s Communications Decency Act, and the specific section that would be amended reads a lot like Section 230. If the amendments are approved, platforms like Facebook and Twitter would be required to censor content that the Indian government deems inappropriate, potentially affecting how content is served outside Indian borders. Further, the amended law would require these companies to produce user messages if the government requests the information, causing serious legal problems for end-to-end encrypted services like WhatsApp.

Elsewhere

Facebook thinks the New York Times’ coverage of it has gotten more critical. It has.

It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you! This story by Rani Molla focuses on the Times, but it’s a good proxy for media coverage in general. I wrote a lot more gee-whiz stories about new Facebook features before 2016 myself:

Sentiment in the Times’ coverage of Facebook has been, on average, almost exclusively negative since the 2016 elections, according to new data analyzed by researcher Joe Hovde, a full-time data analyst at a retail tech company. For the analysis, Hovde included stories with “Facebook” in the article headline and summary text, and then scored the surrounding words on a scale of -5 (very negative words like curses unlikely to show up in the Times) to +5 (extremely positive, using words like “superb” or “breathtaking”). This data was updated from one of his studies that was published in BuzzFeed last spring.

Facebook’s internal documents about how it made money off children to be released

All the big app stores eventually face class-action lawsuits for letting minors buy too many virtual goods with their parents’ credit cards. Facebook is the latest to face such a suit, and some newly unsealed documents suggest that more refunds are likely in order here:

Facebook often failed to send receipts for these purchases, and links on the company’s website to dispute charges frequently failed to work, according to court records. A Facebook employee is quoted describing their attempt to dispute a charge. “I was stuck in an infinite-loop of questions just today,” the employee wrote. “It feels like the form is this Frankenstein beast that we’ve bolted together.”

Facebook is restructuring its augmented reality glasses division as it inches closer to launch

Rob Price has an update on Facebook’s AR glasses, suggesting that the division is a high priority for the company:

The Silicon Valley tech giant has moved hundreds of employees from its research-focused unit Facebook Reality Labs to a new standalone product team focused on AR, Business Insider has learned. The employees had already been working on AR tech at the Reality Labs group prior to the move, and the shift indicates Facebook continues to be focused on developing augmented-reality hardware and that its approach is shifting from something experimental and research-driven to a focus on delivering actual commercial products.

Facebook and The Q have been growing HQ trivia competitors overseas

I had forgotten that Facebook even had an HQ Trivia clone in the market, but Kerry Flynn reports that it’s having some success:

While HQ has put its efforts to grow internationally on hold, both Facebook and The Q are seizing the opportunity to spread their products globally. Some of these shows have been even more successful than the U.S. versions. For example, Facebook hosts two daily shows in Mexico whereas every other country it’s currently operating has only one each. A Facebook spokesperson said the popularity of the game in Mexico is evidence that Confetti can create fan engagement.

Snap’s Security Chief Fired Over Secret Relationship With Outside Consultant on Cheddar

Alex Heath had another impressive Snap scoop with the news that its global security chief was been fired after an internal investigation found that he had been paying his girlfriend a six-figure consulting salary and didn’t disclose it. Its notorious head of HR, Jason Halbert, got caught up in the investigation and was also ousted from Snap. On one hand, its more executive turnover on top. On the other, finally Snap execs are leaving the company for reasons other than an ugly clash with Evan Spiegel!

Launches

Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield

Facebook is launching a new petitions feature called Community Actions. It makes sense that Facebook would build a Change.org clone — petitions benefit from exposure to your friends, and I expect we’ll see plenty of these go viral. Josh Constine focuses on the potential misuses of Facebook petitions, and it’s not hard to imagine viral mobs copying the Gamergate playbook here. Mostly, though, I view this through the lens of engagement — petitions draw eyeballs, and maybe spark interest from lapsed users. Which Facebook could really use right now, especially in North America:

Community Actions start to roll out to the US tomorrow after several weeks of testing in a couple of markets. Users can add a title, description, and image to their Community Action, and tag relevant government agencies and officials who’ll be notified. The goal is to make the Community Action go viral and get people to hit the “Support” button. Community Actions have their own discussion feed where people can leave comments, create fundraisers, and organize Facebook Events or Call Your Rep campaigns. Facebook displays the numbers of supporters behind a Community Action, but you’ll only be able to see the names of those you’re friends with or that are Pages or public figures. Facebook is purposefully trying to focus Community Actions to be more narrowly concentrated on spurring government action than just any random cause. That means it won’t immediately replace Change.org petitions that can range from the civilian to the absurd. But one-click Support straight from the News Feed could massively reduce the friction to signing up, and thereby attract organizations and individuals seeking to maximize the size of their mob.

