Dave Farber
2018-07-04 07:19:45 UTC
Date: July 4, 2018 at 16:02:59 GMT+9
Subject: Re: [IP] cory Doctorow: Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags
Dave,
I wrote a long article (or short essay) that has been published full page on an Italian newspaper.
https://goo.gl/aCJNs2
The main thesis of the article is that the traditional conflict capital vs. labor has been wrapped in another conflict
capital vs. labor --> information vs. capital&labor
intermediaries vs. intermediated
I think you might find it interesting, as it seems to me in line with what you recently sent to the mailing list.
Best, s.
-------------------------------------------Subject: Re: [IP] cory Doctorow: Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags
Dave,
I wrote a long article (or short essay) that has been published full page on an Italian newspaper.
https://goo.gl/aCJNs2
The main thesis of the article is that the traditional conflict capital vs. labor has been wrapped in another conflict
capital vs. labor --> information vs. capital&labor
intermediaries vs. intermediated
I think you might find it interesting, as it seems to me in line with what you recently sent to the mailing list.
Best, s.
*Subject: **[Dewayne-Net] Cory Doctorow: Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags*
*Date: *July 4, 2018 at 10:06:27 AM GMT+9
Cory Doctorow: Zuckâs Empire of Oily Rags
By Cory Doctorow
Jul 2 2018
<http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/>
For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch fell flat: by and large, people were skeptical of the efficacy of targeted advertising; the ads we got were rarely very persuasive, and when they did work, it was usually because the advertisers had figured out what we wanted and offered to sell it to us: people whoâd previously shopped for a sofa saw ads for sofas, and if they bought a sofa, the ads persisted for a while because the ad targeting systems werenât smart enough to know that their services were no longer needed, but really, where was the harm in that? The worst case scenario was that advertisers would waste their money with ads that had no effect, and the best case scenario was that shopping would get somewhat more convenient as predictive algorithms made it easier for us to find the thing we were just about to look for.
Privacy advocates tried to explain that persuasion was just the tip of the iceberg. Commercial databases were juicy targets for spies and identity thieves, to say nothing of blackmail for people whose data-trails revealed socially risky sexual practices, religious beliefs, or political views.
Now weâre living through the techlash, and finally people are coming back to the privacy advocates, saying we were right all along; given enough surveillance, companies can sell us anything: Brexit, Trump, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and successful election bids for absolute bastards like Turkeyâs Erdogan and Hungaryâs Orban.
Itâs great that the privacy-matters message is finally reaching a wider audience, and itâs exciting to think that weâre approaching a tipping point for indifference to privacy and surveillance.
But while the acknowledgment of the problem of Big Tech is most welcome, I am worried that the diagnosis is wrong.
The problem is that weâre confusing automated persuasion with automated targeting. Laughable lies about Brexit, Mexican rapists, and creeping Sharia law didnât convince otherwise sensible people that up was down and the sky was green.
Rather, the sophisticated targeting systems available through Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other Big Tech ad platforms made it easy to find the racist, xenophobic, fearful, angry people who wanted to believe that foreigners were destroying their country while being bankrolled by George Soros.
Remember that elections are generally knife-edge affairs, even for politicians whoâve held their seats for decades with slim margins: 60% of the vote is an excellent win. Remember, too, that the winner in most races is ânone of the above,â with huge numbers of voters sitting out the election. If even a small number of these non-voters can be motivated to show up at the polls, safe seats can be made contestable. In a tight race, having a cheap way to reach all the latent Klansmen in a district and quietly inform them that Donald J. Trump is their man is a game-changer.
Cambridge Analytica are like stage mentalists: theyâre doing something labor-intensive and pretending that itâs something supernatural. A stage mentalist will train for years to learn to quickly memorize a deck of cards and then claim that they can name your card thanks to their psychic powers. You never see the unglamorous, unimpressive memorization practice. Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook to find racist jerks and tell them to vote for Trump and then they claim that theyâve discovered a mystical way to get otherwise sensible people to vote for maniacs.
This isnât to say that persuasion is impossible. Automated disinformation campaigns can flood the channel with contradictory, seemingly plausible accounts for the current state of affairs, making it hard for a casual observer to make sense of events. Long-term repetition of a consistent narrative, even a manifestly unhinged one, can create doubt and find adherents â think of climate change denial, or George Soros conspiracies, or the anti-vaccine movement.
