The Washington Post - 16.11.2019

A16 eZ re the washington post.saturday, november 16 , 2019

each other but not on purpose
and not outside the mayhem
that happens during plays. It is a
gladiatorial contract that should
make you wince, but it is an
understood agreement
participants enter with full
understanding.
When Garrett ripped off
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback
mason rudolph’s helmet and
clubbed him with it in the dying
seconds of Cleveland’s victory,
he committed an egregious act
that will follow him for the rest
of his career and violated the
unspoken players’ pact on which
a sport of such relentless
violence relies. Garrett’s assault
should not be excused on any
basis, such as rudolph’s
provocations that appeared to
include his own tug of Garrett’s
face mask or how a good man
momentarily snapped. It should
especially not be excused on the
premise that it was just more
violence heaped onto a violent
sport.
rudolph already had risked
himself on every snap Thursday
night, taking hits that could
have torn his muscles or rattled
his brain — he has been knocked
unconscious this season. Had
Garrett connected with

nfl from A1 rudolph’s head differently, he
could have maimed or killed
him. Garrett put rudolph at an
unnecessary and enormous risk
well beyond those that
accompany the sport’s pervasive
viciousness. That was the most
shocking aspect.
Look at how other NfL
players, the people who
understand and accept
workplace circumstances the
rest of us can barely fathom,
responded to Garrett’s helmet
swing.
“A ssault,” f ormer linebacker
James Harrison said.
“Insanity,” defensive end J. J.
Watt said.
“Barbaric,” f ormer
quarterback Troy Aikman said.
“A bsolutely ridiculous,”
former quarterback Derek
Anderson said.
“He could [have] killed him,”
Hall of fame wide receiver
Andre reed said. “In the 17 years
I played in the NfL, never been
more disturbed by the end of a
game.”
The league clearly sees the
severity of Garrett’s attack. He is
suspended for at least the
remainder of the season as well
as the playoffs. The only debate
is how much of next season he
should miss. The NfL
suspended repeat offender

Vontaze Burfict a dozen games

for a head-to-head hit this year.

Garrett has been flagged for

typical offenses such as late hits

and personal fouls, but he is not

in the same universe as Burfict

as a recidivist. Still, his

punishment could meet or

surpass Burfict’s. It would be

justified.

Garrett’s initial response did

not help his case for relative

reprieve. He said that “a win is a

win” and that eight seconds do

not overshadow the rest of the

game. He is, of course, woefully

mistaken. Garrett was a famous

football player before Thursday

night, a former first overall pick

known by some for his interest

in poetry and dinosaurs. Now he

is an infamous American, a

player known for ripping off a

quarterback’s helmet and

swinging it at him.

There is room for sympathy

for Garrett. He will be defined by

his actions Thursday night, for

losing sight of the line between

his sport’s violence and the

madness that lies not far

beyond. He would not have been

a prime candidate to commit

one of the most notorious

moments in NfL history.

Defensive end Chris Long

created a charity called

Waterboys that builds clear-

water wells in areas of need in

Africa. When he retired, Long

picked an active player to

become the face of his efforts.

The man he chose was Garrett.

He seems like a good man. To

much of the American viewing

public, he appeared to be

something else Thursday night.

Garrett deserves this

suspension, however long it may

last. The NfL is far from a

wholesome pursuit, but it

cannot tolerate what Garrett did.

NfL players sign up to be

battered by their peers, but even

modern madness has lines.

Garrett crossed one, and it will

haunt him and the league for a

long time.

[email protected]

perspective

The NFL is sanctioned violence. Browns defender Garrett still violated its codes.

Jason miller/getty images

The nfl suspended Browns defensive end Myles Garrett for at least the rest of this season and the

playoffs for yanking off Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph’s helmet and clubbing him with it.

BY TONY ROMM

AND ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER

Twitter will allow some orga-
nizations to continue advertising
about social, economic and envi-
ronmental issues after it imple-
ments a new policy this month
that bans politicians from spon-
soring tweets.
The tech company’s revised
rules, revealed friday, come in
response to growing concerns
that office-seekers, government
officials and their allies are too
easily able to weaponize popular
social media services and pay to
promote falsehoods — though
some experts still questioned
whether Twitter had struck the
right balance in crafting its new
approach.
Starting next week, businesses
and activists can pay to promote
their messages about broadly
defined political causes, includ-
ing “civic engagement” and “so-

cial equity,” so long as they don’t

advocate for or against a candi-

date, legislative proposal or elec-

tion.

Twitter said it also would limit

the way these advertisers target

their messages — prohibiting

them, for example, from running

ads that appear only to people

who harbor certain political

le anings.

