Category: Politics

Social Media’s Power to Manipulate

The FCC, in a narrow vote this week, elected to adopt rules to protect the principle known as “net neutrality.” The agency will now regulate broadband as a public utility in order to ensure that ISPs cannot discriminate between one kind of customer and another, namely that they may not speed up traffic for higher paying users or slow it down for lower paying ones.  Many view the vote for “net neutrality” as a win for universal digital rights, others see it as government overreach into the free market; and both sides claim to be on the side of free speech.  I have expressed doubts before about some of the more extreme fears of a world without net neutrality, and Alex Pareene, writing for Gawker, reminds us that the “win” in this case can be credited to what he calls a “cartel” of Internet industry giants like Google, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, and Amazon. Whether or not net neutrality is essential for maintaining a level playing field for competing interests, one rhetorical talking point overused by all parties is this idea of preserving the Internet as “the greatest tool for free expression and democracy.”  It ought to be, but the more I consider this premise, the more I wonder if it may prove to be one of the worst lies of the digital age — no matter how fast it travels through the proverbial tubes.

In an article posted on Ars Technica, cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier explains exactly how easy it can be to manipulate public opinion through social media.  I’ve been on this kick since starting this blog — the idea that more expression can actually make the electorate less well informed, not because people are necessarily dumb or lazy, but because the way in which we take in information now is so heavily bombarded with aggregated impressions.  Unless one really has time to research and calmly consider every story that might pop up on a Facebook feed, for instance, it’s almost impossible not to be influenced by the constant flow of impressions being made with images, headlines, and memes.  The more these impressions jibe with our own biases, the more they solidify those prejudices, making us less receptive to ideas that might challenge our thinking.  And because a walled garden like Facebook tends to expose us to items based on our group of like-minded Friends and on an algorithmic interpretation of our tastes and interests, the experience is far more circumscribed than we might necessarily notice. Schneier offers a relatively simple example of possible political manipulation thus:

“During the 2012 election, Facebook users had the opportunity to post an “I Voted” icon, much like the real stickers many of us get at polling places after voting. There is a documented bandwagon effect with respect to voting; you are more likely to vote if you believe your friends are voting, too. This manipulation had the effect of increasing voter turnout 0.4% nationwide. So far, so good. But now imagine if Facebook manipulated the visibility of the “I Voted” icon based on either party affiliation or some decent proxy of it: ZIP code of residence, blogs linked to, URLs liked, and so on. It didn’t, but if it did, it would have had the effect of increasing voter turnout in one direction. It would be hard to detect, and it wouldn’t even be illegal. Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results.”

The implications of that are rather staggering.  Forget lobbying and other forms of corporate meddling in the political process.  A vested interest could sway an election at the local, state, or federal level without anyone really noticing, and paradoxically by using these same technologies we believe provide us with better insight and a stronger voice in the process. The Internet can hardly be a tool for transparency, if we’re each looking through our own opaque set of lenses; but then combine this habit of human nature with  manipulation of the data, and you get the opposite result of the new enlightenment that was supposed to come with the digital age. Again from Schneier:

“The first listing in a Google search result gets a third of the clicks, and if you’re not on the first page, you might as well not exist. The result is that the Internet you see is increasingly tailored to what your profile indicates your interests are. This leads to a phenomenon that political activist Eli Pariser has called the “filter bubble”: an Internet optimized to your preferences, where you never have to encounter an opinion you don’t agree with.”

I think Pariser’s “filter bubble” accurately describes the human component that is so often excluded from the discussion, but I will also be presumptuous enough to examine this notion of “an opinion you don’t agree with.”  Depending on how we define that phrase, I actually find the social media experience is chockfull of opinions with which I disagree and that I could spend an unreasonable amount of time sifting through all those opinions in search of competing ideas. After all, opinions and ideas are not quite the same thing. Competing ideas are about problem solving. Competing opinions are mostly theater, and media loves theater. Cable TV news produced many years worth of passive theater comprising competing opinions in the service of few ideas.  Social media turns this into participatory theater that adds the element of narcissism, which serves to exacerbate the divisiveness in our political process.  In short, I suspect the environment is ideal for manipulators to subtly manipulate political outcomes without us  noticing.  The promise that the Internet “democratizes” information certainly sounds progressive, but the ways in which we interact with these tools as they are designed doesn’t necessarily foster progress; and to Schneier’s point, it doesn’t have to be the least bit democratic.

