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1 # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE
2 # Copyright (C) YEAR Cory Doctorow
3 # This file is distributed under the same license as the How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism package.
4 # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
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8 "Project-Id-Version: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism n/a\n"
9 "POT-Creation-Date: 2021-01-09 23:13+0100\n"
10 "PO-Revision-Date: 2020-12-09 15:29+0000\n"
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26 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><title>
27 msgid "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism"
28 msgstr "Jak zniszczyć kapitalizm oparty na inwigilacyjnych systemach nadzoru"
29
30 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><authorgroup><author><firstname>
31 msgid "Cory"
32 msgstr "Cory"
33
34 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><authorgroup><author><surname>
35 msgid "Doctorow"
36 msgstr "Doctorow"
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40 msgid "<city>Oslo</city>"
41 msgstr "<city>Oslo</city>"
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45 "<publisher> <publishername>Petter Reinholdtsen</publishername> <placeholder "
46 "type=\"address\" id=\"0\"/> </publisher> <copyright> <year>2020</year> "
47 "<holder>Cory Doctorow</holder> </copyright> <copyright> <year>2020</year> "
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49 msgstr ""
50 "<publisher> <publishername>Petter Reinholdtsen</publishername> <placeholder "
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52 "<holder>Cory Doctorow</holder> </copyright> <copyright> <year>2020</year> "
53 "<holder>Petter Reinholdtsen</holder> </copyright>"
54
55 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
56 msgid "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow."
57 msgstr ""
58 "Jak zniszczyć kapitalizm oparty na inwigilacyjnych systemach nadzoru Autor: "
59 "Cory Doctorow."
60
61 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
62 msgid "Published by Petter Reinholdtsen."
63 msgstr "Wydawca: Petter Reinholdtsen."
64
65 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
66 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (hard cover)"
67 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (oprawa twarda)"
68
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70 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (paperback)"
71 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (oprawa miękka)"
72
73 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
74 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (ePub)"
75 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (ePub)"
76
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79 "This book is available for purchase from <ulink url=\"https://www.lulu.com/"
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81 msgstr ""
82 "Ta książka jest dostępna w sprzedaży na <ulink url=\"https://www.lulu.com/\"/"
83 ">."
84
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87 "If you find typos, error or have other corrections to the translated text, "
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89 "personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/nb_NO/\"/>."
90 msgstr ""
91 "Jeśli znajdziesz literówkę, błąd lub masz inne uwagi na temat poprawienia "
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93 "projects/rms-personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/nb_NO/"
94 "\"/>."
95
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110 msgstr "Creative Commons, Pewne prawa zastrzeżone"
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117 msgid ""
118 "This book is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This license permits "
119 "any use of this work, so long as attribution is given and no derivatived "
120 "material is distributed. For more information about the license visit "
121 "<ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
122 msgstr ""
123 "Ta książka jest wydana na licencji Creative Commons. Licencja ta pozwala na "
124 "dowolny użytek tej pracy tak długo, jak długo podane jest jej autorstwo i "
125 "nie jest rozpowszechniany żaden materiał pochodny. Więcej informacji na "
126 "temat tej licencji znajdziesz na <ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/"
127 "licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
128
129 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><abstract><para>
130 msgid ""
131 "The Science Fiction author, journalist and technology activist Cory Doctorow "
132 "have a look at what really is behind \"Surveillance Capitalism\" and what "
133 "should be done to stop it."
134 msgstr ""
135
136 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
137 msgid "The net of a thousand lies"
138 msgstr "Sieć tysięcy kłamstw"
139
140 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
141 msgid ""
142 "The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st "
143 "century is just how widespread the evidence against them is. You can "
144 "understand how, centuries ago, people who’d never gained a high-enough "
145 "vantage point from which to see the Earth’s curvature might come to the "
146 "commonsense belief that the flat-seeming Earth was, indeed, flat."
147 msgstr ""
148 "Najbardziej zaskakującą kwestią w dziedzinie powtórnych narodzin `płaskich` "
149 "Ziemian w XXI wieku jest to, jak szeroko rozpowszechnione są przeciwko nim "
150 "dowody. Można teraz zrozumieć, jak przed wiekami ludzie, którzy nigdy nie "
151 "mieli okazji zobaczyć Ziemi z orbity ziemskiej, mogli dojść do przekonania, "
152 "opartego na zdrowym rozsądku, że Ziemia - wyglądająca na płaską - jest "
153 "faktycznie, płaska."
154
155 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
156 msgid ""
157 "But today, when elementary schools routinely dangle GoPro cameras from "
158 "balloons and loft them high enough to photograph the Earth’s curve — to say "
159 "nothing of the unexceptional sight of the curved Earth from an airplane "
160 "window — it takes a heroic effort to maintain the belief that the world is "
161 "flat."
162 msgstr ""
163 "Lecz dzisiaj, gdy szkoły podstawowe rutynowo podczepiają do balonów kamery "
164 "GoPro i umieszczają je na tyle wysoko, aby sfotografować krzywą Ziemi — nie "
165 "mówiąc już o niezrównanie wyjątkowym widoku zakrzywionej Ziemi z okna "
166 "samolotu — trzeba naprawdę heroicznego wysiłku, aby uwierzyć, że Ziemia jest "
167 "płaska."
168
169 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
170 msgid ""
171 "Likewise for white nationalism and eugenics: In an age where you can become "
172 "a computational genomics datapoint by swabbing your cheek and mailing it to "
173 "a gene-sequencing company along with a modest sum of money, <quote>race "
174 "science</quote> has never been easier to refute."
175 msgstr ""
176 "Podobnie jest z eugeniką i białym nacjonalizmem: w epoce, w której można "
177 "stać się obliczeniowym punktem danych genomicznych, poprzez pobranie wymazu "
178 "z policzka, i przesłanie go — za pomocą poczty elektronicznej — do firmy "
179 "sekwencjonujoącej geny, wraz ze skromną sumą pieniędzy, nigdy nie było "
180 "łatwiej zaprzeczyć twierdzeniom wysuwanym podczas <quote>naukowego wyścigu "
181 "po sukces</quote>."
182
183 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
184 msgid ""
185 "We are living through a golden age of both readily available facts and "
186 "denial of those facts. Terrible ideas that have lingered on the fringes for "
187 "decades or even centuries have gone mainstream seemingly overnight."
188 msgstr ""
189 "Żyjemy w złotej epoce, zarówno łatwo dostępnych faktów, jak i zaprzeczenia "
190 "tym faktom. Okropne idee, które pozostawały na marginesie przez "
191 "dziesięciolecia, a nawet stulecia, z dnia na dzień weszły do głównego nurtu."
192
193 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
194 msgid ""
195 "When an obscure idea gains currency, there are only two things that can "
196 "explain its ascendance: Either the person expressing that idea has gotten a "
197 "lot better at stating their case, or the proposition has become harder to "
198 "deny in the face of mounting evidence. In other words, if we want people to "
199 "take climate change seriously, we can get a bunch of Greta Thunbergs to make "
200 "eloquent, passionate arguments from podiums, winning our hearts and minds, "
201 "or we can wait for flood, fire, broiling sun, and pandemics to make the case "
202 "for us. In practice, we’ll probably have to do some of both: The more we’re "
203 "boiling and burning and drowning and wasting away, the easier it will be for "
204 "the Greta Thunbergs of the world to convince us."
205 msgstr ""
206 "Kiedy niejasny pomysł zyskuje na popularności, istnieją tylko dwie rzeczy, "
207 "które mogą wyjaśnić jego przewagę: albo osoba wyrażająca ten pomysł znacznie "
208 "lepiej radzi sobie z przedstawieniem swojej racji, albo twierdzenie staje "
209 "się trudniejsze do zaprzeczenia w obliczu rosnących dowodów. Innymi słowy, "
210 "jeśli chcemy, aby ludzie poważnie podchodzili do zmian klimatycznych, możemy "
211 "skłonić grupę Grety Thunberg do wyrażenia wymownych, namiętnych argumentów w "
212 "sposób publiczny, przez co zdobędzie ona nasze serca i umysły, lub możemy "
213 "poczekać na powódź, ogień, palące słońce i pandemie, aby przemówiła za nami. "
214 "W praktyce prawdopodobnie będziemy musieli zrobić jedno i drugie: im więcej "
215 "będziemy gotować, palić, topić i marnować, tym łatwiej będzie Grecie "
216 "Thunberg nas przekonać."
217
218 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
219 msgid ""
220 "The arguments for ridiculous beliefs in odious conspiracies like anti-"
221 "vaccination, climate denial, a flat Earth, and eugenics are no better than "
222 "they were a generation ago. Indeed, they’re worse because they are being "
223 "pitched to people who have at least a background awareness of the refuting "
224 "facts."
225 msgstr ""
226 "Argumenty za absurdalnymi wierzeniami w oparciu o teorie spiskowe, takie jak "
227 "teoria antyszczepionkowa, teoria negująca zmiany klimatu, teoria o istnieniu "
228 "płaskiej Ziemi i teoria eugeniczna, wcale nie są lepsze niż w pokoleniu "
229 "wcześniejszym. W rzeczywistości, są gorsze, ponieważ są przedstawiane "
230 "ludziom, którzy mają przynajmniej podstawową świadomość faktów obalających "
231 "te teorie."
232
233 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
234 msgid ""
235 "Anti-vax has been around since the first vaccines, but the early anti-"
236 "vaxxers were pitching people who were less equipped to understand even the "
237 "most basic ideas from microbiology, and moreover, those people had not "
238 "witnessed the extermination of mass-murdering diseases like polio, smallpox, "
239 "and measles. Today’s anti-vaxxers are no more eloquent than their forebears, "
240 "and they have a much harder job."
241 msgstr ""
242 "Antyszczepionkowcy pojawiali się już od czasu wynalezienia pierwszych "
243 "szczepionek, lecz pierwsi z nich byli ludźmi słabo przygotowanymi do "
244 "zrozumienia nawet najbardziej podstawowych kwestii mikrobiologii, a – "
245 "ponadto - ludzie ci nie byli świadkami masowej eksterminacji, spowodowanej "
246 "takimi morderczymi chorobami, jak polio, ospa czy odra. Dzisiejsi "
247 "przeciwnicy szczepień nie są bardziej elokwentni niż ich przodkowie, a mają "
248 "znacznie cięższą pracę."
249
250 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
251 msgid ""
252 "So can these far-fetched conspiracy theorists really be succeeding on the "
253 "basis of superior arguments?"
254 msgstr ""
255 "A więc, czy ci wyrafinowani zwolennicy teorii spiskowych mogą, tak naprawdę, "
256 "odnieść sukces w oparciu o lepsze argumenty?"
257
258 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
259 msgid ""
260 "Some people think so. Today, there is a widespread belief that machine "
261 "learning and commercial surveillance can turn even the most fumble-tongued "
262 "conspiracy theorist into a svengali who can warp your perceptions and win "
263 "your belief by locating vulnerable people and then pitching them with A.I.-"
264 "refined arguments that bypass their rational faculties and turn everyday "
265 "people into flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or even Nazis. When the RAND "
266 "Corporation <ulink url=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/"
267 "research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf\">blames Facebook for "
268 "<quote>radicalization</quote></ulink> and when Facebook’s role in spreading "
269 "coronavirus misinformation is <ulink url=\"https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/"
270 "en/facebook_threat_health/\">blamed on its algorithm</ulink>, the implicit "
271 "message is that machine learning and surveillance are causing the changes in "
272 "our consensus about what’s true."
273 msgstr ""
274 "Niektórzy ludzie myślą, że tak. Obecnie panuje powszechne przekonanie, że "
275 "uczenie maszynowe i komercyjne systemy inwigilacji mogą zmienić nawet "
276 "najbardziej nieudolnego teoretyka spiskowego w `swengali`, osobę, która może "
277 "wypaczyć czyjeś spostrzeżenia i zdobyć jego /jej zaufanie, lokalizując osoby "
278 "wrażliwe, a następnie przedstawiając im wyrafinowane argumenty Sztucznej "
279 "Inteligencji, omijające racjonalne umiejętności ludzi i zmieniające ich w "
280 "`płaskich` Ziemian, przeciwników szczepień, a nawet nazistów. Gdy the RAND "
281 "Corporation <ulink url=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/"
282 "research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf\">oskarża Facebook'a za "
283 "<quote>radykalizację</quote></ulink>, kiedy Facebook'a oskarża się o "
284 "rozpowszechnianie dezinformacji na temat koronawirusa, <ulink url = "
285 "\"https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/facebook_threat_health/\">a jest to "
286 "spowodowane jego algorytmem</ulink>, to domyślnym przesłaniem jest fakt, że "
287 "uczenie maszynowe i systemy inwigilacyjnego nadzoru powodują zmiany w naszym "
288 "konsensusie wobec tego, co jest prawdą."
289
290 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
291 msgid ""
292 "After all, in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories "
293 "like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, "
294 "<emphasis>something</emphasis> must be afoot."
295 msgstr ""
296 "W końcu, w świecie, w którym rozległe i niespójne teorie spiskowe, takie jak "
297 "Pizzagate i jej nastepczyni, QAnon, mają szeroko rozpowszechnionych "
298 "następców, <emphasis>coś</emphasis>, musi trwać nadal."
299
300 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
301 msgid ""
302 "But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material "
303 "circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for "
304 "these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through "
305 "<emphasis>real conspiracies</emphasis> all around us — conspiracies among "
306 "wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts "
307 "and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as "
308 "<quote>corruption</quote>) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy "
309 "theories?"
310 msgstr ""
311 "Lecz co zrobić, jeśli jest inne wytłumaczenie? Jeśli są to warunki "
312 "materialne, a nie argumenty, stanowiące różnicę dla tych wygadanych "
313 "zwolenników konspiracji? A co, jeśli trauma spowodowana życiem w "
314 "<emphasis>rzeczywistych konspiracjach</emphasis> wszystkiego wokół nas — "
315 "konspiracjach ludzi bogatych, ich lobbystów i prawników, ukrywających "
316 "niewygodne fakty i dowody wykróczeń (te konspiracje są powszechnie znane "
317 "jako <quote>korupcja</quote> — tworzy ludzi podatnych na teorie "
318 "konspiracyjne?"
319
320 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
321 msgid ""
322 "If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology — "
323 "that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive "
324 "misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean our "
325 "computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work of "
326 "locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of ever-more-"
327 "extreme ideas and communities."
328 msgstr ""
329 "Jeśli to trauma, materialne uwarunkowania a nie „zaraza” ideologiczna "
330 "stanowią dziś różnicę i umożliwiają tworzenienie odpychających dezinformacji "
331 "w obliczu łatwo obserwowalnych faktów, nie oznacza to jeszcze, że nasze "
332 "sieci komputerowe są bez winy. Nadal wykonują one ciężką pracę, polegającą "
333 "na lokalizowaniu osób bezbronnych i prowadzeniu ich przez serię coraz "
334 "bardziej ekstremalnych pomysłów i społeczności."
335
336 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
337 msgid ""
338 "Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and poses "
339 "real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics <ulink url=\"https://"
340 "www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html\">kicked off by vaccine denial</"
341 "ulink> to genocides <ulink url=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/"
342 "technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html\">kicked off by racist "
343 "conspiracies</ulink> to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate "
344 "inaction. Our world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to "
345 "figure out how to help people see the truth of the world through the "
346 "conspiracies they’ve been confused by."
347 msgstr ""
348 "Wiara w konspirację to szalejący pożar, który wyrządził już rzeczywiste "
349 "szkody i stał się realnym zagrożeniem dla naszej planety i jej gatunków w "
350 "wyniku epidemii <ulink url=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html"
351 "\">rozpoczętej odmową szczepień</ulink> poprzez ludobójstwa <ulink url="
352 "\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide."
353 "html\">wywołane przez rasistowskich konspiratorów</ulink>. Prowadzi to do "
354 "planetarnego stapiającego wszystko tygla, spowodowanego bezczynnością, "
355 "zainspirowaną zaprzeczeniem problemu klimatycznego. Nasz świat płonie, więc "
356 "musimy ugasić pożary, aby dowiedzieć się, jak pomóc ludziom w zobaczeniu "
357 "prawdy o świecie poprzez spiski, które ich zmyliły."
358
359 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
360 msgid ""
361 "But firefighting is reactive. We need fire <emphasis>prevention</emphasis>. "
362 "We need to strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people "
363 "vulnerable to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to "
364 "play."
365 msgstr ""
366 "Ale gaszenie pożarów jest ma reaktywny charakter. Musimy "
367 "także<emphasis>zapobiegać</emphasis> pożarom. Musimy uderzyć w traumatyczne "
368 "warunki materialne, które czynią ludzi podatnymi na zarażenie konspiracją. "
369 "Tutaj również technologia ma do odegrania ważną rolę."
370
371 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
372 msgid ""
373 "There’s no shortage of proposals to address this. From the EU’s <ulink url="
374 "\"https://edri.org/tag/terreg/\">Terrorist Content Regulation</ulink>, which "
375 "requires platforms to police and remove <quote>extremist</quote> content, to "
376 "the U.S. proposals to <ulink url=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/"
377 "earn-it-act-violates-constitution\">force tech companies to spy on their "
378 "users</ulink> and hold them liable <ulink url=\"https://www.natlawreview.com/"
379 "article/repeal-cda-section-230\">for their users’ bad speech</ulink>, "
380 "there’s a lot of energy to force tech companies to solve the problems they "
381 "created."
382 msgstr ""
383
384 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
385 msgid ""
386 "There’s a critical piece missing from the debate, though. All these "
387 "solutions assume that tech companies are a fixture, that their dominance "
388 "over the internet is a permanent fact. Proposals to replace Big Tech with a "
389 "more diffused, pluralistic internet are nowhere to be found. Worse: The "
390 "<quote>solutions</quote> on the table today <emphasis>require</emphasis> Big "
391 "Tech to stay big because only the very largest companies can afford to "
392 "implement the systems these laws demand."
