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| | “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” – Melvin Kranzberg, 1986
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< | Something’s wrong with what we have made of the Net. In the aftermath of the presidential election, reckoning with how our direct bond to the Net, particularly via Twitter and Facebook, makes some kinds of evil easy has been all the rage. From the proliferation of fake news to the disregard of systemic user harassment, the social networks we presumably turn to for knowledge and connection have become safe spaces for misinformation and hate speech. The norms of civility, truthfulness, and respect that bound together a vibrant democratic society are eroding fast in the Net, and we are alarmed at what this will mean for our non-digital lives. |
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> | Something’s wrong with what we have made of the Net. In the aftermath of the presidential election, reckoning with how our direct bond to the Net, particularly via Twitter and Facebook, makes some kinds of evil easy has been all the rage. From the proliferation of fake news to the disregard of systemic user harassment, the social networks we presumably turn to for knowledge and connection have become safe spaces for misinformation and hate speech. The norms of civility, truthfulness, and respect that bound together a vibrant democratic society are eroding fast in the web, and we are alarmed at what this will mean for our non-digital lives. |
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< | This collective outrage at how the Net is deceiving us to the beat of fake news, however, is also pure irony. Deception powers our relationship with many of the “services” we obtain through the Net. We don’t only go online to simplify daily errands, obtain information, and pursue human connection; we are also in the Net to self-promote and police our peers. In turn, and whether we are aware or not, service providers surveil each of our digital steps and bask us with untruthful news. Our digital lives navigate a multidimensional highway of deception—and before the current moment’s moral panic about fake news—many didn’t seem to care. |
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> | The collective outrage at how the Net deceives us to the beat of fake news, however, is also pure irony. Deception powers our relationship with many of the “services” we obtain through the Net. We don’t only go online to simplify daily errands, obtain information, and pursue human connection; we are also in the Net to self-promote and police our peers. In turn, and whether we are aware or not, service providers surveil our digital steps and bask us with untruthful news. Our digital lives navigate a multidimensional highway of deception—and before today's moral panic about fake news—many didn’t seem to care. |
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| | Around the same time, a Huffington Post journalist learned he was under FBI investigation for tweeting about engaging in voter fraud as a joke in response to a fake news story. |
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< | And most recently, Florida authorities charged a woman who believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax to advance gun-control legislation for threatening a parent of one of the massacre’s victims. |
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> | And most recently, Florida authorities charged a woman, who believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax to advance gun-control legislation, for threatening a parent of one of the massacre’s victims. |
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< | These three incidents exemplify how the Machine not only collects but also generates behavior—the tangibility and concreteness of which perhaps explains why we are more scandalized by fake news than by a regime of surveillance and data mining that, albeit pervasive, feels “invisible.” Moreover, the first large-scale study on the effect of fake news reveals that American adults are deceived by untrue news articles 75% of the time, and that they are mostly unable to distinguish between real and fake stories. Such a phenomenon may beg rethinking what constitutes censorship in our age of Big Fake News: Although the “Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” aren’t Facebook and Twitter censoring the truth by allowing it to drown in a sea of misinformation? |
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> | These three incidents exemplify how the Net not only collects but also generates behavior—the tangibility and concreteness of which perhaps explains why we are more scandalized by fake news than by a regime of surveillance and data mining that, albeit pervasive, feels “invisible.” Moreover, the first large-scale study on the effect of fake news reveals that American adults are deceived by untrue news articles 75% of the time, and that they are mostly unable to distinguish between real and fake stories. Such a phenomenon may beg rethinking what constitutes censorship in our age of Big Fake News: Although the “Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” aren’t Facebook and Twitter censoring the truth by allowing it to drown in a sea of misinformation? |
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The Front to Misinform and the Back to Surveil |
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< | In light of these recent events, then, it should be no surprise that over the past year we have been more interested in learning about fake news than the collection of our online behavior. Meanwhile, we remain appeased residents of a “curiously fabricated privatised commons of data and surveillance.” |
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> | In light of these recent events, then, it should be no surprise that over the past year we have been more interested in learning about fake news than aboyt the pervasive collection of our online behavior. Meanwhile, we remain appeased residents of a “curiously fabricated privatised commons of data and surveillance.” |
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In-Q-Tel-backed Dataminr retains its monopoly over the mining of our tweets. Out of our Millenial distaste for carrying cash, Venmo’s default sharing features and limited privacy controls expose the financial transaction data of over two million users. A recent study shows Venmo behaves just like Facebook in choosing the profit of user growth over addressing identified privacy vulnerabilities. And our entryway to Facebook, Twitter, and Venmo—the ISPs—are still able to access everything that exits and enters their customers’ computers (although, in a welcome change, broadband providers will soon need to obtain permission before collecting and sharing data on consumers' online activities as new FCC rules come into effect). |