Oct 11, 2022·edited Oct 11, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
This is well summed up by one of my favorite quotes from the 2016 movie Denial.
"Now, some people are saying that the result of this trial will threaten free speech. I don't accept that. I'm not attacking free speech. On the contrary, I've been defending it against someone who wanted to abuse it.
Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive."
The question no one is asking is why all of these social media platforms have algorithyms that specifically targets and forwards horrible things and ensures it creates the thing it makes the most profit off of... fear, hate, slander and ignorance.
“The question no one is asking is why all of these social media platforms have algorithyms that specifically targets and forwards horrible things…”
Bullshit. Lots of people have been asking that question. And many who were asking it have stopped doing only because the answer is obvious. Hell, you provided it yourself: it makes them the most profit.
The average American capitalist corporation would sell the children of the poor to a cannibal cannery if the profit were great enough and the law weak enough.
Sadly, count on it. "OUR" government seems feckless in the face of big money to reign in the soulless greed and destruction. Anti-Trust enforcement is long overdue. People are suffering NOT from inflation, but from excessive greed of large corporations who take advantage. WHY does a gallon of gas cost $2.50 more in California, where there are several refineries, than other States? Feckless government enforcement. Recently, Governor Newsom, after decades of this citizen abuse by the oil companies, has decided to implement an "Excessive Profit Tax". Good. It is beyond time. But will it be strong enough to not only stop the excessive greed, but also stop other corporations from considering the same thing? We will see, but something seriously must be done to address this callous, soulless, "Anything for money" mentality of people and corporations. "OUR" government has a duty to PROTECT US from the sociopaths.
Oh Jim, well-said. I do believe our government has the responsibility to protect we the people from corporate abuses, but when those same government representatives depend on the donations from those abusive corporations to win elections and are permitted to get the money through dark donations so we don't even know for sure who has given what, they are not likely to curb any of the corporations' worst behaviors. It is just too profitable. We need a majority of committed legislators around the country in place before any long-lasting change happens. But, with the social media corporations pumping out lies and defaming those committed legislators pretty much unimpeded, it is going to be a long time.
"But, with the social media corporations pumping out lies and defaming those committed legislators pretty much unimpeded, it is going to be a long time." BY DESIGN! Billionaires and Corporate interests understand their power. They want to preserve the wealth=power they have, while simultaneously seeking to gain more wealth=power. More importantly, they too understand that keeping the electorate distracted, dis-informed (my spin on disinformation) and divided, prevents "the people" from using their collective power (through democracy) to keep them in check and thus enables them to maintain their wealth=power and gain more wealth=power.
Well said, but I wish that still existed that our government has a duty to protect us from the sociopaths, yet it is now full of election deniers, authoritarians, power at any price and screw the constituents sociopath Congresspeople. Runaway capitalism is the culprit. Government should not have to rely on donors to run government. Every junior Congressperson decries the fact that almost 40 hours a week is spent on fundraising so they can be reelected. It's all so exhausting and undemocratic. Monopolies. Price gouging. Closing down the government. We are not a real democracy. We are a plutocrat kleptocracy. I mean look at the current elections wherein Democrats running on grassroots are pleading for money to counter billionaire backed (and unqualifed) Republican candidates. The system just doesn't work for the people and is no longer by the people.
this isn’t the first time we have been been in dire trouble, This experiment has always tired to give more rights to all people. With half of the republican party election deniers, we are in trouble, but if we can get the Democrats to be the majority, we may have a chance to make changes that have been needed for decades. You might want to listen to Rachel Maddows new podcast, Ultra for so,e history and hope.
William, a great image! Corporations do not seem to have any kind of moral compass and money is their north star and power is their drug of choice. To get both, yep, they'd potentially do even worse than selling the "children of the poor" to the highest bidder for whatever purpose the bidder had in mind, just so long as the corporation didn't get too much bad publicity for it. Some of them have so much power and money at this point they wouldn't mind that either since they probably own the media who would report on it.
Our entire economy is built on being numb and oblivious to carnage and slaughter for profit. Holocaust survivor Dr Alex Hershaft founded a non-profit to educate about animals treated comparably to Nazi concentration camps.
Americans once were fed from family farms. Now, it's fed from factory farms and repetitive-stress-injury assembly-line slaughterhouses that move too quickly to treat animals respectfully or inspect their pus-covered carcasses. BigPharma gives free antibiotics & growth hormones, to reap profits from treating sick human egg-, meat- & dairy-consumers. Sure, one could pay more for the small amount of unsubsidized animals raised the old way, but who can afford it?
On a related & timely note about free speech, there are AgGag laws to prevent anyone from talking about many details of how BigAg's perishable commodities are produced. Here's today's story about China-owned, US-based Smithfield (pork) losing a case against activists, even though they weren't permitted to mention the most salient points of their defense. They had to argue they were essentially acting like people saving dogs locked in their owners' cars on a hot day:
An easy start would be to force them to sell off the companies they already "gobbled up" because of their fear of competition, especially Instagram (where they were going to knowingly market "suicide inducing" info to pre-teens and teens (body shaming, etc.) until the government stopped them (Meta is an abhorrent "ANYTHING for money" platform!!) Anybody who is on their sites should be PAID to allow them to sell your data). Force them to sell WhatsApp, Oculus VR. Google, "Meta acquisitions and mergers". There are 98 companies under their umbrella of greed.
Yes. Of course. One company, one platform. Eliminate and reverse the mergers. Thank you. I obviously had not thought about Meta owning Facebook and myriad others.
Suppose for a second that no one wanted to be rich and that we wanted to legislate against "algorithms". It's okay, it's just for a second, don't worry. How exactly would you do that? Say, I run a web service that people can subscribe to and I say "I use algorithms - if you don't agree don't sign up." So, lawmakers come along and they say, "Well, not all algorithms are bad, because good ones let you earn fees that makes it worthwhile forking out for the web site." (I did say, it was just for a second). Thank you, lawmakers. "But .... no horrid things, please." What does "horrid" mean? "Things we think are horrid." Like? "Frankenstein, Dracula and Kanye West." How do I know if someone is horrid before they're horrid? "Ask us. We know who's horrid."
I downloaded pictures of executed civilians in Ukraine. They're horrid. The fact I find them horrid is part of what tells me I abhor those who did what they did to these people. But, horrid is what they are. And a law against horrid would prevent me seeing how the real world is. Can you legislate against "horrid people" and distinguish them from those who want to be informed about how horrid people are?
Graham, you have identified a major dilemma related to our social media. What I find offensive may not be what you do. We went through that back in the Comstock days and the "I'll know it when I see it" days. There are a few guidelines we could use: is something verifiable (it would take better algorithms for that, but when someone can prove a post and its thread wrong, it could be removed); if people have proven over and over to be unreliable, they can be removed from the platform as was done with Donald Trump (it seems to me his massive number of lies should make him ineligible for appearance on any platform no matter who he is); people who have been proven to use other people on social media, sharing sexual content that has been reported as without permission, for example, they should be permanently removed. I suspect if people could meet, who really care about free speech and protection of everyone's rights, not just the powerful people's rights, we could have a better more fair set of guidelines. Of course, they won't be perfect, but we could make it better. Then, there's breaking up social media corporations to own no more than one platform, with rare exceptions to two platforms.
Hello Ruth, When I translated in a law firm, I shared an office with a young attorney and, if I had a question about something I saw as being odd, I asked him. I guessed he wouldn't have the answer, but was always reassured if he said, "That's a good question." Because I don't like to ask daft questions I ought to know the answer to, and Mr Reich, I guess, doesn't either. And he doesn't. However, the questions generate much discussion and a few "That's a good question"s but few answers. Mostly because there isn't one.
Your response is a good one, but if you gave that to lawmakers as a brief on how to put right the mischief sketched out in the question along the policy lines sketched out in your response, how would you suggest they go about designing legislation that would effectively reach the goal of removing the mischief? The last line of argument is perhaps a good place to start. What criterion would apply to limiting the platforms owned to two and not one? When could a corporation have two? Why? What does that serve? What interests does it militate against? Or in favour of? In short, we need to provide cogent argument for why each and every one of the restrictions or exclusions we wanted in that statute is fair, reasonable, definable, perceivable, enforceable and practical. They need to stand up to being couched in a counsel's opinion, presented in argument and debated before a court of law. A judge has to have clear guidance on how they should decide. These are proposals to restrict people's rights and cannot be legislated on lightly. Because when you advance laws to restrict rights of others, you end up restricting your own rights as well, from simple legal requirements to have everything that you yourself say fact-checked and corroborated, and perhaps even laying down a trend that means your own rights in another area completely are also slowly eroded away. Rights are like snowballs, and removing them from a mountainside can quickly result in an avalanche.
Mr Trump made a name for himself as being strident and outspoken. But outspoken isn't lying and lying is in fact what all politicians do at some point. White lies, drawing a veil over the truth, being economical with it, switching policy direction. "There is no intention [slight laugh] of building a wall in Berlin" - August 1961. Ms Truss in the UK has done many policy U-turns in just one month - but so have other politicians. If Zelenskiy viewed it as desirable, what if he decided to abandon his hope of returning the Donbas regions and reached a settlement with Moscow? Did he lie when he uttered his well-meant rallying cry to his nation?
It's rarely mentioned but Mr Trump had two major policy successes during his period in office: he had unemployment at a level lower than had been seen in a while; and he was the first president since WW2 not to take his nation to war. Say what one will about how he achieved that, the facts are there. He won't be remembered for them, but unemployment and foreign policy are very important policy threads, and the statistics show him to have been good enough to at least vaunt them if he were to seek re-election. They could only be denied with an answer that starts, "Yes, but -", and that's not an answer to a lie, it's an answer to an interpretation. And there's the rub. It isn't lies that actually pose the issue, for to be a lie, one simply needs to be able, and have the means, to demonstrate its falsity; and if you cannot do that, then it's an assertion. But, an interpretation is a view on a state of fact. How would we stop people we don't like from interpreting things differently to how we do? We can't. And, for one, I wouldn't want to.
Mr Trump came to power on a band-wagon, and he started a second one by doing so, where, for the merest of reasons, perfectly rational, well-balanced people decided that Trump-bashing was in. And they stopped listening to the policies and listened only to the mountebank in him and pointed and ridiculed. That's not political argument in my book, that's populist mob rule, like throwing rotten eggs at a vaudeville show. And not even listening to hear if the act has got some good one-liners.
If you shut out debate and exclude it from the debating arena, you do not stifle the argument, you enrage the debater. In effect, you burn books.
"But is there any reason to trust the government to do a better job of content moderation than the giants do on their own? (I hate to imagine what would happen under a Republican FCC.) "
To my mind, the FCC has a proven track record. Whether you approve or not, it has led to better results in that objective, with the broadcast and telephone media, than a "free internet", so called, has performed . That's when it's not being hamstrung by those who would otherwise abolish it - in service to the same bullshit we must endure with a so-called "free and open internet." I'm convinced it's done a better job of -keeping things fair & balanced, while controlling - albeit not perfectly - the dissemination of outright lies, than some half-assed market theory that suggests it can regulate itself - like the banking system, Wall Street, and even the gas stations and grocery stores regulate themselves. If someone believes an unregulated internet is our salvation, then I've got a web site where I have a bridge available I can sell them.
DZK, I am with you about our government. During the Trump Administration, a lot of damage was done to our democracy: separating children from parents, tax cuts for the rich, ignoring of the role of the Attorney General, undermining the EPA and Department of Education, and more, but it was the career government workers that kept things from getting totally out of control. If the FCC were actually given the power to do honest regulation, they would definitely do a better job than Facebook, Instagram, and the rest have done under the "regulation" of the private corporations. I have no doubt of that.
Where did I say you did? I was commenting on Dr Reich's comment I quoted expressing his misgivings about government control, while advocating my support of the FCC.
