<nettime> New Trend? Surveillance Denial.

[carlo von lynX <lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>]

This 'Social Dilemma' documentary is triggering a new kind of
response… people looking up from their computer desks and
suddenly daring to judge how surveillance isn't actually a
threat at all, because… literally… "so what".

After all the Snowden revelations and Cambridge Analytica
scandal analysis making it completely clear facts of life
that surveillance is real and it enables microtargeted mass
manipulation resulting in bogus elections and referendums…
these self-proclaimed Internet experts come from behind their
desks and claim that all this surveillance isn't really
enabling any psychosocial manipulation because… uh… those
algorithms really aren't smart enough! Yet?! And that Shoshana
Zuboff is all wrong because she hasn't understood this aspect.
So hasn't Tristan Harris, although he's seen the Internet from
the side of the control room.

What? A control room? Well yes… Google and Facebook have a
place where all the information of what is happening on their
entire spider web comes together… where they take decisions
on which humbug to promote to which millions of gullible
minds. Nathaniel Borenstein suggested we should turn social
media around to make it do more good than harm, but there's
nothing to turn around if the very few people in the control
room are completely outside of our influence! We have no means
to make social media do good.

So the new trend is, computer nerds in denial that microtargeted 
mass manipulation is happening, just because they either aren't
in the target group or are failing to perceive that they are
being manipulated.

Yes, advertising sometimes gets the target group wrong. But
that doesn't change that millions of Brits were scaremongered
into voting for BREXIT due to false information such as the
claim that Turkey would swiftly join the EU and millions of
Turkish farmers were just waiting to claim jobs in the UK.
Especially rural areas that have only had advantages from EU
funding and hardly ever encountered any migrants coming from
the EU have been brainwashed into thinking paranoically
xenophobic.

So the film is stirring up some drama? Well, it fits! But these
critics think they have a point when comparing the way the film
functions to the strongly manipulative way Cambridge Analytica
has put presidents in place and convinced populations to leave
the European Union… well, it is completely silly and incompetent.
This is about accepting factual reality and comprehending its 
implications. With or without a dramatic soundtrack.

These guys called Mike Masnick or Antonio Garcia-Martinez that are
now getting their 15 minutes of fame and attention for doing the
politically incorrect thing of doubting the political relevance
of surveillance… they may be starting a new trend of fact denial
in that field. We have been working and waiting for anything useful
to happen to counter the problems that Edward told us about — instead
a new idea of complacency is being promoted. The idea that it is
okay to live out your Internet expert privileges while democracy
is eliminated — because *by definition* you aren't living in a
democracy when the political decisions are being taken by small
plutocrat minorities in their control rooms, and the general
population is induced to act/vote accordingly. Trump or Biden? Not
sure it's a decision that the general population is going to take.

These folks have been criticizing 'Social Dilemma' in a style much 
like we saw a decade ago doubting the existence of a global planetary
heating crisis. Much like when Al Gore's documentary came out, which
then turned out to be mostly accurate.

Instead they make completely superficial and faulty comparisons
with previous "moral panics" on technological progress about waltz,
chess and the telephone. Well, waltz and chess actually where no
technological progresses, whereas the telephone has indeed made it
possible that the NSA collects voice to text transcripts of at least
all intercontinental phone calls, according to facts revealed by
Edward, already since 2007. Now who is so naive to actually voice
a "so what" at this point? Are you really so uneducated about the
theory of democracy not to know that NEVER should a small minority
of people, whoever is in NSA's control room, have a complete overview
of what the human species is talking about at any given time? Just
because you think some advertising algorithms are sometimes dumb,
you think you can judge that this complete imbalance of power isn't
putting democracy systematically at risk? Seriously?

Doug Schuler points out that with TV you could at least turn it off,
whereas you can't turn off social media culture. Yes indeed, such
people are quickly cut out of social life… physical social life…
as most event coordination is taking place on Facebook these days.
You turn it off? You won't know that all your friends are going to
an exhibition just down your street!

Yosem Companys suggested we should have our own decentralized 
social media, which we sure should, but in a capitalist world any 
platform that isn't part of the problem is unable to compete against
the problem - only regulation forbidding the exploitation of basic 
human data rights could be of help - and no more permission to "opt
in" into a digital data suicide, not only to stop yourself from 
harming your future by becoming predictible, easy to manipulate and
easy to harvest, but to only stop you from selling out data of your
friends or family, that you have never been allowed to hand out to 
the monopolists, and yet you keep breaching other people's rights 
every day, if you are an average Facebook, Insta or Whatsapp user.

No, I'm not going to link to the convincing sounding demential posts
I've seen regarding 'Social Dilemma'… I'm just nervously pointing
out that this very stupid trend of being "politically incorrect" is
reaching out beyond what we already now from the trollocracy we are
living in to also question the fact how much the Internet is an
extreme threat to our society. And how once again facts are being
downplayed into "opinions", just like the fascists did in the 1930s.
Opinions that can be countered with opinions and alternative facts.


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