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Murdoch/Disney

Again that is just technology, not content-driving. I’d argue all the web, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc have done is to democratise media which has had a rather unfortunate side effect of exposing vast swathes of people as being more than a bit thick and horrible! YouTube is not the view of Google anymore than Facebook is the view of Zuckerberg, it is just a soapbox that anyone, arsehole or not, can use.

Sky have a colossal team in the UK that use complex analytics to look at the viewing habits of their customers. It's all part of a complex method of targeting media at customers. One could assume that if Murdoch wanted he could target hard right content at already right wing viewers and drip feed stuff at more moderate viewers in order to sway them to the right.
 
Sky have a colossal team in the UK that use complex analytics to look at the viewing habits of their customers. It's all part of a complex method of targeting media at customers. One could assume that if Murdoch wanted he could target hard right content at already right wing viewers and drip feed stuff at more moderate viewers in order to sway them to the right.

This is an aspect that worries me hugely. As someone who has been online longer than HTML itself I love the idea of the internet as an open democratic frontier, but it so easily becomes an echo chamber these days and that is so dangerous. Given the extent of this issue I’d actually like to see some formal regulation regarding content-fielding as it is now so clear serious abuse/reality distortion can occur. This is an emerging technology and there will obviously be a steep learning curve and I suspect there will be some very significant legal cases in the USA initially relating to the Russian social-media tampering in the Trump election but applicable to a far wider scope later. We are definitely still finding our way around this stuff!
 
This is an aspect that worries me hugely. As someone who has been online longer than HTML itself I love the idea of the internet as an open democratic frontier, but it so easily becomes an echo chamber these days and that is so dangerous. Given the extent of this issue I’d actually like to see some formal regulation regarding content-fielding as it is now so clear serious abuse/reality distortion can occur. This is an emerging technology and there will obviously be a steep learning curve and I suspect there will be some very significant legal cases in the USA initially relating to the Russian social-media tampering in the Trump election but applicable to a far wider scope later. We are definitely still finding our way around this stuff!
I hear tales of news sites spitting out content flavoured left or right wing depending on the consumer. Not sure if that's true.
 
I hear tales of news sites spitting out content flavoured left or right wing depending on the consumer. Not sure if that's true.

Facebook unquestionably does this, and this is what I feel needs some regulation as it results in a completely false ‘echo chamber’. In most instances it is just algorithms and without bias, just statistical selection based on prior usage and related user-trends just like ‘Amazon recommends’, Google Adsense or whatever, but as the Trump election, Brexit and last general election prove it can be hugely manipulated or even bought, and that is deeply worrying/terrifying.
 
I hear tales of news sites spitting out content flavoured left or right wing depending on the consumer. Not sure if that's true.

Sky have a colossal team in the UK that use complex analytics to look at the viewing habits of their customers. It's all part of a complex method of targeting media at customers. One could assume that if Murdoch wanted he could target hard right content at already right wing viewers and drip feed stuff at more moderate viewers in order to sway them to the right.
 
I didn't mean targeting clicks. I meant the same web page where you read the same story, but it looks different. So I hear.
 
I do accept your concerns, though I guess as someone who chooses to use Apple products and earns most of my income from Google and Amazon monetisation (this site would simply not be viable without it!) I guess I am a little biased.

There is simply no denying that these companies are building our technological future, what they are doing is coming and it is coming fast.

I quite understand why people use them. The problem is that they become essentially powerful quasi-monopolies who are then in a position to do things like tax dodge, undermine competition, exploit workers, exploit personal data, or manipulate what information we get. Not healthy.

It has reached the point where people often have no idea that, for example, alternative search engines even *exist*. Let alone the scope of the practices like tax dodging, which costs us all a great deal, indirectly.
 
jim.

one of the big problems is that we rely on others for publishing. there was an initiative a while back by the free software foundation to devise affordable microservers that would allow people to control their own broadcasting. that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. IMO, nations or erhaps even the UN (or some new international body) should take over companies like google and facebook. the situation is totally out of control, even from a capitalist perspective the other idea would be to ban internet advertizing or tax it at a rate of 90%.
 
Banning internet advertising would drive all the independent voices from the internet leaving only the wealthy or corporate/party political. Sites like this one simply couldn’t exist as keeping it running smoothly is close to a full time job that obviously needs financing. It is no surprise to me that the Free Software Foundation idea failed, as so much similar thinking always does.
 
tony.

i think we need people with more creative ideas than what both you and i have quickly scribbled down here to arrive at a good solution.
 
To my mind we need a little very, very light regulation regarding political content-fielding and nothing more. That and better tax collection for multinational companies (which is a very real issue but nothing to do with the topic here). The totalitarian state control you apparently seek that is so all-powerful it even steals people’s businesses etc after some arbitrary level of success is my very worst nightmare!
 
The totalitarian state control you apparently seek that is so all-powerful

i don't seek that at all. i seek very local, de-centralized control, like municipalities providing internet services -- which is actually happening in the USA and is one way to thwart the net neutrality problem, as an example. i seek to come up with (or welcome) alternatives to totalitarian monopolies like google and facebook.
 
i don't seek that at all. i seek very local, de-centralized control, like municipalities providing internet services -- which is actually happening in the USA and is one way to thwart the net neutrality problem, as an example. i seek to come up with (or welcome) alternatives to totalitarian monopolies like google and facebook.