You commented as a reply to N Travis’s post you used the word, “you,” which has a vague referent. To whom does “you” refer? The context determines the reference. Since you used it to reply to N Travis, the reference is clearly to them. As a general rule, clarity and precision of pronoun reference are crucial to effective communication.
@N Travis. The most fervent members of the Republican Party disagree with at least 3 of your five examples of facts. In fact some of them think Elvis is still around and a few of them doubt the Earth is round... ;-D
Hey, N. Travis, good observations. I suspect the reason the algorithms are designed to emphasize the worst in humanity is that advertisers are attracted to it, just like on the local and national news on TV and cable as well as newspapers. It seems people want to hear the worst on the platforms they choose to follow so they can participate but mostly anonymously pouring out their own garbage along with everyone else. If questioned by someone they can say "well, everyone else is saying it, just check the internet." We could turn this around if there were incentives and disincentives related to the veracity and reliability of the material carried on their platforms. It seems to me another thing that could help is not permitting any one owner or corporation to control more than one social platform on the internet, possibly two if they are related to a scientific or educational purpose. I do believe we could fix a lot of this if we had the will.
Hello, James, thank you for your contribution. Indeed, we rubberneck at road accidents, don't we? I don't, as a matter of fact. I witnessed a horrific crash on a motorway outside Paris, in which a man was killed and woman shocked into stunned immobility. A six-year-old girl sat wailing in the back seat of her car and her grandmother tried to console her. It was 20 minutes before police arrived and took over and till then I directed traffic around the crash site, at 3 am in the black impenetrable dark of the French countryside. It expunged all morbid curiosity from me and I ignore accidents and leave the police to their duty.
The "why" to any question is the root to an answer but is not the answer and is coloured by our interpretation of it. When a cause has an effect, the link may be clear, but the motive behind bringing the cause into being can remain unclear. Galileo proved from his observations of the sun crossing the daytime sky that, contrary to church doctrine, the sun did not circle around the Earth but rather the other way around. He was locked up and his book banned for 300 years. He propounded truth, yet was silenced for 3 centuries and, what's more, although he was correct in his conclusion, his observations didn't actually prove his theory of heliocentricism, for, where a sphere rotates around another, fixed sphere, the observations of the one from the other will be identical, regardless of which is which. Like you believe the train you're on is moving, when that beside your train is in fact moving.
What sells is more our confirmation bias: we believe what we want to believe or what it costs us least to believe. Stockholders believe in capitalism, because they believe it will feather their lot; manual labourers believe in communism because they believe that will feather theirs. But, if a cock crows at dawn, does it crow because the sun is rising, or does the sun rise because the cock is summoning it?
I'll see your Denial, and raise you The People v. Larry Flynt.
You can lie, and you can get away with it. I can say the Earth is flat, and get away with it. What I can't say is that your mother was a blueberry (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), because I'm fairly sure she wasn't and you'd sue me for defaming you (or she would for defaming her ... Defamation is the solution of last resort for NDAs - you allege what they say, because you're pretty sure it's right, and they need to open the secret NDA to prove it isn't and refuse to do so, so lose, and you win because everyone knows what's in there anyway. And you get costs. And Prince Andrew forks out 12 million of his soon-to-be-deceased mother's fortune; boy, that was good timing). Anyway, truth would be a defence, but the pursuer wants you to be lying, which you aren't, and they know it, which is why defamation can break an NDA. Saying stuff about people (not things) is defamation, and only if it's a falsity. I do wonder what you could still say about D Trump that would "bring him into disrepute", but there must be something. Like "She say anything about me?" for instance, except that's true.
You have me clueless. It's not a contest, it's a forum, where people say something and invite others to comment. I paid my five bucks, too, y'know.
N, people lie all the time, even with their hand on a bible; and they get away with it. They really do.
I simply don't agree with your statement that "What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it." I think lots of people do lie and it's gone beyond being afraid that they may be held accountable - they do expect not be held accountable, and devise systems to ensure that; and I suspect you know that, too - and I join with you in saying, "But, they should be held accountable." Now, I'll watch your movie recommendation and try to catch Edward Norton and Woody Harelson in the true story film I cited.
Ummm, @Graham Vincent. The history of Donald Trump, whom I like to call the tangerine twat-waddle, or old bone spur depending on context, is not over by far. I think the rear-guard action he is fighting is consequential, and I believe he will ultimately fall under legal action. I believe he will most certainly not be President again, and I believe that his acolytes, emulators, ditto heads and wanna-be's are going to do a lot less well at the polls than once we might have thought. In a midterm election with the President's low popularity, the party in power should have expected a total rout. Instead there are prospects that the Democrats could hold on to a majority or 50/50 Senate and a real long shot that the Democrats could hold the House of Representatives. While no one can be sure of the outcome of an election, we can be sure that the Republicans are doing a lot less well than they would have traditionally done. I lay this at the feet of that pussy grabber and I believe (HOPE!) it really spoils his day on November 8th, 2022.
Even if your prediction comes true that *rump "will most certainly not be President again," the havoc and destruction that he and his cult have wrought have done tremendous damage, having established new parameters of what is acceptable, what is "true," what is decent and honorable. Their strategy is to throw up as much flak and confusion as possible. They are entirely 3-card monte, shell game, trickster, con-gamers, robber barons, crooks, masters of corruption. And where are the "stops" to their game?! The last AG was crooked; the current AG is milquetoast. The last AG has had no sanctions to his ability to practice law, nor any difficulty finding a book publisher or time on TV shows to lay out his shells on the table and invite viewers/listeners to play along. The current AG seems adept at ignoring the daily parade of solid proof and evidence of sedition, treason and fraud put before him, with the occasional appearance at a lectern to say that “nobody is above the law,” although most of us could provide him with a very long list of those who appear to be way above the law, in some stratrosphere where there is no law that pertains to them.
Lawyers, good and bad, have gotten a lot richer under the *rump con-game.
Books have again become a hot commodity, as long as they are about *rump (whether they are "love him or leave him" in theme, fact-based or bunk).
This era, though, seems very different from other eras of corruption and graft or grift. It does not seem to be counter-balanced with some kind of soul-cleansing, some redemption and pendulum-swing towards a renewed effort to do better. Instead, there seems to be an acceptance of, even admiration for, what used to be considered abnormal, aberrant, criminal. It seems that "the bad" has been exposed and rather than being dispatched by a turn to "the good," instead "the bad" is persistent and relentless and dominating "the good."
If there is any "good" that *rump has done, it was paradoxically generated by his deranged and criminal acts: the *rump era has exposed so many of the weaknesses and gaps in our system that had apparently never occurred to anyone before because the scale of sociopathy and corruption hadn't been so blatant before. Now that the disease has been diagnosed, one would think that the cure would follow. However, even more disturbing than the disease is what seems to be the fact that there is no serious pursuit of the cure; in fact, those who might bring the cure and fix things seem to be showing that perennial analysis and examination of the disease is as far as they will ever go. Case in point: *rump and his flying monkey thug army are still barnstorming the country stuffing cash in their wallets telling lies and fomenting violence, anger, hatred, confusion, all with impunity, unabated, getting enormous publicity from those who "tsk-tsk" while examining the disease organism endlessly. Where will we be a year from now? Gasping for our last breath or getting better in "rehab." How far and deep has the disease metastasized?
This is off-topic, but I'm grateful for your lengthy input. Thank you, and thanks also to Benjamin.
I am not American, but your politics affects me. America's policies are vital to a battleground much closer to my home than the mid-terms, and your President's ability to cultivate friendship with other statesmen and women and be cogent in his rhetoric is valued.
However, and to just interlace the question into all of this, the sentiment that the Internet was creating a polarisation within society is no longer theoretical, it is proven, by academic research. That means that the place traditionally occupied by the liberal, fair-minded judge has become the target of vitriol from all sides, and that is uncomfortable. I sit in that No Man's Land. In another arena, I plead to Ukrainians who cry for the blood of their attackers to think how the world will view them if they prove victorious in the war, but fail to live up to the hopes and expectations that democratic stalwart nations have placed in them over this year. For Ukraine, the peace may yet be a harder struggle than the war.
And so it is in your own home arena, the political battleground that is the mid-terms and the 2024 election. I understand the hurt and anger of Ukraine's people. I felt it myself. And I understand the outrage at the clear abuses committed by an occupier of the highest office of the USA. Yet I don't condone retorting to vitriol with vitriol. I said early in Mr Trump's tenure, "He is accused with menace and disdain of a lack of humanity by many who would seem to lack the same humanity towards him." Litigants will figuratively scream at one another through courtroom pleadings; and yet a judge must remain calm and hear all sides to the case. However, the judgment he hands down will side with the litigant whose arguments come closest to where he feels the justice lies. Litigants must endeavour to find that justice, for, then, they will prevail. However, I am no judge. Your electorate is.
I do not condone those accusers of Mr Trump who feel aggrieved, and yet I don't condemn them either. Like embittered invaded nations, they are entitled to their indignation, but causal epidemiology will not cure a cholera outbreak unless you also apply the medicine to the sick. The Democratic Party may be confirmed in its analysis of the cause of America's malaises, but it must do more: it must propose solutions. Railing at the cause will not resolve what got you in the mire, if mire you are in.
Well, hurrah for that. So is the theatre, but it's tremendously entertaining: assuming audiences don't actually want to see athletes' necks broken before their very eyes?
That must be why the offside rule is so devilishly complicated in soccer: to lend the sport some element of vaguely intellectual challenge besides ... kicking the ball.
The problem is not only the misleading content some users place on these media, but the algorithms the media uses to increase visibility of the content. By observation these algorithms in effect create isolated groups who watch what each other watches and do not encourage reading, reaction, and analysis by those with other views. The algorithms appear to be positive feedback which increases the magnitude of deviations. Rational democratic discourse will happen only if opponents see each others content and comment upon it. It appears the algorithms are currently striving to increase revenue by offering up what amounts to "more of the same" to "believers". Algorithms that encourage cross pollination are what is called for in order to save our nation.
Corporate capitalism operates on principles that are diametrically opposed to the moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Jesus said "sell all you have, and give to the poor..." while corporate capitalism teaches "take all the poor have, and sell them for profit."
Hey William, I want to slightly alter your statement about what Corporate America says in relation to the Judeo-Christian expectation. I think it is more like "sell trash instead of quality necessities to the poor at the highest possible price, then blame and malign them for being poor.",
Yes, on FB for example, comments that disagree on a post and are not from “friends “ might be attributed to trolls. We haven’t learned how to have respectful discourse and disagreements. Recent politicians have modeled how to successfully attack and lie with the megaphone of social media.
Algorithms get a bad press. Because they feed you what you're interested in. And that's ... bad? Have you tried searching for your local dog food store with a search that really did encompass the entire globe? But if we go into a bookshop, don't we gravitate to the sections that interest us - crime, personal health, children's stories? They help sellers advertise to people likely to be interested in what they're selling, and they prick our interest by displaying goods we want to see - no good trying to sell ladies' millinery to teenage boys.
If they worked half as efficiently as they wish they could, and as many fear they do, they would end up directing all the haters out there toward other haters and they could all have a merry old time telling each other what scoundrels and blackguards the rest of us are. But, there is in fact more leakage than we think. And, in any case, it wasn't algorithms that made the Washington Post put Mr West in a headline ...
"Algorithms get a bad press. Because they feed you what you're interested in. And that's ... bad?"
IMO, yes, that's bad. It's bad because it limits what you see, and tends to push you further into what you already think or believe. I always turn off that feature on sites. Show me everything, and let me decide what to watch or read.
There's a difference between searching for a local product or service, and searching for information. Algorithms that steer you into information silos reinforce beliefs and opinions that should probably be questioned.
