We had to take one of your papers down :(

If you are alone, you cannot fight the power of digital platforms.

This post is an unfortunate description of moderation content [1], in particular the lack of capacity of Academia in checking a copyright request, and later, the lack of an attitude towards publicly assuming the error.

After wrongly removing my essay from the platform (this document was there for nearly ten years), Academia has offered me a year of free Academia Premium (twice, because one was not enough). So, I thought, is the offer of premium services a common practice to make things right? Should I have felt flattered with such an offer? See, this post is a story of myself going through this unpleasant experience of having my authorship rights ‘violated’. Yes, it was frustrating but the problem is far more complicated than my personal experience. So, this post is actually about the authoritative and uncontested power of platforms.

What follows is a register of how Academia took one of my papers down, but, as we know, this example can mirror many other cases – unknown and unregistered. If you think my story shall be shared, please do it! After all, my voice alone was not worth to be heard. Unless I were a public figure, a famous person or politician or even better social media influencer, right? Yep, maybe only in this way, I would have had my voice heard.

THE DOCUMENT: “Ensaio sobre a cegueira: análise crítica“

The essay “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira: análise crítica” was written by myself in early 2010 as part of a course that I attended at Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil (long time ago, I know!). The course, named Journalism and Cultural Critique, was not only an incredible personal experience but also a confirmation that I wanted to be a scholar (yep, it also took some time, still on my way to get there). I am providing some ‘personal’ details in order to situate what this essay means beyond its written content.

Cinema and Critique was one of the seminars of the course which had professor Paulo Cunha as lecturer. The main requirement of this seminar was the writing of an essay on the topics discussed in classroom. That was exactly what my colleagues and I have done. The document uploaded in Academia.Edu in 2010 is about the film Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira in Portuguese), based on the novel of José Saramago, and brilliantly directed by Fernando Meirelles, who is a Brazilian film director that I look up to.

You can read my document, written in Portuguese, here (yes, I have uploaded it again on Academia, please don’t blame me). Over time, this essay has gained attention reaching more than 30 thousands views and a large number of downloads. I must confess, it was unexpected but it was indeed organic (of course, ‘bot’ views were also there, but I’m not sure how many). It is not that I care about these metrics, but of course they say something about what was written and how it was written. So, yes, I was proud of seeing people interested in my analytical perspective on Blindness.

I remember a colleague of my (at the time he was a PhD student and I was still on my master degree journey) saying how impressed he was by the impact of “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira: análise crítica”. We were walking to the canteen of NOVA FCSH, and the funny part about it (at least to me) was he questioning how on earth could I have got such popularity with this essay. I smiled to him, and said: “I did nothing”.

THE NOTIFICATION: We had to take one of your papers down 😦

Academia has received a take-down notice from the Brazilian Reproduction Rights Organisation – Associação Brasileira de Direitos Reprográficos (ABDR). This organisation was the submitter of the copyright claim. On 16 April 2020, after receiving the notification from Academia, I replied to the platform making clear I was the author of the essay “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira: análise crítica”. The removal of it was certainly unfair and authoritative, especially considering that the essay was there for a long time.

THE CONFIRMATION: “Academia has removed in error the document”

On 20 April 2020, I received a second email from Academia confirming that the platform had removed my document in error so I was asked to re-upload the essay. I replied this email on 21 April 2020, saying that in my understanding the platform should place back the document wrongly taken down.

A similar situation has happened to me before, when studying botted accounts on Instagram, the research account Mary Loo had violated the terms of service and community guidelines of the platform. As a consequence, this account was prohibited to log in on Instagram. After a few weeks, Instagram put the account back on Instagram, including its unique publication (read the tweet thread here or the case of Mary Loo in the context of social bots studies). Based on this experience, I thought that Academia would also be able of doing the same, putting back my essay.

THE BACKLASH: How dare you editing an email content? Why?

After a couple of days, on 8 May 2020 I returned to the chain of emails exchanged with Academia in order to verify whether there was any feedback concerning my solicitation to put the essay back on the platform. However, when re-reading the last email from Academia user operator, I’ve noticed the content of the email was changed; rather than reading that Academia had made a mistake, what I read was actually something pointing to myself; so if I felt my document was removed in error, I should re-upload it. What? How is that possible? A feeling of being deceived; that was my first reaction, so right away I did feel obliged to respond to. See below.

First I was pissed off because of the shift of responsibility; from Academia to myself. Then, even worse was realising the change of content in the email (see below). I was flabbergasted when reading the change in the content. Was that even possible? Many times I’ve made myself this question but I am sure about what I read.

Anyway, while writing this post and taking some screen shots, I have noticed a different register format of date and time in this very same email. Rather than seeing the standard format found in the other emails – with month + day + time-minute-second + AM or PM, the register format in this particular email was incomplete format (see below).

THE SOLUTION FOR CONTENT MODERATION PROBLEMS (I): “a year of Academia Premium to make up for this frustration”

The day after sending a long email complaining about the change of content, on 9 May 2020, Academia assumes the error in the removal of my essay bringing up the possibility of “the copyright request was not valid or the copyright ownership of the document did not match the request submitted”. Let´s recall the submitter of copyright claim: Brazilian Reproduction Rights Organisation. Note that the possible content manipulation in the email is not even mentioned.

To make my life easy, a year of free Academia Premium was offered to me as gift. As something that would make up for the frustration of having my essay wrongly taken down. No one better than Rachel to express my reaction before such an amazing offer.

Based on a false or not valid copyright claim Academia took my essay down. Shouldn´t the platform first make sure that the copyright request or the copyright ownership was valid? It was clear that the essay was responding to a requirement of a post-graduation course seminar (Brazilian Culture and Global Culture) in early 2010. Moreover, all references were registered at the bibliography section. To me, the situation was getting even more complicated and this could not be amended with a year of free Academia Premium. 

THE SOLUTION FOR CONTENT MODERATION PROBLEMS (II): how about taking public responsibility for your limited capabilities?

Who were taking part of this story? A user (myself) – the powerless part in terms of controlling anything, not influential, a platform (Academia) – something that takes much more than offer to the users, a national institution of reproduction rights (Brazilian Reproduction Rights Organisation). This latter has sent a take-down notice to Academia, which act straightaway in favour of it without verifying the copyright ownership. The weak part, by being only another user, had no chance of saying a thing, neither defending herself. The only option was to accept the communication received by email: “we had to take one of your papers down :(“. See, this is what I meant by “if you are alone, you cannot fight the power of digital platforms”.

A REALITY: (like other platforms) Academia is NOT able to do read and review all Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

When it comes to “promises”, platforms are full of bla, bla, bla, when it comes to impositions in what concerns what users should do and accept, there is always a long list of rules to abide by than rights on our own content and info (read Academia Terms, Privacy and Copyright Policy). So, if we are talking about both unbalanced terms and measures, why assuming a failure or lack of capacity in doing this or that task is so problematic?

The fact is that I gave up insisting on this matter. After all, a PhD thesis cannot be written down by itself, neither grading students projects, and so on and so forth. Anyway, it is registered here, this may be useful for something or someone. It is my way of protesting against the authoritative and uncontested power of platforms.

Notes

[1] On content moderation check out this reading list of Social Media Collective.