Category: Digital Culture

The Morning After or Social Media is a Humbug

Looking through window blinds, sun light coming inside.
Photo by photocreo.

Time for a hard look in the mirror?  We’ve been on a social media bender for years, and I’m thinking January 1, 2017 might be the day we begin to sober up and come to grips with its more negative effects.  When I began writing about all this stuff in 2011, it was partly in response to the fact that people seemed too eager to give the internet industry itself a free pass on the ill-effects of several major platforms because the internet writ large is perceived as so essential to democracy. And thanks to social media, the internet became an extension of our egos, in much the same way that liquor makes us all good looking and smart.

In January of 2012, a relatively small cadre of internet wonks rallied people to shout down SOPA—a bill almost nobody understood—and progressives in particular congratulated themselves for participating in “true democracy in action.” It scared the hell out of me because it was not democracy in action but industry-backed manipulation disguised as democracy.  Or as just one example of its insidious nature, the campaign was partly driven by the same anonymous denizens of a site called 4Chan, whence come many agitators of the alt-right that people now realize is a thing. My left-leaning friends who helped drive SOPA over the cliff failed to recognize the dark genie they’d let out of the bottle.  Forget that SOPA was not the toxic legislation everyone had been told it was; that’s just a minor, nagging detail. What matters is that the campaign against it was a blueprint for circumventing the democratic process itself.

The capacity to unleash thoughtless reaction in any number of directions is a power we have ceded to social media platforms.  If spurious Trump-tweets are disconcerting to you, I’d note that this was the same pavlovian mechanism at work in the anti-SOPA campaign and is more or less the manner in which we continue to dumb down the most complex issues into bites, memes, and zingers.  Kind of like those big ideas that seem really smart while under the influence, but are best left unfulfilled in the harsh reality of the ensuing hangover. So, here’s a question:  Is a platform like Twitter valuable because people get to respond to what a politician might say, or is it toxic because it gives a politician a round-the-clock platform for riling people up with some insipid one-liner in the first place?  Hint: Twitter is fine for sharing links but a stupid way to discuss real issues. The word twit is right there in the name.

With all the attention the election has focused on fake news and manipulation of information by a foreign power, it has been interesting to observe—at least anecdotally—a renewed sense of vigilance about the sources of information people choose to share or cite on Facebook.  It was not surprising, of course, that some folks wanted to blame the platform operators for failing to weed out fake news. And although it isn’t exactly Facebook’s fault that people are happy to believe nonsense in the first place, the medium is still the message; and it is a medium that instantly rewards what’s popular, not necessarily what is true, decent, thoughtful, or fair.  That was what frightened me about the anti-SOPA campaign—that suddenly being “right” en masse completely overwhelmed common sense, rational analysis, or the exchange of ideas.  The fact that nobody happened to be right was just bitter icing on the cake.

I’ve seen people respond to the fake news problem with the sentiment that they don’t want corporations like Facebook editing what we see online, but the fact is these entities already do edit what we see, but in a manner that serves their advertising and data-harvesting interests. So, while they’re at it, as long as people are going to use search engines and social media for acquiring news and information, the OSPs could be better corporate citizens and take a harder look at the negative effects that their anything-goes approach can have on business and consumers; on politics and journalism; on social behaviors and discourse; and even on the advertising that is their bread-and-butter.

One question I ask now is whether or not this sudden, wider realization that the internet may be chockfull of garbage—and is highly vulnerable to manipulation—will change the mood of the public with regard to giving OSPs quite so much latitude to sweep a million sins under the rug of the First Amendment. Invariably, whether we’re talking about copyright infringement, counterfeit operations, or predators, criminals, and terrorists using legal platforms for illegal purposes, the general response from Google & Friends has been that these problems cannot be addressed without harming otherwise protected speech.  It’s been an effective message but largely not a true one—especially when an OSP may earn revenue from the activities of bad actors and good actors at the same time.

