Is the social media bubble about to burst?
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Privacy concerns are an important motivator. But we have already things a lot more tangible than that.
I like the concept of social media, of sharing moments with people I know but I don't have day to day contact, of communicating with my family that is in another country. But the way it's implemented is scary, and it has lasting world-wide consequences.
I would not mind paying X$ monthly to have quality social media. But this can't happen while it competes with free social media where your data is the product. Regulate the market, force it to move in a more healthy direction and let new companies grow and drive inside the new game rules, and make the old ones to adapt.
This seems like a very weird thing to say to me. Democratic voting is always manipulated, every media source and conversation and political speech you see is "manipulation". Why is social media any different?
Cynically, or conspiratorially, I think everyone is making a huge deal about this because it's manipulation that's not happening through the officially-controlled and sanctioned channels.
Cynically, it is cynism to devaluate all democratic values because democracies are not perfect. You say, and I agree, that democracies are not perfect because there are groups of interest that manipulate the results. Your conclusion is that we should stop caring and we should accept any level of manipulation, as it is impossible to reach zero manipulation. With that same logic, we should allow any crime as it is proven that we cannot stop all of them.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...
I am somewhat skeptical of democracy, though.
Would you elaborate on this? Alternatives you'd prefer?
My general sense of skepticism comes from a few things:
- The sense that America as a whole is somewhat shoddily run
- The sense that San Francisco specifically is very shoddily run.
- The (very elitist, I'll admit) feeling that I don't think the average person is competent to understand or decide most issues.
To be sure, context matters: "who is your population", "what is your political culture" (tradition of bribery? of honesty?) &c are important; some very nice places seem to be working well as democracies.
But I would not classify the city or the country I live in among them.
Still unsure of & mulling over exactly what I'd do to fix things.
(SF in particular is pretty bad:
- Extremely rich
- But staffed with a working-class that lives in poor conditions & is super overworked; basically, exploited
- Filled with people living on the streets in conditions ranging from extremely bad to some of the extreme human misery I've ever witnessed
- Decaying infrastructure
- Constant low-level crime
- Very (very!) dirty.)
There is a chance of that happening, but it should be a self correcting system. If government assistance is pulled from people, they just opened a new voting block.
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-cambri...
Why is foreign influence bad but domestic influence OK? American foreign policy has huge effects on the rest of the world. Shouldn't they have a say? How about undocumented immigrants living in the country?
The nice thing about a concrete example is it collapses hypotheticals.
Cambridge Analytica illegally deployed foreign workers to American campaigns [1], used improperly—perhaps illegally [2]—obtained data to target voters with messages that were at times conflicting and generally designed to inflame disagreement. CA took active measures to conceal they were behind these messages and takes active measures to conceal its own backers. Its (now former) CEO is on tape [3] attempting to sell services which violate the FCPA [4].
We need a solution that preserves Internet freedoms while protecting against this.
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-cambridge-...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics/alexander-nix-cambri...
[4] https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-pract...
"Cambridge Analytica illegally deployed foreign workers to American campaigns"
Why is it (or should it be) wrong for a non-US-citizen to advise members of a US campaign?
To ensure the U.S. government is serving the interests of Americans.
It also promotes accountability. Take the trolls who provoked both sides of a debate into hostility [1]. That's not healthy for our democracy. But the FEC will have limited success going after the instigators. What they can do is tell American social media companies: "if you get paid to show advertising which, if on TV would have to carry a 'paid for by XYZ' disclaimer, then you have to get that information too."
Note that the FEC does not consider foreigners "who are...lawfully admitted for permanent residence" to be "foreign nationals."
Note further that nothing prevents e.g. the Russian embassy from taking out a full-page ad in a newspaper or buying advertisements promoting their views. They just have to say "this was paid for by the Russian Federation."
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-trolls-senate-intellig...
A little silly: Consider the examples. E.g., Russia took out facebook ads raising awareness about police brutality in the US. This is clearly "provoking both sides into hostility," but so what? Does it really matter that it's (scary voice) Russia doing it?