393 msgstr ""
394
395 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
396 msgid ""
397 "Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re going to "
398 "get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re trying to "
399 "figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that dominate our "
400 "internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by unshackling it from Big "
401 "Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we have to choose."
402 msgstr ""
403
404 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
405 msgid ""
406 "I want us to choose wisely. Taming Big Tech is integral to fixing the "
407 "Internet, and for that, we need digital rights activism."
408 msgstr ""
409
410 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
411 msgid "Digital rights activism, a quarter-century on"
412 msgstr "Aktywizm praw cyfrowych, krótka historia 25 lat działalności"
413
414 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
415 msgid ""
416 "Digital rights activism is more than 30 years old now. The Electronic "
417 "Frontier Foundation turned 30 this year; the Free Software Foundation "
418 "launched in 1985. For most of the history of the movement, the most "
419 "prominent criticism leveled against it was that it was irrelevant: The real "
420 "activist causes were real-world causes (think of the skepticism when <ulink "
421 "url=\"https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/finland-legal-right-to-"
422 "broadband-for-all-citizens/#:~:text=Global%20Legal%20Monitor,-Home%20%7C"
423 "%20Search%20%7C%20Browse&amp;text=(July%206%2C%202010)%20On,connection"
424 "%20100%20MBPS%20by%202015.\">Finland declared broadband a human right in "
425 "2010</ulink>), and real-world activism was shoe-leather activism (think of "
426 "Malcolm Gladwell’s <ulink url=\"https://www.newyorker.com/"
427 "magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell\">contempt for "
428 "<quote>clicktivism</quote></ulink>). But as tech has grown more central to "
429 "our daily lives, these accusations of irrelevance have given way first to "
430 "accusations of insincerity (<quote>You only care about tech because you’re "
431 "<ulink url=\"https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/06/04/report-engine-eff-shills-"
432 "google-patent-reform/id=98007/\">shilling for tech companies</ulink></"
433 "quote>) to accusations of negligence (<quote>Why didn’t you foresee that "
434 "tech could be such a destructive force?</quote>). But digital rights "
435 "activism is right where it’s always been: looking out for the humans in a "
436 "world where tech is inexorably taking over."
437 msgstr ""
438
439 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
440 msgid ""
441 "The latest version of this critique comes in the form of <quote>surveillance "
442 "capitalism,</quote> a term coined by business professor Shoshana Zuboff in "
443 "her long and influential 2019 book, <emphasis>The Age of Surveillance "
444 "Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power</"
445 "emphasis>. Zuboff argues that <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> is a "
446 "unique creature of the tech industry and that it is unlike any other abusive "
447 "commercial practice in history, one that is <quote>constituted by unexpected "
448 "and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control "
449 "that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new "
450 "markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism "
451 "challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long "
452 "evolution of market capitalism.</quote> It is a new and deadly form of "
453 "capitalism, a <quote>rogue capitalism,</quote> and our lack of understanding "
454 "of its unique capabilities and dangers represents an existential, species-"
455 "wide threat. She’s right that capitalism today threatens our species, and "
456 "she’s right that tech poses unique challenges to our species and "
457 "civilization, but she’s really wrong about how tech is different and why it "
458 "threatens our species."
459 msgstr ""
460
461 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
462 msgid ""
463 "What’s more, I think that her incorrect diagnosis will lead us down a path "
464 "that ends up making Big Tech stronger, not weaker. We need to take down Big "
465 "Tech, and to do that, we need to start by correctly identifying the problem."
466 msgstr ""
467
468 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
469 msgid "Tech exceptionalism, then and now"
470 msgstr "Wyjątkowość Technologii, dawniej i obecnie"
471
472 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
473 msgid ""
474 "Early critics of the digital rights movement — perhaps best represented by "
475 "campaigning organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free "
476 "Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and others that focused on preserving "
477 "and enhancing basic human rights in the digital realm — damned activists for "
478 "practicing <quote>tech exceptionalism.</quote> Around the turn of the "
479 "millennium, serious people ridiculed any claim that tech policy mattered in "
480 "the <quote>real world.</quote> Claims that tech rules had implications for "
481 "speech, association, privacy, search and seizure, and fundamental rights and "
482 "equities were treated as ridiculous, an elevation of the concerns of sad "
483 "nerds arguing about <emphasis>Star Trek</emphasis> on bulletin board systems "
484 "above the struggles of the Freedom Riders, Nelson Mandela, or the Warsaw "
485 "ghetto uprising."
486 msgstr ""
487
488 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
489 msgid ""
490 "In the decades since, accusations of <quote>tech exceptionalism</quote> have "
491 "only sharpened as tech’s role in everyday life has expanded: Now that tech "
492 "has infiltrated every corner of our life and our online lives have been "
493 "monopolized by a handful of giants, defenders of digital freedoms are "
494 "accused of carrying water for Big Tech, providing cover for its self-"
495 "interested negligence (or worse, nefarious plots)."
496 msgstr ""
497
498 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
499 msgid ""
500 "From my perspective, the digital rights movement has remained stationary "
501 "while the rest of the world has moved. From the earliest days, the "
502 "movement’s concern was users and the toolsmiths who provided the code they "
503 "needed to realize their fundamental rights. Digital rights activists only "
504 "cared about companies to the extent that companies were acting to uphold "
505 "users’ rights (or, just as often, when companies were acting so foolishly "
506 "that they threatened to bring down new rules that would also make it harder "
507 "for good actors to help users)."
508 msgstr ""
509
510 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
511 msgid ""
512 "The <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> critique recasts the digital "
513 "rights movement in a new light again: not as alarmists who overestimate the "
514 "importance of their shiny toys nor as shills for big tech but as serene deck-"
515 "chair rearrangers whose long-standing activism is a liability because it "
516 "makes them incapable of perceiving novel threats as they continue to fight "
517 "the last century’s tech battles."
518 msgstr ""
519
520 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
521 msgid "But tech exceptionalism is a sin no matter who practices it."
522 msgstr ""
523
524 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
525 msgid "Don’t believe the hype"
526 msgstr "Nie wierz 'szumom' medialnym"
527
528 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
529 msgid ""
530 "You’ve probably heard that <quote>if you’re not paying for the product, "
531 "you’re the product.</quote> As we’ll see below, that’s true, if incomplete. "
532 "But what is <emphasis>absolutely</emphasis> true is that ad-driven Big "
533 "Tech’s customers are advertisers, and what companies like Google and "
534 "Facebook sell is their ability to convince <emphasis>you</emphasis> to buy "
535 "stuff. Big Tech’s product is persuasion. The services — social media, search "
536 "engines, maps, messaging, and more — are delivery systems for persuasion."
537 msgstr ""
538
539 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
540 msgid ""
541 "The fear of surveillance capitalism starts from the (correct) presumption "
542 "that everything Big Tech says about itself is probably a lie. But the "
543 "surveillance capitalism critique makes an exception for the claims Big Tech "
544 "makes in its sales literature — the breathless hype in the pitches to "
545 "potential advertisers online and in ad-tech seminars about the efficacy of "
546 "its products: It assumes that Big Tech is as good at influencing us as they "
547 "claim they are when they’re selling influencing products to credulous "
548 "customers. That’s a mistake because sales literature is not a reliable "
549 "indicator of a product’s efficacy."
550 msgstr ""
551
552 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
553 msgid ""
554 "Surveillance capitalism assumes that because advertisers buy a lot of what "
555 "Big Tech is selling, Big Tech must be selling something real. But Big Tech’s "
556 "massive sales could just as easily be the result of a popular delusion or "
557 "something even more pernicious: monopolistic control over our communications "
558 "and commerce."
559 msgstr ""
560
561 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
562 msgid ""
563 "Being watched changes your behavior, and not for the better. It creates "
564 "risks for our social progress. Zuboff’s book features beautifully wrought "
565 "explanations of these phenomena. But Zuboff also claims that surveillance "
566 "literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal data is mixed "
567 "with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion so devastating that "
568 "we are helpless before it. That is, Facebook uses an algorithm to analyze "
569 "the data it nonconsensually extracts from your daily life and uses it to "
570 "customize your feed in ways that get you to buy stuff. It is a mind-control "
571 "ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded by mad scientists whose "
572 "supercomputers guarantee them perpetual and total world domination."
573 msgstr ""
574
575 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
576 msgid "What is persuasion?"
577 msgstr "Co to jest przekonywanie?"
578
579 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
580 msgid ""
581 "To understand why you shouldn’t worry about mind-control rays — but why you "
582 "<emphasis>should</emphasis> worry about surveillance <emphasis>and</"
583 "emphasis> Big Tech — we must start by unpacking what we mean by "
584 "<quote>persuasion.</quote>"
585 msgstr ""
586
587 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
588 msgid ""
589 "Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists promise their customers "
590 "(the advertisers) that if they use machine-learning tools trained on "
591 "unimaginably large data sets of nonconsensually harvested personal "
592 "information, they will be able to uncover ways to bypass the rational "
593 "faculties of the public and direct their behavior, creating a stream of "
594 "purchases, votes, and other desired outcomes."
595 msgstr ""
596
597 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
598 msgid ""
599 "The impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
600 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
601 msgstr ""
602
603 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
604 msgid ""
605 "But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the predictions "
606 "that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are much less "
607 "impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational faculties, "
608 "surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one or more of three "
609 "things:"
610 msgstr ""
611
612 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
613 msgid "1. Segmenting"
614 msgstr "1. Segmentacja"
615
616 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
617 msgid ""
618 "If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to people "
619 "in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity ward just "
620 "had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the market for "
621 "diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of being in the "
622 "market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly correlated with "
623 "having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards (and even pitchmen "
624 "for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with baskets full of freebies)."
625 msgstr ""
626
627 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
628 msgid ""
629 "Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors can go "
630 "way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, too, with "
631 "things like location-based mobile ads). They can target you based on "
632 "whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, or a host of "
633 "other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious keywords to advertise "
634 "against. They can target you based on the articles you’ve recently read. "
635 "They can target you based on what you’ve recently purchased. They can target "
636 "you based on whether you receive emails or private messages about these "
637 "subjects — or even if you speak aloud about them (though Facebook and the "
638 "like convincingly claim that’s not happening — yet)."
639 msgstr ""
640
641 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
642 msgid "This is seriously creepy."
643 msgstr ""
644
645 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
646 msgid "But it’s not mind control."
647 msgstr ""
648
649 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
650 msgid "It doesn’t deprive you of your free will. It doesn’t trick you."
651 msgstr ""
652
653 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
654 msgid ""
655 "Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics. Surveillance "
656 "capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate people "
657 "who might be receptive to their pitch. Candidates campaigning on finance "
658 "industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates campaigning "
659 "on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have always targeted "
660 "their message whether their intentions were honorable or not: Union "
661 "organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white supremacists hand out "
662 "fliers at John Birch Society meetings."
663 msgstr ""
664
665 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
666 msgid ""
667 "But this is an inexact and thus wasteful practice. The union organizer can’t "
668 "know which worker to approach on the way out of the factory gates and may "
669 "waste their time on a covert John Birch Society member; the white "
670 "supremacist doesn’t know which of the Birchers are so delusional that making "
671 "it to a meeting is as much as they can manage and which ones might be "
672 "convinced to cross the country to carry a tiki torch through the streets of "
673 "Charlottesville, Virginia."
674 msgstr ""
675
676 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
677 msgid ""
678 "Because targeting improves the yields on political pitches, it can "
679 "accelerate the pace of political upheaval by making it possible for everyone "
680 "who has secretly wished for the toppling of an autocrat — or just an 11-term "
681 "incumbent politician — to find everyone else who feels the same way at very "
682 "low cost. This has been critical to the rapid crystallization of recent "
683 "political movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as "
684 "well as less savory players like the far-right white nationalist movements "
685 "that marched in Charlottesville."
686 msgstr ""
687
688 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
689 msgid ""
690 "It’s important to differentiate this kind of political organizing from "
691 "influence campaigns; finding people who secretly agree with you isn’t the "
692 "same as convincing people to agree with you. The rise of phenomena like "
693 "nonbinary or otherwise nonconforming gender identities is often "
694 "characterized by reactionaries as the result of online brainwashing "
695 "campaigns that convince impressionable people that they have been secretly "
696 "queer all along."
697 msgstr ""
698
699 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
700 msgid ""
701 "But the personal accounts of those who have come out tell a different story "
702 "where people who long harbored a secret about their gender were emboldened "
703 "by others coming forward and where people who knew that they were different "
704 "but lacked a vocabulary for discussing that difference learned the right "
705 "words from these low-cost means of finding people and learning about their "
706 "ideas."
707 msgstr ""
708
709 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
710 msgid "2. Deception"
711 msgstr "2. Podstęp"
712
713 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
714 msgid ""
715 "Lies and fraud are pernicious, and surveillance capitalism supercharges them "
716 "through targeting. If you want to sell a fraudulent payday loan or subprime "
717 "mortgage, surveillance capitalism can help you find people who are both "
718 "desperate and unsophisticated and thus receptive to your pitch. This "
719 "accounts for the rise of many phenomena, like multilevel marketing schemes, "
720 "in which deceptive claims about potential earnings and the efficacy of sales "
721 "techniques are targeted at desperate people by advertising against search "
722 "queries that indicate, for example, someone struggling with ill-advised "
723 "loans."
724 msgstr ""
725
726 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
727 msgid ""
728 "Surveillance capitalism also abets fraud by making it easy to locate other "
729 "people who have been similarly deceived, forming a community of people who "
730 "reinforce one another’s false beliefs. Think of <ulink url=\"https://www."
731 "vulture.com/2020/01/the-dream-podcast-review.html\">the forums</ulink> where "
732 "people who are being victimized by multilevel marketing frauds gather to "
733 "trade tips on how to improve their luck in peddling the product."
734 msgstr ""
735
736 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
737 msgid ""
738 "Sometimes, online deception involves replacing someone’s correct beliefs "
739 "with incorrect ones, as it does in the anti-vaccination movement, whose "
740 "victims are often people who start out believing in vaccines but are "
741 "convinced by seemingly plausible evidence that leads them into the false "
742 "belief that vaccines are harmful."
743 msgstr ""
744
745 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
746 msgid ""
747 "But it’s much more common for fraud to succeed when it doesn’t have to "
748 "displace a true belief. When my daughter contracted head lice at daycare, "
749 "one of the daycare workers told me I could get rid of them by treating her "
750 "hair and scalp with olive oil. I didn’t know anything about head lice, and I "
751 "assumed that the daycare worker did, so I tried it (it didn’t work, and it "
752 "doesn’t work). It’s easy to end up with false beliefs when you simply don’t "
753 "know any better and when those beliefs are conveyed by someone who seems to "
754 "know what they’re doing."
755 msgstr ""
756
757 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
758 msgid ""
759 "This is pernicious and difficult — and it’s also the kind of thing the "
760 "internet can help guard against by making true information available, "
761 "especially in a form that exposes the underlying deliberations among parties "
762 "with sharply divergent views, such as Wikipedia. But it’s not brainwashing; "
763 "it’s fraud. In the <ulink url=\"https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/"
764 "\">majority of cases</ulink>, the victims of these fraud campaigns have an "
765 "informational void filled in the customary way, by consulting a seemingly "
766 "reliable source. If I look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge and learn "
767 "that it is 5,800 feet long, but in reality, it is 5,989 feet long, the "
768 "underlying deception is a problem, but it’s a problem with a simple remedy. "
769 "It’s a very different problem from the anti-vax issue in which someone’s "
770 "true belief is displaced by a false one by means of sophisticated persuasion."
771 msgstr ""
772
773 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
774 msgid "3. Domination"
775 msgstr "3. Dominacja"
776
777 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
778 msgid ""
779 "Surveillance capitalism is the result of monopoly. Monopoly is the cause, "
780 "and surveillance capitalism and its negative outcomes are the effects of "
781 "monopoly. I’ll get into this in depth later, but for now, suffice it to say "
782 "that the tech industry has grown up with a radical theory of antitrust that "
783 "has allowed companies to grow by merging with their rivals, buying up their "
784 "nascent competitors, and expanding to control whole market verticals."
785 msgstr ""
786
787 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
788 msgid ""
789 "One example of how monopolism aids in persuasion is through dominance: "
790 "Google makes editorial decisions about its algorithms that determine the "
791 "sort order of the responses to our queries. If a cabal of fraudsters have "
792 "set out to trick the world into thinking that the Brooklyn Bridge is 5,800 "
793 "feet long, and if Google gives a high search rank to this group in response "
794 "to queries like <quote>How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?</quote> then the "
795 "first eight or 10 screens’ worth of Google results could be wrong. And since "
796 "most people don’t go beyond the first couple of results — let alone the "
797 "first <emphasis>page</emphasis> of results — Google’s choice means that many "
798 "people will be deceived."
799 msgstr ""
800
801 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
802 msgid ""
803 "Google’s dominance over search — more than 86% of web searches are performed "
804 "through Google — means that the way it orders its search results has an "
805 "outsized effect on public beliefs. Ironically, Google claims this is why it "
806 "can’t afford to have any transparency in its algorithm design: Google’s "
807 "search dominance makes the results of its sorting too important to risk "
808 "telling the world how it arrives at those results lest some bad actor "
809 "discover a flaw in the ranking system and exploit it to push its point of "
810 "view to the top of the search results. There’s an obvious remedy to a "
811 "company that is too big to audit: break it up into smaller pieces."