Ayn Rand Didn’t Mean a Technocracy

Ayn Rand

It is a matter of record that many of the most powerful entrepreneurs and VCs of Silicon Valley espouse a distinctly libertarian point of view tinged with shades of Ayn Rand, or at least a half-assed reading of her works.  And this confluence should not be overlooked, if for no other reason than, at least for the moment, what feels like our inexorable march toward a technocracy is being led by a very small group of very young men.

I have opined to friends and colleagues that the last people who should ever read Ayn Rand’s novels, let alone be required to read them, are teenage boys.  No creature that horny and that neophyte in basic literacy should ever be exposed to her particular brand of social philosophy until it is mature enough to realize that, for instance, her masterwork Atlas Shrugged is essentially an unforgivably verbose, adult comic book.  Like The Justice League meets The Story of O, part of the narrative of this undeservedly influential novel is one in which the heroine lives out her rape fantasies with a series of increasingly powerful wizards.

Each of the wizards — all brilliant and good-looking men — are flattering caricatures of 20th century Robber Barons, as if Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie were all dashing, philosophical, and scientific rather than cunning, ruthless, and lucky.  The subplot of Dagney Taggart’s sexual metamorphosis portrays her as a figure who must earn the right through her journey toward ideological enlightenment to finally deserve to be ravished by the man with the biggest machine.  In this sense, Taggart’s sexual “awakening” parallels the overarching implication in the novel that society itself must earn the right for John Galt to return messianic with his intrinsic technology.  All of the action is of course interspersed  with endless and repetitive monologues that might be boiled down to three words — communism is bad.

So, no, we should not assign this novel to adolescent boys, most especially if those boys reveal themselves to be prodigies in a technological field and are, therefore, more apt to imagine themselves possessing the power to “turn off the machine of the world.”  Such comparisons to Galt were made after the blackout of certain websites in protest of SOPA/PIPA. And although the world did, and certainly could, carry on without Wikipedia, it is worth noting that its founder Jimmy Wales considers himself an Objectivist, which is the social philosophy of Rand and her inner circle of thinkers and sex partners.  Of course, it’s hard to imagine many enterprises that would inspire one of the author’s smoky sneers more than Wikipedia might.  Free?  For the greater good?  Managed by a collective?  As I say, Rand leaves almost no English word unused in her excoriation of such ideas.  But this is typical of most people who claim to adhere to a particular philosophy; from traditional religion to vegetarianism, they tend to cherry pick the bits they like and leave out the bits they don’t like or don’t understand.

Visualize the present lifestyles many of Silicon Valley’s boy geniuses, and the parallels with Atlas Shrugged require little imagination.  These contemporary wizards have science and technology, they have extraordinary wealth, and they have private planes they land in their very own magic valley where they construct work spaces, social clubs, and even transportation systems that allow them to exist entirely separate from the population around them.  And like John Galt and those chosen to live in his secret valley, the consistently articulated message from these real-life wizards is that society needs them, and we would be self-destructive to restrain their “genius” no matter where it may lead.  Of course, the fictional Galt had invented a machine that would produce an endless supply of energy while many a real-world Internet entrepreneur has invented a means to waste an endless amount of time; but that’s just life’s way of producing an endless amount of irony.

Needless to say, I am no Ayn Rand fan; I think she was mad as a hatter, desperately in need of an editor, and doesn’t really deserve the philosophical pedestal on which she has been placed.  But one value often overlooked by both her fans and her haters, in industry or in politics, and one she often wrote about quite beautifully, was the notion that a person’s work is irrevocably his own. Be it a technological device, an architectural design, a new formulation for steel, a novel, or a symphony, a person’s work was his or her property; and any other person or entity which sought to profit from or restrain the creator’s right to exploit that work was what she called a “looter.”  And nothing was lower in her view.

While many interpreters of Rand associate her with social Darwinism, I think she makes clear that she doesn’t revile the average citizen but rather reviles the theft of human capacity and theft of genius.  Thus, her characters are caricatures of genius breaking restraints on their abilities, but if you pay attention to the passage in Atlas Shrugged once Dagney arrives in the secret valley, you’ll notice that even the ubermenschen who have formed their own society still honor the boundaries of one another’s individual sovereignty.  They so utterly reject the idea of the collective, that they will not do even the slightest deed as a favor; all interactions and transactions are a form of trade.  And a less jaded reading of this is that all individuals, not just the John Galts of the world, own the sovereignty and dignity produced by their labor.  And that is not a wholly inhuman idea, which is why I’m not surprised it is so often missed by boys who probably didn’t read very carefully.