The second reason I think it's silly is it's just impossible to trace influence, ultimately. How many political commentators have gigs at think tanks that are ultimately funded by foreign governments? Lots! Or what about people that have close family members living in other countries? Etc.
Ultimately, I think people just need to evaluate arguments on the merits, and also be sophisticated about considering all possible sources and motivations for any given argument they are seeing.
You're highlighting the not-wrong parts of the illegal stuff and will next highlight the not-illegal parts of the wrong stuff. CA did things that were wrong and illegal, but not everything they did was both.
Microtargeting voters is not illegal. It needs oversight, in the way campaign ads have to follow certain rules, but if the Russian Embassy bought political ads on Facebook, I think that would be fine.
There is a public interest in knowing who says what in a political discussion. This is why, whether it's a campaign or a PAC or a foreign government, political ads come with "paid for by XYZ" disclaimers. Cambridge Analytica deliberately skirted those rules to do what they were written to prevent.
There is also public interest in ensuring foreigners pushing political agendas do so in good faith. Promoting both sides of a debate, with the intention of sparking conflict, for example, is acting in bad faith [1]. Cambridge Analytica broke these rules [2]. In doing so, they enabled--deliberately or negligently--what those rules were written to prevent.
The line between "using" and "manipulating" any medium comes down to legality and intent. There are grey areas in those delineations. Cambridge Analytica jumped over the ambiguity into clear illegality, wanton disregard and in-your-face bad-faith behaviour [3]. They did so by taking advantage of Facebook's comercially-incentivised negligence and our election oversight system's blind spot in respect of online ads.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-trolls-senate-intellig...
[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-cambridge-...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics/alexander-nix-cambri...
Definitely not if they were political ads for a US election. It is illegal for foreign nationals without permanent resident status to participate in election campaign activities in that manner[1].
FWIW, I'd say the same about domestic campaigning - you should be able to track it back to its source.
Obviously not. Foreign countries are always going to act in their own interest. They are not interested in the stability or longterm prosperity of other nations, usually quite the opposite.
Those affected by foreign policy have other ways of exerting influence (tariffs, their own policies, immigration policies, etc) they don't get to alter my day to day life. Freedom of the press and Freedom of speech in the US is a critical and fundamental right - China doesn't get to throw money at shutting those down because they're inconvenient to Chinese policy.
Complaining primarily about Russia's interference in our 2016 election is willful blindness. Every country tries to influence every other country's elections. Russia (if the allegations are true) may have done it better this time, or used methods that were more detectable, and got more attention because of how shocking the election turned out.
At least some of what Russia (allegedly, I'm unconvinced whether it was Russia or Seth Rich like Assange implied) leaked (the hacked DNC emails) was really important political information that the people had a right to know. Do you think the DNC had a right to keep private their Hillary favoritism and primary rigging? I don't care if Russia leaked it, Seth Rich leaked it, or some Tuvalu aborigines leaked it. Russian and other countries' intelligence agencies hack everything they can; that doesn't mean they're the source of a particular leak.
Yes? As a general rule, private organizations should generally be free to keep their private emails sent about privately held preferences and gatherings in private hands.
The DNC is not a government agency or body. They're not subject to FOIL. They didn't "rig" the primaries unless you enormously stretch the definition of "rigging".
If we have a right to see the DNC's emails, we have a similar right to see the RNC's. Doesn't take much wondering to tell if they expressed private feelings about Trump there - they were publicly telling Trump to drop out.
To review, the U.S. election system for presidents is single-winner, which game-theoretically pushes the general election toward a two-candidate race. Those two dominant candidates are selected by "private" political organizations called the DNC and RNC.
Was it legal for them to do what they did? I guess so, but I'm not a lawyer much less an election law lawyer. Does a system in which the DNC can secretly (until it gets leaked) show favoritism still represent democracy of any kind? I don't think so. It's cronyism or oligarchy or something more akin to that than to representative democracy.
So in the Democratic primary we had the DNC (legally, presumably) influencing primary voters to favor Hillary. In the general election, we had Russia, to some extent, influencing voters to favor Trump (or at least hate Hillary enough to stay home). Everyone goes through the roof that a small group of people from another country would influence the general election, but little to no concern domestically that a tiny group of people were influencing the Dem presidential primary results.