812 msgstr ""
813
814 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
815 msgid ""
816 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> whose "
817 "data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. But "
818 "influence campaigns that seek to displace existing, correct beliefs with "
819 "false ones have an effect that is small and temporary while monopolistic "
820 "dominance over informational systems has massive, enduring effects. "
821 "Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means controlling "
822 "access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, control over much of "
823 "the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how corporations are foreclosing on "
824 "our ability to make up our own minds and determine our own futures, the "
825 "impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
826 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
827 msgstr ""
828
829 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
830 msgid "4. Bypassing our rational faculties"
831 msgstr "4. Omijanie naszych racjonalnych zdolności"
832
833 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
834 msgid ""
835 "<emphasis>This</emphasis> is the good stuff: using machine learning, "
836 "<quote>dark patterns,</quote> engagement hacking, and other techniques to "
837 "get us to do things that run counter to our better judgment. This is mind "
838 "control."
839 msgstr ""
840
841 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
842 msgid ""
843 "Some of these techniques have proven devastatingly effective (if only in the "
844 "short term). The use of countdown timers on a purchase completion page can "
845 "create a sense of urgency that causes you to ignore the nagging internal "
846 "voice suggesting that you should shop around or sleep on your decision. The "
847 "use of people from your social graph in ads can provide <quote>social proof</"
848 "quote> that a purchase is worth making. Even the auction system pioneered by "
849 "eBay is calculated to play on our cognitive blind spots, letting us feel "
850 "like we <quote>own</quote> something because we bid on it, thus encouraging "
851 "us to bid again when we are outbid to ensure that <quote>our</quote> things "
852 "stay ours."
853 msgstr ""
854
855 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
856 msgid ""
857 "Games are extraordinarily good at this. <quote>Free to play</quote> games "
858 "manipulate us through many techniques, such as presenting players with a "
859 "series of smoothly escalating challenges that create a sense of mastery and "
860 "accomplishment but which sharply transition into a set of challenges that "
861 "are impossible to overcome without paid upgrades. Add some social proof to "
862 "the mix — a stream of notifications about how well your friends are faring — "
863 "and before you know it, you’re buying virtual power-ups to get to the next "
864 "level."
865 msgstr ""
866
867 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
868 msgid ""
869 "Companies have risen and fallen on these techniques, and the <quote>fallen</"
870 "quote> part is worth paying attention to. In general, living things adapt to "
871 "stimulus: Something that is very compelling or noteworthy when you first "
872 "encounter it fades with repetition until you stop noticing it altogether. "
873 "Consider the refrigerator hum that irritates you when it starts up but "
874 "disappears into the background so thoroughly that you only notice it when it "
875 "stops again."
876 msgstr ""
877
878 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
879 msgid ""
880 "That’s why behavioral conditioning uses <quote>intermittent reinforcement "
881 "schedules.</quote> Instead of giving you a steady drip of encouragement or "
882 "setbacks, games and gamified services scatter rewards on a randomized "
883 "schedule — often enough to keep you interested and random enough that you "
884 "can never quite find the pattern that would make it boring."
885 msgstr ""
886
887 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
888 msgid ""
889 "Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful behavioral tool, but it also "
890 "represents a collective action problem for surveillance capitalism. The "
891 "<quote>engagement techniques</quote> invented by the behaviorists of "
892 "surveillance capitalist companies are quickly copied across the whole sector "
893 "so that what starts as a mysteriously compelling fillip in the design of a "
894 "service—like <quote>pull to refresh</quote> or alerts when someone likes "
895 "your posts or side quests that your characters get invited to while in the "
896 "midst of main quests—quickly becomes dully ubiquitous. The impossible-to-"
897 "nail-down nonpattern of randomized drips from your phone becomes a grey-"
898 "noise wall of sound as every single app and site starts to make use of "
899 "whatever seems to be working at the time."
900 msgstr ""
901
902 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
903 msgid ""
904 "From the surveillance capitalist’s point of view, our adaptive capacity is "
905 "like a harmful bacterium that deprives it of its food source — our attention "
906 "— and novel techniques for snagging that attention are like new antibiotics "
907 "that can be used to breach our defenses and destroy our self-determination. "
908 "And there <emphasis>are</emphasis> techniques like that. Who can forget the "
909 "Great Zynga Epidemic, when all of our friends were caught in "
910 "<emphasis>FarmVille</emphasis>’s endless, mindless dopamine loops? But every "
911 "new attention-commanding technique is jumped on by the whole industry and "
912 "used so indiscriminately that antibiotic resistance sets in. Given enough "
913 "repetition, almost all of us develop immunity to even the most powerful "
914 "techniques — by 2013, two years after Zynga’s peak, its user base had halved."
915 msgstr ""
916
917 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
918 msgid ""
919 "Not everyone, of course. Some people never adapt to stimulus, just as some "
920 "people never stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator. This is why most "
921 "people who are exposed to slot machines play them for a while and then move "
922 "on while a small and tragic minority liquidate their kids’ college funds, "
923 "buy adult diapers, and position themselves in front of a machine until they "
924 "collapse."
925 msgstr ""
926
927 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
928 msgid ""
929 "But surveillance capitalism’s margins on behavioral modification suck. "
930 "Tripling the rate at which someone buys a widget sounds great <ulink url="
931 "\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2018/03/09/the-advertising-"
932 "conversion-rates-for-every-major-tech-platform/#2f6a67485957\">unless the "
933 "base rate is way less than 1%</ulink> with an improved rate of… still less "
934 "than 1%. Even penny slot machines pull down pennies for every spin while "
935 "surveillance capitalism rakes in infinitesimal penny fractions."
936 msgstr ""
937
938 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
939 msgid ""
940 "Slot machines’ high returns mean that they can be profitable just by "
941 "draining the fortunes of the small rump of people who are pathologically "
942 "vulnerable to them and unable to adapt to their tricks. But surveillance "
943 "capitalism can’t survive on the fractional pennies it brings down from that "
944 "vulnerable sliver — that’s why, after the Great Zynga Epidemic had finally "
945 "burned itself out, the small number of still-addicted players left behind "
946 "couldn’t sustain it as a global phenomenon. And new powerful attention "
947 "weapons aren’t easy to find, as is evidenced by the long years since the "
948 "last time Zynga had a hit. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that "
949 "Zynga has to spend on developing new tools to blast through our adaptation, "
950 "it has never managed to repeat the lucky accident that let it snag so much "
951 "of our attention for a brief moment in 2009. Powerhouses like Supercell have "
952 "fared a little better, but they are rare and throw away many failures for "
953 "every success."
954 msgstr ""
955
956 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
957 msgid ""
958 "The vulnerability of small segments of the population to dramatic, efficient "
959 "corporate manipulation is a real concern that’s worthy of our attention and "
960 "energy. But it’s not an existential threat to society."
961 msgstr ""
962
963 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
964 msgid ""
965 "If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak"
966 msgstr ""
967 "Jeśli dane są nowym paliwem, to silnik kapitalistycznych systemów nadzoru ma "
968 "wyciek"
969
970 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
971 msgid ""
972 "This adaptation problem offers an explanation for one of surveillance "
973 "capitalism’s most alarming traits: its relentless hunger for data and its "
974 "endless expansion of data-gathering capabilities through the spread of "
975 "sensors, online surveillance, and acquisition of data streams from third "
976 "parties."
977 msgstr ""
978
979 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
980 msgid ""
981 "Zuboff observes this phenomenon and concludes that data must be very "
982 "valuable if surveillance capitalism is so hungry for it. (In her words: "
983 "<quote>Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous "
984 "intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists and "
985 "their market players are now locked into the continuous intensification of "
986 "the means of behavioral modification and the gathering might of "
987 "instrumentarian power.</quote>) But what if the voracious appetite is "
988 "because data has such a short half-life — because people become inured so "
989 "quickly to new, data-driven persuasion techniques — that the companies are "
990 "locked in an arms race with our limbic system? What if it’s all a Red "
991 "Queen’s race where they have to run ever faster — collect ever-more data — "
992 "just to stay in the same spot?"
993 msgstr ""
994
995 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
996 msgid ""
997 "Of course, all of Big Tech’s persuasion techniques work in concert with one "
998 "another, and collecting data is useful beyond mere behavioral trickery."
999 msgstr ""
1000
1001 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1002 msgid ""
1003 "If someone wants to recruit you to buy a refrigerator or join a pogrom, they "
1004 "might use profiling and targeting to send messages to people they judge to "
1005 "be good sales prospects. The messages themselves may be deceptive, making "
1006 "claims about things you’re not very knowledgeable about (food safety and "
1007 "energy efficiency or eugenics and historical claims about racial "
1008 "superiority). They might use search engine optimization and/or armies of "
1009 "fake reviewers and commenters and/or paid placement to dominate the "
1010 "discourse so that any search for further information takes you back to their "
1011 "messages. And finally, they may refine the different pitches using machine "
1012 "learning and other techniques to figure out what kind of pitch works best on "
1013 "someone like you."
1014 msgstr ""
1015
1016 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1017 msgid ""
1018 "Each phase of this process benefits from surveillance: The more data they "
1019 "have, the more precisely they can profile you and target you with specific "
1020 "messages. Think of how you’d sell a fridge if you knew that the warranty on "
1021 "your prospect’s fridge just expired and that they were expecting a tax "
1022 "rebate in April."
1023 msgstr ""
1024
1025 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1026 msgid ""
1027 "Also, the more data they have, the better they can craft deceptive messages "
1028 "— if I know that you’re into genealogy, I might not try to feed you "
1029 "pseudoscience about genetic differences between <quote>races,</quote> "
1030 "sticking instead to conspiratorial secret histories of <quote>demographic "
1031 "replacement</quote> and the like."
1032 msgstr ""
1033
1034 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1035 msgid ""
1036 "Facebook also helps you locate people who have the same odious or antisocial "
1037 "views as you. It makes it possible to find other people who want to carry "
1038 "tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville in Confederate cosplay. "
1039 "It can help you find other people who want to join your militia and go to "
1040 "the border to look for undocumented migrants to terrorize. It can help you "
1041 "find people who share your belief that vaccines are poison and that the "
1042 "Earth is flat."
1043 msgstr ""
1044
1045 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1046 msgid ""
1047 "There is one way in which targeted advertising uniquely benefits those "
1048 "advocating for socially unacceptable causes: It is invisible. Racism is "
1049 "widely geographically dispersed, and there are few places where racists — "
1050 "and only racists — gather. This is similar to the problem of selling "
1051 "refrigerators in that potential refrigerator purchasers are geographically "
1052 "dispersed and there are few places where you can buy an ad that will be "
1053 "primarily seen by refrigerator customers. But buying a refrigerator is "
1054 "socially acceptable while being a Nazi is not, so you can buy a billboard or "
1055 "advertise in the newspaper sports section for your refrigerator business, "
1056 "and the only potential downside is that your ad will be seen by a lot of "
1057 "people who don’t want refrigerators, resulting in a lot of wasted expense."
1058 msgstr ""
1059
1060 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1061 msgid ""
1062 "But even if you wanted to advertise your Nazi movement on a billboard or "
1063 "prime-time TV or the sports section, you would struggle to find anyone "
1064 "willing to sell you the space for your ad partly because they disagree with "
1065 "your views and partly because they fear censure (boycott, reputational "
1066 "damage, etc.) from other people who disagree with your views."
1067 msgstr ""
1068
1069 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1070 msgid ""
1071 "Targeted ads solve this problem: On the internet, every ad unit can be "
1072 "different for every person, meaning that you can buy ads that are only shown "
1073 "to people who appear to be Nazis and not to people who hate Nazis. When "
1074 "there’s spillover — when someone who hates racism is shown a racist "
1075 "recruiting ad — there is some fallout; the platform or publication might get "
1076 "an angry public or private denunciation. But the nature of the risk assumed "
1077 "by an online ad buyer is different than the risks to a traditional publisher "
1078 "or billboard owner who might want to run a Nazi ad."
1079 msgstr ""
1080
1081 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1082 msgid ""
1083 "Online ads are placed by algorithms that broker between a diverse ecosystem "
1084 "of self-serve ad platforms that anyone can buy an ad through, so the Nazi ad "
1085 "that slips onto your favorite online publication isn’t seen as their moral "
1086 "failing but rather as a failure in some distant, upstream ad supplier. When "
1087 "a publication gets a complaint about an offensive ad that’s appearing in one "
1088 "of its units, it can take some steps to block that ad, but the Nazi might "
1089 "buy a slightly different ad from a different broker serving the same unit. "
1090 "And in any event, internet users increasingly understand that when they see "
1091 "an ad, it’s likely that the advertiser did not choose that publication and "
1092 "that the publication has no idea who its advertisers are."
1093 msgstr ""
1094
1095 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1096 msgid ""
1097 "These layers of indirection between advertisers and publishers serve as "
1098 "moral buffers: Today’s moral consensus is largely that publishers shouldn’t "
1099 "be held responsible for the ads that appear on their pages because they’re "
1100 "not actively choosing to put those ads there. Because of this, Nazis are "
1101 "able to overcome significant barriers to organizing their movement."
1102 msgstr ""
1103
1104 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1105 msgid ""
1106 "Data has a complex relationship with domination. Being able to spy on your "
1107 "customers can alert you to their preferences for your rivals and allow you "
1108 "to head off your rivals at the pass."
1109 msgstr ""
1110
1111 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1112 msgid ""
1113 "More importantly, if you can dominate the information space while also "
1114 "gathering data, then you make other deceptive tactics stronger because it’s "
1115 "harder to break out of the web of deceit you’re spinning. Domination — that "
1116 "is, ultimately becoming a monopoly — and not the data itself is the "
1117 "supercharger that makes every tactic worth pursuing because monopolistic "
1118 "domination deprives your target of an escape route."
1119 msgstr ""
1120
1121 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1122 msgid ""
1123 "If you’re a Nazi who wants to ensure that your prospects primarily see "
1124 "deceptive, confirming information when they search for more, you can improve "
1125 "your odds by seeding the search terms they use through your initial "
1126 "communications. You don’t need to own the top 10 results for <quote>voter "
1127 "suppression</quote> if you can convince your marks to confine their search "
1128 "terms to <quote>voter fraud,</quote> which throws up a very different set of "
1129 "search results."
1130 msgstr ""
1131
1132 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1133 msgid ""
1134 "Surveillance capitalists are like stage mentalists who claim that their "
1135 "extraordinary insights into human behavior let them guess the word that you "
1136 "wrote down and folded up in your pocket but who really use shills, hidden "
1137 "cameras, sleight of hand, and brute-force memorization to amaze you."
1138 msgstr ""
1139
1140 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1141 msgid ""
1142 "Or perhaps they’re more like pick-up artists, the misogynistic cult that "
1143 "promises to help awkward men have sex with women by teaching them "
1144 "<quote>neurolinguistic programming</quote> phrases, body language "
1145 "techniques, and psychological manipulation tactics like <quote>negging</"
1146 "quote> — offering unsolicited negative feedback to women to lower their self-"
1147 "esteem and prick their interest."
1148 msgstr ""
1149
1150 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1151 msgid ""
1152 "Some pick-up artists eventually manage to convince women to go home with "
1153 "them, but it’s not because these men have figured out how to bypass women’s "
1154 "critical faculties. Rather, pick-up artists’ <quote>success</quote> stories "
1155 "are a mix of women who were incapable of giving consent, women who were "
1156 "coerced, women who were intoxicated, self-destructive women, and a few women "
1157 "who were sober and in command of their faculties but who didn’t realize "
1158 "straightaway that they were with terrible men but rectified the error as "
1159 "soon as they could."
1160 msgstr ""
1161
1162 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1163 msgid ""
1164 "Pick-up artists <emphasis>believe</emphasis> they have figured out a secret "
1165 "back door that bypasses women’s critical faculties, but they haven’t. Many "
1166 "of the tactics they deploy, like negging, became the butt of jokes (just "
1167 "like people joke about bad ad targeting), and there’s a good chance that "
1168 "anyone they try these tactics on will immediately recognize them and dismiss "
1169 "the men who use them as irredeemable losers."
1170 msgstr ""
1171
1172 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1173 msgid ""
1174 "Pick-up artists are proof that people can believe they have developed a "
1175 "system of mind control <emphasis>even when it doesn’t work</emphasis>. Pick-"
1176 "up artists simply exploit the fact that one-in-a-million chances can come "
1177 "through for you if you make a million attempts, and then they assume that "
1178 "the other 999,999 times, they simply performed the technique incorrectly and "
1179 "commit themselves to doing better next time. There’s only one group of "
1180 "people who find pick-up artist lore reliably convincing: other would-be pick-"
1181 "up artists whose anxiety and insecurity make them vulnerable to scammers and "
1182 "delusional men who convince them that if they pay for tutelage and follow "
1183 "instructions, then they will someday succeed. Pick-up artists assume they "
1184 "fail to entice women because they are bad at being pick-up artists, not "
1185 "because pick-up artistry is bullshit. Pick-up artists are bad at selling "
1186 "themselves to women, but they’re much better at selling themselves to men "
1187 "who pay to learn the secrets of pick-up artistry."
1188 msgstr ""
1189
1190 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1191 msgid ""
1192 "Department store pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have lamented, "
1193 "<quote>Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I "
1194 "don’t know which half.</quote> The fact that Wanamaker thought that only "
1195 "half of his advertising spending was wasted is a tribute to the "
1196 "persuasiveness of advertising executives, who are <emphasis>much</emphasis> "
1197 "better at convincing potential clients to buy their services than they are "
1198 "at convincing the general public to buy their clients’ wares."
1199 msgstr ""
1200
1201 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1202 msgid "What is Facebook?"
1203 msgstr "Co to jest Facebook?"
1204
1205 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1206 msgid ""
1207 "Facebook is heralded as the origin of all of our modern plagues, and it’s "
1208 "not hard to see why. Some tech companies want to lock their users in but "
1209 "make their money by monopolizing access to the market for apps for their "
1210 "devices and gouging them on prices rather than by spying on them (like "
1211 "Apple). Some companies don’t care about locking in users because they’ve "
1212 "figured out how to spy on them no matter where they are and what they’re "
1213 "doing and can turn that surveillance into money (Google). Facebook alone "
1214 "among the Western tech giants has built a business based on locking in its "
1215 "users <emphasis>and</emphasis> spying on them all the time."