Advertising from candidates

and a wide range of other politi-

cal actors, including political

action committees and dark-

money spending groups, will be

banned outright, Twitter said,

fulfilling a commitment it first

revealed oct. 30 to limit such ads

globally.

“We believe political messag-

ing should earn their reach,” s aid

Vijaya Gadde, who oversees le-

gal, policy, a nd trust and safety a t

Twitter. “It’s a big change for us

as a company but one we believe

is going to make our service and

ultimately political outcomes

around the world better.”

Twitter’s efforts come after a

controversy stirred by President

Trump’s 2020 campaign, which

ran false ads on facebook and

Google-owned YouTube target-

ing former vice president Joe

Biden, a Democratic contender

for the White House. Those two

companies have declined to re-

move the ads and, unlike Twitter,

have a nnounced no m ajor chang-

es to their rules on election

advertising, even in the face of

broad public pressure.

At the same time, though,

Twitter’s new prohibitions could

spark concerns of their own.

They do little to address Trump,

for example, who posts contro-

versial, unpaid tweets — which

frequently contain falsehoods —

for his more than 66 million

followers each day. That has

produced an outcry among Dem-

ocrats and digital rights experts,

who have asked Twitter to limit

Trump’s reach. And the rules

don’t include any new fact-

checking requirements, meaning

the educational ads about causes

that it does allow could include

misinformation.

“A nyone — whether they’re

running an ad or not — can be

held accountable for what they

say and their actions in this

space,” Del Harvey, t he vice p resi-

dent for trust and safety at

Twitter, said in response to that

criticism, noting that the compa-

ny’s new guidelines will make it

easier for people to spot such

falsehoods and react to them.

Shannon mcGregor, an assis-

tant professor of communica-

tions at the University of Utah,

disagreed with the platform’s

decision to police the boundary

between political and nonpoliti-

cal speech. In an apparent effort

to remove itself from the thicket

of regulating political speech,

she said, Twitter had stepped

into territory that’s even more

potentially perilous.

“We’ve seen both for Twitter

and other platforms the real

challenges of defining what is

and what is not political — how

contestable that is, from the

public’s point of view and also

from the perspective of actors

who are trying to place ads,”

mcGregor said. “A nd doing that

at scale, it doesn’t seem feasible.”

She also said she feared the

effects for local and down-ballot

candidates, who depend on ad-

vertising to break into a crowded

media environment — one that

gives an advantage to politicians

with large numbers of Twitter

followers, like Trump, who are

less reliant on paid messaging to

gain notice.

Political ads generate far less

revenue for Twitter than for its

tech peers: Twitter executives

said last month that the 2018

congressional midterms brought

in less than $3 million for the

company. Instead, major candi-

dates have flocked to facebook

and its photo-sharing app, Insta-

gram, as well as Google and its

sprawling web empire, from

search to video.

The massive spending by

Trump and his allies on face-

book in particular has alarmed

the president’s critics, leading to

efforts by deep-pocketed Demo-

crats to counter him on digital

platforms. on friday, aides to

former New York mayor mike

Bloomberg, who is weighing a

bid for the Democratic nomina-

tion, said he would spend

$100 million on online ads as-

sailing Trump in four battle-

ground states: michigan, Wis-

consin, Pennsylvania and Arizo-

na.

[email protected]

isaac.stanley-becker

@washpost.com

Twitter’s new rules ban political ads from candidates, not ads about causes

BY LENA H. SUN

The majority of facebook ad-
vertisements spreading misin-
formation about vaccines were
funded by two anti-vaccine
groups: The World mercury Proj-
ect, headed b y robert f. K ennedy
Jr., and a California-based orga-
nization called Stop mandatory
Vaccination. The two bought
54 percent of the anti-vaccine
ads on facebook during the peri-
ods studied, according to a re-
port this week.
researchers said the results
surprised them. much of the
anti-vaccine content posted on
social media platforms such as
facebook and Twitter may ap-
pear to be organic, grass-roots
discussions led by neighborhood
groups and concerned parents,
said David A. Broniatowski, an
associate professor at George
Washington University and one
of the authors of the study.
“In fact,” said Broniatowski,
who s tudies group decision-mak-
ing, “what we are seeing is a
small number of motivated inter-
ests that are trying to dissemi-
nate a lot of harmful content.”
The study was conducted be-
fore facebook changed its poli-
cies around anti-vaccine adver-
tising, but researchers said it
provides a look at how the plat-
form has been used to spread
misinformation. The study also
provides a baseline for research-
ers to evaluate how well face-
book’s new policies are working,
said Amelia Jamison, a social
science researcher at the Univer-
sity of maryland and another
study author.
The report in the journal Vac-
cine is the first to study anti-vac-
cine advertisements in face-
book’s advertising archive. The
platform, a publicly available
and searchable repository, was
introduced by facebook in 2018
to improve transparency related

to certain forms of advertising

considered of “national impor-

tance.” The social media giant

has repeatedly come under fire

for allowing the promotion of

anti-vaccine material.