In recent weeks, two stories trended about harassment of Muslims—one on the New York subway and one on a Delta flight—that proved to be false.  The second of these was perpetrated by a known prankster, who creates these spectacles for his YouTube channel. Historically, the progressive view would be to defend his free speech rights in defense of YouTube itself; but creating false claims of harassment is not only not protected speech, it is purposely throwing fuel on an already dangerous fire. Is YouTube required to support this guy’s channel because of the First Amendment?  Absolutely not. No more than they are required to support terrorist recruiting videos or videos demonstrating how to hack someone’s computer or videos that infringe the rights of musicians or other creators.

In reality, web platforms do not have the kind of constraints under the First Amendment that they often claim. The First Amendment protects American citizens and entities against censorship by state actors, while a privately-owned business like a social media site can adopt nearly any Terms of Service its operators choose.  Quite simply, YouTube could decide tomorrow to become a platform exclusively for videos featuring left-handed,  yodeling, Ukrainian, sword swallowers, and the creators of the millions of videos that would consequently be removed would not be able to make a First Amendment infringement claim against the company.  To the contrary, such a suit would be in conflict with the First Amendment rights of YouTube, which happen to be the same rights that allow a newspaper to employ editorial oversight of its content.

Getting Real About Free Speech

The big question is instantly tricky, of course, because the new president-elect is the first in living memory to voice such an openly hostile relationship with the free press and free speech; and we can, therefore, imagine real policy that could become legit First Amendment challenges. As such, it’s a good time to make more sober distinctions between actual First Amendment threats and perceived ones.  Because for the last several years, the internet industry has successfully labeled just about every effort to enforce reasonable, legal protections for consumers and businesses as a threat to free speech. But mitigating tangible harm in cyberspace is not in conflict with the First Amendment any more than it is in physical space.  In fact, it is often less of an issue because the harmful actors are neither located in the U.S. nor U.S. citizens, which means they do not technically enjoy—or even necessarily respect—First Amendment protections.

Of course, the conversation is probably going to get a lot dicier now. One major flaw of the Obama administration was that it gave way too much latitude to Google and other Silicon Valley firms to shape policy in a number of areas.  If the Trump administration and Congress take meaningful action to mitigate various types of harm online, the internet industry and the “digital rights” activists will likely amp up their free speech and “open internet” rhetoric, which will play even louder against the drumbeat of the Trump administration than it did during the Obama years.

Even trickier is the possibility that the new Executive really will advocate policies that run afoul of constitutional protections; and we don’t honestly know the extent to which Silicon Valley firms, to whom we’ve volunteered so much information, will cooperate.  One way or another, it’s going to be a bumpy damn ride, and a lot of crazy shit is going to fly around the web in the coming years—a lot of it disposable, trendy nonsense that will only further divide people who might otherwise find social and political common ground.

We’ve already seen attempts by the EFF, Techdirt, and the Press Freedom Foundation to conflate Trump’s press censorship rhetoric with the News Media Alliance’s interests in protecting its own copyrights online. And we can expect more of this kind of blurry messaging in the months and years to come. I believe these parties mean well, or want to mean well, but they’re still so drunk from the tech-utopian punchbowl that they don’t notice the bowl is full of all-sorts.*

With their over-broad invocations of the First Amendment, and their love of online anonymity, the tech-utopian observers fail to acknowledge the role major online platforms have played in making our political process uglier than it was 20 years ago. We’ve managed to recreate the outrageous theatrics of the turbulent 19th century rather than the more contemplative and moderated environment we had promised ourselves for the 21st.  Rational people are suddenly noticing that we’ve entered what they’re calling a post-truth era, which sounds to my ear like the queen mother of unintended consequences for what was billed as the “information age.”

In a recent video, Robert Reich recommended that people find opportunities to talk to one another in real life, especially if they are on opposite sides of the Trump divide.  Personally, I think he has the right idea.  After five years working on a non-partisan issue like copyright, I have become friends with some extraordinarily brilliant, generous, and empathetic individuals who are traditionally conservative and whom I certainly trust to uphold the core principles of the Republic, even as we discuss different views on a wide variety of issues.

