Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Digital Trust, article in
HBR:(https://hbr.org/2018/02/the-4-dimensions-of-digital-trust-charted-across-42-co
untries)

Trust-building is not only central to our digital future, it is also
complex — and it costs money and resources to guarantee trust.
Effectively building trust in a global digital marketplace requires
a strategic choice of knowing where to play. You can’t put
equivalent investments in every market. Our framework offers an
approach to figuring out where to prioritize and ensure profitable
growth.

Roger, Facebook has most definitely lost our trust in all of this
mess. Can it be restored with the fixes you have in mind?
  

    
Yesterday The Washington Post published an op-ed that I wrote about
how to fix Facebook.  The best way is to change the business model
away from advertising.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-fix-facebook-make-users-pay-for
-it/2018/02/20/a22d04d6-165f-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.27287
48e5038
  

    
Relative to fixing Facebook from the outside, my Washington Monthly
essay concludes with a series of policy prescriptions:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-
facebook-before-it-fixes-us/

The best way to fix FB is from the inside.  Beginning in October
2016, I spent three months privately trying to persuade Facebook’s
management that there were systemic flaws in the platform.  At that
time I had only a partial understanding — I did not grok the
perverse incentives of FB’s advertising business model until Tristan
Harris explained them in April 2016 — but the rest of my analysis
turned out to be right on.  A different group of people — or the
same people at a different time — might have taken the warning
seriously.  Sadly, they did not.
  

    
What us a “stack”? New term to me.
  

    
As used here, I think a stack is the computing hardware and software
infrastructure that makes possible a global-scale computing
enterprise.
  

    
A Stack is a "walled garden" or what we call a "silo"... that limits
your internet experience to only what the App or hardware seller
allows. So, if you buy a Kindle you are stuck in Amazon world. If
you buy an Apple product you are stuck in Apple world. ETC. 

Unless you jailbreak these devices or have some serious digital
chops, you do not experience all of the internet....so, for
instance, you cannot get the apps from Google Play on an Apple
device...nor do you actually own any products you buy from Amazon's
store - books, movies, etc. You merely have the right to view them
on the approved Amazon apps and devices.

The five 'Stacks' are Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and
Microsoft...these 5 companies control almost all of American's
experience on the Web....within all that, You Tube and Facebook,
account for almost 50% of all internet usage in this country.   

The problems Roger is addressing with regards to Facebook are
pandemic among all the Stacks...so this is a meta issue as well as
being specific to Facebook...

Trying to ungeek all this and put it into English....I first heard
the term Stacks from our chief curmudgeon, (bruces) Bruce Sterling
at a SXSW wrapup. Up until then these 5 companies were simply
referred to as walled gardens or silos because they were
inescapable. 

Hence, Android vs all the rest...Android devices give you access to
the entire Web and do not throttle your experience like the Stacks
do...

http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ 
  

    
The walls around those gardens are somewhat more porous than you
suggest.
  

    
To the question, "did Facebook know about the Russians?"

Facebook is highly automated, but not in all respects.  There are a
lot of humans in the sales group and as this post from Reddit (from
6 months ago) indicates, some of them knew ...


https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6zr5xg/purged_facebook_page_tied_to
_the_kremlin_spread/dmxkbr5/

Facebook's culture combines elements of hacker and libertarian
philosophy. They perceive that they have given the world a gift and
we should all be grateful.  They do not believe they are responsible
for the downstream consequences of their actions ... and point to
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a safe harbor from
liability for the actions of third parties.  

While I think Zuck was genuinely shocked on Nov 9, 2016 that anyone
would suggest FB might have influenced the outcome of the
presidential election, that would not have been the case by
July/August 2017 when Jonathan Albright published data indicating
that Russian messages had been shared hundreds of the millions of
times.  From that point on, Facebook has delayed, deflected
criticism, and dissembled.  I do not believe they have done anything
significant that would indicate that they are taking responsibility
or working to undo the damage their platform has enabled.  
  

    
To Rip van Winkle:

The key differences between FB (and Google) and prior generations of
ad supported media ...

* Personalization: FB and Google are surveillance companies who know
more about their users than the government does.  In FB's case, they
are focused on emotions, because emotions are the key to engagement,
sharing, and economic value.  The preferred emotions are the ones in
the lizard brain (e.g., fear, anger), the same emotions that led to
the insight about "if it bleeds, it leads".  Newspapers, TV, et al
provide plenty of blood and sizzle, but in a one-size-fits-all
broadcast model.  Facebook has 2.1 billion Truman Shows ... each
person lives in a bubble tuned to their emotions ... and FB pushes
emotional buttons as needed.  Once it identifies an issue that
provokes your emotions, it works to get you into groups of
like-minded people.  Such filter bubbles intensify pre-existing
beliefs, making them more rigid and extreme.  In many cases, FB
helps people get to a state where they are resistant to ideas that
conflict with the pre-existing ones, even if the new ideas are
demonstrably true.