1216 msgstr ""
1217
1218 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1219 msgid ""
1220 "Facebook’s surveillance regime is really without parallel in the Western "
1221 "world. Though Facebook tries to prevent itself from being visible on the "
1222 "public web, hiding most of what goes on there from people unless they’re "
1223 "logged into Facebook, the company has nevertheless booby-trapped the entire "
1224 "web with surveillance tools in the form of Facebook <quote>Like</quote> "
1225 "buttons that web publishers include on their sites to boost their Facebook "
1226 "profiles. Facebook also makes various libraries and other useful code "
1227 "snippets available to web publishers that act as surveillance tendrils on "
1228 "the sites where they’re used, funneling information about visitors to the "
1229 "site — newspapers, dating sites, message boards — to Facebook."
1230 msgstr ""
1231
1232 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
1233 msgid ""
1234 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
1235 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>."
1236 msgstr ""
1237
1238 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1239 msgid ""
1240 "Facebook offers similar tools to app developers, so the apps — games, fart "
1241 "machines, business review services, apps for keeping abreast of your kid’s "
1242 "schooling — you use will send information about your activities to Facebook "
1243 "even if you don’t have a Facebook account and even if you don’t download or "
1244 "use Facebook apps. On top of all that, Facebook buys data from third-party "
1245 "brokers on shopping habits, physical location, use of <quote>loyalty</quote> "
1246 "programs, financial transactions, etc., and cross-references that with the "
1247 "dossiers it develops on activity on Facebook and with apps and the public "
1248 "web."
1249 msgstr ""
1250
1251 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1252 msgid ""
1253 "Though it’s easy to integrate the web with Facebook — linking to news "
1254 "stories and such — Facebook products are generally not available to be "
1255 "integrated back into the web itself. You can embed a tweet in a Facebook "
1256 "post, but if you embed a Facebook post in a tweet, you just get a link back "
1257 "to Facebook and must log in before you can see it. Facebook has used extreme "
1258 "technological and legal countermeasures to prevent rivals from allowing "
1259 "their users to embed Facebook snippets in competing services or to create "
1260 "alternative interfaces to Facebook that merge your Facebook inbox with those "
1261 "of other services that you use."
1262 msgstr ""
1263
1264 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1265 msgid ""
1266 "And Facebook is incredibly popular, with 2.3 billion claimed users (though "
1267 "many believe this figure to be inflated). Facebook has been used to organize "
1268 "genocidal pogroms, racist riots, anti-vaccination movements, flat Earth "
1269 "cults, and the political lives of some of the world’s ugliest, most brutal "
1270 "autocrats. There are some really alarming things going on in the world, and "
1271 "Facebook is implicated in many of them, so it’s easy to conclude that these "
1272 "bad things are the result of Facebook’s mind-control system, which it rents "
1273 "out to anyone with a few bucks to spend."
1274 msgstr ""
1275
1276 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1277 msgid ""
1278 "To understand what role Facebook plays in the formulation and mobilization "
1279 "of antisocial movements, we need to understand the dual nature of Facebook."
1280 msgstr ""
1281
1282 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1283 msgid ""
1284 "Because it has a lot of users and a lot of data about those users, Facebook "
1285 "is a very efficient tool for locating people with hard-to-find traits, the "
1286 "kinds of traits that are widely diffused in the population such that "
1287 "advertisers have historically struggled to find a cost-effective way to "
1288 "reach them. Think back to refrigerators: Most of us only replace our major "
1289 "appliances a few times in our entire lives. If you’re a refrigerator "
1290 "manufacturer or retailer, you have these brief windows in the life of a "
1291 "consumer during which they are pondering a purchase, and you have to somehow "
1292 "reach them. Anyone who’s ever registered a title change after buying a house "
1293 "can attest that appliance manufacturers are incredibly desperate to reach "
1294 "anyone who has even the slenderest chance of being in the market for a new "
1295 "fridge."
1296 msgstr ""
1297
1298 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1299 msgid ""
1300 "Facebook makes finding people shopping for refrigerators a <emphasis>lot</"
1301 "emphasis> easier. It can target ads to people who’ve registered a new home "
1302 "purchase, to people who’ve searched for refrigerator buying advice, to "
1303 "people who have complained about their fridge dying, or any combination "
1304 "thereof. It can even target people who’ve recently bought <emphasis>other</"
1305 "emphasis> kitchen appliances on the theory that someone who’s just replaced "
1306 "their stove and dishwasher might be in a fridge-buying kind of mood. The "
1307 "vast majority of people who are reached by these ads will not be in the "
1308 "market for a new fridge, but — crucially — the percentage of people who "
1309 "<emphasis>are</emphasis> looking for fridges that these ads reach is "
1310 "<emphasis>much</emphasis> larger than it is than for any group that might be "
1311 "subjected to traditional, offline targeted refrigerator marketing."
1312 msgstr ""
1313
1314 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1315 msgid ""
1316 "Facebook also makes it a lot easier to find people who have the same rare "
1317 "disease as you, which might have been impossible in earlier eras — the "
1318 "closest fellow sufferer might otherwise be hundreds of miles away. It makes "
1319 "it easier to find people who went to the same high school as you even though "
1320 "decades have passed and your former classmates have all been scattered to "
1321 "the four corners of the Earth."
1322 msgstr ""
1323
1324 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1325 msgid ""
1326 "Facebook also makes it much easier to find people who hold the same rare "
1327 "political beliefs as you. If you’ve always harbored a secret affinity for "
1328 "socialism but never dared utter this aloud lest you be demonized by your "
1329 "neighbors, Facebook can help you discover other people who feel the same way "
1330 "(and it might just demonstrate to you that your affinity is more widespread "
1331 "than you ever suspected). It can make it easier to find people who share "
1332 "your sexual identity. And again, it can help you to understand that what "
1333 "you thought was a shameful secret that affected only you was really a widely "
1334 "shared trait, giving you both comfort and the courage to come out to the "
1335 "people in your life."
1336 msgstr ""
1337
1338 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1339 msgid ""
1340 "All of this presents a dilemma for Facebook: Targeting makes the company’s "
1341 "ads more effective than traditional ads, but it also lets advertisers see "
1342 "just how effective their ads are. While advertisers are pleased to learn "
1343 "that Facebook ads are more effective than ads on systems with less "
1344 "sophisticated targeting, advertisers can also see that in nearly every case, "
1345 "the people who see their ads ignore them. Or, at best, the ads work on a "
1346 "subconscious level, creating nebulous unmeasurables like <quote>brand "
1347 "recognition.</quote> This means that the price per ad is very low in nearly "
1348 "every case."
1349 msgstr ""
1350
1351 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1352 msgid ""
1353 "To make things worse, many Facebook groups spark precious little discussion. "
1354 "Your little-league soccer team, the people with the same rare disease as "
1355 "you, and the people you share a political affinity with may exchange the odd "
1356 "flurry of messages at critical junctures, but on a daily basis, there’s not "
1357 "much to say to your old high school chums or other hockey-card collectors."
1358 msgstr ""
1359
1360 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1361 msgid ""
1362 "With nothing but <quote>organic</quote> discussion, Facebook would not "
1363 "generate enough traffic to sell enough ads to make the money it needs to "
1364 "continually expand by buying up its competitors while returning handsome "
1365 "sums to its investors."
1366 msgstr ""
1367
1368 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1369 msgid ""
1370 "So Facebook has to gin up traffic by sidetracking its own forums: Every time "
1371 "Facebook’s algorithm injects controversial materials — inflammatory "
1372 "political articles, conspiracy theories, outrage stories — into a group, it "
1373 "can hijack that group’s nominal purpose with its desultory discussions and "
1374 "supercharge those discussions by turning them into bitter, unproductive "
1375 "arguments that drag on and on. Facebook is optimized for engagement, not "
1376 "happiness, and it turns out that automated systems are pretty good at "
1377 "figuring out things that people will get angry about."
1378 msgstr ""
1379
1380 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1381 msgid ""
1382 "Facebook <emphasis>can</emphasis> modify our behavior but only in a couple "
1383 "of trivial ways. First, it can lock in all your friends and family members "
1384 "so that you check and check and check with Facebook to find out what they "
1385 "are up to; and second, it can make you angry and anxious. It can force you "
1386 "to choose between being interrupted constantly by updates — a process that "
1387 "breaks your concentration and makes it hard to be introspective — and "
1388 "staying in touch with your friends. This is a very limited form of mind "
1389 "control, and it can only really make us miserable, angry, and anxious."
1390 msgstr ""
1391
1392 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1393 msgid ""
1394 "This is why Facebook’s targeting systems — both the ones it shows to "
1395 "advertisers and the ones that let users find people who share their "
1396 "interests — are so next-gen and smooth and easy to use as well as why its "
1397 "message boards have a toolset that seems like it hasn’t changed since the "
1398 "mid-2000s. If Facebook delivered an equally flexible, sophisticated message-"
1399 "reading system to its users, those users could defend themselves against "
1400 "being nonconsensually eyeball-fucked with Donald Trump headlines."
1401 msgstr ""
1402
1403 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1404 msgid ""
1405 "The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads it gets to show you. The "
1406 "solution to Facebook’s ads only working one in a thousand times is for the "
1407 "company to try to increase how much time you spend on Facebook by a factor "
1408 "of a thousand. Rather than thinking of Facebook as a company that has "
1409 "figured out how to show you exactly the right ad in exactly the right way to "
1410 "get you to do what its advertisers want, think of it as a company that has "
1411 "figured out how to make you slog through an endless torrent of arguments "
1412 "even though they make you miserable, spending so much time on the site that "
1413 "it eventually shows you at least one ad that you respond to."
1414 msgstr ""
1415
1416 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1417 msgid "Monopoly and the right to the future tense"
1418 msgstr "Monopol i prawo do czasu przyszłego"
1419
1420 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1421 msgid ""
1422 "Zuboff and her cohort are particularly alarmed at the extent to which "
1423 "surveillance allows corporations to influence our decisions, taking away "
1424 "something she poetically calls <quote>the right to the future tense</quote> "
1425 "— that is, the right to decide for yourself what you will do in the future."
1426 msgstr ""
1427
1428 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1429 msgid ""
1430 "It’s true that advertising can tip the scales one way or another: When "
1431 "you’re thinking of buying a fridge, a timely fridge ad might end the search "
1432 "on the spot. But Zuboff puts enormous and undue weight on the persuasive "
1433 "power of surveillance-based influence techniques. Most of these don’t work "
1434 "very well, and the ones that do won’t work for very long. The makers of "
1435 "these influence tools are confident they will someday refine them into "
1436 "systems of total control, but they are hardly unbiased observers, and the "
1437 "risks from their dreams coming true are very speculative."
1438 msgstr ""
1439
1440 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1441 msgid ""
1442 "By contrast, Zuboff is rather sanguine about 40 years of lax antitrust "
1443 "practice that has allowed a handful of companies to dominate the internet, "
1444 "ushering in an information age with, <ulink url=\"https://twitter.com/"
1445 "tveastman/status/1069674780826071040\">as one person on Twitter noted</"
1446 "ulink>, five giant websites each filled with screenshots of the other four."
1447 msgstr ""
1448
1449 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1450 msgid ""
1451 "However, if we are to be alarmed that we might lose the right to choose for "
1452 "ourselves what our future will hold, then monopoly’s nonspeculative, "
1453 "concrete, here-and-now harms should be front and center in our debate over "
1454 "tech policy."
1455 msgstr ""
1456
1457 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1458 msgid ""
1459 "Start with <quote>digital rights management.</quote> In 1998, Bill Clinton "
1460 "signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. It’s a complex "
1461 "piece of legislation with many controversial clauses but none more so than "
1462 "Section 1201, the <quote>anti-circumvention</quote> rule."
1463 msgstr ""
1464
1465 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1466 msgid ""
1467 "This is a blanket ban on tampering with systems that restrict access to "
1468 "copyrighted works. The ban is so thoroughgoing that it prohibits removing a "
1469 "copyright lock even when no copyright infringement takes place. This is by "
1470 "design: The activities that the DMCA’s Section 1201 sets out to ban are not "
1471 "copyright infringements; rather, they are legal activities that frustrate "
1472 "manufacturers’ commercial plans."
1473 msgstr ""
1474
1475 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1476 msgid ""
1477 "For example, Section 1201’s first major application was on DVD players as a "
1478 "means of enforcing the region coding built into those devices. DVD-CCA, the "
1479 "body that standardized DVDs and DVD players, divided the world into six "
1480 "regions and specified that DVD players must check each disc to determine "
1481 "which regions it was authorized to be played in. DVD players would have "
1482 "their own corresponding region (a DVD player bought in the U.S. would be "
1483 "region 1 while one bought in India would be region 5). If the player and the "
1484 "disc’s region matched, the player would play the disc; otherwise, it would "
1485 "reject it."
1486 msgstr ""
1487
1488 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1489 msgid ""
1490 "However, watching a lawfully produced disc in a country other than the one "
1491 "where you purchased it is not copyright infringement — it’s the opposite. "
1492 "Copyright law imposes this duty on customers for a movie: You must go into a "
1493 "store, find a licensed disc, and pay the asking price. Do that — and "
1494 "<emphasis>nothing else</emphasis> — and you and copyright are square with "
1495 "one another."
1496 msgstr ""
1497
1498 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1499 msgid ""
1500 "The fact that a movie studio wants to charge Indians less than Americans or "
1501 "release in Australia later than it releases in the U.K. has no bearing on "
1502 "copyright law. Once you lawfully acquire a DVD, it is no copyright "
1503 "infringement to watch it no matter where you happen to be."
1504 msgstr ""
1505
1506 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1507 msgid ""
1508 "So DVD and DVD player manufacturers would not be able to use accusations of "
1509 "abetting copyright infringement to punish manufacturers who made "
1510 "noncompliant players that would play discs from any region or repair shops "
1511 "that modified players to let you watch out-of-region discs or software "
1512 "programmers who created programs to let you do this."
1513 msgstr ""
1514
1515 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1516 msgid ""
1517 "That’s where Section 1201 of the DMCA comes in: By banning tampering with an "
1518 "<quote>access control,</quote> the rule gave manufacturers and rights "
1519 "holders standing to sue competitors who released superior products with "
1520 "lawful features that the market demanded (in this case, region-free players)."
1521 msgstr ""
1522
1523 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1524 msgid ""
1525 "This is an odious scam against consumers, but as time went by, Section 1201 "
1526 "grew to encompass a rapidly expanding constellation of devices and services "
1527 "as canny manufacturers have realized certain things:"
1528 msgstr ""
1529
1530 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1531 msgid ""
1532 "Any device with software in it contains a <quote>copyrighted work</quote> — "
1533 "i.e., the software."
1534 msgstr ""
1535
1536 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1537 msgid ""
1538 "A device can be designed so that reconfiguring the software requires "
1539 "bypassing an <quote>access control for copyrighted works,</quote> which is a "
1540 "potential felony under Section 1201."
1541 msgstr ""
1542
1543 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1544 msgid ""
1545 "Thus, companies can control their customers’ behavior after they take home "
1546 "their purchases by designing products so that all unpermitted uses require "
1547 "modifications that fall afoul of Section 1201."
1548 msgstr ""
1549
1550 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1551 msgid ""
1552 "Section 1201 then becomes a means for manufacturers of all descriptions to "
1553 "force their customers to arrange their affairs to benefit the manufacturers’ "
1554 "shareholders instead of themselves."
1555 msgstr ""
1556
1557 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1558 msgid ""
1559 "This manifests in many ways: from a new generation of inkjet printers that "
1560 "use countermeasures to prevent third-party ink that cannot be bypassed "
1561 "without legal risks to similar systems in tractors that prevent third-party "
1562 "technicians from swapping in the manufacturer’s own parts that are not "
1563 "recognized by the tractor’s control system until it is supplied with a "
1564 "manufacturer’s unlock code."
1565 msgstr ""
1566
1567 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1568 msgid ""
1569 "Closer to home, Apple’s iPhones use these measures to prevent both third-"
1570 "party service and third-party software installation. This allows Apple to "
1571 "decide when an iPhone is beyond repair and must be shredded and landfilled "
1572 "as opposed to the iPhone’s purchaser. (Apple is notorious for its "
1573 "environmentally catastrophic policy of destroying old electronics rather "
1574 "than permitting them to be cannibalized for parts.) This is a very useful "
1575 "power to wield, especially in light of CEO Tim Cook’s January 2019 warning "
1576 "to investors that the company’s profits are endangered by customers choosing "
1577 "to hold onto their phones for longer rather than replacing them."
1578 msgstr ""
1579
1580 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1581 msgid ""
1582 "Apple’s use of copyright locks also allows it to establish a monopoly over "
1583 "how its customers acquire software for their mobile devices. The App Store’s "
1584 "commercial terms guarantee Apple a share of all revenues generated by the "
1585 "apps sold there, meaning that Apple gets paid when you buy an app from its "
1586 "store and then continues to get paid every time you buy something using that "
1587 "app. This comes out of the bottom line of software developers, who must "
1588 "either charge more or accept lower profits for their products."
1589 msgstr ""
1590
1591 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1592 msgid ""
1593 "Crucially, Apple’s use of copyright locks gives it the power to make "
1594 "editorial decisions about which apps you may and may not install on your own "
1595 "device. Apple has used this power to <ulink url=\"https://www.telegraph.co."