As for (brick and mortar) bookshops, they tend to put prominent displays inside the front door of books that you might not otherwise seek out. I have read many a book I would not have known about were it not for such displays. And even if you stick to certain subjects, there are many different ideas from different sources on those subjects. Algorithms tend to focus in only on ideas that are similar to what you've engaged with before. Bookstores don't do that. They show ALL the books on the subject.
Gail. I like your explanation of algorithms and why they can be problematic. Your use of the bookstore to explain was really good. As a blind person, I am privileged to download books from the Library of Congress site for disabled readers. I used to think that when I went to check out the new books, I wanted the books to be divided into themes and authors. I have discovered I like the random list a lot. What I like most about it is that I have found so many books I probably would never have noticed had I only checked out the categories I usually read, books I have loved. It seems to me algorithms can be designed to include different points of view even if it is not what a particular user generally gets or searches for. The emphasis should be on truth whenever possible. There could be prompts to check out some noted people with different viewpoints, eventually broadening the scope of whose work is included. People might find things they didn't expect, but learned from. Challenging one's beliefs is healthy despite what autocrats and scared people claim.
Well, I agree with the general tenor of what you say. See my reply to David below, I'll not repeat it here. The bookstore is just an example of somewhere we like to have guidance in finding what we're interested in and that is "a" function of algorithms. If I were a pacifist looking for like-minded souls, I might find it distressing to be constantly given the option of going to see articles about warfare; the algorithm will recognise the nature of my sympathies and direct me more to those who think like me. That means I may remain a convinced conscientious objector and never come to terms with the "need for warfare", and that might be a good or a bad thing. However, some seek guidance on certain matters because they have no view at all: I knew nothing about price gouging before Mr Reich explained it in his articles, so I thank him for informing me. To balance that I should read what the corporations he criticises say on the matter - the fact that I don't do that, because I think they speak hogwash, makes of me a Reich partisan on that subject. And my algorithm will direct me to people who think like Mr Reich. You may find that interesting, or approve that I don't seek info from corporations, or find that bad, imbalanced and irrational. But it's the same in effect as someone who gets fed anti-this or anti-that posts from their pseudonym-guarded partners in crime on Nazi websites. Occasionally I do seek out the "contrary view" and often get shocked at its vehemence; other times I just see "another point of view." And thank you for yours, Gail.
My local bookshop actually always had to order the books I wanted, by the way! But they closed down.
I'm sorry to hear your bookstores have closed. Such a great loss that so many do.
I wouldn't blame you for thinking I believe all algorithms that cater to individual interest are bad. But as you say, they can be useful to winnow the overwhelming onslaught of online information and opinion.
The biggest issues I see with the algorithms employed in social media are (a) monetization (i.e., pushing people toward paid content to increase revenue), (b) the fact that so much of that paid content ranges from misleading to disinformation and outright lies, and (c) the tightening spiral that seems to occur once an algorithm "determines" what a person wants to see, thus creating a positive feedback loop for inaccurate, false, and potentially harmful information. Put those all together, and you get massive social and political effects that wreak havoc with social, economic, and political systems.
Hello Gail: Thank you for your kind sympathies! The shop was a long-standing servant of the English-language community and beyond in Brussels, but had to fold over the Covid crisis, and is sadly mourned by all booklovers here.
I wrote elsewhere on this post that Mr Reich's question had transmuted from "How do we stop malevolent content being disseminated by others?" into "How do we prevent our own content - in the form of personal data - being abused by others?" and they are flip sides of the same issue.
Somebody here asked why web portals such as FB and LI cannot be held liable for what is published under their banner and, indeed, that's problematic - it's not their banner as such. If we insist that enough is enough and that all content will be deemed "published" by what we call in French l'éditeur responsable (in the sense of "whom you can sue"), then, whilst officially registered publications on news stands can be checked for compliance, there is so much dark stuff, bogus websites and 'here today, gone tomorrow' web presences, I can't see stringent registration working at all. Some operators, even nations, treat the Net as a fair playing field whereas others, as you point out, view it as a hunting ground with constant open season for tricksters on all and any. We call it 'virtual', but it is only that for so long as it remains online: its effects are only too palpable when it emerges into the real world, whether it's read, reacted to, purloined, misappropriated or sold.
Let me give an example of how one government reacted to an imminent "clear & present danger" of late: In response to the fuel and climate crises, a bill went before Belgium's parliament in July to reduce the maximum freeway speed here, as in the Netherlands, from 120 to 100 km/h, and it was defeated. It seems such an obvious saver of needless outlay when budgets are shrinking, and a positive move to reducing air pollution, and yet it failed to pass. If we cannot achieve advancement in, as I see it, such palpable and seemingly sensible measures, what hope for the far-reaching soul-searching that our prime means of modern communication seems to need? Raising concerns among ordinary folk like you and me, its ambit extends beyond data security and Mr West's crassness, but goes to the extent to which freedoms are paid mere lip-service to by the multifarious manipulators of the world's peoples. Elected officials seem unwilling to intervene; even those with noble intentions fall short of the mark. Did the Internet's inventors create a Behemoth, one that soothes our concerns with platitudes whilst telling us how to earn, how to consume, how to hate our neighbours, whether to buy guns and whether to procreate, how to redefine fair play and a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, whether we may vote and how to wage war, how and where to die, and how and where to live, persuading us where to be educated, how and where to travel, what convictions and beliefs to hold, what sexual proclivity to hold, what to eat and where to eat it, what is acceptable and what is not and, ultimately, where our own true interests lie? Do we learn our morals from the Internet, or from our elders, our schooling and our upbringing? I still have one preserve I cannot relinquish: how to think; yet even the information needed to do that is slowly ebbing from my grip. Once it is gone, shall we be but pawns? Eloi to Morlocks of our own creation?
The Internet is an unimaginably rich resource, inconceivable when my parents came into the world a century ago; a friend of mine was internetting in 1993 and enthused at his nightly e-mail sessions with friends he respected and chatted with in far-off places, whom he'd never met but who were all riveted by this new "instantaneousness". The corporate interest soon saw how it could be turned to profit, and it failed: you cannot sell the Internet, any more than you can sell a pathway through a forest. So, it became a means to exact profit instead of being a saleable item in and of itself. Now it has become a breeding ground for the unscrupulous and the dishonest - city pickpocketing is way down as a criminal problem - and the rise in e-commerce has forced us, in order to cope at all and even deal with our governments and their agencies, to mingle in a market laced with thieves and cut-throats. Commerce should strive to protect the unwary and yet it seems to say "just do it".
Perhaps apples and pears, but the foresight demonstrated by those with power to rule is but short term. Presidents and prime ministers have cut-off dates to their influence, of 5 years and less hence; potentates with names ending in Inc. and -in may even survive the 5-year deadline. The Internet may never again become a quiet snug for midnight e-mail chats with excited discoverers, but if anyone up above had a comment to make, it might well be: "You have made it a den of robbers."
That's right, David, but it's also the up-side to algorithms. The idea behind waste sorting is to sort waste, but it also creates jobs, which adds to the cost. In many things deciding whether the benefit is the mover behind the thing or the down-side is the mover can be a close call. It's called the cobra problem: India had a bounty on cobras at one time, to rid people of that dangerous pest. So, people started breeding cobras to claim the bounty. Here, it's even possible - just supposing - that a cobra-breeder had the bounty introduced in the first place. For cobras, you might perhaps substitute any measure sold as solving a problem and just by coincidence benefiting a major corporation or lawmaker (paid to promote legislation by a major corporation).
Is there a solution to this algorithm problem? If algorithms can track you, surely another algorithm could ward them off? If not, why not? If so, why aren't they doing so? That perhaps starts us on the way to enquiring why algorithms were invented: more to sell data than to "enhance enjoyment"? Or is tracking an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise beneficial concept that helps us navigate the web? Whatever it is, we have both: is there a way out?
The reply suggests powers the platform’s algorithms do not have. The platform’s goal is to sell advertising, which depends on traffic items, posts, images, videos, etc. The platform sells ads based on evidence participants see the traffic items. The algorithms suggest items of traffic to a participant based on likelihood the participant will spend time on those traffic items and see the associated ads. This is done by suggesting to a participant traffic items others who have seen the same item have seen. This is a very simple algorithm. No “tracking”. No “enjoyment evaluation”. No “content analysis”. This algorithm is simple to write and implement and should maximize “views” and thus revenue. Its result is individuals wind up viewing traffic items that are most often similar to one another and rarely represent diverse viewpoints. This bias has those with one viewpoint almost never seeing alternative viewpoints. That is called positive feedback and strengthens polarizing opinions, such as the maga sect.
Thanks, David: clearly my technical grasp is not up there, and I have a fear of my smartphone, which I don't answer and just call folk back on the thing that goes into the wall.
If algorithms don't track, that's a plus point for algorithms. However, something does, and that is the general tone here: whatever it may be called, it has no business doing what it is doing, because where I go and what I do there, provided it's within the bounds of what is legally permissible, is fundamentally no one's business but mine. If I wish to tell people of it, that's a matter of my discretion, every bit as much as telling them the contents of my diary or whose soap powder I buy. It's not, I believe, the fact that something is done, or that it can be done or that it's done and I can't stop it being done that means it's not wrong or it's not something that should not be being done. I also go into shops and, when asked if I can be helped, decline the offer if I prefer to simply browse, perhaps to pass the time of day, or because it's raining outside or because I'm looking for French knickers to satisfy a feral urge in me and would rather not share that knowledge with the shop assistant. Why I decline is neither here nor there - I decline. And I would actually like to be able to say "No, thank you" when I'm on line, and I do, wherever I can. Most tracking I have been subjected to rather crassly asks if I'd like to buy a product that I've in fact just bought. Do many people actually then go and buy a second complete set of new saucepans?
I like this comment because it’s provocative and thoughtful. I smile at image of all the haters and deniers in a metaphorical room gabbing away about their alternate universe and the deplorable people who aren’t them and who inhabit their version of hell.😄
Do we go to the circus because we're interesting in seeing the circus or because we saw the parade down main street? Advertisers mislead people all the time. Dorothy L. Sayers likened ads to yeast in bread, saying it's like truth in advertising. You can't make bread from just yeast, but it blows the rest of the stodge into a digestible mass that the public can swallow. Contract law has rules against being misleading, and there are regulators that look at ads, warranty terms and such like. But you can't legislate against "being misleading" in the criminal law, unless you commit fraud. Because you need 'intention' and the defence would always be 'I didn't know I was wrong.' And what's evidentially wrong about 'Jews are bad people'? Some Jews have been bad. This is an area where we just want to say "Because I say so" and democracies don't have rules like that; that's another kind of government, called "confederacy".
Yes. The word was cited only as a part of first year law school "theory" class.
I just read this, which you and others may care to read too. It tells a new chapter in a never-ending story and contains phrases like "data on people who don't even use the app itself", "I think people are conditioned to think, 'Facebook is everywhere, and whatever, they're going to get my data'", "data 'is not used to group individuals into particular interest categories'" (are they stupid, or do they think we are?), "removed pixels, citing their presence was an oversight" (oops, sorry), "businesses either declined to comment or never responded" (we use the Internet and can't communicate), "companies are able to watch what you do from site to site."
A buddy years ago went to buy a TV and refused to have one with a remote control. "If I want to see something, I'll get off my butt and change channels." He couldn't find one without a remote. And, were he alive today, he wouldn't be able to "be" without the Internet. Why are we forced to live in a world where we are obliged to leave the front doors to our homes open?
Why aren't social media treated the same as publishers? Publishers are accountable for what they publish, aren't they? If I write a book or an article that is preposterous, and I can't get anyone to publish it, is that a violation of my right to free speech? I don't think so. I can self-publish my views, but without the the power to distribute it widely, it won't start an insurrection or have a team of lawyers to defend it from lawsuits, nor will it require a government to regulate its content. This is the problem with social media being treated as public carriers. They must be held accountable for being able so easily and cheaply to publish harmful tripe.