Traditionally, in physical space, people are human beings whose personal narratives  and opinions remain invisible to one another.  On social media platforms, it’s the opposite; everyone’s narrative is on display while their basic humanity remains invisible. In this sense, social media’s promise to “connect” us is a bit of a humbug. Not that I would advocate outright abstention any more than I intend to give up scotch; but the start of 2017 is probably a good time for a reality check and a freshly moderated approach to the pros and cons of these platforms.

*All-sorts was a cask full of the combined dregs from drinks left on tables in a tavern, including God-knows how much backwash. A cup of all-sorts was the cheapest drink available, and for good reason.

The Fake News Problem: It’s not them, it’s us.

via GIPHY

(Okay, it’s a little bit them.)

It’s kinda like on November 9th, everyone suddenly discovered that social media fosters a fake news problem. Well, better late than never I suppose, but just because the topic of fake news is trending now, that doesn’t make it news. It’s been a problem for a long time, and if there’s a solution to be found, it probably does not begin by asking what Facebook, Twitter, or Google can do about it so much as what we can do about it.

Information, meaning facts, should not be political, or at least not partisan. But that ship has not only sailed, it’s gone straight over the edge of the flat Earth. And while there’s no question that I’ve seen both liberals and conservatives (for want of better terms) share unsubstantiated garbage posing as news, it’s hard to get past the fact that finding a reference point for truth in the digital age takes a lot more work than it did in the analog world of “scarcity.”

But who ceded so much power to these platforms? We did. Conservatives and liberals did. Republicans and Democrats did. Everyone who defines all professional journalism by the pejorative “mainstream media” has given power to social media as the new temples of truth. So, now, various factions are jumping on Zuckerberg, blaming fake news for the outcome of the election and insisting the company must do a better job of weeding out bogus news sites and hoaxes.

As an aside, I see no problem if AdSense or Facebook want to cut off the revenue spigots for fake news creators. Caitlin Dewey, writing for the Washington Post, profiled a fake news maker who earns about $10,000/month in ad revenue from spinning catchy dreck that your friends and mine share on social sites. But while the OSPs are reacting to the election and the backlash against fake news, they and their cadre of pundits and advocates ought to be a little chastened about their chronic abuse of the word innovation as a catch-all to describe what an unbounded internet actually produces. Just like pirate sites have managed to innovate revenue from creators’ pockets into their own pockets, these fake news creators innovate attention away from legitimate journalism toward utter gibberish simply because there’s money in it. But that doesn’t make it the OSP’s fault that so many users believe and spread all that fake news?

So, here’s a thought: Facebook is not, and never has been, a news source. At best, it’s a high-speed synthesis of the community bulletin board with the bathroom wall. And it’s one that is manipulated, adjusted, and monitored in order to maximize data harvesting and advertising value. I say this as someone who enjoys sharing a zinger, a comment, or a conversation on the platform. But news? It really depends.

Sadly, even paying attention to the publishing source is not always helpful. The tragedy of expanding, democratizing, and glitzing up news is that even the brand-name sources compete with the lowest common denominator. Many professional news organizations are apt to publish a story with thin research and a grabby headline just to remain visible in the multi-species stampede of stories careening through social media, kicking up huge clouds of dust.

Fake news is not nearly as big a problem as the real news that’s being filtered through marketing templates that drive reasonable and decent people apart, creating a vacuum in the middle.  Not only are we destroying the middle-class economically, but we seem to be doing an excellent job of ruining the center politically.

I have long believed that one of the reasons the United States is so fragile—but also the reason it can be great—is that we really don’t have a common culture. We have a million competitive or compatible narratives happening at any given moment. Then, the customization of social media seems to have exacerbated the lesser angels of diversity, fostering new forms of segregation, obliterating common ground for the sake of a complex and phantasmagoric venn diagram of American society. I suspect it’s how we look to a computer–especially one that wants to market to us individually–but not quite a fair representation of how we might wish to look to ourselves.

Democratization is Killing Democracy

Burning Male Protesteron Fire Shouts at Riot Act on the Streets.
Photo by stevanovicigor Pond 5.