Still a dictatorship/totalitarian mindset as you are seeking to remove freedom of people to own and run these entities after a certain threshold of success, i.e. you wish to enforce your beliefset upon others. In contrast I do no wish to close Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google etc at all, only to ensure legislation exists to make them pay the tax they owe and ensure tyrants like Putin etc can’t use them to tilt elections! I have no issue with success at all, the choice to use them or not remains with the end user and they will be judged on the quality of service they provide.

I am however hugely worried about echo chambers and the politicising of social media content in general by many disparate factions (mainly forces outside the platform owners), but that is a whole other issue and the very last thing I want to see is state control of the internet as I no more trust a state to be benign than any other person or entity. There is room for all. It is very new technology and I’m sure a huge amount of change will occur over the next decade or so.
 
jim.

one of the big problems is that we rely on others for publishing. there was an initiative a while back by the free software foundation to devise affordable microservers that would allow people to control their own broadcasting. that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. IMO, nations or erhaps even the UN (or some new international body) should take over companies like google and facebook. the situation is totally out of control, even from a capitalist perspective the other idea would be to ban internet advertizing or tax it at a rate of 90%.

I've been 'publishing' my own material for decades. At least in the sense that I've written material and put it onto public websites that either I've paid for, or my then-employer (University) or some other organisation provided. And people can now set up their own home web servers and make things available if they wish.

So I think the answer isn't a 'take over', so much as diversity accompanied by some state action to expose and limit excess or unsocial behaviour by large quasi-monopolies. In that sense, its a matter of education and political will. If people become *educated* about the net, etc, they can make informed choices. The problem at present is people are left dumb in the dark. So they don't even think of requiring politicians *and* big companies to deal with the problems.

Some law and government (on various levels) actions are needed. But the best disinfectant is sunshine. That then allows us to decide what government action is required.

Mind you, I'm obviously biassed. Having worked in the 'ed biz' for decades I'm inevitably going to say 'education' is the key. 8-]
 
Still a dictatorship/totalitarian mindset as you are seeking to remove freedom of people to own and run these entities after a certain threshold of success, i.e. you wish to enforce your beliefset upon others. In contrast I do no wish to close Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google etc at all, only to ensure legislation exists to make them pay the tax they owe and ensure tyrants like Putin etc can’t use them to tilt elections! I have no issue with success at all, the choice to use them or not remains with the end user and they will be judged on the quality of service they provide.

I am however hugely worried about echo chambers and the politicising of social media content in general by many disparate factions (mainly forces outside the platform owners), but that is a whole other issue and the very last thing I want to see is state control of the internet as I no more trust a state to be benign than any other person or entity. There is room for all. It is very new technology and I’m sure a huge amount of change will occur over the next decade or so.

A "certain threshold of success" here means near total monopoly. Monopolisation is what happens when data giants are allowed to do what they want - it's built into the model, which is about maximising data extraction (so platforms expand into everything) and network effects (which means that biggest is best: why use a social media site that no-one else is using?). Of course you can opt out of these services but you can't opt out of the societies they shape. And if you don't like the Trump-like, Faragiste shape they're taking then you need to accept that something radical needs to be done because the software platforms bear more responsibility for that than Putin's troll-masters - they just understand how the platforms work.

The alternative doesn’t have to be top-down control: that’s the conservative (and, weirdly, the liberal) vision of the alternative to “free markets” when it comes to the media. People can themselves decide what form regulation should take (this is what Labour propose). And positive rather than negative regulation is what most progressive voices are talking about: alternative, public service platforms, perhaps run as co-operatives. (One of the things that frustrates me about the BBC is that they are well placed to innovate here and have indeed developed some interesting digital projects, but when they get too interesting they are shut down, and they go back to slightly tweaked ways of delivering traditional TV.)
 
Am I the only person who wonders what is going on behind things like 'Alexa'? IIUC that sends info about what you are saying off to the 'cloud' so you can switch off Clarkeson when he appears on TV. I appreciate the desire to do that, but wonder how we know that no other use is made of listening to what people say by those who have suitable access to the real systems beyond your home and probably outside the UK.
 
Am I the only person who wonders what is going on behind things like 'Alexa'? IIUC that sends info about what you are saying off to the 'cloud' so you can switch off Clarkeson when he appears on TV. I appreciate the desire to do that, but wonder how we know that no other use is made of listening to what people say by those who have suitable access to the real systems beyond your home and probably outside the UK.

It is an odd thing and in most respects has to be viewed as actively allowing the bugging your house! Even if the intent of Google, Apple, Amazon etc is benign (and I’m far from a conspiracy theorist on this, I actively welcome and enjoy much of what these modern technology companies offer) it is still a mic connected to the outside world with the user’s permission, so potentially open to hacking if nothing else.

I’m an Apple user, I love their hardware and OS X is a really nice balance of UNIX power and a lovely GUI so I’d not really want to use anything else, but Siri is a step too far for me. I just don’t like the whole idea of talking to computers, and I certainly don’t like the idea of them listening, so Siri is turned off on all my devices. I’m sure some of this is just my age; I started my computer journey in 1981 on a friend’s BBC B so I expect a proper keyboard and command line somewhere! Sure, these days I spend a lot of time on an iPad as it is just so convenient, but whenever I have to do some real data entry I have a proper heavy vintage IBM Model M keyboard connected to my Mac to type on!
 


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