Category: Politics

Zeynep Tufekci on how the idealism of social media went wrong

In a new, must-read article at MIT Technology review, Professor Zeynep Tufekci at the the University of North Carolina describes How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump.  Beginning with the euphoric naivete of just a few years ago that universally assumed Facebook and Twitter would save democracy, Tufekci details the mechanisms by which social media became a weapon aimed at destroying democracy–and not just by Russians.  Advocating that we look beyond the technology–and especially not seek exclusively digital solutions–she places the role of social media in its proper context, I think, as a tool for exacerbating social, political, and economic ills that were already in place well before Mark Zuckerberg began shaving.  Some pull-quotes below, but read the whole article here.

“Digital platforms allowed communities to gather and form in new ways, but they also dispersed existing communities, those that had watched the same TV news and read the same newspapers. Even living on the same street meant less when information was disseminated through algorithms designed to maximize revenue by keeping people glued to screens.”

“Throughout the years of the Obama administration, these platforms grew boisterously and were essentially unregulated. They spent their time solidifying their technical chops for deeply surveilling their users, so as to make advertising on the platforms ever more efficacious.”

“… the weakening of old-style information gatekeepers (such as media, NGOs, and government and academic institutions), while empowering the underdogs, has also, in another way, deeply disempowered underdogs.”

Why Do We Share Fake News?

The underlying premise of this blog—indeed its title—is a rejection of the tech-utopian pursuit of more as a virtue unto itself.  It is true that the presumed benefit of more access to more content happens to be one of the commonly-alleged rationales for mass copyright infringement, but the destructive power of more goes far beyond the interests of authors of creative works. And we’re watching this destruction happen in real time.

That the current President of the United States can get away with labeling news he does not like as “fake news” is one consequence of our misguided faith in more—arguably the most prominent and acutely-negative result of information democratization. By contrast, the very subtle moment that inspired this blog was the day a friend of mine—well-educated and liberal—shared a story in 2011 that I knew to be false.  When I pointed out the inaccuracy, he countered that he cared more about the point of view being advocated than the legitimacy of the article.  Then, when I discovered how many places this same article had been re-published online, the name The Illusion of More became a thing.

But why do people share fake news? Why was my otherwise-reasonable friend unwilling to temper his eagerness to share a story that was simply untrue? “When someone chooses to share a fake news story on Facebook, Twitter, via text message, or on Whatsapp; when they post a conservative meme to their wall; or when they ‘like’ a YouTube video about a pro-Trump conspiracy theory, they may well be doing it to signal their identity and affiliate themselves with like-minded others,” writes Alice E. Marwick in a new academic paper titled Why Do People Share Fake News? A Sociotechnical Model of Media Effects.

An assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina, Marwick does not fully answer her titular question, acknowledging that she and her colleagues are far from those conclusions. Instead, she describes the complexity of the fake news problem, recommending avenues for further research and a language for more accurately discussing the issues.

The term “fake news” itself is simultaneously too broad and too narrow,” says Marwick, who advocates the more general term problematic information to encompass the complex universe of “hoaxes, memes, YouTube videos, conspiracy theories, and hyper-partisan news sites,” which all contribute in different ways to the fun-house mirror version of contemporary society we see via social media. At the same time, she describes political news as “one ingredient in a bouillabaisse of photographs, personal stories, advertisements, movie trailers, celebrity gossip, sports news…,” asserting that “In social spaces, the traditional journalistic value of objectivity no longer makes sense: virtually every story is augmented with someone’s opinion.”

The literal meaning of “fake news” is typically an enterprise in which the creator of a spoof has no agenda other than to chum the waters of social media with click-bait in order to generate ad revenue. Often, these “stories” are polysemous, says Marwick, meaning they can be interpreted in divergent ways and, therefore, shared for opposing reasons. She writes the following about one of these false stories: “‘White Baseball Players Kneel in the 50’s [sic] to Protest Black Lynchings,’ could be interpreted in support of NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s position on Black Lives Matter, or it could be a refutation of the history of White racism.”

