Month: March 2018

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Regulation of Cyberspace

Social media, and by that I mostly mean Facebook, is a mess. We all know that it wastes too much of our time, makes us more agitated and irritable than we should be, and collects information about us and uses that intel to manipulate us. We’ve known most of that for some time now. But seeing the undercover Channel 4 video of the Cambridge Analytica executives has shaken people who had been fully in the techno-utopian camp when it came to the internet and Web 2.0 services like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Suddenly the brave new world of the internet doesn’t look so bright and shiny.

In preparation for teaching a unit on new media and regulation I was reviewing my notes about the history of regulation of the internet…which is pretty short. Not that there haven’t been attempts to regulate “cyberspace”…but as early observers already noted, the internet does not take kindly to outsiders telling it how to go about its business. The early credo, “The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” is testimony to the structural logic of the internet and explains the technical challenge of controlling something that was built to withstand external attacks.

Much of the early rhetoric was hyperbolic and now seems a bit silly. As the luster and new-car-smell has faded, we look back on those early utopian ideals as innocent and naive. Here’s an example from 1996. The speaker/author of A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is John Perry Barlow; a cattle rancher, techno-philosopher, and lyricist for The Grateful Dead.

While many of the early attempts to regulate were focused on the content of the internet, e.g. the Communications Decency Act, other legislation focused on intellectual property and piracy, e.g. SOPA and PIPA.

The most recent piece of legislation, H.R. 1865 aka FOSTA-SESTA, if signed by President Trump, will modify the 1996 Communications Decency Act Section 230 which has provided cover for internet companies and shielded them from legal repercussions related to the actions of users on their sites.

So, what does Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have to do with any of this? Simply that users are starting to question whether big internet companies can be trusted to do the right thing without oversight. (Others aren’t so sure).

But if it is time for regulators to tell Craigslist, Reddit, and Backpage (among others) to clean up their Personal/Massage/Dating ads in the interest of combating sex trafficking, perhaps it’s also time for regulators to tell Facebook when it is and isn’t okay to harvest and sell our data to political operatives.

No one naively believes that this will end the sex trafficking problem…just as no one believes that Zuckerberg’s promise to do a better job handling the personal data of 1.5 billion users will end the kinds of abuse exposed by last week’s investigative journalism. But it may be a start.

Update (April 9, 2018): Since this was initially posted, Craigslist has eliminated its Personals section as a response to FOSTA-SESTA. Also, the FBI shut down Backpage and charged its founder Michael Lacey. Backpage has seen strong growth after Craigslist closed its Erotic Services section in 2010.

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Democracy, Data, and Dirty Tricks

It’s no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it’s all about emotion.

This is just one quote from an investigative report conducted by Channel 4 News in the UK. The person quoted above is an employee of Cambridge Analytica. You may have heard of the big data marketing company when their use of data harvested from 50 million Facebook users was revealed this week. The use of big data in political campaigns is not new, but it is being pushed to new heights by companies who appear to be unconstrained by established ethical norms. Here’s the entire Channel 4 video…

While opposition research is not new, there appear to be new efforts to push the limits of op research to include entrapment, bribery, and investigative reporting motivated by a political agenda. This is not just muck raking, but rather “muck making.”

Just to be clear, the use of Facebook’s data is not a data breach or hack. This is how big data works and everything you do online is being scooped up by someone who wants to use that information to advance their agenda. It might be selling you something like a new pair of socks, or maybe a health insurance policy, or maybe…a president.

Want to make sure that your data on Facebook won’t end up compromised? Electronic Frontier Foundation has you covered with this explainer on how to change your Facebook API settings.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from the video above…just to make it clear that the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’.”

More at Nieman Labs.

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Lux et Veritas

How’s your knowledge of Latin? Here’s a hint…the words in the title are the motto of Yale University (and at least three other universities). It could also be the motto for journalists everywhere. It means, Light and Truth. Journalism is a profession that shines it light into dark corners, exposing corruption and chicanery wherever it may be found. The metaphor can be “spotted” in the movie Spotlight about the Boston Globe newspaper’s expose of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church. And, of course, journalism is all about seeking the truth and reporting it.

In chapter one of his 1920 book, Liberty and the News, Walter Lippmann wrote about the centrality of truth to the journalistic ideal. He begins chapter one with an account of Benjamin Harris, editor of the first newspaper to be printed in the newly discovered land that would become the United States of America.

Volume 1, Number 1, of the first American newspaper was published in Boston on September 25, 1690. It was called Publick Occurrences. The second issue did not appear because the Governor and Council suppressed it. They found that Benjamin Harris, the editor, had printed “reflections of a very high nature.” Even today some of his reflections seem very high indeed. In his prospectus he had written:

That something may be done toward the Curing, or at least the Charming of that Spirit of Lying, which prevails amongst us, wherefore nothing shall be entered, but what we have reason to believe is true, repairing to the best fountains for our Information. And when there appears any material mistake in anything that is collected, it shall be corrected in the next. Moreover, the Publisher of these Occurrences is willing to engage, that whereas, there are many False Reports, maliciously made, and spread among us, if any well-minded person will be at the pains to trace any such false Report, so far as to find out and Convict the First Raiser of it, he will in this Paper (unless just Advice be given to the contrary) expose the Name of such Person, as A malicious Raiser of a false Report. It is  suppos’d that none will dislike this Proposal, but such as intend to be guilty of so villainous a Crime.

There you have it. At least as early as 1690 journalists were concerned about the veracity (accuracy/truth) of the information printed in their newspapers. It starts with the acknowledgement that “false reports” are everywhere, and only by eternal vigilance can we avoid falling for deception. The times and technology have changed, but the Spirit of Lying continues to haunt us.

 

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Media Violence: Cause or Effect?

The age-old question about media content and make-believe violence comes up every time we have a horrific incident of violence in real-life. Movies, video games, and now fully-immersive VR are the focus when well-meaning crusaders attempting to explain, or reduce, violence and mayhem in our schools and streets.

An editorial by Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and a professor in the Department of Communication, asks serious questions about modern mass media and its consequences. It is definitely worth a few minutes of your time before continuing with this blog post.

I just had a Facebook “discussion” with a colleague who is a Clinical Psychologist and his take is that the research connecting social learning theory with violent media exposure fails to draw a direct cause-and-effect line between the two. But I would like to suggest that this failure to provide significant research findings is more about the limitations of our research methodology and ethical restraints imposed on experiments with human subjects than it is about real effects. The fact that the military uses video games and VR to train soldiers is important, and it suggests that there is evidence that the newest technologies in video gaming and VR can make players more effective shooters/killers in real life.

Fully immersive VR with input control devices that mimic real weapons, and simulated virtual environments that can map the game onto real (not virtual) physical spaces (e.g. a 3-D simulation of a high school) could be a deadly combination.

If we’re serious about taking away “assault” weapons we might also consider taking away “assault” media. Or perhaps, as Bailenson suggests, video game companies should follow the lead of major retailers who are pulling certain products and increasing the age requirements for purchasing. Software manufacturers could avoid regulatory oversight by imposing their own restraints on what they make available on the open market. But I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath.

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