1596 "uk/technology/apple/5982243/Apple-bans-dictionary-from-App-Store-over-swear-"
1597 "words.html\">reject dictionaries</ulink> for containing obscene words; to "
1598 "<ulink url=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-"
1599 "app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again\">limit political speech</ulink>, "
1600 "especially from apps that make sensitive political commentary such as an app "
1601 "that notifies you every time a U.S. drone kills someone somewhere in the "
1602 "world; and to <ulink url=\"https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-19-"
1603 "palestinian-indie-game-must-not-be-called-a-game-apple-says\">object to a "
1604 "game</ulink> that commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict."
1605 msgstr ""
1606
1607 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1608 msgid ""
1609 "Apple often justifies monopoly power over software installation in the name "
1610 "of security, arguing that its vetting of apps for its store means that it "
1611 "can guard its users against apps that contain surveillance code. But this "
1612 "cuts both ways. In China, the government <ulink url=\"https://www.ft.com/"
1613 "content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc\">ordered Apple to prohibit the "
1614 "sale of privacy tools</ulink> like VPNs with the exception of VPNs that had "
1615 "deliberately introduced flaws designed to let the Chinese state eavesdrop on "
1616 "users. Because Apple uses technological countermeasures — with legal "
1617 "backstops — to block customers from installing unauthorized apps, Chinese "
1618 "iPhone owners cannot readily (or legally) acquire VPNs that would protect "
1619 "them from Chinese state snooping."
1620 msgstr ""
1621
1622 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1623 msgid ""
1624 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote> "
1625 "Theoreticians of capitalism claim that its virtue is that it <ulink url="
1626 "\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_signal\">aggregates information in the "
1627 "form of consumers’ decisions</ulink>, producing efficient markets. "
1628 "Surveillance capitalism’s supposed power to rob its victims of their free "
1629 "will through computationally supercharged influence campaigns means that our "
1630 "markets no longer aggregate customers’ decisions because we customers no "
1631 "longer decide — we are given orders by surveillance capitalism’s mind-"
1632 "control rays."
1633 msgstr ""
1634
1635 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1636 msgid ""
1637 "If our concern is that markets cease to function when consumers can no "
1638 "longer make choices, then copyright locks should concern us at "
1639 "<emphasis>least</emphasis> as much as influence campaigns. An influence "
1640 "campaign might nudge you to buy a certain brand of phone; but the copyright "
1641 "locks on that phone absolutely determine where you get it serviced, which "
1642 "apps can run on it, and when you have to throw it away rather than fixing it."
1643 msgstr ""
1644
1645 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1646 msgid "Search order and the right to the future tense"
1647 msgstr "Porządek wyszukiwania i prawo do czasu przyszłego"
1648
1649 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1650 msgid ""
1651 "Markets are posed as a kind of magic: By discovering otherwise hidden "
1652 "information conveyed by the free choices of consumers, those consumers’ "
1653 "local knowledge is integrated into a self-correcting system that makes "
1654 "efficient allocations—more efficient than any computer could calculate. But "
1655 "monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one app "
1656 "store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the range of "
1657 "choices. As Boss Tweed once said, <quote>I don’t care who does the electing, "
1658 "so long as I get to do the nominating.</quote> A monopolized market is an "
1659 "election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist."
1660 msgstr ""
1661
1662 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1663 msgid ""
1664 "This ballot rigging is made more pernicious by the existence of monopolies "
1665 "over search order. Google’s search market share is about 90%. When Google’s "
1666 "ranking algorithm puts a result for a popular search term in its top 10, "
1667 "that helps determine the behavior of millions of people. If Google’s answer "
1668 "to <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</quote> is a page that rebuts anti-vax "
1669 "conspiracy theories, then a sizable portion of the public will learn that "
1670 "vaccines are safe. If, on the other hand, Google sends those people to a "
1671 "site affirming the anti-vax conspiracies, a sizable portion of those "
1672 "millions will come away convinced that vaccines are dangerous."
1673 msgstr ""
1674
1675 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1676 msgid ""
1677 "Google’s algorithm is often tricked into serving disinformation as a "
1678 "prominent search result. But in these cases, Google isn’t persuading people "
1679 "to change their minds; it’s just presenting something untrue as fact when "
1680 "the user has no cause to doubt it."
1681 msgstr ""
1682
1683 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1684 msgid ""
1685 "This is true whether the search is for <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</"
1686 "quote> or <quote>best restaurants near me.</quote> Most users will never "
1687 "look past the first page of search results, and when the overwhelming "
1688 "majority of people all use the same search engine, the ranking algorithm "
1689 "deployed by that search engine will determine myriad outcomes (whether to "
1690 "adopt a child, whether to have cancer surgery, where to eat dinner, where to "
1691 "move, where to apply for a job) to a degree that vastly outstrips any "
1692 "behavioral outcomes dictated by algorithmic persuasion techniques."
1693 msgstr ""
1694
1695 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1696 msgid ""
1697 "Many of the questions we ask search engines have no empirically correct "
1698 "answers: <quote>Where should I eat dinner?</quote> is not an objective "
1699 "question. Even questions that do have correct answers (<quote>Are vaccines "
1700 "dangerous?</quote>) don’t have one empirically superior source for that "
1701 "answer. Many pages affirm the safety of vaccines, so which one goes first? "
1702 "Under conditions of competition, consumers can choose from many search "
1703 "engines and stick with the one whose algorithmic judgment suits them best, "
1704 "but under conditions of monopoly, we all get our answers from the same place."
1705 msgstr ""
1706
1707 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1708 msgid ""
1709 "Google’s search dominance isn’t a matter of pure merit: The company has "
1710 "leveraged many tactics that would have been prohibited under classical, pre-"
1711 "Ronald-Reagan antitrust enforcement standards to attain its dominance. After "
1712 "all, this is a company that has developed two major products: a really good "
1713 "search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. Every other major success "
1714 "it’s had — Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. — has come through an "
1715 "acquisition of a nascent competitor. Many of the company’s key divisions, "
1716 "such as the advertising technology of DoubleClick, violate the historical "
1717 "antitrust principle of structural separation, which forbade firms from "
1718 "owning subsidiaries that competed with their customers. Railroads, for "
1719 "example, were barred from owning freight companies that competed with the "
1720 "shippers whose freight they carried."
1721 msgstr ""
1722
1723 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1724 msgid ""
1725 "If we’re worried about giant companies subverting markets by stripping "
1726 "consumers of their ability to make free choices, then vigorous antitrust "
1727 "enforcement seems like an excellent remedy. If we’d denied Google the right "
1728 "to effect its many mergers, we would also have probably denied it its total "
1729 "search dominance. Without that dominance, the pet theories, biases, errors "
1730 "(and good judgment, too) of Google search engineers and product managers "
1731 "would not have such an outsized effect on consumer choice."
1732 msgstr ""
1733
1734 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1735 msgid ""
1736 "This goes for many other companies. Amazon, a classic surveillance "
1737 "capitalist, is obviously the dominant tool for searching Amazon — though "
1738 "many people find their way to Amazon through Google searches and Facebook "
1739 "posts — and obviously, Amazon controls Amazon search. That means that "
1740 "Amazon’s own self-serving editorial choices—like promoting its own house "
1741 "brands over rival goods from its sellers as well as its own pet theories, "
1742 "biases, and errors— determine much of what we buy on Amazon. And since "
1743 "Amazon is the dominant e-commerce retailer outside of China and since it "
1744 "attained that dominance by buying up both large rivals and nascent "
1745 "competitors in defiance of historical antitrust rules, we can blame the "
1746 "monopoly for stripping consumers of their right to the future tense and the "
1747 "ability to shape markets by making informed choices."
1748 msgstr ""
1749
1750 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1751 msgid ""
1752 "Not every monopolist is a surveillance capitalist, but that doesn’t mean "
1753 "they’re not able to shape consumer choices in wide-ranging ways. Zuboff "
1754 "lauds Apple for its App Store and iTunes Store, insisting that adding price "
1755 "tags to the features on its platforms has been the secret to resisting "
1756 "surveillance and thus creating markets. But Apple is the only retailer "
1757 "allowed to sell on its platforms, and it’s the second-largest mobile device "
1758 "vendor in the world. The independent software vendors that sell through "
1759 "Apple’s marketplace accuse the company of the same surveillance sins as "
1760 "Amazon and other big retailers: spying on its customers to find lucrative "
1761 "new products to launch, effectively using independent software vendors as "
1762 "free-market researchers, then forcing them out of any markets they discover."
1763 msgstr ""
1764
1765 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1766 msgid ""
1767 "Because of its use of copyright locks, Apple’s mobile customers are not "
1768 "legally allowed to switch to a rival retailer for its apps if they want to "
1769 "do so on an iPhone. Apple, obviously, is the only entity that gets to decide "
1770 "how it ranks the results of search queries in its stores. These decisions "
1771 "ensure that some apps are often installed (because they appear on page one) "
1772 "and others are never installed (because they appear on page one million). "
1773 "Apple’s search-ranking design decisions have a vastly more significant "
1774 "effect on consumer behaviors than influence campaigns delivered by "
1775 "surveillance capitalism’s ad-serving bots."
1776 msgstr ""
1777
1778 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1779 msgid "Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs"
1780 msgstr "Monopoliści mogą sobie pozwolić na proszki nasenne dla strażników"
1781
1782 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1783 msgid ""
1784 "Only the most extreme market ideologues think that markets can self-regulate "
1785 "without state oversight. Markets need watchdogs — regulators, lawmakers, and "
1786 "other elements of democratic control — to keep them honest. When these "
1787 "watchdogs sleep on the job, then markets cease to aggregate consumer choices "
1788 "because those choices are constrained by illegitimate and deceptive "
1789 "activities that companies are able to get away with because no one is "
1790 "holding them to account."
1791 msgstr ""
1792
1793 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1794 msgid ""
1795 "But this kind of regulatory capture doesn’t come cheap. In competitive "
1796 "sectors, where rivals are constantly eroding one another’s margins, "
1797 "individual firms lack the surplus capital to effectively lobby for laws and "
1798 "regulations that serve their ends."
1799 msgstr ""
1800
1801 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1802 msgid ""
1803 "Many of the harms of surveillance capitalism are the result of weak or "
1804 "nonexistent regulation. Those regulatory vacuums spring from the power of "
1805 "monopolists to resist stronger regulation and to tailor what regulation "
1806 "exists to permit their existing businesses."
1807 msgstr ""
1808
1809 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1810 msgid ""
1811 "Here’s an example: When firms over-collect and over-retain our data, they "
1812 "are at increased risk of suffering a breach — you can’t leak data you never "
1813 "collected, and once you delete all copies of that data, you can no longer "
1814 "leak it. For more than a decade, we’ve lived through an endless parade of "
1815 "ever-worsening data breaches, each one uniquely horrible in the scale of "
1816 "data breached and the sensitivity of that data."
1817 msgstr ""
1818
1819 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1820 msgid ""
1821 "But still, firms continue to over-collect and over-retain our data for three "
1822 "reasons:"
1823 msgstr ""
1824
1825 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1826 msgid ""
1827 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">1. They are locked in the aforementioned limbic "
1828 "arms race with our capacity to shore up our attentional defense systems to "
1829 "resist their new persuasion techniques.</emphasis> They’re also locked in an "
1830 "arms race with their competitors to find new ways to target people for sales "
1831 "pitches. As soon as they discover a soft spot in our attentional defenses (a "
1832 "counterintuitive, unobvious way to target potential refrigerator buyers), "
1833 "the public begins to wise up to the tactic, and their competitors leap on "
1834 "it, hastening the day in which all potential refrigerator buyers have been "
1835 "inured to the pitch."
1836 msgstr ""
1837
1838 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1839 msgid ""
1840 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">2. They believe the surveillance capitalism story."
1841 "</emphasis> Data is cheap to aggregate and store, and both proponents and "
1842 "opponents of surveillance capitalism have assured managers and product "
1843 "designers that if you collect enough data, you will be able to perform "
1844 "sorcerous acts of mind control, thus supercharging your sales. Even if you "
1845 "never figure out how to profit from the data, someone else will eventually "
1846 "offer to buy it from you to give it a try. This is the hallmark of all "
1847 "economic bubbles: acquiring an asset on the assumption that someone else "
1848 "will buy it from you for more than you paid for it, often to sell to someone "
1849 "else at an even greater price."
1850 msgstr ""
1851
1852 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1853 msgid ""
1854 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">3. The penalties for leaking data are negligible.</"
1855 "emphasis> Most countries limit these penalties to actual damages, meaning "
1856 "that consumers who’ve had their data breached have to show actual monetary "
1857 "harms to get a reward. In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it had lost credit-"
1858 "card data for 53 million of its customers, but it settled the matter by "
1859 "paying those customers about $0.34 each — and a third of that $0.34 wasn’t "
1860 "even paid in cash. It took the form of a credit to procure a largely "
1861 "ineffectual credit-monitoring service."
1862 msgstr ""
1863
1864 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1865 msgid ""
1866 "But the harms from breaches are much more extensive than these actual-"
1867 "damages rules capture. Identity thieves and fraudsters are wily and "
1868 "endlessly inventive. All the vast breaches of our century are being "
1869 "continuously recombined, the data sets merged and mined for new ways to "
1870 "victimize the people whose data was present in them. Any reasonable, "
1871 "evidence-based theory of deterrence and compensation for breaches would not "
1872 "confine damages to actual damages but rather would allow users to claim "
1873 "these future harms."
1874 msgstr ""
1875
1876 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1877 msgid ""
1878 "However, even the most ambitious privacy rules, such as the EU General Data "
1879 "Protection Regulation, fall far short of capturing the negative "
1880 "externalities of the platforms’ negligent over-collection and over-"
1881 "retention, and what penalties they do provide are not aggressively pursued "
1882 "by regulators."
1883 msgstr ""
1884
1885 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1886 msgid ""
1887 "This tolerance of — or indifference to — data over-collection and over-"
1888 "retention can be ascribed in part to the sheer lobbying muscle of the "
1889 "platforms. They are so profitable that they can handily afford to divert "
1890 "gigantic sums to fight any real change — that is, change that would force "
1891 "them to internalize the costs of their surveillance activities."
1892 msgstr ""
1893
1894 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1895 msgid ""
1896 "And then there’s state surveillance, which the surveillance capitalism story "
1897 "dismisses as a relic of another era when the big worry was being jailed for "
1898 "your dissident speech, not having your free will stripped away with machine "
1899 "learning."
1900 msgstr ""
1901
1902 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1903 msgid ""
1904 "But state surveillance and private surveillance are intimately related. As "
1905 "we saw when Apple was conscripted by the Chinese government as a vital "
1906 "collaborator in state surveillance, the only really affordable and tractable "
1907 "way to conduct mass surveillance on the scale practiced by modern states — "
1908 "both <quote>free</quote> and autocratic states — is to suborn commercial "
1909 "services."
1910 msgstr ""
1911
1912 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1913 msgid ""
1914 "Whether it’s Google being used as a location tracking tool by local law "
1915 "enforcement across the U.S. or the use of social media tracking by the "
1916 "Department of Homeland Security to build dossiers on participants in "
1917 "protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family separation "
1918 "practices, any hard limits on surveillance capitalism would hamstring the "
1919 "state’s own surveillance capability. Without Palantir, Amazon, Google, and "
1920 "other major tech contractors, U.S. cops would not be able to spy on Black "
1921 "people, ICE would not be able to manage the caging of children at the U.S. "
1922 "border, and state welfare systems would not be able to purge their rolls by "
1923 "dressing up cruelty as empiricism and claiming that poor and vulnerable "
1924 "people are ineligible for assistance. At least some of the states’ "
1925 "unwillingness to take meaningful action to curb surveillance should be "
1926 "attributed to this symbiotic relationship. There is no mass state "
1927 "surveillance without mass commercial surveillance."
1928 msgstr ""
1929
1930 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1931 msgid ""
1932 "Monopolism is key to the project of mass state surveillance. It’s true that "
1933 "smaller tech firms are apt to be less well-defended than Big Tech, whose "
1934 "security experts are drawn from the tops of their field and who are given "
1935 "enormous resources to secure and monitor their systems against intruders. "
1936 "But smaller firms also have less to protect: fewer users whose data is more "
1937 "fragmented across more systems and have to be suborned one at a time by "
1938 "state actors."
1939 msgstr ""
1940
1941 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1942 msgid ""
1943 "A concentrated tech sector that works with authorities is a much more "
1944 "powerful ally in the project of mass state surveillance than a fragmented "
1945 "one composed of smaller actors. The U.S. tech sector is small enough that "
1946 "all of its top executives fit around a single boardroom table in Trump Tower "
1947 "in 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Most of its biggest players bid "
1948 "to win JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense "
1949 "Infrastructure cloud contract. Like other highly concentrated industries, "
1950 "Big Tech rotates its key employees in and out of government service, sending "
1951 "them to serve in the Department of Defense and the White House, then hiring "
1952 "ex-Pentagon and ex-DOD top staffers and officers to work in their own "
1953 "government relations departments."
1954 msgstr ""
1955
1956 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1957 msgid ""
1958 "They can even make a good case for doing this: After all, when there are "
1959 "only four or five big companies in an industry, everyone qualified to "
1960 "regulate those companies has served as an executive in at least a couple of "
1961 "them — because, likewise, when there are only five companies in an industry, "
1962 "everyone qualified for a senior role at any of them is by definition working "
1963 "at one of the other ones."
1964 msgstr ""
1965
1966 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
1967 msgid ""
1968 "While surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies certainly abet "
1969 "surveillance."
1970 msgstr ""
1971
1972 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1973 msgid ""
1974 "Industries that are competitive are fragmented — composed of companies that "
1975 "are at each other’s throats all the time and eroding one another’s margins "
1976 "in bids to steal their best customers. This leaves them with much more "
1977 "limited capital to use to lobby for favorable rules and a much harder job of "
1978 "getting everyone to agree to pool their resources to benefit the industry as "
1979 "a whole."