If you would prefer the term "influence" instead of "rig" in reference to what the DNC did for Hillary vs Bernie, I understand that. But none less than the NYTimes declared (via an editorial by Krugman) that Russia "rigged" the 2016 election when what they really mean is that Russia appeared to have influenced voters, which is the same as what the DNC did to Democratic Party primary voters.
If the RNC secretly did the same thing, I'd be complaining about them too, but there's a lack of evidence that they did, and even if they tried, it wasn't successful. As you pointed out, there were some public efforts to bias (against Trump), but they were too incompetent to be successful.
The RNC and DNC are organizations intended to help their parties' voters pick among several primary candidates. If the organizations' leadership is not neutral (or doesn't try hard to be neutral) but pretends to be, primary voters risk being seriously misled. As I said before, the whole notion that such a system has anything to do with democracy is a sham. So this past election was a sham candidate vs an awful candidate who was at least honestly selected by general party sentiment.
Sure. They're ultimately tasked with winning elections. If a neo-Nazi ran for the party's presidential ticket, I don't think anyone would question their right to oppose that.
Sanders was no neo-Nazi (clearly!), but I'm not shocked the Democratic Party leadership flinched internally at the prospect of a non-Democrat jumping into the race and affecting the chances of the most viable candidate in the general election.
> If the RNC did the same thing I'd be complaining about them too, but they didn't in this last election.
They absolutely did the same thing. I have 100% certainty that a leak of the RNC's emails would show similar internal efforts to prevent a Trump candidacy.
> The RNC and DNC are organizations intended to help their parties' voters pick among several primary candidates. That they failed at it doesn't change the fact that they publicly expressed the preferences you're aghast at the Democrats expressing internally.
That's one of their responsibilities. They also have, per their bylaws, responsibilities to win elections for the benefit of their respective parties and their values.
So you don't care if a small number of party leaders influence primaries for the good of "democracy" or "the party"?
You think it's wrong for that information about secret DNC bias to get leaked, or it's only wrong if it's leaked by a foreign party? How do you know Putin leaked it rather than Seth Rich?
What you're outlining for the role of political parties seems to be that they should strongly bias and rubber-stamp frontrunner candidates who are then rubber-stamped by primary voters who have been persuaded by bias and propaganda from the party leaders during the primary campaigns.
I don't know what the word democracy means anymore if you think that conforms to its definition.
Even having primaries be anything other than overtly symbolic is a relatively recent feature of the system, for both parties.
The norm has long been that you vote with your membership: you join the party whose leaders you trust most to serve your interests, and then (notionally) those leaders make decisions that they expect will retain and attract members.
The RNC was accused of it just like the DNC, the difference is a foreign intelligence operation didn't hack and leak RNC emails.
Well, that and that the RNC’s system to assure that they don’t have to get hands on in supporting the establishment candidate because of the way delegates selection is stacked to give the early leader (who the rule writers assumed would be the establishment favorite) an artificial air of supermajority support, to drive media coverage in a way which will collapse support for other candidates backfired because even with insider influence the early establishment candidates couldn't get public traction, leaving Trump to reap the benefits designed to go to the establishment candidate.)
Can you point me to this article? I'm fairly certain I don't remember them saying the election was "rigged".
Regardless of whether the DNC is a private or public entity, it misrepresented its process to voters. Most voters assumed that the DNC was a neutral third-party arbiter that existed to reflect the will of the voters. It is not naive to assume that your vote means something, even in the primaries. Well, it didn't used to be naive. The DNC destroyed the illusion of choice and wants to restore it by blaming a foreign power.
What actions are we okay with the DNC taking and hiding from voters? Would we want to know if the DNC was using foreign funding to push Trump as the Republican nominee? It doesn't sound illegal, but it isn't honest.
Voters who appreciated seeing the DNC emails would agree that it would be nice to see RNC emails as well. Is anyone is arguing against that?
I don't see how Russia commenting or propagandizing in any way restricts freedom of the press or freedom of speech.
One activity in question involves a single agent promoting both sides of a debate [1] with the intent of sowing discord.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-trolls-senate-intellig...