The game rules are different. Responsible publishers are named in the books and magazines they print as being "responsible" for what they print. But web portals (as opposed to websites) are a conduit for their members to publish, like here, actually on the Substack. They have a code of conduct and they do police that but they say they can't be everywhere at once, and they're not doing the publishing, so it is difficult. That's the why. But the main question is "why is that the why?" Who set things up this way? Mr Reich channels like-minded thinkers on his pet subjects here and that is handy, because I get to speak to you. Otherwise I would have a website where I publish my ideas, and you'd need to know who I am and where to find me (here, in fact - Endless Chain). It's a forum of exchange here, and we've had them since Ancient Rome, where people come together and trade, whether horsemeat or ideas. But the marketplace itself isn't answerable for the conduct of the traders who do business there. If they cheat a lot, the market may exclude them, however.
Publishers are not legally responsible for the content they publish. Their authors are. If I defame you, you can sue me. But, you can’t sue my publisher.
Communications Decency Act of 1996 was invoked to regulate porn on the internet. Now it’s time to invoke another Communications Decency Act to regulate indecent free speech and hold accountable those people who promote hate filled internet speech. Alex Jones is a good example!
I wanted to answer this by quoting Alan Bullock's "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny", about how AH achieved his position as Chancellor by democratic means, whereupon his first act of policy was to abolish the democracy by which he'd got there - cutting the rope after he'd clambered aboard. But I found a better one on page 46: "The force which ever set in motion the great historical avalanches of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken word."
Do we therefore assume that our status quo is so sacrosanct (please, don't tell me the status quo "in" bellum is sacrosanct) that we would repel all boarders from our ship of fools and cut the rope by which we clambered aboard; repel all invaders into our sanctity of clean and pure thought? How sure can we be that law aimed at preserving decency would not thereafter be usurped in order to preserve tyranny?
In one thing Hitler was right - gosh, he is an archetype to rank alongside Machiavelli as an "Idiot's Guide to Ruling the World", we must wonder how could he have also been so wrong - aside from his thing about big lies being more believable than little ones: the spoken word is a force for change, be it for the better or the worse. And recognition of that truth must surely debouch into a mechanism designed to regulate its power. We regulate bombs and bullets, dangerous machinery and public acts, systems of government and pornographic magazines. And yet we do not regulate the most powerful force to have upheld tyranny ever?
Well, we do regulate it, but such a slippery entity as the spoken word is, we do so using malleable, shape-shifting concepts that result in endless trials, not to mention tribulations, and never really pin down what we meant by them when they were inserted into statute law: obscenity, hatred (there are those who love it, actually), incitement, outrage, dishonesty, fake, truth, evidence, proof, corroboration, denial. One man's decency is indeed another man's pissing.
Careful! Not "regulate porn" but prohibit claims of indecency from subsuming The Internet (as The G.O.P. was perfectly ready to push censorship laws into cyberspace, i.e. the dominion of liberal counter-culture, wherever possible!)...
Passed by Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, the CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who
knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.
It further criminalized the transmission of "obscene or indecent" materials to persons known to be under 18.
You’re right. I checked Wikipedia and found the following:
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet. Thank You Rishi
Free speech does not or should not make it OK to shout 'Fire!" in a crowded theater. It should not allow an ad agency to make a political commercial depicting men kicking in the door to their opponent's home and entering with AR-15's and shooting the place up. Responsibility for content has to be there somewhere.
I agree Laurie. As far as I’m concerned, the very few social media platforms owe a duty of care to the general public and should be treated as common carriers and regulated. As Robert has pointed out, those platforms offer a megaphone to the purveyors of disinformation and to those bullies who would fat shame a 10-year-old girl to the world with the click of “send.” Can we fix this? Of course we can. And for the sake of a civilized society, we must.
We found out long ago that monopolies are bad and there were laws to break them up. What happened to those laws? Why do we have to make the same mistakes over and over?
The challenge is preserving truth in the internet’s torrent of information. Freedom of speech is not freedom to lie, or to mislead . How the courts can create enforceable measures which protect the public is the challenge of our time.
I don't know what the exact stats are but it seems like the courts at all levels were stacked during the DJT years, so I'm not sure what kind of relief to expect.
The idea of imposing the duties of a common carrier can represent a needed balance to the capitalist tendency towards over concentration. Obviously, the courts are the wrong place for this. It should be a legislative and regulatory policy-based approach that deals with the number of platform companies beyond the social media giants.
My suggestion is that Section 230 be amended to narrow its scope and no longer protect the platform algorithm technologies of selection and aggregation. Only the actual words of natural persons should give rise the protection for the companies. The creators of content through algorithms, bots, or similar technology should be subject to full and complete liability for the harm done.
Such an amendment would allow the tort system to regulate conduct without the section 230 liability shield that was enacted to protect an infant industry which is no longer in its infancy.
Finally, if we want to take a strict "originalist" view of the first amendment as sacred text to be interpreted only literally, speech literacy means spoken words and social media companies do not have printing presses so are not the "press".
My understanding is that once you post on a social media platform they own your post forever, and getting a post removed at your request can sometimes be problematic; that would seem to imply some level of liability on their part, yes? I know that is a hypothetical obverse situation to allowing free access on the platform to openly biased/toxic posts but it would seem to be relevant at some level, no? I don't really know the details b/c I've avoided ever using most of the major social media platforms. In a larger sense, I do feel like all sorts of industries are being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and there needs to be some sort of antitrust activity at the DOJ, if they could get it together to do that in the face of industry opposition and the current makeup of the courts.
If a set of states such as California, New York, and Illinois were to adopt the equivalent of the EU's DSA, that would help.
The DOJ and the courts are, by design, reactive and slow processes that should be seen as a poor alternative to legislatures that actually enact laws to benefit human beings.
I agree. We have too many monopolies now. Airlines. Media carriers- newspapers, television, radio. Banks. Movie studios. With their power, they do what they want. Maybe a shareholder would have the guts to object but they just buy back stock. Facebook is a huge business and it’s run by a cheating pipsqueek. Google is huge and pretty much controls most of the net - we google now, not search. Monopolies are good for the dictators running them but terrible and costly for the citizen.
Word Perfect is still alive and well. It is owned by Corel and runs under Windows on PCs or under a virtual machine such as Parallels or VMWare on Macs.
Churchill had an astute viewpoint. I like what Gandhi said when ask what he thought of Western civilization. He said “I think it would be a good idea.“ That being said, I agree with you Robert. Breaking up these mega corporations is a great idea and hopefully will add to a more perfect Union. Right now, it seems like we are akin to the three poor fishermen rescued off the coast of Louisiana today; in shark infested waters fending themselves off with their hands.
1st How can it be called "The Communications Decency Act of 1996" When it is protecting corporations from being sued for publishing false, indecent, and dangerous crap? 2nd I probably shouldn't comment since I don't understand how otherwise reasonably intelligent people can be swayed by the obvious garbage of political ads, and who cares what you ate last night?
Agreed Fay. And speaking of greed, we as a country have long had a pro business bias when it comes to regulating speech. Doubt this? Why are businesses allowed to make false statements such as “this is the best deal ever” when two minutes in a courtroom would prove that to be a false statement? Check out the word “puffery” in the Supreme Court annals. Purveyors of goods in this country are allowed to lie with impunity. Our faith in the unregulated free market has led us to social Jonestown. Drink the Kool-Aid and die.
Winston Churchill had a clear view : “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted." We can only hope that there is enough time for the powers that be to figure out what that right thing is. How bad will it get before then?
And SOON. DOJ has moved too slowly and indecisively. The price is probably going to be the end of our republic. And behind it all: corporate $$$, the 1%ers wealth and power, and a mentally ill orange carnival barker.
The FOX TV station here shares its studio with the ABC TV station for it's broadcast operation. Both stations share the same local news team, as well. ABC broadcasts the local news until 7:00 AM, at which time it changes over to the network news. Just before the 7:00 AM switch to network, the local news team invites the viewers to join them on FOX, where they'll continue to deliver the morning news.
Now, here's what's interesting. If you switch over to the FOX broadcast station at 7:00 AM, what you'll find is infomercials, complete with the disclaimer preface - on each - denying responsibility for the views or products presented by the infomercial. The FOX trash news seems to be exclusively a creature of the internet.
The only explanation I think holds water for that dichotomy in FOX's behavior is that broadcast TV is regulated by the FCC, while the internet is - for all intent - unregulated. It seems that broadcast is required to at least tip it's hat in observance of >some< modicum of truth and decency - not to mention . . . fairness.
That's why I think there could be a lot worse outcomes than imposing FCC regulations on "common carriers" - >a lot worse.< I don't think the internet should be viewed and treated as an >instead< of broadcast platform. I think it should be viewed and treated as an >additional< broadcast platform.
However, I think FCC regulations being imposed exclusively on social media platforms is a >canard.< After having had time to see the trend of an unregulated - for all intent - internet, as it has developed over years, I think FCC regulation should be imposed on the internet as a whole - in the same way it is imposed on radio transmissions. >Every< website hosted on the internet should be considered equivalent to a broadcast TV channel or radio station or telephone network, and regulated in >exactly the same way<.
After all, what we have come to know as the internet, a public platform, was originally a US defense system developed by DARPA to insure a "self healing" strategic communications system that could maintain critical communications channels in the event of a nuclear attack.
Some genius just decided that if huge money could be made if the public was granted access, it should be opened for use by the public. >Fair enough.< It worked well enough for >regulated< radio and television broadcast. Few people like taking a shot. Yet, sometimes a shot is the only thing that can save them.
I'm very conflicted as to what I think. The First Amendment protects our right to free speech...up to a point. It's my understanding that inflammatory racist or call-to-violence type speech is NOT protected because of the harm they cause. So I do believe that the social media platforms should be more responsible and diligent about keeping that awful stuff off their sites. As for trusting Americans to do the right thing, once upon a time Winston Churchill was absolutely correct. Now? I wonder.
This is well summed up by one of my favorite quotes from the 2016 movie Denial.
"Now, some people are saying that the result of this trial will threaten free speech. I don't accept that. I'm not attacking free speech. On the contrary, I've been defending it against someone who wanted to abuse it.
Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive."
The question no one is asking is why all of these social media platforms have algorithyms that specifically targets and forwards horrible things and ensures it creates the thing it makes the most profit off of... fear, hate, slander and ignorance.
“The question no one is asking is why all of these social media platforms have algorithyms that specifically targets and forwards horrible things…”
Bullshit. Lots of people have been asking that question. And many who were asking it have stopped doing only because the answer is obvious. Hell, you provided it yourself: it makes them the most profit.
The average American capitalist corporation would sell the children of the poor to a cannibal cannery if the profit were great enough and the law weak enough.
Sadly, count on it. "OUR" government seems feckless in the face of big money to reign in the soulless greed and destruction. Anti-Trust enforcement is long overdue. People are suffering NOT from inflation, but from excessive greed of large corporations who take advantage. WHY does a gallon of gas cost $2.50 more in California, where there are several refineries, than other States? Feckless government enforcement. Recently, Governor Newsom, after decades of this citizen abuse by the oil companies, has decided to implement an "Excessive Profit Tax". Good. It is beyond time. But will it be strong enough to not only stop the excessive greed, but also stop other corporations from considering the same thing? We will see, but something seriously must be done to address this callous, soulless, "Anything for money" mentality of people and corporations. "OUR" government has a duty to PROTECT US from the sociopaths.
Oh Jim, well-said. I do believe our government has the responsibility to protect we the people from corporate abuses, but when those same government representatives depend on the donations from those abusive corporations to win elections and are permitted to get the money through dark donations so we don't even know for sure who has given what, they are not likely to curb any of the corporations' worst behaviors. It is just too profitable. We need a majority of committed legislators around the country in place before any long-lasting change happens. But, with the social media corporations pumping out lies and defaming those committed legislators pretty much unimpeded, it is going to be a long time.