Facebook and the Technical University of Munich Announce New Independent TUM Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence

Facebook is funding new research into AI ethics:

Today, Facebook is announcing a new partnership with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) to support the creation of an independent AI ethics research center. The Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, which is supported by an initial funding grant from Facebook of $7.5 million over five years, will help advance the growing field of ethical research on new technology and will explore fundamental issues affecting the use and impact of AI.

Twitter is rolling out a new web interface, including an emoji button

Twitter’s new desktop site is modeled after the mobile website, and brings some nice touches. A nicer touch would have been to continue supporting its native desktop clients, beyond occasional bug fixes for Tweetdeck. But here we are.

Match Group and Betches’ new dating app lets you swipe for your friends

Ashley Carman reports on a new dating app that brings a fun twist to the genre:

Match Group and the media brand Betches are partnering to launch an iOS dating app that allows users to help their friends pick out potential dates. The app is called Ship, and it lets users swipe for their friends and chat about profiles, so even if your best friend is in a relationship, he or she can download the app and look around for you. (Your mom could, too.) Ship could stand out by creating a different behavior than we’re used to on most dating apps. More importantly, it comes from the popular, female-oriented content machine Betches, which produces a website, Instagram account, and podcast, among other things. It has a massive following across various platforms.

Takes

If Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Talk, Britain Is Waiting

Damian Collins, one of Facebook’s most vocal critics in British Parliament, warns that his committees efforts will intensify this year — and soon:

This month, my select committee will produce our final report in our inquiry into disinformation and the many issues we have examined related to Facebook and other social media companies. We also recently began an inquiry into the ethics and practices of addictive and immersive media. I believe we should give tech companies limited liability for harmful and illegal content that has been posted on their sites. If a company has been notified of this content or should have reasonably been able to discover it on its own, then it should be required to take it down promptly or be held responsible for its still being there. This principle has already been established in Germany, where the government requires the tech companies to act against content that is in breach of the country’s hate speech laws.

It’s not enough for Facebook to own your images. It wants to own your mortality, too.

Philip Kennicott finds the 10-year challenge depressing:

It plays into our narcissism, and our competitive instincts, and it is little different from a game of “Hot or Not,” but for old people on Facebook who know their friends will be kind if not truthful. It encourages malice and feeds our appetite for schadenfreude (“The years haven’t been kind to him . . .”). It abets the industries of youthfulness, purveyors of wrinkle creams and Botox and cosmetic surgeons. It is also curiously moralistic with its implicit assumption that we have a duty to ourselves to keep our carcass in good shape. And it awakens atavistic beliefs about morality and the body, as if our face, like the painting in Dorian Gray’s old schoolroom, is a physical record of our deeds. Is that, perhaps, why so many of the images posted as part of the challenge feel strangely like mug shots submitted for juridical evaluation?

And finally ...

Incredibly Relatable: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Proving She’s Just Like Us By Wasting Her Life On Social Media

I laughed:

Ocasio-Cortez wins the internet every day with incredible posts in which she comes off as a normal, everyday person who’s forced to be online 24/7 due to social media’s ever-tightening stranglehold on American life. She posts viral tweets to her 1.5 million followers that eloquently and passionately explain her progressive political goals, each tweet evidence of a moment Twitter has stolen from her—time she’ll never get back. Amazing! It’s refreshing to see an elected official who actually knows how to use social media instead of being free from the interminable nightmare.

Talk to me

Send tips, comments, questions, and your takes about Covington high school students: casey@theverge.com.