Personally, if it happens to my country, I want us to defend and fight against it, not try to play the both-sides whataboutism game. The Internet didn't break the nationstate like we thought it would.
Pretty sure everyone in the entire world with internet access chimed in at some point on the US's last election. I doubt many people looked into the country of origin of a tweet before deciding on whether or not to be influenced by it.
Then say it as yourself. Nobody gets mad at Sweden or Israel for holding events, taking out ads or lobbying lawmakers. The issue is Cambridge Analytica lying about who they are. That’s why one is legal and the other is illegal.
But when it comes to people influencing people, especially over the internet, I doubt very many knew or cared of the country of origin an opinion/idea/piece of "information" came from if it jived with them. Much less whether the identity of the poster was falsified.
Indeed with the anonymity provided by the internet, no nationality whatsoever, foreign or domestic, need be provided.
As an aside, I kind of appreciate how in the past, mostly before WW2, governments would have agencies such as "Ministry of Propaganda", or "Department of War". Now we use doublespeak terms ("Public Affairs", "Defense") to calm the masses, even though they mean the same thing.
> Social influence is not necessarily negative. For example, doctors can try to persuade patients to change unhealthy habits. Social influence is generally perceived to be harmless when it respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject it, and is not unduly coercive. Depending on the context and motivations, social influence may constitute underhanded manipulation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation
I would say that persuasion based on facts is perfectly fine. It’s the deceit that was particularly troublesome last election. And by using targeted social media campaigns derived/aided by private data and possibly behavioural and psychological profiles, people were easily manipulated for the purpose of another nation state. The foreign influence aspect is a real challenge for democracy and sovereignty
This is just using different terms to say the same thing. Facts can and often are used to manipulate, by framing and context, and by what is left out. Opinion, supposition, and FUD are also commonly used to persuade. That people usually believe what they are saying does not mean their opinions were not originally based on deceitful or self-serving propaganda.
> last election.
This has been going on since politics existed (ie. civilization).
Foreign influence is another issue. It is however deceitful to suggest that the issues foreigners (Russians) are accused of inflaming were domestically non-issues, non-controversial, or not-inflammatory before their interjection.
The fact that it was false-flag manipulation by illegal means and in part by actors prohibited from lawful participation because they are foreign to the jurisdiction is the overt reason people are upset about these manipulations.
Other than the emotional charge of the word choice, your “cynical" description of why people are secretly making a big deal is simply the exact open reason people are upset.
I don't like this kind of slippery slope whataboutism because shades of difference do matter, often profoundly. If I pat you on the back, slap you in the face, or kick you in the genitals, they're all "hitting you", so what's the difference, right? But those are different things, and discarding information by tossing them all in the same bucket makes for a less sophisticated analysis.
There are real differences between:
* A trusted friend telling you they like candidate X because Y.
* A reputable news organization writing a factual article about something candidate X did.
* A biased media source writing a clickbait opinion piece that presents itself as "news" when it's really pushing an agenda funded by its backers.
* A political advertisement paid for and from a candidate.
* A political advertisement paid for and acknowledging itself to be from some corporate super PAC.
* A political advertisement that is paid for by a corporate interest but deliberately obscures that fact.
* A political advertisement stating things that are factually untrue.
* A political advertisement that claims to be from group A but is actually from group B.
Etc.
In order to correctly process the information we're receiving, we need to know the context around it. The way that context is presented or obscured, relative to our own expectations for that context, matters hugely.
> Why is social media any different?
Because it was hyper-targeted to individuals based on psychological profiles of what those people are predisposed to believe and accept. The manipulation was expressly designed to undermine our ability to reason critically and correctly understand the intent and accuracy of the presented information.
In other words who says the authorised propaganda is better or more true. The are doing the exact same and the deeper the pockets the deeper their social media influence is.
Why is it Suddenly ok that propaganda has to be authorised to be 'valid'
It's all just additional information. Isn't it the peoples job to build their own image? Do we really want to regulate what perception people get of 'things'?
I hope someone can follow what I am trying to say...
