Cambridge Analytica, Bannon, Trump & 50m Facebook accounts

[Tony L]

We need a publicly owned digital space.

I think your wider post is on the money and the points you raise are valid, though with regards to the above quote I’d argue that is exactly what the internet is. There is nothing stopping anyone creating any platform, which is what I have done here with pfm, what Jim did with his site, and in fairness what Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. It is an open and free system and people’s tastes and market forces dictates which platforms are heard and which fall through the cracks. I have no issue with that at all.

There can really be no such thing as ‘publicly owned’ space on a global scale. Everything has some allegiance, everything public needs some moderation. Even open source or donation-financed entities can be found to be corrupt and hopelessly biased (just look at Assange/Wikileaks for evidence of that). The beauty of the internet is it is at this point at least still wide open and if someone hates Facebook, Wikileaks, pfm or whatever there is nothing stopping them creating a better one. We even have Conservapediea for right-wing loons who hate facts!

We should IMHO be far more worried about existing ‘net neutrality’ and how the far-right such as Trump are removing it before our eyes. State authoritarianism and state corporate favours are our main risks going forward IMO.

 

[merlin]

No the internet is remarkably dangerous and will only become more so with the next generation of smart phone social media zombies.

No one is going to come in and realistically disturb the monopoly of the larger net players. The only people who could are bodies like the UN who could possibly force the breakup of social media platforms and large internet operations. That still doesn't stop the llegal gathering of data and consolidating that information though does it? It just demands more processing power.

Much as I love PFM, it has f all impact on global politics and is unlikely to result in armed revolution in Zambia or conflict in the South Pacific.

 

[Seanm]

I think your wider post is on the money and the points you raise are valid, though with regards to the above quote I’d argue that is exactly what the internet is. There is nothing stopping anyone creating any platform, which is what I have done here with pfm, what Jim did with his site, and in fairness what Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. It is an open and free system and people’s tastes and market forces dictates which platforms are heard and which fall through the cracks. I have no issue with that at all.

There can really be no such thing as ‘publicly owned’ space on a global scale. Everything has some allegiance, everything public needs some moderation. Even open source or donation-financed entities can be found to be corrupt and hopelessly biased (just look at Assange/Wikileaks for evidence of that). The beauty of the internet is it is at this point at least still wide open and if someone hates Facebook, Wikileaks, pfm or whatever there is nothing stopping them creating a better one. We even have Conservapediea for right-wing loons who hate facts!

We should IMHO be far more worried about existing ‘net neutrality’ and how the far-right such as Trump are removing it before our eyes. State authoritarianism and state corporate favours are our main risks going forward IMO.

I think even the most unapologetically neoliberal Chicago School economist would raise their eyebrows at this. We have never seen monopolies like Facebook and Google: the market stopped acting efficiently in this domain...well, did it ever? There are massive barriers to entry for anyone thinking of launching a rival to a platform like Facebook. And why on earth should we trust some startup to do it "better"? Better in this market means better at extracting your data, better at manipulating you, better at dictating the form of public communication. We don't need an alternative corporation: we need an alternative model, which the market simply can't provide.

 

[JensenHealey]

Facebook is perhaps not quite the monopoly you think it is. We all live in a Western rut in the road. Climb and peer over the rim....other ruts in China, Russia, India do not see Facebook as a monopoly - there are other platforms out there serving other groups of people. Facebook is still trying to find a way into these other markets.

Facebook CAN be broken up - if the American government were to decide to. This has happened twice in the past to my knowledge - Standard OIl was forcibly broken up, as was ATT Bell.

 

[Seanm]

Facebook is perhaps not quite the monopoly you think it is. We all live in a Western rut in the road. Climb and peer over the rim....other ruts in China, Russia, India do not see Facebook as a monopoly - there are other platforms out there serving other groups of people. Facebook is still trying to find a way into these other markets.