1980 msgstr ""
1981
1982 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1983 msgid ""
1984 "Surveillance combined with machine learning is supposed to be an existential "
1985 "crisis, a species-defining moment at which our free will is just a few more "
1986 "advances in the field from being stripped away. I am skeptical of this "
1987 "claim, but I <emphasis>do</emphasis> think that tech poses an existential "
1988 "threat to our society and possibly our species."
1989 msgstr ""
1990
1991 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1992 msgid "But that threat grows out of monopoly."
1993 msgstr ""
1994
1995 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1996 msgid ""
1997 "One of the consequences of tech’s regulatory capture is that it can shift "
1998 "liability for poor security decisions onto its customers and the wider "
1999 "society. It is absolutely normal in tech for companies to obfuscate the "
2000 "workings of their products, to make them deliberately hard to understand, "
2001 "and to threaten security researchers who seek to independently audit those "
2002 "products."
2003 msgstr ""
2004
2005 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2006 msgid ""
2007 "IT is the only field in which this is practiced: No one builds a bridge or a "
2008 "hospital and keeps the composition of the steel or the equations used to "
2009 "calculate load stresses a secret. It is a frankly bizarre practice that "
2010 "leads, time and again, to grotesque security defects on farcical scales, "
2011 "with whole classes of devices being revealed as vulnerable long after they "
2012 "are deployed in the field and put into sensitive places."
2013 msgstr ""
2014
2015 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2016 msgid ""
2017 "The monopoly power that keeps any meaningful consequences for breaches at "
2018 "bay means that tech companies continue to build terrible products that are "
2019 "insecure by design and that end up integrated into our lives, in possession "
2020 "of our data, and connected to our physical world. For years, Boeing has "
2021 "struggled with the aftermath of a series of bad technology decisions that "
2022 "made its 737 fleet a global pariah, a rare instance in which bad tech "
2023 "decisions have been seriously punished in the market."
2024 msgstr ""
2025
2026 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2027 msgid ""
2028 "These bad security decisions are compounded yet again by the use of "
2029 "copyright locks to enforce business-model decisions against consumers. "
2030 "Recall that these locks have become the go-to means for shaping consumer "
2031 "behavior, making it technically impossible to use third-party ink, insulin, "
2032 "apps, or service depots in connection with your lawfully acquired property."
2033 msgstr ""
2034
2035 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2036 msgid ""
2037 "Recall also that these copyright locks are backstopped by legislation (such "
2038 "as Section 1201 of the DMCA or Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive) "
2039 "that ban tampering with (<quote>circumventing</quote>) them, and these "
2040 "statutes have been used to threaten security researchers who make "
2041 "disclosures about vulnerabilities without permission from manufacturers."
2042 msgstr ""
2043
2044 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2045 msgid ""
2046 "This amounts to a manufacturer’s veto over safety warnings and criticism. "
2047 "While this is far from the legislative intent of the DMCA and its sister "
2048 "statutes around the world, Congress has not intervened to clarify the "
2049 "statute nor will it because to do so would run counter to the interests of "
2050 "powerful, large firms whose lobbying muscle is unstoppable."
2051 msgstr ""
2052
2053 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2054 msgid ""
2055 "Copyright locks are a double whammy: They create bad security decisions that "
2056 "can’t be freely investigated or discussed. If markets are supposed to be "
2057 "machines for aggregating information (and if surveillance capitalism’s "
2058 "notional mind-control rays are what make it a <quote>rogue capitalism</"
2059 "quote> because it denies consumers the power to make decisions), then a "
2060 "program of legally enforced ignorance of the risks of products makes "
2061 "monopolism even more of a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> than surveillance "
2062 "capitalism’s influence campaigns."
2063 msgstr ""
2064
2065 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2066 msgid ""
2067 "And unlike mind-control rays, enforced silence over security is an "
2068 "immediate, documented problem, and it <emphasis>does</emphasis> constitute "
2069 "an existential threat to our civilization and possibly our species. The "
2070 "proliferation of insecure devices — especially devices that spy on us and "
2071 "especially when those devices also can manipulate the physical world by, "
2072 "say, steering your car or flipping a breaker at a power station — is a kind "
2073 "of technology debt."
2074 msgstr ""
2075
2076 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2077 msgid ""
2078 "In software design, <quote>technology debt</quote> refers to old, baked-in "
2079 "decisions that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. Perhaps a long-ago "
2080 "developer decided to incorporate a networking protocol made by a vendor that "
2081 "has since stopped supporting it. But everything in the product still relies "
2082 "on that superannuated protocol, and so, with each revision, the product team "
2083 "has to work around this obsolete core, adding compatibility layers, "
2084 "surrounding it with security checks that try to shore up its defenses, and "
2085 "so on. These Band-Aid measures compound the debt because every subsequent "
2086 "revision has to make allowances for <emphasis>them</emphasis>, too, like "
2087 "interest mounting on a predatory subprime loan. And like a subprime loan, "
2088 "the interest mounts faster than you can hope to pay it off: The product team "
2089 "has to put so much energy into maintaining this complex, brittle system that "
2090 "they don’t have any time left over to refactor the product from the ground "
2091 "up and <quote>pay off the debt</quote> once and for all."
2092 msgstr ""
2093
2094 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2095 msgid ""
2096 "Typically, technology debt results in a technological bankruptcy: The "
2097 "product gets so brittle and unsustainable that it fails catastrophically. "
2098 "Think of the antiquated COBOL-based banking and accounting systems that fell "
2099 "over at the start of the pandemic emergency when confronted with surges of "
2100 "unemployment claims. Sometimes that ends the product; sometimes it takes "
2101 "the company down with it. Being caught in the default of a technology debt "
2102 "is scary and traumatic, just like losing your house due to bankruptcy is "
2103 "scary and traumatic."
2104 msgstr ""
2105
2106 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2107 msgid ""
2108 "But the technology debt created by copyright locks isn’t individual debt; "
2109 "it’s systemic. Everyone in the world is exposed to this over-leverage, as "
2110 "was the case with the 2008 financial crisis. When that debt comes due — when "
2111 "we face a cascade of security breaches that threaten global shipping and "
2112 "logistics, the food supply, pharmaceutical production pipelines, emergency "
2113 "communications, and other critical systems that are accumulating technology "
2114 "debt in part due to the presence of deliberately insecure and deliberately "
2115 "unauditable copyright locks — it will indeed pose an existential risk."
2116 msgstr ""
2117
2118 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2119 msgid "Privacy and monopoly"
2120 msgstr "Prywatność a monopol"
2121
2122 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2123 msgid ""
2124 "Many tech companies are gripped by an orthodoxy that holds that if they just "
2125 "gather enough data on enough of our activities, everything else is possible "
2126 "— the mind control and endless profits. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis: "
2127 "If data gives a tech company even a tiny improvement in behavior prediction "
2128 "and modification, the company declares that it has taken the first step "
2129 "toward global domination with no end in sight. If a company <emphasis>fails</"
2130 "emphasis> to attain any improvements from gathering and analyzing data, it "
2131 "declares success to be just around the corner, attainable once more data is "
2132 "in hand."
2133 msgstr ""
2134
2135 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2136 msgid ""
2137 "Surveillance tech is far from the first industry to embrace a nonsensical, "
2138 "self-serving belief that harms the rest of the world, and it is not the "
2139 "first industry to profit handsomely from such a delusion. Long before hedge-"
2140 "fund managers were claiming (falsely) that they could beat the S&amp;P 500, "
2141 "there were plenty of other <quote>respectable</quote> industries that have "
2142 "been revealed as quacks in hindsight. From the makers of radium "
2143 "suppositories (a real thing!) to the cruel sociopaths who claimed they "
2144 "could <quote>cure</quote> gay people, history is littered with the formerly "
2145 "respectable titans of discredited industries."
2146 msgstr ""
2147
2148 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2149 msgid ""
2150 "This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech and its "
2151 "ideological addiction to data. While surveillance’s benefits are mostly "
2152 "overstated, its harms are, if anything, <emphasis>understated</emphasis>."
2153 msgstr ""
2154
2155 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2156 msgid ""
2157 "There’s real irony here. The belief in surveillance capitalism as a "
2158 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is driven by the belief that markets "
2159 "wouldn’t tolerate firms that are gripped by false beliefs. An oil company "
2160 "that has false beliefs about where the oil is will eventually go broke "
2161 "digging dry wells after all."
2162 msgstr ""
2163
2164 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2165 msgid ""
2166 "But monopolists get to do terrible things for a long time before they pay "
2167 "the price. Think of how concentration in the finance sector allowed the "
2168 "subprime crisis to fester as bond-rating agencies, regulators, investors, "
2169 "and critics all fell under the sway of a false belief that complex "
2170 "mathematics could construct <quote>fully hedged</quote> debt instruments "
2171 "that could not possibly default. A small bank that engaged in this kind of "
2172 "malfeasance would simply go broke rather than outrunning the inevitable "
2173 "crisis, perhaps growing so big that it averted it altogether. But large "
2174 "banks were able to continue to attract investors, and when they finally "
2175 "<emphasis>did</emphasis> come a-cropper, the world’s governments bailed them "
2176 "out. The worst offenders of the subprime crisis are bigger than they were in "
2177 "2008, bringing home more profits and paying their execs even larger sums."
2178 msgstr ""
2179
2180 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2181 msgid ""
2182 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
2183 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>. The reason every web publisher "
2184 "embeds a Facebook <quote>Like</quote> button is that Facebook dominates the "
2185 "internet’s social media referrals — and every one of those <quote>Like</"
2186 "quote> buttons spies on everyone who lands on a page that contains them (see "
2187 "also: Google Analytics embeds, Twitter buttons, etc.)."
2188 msgstr ""
2189
2190 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2191 msgid ""
2192 "The reason the world’s governments have been slow to create meaningful "
2193 "penalties for privacy breaches is that Big Tech’s concentration produces "
2194 "huge profits that can be used to lobby against those penalties — and Big "
2195 "Tech’s concentration means that the companies involved are able to arrive at "
2196 "a unified negotiating position that supercharges the lobbying."
2197 msgstr ""
2198
2199 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2200 msgid ""
2201 "The reason that the smartest engineers in the world want to work for Big "
2202 "Tech is that Big Tech commands the lion’s share of tech industry jobs."
2203 msgstr ""
2204
2205 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2206 msgid ""
2207 "The reason people who are aghast at Facebook’s and Google’s and Amazon’s "
2208 "data-handling practices continue to use these services is that all their "
2209 "friends are on Facebook; Google dominates search; and Amazon has put all the "
2210 "local merchants out of business."
2211 msgstr ""
2212
2213 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2214 msgid ""
2215 "Competitive markets would weaken the companies’ lobbying muscle by reducing "
2216 "their profits and pitting them against each other in regulatory forums. It "
2217 "would give customers other places to go to get their online services. It "
2218 "would make the companies small enough to regulate and pave the way to "
2219 "meaningful penalties for breaches. It would let engineers with ideas that "
2220 "challenged the surveillance orthodoxy raise capital to compete with the "
2221 "incumbents. It would give web publishers multiple ways to reach audiences "
2222 "and make the case against Facebook and Google and Twitter embeds."
2223 msgstr ""
2224
2225 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2226 msgid ""
2227 "In other words, while surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies "
2228 "certainly abet surveillance."
2229 msgstr ""
2230
2231 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2232 msgid "Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism"
2233 msgstr "Ronald Reagan, pionier monopolizmu technologicznego"
2234
2235 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2236 msgid ""
2237 "Technology exceptionalism is a sin, whether it’s practiced by technology’s "
2238 "blind proponents or by its critics. Both of these camps are prone to "
2239 "explaining away monopolistic concentration by citing some special "
2240 "characteristic of the tech industry, like network effects or first-mover "
2241 "advantage. The only real difference between these two groups is that the "
2242 "tech apologists say monopoly is inevitable so we should just let tech get "
2243 "away with its abuses while competition regulators in the U.S. and the EU say "
2244 "monopoly is inevitable so we should punish tech for its abuses but not try "
2245 "to break up the monopolies."
2246 msgstr ""
2247
2248 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2249 msgid ""
2250 "To understand how tech became so monopolistic, it’s useful to look at the "
2251 "dawn of the consumer tech industry: 1979, the year the Apple II Plus "
2252 "launched and became the first successful home computer. That also happens to "
2253 "be the year that Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail for the 1980 "
2254 "presidential race — a race he won, leading to a radical shift in the way "
2255 "that antitrust concerns are handled in America. Reagan’s cohort of "
2256 "politicians — including Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Brian Mulroney in "
2257 "Canada, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile — went on to "
2258 "enact similar reforms that eventually spread around the world."
2259 msgstr ""
2260
2261 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2262 msgid ""
2263 "Antitrust’s story began nearly a century before all that with laws like the "
2264 "Sherman Act, which took aim at monopolists on the grounds that monopolies "
2265 "were bad in and of themselves — squeezing out competitors, creating "
2266 "<quote>diseconomies of scale</quote> (when a company is so big that its "
2267 "constituent parts go awry and it is seemingly helpless to address the "
2268 "problems), and capturing their regulators to such a degree that they can get "
2269 "away with a host of evils."
2270 msgstr ""
2271
2272 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2273 msgid ""
2274 "Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who "
2275 "Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit "
2276 "and who had created an alternate legislative history of the Sherman Act and "
2277 "its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that these statutes were "
2278 "never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, "
2279 "including the transcribed speeches of the acts’ authors) but, rather, that "
2280 "they were intended to prevent <quote>consumer harm</quote> — in the form of "
2281 "higher prices."
2282 msgstr ""
2283
2284 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2285 msgid ""
2286 "Bork was a crank, but he was a crank with a theory that rich people really "
2287 "liked. Monopolies are a great way to make rich people richer by allowing "
2288 "them to receive <quote>monopoly rents</quote> (that is, bigger profits) and "
2289 "capture regulators, leading to a weaker, more favorable regulatory "
2290 "environment with fewer protections for customers, suppliers, the "
2291 "environment, and workers."
2292 msgstr ""
2293
2294 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2295 msgid ""
2296 "Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who "
2297 "backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies began "
2298 "to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement decisions "
2299 "(Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork flunked the "
2300 "Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, D.C. insiders use "
2301 "the term <quote>borked</quote> to refer to any catastrophically bad "
2302 "political performance)."
2303 msgstr ""
2304
2305 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2306 msgid ""
2307 "Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their backers "
2308 "began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on junkets where "
2309 "members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun outdoor "
2310 "activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the consumer "
2311 "harm theory of antitrust. The more Bork’s theories took hold, the more money "
2312 "the monopolists were making — and the more surplus capital they had at their "
2313 "disposal to lobby for even more Borkian antitrust influence campaigns."
2314 msgstr ""
2315
2316 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2317 msgid ""
2318 "The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the "
2319 "kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns us "
2320 "against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy. But Bork didn’t "
2321 "change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over a "
2322 "generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed "
2323 "oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts in "
2324 "public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that wealth is "
2325 "a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to form a "
2326 "coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue."
2327 msgstr ""
2328
2329 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2330 msgid ""
2331 "Today, many fear that machine learning allows surveillance capitalism to "
2332 "sell <quote>Bork-as-a-Service,</quote> at internet speeds, so that you can "
2333 "contract a machine-learning company to engineer <emphasis>rapid</emphasis> "
2334 "shifts in public sentiment without needing the capital to sustain a "
2335 "multipronged, multigenerational project working at the local, state, "
2336 "national, and global levels in business, law, and philosophy. I do not "
2337 "believe that such a project is plausible, though I agree that this is "
2338 "basically what the platforms claim to be selling. They’re just lying about "
2339 "it. Big Tech lies all the time, <emphasis>including</emphasis> in their "
2340 "sales literature."
2341 msgstr ""
2342
2343 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2344 msgid ""
2345 "The idea that tech forms <quote>natural monopolies</quote> (monopolies that "
2346 "are the inevitable result of the realities of an industry, such as the "
2347 "monopolies that accrue the first company to run long-haul phone lines or "
2348 "rail lines) is belied by tech’s own history: In the absence of anti-"
2349 "competitive tactics, Google was able to unseat AltaVista and Yahoo; Facebook "
2350 "was able to head off Myspace. There are some advantages to gathering "
2351 "mountains of data, but those mountains of data also have disadvantages: "
2352 "liability (from leaking), diminishing returns (from old data), and "
2353 "institutional inertia (big companies, like science, progress one funeral at "
2354 "a time)."
2355 msgstr ""
2356
2357 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2358 msgid ""
2359 "Indeed, the birth of the web saw a mass-extinction event for the existing "
2360 "giant, wildly profitable proprietary technologies that had capital, network "
2361 "effects, and walls and moats surrounding their businesses. The web showed "
2362 "that when a new industry is built around a protocol, rather than a product, "
2363 "the combined might of everyone who uses the protocol to reach their "
2364 "customers or users or communities outweighs even the most massive products. "
2365 "CompuServe, AOL, MSN, and a host of other proprietary walled gardens learned "
2366 "this lesson the hard way: Each believed it could stay separate from the web, "
2367 "offering <quote>curation</quote> and a guarantee of consistency and quality "
2368 "instead of the chaos of an open system. Each was wrong and ended up being "
2369 "absorbed into the public web."
2370 msgstr ""
2371
2372 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2373 msgid ""
2374 "Yes, tech is heavily monopolized and is now closely associated with industry "
2375 "concentration, but this has more to do with a matter of timing than its "
2376 "intrinsically monopolistic tendencies. Tech was born at the moment that "
2377 "antitrust enforcement was being dismantled, and tech fell into exactly the "
2378 "same pathologies that antitrust was supposed to guard against. To a first "
2379 "approximation, it is reasonable to assume that tech’s monopolies are the "
2380 "result of a lack of anti-monopoly action and not the much-touted unique "
2381 "characteristics of tech, such as network effects, first-mover advantage, and "
2382 "so on."
