How will web decentralization shape revolution and terrorism?

16

October

2019

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Hello and welcome to my corner of the centralized internet where I get to tell you all about the newest, hippest technologies! Meanwhile, advertisers keep bombarding me with useless ads, companies keep tracking all my data to use for their own profit-seeking purposes or to resell for a quick buck, and China knows when I badmouth them (I’m sorry China, don’t do it, NOO-).

How do I escape this nightmare? Let me introduce you to the Decentralized Web

The regular internet was built with centralized points of control due to technological limitations as well as the need to keep some control over the internet. The purpose of the Decentralized Web is to reduce or eliminate such centralized points of control to have a system that can function when parts are missing, provides better privacy protection, provide more reliable access and make direct buying and selling possible without data collecting middlemen. It works thanks to a combination of peer-to-peer networks under a far faster internet than back in 1980 and block-chain inspired encryption that stores information in multiple anonymous locations (Decentralized web summit, 2019: https://www.decentralizedweb.net/about/).

This system is built to be resistant to meddling by central authority for better and for worse. It keeps your, and more importantly my, data safe. However, this system also keeps the data of terrorists, hate groups and revolutionaries safe.

  • Terrorists already use the dark web as a relatively safe way to communicate (Weimann, 2016: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26297596?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents), and having access to decentralized web technology makes organizing and recruitment that much easier. This is not a good thing…
  • Hate groups will become more able to close off their echo-chambers from outside voices of reason to more easily indoctrinate and radicalize their members. Be prepared for increased domestic terrorism folks…
  • Revolutions happen for various reasons on which anyone can disagree on whether the reasons are morally just or unjust, but it stands to reason that totalitarian regimes will not like the step to web decentralization as they lose control over their citizens, citizens which can now organize in a way they couldn’t before and start to challenge these regi- NO WAIT CHINA, I’M NOT TALKING ABOU-

So yeah, this article’s a bit of a bummer.

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28

September

2019

The results of Brexit or Trump happening were shocking but not surprising. However, a greater concern emerged: the accidental or deliberate propagation of misinformation via social media.

44% of Americans get their news from Facebook (Solon, 2016). Many millions of people saw and believed fake reports that “the pope had endorsed Trump; Democrats had paid and bussed anti-Trump protesters; Hillary Clinton was under criminal investigation for sexually assaulting a minor” (Smith, 2016). If our democracy is built on reliable information, what is real?

The good, the bad and the ugly admission fee

In the Arab Spring campaign, Facebook as well as Twitter were first politicized and used to inspire people as tool for democracy. With Brazil, Brexit, and US we saw the equilibrium shift to the other side. We assume that there is an admission fee to pay before we are allowed to the connected world (Thompson, 2019). How many times a day have you been asked to agree with the terms on a website and clicked accept to only access the data behind it?

The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal exposes Facebook’s rather porous privacy policies and the company’s casual attitude to oversight. By using the platform, Cambridge Analytica, a British data mining firm, was able to extract data of 270.000 people by conducting a survey. People accepted to share details about themselves –and unknowingly about their friends (Economist, 2018). This amounted to information from 50 million Facebook users in overall, which the company happily shared with their customers, including Trump (Economist, 2019).

Full-service propaganda machine and Nazi Germany

In essence, companies like Cambridge Analytica can use Facebook to “target voters who show an interest in the same issues or have similar profiles, packaging them into what it calls ‘lookalike audiences’.” (Economist, 2018). The practice used effectively shaped voting results in several countries such as Argentina, Kenya, Malaysia, and South Africa even before the US presidency in 2016 (Thompson, 2019).

The practice to address certain lookalike audiences with feelings rather than facts, playing up vision to create a fake emotional connection, is not new. Nazi Germany shows this. Yet, we have the internet-driven efficiency (Smith, 2016).

Clickbait

Like the headline of this article, revenue-driven platforms such as Google and Facebook are using news feeds that engage more people, essentially to expose them to more ads. Whether the article is reliable or not does not matter, the algorithm boosts sensational stories that reinforce prejudice in order to draw more clicks (Smith, 2016). As mentioned before, if we use this as our primary information source, how can we assure that we are able to make informed decisions?

To conclude, platforms cannot stand at the sidelines making profit and see how they are used as a stepping stone to the next political victory for the highest bidder. They should be held accountable. Now.

 

References:

Economist (2018) The Facebook scandal could change politics as well as the internet. Data privacy. Available at: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/03/22/the-facebook-scandal-could-change-politics-as-well-as-the-internet

Economist (2019) “The Great Hack” is a misinformed documentary about misinformation. The Facebook scandal. Available at: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/07/24/the-great-hack-is-a-misinformed-documentary-about-misinformation

Smith A. (2016) The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/pedlars-fake-news-corroding-democracy-social-networks

Solon O. (2016). Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories

Thompson A. (2019) The Great Hack terrified Sundance audiences, and then the documentary go even scarier. IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/the-great-hack-documentary-oscar-cambridge-analytica-1202162430/

Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

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