The polysemy of this untrue story might mean more revenue for the fake news-maker, but it certainly means more reinforcement of competing, phantom narratives driving potentially reasonable citizens further apart.  Or if the story was created by a malicious actor, like a Russian agent, then the division it sows is the intent of the spoof. Regardless, the lack of truth in the story does not stop its being shared by people for divergent reasons, and Marwick wants to better understand why this is the case.

Opening the Overton Window

At present, Marwick notes that the data does reveal that Republicans are swimming in a larger pond of problematic information than Democrats, but there is “still a plethora of false content that appeals to people with left-wing sensibilities.” By democratizing news (meaning anybody gets to produce it), we have widened the Overton window, “the range of political viewpoints that are socially acceptable in American society,” thereby fostering what Marwick describes as an often subtle correspondence between problematic information online and more mainstream outlets that will encode extremist views into moderate sounding reportage or messaging.

A good example of this occurred recently in my congressional district in Upstate New York. The white, Republican incumbent employed a rhetorical attack on his Black, Democratic challenger that likely would not have been attempted as recently as two years ago. Although the Democratic candidate is a pro-business attorney and Rhodes Scholar (qualities that might normally invite labels like “elitist”), the fact that he briefly dabbled in rap music early in his career inspired the incumbent Republican to assert that a “former rapper does not represent our rural values.”

The coded “former rapper” standing in for “Black man” cannot be seen as simply a consequence of Trumpism because Trump’s presidency itself is a manifestation of our having thrown open that Overton window long before he announced his candidacy. Instead, Marwick would likely identify the Republican’s rhetorical strategy as tapping into a “deep story,” in which the interests of rural Americans have allegedly been moved to the “back of the line” behind immigrants, refugees, people of color, etc. at the urging of liberal urbanites.

While this particular narrative may be grounded in the fact that, indeed, city-centric politics often do overlook the interests of rural citizens, the crazy, racist, and divisive aspects of this deep story have been reinvigorated and amplified by the diverse range of problematic information fed non-stop via internet platforms. The Illusion of More effect kicks in as consensus builds around repeated themes shared by like-minded people; and no amount of fact-checking, or even platform moderation per se, is going to dislodge misinformation from someone committed to finding evidence for his deep story.

And this folly knows no political loyalty. The “sudden” appearance of QAnon—a collective of conspiracy-minded Trump zealots who coalesced on chat boards like 4Chan—comprises both “right” and “left” identity types, but who share a common belief in a “deep state” conspiracy to which they imagine Trump stands in opposition. QAnon may be the main act in the center ring at the moment, but they are hardly the only clowns in the circus believing and spreading fake news. In fact, it would be a serious mistake—not to mention an arrogant one—to believe that disinformation is only aimed at, or effective upon, these caricatures. Take for example this statement:

“Morals, values, and identity will always defeat facts, reason, logic, and self-interest.”

If you think that reads like something out of a training manual for cult indoctrination or the Tao of authoritarianism, it actually comes from a slide deck created by Open Media to instruct its activists in the proper way to “frame” issues in support of—get this—digital rights! Think about that for a moment …

The fundamental premise of “digital rights” is that an “open internet” must thoroughly democratize speech and information because more information is inherently good for democratic society.  But Open Media states that the ideal way to evangelize these principles is to appeal to people’s emotions, because emotion will always defeat reason, thus contradicting the presumed value of information in the first place.

Intent of the Fakers Less Important Than the Effect of the Fakes

“…the networked nature of the internet and the ability to replicate and remix images, text, and video makes it impossible to determine where a particular idea, image, or meme originated, let alone pinpoint the intent of the author. This is particularly true considering the dominance of irony as an expressive and affective force in native internet content.”

To me, this statement by Marwick alludes to one of the most difficult problems in addressing the fake news disease—the often subtle correlation between the harmlessly entertaining and the poisonously effective. All those ironic, political memes (and I’ve shared a few) can have the tangible effect of eroding basic reason, even if the meme-maker was just going for laughs. “…messaging is reinforced through repetition; the more people see fake news headlines, the more likely they are to think they are accurate,” writes Marwick. “This is true even if the story is repeated in order to debunk it.”