2383 msgstr ""
2384
2385 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2386 msgid ""
2387 "In support of this thesis, I offer the concentration that every "
2388 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> industry has undergone over the same period. From "
2389 "professional wrestling to consumer packaged goods to commercial property "
2390 "leasing to banking to sea freight to oil to record labels to newspaper "
2391 "ownership to theme parks, <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry has undergone "
2392 "a massive shift toward concentration. There’s no obvious network effects or "
2393 "first-mover advantage at play in these industries. However, in every case, "
2394 "these industries attained their concentrated status through tactics that "
2395 "were prohibited before Bork’s triumph: merging with major competitors, "
2396 "buying out innovative new market entrants, horizontal and vertical "
2397 "integration, and a suite of anti-competitive tactics that were once illegal "
2398 "but are not any longer."
2399 msgstr ""
2400
2401 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2402 msgid ""
2403 "Again: When you change the laws intended to prevent monopolies and then "
2404 "monopolies form in exactly the way the law was supposed to prevent, it is "
2405 "reasonable to suppose that these facts are related. Tech’s concentration "
2406 "can be readily explained without recourse to radical theories of network "
2407 "effects — but only if you’re willing to indict unregulated markets as "
2408 "tending toward monopoly. Just as a lifelong smoker can give you a hundred "
2409 "reasons why their smoking didn’t cause their cancer (<quote>It was the "
2410 "environmental toxins</quote>), true believers in unregulated markets have a "
2411 "whole suite of unconvincing explanations for monopoly in tech that leave "
2412 "capitalism intact."
2413 msgstr ""
2414
2415 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2416 msgid "Steering with the windshield wipers"
2417 msgstr "Sterowanie za pomocą wycieraczek przedniej szyby"
2418
2419 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2420 msgid ""
2421 "It’s been 40 years since Bork’s project to rehabilitate monopolies achieved "
2422 "liftoff, and that is a generation and a half, which is plenty of time to "
2423 "take a common idea and make it seem outlandish and vice versa. Before the "
2424 "1940s, affluent Americans dressed their baby boys in pink while baby girls "
2425 "wore blue (a <quote>delicate and dainty</quote> color). While gendered "
2426 "colors are obviously totally arbitrary, many still greet this news with "
2427 "amazement and find it hard to imagine a time when pink connoted masculinity."
2428 msgstr ""
2429
2430 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2431 msgid ""
2432 "After 40 years of studiously ignoring antitrust analysis and enforcement, "
2433 "it’s not surprising that we’ve all but forgotten that antitrust exists, that "
2434 "in living memory, growth through mergers and acquisitions were largely "
2435 "prohibited under law, that market-cornering strategies like vertical "
2436 "integration could land a company in court."
2437 msgstr ""
2438
2439 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2440 msgid ""
2441 "Antitrust is a market society’s steering wheel, the control of first resort "
2442 "to keep would-be masters of the universe in their lanes. But Bork and his "
2443 "cohort ripped out our steering wheel 40 years ago. The car is still "
2444 "barreling along, and so we’re yanking as hard as we can on all the "
2445 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> controls in the car as well as desperately "
2446 "flapping the doors and rolling the windows up and down in the hopes that one "
2447 "of these other controls can be repurposed to let us choose where we’re "
2448 "heading before we careen off a cliff."
2449 msgstr ""
2450
2451 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2452 msgid ""
2453 "It’s like a 1960s science-fiction plot come to life: People stuck in a "
2454 "<quote>generation ship,</quote> plying its way across the stars, a ship once "
2455 "piloted by their ancestors; and now, after a great cataclysm, the ship’s "
2456 "crew have forgotten that they’re in a ship at all and no longer remember "
2457 "where the control room is. Adrift, the ship is racing toward its extinction, "
2458 "and unless we can seize the controls and execute emergency course "
2459 "correction, we’re all headed for a fiery death in the heart of a sun."
2460 msgstr ""
2461
2462 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2463 msgid "Surveillance still matters"
2464 msgstr "Systemy nadzoru mają ciągle znaczenie"
2465
2466 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2467 msgid ""
2468 "None of this is to minimize the problems with surveillance. Surveillance "
2469 "matters, and Big Tech’s use of surveillance <emphasis>is</emphasis> an "
2470 "existential risk to our species, but that’s not because surveillance and "
2471 "machine learning rob us of our free will."
2472 msgstr ""
2473
2474 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2475 msgid ""
2476 "Surveillance has become <emphasis>much</emphasis> more efficient thanks to "
2477 "Big Tech. In 1989, the Stasi — the East German secret police — had the whole "
2478 "country under surveillance, a massive undertaking that recruited one out of "
2479 "every 60 people to serve as an informant or intelligence operative."
2480 msgstr ""
2481
2482 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2483 msgid ""
2484 "Today, we know that the NSA is spying on a significant fraction of the "
2485 "entire world’s population, and its ratio of surveillance operatives to the "
2486 "surveilled is more like 1:10,000 (that’s probably on the low side since it "
2487 "assumes that every American with top-secret clearance is working for the NSA "
2488 "on this project — we don’t know how many of those cleared people are "
2489 "involved in NSA spying, but it’s definitely not all of them)."
2490 msgstr ""
2491
2492 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2493 msgid ""
2494 "How did the ratio of surveillable citizens expand from 1:60 to 1:10,000 in "
2495 "less than 30 years? It’s thanks to Big Tech. Our devices and services gather "
2496 "most of the data that the NSA mines for its surveillance project. We pay for "
2497 "these devices and the services they connect to, and then we painstakingly "
2498 "perform the data-entry tasks associated with logging facts about our lives, "
2499 "opinions, and preferences. This mass surveillance project has been largely "
2500 "useless for fighting terrorism: The NSA can <ulink url=\"https://www."
2501 "washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-of-"
2502 "phone-data-collection-program/2013/08/08/fc915e5a-feda-11e2-96a8-"
2503 "d3b921c0924a_story.html\">only point to a single minor success story</ulink> "
2504 "in which it used its data collection program to foil an attempt by a U.S. "
2505 "resident to wire a few thousand dollars to an overseas terror group. It’s "
2506 "ineffective for much the same reason that commercial surveillance projects "
2507 "are largely ineffective at targeting advertising: The people who want to "
2508 "commit acts of terror, like people who want to buy a refrigerator, are "
2509 "extremely rare. If you’re trying to detect a phenomenon whose base rate is "
2510 "one in a million with an instrument whose accuracy is only 99%, then every "
2511 "true positive will come at the cost of 9,999 false positives."
2512 msgstr ""
2513
2514 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2515 msgid ""
2516 "Let me explain that again: If one in a million people is a terrorist, then "
2517 "there will only be about one terrorist in a random sample of one million "
2518 "people. If your test for detecting terrorists is 99% accurate, it will "
2519 "identify 10,000 terrorists in your million-person sample (1% of one million "
2520 "is 10,000). For every true positive, you’ll get 9,999 false positives."
2521 msgstr ""
2522
2523 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2524 msgid ""
2525 "In reality, the accuracy of algorithmic terrorism detection falls far short "
2526 "of the 99% mark, as does refrigerator ad targeting. The difference is that "
2527 "being falsely accused of wanting to buy a fridge is a minor nuisance while "
2528 "being falsely accused of planning a terror attack can destroy your life and "
2529 "the lives of everyone you love."
2530 msgstr ""
2531
2532 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2533 msgid ""
2534 "Mass state surveillance is only feasible because of surveillance capitalism "
2535 "and its extremely low-yield ad-targeting systems, which require a constant "
2536 "feed of personal data to remain barely viable. Surveillance capitalism’s "
2537 "primary failure mode is mistargeted ads while mass state surveillance’s "
2538 "primary failure mode is grotesque human rights abuses, tending toward "
2539 "totalitarianism."
2540 msgstr ""
2541
2542 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2543 msgid ""
2544 "State surveillance is no mere parasite on Big Tech, sucking up its data and "
2545 "giving nothing in return. In truth, the two are symbiotes: Big Tech sucks up "
2546 "our data for spy agencies, and spy agencies ensure that governments don’t "
2547 "limit Big Tech’s activities so severely that it would no longer serve the "
2548 "spy agencies’ needs. There is no firm distinction between state surveillance "
2549 "and surveillance capitalism; they are dependent on one another."
2550 msgstr ""
2551
2552 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2553 msgid ""
2554 "To see this at work today, look no further than Amazon’s home surveillance "
2555 "device, the Ring doorbell, and its associated app, Neighbors. Ring — a "
2556 "product that Amazon acquired and did not develop in house — makes a camera-"
2557 "enabled doorbell that streams footage from your front door to your mobile "
2558 "device. The Neighbors app allows you to form a neighborhood-wide "
2559 "surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through which you can share "
2560 "clips of <quote>suspicious characters.</quote> If you’re thinking that this "
2561 "sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists supercharge their "
2562 "suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down their blocks, <ulink url="
2563 "\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/amazons-ring-enables-over-policing-"
2564 "efforts-some-americas-deadliest-law-enforcement\">you’re right</ulink>. Ring "
2565 "has become a <emphasis>de facto,</emphasis> off-the-books arm of the police "
2566 "without any of the pesky oversight or rules."
2567 msgstr ""
2568
2569 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2570 msgid ""
2571 "In mid-2019, a series of public records requests revealed that Amazon had "
2572 "struck confidential deals with more than 400 local law enforcement agencies "
2573 "through which the agencies would promote Ring and Neighbors and in exchange "
2574 "get access to footage from Ring cameras. In theory, cops would need to "
2575 "request this footage through Amazon (and internal documents reveal that "
2576 "Amazon devotes substantial resources to coaching cops on how to spin a "
2577 "convincing story when doing so), but in practice, when a Ring customer turns "
2578 "down a police request, Amazon only requires the agency to formally request "
2579 "the footage from the company, which it will then produce."
2580 msgstr ""
2581
2582 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2583 msgid ""
2584 "Ring and law enforcement have found many ways to intertwine their "
2585 "activities. Ring strikes secret deals to acquire real-time access to 911 "
2586 "dispatch and then streams alarming crime reports to Neighbors users, which "
2587 "serve as convincers for anyone who’s contemplating a surveillance doorbell "
2588 "but isn’t sure whether their neighborhood is dangerous enough to warrant it."
2589 msgstr ""
2590
2591 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2592 msgid ""
2593 "The more the cops buzz-market the surveillance capitalist Ring, the more "
2594 "surveillance capability the state gets. Cops who rely on private entities "
2595 "for law-enforcement roles then brief against any controls on the deployment "
2596 "of that technology while the companies return the favor by lobbying against "
2597 "rules requiring public oversight of police surveillance technology. The more "
2598 "the cops rely on Ring and Neighbors, the harder it will be to pass laws to "
2599 "curb them. The fewer laws there are against them, the more the cops will "
2600 "rely on them."
2601 msgstr ""
2602
2603 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2604 msgid "Dignity and sanctuary"
2605 msgstr "Godność i sanktuarium"
2606
2607 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2608 msgid ""
2609 "But even if we could exercise democratic control over our states and force "
2610 "them to stop raiding surveillance capitalism’s reservoirs of behavioral "
2611 "data, surveillance capitalism would still harm us."
2612 msgstr ""
2613
2614 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2615 msgid ""
2616 "This is an area where Zuboff shines. Her chapter on <quote>sanctuary</quote> "
2617 "— the feeling of being unobserved — is a beautiful hymn to introspection, "
2618 "calmness, mindfulness, and tranquility."
2619 msgstr ""
2620
2621 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2622 msgid ""
2623 "When you are watched, something changes. Anyone who has ever raised a child "
2624 "knows this. You might look up from your book (or more realistically, from "
2625 "your phone) and catch your child in a moment of profound realization and "
2626 "growth, a moment where they are learning something that is right at the edge "
2627 "of their abilities, requiring their entire ferocious concentration. For a "
2628 "moment, you’re transfixed, watching that rare and beautiful moment of focus "
2629 "playing out before your eyes, and then your child looks up and sees you "
2630 "seeing them, and the moment collapses. To grow, you need to be and expose "
2631 "your authentic self, and in that moment, you are vulnerable like a hermit "
2632 "crab scuttling from one shell to the next. The tender, unprotected tissues "
2633 "you expose in that moment are too delicate to reveal in the presence of "
2634 "another, even someone you trust as implicitly as a child trusts their parent."
2635 msgstr ""
2636
2637 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2638 msgid ""
2639 "In the digital age, our authentic selves are inextricably tied to our "
2640 "digital lives. Your search history is a running ledger of the questions "
2641 "you’ve pondered. Your location history is a record of the places you’ve "
2642 "sought out and the experiences you’ve had there. Your social graph reveals "
2643 "the different facets of your identity, the people you’ve connected with."
2644 msgstr ""
2645
2646 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2647 msgid ""
2648 "To be observed in these activities is to lose the sanctuary of your "
2649 "authentic self."
2650 msgstr ""
2651
2652 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2653 msgid ""
2654 "There’s another way in which surveillance capitalism robs us of our capacity "
2655 "to be our authentic selves: by making us anxious. Surveillance capitalism "
2656 "isn’t really a mind-control ray, but you don’t need a mind-control ray to "
2657 "make someone anxious. After all, another word for anxiety is agitation, and "
2658 "to make someone experience agitation, you need merely to agitate them. To "
2659 "poke them and prod them and beep at them and buzz at them and bombard them "
2660 "on an intermittent schedule that is just random enough that our limbic "
2661 "systems never quite become inured to it."
2662 msgstr ""
2663
2664 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2665 msgid ""
2666 "Our devices and services are <quote>general purpose</quote> in that they can "
2667 "connect anything or anyone to anything or anyone else and that they can run "
2668 "any program that can be written. This means that the distraction rectangles "
2669 "in our pockets hold our most precious moments with our most beloved people "
2670 "and their most urgent or time-sensitive communications (from <quote>running "
2671 "late can you get the kid?</quote> to <quote>doctor gave me bad news and I "
2672 "need to talk to you RIGHT NOW</quote>) as well as ads for refrigerators and "
2673 "recruiting messages from Nazis."
2674 msgstr ""
2675
2676 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2677 msgid ""
2678 "All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration and "
2679 "tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think through "
2680 "difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated them like "
2681 "this, we’d call it <quote>sleep deprivation torture,</quote> and it would be "
2682 "<ulink url=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SKpRbvnx6g\">a war crime under "
2683 "the Geneva Conventions</ulink>."
2684 msgstr ""
2685
2686 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2687 msgid "Afflicting the afflicted"
2688 msgstr "Dręczenie udręczonych"
2689
2690 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2691 msgid ""
2692 "The effects of surveillance on our ability to be our authentic selves are "
2693 "not equal for all people. Some of us are lucky enough to live in a time and "
2694 "place in which all the most important facts of our lives are widely and "
2695 "roundly socially acceptable and can be publicly displayed without the risk "
2696 "of social consequence."
2697 msgstr ""
2698
2699 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2700 msgid ""
2701 "But for many of us, this is not true. Recall that in living memory, many of "
2702 "the ways of being that we think of as socially acceptable today were once "
2703 "cause for dire social sanction or even imprisonment. If you are 65 years "
2704 "old, you have lived through a time in which people living in <quote>free "
2705 "societies</quote> could be imprisoned or sanctioned for engaging in "
2706 "homosexual activity, for falling in love with a person whose skin was a "
2707 "different color than their own, or for smoking weed."
2708 msgstr ""
2709
2710 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2711 msgid ""
2712 "Today, these activities aren’t just decriminalized in much of the world, "
2713 "they’re considered normal, and the fallen prohibitions are viewed as "
2714 "shameful, regrettable relics of the past."
2715 msgstr ""
2716
2717 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2718 msgid ""
2719 "How did we get from prohibition to normalization? Through private, personal "
2720 "activity: People who were secretly gay or secret pot-smokers or who secretly "
2721 "loved someone with a different skin color were vulnerable to retaliation if "
2722 "they made their true selves known and were limited in how much they could "
2723 "advocate for their own right to exist in the world and be true to "
2724 "themselves. But because there was a private sphere, these people could form "
2725 "alliances with their friends and loved ones who did not share their "
2726 "disfavored traits by having private conversations in which they came out, "
2727 "disclosing their true selves to the people around them and bringing them to "
2728 "their cause one conversation at a time."
2729 msgstr ""
2730
2731 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2732 msgid ""
2733 "The right to choose the time and manner of these conversations was key to "
2734 "their success. It’s one thing to come out to your dad while you’re on a "
2735 "fishing trip away from the world and another thing entirely to blurt it out "
2736 "over the Christmas dinner table while your racist Facebook uncle is there to "
2737 "make a scene."
2738 msgstr ""
2739
2740 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2741 msgid ""
2742 "Without a private sphere, there’s a chance that none of these changes would "
2743 "have come to pass and that the people who benefited from these changes would "
2744 "have either faced social sanction for coming out to a hostile world or would "
2745 "have never been able to reveal their true selves to the people they love."
2746 msgstr ""
2747
2748 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2749 msgid ""
2750 "The corollary is that, unless you think that our society has attained social "
2751 "perfection — that your grandchildren in 50 years will ask you to tell them "
2752 "the story of how, in 2020, every injustice had been righted and no further "
2753 "change had to be made — then you should expect that right now, at this "
2754 "minute, there are people you love, whose happiness is key to your own, who "
2755 "have a secret in their hearts that stops them from ever being their "
2756 "authentic selves with you. These people are sorrowing and will go to their "
2757 "graves with that secret sorrow in their hearts, and the source of that "
2758 "sorrow will be the falsity of their relationship to you."
2759 msgstr ""
2760
2761 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2762 msgid "A private realm is necessary for human progress."
2763 msgstr "Prywatna rzeczywistość jest konieczna dla rozwoju ludzkości."