* Smartphones: prior forms of media were delivered on platforms that
were generally usable only for limited periods.  Newspapers and
books because people would only read for a short time, TV was
clunky, PCs were clunky, etc.  Smartphones are on our person every
waking moment.  The question I ask is, "in the morning, do you pick
up your phone before or after you pee?"

When you combine personalization with smartphones, you have a
package that leads to a more dangerous addiction than TV created. 
In the 60s, we all saw the JFK funeral, the Beatles, the Moon
landing, Vietnam etc.  Broadcast TV created a shared set of facts
and brought us together.  The cost was conformity, but the benefit
to social cohesion was significant.  Facebook's business improves in
proportion to the level of polarization it can create.  The people
in the middle have little value, so FB looks for some angle to get
people scared or angry.

When FB was just on PCs, the harm it could do was limited. 
Smartphones really changed the game. 
  

    
re: Filter bubbles and brain hacking

Once FB figures out your emotional triggers, the algorithms look for
issues to provoke.  The goal is to get you into groups that bring
out your fear and anger.  If they find issues you care about
emotionally, they overweight that content in your feed, gradually
creating a filter bubble that confirms your pre-existing biases. 
When the filter bubble is set, it appears that most people agree
with you.  For many people the filter bubbles are building things
that demonstrably false.  How many?  Thanks to Fox News, far more
people on the right than the left, but my sense is 25% to 33% of the
overall population identifies with at least one issue that is
demonstrably false ... perhaps 7-8% on the left and 18-25% on the
right.  These people are susceptible to brain hacking, which is when
the platform or a bad actor exploits the filter bubble to implant a
false idea in a way that the recipient believes the idea is their
own.  The works like a card trick where the magician tells you to
"pick a card, any card".  What you may not realize is that five
moves previously the magician began setting you up so that you would
pick a specific card. 

Facebook does this when they say, "users pick their friends, their
groups, everything."  In reality, FB gets to pick from one million
or messages that would be suitable for each user at any moment in
time.  What they actually do is pick the 10 or 20 that maximize
their revenue.  You think you are picking the content, but you are
not.  
  

    
To Howard Rheingold ... 

I agree.

I wrote an op-ed yesterday for WaPo recommending that Facebook
change its business model to subscriptions.  That would align
incentives with users and publishers ... and could actually be a
better business. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-fix-facebook-make-users-pay-for
-it/2018/02/20/a22d04d6-165f-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.a192e
b82d01f

I am not holding my breath.  
  

    
to Gary Greenberg ...

I agree. 

The issue here is that FB's business model has terrible incentives. 
It is predatory ... and in some cases parasitic.
  

    
to Ted Newcomb and Virtual Sea Monkey ...

I think the Stack model is highly porous.  

Unfortunately, Facebook and especially Google privatized the
internet. Google's great insight was that because no one owned the
internet, there was little economic incentive to create great tools.
The open source community got us started, but did not address many
legitimate needs of businesses and users.  Google saw this and
started creating convenient, easy to use, free alternatives for the
top internet activities:

- search
- email
- photos
- maps
- videos
- productivity applications
- etc.

There is some evolutionary thing that causes humans to prefer
convenience, even when they know there will be downstream harm. 
Google exploited that to privatize much of the activity on the
internet, forcing content vendors onto its platform.  Facebook
privatized most of the rest.  Unfortunately, consumers are cool with
that.  
  

    
Irrelevant trivia ... I am loading the CDs of the December Dead & Co
tour into iTunes as I write these replies ...
  

    
(12/2 in Austin is the one for me!)
  

    
Ooh, ooh, make a playlist and share with us Roger, puhleez
  

    
<38> Yup, I agree. Please excuse my rant, this just pushes all my
buttons. I will try to be quiet for a while.

I jail broke my Kindle 7 in a matter of minutes...had Google Play
and downloaded every app my little heart desired on my mega sd
card....with the exception of a couple of things that Amazon has not
updated for, as it does not use standard Android software, I pretty
much have everything I would on a $600 Samsung...

Sideloaded all my movies and then put them back up on Amazon's
cloud...now they ARE mine...so there Amazon, razzzberries to you...I
paid the same amount at your store that I would have at Target, so
don't tell me I don't own it...

Similar with my Windows 10 PC...put Ubuntu on it immediately, got
developer privileges and insider tracking and helped code Azure with
Linux...die DOS, Windows 3.0 and all the rest of that Borg sandwich
no one understands and 8 year olds can hack...

You raise the more important point...whether or not you jailbreak
your toys or not...the Big 5 control way too much, know too much,
and ship most of it to NSA every midnight. And they answer to no
one. So much for privacy and Net neutrality...those days are long
gone....and, frankly, I don't much care...