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Vicious Cycle – Speech Now Rewards the Oligarchs

I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, about the challenges and the opportunities facing the next generation — those millennials about whom everyone has a theory and whose attention everybody wants.  They are, after all, the next big generation, equalling the boomers at about eighty million with us Xers weighing in at a paltry fifty million.  But as the father of three of these so-called millennials, I’m not so much interested in them as a demographic, trying to understand their habits and tastes so I can figure out what to sell them and how to package it.  And I certainly worry about their entry into cyberspace, sharing information about themselves with Zuckerberg’s data mining organization before they reach adulthood.  But above all, I wonder whether or not millennials are up for the big social and political challenge of their age and whether or not us Xers are able to lead the charge. At the moment I’m not so hopeful in light of this report from Public Citizen entitled Mission Creep-y, explaining how Google is becoming an ultra-powerful political force and continuing to expand its “information collection empire.” Just the first few lines of the introduction reads as follows:

“Google may possess more information about more people than any entity in the history of the world. Its business model and its ability to execute it demonstrate that it will continue to collect personal information about the public at a galloping pace. Meanwhile Google is becoming the most prolific political spender among corporations in the United States, while providing less transparency about its activities than many other of its politically active peers. Despite its mantra – “Don’t be evil” – Google’s ever- growing power calls for keeping a close eye on the company, just as it is keeping a close eye on us.”

I do think the challenge of this half of this century is whether or not we’re going to allow the unfettered power of a new oligarchy to flourish.  Plutocrats have risen before in American history, but what is unique this time is that the means by which we perceive we can combat unchecked power actually waters the seeds of that power itself. To illustrate what I mean, let’s go back to Occupy Wall Street.  Remember Occupy?  It was trending not that long ago.  In my opinion, this series of protests was borne of anger and frustration with exactly the right problem — wealth consolidation.  For more than a half century now, Americans have fostered both policy and business culture that has resulted in a tiny fraction of society holding the greatest percentage of wealth.  Meanwhile, opportunity continues to shrink for everyone else — the 99% championed by OWS.  Thus, the targets of Occupy were the financial industry and the government that failed first to regulate and then to punish those who practiced predatory and fraudulent schemes that led to near economic collapse five years ago.  This particular rage aimed at those particular institutions was a reasonable start, but the narrative written by OWS actually contains an ironic twist I doubt many of its founders or followers ever considered before, during, or since those days in Zuccotti Park.

If we’re going to be honest, OWS produced nothing tangible to address the fundamental problem of wealth consolidation in the U.S.  No serious grassroots political force was founded, no OWS-backed candidates were elected to office, no dialogue has even really changed much as a result of those protests.  Instead, what OWS produced was a great deal of theater. And that’s normal.  Protests always produce some measure of theater that doesn’t translate into progress, which doesn’t mean protests don’t serve a purpose.  The irony, however, with this particular spectacle in the age of social media, this free show comprised of shared photos, videos, tweets, and updates about kids tussling with city police, was that it could not exist without putting money into the pockets of the wealthiest one percent of the one percent. For every one of us who watched a video of Officer Bologna pepper spray a young woman and thought, “that’s wrong” and then went about our day, the Internet billionaires made money. The top search result of that video alone has just under a million views on YouTube, and there are I don’t know how many related videos representing how many thousands of views.  But suffice to say that long after the goals of Occupy have been swept up with the detritus from the park, Silicon Valley’s elite few continue to make money from the from the free media circus performed in the name of restoring power to the many.  This Catch-22 scenario applies to just about any cause, any protest, any movement around the world.

I wrote broadly on this theme after supposed co-founder of OWS, now Google employee (yep), Justine Tunney called for a libertarian’s coup that would install Google chairman Eric Schmidt as chief executive of America. I really don’t think it’s alarmist to say that we are spawning a new generation of Vanderbilts with a social agenda that goes beyond mere greed, and that in the end, we won’t even get a railroad out of the deal.  But what is truly different about this era’s breed of Robber Baron is that this time he owns the medium through which we naively imagine we can protect our civil liberties against his caprice and callousness.  With every tweet, status update, an even blog post just like this one, we are feeding the very monster we think we’re fighting.  This is the real conundrum of our times and for the next generation to solve:  How do we speak truth to power when that power is made stronger by every word we say?