Facebook CAN be broken up - if the American government were to decide to. This has happened twice in the past to my knowledge - Standard OIl was forcibly broken up, as was ATT Bell.

Good point, and a good argument for the potential of a national digital space.

 

[Tony L]

We don't need an alternative corporation: we need an alternative model, which the market simply can't provide.

My point is until we evolve to a Star Trek-like global boundary-less utopia there is no alternative model possible as you are limiting things to either nation states (and all the inherent authoritarianism that would bring) or relying on public-domain entities to be balanced and trustworthy. Wikileaks ending up as much of a covert player in the Trump election as CA demonstrates perfectly the potential failings there.

To be honest I’d prefer platforms such as Facebook who people on the whole inherently mistrust to entities like Wikileaks who claim to be independent, impartial and publicly financed whilst actually being deeply partisan, meddling and corrupt beneath the surface. As I see it these are really the only options on the table at present. If nation states get involved with providing platforms we’d end up being allowed to have a discussion on Conservative Home or whatever as that is what our government would view as neutral and impartial!

 

[Mark Grant]

Can you imagine any other scenario where the "police" would give their suspect 48 hours notice before they went in to investigate?

Gives plenty of time for the Executives to get the shredder going at full speed

 

[Seanm]

My point is until we evolve to a Star Trek-like global boundary-less utopia there is no alternative model possible as you are limiting things to either nation states (and all the inherent authoritarianism that would bring) or relying on public-domain entities to be balanced and trustworthy. Wikileaks ending up as much of a covert player in the Trump election as CA demonstrates perfectly the potential failings there.

To be honest I’d prefer platforms such as Facebook who people on the whole inherently mistrust to entities like Wikileaks who claim to be independent, impartial and publicly financed whilst actually being deeply partisan, meddling and corrupt beneath the surface. As I see it these are really the only options on the table at present. If nation states get involved with providing platforms we’d end up being allowed to have a discussion on Conservative Home or whatever as that is what our government would view as neutral and impartial!

I think Wikileaks is basically the mirror image of Facebook: opaque, manipulative, intervening in public affairs in an entirely unaccountable way. I don't think that's the only alternative.

There's no reason why a digital space operating within the domain of a nation state should be authoritarian. The options aren't market/state management. We don't have to simply trust public domain entities to be trustworthy. You put in systems of governance that make the organisation transparent, democratically accountable, independent from government. From a governance perspective there's really nothing very complicated about it.

http://www.mediareform.org.uk/get-involved/mrc-publishes-proposals-radical-reform-bbc

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

I think even the most unapologetically neoliberal Chicago School economist would raise their eyebrows at this. We have never seen monopolies like Facebook and Google: the market stopped acting efficiently in this domain...well, did it ever? There are massive barriers to entry for anyone thinking of launching a rival to a platform like Facebook. And why on earth should we trust some startup to do it "better"?

In a way the situation with Facebook, Google, etc, is an example of how modern 'economics' works. The biggest fish tend to crowd out the smaller fish.

We reached the point some years ago when people started treating Google as the *only* search engine that existed. Ends up with 'to google' meaning 'to search for info' and corrupts the *language* people use - and think in! Time after time I've seen or heard journalists say such things.

The word to spread is that there *are* alternatives, and people should seek them out. Otherwise we end up with monopolies who end up using their power - sometimes in ways we *won't* like. e.g. biassing what comes 'top of the list' when you do a search because someone paid them to show you *their* site first.

Ask yourself: What search engine have I used recently that is *not* Google?

Assuming that you should go on just using Google because it is the 'best' falls into a trap. Others can get better *if* people use them. Then we'd get a better choice and diversity.

Keep in mind two things:

1) For companies like Google or Facebook *you* are their 'product'.

2) It is the slave who makes slavery possible. Harsh as that may seem, it remains true.

 

[Joe Hutch]

But is Facebook really a monopoly? Haven't the young folk moved on from it, because it's what their parents/grandparents use? In a few years time, might it not be as nearly forgotten as MySpace is?