"But, with the social media corporations pumping out lies and defaming those committed legislators pretty much unimpeded, it is going to be a long time." BY DESIGN! Billionaires and Corporate interests understand their power. They want to preserve the wealth=power they have, while simultaneously seeking to gain more wealth=power. More importantly, they too understand that keeping the electorate distracted, dis-informed (my spin on disinformation) and divided, prevents "the people" from using their collective power (through democracy) to keep them in check and thus enables them to maintain their wealth=power and gain more wealth=power.
Well said, but I wish that still existed that our government has a duty to protect us from the sociopaths, yet it is now full of election deniers, authoritarians, power at any price and screw the constituents sociopath Congresspeople. Runaway capitalism is the culprit. Government should not have to rely on donors to run government. Every junior Congressperson decries the fact that almost 40 hours a week is spent on fundraising so they can be reelected. It's all so exhausting and undemocratic. Monopolies. Price gouging. Closing down the government. We are not a real democracy. We are a plutocrat kleptocracy. I mean look at the current elections wherein Democrats running on grassroots are pleading for money to counter billionaire backed (and unqualifed) Republican candidates. The system just doesn't work for the people and is no longer by the people.
this isn’t the first time we have been been in dire trouble, This experiment has always tired to give more rights to all people. With half of the republican party election deniers, we are in trouble, but if we can get the Democrats to be the majority, we may have a chance to make changes that have been needed for decades. You might want to listen to Rachel Maddows new podcast, Ultra for so,e history and hope.
“Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth.”
— Lucy Parsons, IWW founding convention, 1905
Yes
William, a great image! Corporations do not seem to have any kind of moral compass and money is their north star and power is their drug of choice. To get both, yep, they'd potentially do even worse than selling the "children of the poor" to the highest bidder for whatever purpose the bidder had in mind, just so long as the corporation didn't get too much bad publicity for it. Some of them have so much power and money at this point they wouldn't mind that either since they probably own the media who would report on it.
Especially love your phrase "money is their north star and power is their drug of choice"...
Ruth, if you wish, may I humbly offer my thoughts on precisely this aspect, albeit from a slightly different angle (around 3° of latitude to the west on that compass): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trade-wars-moving-heaven-earth-part-i-graham-vincent/
William......well put! Corporations are interested in one thing and that is profits.
@William. Don't they do that already? At least Bolsonaro is ready to eat the Yanomami... Next step, can them and sell them!
These people should pray every day that God and Jesus don't exist.
They do. But the kids are safely in someone else's country.
Our entire economy is built on being numb and oblivious to carnage and slaughter for profit. Holocaust survivor Dr Alex Hershaft founded a non-profit to educate about animals treated comparably to Nazi concentration camps.
Americans once were fed from family farms. Now, it's fed from factory farms and repetitive-stress-injury assembly-line slaughterhouses that move too quickly to treat animals respectfully or inspect their pus-covered carcasses. BigPharma gives free antibiotics & growth hormones, to reap profits from treating sick human egg-, meat- & dairy-consumers. Sure, one could pay more for the small amount of unsubsidized animals raised the old way, but who can afford it?
On a related & timely note about free speech, there are AgGag laws to prevent anyone from talking about many details of how BigAg's perishable commodities are produced. Here's today's story about China-owned, US-based Smithfield (pork) losing a case against activists, even though they weren't permitted to mention the most salient points of their defense. They had to argue they were essentially acting like people saving dogs locked in their owners' cars on a hot day:
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/10/11/the_right_to_rescue_jury_acquits
There are also laws that prevent Frackers from divulging the chemicals used in their extraction process.
Just curious. How would an antitrust law break up Facebook? And what would a “broken up” Facebook look like?
An easy start would be to force them to sell off the companies they already "gobbled up" because of their fear of competition, especially Instagram (where they were going to knowingly market "suicide inducing" info to pre-teens and teens (body shaming, etc.) until the government stopped them (Meta is an abhorrent "ANYTHING for money" platform!!) Anybody who is on their sites should be PAID to allow them to sell your data). Force them to sell WhatsApp, Oculus VR. Google, "Meta acquisitions and mergers". There are 98 companies under their umbrella of greed.
Yes. Of course. One company, one platform. Eliminate and reverse the mergers. Thank you. I obviously had not thought about Meta owning Facebook and myriad others.
Suppose for a second that no one wanted to be rich and that we wanted to legislate against "algorithms". It's okay, it's just for a second, don't worry. How exactly would you do that? Say, I run a web service that people can subscribe to and I say "I use algorithms - if you don't agree don't sign up." So, lawmakers come along and they say, "Well, not all algorithms are bad, because good ones let you earn fees that makes it worthwhile forking out for the web site." (I did say, it was just for a second). Thank you, lawmakers. "But .... no horrid things, please." What does "horrid" mean? "Things we think are horrid." Like? "Frankenstein, Dracula and Kanye West." How do I know if someone is horrid before they're horrid? "Ask us. We know who's horrid."
I downloaded pictures of executed civilians in Ukraine. They're horrid. The fact I find them horrid is part of what tells me I abhor those who did what they did to these people. But, horrid is what they are. And a law against horrid would prevent me seeing how the real world is. Can you legislate against "horrid people" and distinguish them from those who want to be informed about how horrid people are?
Graham, you have identified a major dilemma related to our social media. What I find offensive may not be what you do. We went through that back in the Comstock days and the "I'll know it when I see it" days. There are a few guidelines we could use: is something verifiable (it would take better algorithms for that, but when someone can prove a post and its thread wrong, it could be removed); if people have proven over and over to be unreliable, they can be removed from the platform as was done with Donald Trump (it seems to me his massive number of lies should make him ineligible for appearance on any platform no matter who he is); people who have been proven to use other people on social media, sharing sexual content that has been reported as without permission, for example, they should be permanently removed. I suspect if people could meet, who really care about free speech and protection of everyone's rights, not just the powerful people's rights, we could have a better more fair set of guidelines. Of course, they won't be perfect, but we could make it better. Then, there's breaking up social media corporations to own no more than one platform, with rare exceptions to two platforms.
Hello Ruth, When I translated in a law firm, I shared an office with a young attorney and, if I had a question about something I saw as being odd, I asked him. I guessed he wouldn't have the answer, but was always reassured if he said, "That's a good question." Because I don't like to ask daft questions I ought to know the answer to, and Mr Reich, I guess, doesn't either. And he doesn't. However, the questions generate much discussion and a few "That's a good question"s but few answers. Mostly because there isn't one.
Your response is a good one, but if you gave that to lawmakers as a brief on how to put right the mischief sketched out in the question along the policy lines sketched out in your response, how would you suggest they go about designing legislation that would effectively reach the goal of removing the mischief? The last line of argument is perhaps a good place to start. What criterion would apply to limiting the platforms owned to two and not one? When could a corporation have two? Why? What does that serve? What interests does it militate against? Or in favour of? In short, we need to provide cogent argument for why each and every one of the restrictions or exclusions we wanted in that statute is fair, reasonable, definable, perceivable, enforceable and practical. They need to stand up to being couched in a counsel's opinion, presented in argument and debated before a court of law. A judge has to have clear guidance on how they should decide. These are proposals to restrict people's rights and cannot be legislated on lightly. Because when you advance laws to restrict rights of others, you end up restricting your own rights as well, from simple legal requirements to have everything that you yourself say fact-checked and corroborated, and perhaps even laying down a trend that means your own rights in another area completely are also slowly eroded away. Rights are like snowballs, and removing them from a mountainside can quickly result in an avalanche.
Mr Trump made a name for himself as being strident and outspoken. But outspoken isn't lying and lying is in fact what all politicians do at some point. White lies, drawing a veil over the truth, being economical with it, switching policy direction. "There is no intention [slight laugh] of building a wall in Berlin" - August 1961. Ms Truss in the UK has done many policy U-turns in just one month - but so have other politicians. If Zelenskiy viewed it as desirable, what if he decided to abandon his hope of returning the Donbas regions and reached a settlement with Moscow? Did he lie when he uttered his well-meant rallying cry to his nation?
It's rarely mentioned but Mr Trump had two major policy successes during his period in office: he had unemployment at a level lower than had been seen in a while; and he was the first president since WW2 not to take his nation to war. Say what one will about how he achieved that, the facts are there. He won't be remembered for them, but unemployment and foreign policy are very important policy threads, and the statistics show him to have been good enough to at least vaunt them if he were to seek re-election. They could only be denied with an answer that starts, "Yes, but -", and that's not an answer to a lie, it's an answer to an interpretation. And there's the rub. It isn't lies that actually pose the issue, for to be a lie, one simply needs to be able, and have the means, to demonstrate its falsity; and if you cannot do that, then it's an assertion. But, an interpretation is a view on a state of fact. How would we stop people we don't like from interpreting things differently to how we do? We can't. And, for one, I wouldn't want to.
Mr Trump came to power on a band-wagon, and he started a second one by doing so, where, for the merest of reasons, perfectly rational, well-balanced people decided that Trump-bashing was in. And they stopped listening to the policies and listened only to the mountebank in him and pointed and ridiculed. That's not political argument in my book, that's populist mob rule, like throwing rotten eggs at a vaudeville show. And not even listening to hear if the act has got some good one-liners.
If you shut out debate and exclude it from the debating arena, you do not stifle the argument, you enrage the debater. In effect, you burn books.
She's touchy today, ain't she?
You need to brush up on your pronouns, DZ. That, at least.
I get so confused, of late! I'm just an ol' coot a'doin 'is best!
Mwa!
Such a benign comment for you to get so angry about. You have a lovely day too!
DZ and I go back a long way, N.
See my full comment elsewhere in this discussion.
However, in addressing Mr Reich's concern:
"But is there any reason to trust the government to do a better job of content moderation than the giants do on their own? (I hate to imagine what would happen under a Republican FCC.) "
To my mind, the FCC has a proven track record. Whether you approve or not, it has led to better results in that objective, with the broadcast and telephone media, than a "free internet", so called, has performed . That's when it's not being hamstrung by those who would otherwise abolish it - in service to the same bullshit we must endure with a so-called "free and open internet." I'm convinced it's done a better job of -keeping things fair & balanced, while controlling - albeit not perfectly - the dissemination of outright lies, than some half-assed market theory that suggests it can regulate itself - like the banking system, Wall Street, and even the gas stations and grocery stores regulate themselves. If someone believes an unregulated internet is our salvation, then I've got a web site where I have a bridge available I can sell them.
DZK, I am with you about our government. During the Trump Administration, a lot of damage was done to our democracy: separating children from parents, tax cuts for the rich, ignoring of the role of the Attorney General, undermining the EPA and Department of Education, and more, but it was the career government workers that kept things from getting totally out of control. If the FCC were actually given the power to do honest regulation, they would definitely do a better job than Facebook, Instagram, and the rest have done under the "regulation" of the private corporations. I have no doubt of that.
Where on earth did I imply I think an unregulated internet is the answer?
Where did I say you did? I was commenting on Dr Reich's comment I quoted expressing his misgivings about government control, while advocating my support of the FCC.
You commented as a reply to N Travis’s post you used the word, “you,” which has a vague referent. To whom does “you” refer? The context determines the reference. Since you used it to reply to N Travis, the reference is clearly to them. As a general rule, clarity and precision of pronoun reference are crucial to effective communication.
OOPS! I should change that to "someone" and "they," which I shall do directly. My apology for my sloppy grammar!
Then your comment should be under his question... not my post. js
And I think otherwise.
Then have a lovely triggered day in muted repose. I am too ill to deal today.