 

I’m not sure what further evidence we need to finally declare the “information revolution” a fiasco. If the mind-boggling reality of electing a president who normalized hate speech with his campaign is not sufficient evidence that the digital age has failed to produce a more enlightened electorate, it’s hard to imagine what it would take for progressives to accept that the web hasn’t done us any favors. Yet the internet industry will keep insisting that what’s needed is more. If we just digitize more, provide more access, and harvest more data, the promised enlightenment is still within our grasp.

In the age of Less, conservative meant an author and scholar like William F. Buckley. In the age of More conservative means a cult troll like Milo Yiannapoulous. In the age of Less, there were three TV networks whose news divisions were both unprofitable and mandated by law, making them honest brokers of responsible journalism that didn’t have to compete with show business. In the age of More, a meme or a tweet will suffice because the “mainstream media” cannot be trusted. In the age of Less, expertise and dedication to purpose counted for something. In the age of More, anyone can be anything, a mashup video can be filmmaking, a cut-and-paste blog can be news, and a know-nothing thug can be President of the United States.

Donald Trump is—among many other things—the result of caring more about democratization than we do about democratic republicanism. As readers who’ve known this blog from the beginning are aware, it was the anti-SOPA campaign that got me started—less so because of the copyright issue than what that campaign said about our political process in the digital age. People were so convinced they were right about the bill that they didn’t bother to consider the larger implications of how social media and Big Data could so dramatically override the more contemplative and nuanced process of representative government. Now, with the victory of a guy like Trump, it should be clear that democratization does not in any way have to result in a benevolent society. There is no wisdom of crowds.

The utopian pretense of “disrupting the gatekeepers” in order to make the world’s information and culture freely and widely available is—in addition to stealing the work of authors—a complete fallacy as a social good. Every American who voted for the least-qualified and most obnoxious candidate in living memory had ample access to information, but to what end? This is what comes from treating all expression as “content,” as more fuel to run the data harvest for the data industry. The promise of technology has led even progressives to place so much emphasis on tearing down “elites,” that they should not be surprised when fools win the day.

The courts said Google is free to digitize a corpus of literature in order to serve a society that doesn’t read. “Digital rights” groups work to keep copyright weak in the service of the “free flow of information,” which inadvertently equalizes the social value of the poet and the fascist. More “information” is no more the answer to democracy than “more speech” was when SCOTUS ruled in Citizens United. Historically, less—what some call “artificial scarcity”—has produced the benevolently influential outcomes I want to believe most people still hope for. After all, the reason thousands mourn the passing of Leonard Cohen today is because there is only one Leonard Cohen.

Democratization is governed by the economy of trending, and trending is garbage—producing circumscribed experiences, as my colleague Mike Katell rightly points out in his blog. He writes, “While we’re busy pontificating (myself included) on social media about our views and sharing our carefully curated information tidbits with our online followers and friends, remember that this narrowly focused information sharing is a central problem for political discourse.” Trending is glib. Donald Trump just trended his way into the White House with all the intellectual virtue of a mean-girl tweet.

Ironically—perhaps even counter-intuitively—the information age has produced a climate in which American politics is no longer a competition of ideas, and factions on both the right and left are equally guilty of feeding that monster. Not only is the bubble naive, it is also grossly inaccurate. But what now?

It’s true that Trump welcomed hate into his campaign and has yet to say anything to quell that fire. And when we read about high school students already harassing minorities, this conjures legitimate fears of American Brown Shirts—a history that itself seems somehow lost despite the free flow of “information.” Through the filter of social media, it’s hard to avoid the anxiety and very hard to distinguish between being vigilantly informed and hysterically manipulated.

As indicated in a previous post, I know that if my neighbor voted for Donald Trump on Tuesday, it’s not because he’s a KKK member or a neo-Nazi. I want to believe there are more of him than there are of them—that perhaps the litany of horrors populating my Facebook feed this week is not an accurate reflection of the sentiments of half of America. But there is no getting past the sense that democratization has helped make our politics more divisive not less—that the promise of connection through technology hasn’t really panned out as the great campfire many predicted. To the contrary, it’s more like a car fire in the middle of a riot.