As you make patently clear in your posts, FB is entirely
culpable...they knew, they know, they manipulate data for
profit...that is their model....Google knows so much it is scary,
and they don't even share their code any more....So, it's war, game
on, yada, yada....that would be the War Cry down under in the Dark
Web....But what's new...we've known that since the 60's...same as it
ever was...As Leonard sang, Everybody knows...Burning down the
House, same as it ever was...nothing new, nothing to see, move along
now...

All I would like is the ownership of MY data, with all my zero posts
accounted for in the Blockchain, Holochain, Tangle, Borg, or
whatever...and I'll ship it all myself...

I'm not jaded, I'm 70 years old and realistic...and, in spite of
everything, optimistic....These kids in Florida are only the tip of
the Alpha iceberg...I see it with my 8 and 12 year old grandchildren
and their friends as well....they seamlessly integrate this tech -
one foot in the world, and one foot in cyberspace, and their head
does not seem to have any problems with either/or/and both...so, I
will fan their flames, while marching on Washington :) 
  

    
And then there is this bit of cheeriness:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610253/the-ganfather-the-man-whos-given-mac
hines-the-gift-of-imagination/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_co
ntent=2018-02-22&utm_campaign=Technology+Review

"There is a darker side, however. A machine designed to create
realistic fakes is a perfect weapon for purveyors of fake news who
want to influence everything from stock prices to elections. AI
tools are already being used to put pictures of other people’s faces
on the bodies of porn stars and put words in the mouths of
politicians. GANs didn’t create this problem, but they’ll make it
worse.

Hany Farid, who studies digital forensics at Dartmouth College, is
working on better ways to spot fake videos, such as detecting slight
changes in the color of faces caused by inhaling and exhaling that
GANs find hard to mimic precisely. But he warns that GANs will adapt
in turn. “We’re fundamentally in a weak position,” says Farid."
  

    
I've been mulling over Roger's basic premise and I wonder how he
would evaluate this distillation of it:  What Facebook does (and
perhaps other stacks as well?) is sort users into like-minded
tribes. I would then add the argument that tribalism is antithetical
not only to an open pluralistic society but, in our world, to human
survival. This has me thinking once again that I need to stop voting
for Facebook with my time and content. I have even announced my
departure there, at least once, only to return. It's addictive, that
emotional bait-and-reinforce model. I wonder if Roger, or other
participants, have any suggestions on where else one might go -- in
addition, of course, to the Well. I've had my eye on Diaspora for
years.
  

    
Irrelevant trivia ... I am loading the CDs of the December Dead & Co
tour into iTunes as I write these replies ...
  

    
(you said that already!)
  

    
The more I think about this the more I wonder if the bubble/tribal
phenomenon isn't inherent to online communities of all kinds --
raising the question whether the pay model would make all that much
difference. The Well is a paid subscription system, with none of
FB's incentives and yet there's plenty of evidence of bubblification
(!) in our history. The fact is that like-minded people tend to
cluster together when it's easy to do, and in cyberspace it's real
easy.
  

    
To Andrew Trott ...

I think your tribe metaphor is valid, but with a twist.  They use
their data set to identify potential tribe members, invite them into
various groups, then use filter bubbles to deepen attachment (and
polarization).  In that sense, the process is more like a cult than
a tribe.  
  

    
One aspect of this problem that terrifies me is the decline of facts
relative to opinions: anything I believe is a fact; anything that
you believe (which differs from my "fact") is an opinion.  

Democracy depends on having some shared beliefs. Shared beliefs
enable people to disagree without being guilty of bad faith.
Compromise is possible for the same reason. Disagreement and
compromise are building blocks of democracy.  

The polarization in society is so extreme today that even people who
share the same values sometimes cannot compromise.  This happened
between Sanders and Clinton voters during the 2016 primary. The
Russians used Facebook to magnify the disagreements between Sanders
and Clinton supporters, effectively making the gap unbridgeable for
many Sanders voters.  

Compromise is difficult, especially on issues of substance and
values, but I don't know how democracies can work without them.
Another way to think about this: if we want to change the balance of
power in Washington, we are going to have to accept a coalition that
includes people who disagree with us on some issues.  I call this
the "Joe Manchin Problem."  Manchin votes like a Republican on a few
issues, but it turns out he has been a loyal Dem on a wide range of
issues that really matter, such as ACA.  I used to think he was a
bum, but I would rather have a Senate vote in WV in favor of good
health care than a Republican who votes wrong on everything.  
  

    
More important than shared facts is a shared understanding about how
we decide what's a fact and what's not. I read the phrase "tribal
epistemology" in a Facebook post a couple of months ago and adopted
it as a better summary of this problem than I'd been using.