In the seminal example of my friend sharing fake news in 2011, there was no way of knowing who had cut and paste the original “story” just like there is no way to know whether that political meme you just shared was made by some kid amusing himself or by a Russian hacker paid to make mischief or by some guy taking the wrong medication. But if we are indeed all steadily eroding our capacity for reason and widening the Overton window, Marwick warns that fact-checking is probably not the answer …

“Fact-checking is predicated on the assumption that people will change their mind [sic] when confronted with correct information,” writes Marwick, “which implies a very passive model of the audience … [but] this ignores a wide variety of social and cultural factors, and is not supported by empirical evidence. In fact, fact-checking may have the opposite effect of making stories ‘more sticky.’”

It is true that trying to get someone to reconsider a statement based on evidence alone is like trying to flick that nagging ball of Scotch tape from the end of your fingertips. The assumption that fact-checking is the antidote to fake news is derivative of the original, mistaken assumption that more information is the only solution to bad information. Marwick’s paper casts considerable doubt on the rhetoric that a society networked by information systems is inherently self-correcting, and it provides a conversation-starter that seeks a holistic approach to understanding why people share so much utter nonsense.

The why is important because it is largely a sociological or psychological inquiry rather than a purely technological—let alone legal—one.  As much as I advocate more platform responsibility in specific contexts, the fake news problem is not one we can blame solely on Facebook et al, or certainly expect these companies to solve for us. To the contrary, if Marwick’s line of inquiry is on the right track, it suggests that the question why is something most of us should constantly be asking ourselves.

Photo by NomadSoul1

How Napster Gave Us Donald Trump

I finally had a chance to read Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin.  A former music manager and film producer from the period I would describe as America’s true golden age, Taplin is now director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. The book, which debuted a few months ago, explains how the internet oligopoly has steadily undermined democratic principles—and how we’ve helped them do it.  Taplin condenses a lot of information into a highly-accessible book that I would recommend for anyone first approaching these issues, or as a well-articulated reference for anyone already engaged.

While reading Taplin, the thought occured to me that I bet the left-leaning advocates of media piracy, along with many of the anti-copyright voices in academia, and the “digital rights” groups who scorn enforcement of copyright online would hate to know how much they helped elect a guy like Donald Trump as president.  But that’s kinda what happened.

When young, digital natives first bought into the idea that music piracy was justified because they were “sticking it to the Man,” they could not see that they were lighting the first match on a long fuse that would blow their own labor rights all to hell by the time they entered the workforce.  By consuming all the free candy, and subscribing to the progressive-sounding PR of Silicon Valley corporatists, millions of Americans unwittingly surrendered in the first battle of a war they didn’t even know was being waged against the basic rules of democracy.  Now that war is becoming more apparent. As Taplin describes in the book, it is a war being prosecuted by ultra-libertarian, monopolists like technology VC Peter Thiel—a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle—who has publicly stated his disdain for us “unthinking demos,” as he likes to put it.

Democracy is of course anathema to the warped ideology of Silicon Valley’s most powerful corporate leaders; it’s messy and inefficient, imposing rules (like copyright) that stand in the way of boy geniuses who’ve overindulged at the gold-plated bong of libertarianism while swooning to the ravings of Ayn Rand. These are men who want more than the unprecedented wealth they’ve already acquired—men who sincerely believe that their ability to reshape society with technology has earned them the right to be the new landlords of the nation. And we plebs have no business trying to stop them.  Notice I keep saying men. Here’s Taplin’s citation of Thiel’s allusion to American women’s suffrage, as written on the CATO Institute website in 2009:

“Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” [Emphasis added]

That’s the kind of thinking that permissionless innovation, beginning with piracy and the erosion of copyrights, has helped finance into extraordinary political power today. So, let’s not mince words.  If copyright infringement was in fact the first battle in a larger technological war against individual rights, led by a group of egotistical, male capitalists, then I’m afraid every woman who ever justified piracy has—like Ayn Rand’s Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged—demurely told these assholes she’d like them to be in charge.