 

[Joe Hutch]

2) It is the slave who makes slavery possible.

Yeah, coz obviously if you're kidnapped by people with guns, shipped across the ocean and forced to do hard manual labour for the rest of your life or face a whipping or death, it's all your fault.

 

[TheDecameron]

But is Facebook really a monopoly? Haven't the young folk moved on from it, because it's what their parents/grandparents use? In a few years time, might it not be as nearly forgotten as MySpace is?

I suspect you are unaware that you were subjected to mind control techniques that shaped who you are, decades ago- the same lot were slipping “vote Ted Heath” subliminal messaging, one frame in every 25, into All Our Yesterdays and The Golden Shot.

 

[notaclue]

You could argue that Facebook is an even bigger monopoly than Google search* because while you could switch a search engine on your own, you can't switch a social media platform on your own when the whole point of that platform is that everybody else uses it. Individual action becomes a lot less powerful in that situation.

*Though Google's monopoly obviously extends beyond just search to (especially) online advertising, and Android, Chrome, YouTube, etc.

 

[duncan]

But is Facebook really a monopoly? Haven't the young folk moved on from it, because it's what their parents/grandparents use? In a few years time, might it not be as nearly forgotten as MySpace is?

Does anyone here think Facebook will be in existence in anything like it's present form in 10 years time?

 

[notaclue]

Does anyone here think Facebook will be in existence in anything like it's present form in 10 years time?

It's looking less likely by the hour: "Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower." https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas

 

[Seanm]

But is Facebook really a monopoly? Haven't the young folk moved on from it, because it's what their parents/grandparents use? In a few years time, might it not be as nearly forgotten as MySpace is?

My students often tell me they don't use Facebook anymore, but mostly what they mean is they don't check it a hundred times a day like they used to. They still use it. It's become part of the social infrastructure in a way that MySpace never was, and for what it does there's no real competitor in the UK. Or I should say, for the service it provides there's no real competitor. What it really does is extract data, which means that it has its tentacles in every kind of behaviour from which data can be extracted. So when people "leave" Facebook, it's typically for a platform (Instagram, WhatsApp) that is still, in essence, Facebook. It's a monopoly and then some.

 

[Seanm]

It's looking less likely by the hour: "Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower." https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas

I'll be really interested to see what the response to this is, because I think that most people just assumed it was going on anyway. The business model is, Facebook extract the data and then use it to serve up (endless variations of) its users to 3rd parties. That for a period of time the data was going to the 3rd parties in a less mediated way is for most people, I'd have thought, a matter of nuance.

 

[notaclue]

I'll be really interested to see what the response to this is, because I think that most people just assumed it was going on anyway. The business model is, Facebook extract the data and then use it to serve up (endless variations of) its users to 3rd parties. That for a period of time the data was going to the 3rd parties in a less mediated way is for most people, I'd have thought, a matter of nuance.

I don't think we've ever seen statements as strong as this before: "If true, manipulating our personal data is unacceptable and a threat to democracy. We are waiting for Facebook representatives to testify on transparency and the respect of EU rules on data protection in @EP_Justice" https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/976082345378840577

That is from the President of the European Parliament.

 

[Seanm]

interesting. I do hope this is a turning point.

The instinct from the elites will be to regulate from above, though. Important to push democratic alternatives.

 

[Paul R]

But is Facebook really a monopoly? Haven't the young folk moved on from it, because it's what their parents/grandparents use? In a few years time, might it not be as nearly forgotten as MySpace is?

Facebook own Instagram and WhatsApp. I think SnapChat and Twitter are still independent.

The president of the EUP is naïve to the point of ignorance. Has he really no idea how it works?

I think Google is more sinister, FWIW, you use Facebook consciously. You click on a link (from PFM for example) without considering what Google might make of it, and that happens on almost every web site. They may not know who you are, or where you live, but they know a lot about your online manifestations, which is where the value is.