Letter to Genius by Katherine M. Clark Lyrics
Tom Lehman
Chief Executive Officer
Genius Media Group, Inc.
92 Third Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Dear Mr. Lehman,
I write today to express my concern regarding the Genius online annotation platform and its lack of safeguards against Internet harassment and abuse.
By enabling users to post user-generated content on any news story, political speech, or music lyric the Genius online annotation platform is a potentially powerful tool to educate, clarify, and provide context. But while the ability to post commentary can serve to enhance public discourse, it can also be used as a tool to harass, intimidate, and silence.
These concerns have led some platforms to begin moderating comments, provide for comment pre-approval, or to eliminate user-generated content altogether. Yet with Genius, malicious users can now circumvent those safeguards and inject their comments directly into protected content. This is particularly troubling because Genius appears to have opted in websites without their express consent and does not appear to have a readily accessible opt-out. In addition, there appears to be no reporting function for abusive commentary.
It is an unfortunate reality that even platforms developed with the best of intentions can be, and are, misused to target marginalized groups, traumatize victims of violence, or intimidate certain voices into silence. As a result, developers have a responsibility to consider how their platforms can be used to perpetuate abuse and take steps to minimize that potential. During your development and review process, did you consider how Genius could be misused to harass and intimidate? Now that your platform has been shown to enable abusive behavior, do you have plans to implement a robust reporting and remediation process or provide an opt-out function? Please describe what actions you are taking to ensure that your platform is not used as a tool for abuse.
Thank you for considering these questions. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Katherine Clark
Member of Congress
Chief Executive Officer
Genius Media Group, Inc.
92 Third Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Dear Mr. Lehman,
I write today to express my concern regarding the Genius online annotation platform and its lack of safeguards against Internet harassment and abuse.
By enabling users to post user-generated content on any news story, political speech, or music lyric the Genius online annotation platform is a potentially powerful tool to educate, clarify, and provide context. But while the ability to post commentary can serve to enhance public discourse, it can also be used as a tool to harass, intimidate, and silence.
These concerns have led some platforms to begin moderating comments, provide for comment pre-approval, or to eliminate user-generated content altogether. Yet with Genius, malicious users can now circumvent those safeguards and inject their comments directly into protected content. This is particularly troubling because Genius appears to have opted in websites without their express consent and does not appear to have a readily accessible opt-out. In addition, there appears to be no reporting function for abusive commentary.
It is an unfortunate reality that even platforms developed with the best of intentions can be, and are, misused to target marginalized groups, traumatize victims of violence, or intimidate certain voices into silence. As a result, developers have a responsibility to consider how their platforms can be used to perpetuate abuse and take steps to minimize that potential. During your development and review process, did you consider how Genius could be misused to harass and intimidate? Now that your platform has been shown to enable abusive behavior, do you have plans to implement a robust reporting and remediation process or provide an opt-out function? Please describe what actions you are taking to ensure that your platform is not used as a tool for abuse.
Thank you for considering these questions. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Katherine Clark
Member of Congress