The extraordinary power of the tech oligopoly owes much to both political parties’ unwillingness to wield anti-trust law, and to a business and technology press too busy star-fucking to notice that journalists’ heads have been on the chopping block for years.  But perhaps the most insidious element in this narrative is the role played by “digital rights” organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, PublicKnowledge, and Fight for the Future, along with their satellite and sister organizations around the world.  Adopting the tone of left-leaning, anti-corporate activists, the people in these organizations would probably hate to think that their advocacy dovetailed quite nicely with the election of a guy like Donald Trump. But it has.

Whether these institutions are co-conspirators or just useful idiots for Silicon Valley’s wealthy elite, their absolute rejection of copyright—or of any enforceable, democratic rules—in cyberspace has largely served to advance the interests of the most powerful aristocrats the modern world has ever known. The paradox the folks in these organizations refuse to recognize—indeed, which they cannot afford to recognize—is that their micro-defenses of the First Amendment on the internet have largely empowerd a tiny group of men whose stated ambition is to disrupt the Republic as an incovenient, inefficient, and outdated model.  And since no Republic means no First Amendment, it’s hard to fathom what exactly these activists think they’re achieving.

The fact that mass copyright infringement is still viewed as rebellion against corporatists, rather than playing into the hands of oligarchs, probably has a lot to do with the word property.  This is a particularly loaded word in America. Liberty, as it was codified into law at the beginning of the nation, meant liberty for property-owning, white men, including white men who owned black men and women as property. From these morally corrupt beginnings, the progress of demanding that civil liberties apply to all citizens has generally been one of wresting control from the propertied and privileged classes, which is why labor rights are so deeply intertwined with civil rights overall.

While copyright is a kind of property right, it is also analogous to a labor right whereby the right of the worker to negotiate terms is embodied in the protection of the work after completion.  With the appearance of Napster in 1999, the subsequent growth in piracy, and all the ideological bullshit that growth spawned, copyright was incorrectly subsumed into the broader narrative of the people reclaiming territory that was unfairly occupied by the propertied classes.

Though it would not be accurate to say that the major, corporate rights holders are beyond reproach, the general failure to recognize copyright as an individual right was a huge mistake—one that accelerated and financed the agendas of elitists, who view a wide range of individual rights as barriers to their own wealth and power. The destruction of copyright in the service of Silicon Valley’s interests may prove to be the cracked keystone that ultimately allows the whole democratic structure to collapse.  Unless of course we find the political will to tell these guys to get stuffed.

In this narrative, Trump himself, like the “digital rights” activists, is just another useful idiot. His innate disdain for the pesky rules (and even common courtesies) of democracy, coupled with his allegiance to the wealthy elite, make him an effective tool for the likes of much smarter men like Thiel, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Andreesen, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.

If we think of the unorthodox presidency of Trump as one that defies traditional, ideological labels, what it really represents is a vote of no confidence in American democracy. And that’s what makes it so dangerous. As noted in a recent post, the World Values Survey concluded that only 30% of Americans born after 1980 believe that it’s important to live in a democratically governed society at all. Presumably, then, the remaining 70% comprises that cacophony of views we see on social media—including many that would be opposed to Trump, but are equally anti-democratic in other ways.  To be clear, I would not make a case that Hillary Clinton, or any other candidate who has yet emerged, reveals the kind of Teddy Roosevelt moxie needed to restore balance between public and corporate interests; but electing such a figure would actually require the public to restore some faith in the system itself.

I’ve speculated in past posts that the anti-establishment trend is creating an ideological vacuum, which is already being filled by tech corporations and their owners’ libertarian agendas. This may lead to a state of technological feudalism, when all labor rights will be obliterated, taking the soul of other civil liberties with them.  The right of free speech, for instance, would become mere illusion because no citizen’s voice would actually matter in that kind of society. Speech would thoroughly devolve to noise—as effective as playing with a fidget spinner—we make on tech devices just to amuse ourselves, and to tell the computers how we can serve them rather than the other way around.

There’s a reason why one of the first steps toward authoritarianism is to silence the artists. To acheive this in a democratic society, it must be done subtly by degrees, by eroding their rights and economic power.  So, wouldn’t it be a cruel joke on ourselves if the anti-democratic, dystopian end game really did begin with everybody stealing music?