My apology for sloppy grammar. I've corrected the unintended insult.
@N Travis. The most fervent members of the Republican Party disagree with at least 3 of your five examples of facts. In fact some of them think Elvis is still around and a few of them doubt the Earth is round... ;-D
Hey, N. Travis, good observations. I suspect the reason the algorithms are designed to emphasize the worst in humanity is that advertisers are attracted to it, just like on the local and national news on TV and cable as well as newspapers. It seems people want to hear the worst on the platforms they choose to follow so they can participate but mostly anonymously pouring out their own garbage along with everyone else. If questioned by someone they can say "well, everyone else is saying it, just check the internet." We could turn this around if there were incentives and disincentives related to the veracity and reliability of the material carried on their platforms. It seems to me another thing that could help is not permitting any one owner or corporation to control more than one social platform on the internet, possibly two if they are related to a scientific or educational purpose. I do believe we could fix a lot of this if we had the will.
What a great response! My sentiments exactly.
You answered the why question. Our human morbid curiosity along with fear sells! That's why the algorithm feeds it to us.
Hello, James, thank you for your contribution. Indeed, we rubberneck at road accidents, don't we? I don't, as a matter of fact. I witnessed a horrific crash on a motorway outside Paris, in which a man was killed and woman shocked into stunned immobility. A six-year-old girl sat wailing in the back seat of her car and her grandmother tried to console her. It was 20 minutes before police arrived and took over and till then I directed traffic around the crash site, at 3 am in the black impenetrable dark of the French countryside. It expunged all morbid curiosity from me and I ignore accidents and leave the police to their duty.
The "why" to any question is the root to an answer but is not the answer and is coloured by our interpretation of it. When a cause has an effect, the link may be clear, but the motive behind bringing the cause into being can remain unclear. Galileo proved from his observations of the sun crossing the daytime sky that, contrary to church doctrine, the sun did not circle around the Earth but rather the other way around. He was locked up and his book banned for 300 years. He propounded truth, yet was silenced for 3 centuries and, what's more, although he was correct in his conclusion, his observations didn't actually prove his theory of heliocentricism, for, where a sphere rotates around another, fixed sphere, the observations of the one from the other will be identical, regardless of which is which. Like you believe the train you're on is moving, when that beside your train is in fact moving.
What sells is more our confirmation bias: we believe what we want to believe or what it costs us least to believe. Stockholders believe in capitalism, because they believe it will feather their lot; manual labourers believe in communism because they believe that will feather theirs. But, if a cock crows at dawn, does it crow because the sun is rising, or does the sun rise because the cock is summoning it?
I'll see your Denial, and raise you The People v. Larry Flynt.
You can lie, and you can get away with it. I can say the Earth is flat, and get away with it. What I can't say is that your mother was a blueberry (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), because I'm fairly sure she wasn't and you'd sue me for defaming you (or she would for defaming her ... Defamation is the solution of last resort for NDAs - you allege what they say, because you're pretty sure it's right, and they need to open the secret NDA to prove it isn't and refuse to do so, so lose, and you win because everyone knows what's in there anyway. And you get costs. And Prince Andrew forks out 12 million of his soon-to-be-deceased mother's fortune; boy, that was good timing). Anyway, truth would be a defence, but the pursuer wants you to be lying, which you aren't, and they know it, which is why defamation can break an NDA. Saying stuff about people (not things) is defamation, and only if it's a falsity. I do wonder what you could still say about D Trump that would "bring him into disrepute", but there must be something. Like "She say anything about me?" for instance, except that's true.
You treat this as a contest... the only one playing though, is you.
You have me clueless. It's not a contest, it's a forum, where people say something and invite others to comment. I paid my five bucks, too, y'know.
N, people lie all the time, even with their hand on a bible; and they get away with it. They really do.
I simply don't agree with your statement that "What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it." I think lots of people do lie and it's gone beyond being afraid that they may be held accountable - they do expect not be held accountable, and devise systems to ensure that; and I suspect you know that, too - and I join with you in saying, "But, they should be held accountable." Now, I'll watch your movie recommendation and try to catch Edward Norton and Woody Harelson in the true story film I cited.
Ummm, @Graham Vincent. The history of Donald Trump, whom I like to call the tangerine twat-waddle, or old bone spur depending on context, is not over by far. I think the rear-guard action he is fighting is consequential, and I believe he will ultimately fall under legal action. I believe he will most certainly not be President again, and I believe that his acolytes, emulators, ditto heads and wanna-be's are going to do a lot less well at the polls than once we might have thought. In a midterm election with the President's low popularity, the party in power should have expected a total rout. Instead there are prospects that the Democrats could hold on to a majority or 50/50 Senate and a real long shot that the Democrats could hold the House of Representatives. While no one can be sure of the outcome of an election, we can be sure that the Republicans are doing a lot less well than they would have traditionally done. I lay this at the feet of that pussy grabber and I believe (HOPE!) it really spoils his day on November 8th, 2022.
Even if your prediction comes true that *rump "will most certainly not be President again," the havoc and destruction that he and his cult have wrought have done tremendous damage, having established new parameters of what is acceptable, what is "true," what is decent and honorable. Their strategy is to throw up as much flak and confusion as possible. They are entirely 3-card monte, shell game, trickster, con-gamers, robber barons, crooks, masters of corruption. And where are the "stops" to their game?! The last AG was crooked; the current AG is milquetoast. The last AG has had no sanctions to his ability to practice law, nor any difficulty finding a book publisher or time on TV shows to lay out his shells on the table and invite viewers/listeners to play along. The current AG seems adept at ignoring the daily parade of solid proof and evidence of sedition, treason and fraud put before him, with the occasional appearance at a lectern to say that “nobody is above the law,” although most of us could provide him with a very long list of those who appear to be way above the law, in some stratrosphere where there is no law that pertains to them.
Lawyers, good and bad, have gotten a lot richer under the *rump con-game.
Books have again become a hot commodity, as long as they are about *rump (whether they are "love him or leave him" in theme, fact-based or bunk).
This era, though, seems very different from other eras of corruption and graft or grift. It does not seem to be counter-balanced with some kind of soul-cleansing, some redemption and pendulum-swing towards a renewed effort to do better. Instead, there seems to be an acceptance of, even admiration for, what used to be considered abnormal, aberrant, criminal. It seems that "the bad" has been exposed and rather than being dispatched by a turn to "the good," instead "the bad" is persistent and relentless and dominating "the good."
If there is any "good" that *rump has done, it was paradoxically generated by his deranged and criminal acts: the *rump era has exposed so many of the weaknesses and gaps in our system that had apparently never occurred to anyone before because the scale of sociopathy and corruption hadn't been so blatant before. Now that the disease has been diagnosed, one would think that the cure would follow. However, even more disturbing than the disease is what seems to be the fact that there is no serious pursuit of the cure; in fact, those who might bring the cure and fix things seem to be showing that perennial analysis and examination of the disease is as far as they will ever go. Case in point: *rump and his flying monkey thug army are still barnstorming the country stuffing cash in their wallets telling lies and fomenting violence, anger, hatred, confusion, all with impunity, unabated, getting enormous publicity from those who "tsk-tsk" while examining the disease organism endlessly. Where will we be a year from now? Gasping for our last breath or getting better in "rehab." How far and deep has the disease metastasized?
This is off-topic, but I'm grateful for your lengthy input. Thank you, and thanks also to Benjamin.
I am not American, but your politics affects me. America's policies are vital to a battleground much closer to my home than the mid-terms, and your President's ability to cultivate friendship with other statesmen and women and be cogent in his rhetoric is valued.
However, and to just interlace the question into all of this, the sentiment that the Internet was creating a polarisation within society is no longer theoretical, it is proven, by academic research. That means that the place traditionally occupied by the liberal, fair-minded judge has become the target of vitriol from all sides, and that is uncomfortable. I sit in that No Man's Land. In another arena, I plead to Ukrainians who cry for the blood of their attackers to think how the world will view them if they prove victorious in the war, but fail to live up to the hopes and expectations that democratic stalwart nations have placed in them over this year. For Ukraine, the peace may yet be a harder struggle than the war.
And so it is in your own home arena, the political battleground that is the mid-terms and the 2024 election. I understand the hurt and anger of Ukraine's people. I felt it myself. And I understand the outrage at the clear abuses committed by an occupier of the highest office of the USA. Yet I don't condone retorting to vitriol with vitriol. I said early in Mr Trump's tenure, "He is accused with menace and disdain of a lack of humanity by many who would seem to lack the same humanity towards him." Litigants will figuratively scream at one another through courtroom pleadings; and yet a judge must remain calm and hear all sides to the case. However, the judgment he hands down will side with the litigant whose arguments come closest to where he feels the justice lies. Litigants must endeavour to find that justice, for, then, they will prevail. However, I am no judge. Your electorate is.
I do not condone those accusers of Mr Trump who feel aggrieved, and yet I don't condemn them either. Like embittered invaded nations, they are entitled to their indignation, but causal epidemiology will not cure a cholera outbreak unless you also apply the medicine to the sick. The Democratic Party may be confirmed in its analysis of the cause of America's malaises, but it must do more: it must propose solutions. Railing at the cause will not resolve what got you in the mire, if mire you are in.
And wrestling is fake.
Well, hurrah for that. So is the theatre, but it's tremendously entertaining: assuming audiences don't actually want to see athletes' necks broken before their very eyes?
Well, professional wrestling is fake and theatrical Greco-wrestling as seen in the Olympics is a genuine (if boring) sport.
That must be why the offside rule is so devilishly complicated in soccer: to lend the sport some element of vaguely intellectual challenge besides ... kicking the ball.
The problem is not only the misleading content some users place on these media, but the algorithms the media uses to increase visibility of the content. By observation these algorithms in effect create isolated groups who watch what each other watches and do not encourage reading, reaction, and analysis by those with other views. The algorithms appear to be positive feedback which increases the magnitude of deviations. Rational democratic discourse will happen only if opponents see each others content and comment upon it. It appears the algorithms are currently striving to increase revenue by offering up what amounts to "more of the same" to "believers". Algorithms that encourage cross pollination are what is called for in order to save our nation.
Corporate capitalism operates on principles that are diametrically opposed to the moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Jesus said "sell all you have, and give to the poor..." while corporate capitalism teaches "take all the poor have, and sell them for profit."
Hey William, I want to slightly alter your statement about what Corporate America says in relation to the Judeo-Christian expectation. I think it is more like "sell trash instead of quality necessities to the poor at the highest possible price, then blame and malign them for being poor.",
Not to mention Sharia law, which outlaws out of its law "usury". Arabian banks need special "permissions". I wonder how they get them?
Yes, on FB for example, comments that disagree on a post and are not from “friends “ might be attributed to trolls. We haven’t learned how to have respectful discourse and disagreements. Recent politicians have modeled how to successfully attack and lie with the megaphone of social media.
Algorithms get a bad press. Because they feed you what you're interested in. And that's ... bad? Have you tried searching for your local dog food store with a search that really did encompass the entire globe? But if we go into a bookshop, don't we gravitate to the sections that interest us - crime, personal health, children's stories? They help sellers advertise to people likely to be interested in what they're selling, and they prick our interest by displaying goods we want to see - no good trying to sell ladies' millinery to teenage boys.
If they worked half as efficiently as they wish they could, and as many fear they do, they would end up directing all the haters out there toward other haters and they could all have a merry old time telling each other what scoundrels and blackguards the rest of us are. But, there is in fact more leakage than we think. And, in any case, it wasn't algorithms that made the Washington Post put Mr West in a headline ...
"Algorithms get a bad press. Because they feed you what you're interested in. And that's ... bad?"
IMO, yes, that's bad. It's bad because it limits what you see, and tends to push you further into what you already think or believe. I always turn off that feature on sites. Show me everything, and let me decide what to watch or read.