Politics is something that we create to allow sharing of power between people NOT only in direct proportion to their money/military power but one man one vote.
Now as you notice it's not quite that simple because there is propaganda, which has to be paid for.
So some of this propaganda is paid for by specific interests, but all countries have limitations on this. Eg. in the UK we're currently on the borderline of arresting people because they may have exceeded campaign spending limits. All our politicians have complicated rules about donations, spending limits and broadcasts around elections.
Now the US has some of the loosest rules around this, because your supreme court ruled that (broadly) money is speech, so unlimited campaign donations to superpacs are allowed (I'm not an expert on US politics I think this is roughly right).
But even in the US there are limitations, eg. no money from foreign entities, the lawyer thing that they're trying to string up for where him paying off the hooker is effectively donation.
So why are people angry - because the thin wall we've tried to create between raw financial power and controlling people through propaganda with no control or limits has been eroded. Because the legislation (and enforcement) is from an old era when newspapers, radio, television were the most important things.
If you're saying that maybe we should just rip down all the regulations and have unlimited political donations across borders then maybe you can have an argument about that, but I don't think I'd agree. I like that it's at least a little difficult for US companies to bribe UK politicians to relax our regulations, and supposed to be near impossible for Russia to lobby us. I think that argument would be some kind of anarcholibertarian which isn't really my bad but might be popular on here.
However as I see this we can not fix this 'issue' without breaking the Internet.
But I also see that 'free for all' only leads the to rich getting more influence.
But maybe in this situation it's not so impossible to do something useful, Facebook is so effective at the moment because it's a centralized, surveilling monopolistic social network. This centralisation makes them easy to regulate.
You can imagine decentralised networks which would be impossible to regulate but it feels like they'd then also be harder for advertisers/propagandists to access effectively and use to control people's ideas.
Regulation can and will just lead to information bubbles and yet again giving the power in the wrong hands, but in that case a central authority instead of a open market.
When foreign actors are allowed to subvert that rule and are aided by an American company selling access to Americans, that's a problem. No other country would ever allow such a thing - can you imagine if the US started taking out political ads on Baidu against the current Chinese administration?
I think people in general struggle to objectively weigh the information they are presented with, but they struggle so much worse when they don't have the time or ability to sift through the amount of propaganda being thrown at them.
When social media was first finding its roots, many people, myself included, were excited for the prospect of the empowerment and new voice being given to the masses. But not all voices are created equal. Its the equivalent of going from an auditorium of people watching a panel debate a topic to literally everyone in the auditorium trying to debate by shouting over each other. No one has time to consider, let alone fact check, all of the information being presented to them. Its practically gotten to the point where people pick their own reality, with different sets of "alternative facts". Don't like what someone is saying? No problem, there is a never-ending supply of voices out there backing up whatever opinion you want to believe.
Additionally, perhaps the entities most empowered to push their agenda have been the already empowered. 99% of the public does not have the resources or the expertise to collect and analyse data being generated by social media. The people who do are government agencies, political campaigns, and corporations. They have more information on you, how you live, and how you think than at any other time in history. And they can influence public opinion with that information, along with new vehicles of propaganda like botnets, in a way that no regular person can.
So even if social media was originally supposed to bring people together and give a voice to the masses, the reality is that it has resulted in a more divided, disenfranchised populace than before, in my opinion.
IMO the issue is the people who use this information overload to build perceptions.
People could simply not have a opinion if they don't have the time to build it, but that doesn't fit our voting mentality where 'every vote counts' even the most stupid ones.
People also could use traditional media as their main information source instead of biased republished trash sources on Facebook.
Hence our school system should teach kids how to parse information.
How about conspiracies that turned out to be true? What about current conspiracies that will turn out to be true.
Should we ban all these 'missinformations' just because people are to stupid to build their own perception?
Nope. I'm answering a question about the practical difference between targeted and non-targeted propaganda. I was only pointing out the problem, not suggesting any specific of general solution.
> Should we ban
We don't ban such things on broadcast media, either. As I said above, in broadcast the problem is self-correcting because other parties have a chance to make countering claims (legal solutions are available but that's an extreme that doesn't happen often). The only thing I would consider trying to implement is visibility into targeted-message mediums. I also don't have a detailed proposal for how to do this, it's just wishful thinking.
