A new report from the Anti-Defamation League has reviewed the stated hate speech policies of nine different social media platforms. Unlike other studies, it also tests their responsiveness to user reports of violations of those policies. The ADL is an organization that has been operating for more than 100 years trolling (literally) these waters. They were specifically interested in how social media propagated posts made by Holocaust deniers across their networks. They scored each platform in terms of intentions and how they performed in terms of preventing hate speech on such issues such as:

• Did the platform investigate the report and promptly respond (defined as within 24 hours) to the complaint?
• Do users of each platform understand why it has made a certain content decision based on its stated policies?
• Did the platform take any actual action once something was reported?

You can see a part of their report card above. Before I get to the grades given for answering these and other questions, I want to talk about my own personal experience with Holocaust denial. About four years ago, my sister and I went to Poland to see the places where our mom’s family came from. One of our cousins did some genealogy research and found an ancestor who lived in a small town in northeast Poland who was a rabbinical judge back in the 1870s. One of the stops on our trip was to visit Auschwitz, and you can read my thoughts about that day here.

One of the exhibits at the site was about the German engineering firm that designed the mass extermination equipment. For years, the copies of the original drawings used to build this gear were kept from public view by the denier network. But eventually they were sold to someone who flipped from being a denier to someone who realized the legitimacy of these plans, and that’s how we were able to finally see them.

Several years ago I attended a lecture by Jan Grabowski, a history professor from Ottawa. He has done extensive research into Polish Holocaust history, despite the current denier political climate where he and his research associates and colleagues have been threatened and in some cases jailed for their work. Grabowski is affiliated with the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw which is attempting to find primary source records to document what happened during those dark times. Add to this a recent survey of millennials that found that 56% of the respondents could not even identify what Auschwitz was about.

From these two personal moments, I realize that we need more evidence-based approaches and to disseminate facts rather than fiction or misdirection. That is where the social networks come into play, because they have become the superhighway of these fictions. Let’s not even glorify them by using the term “alternative facts.”

Let’s return to the report card. Sadly, only Twitter and Twitch acted against the Holocaust denial content reported. No network got any A grades across the ADL’s rubric, to no surprise. Twitch, the gaming social network, scored B’s. Twitter and You Tube got C’s. Facebook and others received grades of D.

Based on its research, the ADL has some recommendations:

• Tech companies must make changes to their products to prioritize users’ safety over engagement and reduce hateful content on their platforms.
• All the platforms need to do a better job on transparency. They should provide users with more information on how they make their decisions regarding content moderation. This is especially urgent, given the recent decisions to terminate several high-profile accounts.

You can read others at the link above. My final point: yes, censoring hate speech — whether it about the Holocaust or whatever — is destructive to our society. Just look at the mob that swarmed across our Capitol earlier this month. The social networks have to decide whether they can step up to the task. And while it bothers me that we have to censor the most dangerous of hate speakers, we do have to recognize their danger.

I have written before about my love affair with telephone central offices. This past week, we all now know where Nashville’s CO is located, and we mourn for the people of that city. Nashville is a city that I have been to numerous times, for fun and for business. Little did I realize as I walked among the honky tonk bars and restaurants on Second Street that I was passing by its main CO, which offers a wide range of communication services.

Like the CO that was buried by the collapse of the World Trade Center back in 2001, there was a lot of water damage from the firefighters, and the Nashville repairs were hampered by having to work around the crime scene investigators. But still, within a few days AT&T was able to get various services back up and running, including 911 and airport communications, along with wired and cellular services. The company deployed a series of portable cell towers around the region. The lines that went through this CO connected not just Nashville but areas that were in adjoining states.

This is the conundrum of the CO: in the early days of telephony, they had to be located in densely populated areas, because stringing copper lines from each termination point cost money. To shorten the lines, they had to put them near the people and businesses that they were connecting. This means that you can’t easily protect them with physical barricades a la Fort Knox (or other government buildings). Plus, there are more than 20,000 COs in the US by some estimates. That is a lot of real estate to protect or potentially relocate.

COs are also relatively easy to find, even though many of them are located in nondescript building in major urban areas. My own CO sits like Nashville’s across from a similar collection of restaurants and commercial businesses. There are websites lovingly constructed by other fans of telecom, such as this one or this one that show photos of the actual buildings (although you will have to work a bit to find their street addresses). In my blog post from 2018, I posted pictures of several COs that I have been to, including one on Long Island where I brought my high school networking class on a field trip back in 2001.

Whether or not the bomber was intentionally targeting AT&T’s CO or not, one thing is pretty clear to me: these COs are the weak points in any terror campaign. I don’t have any real solutions to offer up here, just an aching spot in my heart for the men and women that have built them and keep them running.

N.B. This is the last day of a horrible year, a year punctuated with my own personal health story that had nothing to do with Covid. I want to send out a note of thanks to all of you that took the time to send me your support, and hope that you found your own support team to help you along as well. Here is my wish that 2021 will be better for all of us, and that we can support and care for each other to make it so.

It is hard to believe that it has taken the US IRS all this time to figure out a better authentication mechanism for taxpayers. But starting next month, all taxpayers can apply for an identity protection personal identification number (IP PIN) to block identity thieves from falsely claiming any tax refunds. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this problem, the IRS says several billions of dollars of phony refunds have been prevented through its half-hearted efforts to date. This includes phony refunds that are issued to taxpayers who never filed returns.

The IP PIN process used to be for high-risk taxpayers: those who have been victims of refund fraud attempts in the past. Starting next month, we can all join this party (hopefully not the victims group). They explain all of this here, which they call “secure access.”

To participate, you will need a “real” cellular phone number (vs. an IP service like Google Hangouts) and your email address. You will also need a credit card or some other financial instrument (not a debit card) to prove your identity. If you are concerned about giving your phone number to the IRS, you can substitute your postal address and they will send the confirmations that way.

The IP PIN is a six-digit code that changes annually. That is annoying — why not use Google-like authenticator smart phone app —  and to make matters more confusing, this differs from the five-digit PIN that is used during the e-filing process for your return. (When I first typed in e-filing, I didn’t use a hyphen and one of the suggestions was effing. That isn’t too far from reality. But I digress.)

Even though the IP PIN effort isn’t happening until next month, you can sign up for your IRS electronic account now.  (CORRECTION: The IRS took down the service until January, see the link in my comment.)

This will be a prerequisite for the universal IP PIN process. You’ll notice that particular link isn’t mentioned in the earlier link that explains what secure access is: Dontcha just love our gummint? Anyway, I spent about 20 minutes getting my digital ducks in order for myself and about the same time for my wife’s account. My first credit card for some reason wasn’t accepted, and the site was initially down the time I tried to sign up my wife. I was going to use my Amex card but the IRS doesn’t take that either. Eventually, both of us passed muster and created our accounts It was nice to see that we didn’t owe the IRS any money from past filings.

If this has awakened a desire to be more proactive about protecting your digital identity, Brian Krebs has a bunch of other suggestions that he calls “planting your digital flag.” They are all good ones, although if you are paranoid about your privacy you might want to think about the security tradeoffs you are making.