There's a difference between searching for a local product or service, and searching for information. Algorithms that steer you into information silos reinforce beliefs and opinions that should probably be questioned.
As for (brick and mortar) bookshops, they tend to put prominent displays inside the front door of books that you might not otherwise seek out. I have read many a book I would not have known about were it not for such displays. And even if you stick to certain subjects, there are many different ideas from different sources on those subjects. Algorithms tend to focus in only on ideas that are similar to what you've engaged with before. Bookstores don't do that. They show ALL the books on the subject.
Gail. I like your explanation of algorithms and why they can be problematic. Your use of the bookstore to explain was really good. As a blind person, I am privileged to download books from the Library of Congress site for disabled readers. I used to think that when I went to check out the new books, I wanted the books to be divided into themes and authors. I have discovered I like the random list a lot. What I like most about it is that I have found so many books I probably would never have noticed had I only checked out the categories I usually read, books I have loved. It seems to me algorithms can be designed to include different points of view even if it is not what a particular user generally gets or searches for. The emphasis should be on truth whenever possible. There could be prompts to check out some noted people with different viewpoints, eventually broadening the scope of whose work is included. People might find things they didn't expect, but learned from. Challenging one's beliefs is healthy despite what autocrats and scared people claim.
Well, I agree with the general tenor of what you say. See my reply to David below, I'll not repeat it here. The bookstore is just an example of somewhere we like to have guidance in finding what we're interested in and that is "a" function of algorithms. If I were a pacifist looking for like-minded souls, I might find it distressing to be constantly given the option of going to see articles about warfare; the algorithm will recognise the nature of my sympathies and direct me more to those who think like me. That means I may remain a convinced conscientious objector and never come to terms with the "need for warfare", and that might be a good or a bad thing. However, some seek guidance on certain matters because they have no view at all: I knew nothing about price gouging before Mr Reich explained it in his articles, so I thank him for informing me. To balance that I should read what the corporations he criticises say on the matter - the fact that I don't do that, because I think they speak hogwash, makes of me a Reich partisan on that subject. And my algorithm will direct me to people who think like Mr Reich. You may find that interesting, or approve that I don't seek info from corporations, or find that bad, imbalanced and irrational. But it's the same in effect as someone who gets fed anti-this or anti-that posts from their pseudonym-guarded partners in crime on Nazi websites. Occasionally I do seek out the "contrary view" and often get shocked at its vehemence; other times I just see "another point of view." And thank you for yours, Gail.
My local bookshop actually always had to order the books I wanted, by the way! But they closed down.
I'm sorry to hear your bookstores have closed. Such a great loss that so many do.
I wouldn't blame you for thinking I believe all algorithms that cater to individual interest are bad. But as you say, they can be useful to winnow the overwhelming onslaught of online information and opinion.
The biggest issues I see with the algorithms employed in social media are (a) monetization (i.e., pushing people toward paid content to increase revenue), (b) the fact that so much of that paid content ranges from misleading to disinformation and outright lies, and (c) the tightening spiral that seems to occur once an algorithm "determines" what a person wants to see, thus creating a positive feedback loop for inaccurate, false, and potentially harmful information. Put those all together, and you get massive social and political effects that wreak havoc with social, economic, and political systems.
Hello Gail: Thank you for your kind sympathies! The shop was a long-standing servant of the English-language community and beyond in Brussels, but had to fold over the Covid crisis, and is sadly mourned by all booklovers here.
I wrote elsewhere on this post that Mr Reich's question had transmuted from "How do we stop malevolent content being disseminated by others?" into "How do we prevent our own content - in the form of personal data - being abused by others?" and they are flip sides of the same issue.
Somebody here asked why web portals such as FB and LI cannot be held liable for what is published under their banner and, indeed, that's problematic - it's not their banner as such. If we insist that enough is enough and that all content will be deemed "published" by what we call in French l'éditeur responsable (in the sense of "whom you can sue"), then, whilst officially registered publications on news stands can be checked for compliance, there is so much dark stuff, bogus websites and 'here today, gone tomorrow' web presences, I can't see stringent registration working at all. Some operators, even nations, treat the Net as a fair playing field whereas others, as you point out, view it as a hunting ground with constant open season for tricksters on all and any. We call it 'virtual', but it is only that for so long as it remains online: its effects are only too palpable when it emerges into the real world, whether it's read, reacted to, purloined, misappropriated or sold.
Let me give an example of how one government reacted to an imminent "clear & present danger" of late: In response to the fuel and climate crises, a bill went before Belgium's parliament in July to reduce the maximum freeway speed here, as in the Netherlands, from 120 to 100 km/h, and it was defeated. It seems such an obvious saver of needless outlay when budgets are shrinking, and a positive move to reducing air pollution, and yet it failed to pass. If we cannot achieve advancement in, as I see it, such palpable and seemingly sensible measures, what hope for the far-reaching soul-searching that our prime means of modern communication seems to need? Raising concerns among ordinary folk like you and me, its ambit extends beyond data security and Mr West's crassness, but goes to the extent to which freedoms are paid mere lip-service to by the multifarious manipulators of the world's peoples. Elected officials seem unwilling to intervene; even those with noble intentions fall short of the mark. Did the Internet's inventors create a Behemoth, one that soothes our concerns with platitudes whilst telling us how to earn, how to consume, how to hate our neighbours, whether to buy guns and whether to procreate, how to redefine fair play and a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, whether we may vote and how to wage war, how and where to die, and how and where to live, persuading us where to be educated, how and where to travel, what convictions and beliefs to hold, what sexual proclivity to hold, what to eat and where to eat it, what is acceptable and what is not and, ultimately, where our own true interests lie? Do we learn our morals from the Internet, or from our elders, our schooling and our upbringing? I still have one preserve I cannot relinquish: how to think; yet even the information needed to do that is slowly ebbing from my grip. Once it is gone, shall we be but pawns? Eloi to Morlocks of our own creation?
The Internet is an unimaginably rich resource, inconceivable when my parents came into the world a century ago; a friend of mine was internetting in 1993 and enthused at his nightly e-mail sessions with friends he respected and chatted with in far-off places, whom he'd never met but who were all riveted by this new "instantaneousness". The corporate interest soon saw how it could be turned to profit, and it failed: you cannot sell the Internet, any more than you can sell a pathway through a forest. So, it became a means to exact profit instead of being a saleable item in and of itself. Now it has become a breeding ground for the unscrupulous and the dishonest - city pickpocketing is way down as a criminal problem - and the rise in e-commerce has forced us, in order to cope at all and even deal with our governments and their agencies, to mingle in a market laced with thieves and cut-throats. Commerce should strive to protect the unwary and yet it seems to say "just do it".
Perhaps apples and pears, but the foresight demonstrated by those with power to rule is but short term. Presidents and prime ministers have cut-off dates to their influence, of 5 years and less hence; potentates with names ending in Inc. and -in may even survive the 5-year deadline. The Internet may never again become a quiet snug for midnight e-mail chats with excited discoverers, but if anyone up above had a comment to make, it might well be: "You have made it a den of robbers."
Thank you for sharing your comments. You're an eloquent writer.
You are describing the problem.
That's right, David, but it's also the up-side to algorithms. The idea behind waste sorting is to sort waste, but it also creates jobs, which adds to the cost. In many things deciding whether the benefit is the mover behind the thing or the down-side is the mover can be a close call. It's called the cobra problem: India had a bounty on cobras at one time, to rid people of that dangerous pest. So, people started breeding cobras to claim the bounty. Here, it's even possible - just supposing - that a cobra-breeder had the bounty introduced in the first place. For cobras, you might perhaps substitute any measure sold as solving a problem and just by coincidence benefiting a major corporation or lawmaker (paid to promote legislation by a major corporation).
Is there a solution to this algorithm problem? If algorithms can track you, surely another algorithm could ward them off? If not, why not? If so, why aren't they doing so? That perhaps starts us on the way to enquiring why algorithms were invented: more to sell data than to "enhance enjoyment"? Or is tracking an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise beneficial concept that helps us navigate the web? Whatever it is, we have both: is there a way out?
The reply suggests powers the platform’s algorithms do not have. The platform’s goal is to sell advertising, which depends on traffic items, posts, images, videos, etc. The platform sells ads based on evidence participants see the traffic items. The algorithms suggest items of traffic to a participant based on likelihood the participant will spend time on those traffic items and see the associated ads. This is done by suggesting to a participant traffic items others who have seen the same item have seen. This is a very simple algorithm. No “tracking”. No “enjoyment evaluation”. No “content analysis”. This algorithm is simple to write and implement and should maximize “views” and thus revenue. Its result is individuals wind up viewing traffic items that are most often similar to one another and rarely represent diverse viewpoints. This bias has those with one viewpoint almost never seeing alternative viewpoints. That is called positive feedback and strengthens polarizing opinions, such as the maga sect.
Thanks, David: clearly my technical grasp is not up there, and I have a fear of my smartphone, which I don't answer and just call folk back on the thing that goes into the wall.
If algorithms don't track, that's a plus point for algorithms. However, something does, and that is the general tone here: whatever it may be called, it has no business doing what it is doing, because where I go and what I do there, provided it's within the bounds of what is legally permissible, is fundamentally no one's business but mine. If I wish to tell people of it, that's a matter of my discretion, every bit as much as telling them the contents of my diary or whose soap powder I buy. It's not, I believe, the fact that something is done, or that it can be done or that it's done and I can't stop it being done that means it's not wrong or it's not something that should not be being done. I also go into shops and, when asked if I can be helped, decline the offer if I prefer to simply browse, perhaps to pass the time of day, or because it's raining outside or because I'm looking for French knickers to satisfy a feral urge in me and would rather not share that knowledge with the shop assistant. Why I decline is neither here nor there - I decline. And I would actually like to be able to say "No, thank you" when I'm on line, and I do, wherever I can. Most tracking I have been subjected to rather crassly asks if I'd like to buy a product that I've in fact just bought. Do many people actually then go and buy a second complete set of new saucepans?
I like this comment because it’s provocative and thoughtful. I smile at image of all the haters and deniers in a metaphorical room gabbing away about their alternate universe and the deplorable people who aren’t them and who inhabit their version of hell.😄
... assuming people don't decide to just log off first.
= /
Which in itself would be a solution.
If people log off because they don’t like what they see, the horde of online assholes gets smaller.
Do we go to the circus because we're interesting in seeing the circus or because we saw the parade down main street? Advertisers mislead people all the time. Dorothy L. Sayers likened ads to yeast in bread, saying it's like truth in advertising. You can't make bread from just yeast, but it blows the rest of the stodge into a digestible mass that the public can swallow. Contract law has rules against being misleading, and there are regulators that look at ads, warranty terms and such like. But you can't legislate against "being misleading" in the criminal law, unless you commit fraud. Because you need 'intention' and the defence would always be 'I didn't know I was wrong.' And what's evidentially wrong about 'Jews are bad people'? Some Jews have been bad. This is an area where we just want to say "Because I say so" and democracies don't have rules like that; that's another kind of government, called "confederacy".
Fraud comprises the buttresses of business's cathedral when business controls the judiciary. Abandon hope, all ye who lack the finances to enter here.
Yes. The word was cited only as a part of first year law school "theory" class.
I just read this, which you and others may care to read too. It tells a new chapter in a never-ending story and contains phrases like "data on people who don't even use the app itself", "I think people are conditioned to think, 'Facebook is everywhere, and whatever, they're going to get my data'", "data 'is not used to group individuals into particular interest categories'" (are they stupid, or do they think we are?), "removed pixels, citing their presence was an oversight" (oops, sorry), "businesses either declined to comment or never responded" (we use the Internet and can't communicate), "companies are able to watch what you do from site to site."