> just because people are to stupid
We can't lay 100% the blame onto the people being misled if there are significant resources being spent by sophisticated actors trying to mislead them. And regardless, if a voter is misled they are not the only person impacted by that. Their failing is an externality to society as a whole, which justifies the consideration of safeguards.
But critical thinking is so outdated these days...
It's propaganda all the way down.
It can be full of falsehoods and come from shadowy sources, like most black propaganda, or it can come directly from the US government and be full of truth, like Voice of America.
BBC / CBC kinda blur the edges here since they're arms length and the content creators aren't monitoring the effectiveness of their work via public opinion polling, etc. But in practice they coordinate with a lot of the think tanks that coordinate with the federal governments and there's a bit of a cozy relationship most times that can be exploited and if a relationship / topic is important (like the US Canadian NAFTA talks) you'll see some pretty positive coverage coming out of the CBC.
There is a short 60s book called "Propaganda" that covers all this, and if you read it with a programmers background you'll be able to fully extrapolate to what today looks like.
not just that, but also that it's personalized so in theory more effective
> changes the outcome of a voting in a negative way
indeed, i don't know that that has been shown to be true.
but keep in mind there are two powerful ways to influence:
1) sway a fence-sitter's opinion 2) get a believer to vote who otherwise wouldn't have voted
Both points you mention also are valid for 'legal' propaganda.
You don’t see the difference between a politician buying ads for themselves and a foreign company illegally using foreign persons to carry out campaign activities [1] ?
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-cambri...
I too use the Internet to help spreading ideas I think are important. Those are not always in line with the current political agenda but important to me. Is that a bad thing now that I use my time and money to help change?
How about political funding? Does that not qualify as foreign interference in elections when politicians get foreign funds?
In most countries this is illegal. Foreigners generally can't make campaign donations.
The housing bubble bursts when a malicious business model failed and was declared illegal. We still have housing. It seems reasonable that valuation of social media companies can be greatly reduced, and their business models be restricted by regulation, without all social media disappearing.
I suspect many politicians are eager to control aspects of social media, specifically political speech, for similar reasons they are happy to control district boundaries: it gives them influence over their constituents. I fully expect to see legislation purposed that would decrease many platform's revenue while increasing their operating costs. We are already seeing operating costs increase as Facebook hires a new team of lobbyist.
I felt the same way about IRC rooms. They are gone now.
Even some officials in UN are fearful of Facebook inspired genocide these days. Rwanda was radio telling people to go killing the Other. Now it is Facebook in some countries. Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India,...
The difference compared to radio is that it should be possible to prevent incitement to kill/hurt people for Facebook operators even if it would mean shutting it down in particular country, so there's culpability of the Facebook co. Facebook is not just a dumb pipe, they clearly police the content.
One day we may wake up to a reality of tens of thousands massacred muslims (or whoever) after people take it to the streets after some particularly successful hate week going viral on Facebook. As of today the riots are so far localised.
If you even believe that NYT or WaPo or any other news organization is infallible, or shouldn't be approached with a critical eye, you are an idiot.
And if you believe a company that makes billions of dollars providing a free service in exchange for user information has your privacy concerns in mind, you are really deluded.
I want to believe that more and more people value privacy and social networks will more and more be like private chat rooms again. Slack/Discord/Wechat/Telegram and soon Hangout again are the best examples.
I believe it will die down in order to make place for more decentralised approaches for connections are not a visible public reference.
Any social graph could be the religion registers back i the nazi days all over again.
Privacy is getting more important even for the non it individuals.
People in highly connected points of social graphs provide a valuable service to society, and are using technology to monetize on their contribution. The people are a mix between a tribe leader and a thought leader. They bring people together and help spread ideas. Even in a very monetized network, Youtube, experts believe Influencers receive less compensation than they would with similar audiences in the old media [1]. This undervalue suggests a market imbalance that should correct it self with time. As more money comes into the field the competition will increase and the quality of the product will increase. That is why I think social graphs will become more and more important.
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2015/07/11/pewdi...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...