The first half of this reads a bit like a Beginner's Guide To The Problems With The Internet In The Last Two Years. It's a good summary of filter bubbles, selected search results, the opacity of search algorithms, the Russians, etc. Aside from the lack of Cambridge Analytics it's pretty comprehensive, but there's not much new here. With the following economic exception that I hadn't considered :
I did not see it at the time, but the users most likely to respond to Leave’s messages were probably less wealthy and therefore cheaper for the advertiser to target: the price of Facebook (and Google) ads is determined by auction, and the cost of targeting more upscale consumers gets bid up higher by actual businesses trying to sell them things. As a consequence, Facebook was a much cheaper and more effective platform for Leave in terms of cost per user reached.
I would add a couple of things. First, that the influence of social media is important more as a nudge than a world-view altering behemoth. Brexit and Trump would never be a thing without a long history of crazies becoming the norm in their respective countries. For that I point the finger of blame firmly at the traditional media, not the internet giants.
Second, there is a something of a portrayal of Facebook etc. here as a somewhat innocent entity making fundamentally honest mistakes. That might be the case for Google and Twitter but I'm far from convinced about Facebook. Not that I'm particularly convinced that Zuckerberg is an evil manipulative Bond-esque villain either, just that there's some middle position between attributing to malevolence what you can't attribute to stupidity.
But it's the second part - how to do something about this - where things get much more interesting. Last time I asked the non-rhetorical question, "how should we regulate speech ?" I got an earful of free speech absolutism. This author has something better to offer, including but not limited to :
I recommend that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others be required to contact each person touched by Russian content with a personal message that says, “You, and we, were manipulated by the Russians. This really happened, and here is the evidence.” The message would include every Russian message the user received.
[They later actually tried this. It didn't work, because apparently the people likely to believe the propaganda were so stupid that they continued to believe it in defiance of the official rebuttal. Unfortunately though, no information was released as to how many people accepted the rebuttal and how many rejected it, making this a purely anecdotal approach.]
Second, the chief executive officers of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—not just their lawyers—must testify before congressional committees in open session.. Forcing tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg to justify the unjustifiable, in public—without the shield of spokespeople or PR spin—would go a long way to puncturing their carefully preserved cults of personality in the eyes of their employees.
[They managed to try this as well in the US - the UK tried but Zuckerberg simply said no. It's probably safe to say that no-one likes Zuckerberg very much, but the questions asked by the committee were not exactly the most penetrating as most politicians are simply not tech-savvy enough.]
It’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans. They distort the “public square” in a way that was never possible in history, no matter how many anonymous leaflets you printed. At a minimum, the law could require explicit labeling of all bots, the ability for users to block them, and liability on the part of platform vendors for the harm bots cause.
I'd prefer labelling, I'm not sure a ban makes any sense. A "bot" can be as simple as one line of code that prints the same thing forever. It can be done without malice or stupidity at all; bots are already used as digital assistants to (somewhat) positive effects. Or so I'm led to believe.
Second, the platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition... This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. This is a great business model for Facebook and Google—and convenient in the short term for customers—but we are drowning in evidence that there are costs that society may not be able to afford.
Eighth, and finally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers. Under that framework, Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not just search and social media but also email, video, photos, and digital ad sales, among others—increasing their monopolies by buying potential rivals like YouTube and Instagram. While superficially appealing, this approach ignores costs that don’t show up in a price tag. Addiction to Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms has a cost. Election manipulation has a cost. Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost. All of these costs are evident today. We can quantify them well enough to appreciate that the costs to consumers of concentration on the internet are unacceptably high.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
Excellent post. In addition to the rabble-rousing issues you mentioned, I think the health issues of social media will start to come to the fore. I think it'll become the nicotine of the 21st century, slowly ground out and replaced for some by something more obnoxious but mostly harmless.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably too late anyway, but that's interesting to see constructive, realistic solutions beyond "FREE SPEECH FOREVARR!" and the Politburo.
ReplyDeleteTroy The thing is, talking to strangers without having to be in the same room as them is intrinsically quite fun. Especially when you can discover people with vaguely-similar interests to converse with.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 90's the free-for-all internet chatroom was revolutionary. The radical freedom (no reference to Existential Comics intended) of being able to talk to anyone was genuinely cool. The danger factor was part of the excitement. But that has long since worn thin, because the high risk that you'll end up talking to a complete arsehole via text has been revealed to be every bit as irritating as when you have to talk to a complete arsehole in real life.
I think social media is here to stay, in some form - it's just too much fun not too. But it has to change. A long while ago, one of the big social media players (either Twitter or Facebook, I forget which) was ranked as the number 1 game in the world, to much head-scratching. But it is very much like a game, gaining that little dopamine hit for every like or new follower. Which is very different from communication in the real world, where, though many people do enjoy outrageous levels of attention, the majority are neither social whores nor mad dishevelled hermits.
The challenge is to get social media to a) connect people with a diverse (but not infinitely so) set of outlooks - there have to be both similarities and differences to have interesting discussing; especially important is to connect people who can disagree but still mutually benefit from dialogue; b) make money.
Easier said than done...
Rhys Taylor I believe society will adapt to each successive challenge. As a millennial (albeit on the very tippy-end), it's easy to get addicted and hard to disengage but eventually you stop wasting your time chasing Likes and start being amused at Google's attempt to match products with your search terms. Young people are just much more susceptible to FOMO, and eventually they discover that +1s don't mean anything.
ReplyDeleteWho would have predicted vinyl would make a comeback? Or that boardgames and wargaming would survive in the era of videogames? Like with newspapers and radio, people learned to deal with them in society instead of panicking thinking the Martians were attacking*.
My guess is that social media will be richer and more related to your actual friends, online or meatspace. Our text and symbol-based interactions get a quick dopamine hit, but we might instead see something more like VR hangouts, more quality time. I'm playing DnD for the first time in my life, and WhatsApp is a big part of the experience, discussing rules, cracking jokes and making decisions in the downtime between sessions. Who knows, 30 years from now we'll still be rolling dice but we'll have an option for an out-of-town friend to join in via AR (something you can already kind of do). Stuff like that.
*If indeed that actually happened
It seems that for some people Cold War was too much fun to let go.
ReplyDeleteWhy is there no reference to Cambridge Analytica? The way how this is written sounds like it is bad only if groups outside of your country our messing with you.
Otherwise great article, hopefully we will see some good changes.