A buddy years ago went to buy a TV and refused to have one with a remote control. "If I want to see something, I'll get off my butt and change channels." He couldn't find one without a remote. And, were he alive today, he wouldn't be able to "be" without the Internet. Why are we forced to live in a world where we are obliged to leave the front doors to our homes open?
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2022/10/tiktoks-secret-operation-tracks-you-even-if-you-dont-use-it
Why aren't social media treated the same as publishers? Publishers are accountable for what they publish, aren't they? If I write a book or an article that is preposterous, and I can't get anyone to publish it, is that a violation of my right to free speech? I don't think so. I can self-publish my views, but without the the power to distribute it widely, it won't start an insurrection or have a team of lawyers to defend it from lawsuits, nor will it require a government to regulate its content. This is the problem with social media being treated as public carriers. They must be held accountable for being able so easily and cheaply to publish harmful tripe.
The game rules are different. Responsible publishers are named in the books and magazines they print as being "responsible" for what they print. But web portals (as opposed to websites) are a conduit for their members to publish, like here, actually on the Substack. They have a code of conduct and they do police that but they say they can't be everywhere at once, and they're not doing the publishing, so it is difficult. That's the why. But the main question is "why is that the why?" Who set things up this way? Mr Reich channels like-minded thinkers on his pet subjects here and that is handy, because I get to speak to you. Otherwise I would have a website where I publish my ideas, and you'd need to know who I am and where to find me (here, in fact - Endless Chain). It's a forum of exchange here, and we've had them since Ancient Rome, where people come together and trade, whether horsemeat or ideas. But the marketplace itself isn't answerable for the conduct of the traders who do business there. If they cheat a lot, the market may exclude them, however.
Publishers are not legally responsible for the content they publish. Their authors are. If I defame you, you can sue me. But, you can’t sue my publisher.
Communications Decency Act of 1996 was invoked to regulate porn on the internet. Now it’s time to invoke another Communications Decency Act to regulate indecent free speech and hold accountable those people who promote hate filled internet speech. Alex Jones is a good example!
I wanted to answer this by quoting Alan Bullock's "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny", about how AH achieved his position as Chancellor by democratic means, whereupon his first act of policy was to abolish the democracy by which he'd got there - cutting the rope after he'd clambered aboard. But I found a better one on page 46: "The force which ever set in motion the great historical avalanches of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken word."
Do we therefore assume that our status quo is so sacrosanct (please, don't tell me the status quo "in" bellum is sacrosanct) that we would repel all boarders from our ship of fools and cut the rope by which we clambered aboard; repel all invaders into our sanctity of clean and pure thought? How sure can we be that law aimed at preserving decency would not thereafter be usurped in order to preserve tyranny?
In one thing Hitler was right - gosh, he is an archetype to rank alongside Machiavelli as an "Idiot's Guide to Ruling the World", we must wonder how could he have also been so wrong - aside from his thing about big lies being more believable than little ones: the spoken word is a force for change, be it for the better or the worse. And recognition of that truth must surely debouch into a mechanism designed to regulate its power. We regulate bombs and bullets, dangerous machinery and public acts, systems of government and pornographic magazines. And yet we do not regulate the most powerful force to have upheld tyranny ever?
Well, we do regulate it, but such a slippery entity as the spoken word is, we do so using malleable, shape-shifting concepts that result in endless trials, not to mention tribulations, and never really pin down what we meant by them when they were inserted into statute law: obscenity, hatred (there are those who love it, actually), incitement, outrage, dishonesty, fake, truth, evidence, proof, corroboration, denial. One man's decency is indeed another man's pissing.
Careful! Not "regulate porn" but prohibit claims of indecency from subsuming The Internet (as The G.O.P. was perfectly ready to push censorship laws into cyberspace, i.e. the dominion of liberal counter-culture, wherever possible!)...
Passed by Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, the CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who
knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.
It further criminalized the transmission of "obscene or indecent" materials to persons known to be under 18.
You’re right. I checked Wikipedia and found the following:
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet. Thank You Rishi
It’s exhausting, waiting for all other possibilities to be exhausted…!
Free speech does not or should not make it OK to shout 'Fire!" in a crowded theater. It should not allow an ad agency to make a political commercial depicting men kicking in the door to their opponent's home and entering with AR-15's and shooting the place up. Responsibility for content has to be there somewhere.
I agree Laurie. As far as I’m concerned, the very few social media platforms owe a duty of care to the general public and should be treated as common carriers and regulated. As Robert has pointed out, those platforms offer a megaphone to the purveyors of disinformation and to those bullies who would fat shame a 10-year-old girl to the world with the click of “send.” Can we fix this? Of course we can. And for the sake of a civilized society, we must.
We found out long ago that monopolies are bad and there were laws to break them up. What happened to those laws? Why do we have to make the same mistakes over and over?
The best allegory I've seen for the human race is Homer Simpson reaching for a doughnut and getting an electric shock. Repeatedly.
Yes - that seems the thrust of Professor Reich's argument...
The challenge is preserving truth in the internet’s torrent of information. Freedom of speech is not freedom to lie, or to mislead . How the courts can create enforceable measures which protect the public is the challenge of our time.
I don't know what the exact stats are but it seems like the courts at all levels were stacked during the DJT years, so I'm not sure what kind of relief to expect.
How do I know that you didn't just mislead me?
The idea of imposing the duties of a common carrier can represent a needed balance to the capitalist tendency towards over concentration. Obviously, the courts are the wrong place for this. It should be a legislative and regulatory policy-based approach that deals with the number of platform companies beyond the social media giants.
My suggestion is that Section 230 be amended to narrow its scope and no longer protect the platform algorithm technologies of selection and aggregation. Only the actual words of natural persons should give rise the protection for the companies. The creators of content through algorithms, bots, or similar technology should be subject to full and complete liability for the harm done.
Such an amendment would allow the tort system to regulate conduct without the section 230 liability shield that was enacted to protect an infant industry which is no longer in its infancy.
Finally, if we want to take a strict "originalist" view of the first amendment as sacred text to be interpreted only literally, speech literacy means spoken words and social media companies do not have printing presses so are not the "press".
My understanding is that once you post on a social media platform they own your post forever, and getting a post removed at your request can sometimes be problematic; that would seem to imply some level of liability on their part, yes? I know that is a hypothetical obverse situation to allowing free access on the platform to openly biased/toxic posts but it would seem to be relevant at some level, no? I don't really know the details b/c I've avoided ever using most of the major social media platforms. In a larger sense, I do feel like all sorts of industries are being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and there needs to be some sort of antitrust activity at the DOJ, if they could get it together to do that in the face of industry opposition and the current makeup of the courts.
Yes and no. Within the EU currently, there are more rights over your content with the right to be forgotten. More is coming with the Digital Services Act (https://www.accessnow.org/digital-services-act-eu-content-moderation-rules-guide/) applicable as of 2024, which will provide more protections.
If a set of states such as California, New York, and Illinois were to adopt the equivalent of the EU's DSA, that would help.
The DOJ and the courts are, by design, reactive and slow processes that should be seen as a poor alternative to legislatures that actually enact laws to benefit human beings.
Love your final paragraph. This is also, a great argument against the 'Citizens United' decision.
I agree. We have too many monopolies now. Airlines. Media carriers- newspapers, television, radio. Banks. Movie studios. With their power, they do what they want. Maybe a shareholder would have the guts to object but they just buy back stock. Facebook is a huge business and it’s run by a cheating pipsqueek. Google is huge and pretty much controls most of the net - we google now, not search. Monopolies are good for the dictators running them but terrible and costly for the citizen.
I know it makes me old but I still miss Netscape and Word Perfect.
Definitely Word Perfect
Word Perfect is still alive and well. It is owned by Corel and runs under Windows on PCs or under a virtual machine such as Parallels or VMWare on Macs.
Churchill had an astute viewpoint. I like what Gandhi said when ask what he thought of Western civilization. He said “I think it would be a good idea.“ That being said, I agree with you Robert. Breaking up these mega corporations is a great idea and hopefully will add to a more perfect Union. Right now, it seems like we are akin to the three poor fishermen rescued off the coast of Louisiana today; in shark infested waters fending themselves off with their hands.
1st How can it be called "The Communications Decency Act of 1996" When it is protecting corporations from being sued for publishing false, indecent, and dangerous crap? 2nd I probably shouldn't comment since I don't understand how otherwise reasonably intelligent people can be swayed by the obvious garbage of political ads, and who cares what you ate last night?
Agreed Fay. And speaking of greed, we as a country have long had a pro business bias when it comes to regulating speech. Doubt this? Why are businesses allowed to make false statements such as “this is the best deal ever” when two minutes in a courtroom would prove that to be a false statement? Check out the word “puffery” in the Supreme Court annals. Purveyors of goods in this country are allowed to lie with impunity. Our faith in the unregulated free market has led us to social Jonestown. Drink the Kool-Aid and die.
Agreed, except people like you, me and others on this platform I believe are a little more skeptical. Also, most of us don't accept caveat emptor.
Winston Churchill had a clear view : “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted." We can only hope that there is enough time for the powers that be to figure out what that right thing is. How bad will it get before then?
Well, it did all start with a necklace of conch beans, didn't it? You could only trust half of Winston, then: the other half was British.
You support him by asking the question.
We are a month out from the possible demise of our democracy. Focus on that.
We also should not be exposed to that other lying MF Donald J. Trump.
IMHO liars are a threat to themselves and to civilization and need a civil commitment hearing.
And SOON. DOJ has moved too slowly and indecisively. The price is probably going to be the end of our republic. And behind it all: corporate $$$, the 1%ers wealth and power, and a mentally ill orange carnival barker.
The FOX TV station here shares its studio with the ABC TV station for it's broadcast operation. Both stations share the same local news team, as well. ABC broadcasts the local news until 7:00 AM, at which time it changes over to the network news. Just before the 7:00 AM switch to network, the local news team invites the viewers to join them on FOX, where they'll continue to deliver the morning news.
Now, here's what's interesting. If you switch over to the FOX broadcast station at 7:00 AM, what you'll find is infomercials, complete with the disclaimer preface - on each - denying responsibility for the views or products presented by the infomercial. The FOX trash news seems to be exclusively a creature of the internet.
The only explanation I think holds water for that dichotomy in FOX's behavior is that broadcast TV is regulated by the FCC, while the internet is - for all intent - unregulated. It seems that broadcast is required to at least tip it's hat in observance of >some< modicum of truth and decency - not to mention . . . fairness.
That's why I think there could be a lot worse outcomes than imposing FCC regulations on "common carriers" - >a lot worse.< I don't think the internet should be viewed and treated as an >instead< of broadcast platform. I think it should be viewed and treated as an >additional< broadcast platform.
However, I think FCC regulations being imposed exclusively on social media platforms is a >canard.< After having had time to see the trend of an unregulated - for all intent - internet, as it has developed over years, I think FCC regulation should be imposed on the internet as a whole - in the same way it is imposed on radio transmissions. >Every< website hosted on the internet should be considered equivalent to a broadcast TV channel or radio station or telephone network, and regulated in >exactly the same way<.
After all, what we have come to know as the internet, a public platform, was originally a US defense system developed by DARPA to insure a "self healing" strategic communications system that could maintain critical communications channels in the event of a nuclear attack.
Some genius just decided that if huge money could be made if the public was granted access, it should be opened for use by the public. >Fair enough.< It worked well enough for >regulated< radio and television broadcast. Few people like taking a shot. Yet, sometimes a shot is the only thing that can save them.
I'm very conflicted as to what I think. The First Amendment protects our right to free speech...up to a point. It's my understanding that inflammatory racist or call-to-violence type speech is NOT protected because of the harm they cause. So I do believe that the social media platforms should be more responsible and diligent about keeping that awful stuff off their sites. As for trusting Americans to do the right thing, once upon a time Winston Churchill was absolutely correct. Now? I wonder.