In recent years, false claims on

social media about vaccines have

led growing numbers of parents

to shun or delay getting their

children vaccinated. misinfor-

mation and skepticism about the

safety of the measles-mumps-ru-

bella vaccine contributed signifi-

cantly to the nearly year-long

measles outbreak in the United

States that ended i n october. The

potentially deadly disease surged

to 1,261 cases this year, as of

Nov. 7, the highest number in

nearly three decades.

Earlier this year, The Post

reported on a wealthy manhat-

tan couple who have emerged as

major financiers of the anti-vac-

cine movement. Hedge fund

manager and philanthropist Ber-

nard Selz and his wife, Lisa, have

contributed more than $3 mil-

lion in recent years to a handful

of activists who have played an

outsize role in the anti-vaccine

movement.

Kennedy is another major

player in anti-vaccine publicity

and support. The attorney and

nephew of President John f.

Kennedy runs the Children’s

Health Defense, which is closely

aligned with the World mercury

Project. The group’s overall mes-

sage falsely claims that vaccines

are c ontributing to a vast array o f

childhood illnesses. In may, Ken-

nedy’s brother, sister and niece

publicly criticized him, saying he

has helped “spread dangerous

misinformation over social me-

dia and is complicit in sowing

distrust of the science behind

vaccines.”

The group Stop mandatory

Vaccination is headed by Larry

Cook, who calls himself “an ad-

vocate for natural living.” on his

website, Cook says he uses dona-

tions to pay for facebook adver-

tising, among other expenses,

including his personal bills. “A ll

donations t o me go d irectly to me

and into my bank account,” he

writes on the site. many adver-

tisements his group funded fea-

tured stories of infants allegedly

harmed by vaccines, researchers

found.

Broniatowski and colleagues

at the University of maryland

and Johns Hopkins University

searched facebook’s Ad Archive,

now called the Ad Library, for

vaccine-related ads at two

points: December 2018 and feb-

ruary o f this year. o f 309 relevant

advertisements, 163 were pro-

vaccine and 145 were anti-vac-

cine. The messages promoting

vaccination did not have a com-

mon or organized theme or

fu nder. They f ocused o n trying to

get people vaccinated against a

specific disease, such as ads for a

flu vaccine clinic, or were part of

the Gates foundation campaign

against polio, for example.

Despite a similar number of

advertisements, there were 83

different groups that promoted

vaccinations, while five groups

accounted for 75 percent of anti-

vaccine messages. The top two

were the World mercury Project

and Stop mandatory Vaccina-

tion.

many pro-vaccine advertise-

ments were taken down by face-

book, researchers f ound, because

first-time buyers failed to fill out

required information disclosing

their funding. That e nds up inad-

vertently removing science-

based information.

“So people are getting penal-

ized not for the content but for

being unfamiliar with this plat-

form,” Broniatowski said. That

creates a bias for organizations

with more resources and famil-

iarity with facebook’s advertis-

ing, he said, pointing to the two

groups funding the majority of

the anti-vaccine messages. “They

are very, very, very used to this

platform and know how to use it

effectively.”

An ad by the Utah Cancer

Control Program about cancer

prevention with the HPV vac-

cine, for example, was taken

down by facebook because it h ad

an incomplete disclaimer about

its funding, researchers found.

facebook’s decision to catego-

rize vaccines as an issue of

“national importance” also

frames the issue as a debate,

rather than one on w hich there is

widespread public agreement

and scientific consensus, re-

searchers said.

In march, a fter mounting pub-

lic pressure, facebook an-

nounced that it would reject ads

that include “misinformation

about vaccinations” and would

block advertisements that in-

clude false content about vac-

cines as part of a wider crack-

down against vaccine conspiracy

theories.

“We tackle vaccine misinfor-

mation on facebook by reducing

its distribution and connecting

people with authoritative infor-

mation from experts on the top-

ic,” a facebook company spokes-

person said. “We partner with

leading public health organiza-

tions, such as the World Health

organization, which has publicly

identified vaccine hoaxes — if

these hoaxes appear on face-

book, we will take action against

them — including rejecting ads.”

[email protected]

Two groups funded 54% of anti-vaccine Facebook ads

Hans Pennink/assoCiateD Press

Robert f. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of President John f. Kennedy, has faced public criticism from his family over his anti-vaccine activism.

Study occurred before

social network changed

its advertising policies

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