These are long, slow processes, though, that make tiny changes in public opinion over the course of years, and they work best when there are other conditions that support them â for example, fascist, xenophobic, and nativist movements that are the handmaidens of austerity and privation. When you donât have enough for a long time, youâre ripe for messages blaming your neighbors for having deprived you of your fair share.
But we donât need commercial surveillance to create angry mobs: Goebbels and Mao did it very well with analog techniques.
[snip]
Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp
Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now> | Modify <https://www.listbox.com/member/?> Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now <https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?&&post_id=20180703210956:F4DF3336-7F26-11E8-9782-988762441846> [Powered by Listbox] <http://www.listbox.com>*Date: *July 4, 2018 at 10:06:27 AM GMT+9
Cory Doctorow: Zuckâs Empire of Oily Rags
By Cory Doctorow
Jul 2 2018
<http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/>
For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch fell flat: by and large, people were skeptical of the efficacy of targeted advertising; the ads we got were rarely very persuasive, and when they did work, it was usually because the advertisers had figured out what we wanted and offered to sell it to us: people whoâd previously shopped for a sofa saw ads for sofas, and if they bought a sofa, the ads persisted for a while because the ad targeting systems werenât smart enough to know that their services were no longer needed, but really, where was the harm in that? The worst case scenario was that advertisers would waste their money with ads that had no effect, and the best case scenario was that shopping would get somewhat more convenient as predictive algorithms made it easier for us to find the thing we were just about to look for.
Privacy advocates tried to explain that persuasion was just the tip of the iceberg. Commercial databases were juicy targets for spies and identity thieves, to say nothing of blackmail for people whose data-trails revealed socially risky sexual practices, religious beliefs, or political views.
Now weâre living through the techlash, and finally people are coming back to the privacy advocates, saying we were right all along; given enough surveillance, companies can sell us anything: Brexit, Trump, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and successful election bids for absolute bastards like Turkeyâs Erdogan and Hungaryâs Orban.
Itâs great that the privacy-matters message is finally reaching a wider audience, and itâs exciting to think that weâre approaching a tipping point for indifference to privacy and surveillance.
But while the acknowledgment of the problem of Big Tech is most welcome, I am worried that the diagnosis is wrong.
The problem is that weâre confusing automated persuasion with automated targeting. Laughable lies about Brexit, Mexican rapists, and creeping Sharia law didnât convince otherwise sensible people that up was down and the sky was green.
Rather, the sophisticated targeting systems available through Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other Big Tech ad platforms made it easy to find the racist, xenophobic, fearful, angry people who wanted to believe that foreigners were destroying their country while being bankrolled by George Soros.
Remember that elections are generally knife-edge affairs, even for politicians whoâve held their seats for decades with slim margins: 60% of the vote is an excellent win. Remember, too, that the winner in most races is ânone of the above,â with huge numbers of voters sitting out the election. If even a small number of these non-voters can be motivated to show up at the polls, safe seats can be made contestable. In a tight race, having a cheap way to reach all the latent Klansmen in a district and quietly inform them that Donald J. Trump is their man is a game-changer.
Cambridge Analytica are like stage mentalists: theyâre doing something labor-intensive and pretending that itâs something supernatural. A stage mentalist will train for years to learn to quickly memorize a deck of cards and then claim that they can name your card thanks to their psychic powers. You never see the unglamorous, unimpressive memorization practice. Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook to find racist jerks and tell them to vote for Trump and then they claim that theyâve discovered a mystical way to get otherwise sensible people to vote for maniacs.
This isnât to say that persuasion is impossible. Automated disinformation campaigns can flood the channel with contradictory, seemingly plausible accounts for the current state of affairs, making it hard for a casual observer to make sense of events. Long-term repetition of a consistent narrative, even a manifestly unhinged one, can create doubt and find adherents â think of climate change denial, or George Soros conspiracies, or the anti-vaccine movement.
These are long, slow processes, though, that make tiny changes in public opinion over the course of years, and they work best when there are other conditions that support them â for example, fascist, xenophobic, and nativist movements that are the handmaidens of austerity and privation. When you donât have enough for a long time, youâre ripe for messages blaming your neighbors for having deprived you of your fair share.
But we donât need commercial surveillance to create angry mobs: Goebbels and Mao did it very well with analog techniques.
[snip]
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