2764
2765 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2766 msgid "Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak"
2767 msgstr ""
2768 "Jakiekolwiek dane, które zbierasz i przetwarzasz, kiedyś w końcu wyciekną"
2769
2770 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2771 msgid ""
2772 "The lack of a private life can rob vulnerable people of the chance to be "
2773 "their authentic selves and constrain our actions by depriving us of "
2774 "sanctuary, but there is another risk that is borne by everyone, not just "
2775 "people with a secret: crime."
2776 msgstr ""
2777
2778 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2779 msgid ""
2780 "Personally identifying information is of very limited use for the purpose of "
2781 "controlling peoples’ minds, but identity theft — really a catchall term for "
2782 "a whole constellation of terrible criminal activities that can destroy your "
2783 "finances, compromise your personal integrity, ruin your reputation, or even "
2784 "expose you to physical danger — thrives on it."
2785 msgstr ""
2786
2787 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2788 msgid ""
2789 "Attackers are not limited to using data from one breached source, either. "
2790 "Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names, addresses, "
2791 "phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work performance, "
2792 "brushes with the criminal justice system, family details, genetic "
2793 "information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits, search "
2794 "histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other sensitive "
2795 "information. Attackers can merge data from these different breaches to build "
2796 "up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and then use different "
2797 "parts of the data for different criminal purposes."
2798 msgstr ""
2799
2800 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2801 msgid ""
2802 "For example, attackers can use leaked username and password combinations to "
2803 "hijack whole fleets of commercial vehicles that <ulink url=\"https://www."
2804 "vice.com/en_us/article/zmpx4x/hacker-monitor-cars-kill-engine-gps-tracking-"
2805 "apps\">have been fitted with anti-theft GPS trackers and immobilizers</"
2806 "ulink> or to hijack baby monitors in order to <ulink url=\"https://www."
2807 "washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/23/how-nest-designed-keep-intruders-"
2808 "out-peoples-homes-effectively-allowed-hackers-get/?"
2809 "utm_term=.15220e98c550\">terrorize toddlers with the audio tracks from "
2810 "pornography</ulink>. Attackers use leaked data to trick phone companies into "
2811 "giving them your phone number, then they intercept SMS-based two-factor "
2812 "authentication codes in order to take over your email, bank account, and/or "
2813 "cryptocurrency wallets."
2814 msgstr ""
2815
2816 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2817 msgid ""
2818 "Attackers are endlessly inventive in the pursuit of creative ways to "
2819 "weaponize leaked data. One common use of leaked data is to penetrate "
2820 "companies in order to access <emphasis>more</emphasis> data."
2821 msgstr ""
2822
2823 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2824 msgid ""
2825 "Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies over-"
2826 "collecting and over-retaining our data. Spy agencies sometimes pay companies "
2827 "for access to their data or intimidate them into giving it up, but sometimes "
2828 "they work just like criminals do — by <ulink url=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/"
2829 "world-us-canada-24751821\">sneaking data out of companies’ databases</ulink>."
2830 msgstr ""
2831
2832 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2833 msgid ""
2834 "The over-collection of data has a host of terrible social consequences, from "
2835 "the erosion of our authentic selves to the undermining of social progress, "
2836 "from state surveillance to an epidemic of online crime. Commercial "
2837 "surveillance is also a boon to people running influence campaigns, but "
2838 "that’s the least of our troubles."
2839 msgstr ""
2840
2841 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2842 msgid "Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism"
2843 msgstr ""
2844 "Przełomowa wyjątkowość technologiczna jest nadal technologiczną wyjątkowością"
2845
2846 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2847 msgid ""
2848 "Big Tech has long practiced technology exceptionalism: the idea that it "
2849 "should not be subject to the mundane laws and norms of <quote>meatspace.</"
2850 "quote> Mottoes like Facebook’s <quote>move fast and break things</quote> "
2851 "attracted justifiable scorn of the companies’ self-serving rhetoric."
2852 msgstr ""
2853
2854 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2855 msgid ""
2856 "Tech exceptionalism got us all into a lot of trouble, so it’s ironic and "
2857 "distressing to see Big Tech’s critics committing the same sin."
2858 msgstr ""
2859
2860 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2861 msgid ""
2862 "Big Tech is not a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> that cannot be cured "
2863 "through the traditional anti-monopoly remedies of trustbusting (forcing "
2864 "companies to divest of competitors they have acquired) and bans on mergers "
2865 "to monopoly and other anti-competitive tactics. Big Tech does not have the "
2866 "power to use machine learning to influence our behavior so thoroughly that "
2867 "markets lose the ability to punish bad actors and reward superior "
2868 "competitors. Big Tech has no rule-writing mind-control ray that necessitates "
2869 "ditching our old toolbox."
2870 msgstr ""
2871
2872 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2873 msgid ""
2874 "The thing is, people have been claiming to have perfected mind-control rays "
2875 "for centuries, and every time, it turned out to be a con — though sometimes "
2876 "the con artists were also conning themselves."
2877 msgstr ""
2878
2879 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2880 msgid ""
2881 "For generations, the advertising industry has been steadily improving its "
2882 "ability to sell advertising services to businesses while only making "
2883 "marginal gains in selling those businesses’ products to prospective "
2884 "customers. John Wanamaker’s lament that <quote>50% of my advertising budget "
2885 "is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%</quote> is a testament to the triumph "
2886 "of <emphasis>ad executives</emphasis>, who successfully convinced Wanamaker "
2887 "that only half of the money he spent went to waste."
2888 msgstr ""
2889
2890 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2891 msgid ""
2892 "The tech industry has made enormous improvements in the science of "
2893 "convincing businesses that they’re good at advertising while their actual "
2894 "improvements to advertising — as opposed to targeting — have been pretty ho-"
2895 "hum. The vogue for machine learning — and the mystical invocation of "
2896 "<quote>artificial intelligence</quote> as a synonym for straightforward "
2897 "statistical inference techniques — has greatly boosted the efficacy of Big "
2898 "Tech’s sales pitch as marketers have exploited potential customers’ lack of "
2899 "technical sophistication to get away with breathtaking acts of overpromising "
2900 "and underdelivering."
2901 msgstr ""
2902
2903 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2904 msgid ""
2905 "It’s tempting to think that if businesses are willing to pour billions into "
2906 "a venture that the venture must be a good one. Yet there are plenty of times "
2907 "when this rule of thumb has led us astray. For example, it’s virtually "
2908 "unheard of for managed investment funds to outperform simple index funds, "
2909 "and investors who put their money into the hands of expert money managers "
2910 "overwhelmingly fare worse than those who entrust their savings to index "
2911 "funds. But managed funds still account for the majority of the money "
2912 "invested in the markets, and they are patronized by some of the richest, "
2913 "most sophisticated investors in the world. Their vote of confidence in an "
2914 "underperforming sector is a parable about the role of luck in wealth "
2915 "accumulation, not a sign that managed funds are a good buy."
2916 msgstr ""
2917
2918 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2919 msgid ""
2920 "The claims of Big Tech’s mind-control system are full of tells that the "
2921 "enterprise is a con. For example, <ulink url=\"https://www.frontiersin.org/"
2922 "articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01415/full\">the reliance on the <quote>Big "
2923 "Five</quote> personality traits</ulink> as a primary means of influencing "
2924 "people even though the <quote>Big Five</quote> theory is unsupported by any "
2925 "large-scale, peer-reviewed studies and is <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/"
2926 "story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/\">mostly the realm of "
2927 "marketing hucksters and pop psych</ulink>."
2928 msgstr ""
2929
2930 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2931 msgid ""
2932 "Big Tech’s promotional materials also claim that their algorithms can "
2933 "accurately perform <quote>sentiment analysis</quote> or detect peoples’ "
2934 "moods based on their <quote>microexpressions,</quote> but <ulink url="
2935 "\"https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/647040758/advertising-on-facebook-is-it-"
2936 "worth-it\">these are marketing claims, not scientific ones</ulink>. These "
2937 "methods are largely untested by independent scientific experts, and where "
2938 "they have been tested, they’ve been found sorely wanting. Microexpressions "
2939 "are particularly suspect as the companies that specialize in training people "
2940 "to detect them <ulink url=\"https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/tsas-own-"
2941 "files-show-doubtful-science-behind-its-behavior-screening-program/\">have "
2942 "been shown</ulink> to underperform relative to random chance."
2943 msgstr ""
2944
2945 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2946 msgid ""
2947 "Big Tech has been so good at marketing its own supposed superpowers that "
2948 "it’s easy to believe that they can market everything else with similar "
2949 "acumen, but it’s a mistake to believe the hype. Any statement a company "
2950 "makes about the quality of its products is clearly not impartial. The fact "
2951 "that we distrust all the things that Big Tech says about its data handling, "
2952 "compliance with privacy laws, etc., is only reasonable — but why on Earth "
2953 "would we treat Big Tech’s marketing literature as the gospel truth? Big Tech "
2954 "lies about just about <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, including how well "
2955 "its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work."
2956 msgstr ""
2957
2958 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2959 msgid ""
2960 "That skepticism should infuse all of our evaluations of Big Tech and its "
2961 "supposed abilities, including our perusal of its patents. Zuboff vests these "
2962 "patents with enormous significance, pointing out that Google claimed "
2963 "extensive new persuasion capabilities in <ulink url=\"https://patents.google."
2964 "com/patent/US20050131762A1/en\">its patent filings</ulink>. These claims are "
2965 "doubly suspect: first, because they are so self-serving, and second, because "
2966 "the patent itself is so notoriously an invitation to exaggeration."
2967 msgstr ""
2968
2969 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2970 msgid ""
2971 "Patent applications take the form of a series of claims and range from broad "
2972 "to narrow. A typical patent starts out by claiming that its authors have "
2973 "invented a method or system for doing every conceivable thing that anyone "
2974 "might do, ever, with any tool or device. Then it narrows that claim in "
2975 "successive stages until we get to the actual <quote>invention</quote> that "
2976 "is the true subject of the patent. The hope is that the patent examiner — "
2977 "who is almost certainly overworked and underinformed — will miss the fact "
2978 "that some or all of these claims are ridiculous, or at least suspect, and "
2979 "grant the patent’s broader claims. Patents for unpatentable things are still "
2980 "incredibly useful because they can be wielded against competitors who might "
2981 "license that patent or steer clear of its claims rather than endure the "
2982 "lengthy, expensive process of contesting it."
2983 msgstr ""
2984
2985 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2986 msgid ""
2987 "What’s more, software patents are routinely granted even though the filer "
2988 "doesn’t have any evidence that they can do the thing claimed by the patent. "
2989 "That is, you can patent an <quote>invention</quote> that you haven’t "
2990 "actually made and that you don’t know how to make."
2991 msgstr ""
2992
2993 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2994 msgid ""
2995 "With these considerations in hand, it becomes obvious that the fact that a "
2996 "Big Tech company has patented what it <emphasis>says</emphasis> is an "
2997 "effective mind-control ray is largely irrelevant to whether Big Tech can in "
2998 "fact control our minds."
2999 msgstr ""
3000
3001 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3002 msgid ""
3003 "Big Tech collects our data for many reasons, including the diminishing "
3004 "returns on existing stores of data. But many tech companies also collect "
3005 "data out of a mistaken tech exceptionalist belief in the network effects of "
3006 "data. Network effects occur when each new user in a system increases its "
3007 "value. The classic example is fax machines: A single fax machine is of no "
3008 "use, two fax machines are of limited use, but every new fax machine that’s "
3009 "put to use after the first doubles the number of possible fax-to-fax links."
3010 msgstr ""
3011
3012 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3013 msgid ""
3014 "Data mined for predictive systems doesn’t necessarily produce these "
3015 "dividends. Think of Netflix: The predictive value of the data mined from a "
3016 "million English-speaking Netflix viewers is hardly improved by the addition "
3017 "of one more user’s viewing data. Most of the data Netflix acquires after "
3018 "that first minimum viable sample duplicates existing data and produces only "
3019 "minimal gains. Meanwhile, retraining models with new data gets progressively "
3020 "more expensive as the number of data points increases, and manual tasks like "
3021 "labeling and validating data do not get cheaper at scale."
3022 msgstr ""
3023
3024 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3025 msgid ""
3026 "Businesses pursue fads to the detriment of their profits all the time, "
3027 "especially when the businesses and their investors are not motivated by the "
3028 "prospect of becoming profitable but rather by the prospect of being acquired "
3029 "by a Big Tech giant or by having an IPO. For these firms, ticking faddish "
3030 "boxes like <quote>collects as much data as possible</quote> might realize a "
3031 "bigger return on investment than <quote>collects a business-appropriate "
3032 "quantity of data.</quote>"
3033 msgstr ""
3034
3035 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3036 msgid ""
3037 "This is another harm of tech exceptionalism: The belief that more data "
3038 "always produces more profits in the form of more insights that can be "
3039 "translated into better mind-control rays drives firms to over-collect and "
3040 "over-retain data beyond all rationality. And since the firms are behaving "
3041 "irrationally, a good number of them will go out of business and become ghost "
3042 "ships whose cargo holds are stuffed full of data that can harm people in "
3043 "myriad ways — but which no one is responsible for antey longer. Even if the "
3044 "companies don’t go under, the data they collect is maintained behind the "
3045 "minimum viable security — just enough security to keep the company viable "
3046 "while it waits to get bought out by a tech giant, an amount calculated to "
3047 "spend not one penny more than is necessary on protecting data."
3048 msgstr ""
3049
3050 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3051 msgid ""
3052 "How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The "
3053 "Snapchat story"
3054 msgstr ""
3055 "Jak monopole, a nie kontrola umysłu, sterują kapitalizmen opartym na "
3056 "systemach nadzoru: historia Snapchat"
3057
3058 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3059 msgid ""
3060 "For the first decade of its existence, Facebook competed with the social "
3061 "media giants of the day (Myspace, Orkut, etc.) by presenting itself as the "
3062 "pro-privacy alternative. Indeed, Facebook justified its walled garden — "
3063 "which let users bring in data from the web but blocked web services like "
3064 "Google Search from indexing and caching Facebook pages — as a pro-privacy "
3065 "measure that protected users from the surveillance-happy winners of the "
3066 "social media wars like Myspace."
3067 msgstr ""
3068
3069 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3070 msgid ""
3071 "Despite frequent promises that it would never collect or analyze its users’ "
3072 "data, Facebook periodically created initiatives that did just that, like the "
3073 "creepy, ham-fisted Beacon tool, which spied on you as you moved around the "
3074 "web and then added your online activities to your public timeline, allowing "
3075 "your friends to monitor your browsing habits. Beacon sparked a user revolt. "
3076 "Every time, Facebook backed off from its surveillance initiative, but not "
3077 "all the way; inevitably, the new Facebook would be more surveilling than the "
3078 "old Facebook, though not quite as surveilling as the intermediate Facebook "
3079 "following the launch of the new product or service."
3080 msgstr ""
3081
3082 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3083 msgid ""
3084 "The pace at which Facebook ramped up its surveillance efforts seems to have "
3085 "been set by Facebook’s competitive landscape. The more competitors Facebook "
3086 "had, the better it behaved. Every time a major competitor foundered, "
3087 "Facebook’s behavior <ulink url=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?"
3088 "abstract_id=3247362\">got markedly worse</ulink>."
3089 msgstr ""
3090
3091 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3092 msgid ""
3093 "All the while, Facebook was prodigiously acquiring companies, including a "
3094 "company called Onavo. Nominally, Onavo made a battery-monitoring mobile app. "
3095 "But the permissions that Onavo required were so expansive that the app was "
3096 "able to gather fine-grained telemetry on everything users did with their "
3097 "phones, including which apps they used and how they were using them."
3098 msgstr ""
3099
3100 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3101 msgid ""
3102 "Through Onavo, Facebook discovered that it was losing market share to "
3103 "Snapchat, an app that — like Facebook a decade before — billed itself as the "
3104 "pro-privacy alternative to the status quo. Through Onavo, Facebook was able "
3105 "to mine data from the devices of Snapchat users, including both current and "
3106 "former Snapchat users. This spurred Facebook to acquire Instagram — some "
3107 "features of which competed with Snapchat — and then allowed Facebook to fine-"
3108 "tune Instagram’s features and sales pitch to erode Snapchat’s gains and "
3109 "ensure that Facebook would not have to face the kinds of competitive "
3110 "pressures it had earlier inflicted on Myspace and Orkut."
3111 msgstr ""
3112
3113 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3114 msgid ""
3115 "The story of how Facebook crushed Snapchat reveals the relationship between "
3116 "monopoly and surveillance capitalism. Facebook combined surveillance with "
3117 "lax antitrust enforcement to spot the competitive threat of Snapchat on its "
3118 "horizon and then take decisive action against it. Facebook’s surveillance "
3119 "capitalism let it avert competitive pressure with anti-competitive tactics. "
3120 "Facebook users still want privacy — Facebook hasn’t used surveillance to "
3121 "brainwash them out of it — but they can’t get it because Facebook’s "
3122 "surveillance lets it destroy any hope of a rival service emerging that "
3123 "competes on privacy features."
3124 msgstr ""
3125
3126 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3127 msgid "A monopoly over your friends"
3128 msgstr "Monopol sprawowany nad twoimi przyjaciółmi"
3129
3130 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3131 msgid ""
3132 "A decentralization movement has tried to erode the dominance of Facebook and "
3133 "other Big Tech companies by fielding <quote>indieweb</quote> alternatives — "
3134 "Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, Diaspora as a Facebook alternative, etc. "
3135 "— but these efforts have failed to attain any kind of liftoff."
3136 msgstr ""
3137
3138 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3139 msgid ""
3140 "Fundamentally, each of these services is hamstrung by the same problem: "
3141 "Every potential user for a Facebook or Twitter alternative has to convince "
3142 "all their friends to follow them to a decentralized web alternative in order "
3143 "to continue to realize the benefit of social media. For many of us, the only "
3144 "reason to have a Facebook account is that our friends have Facebook "
3145 "accounts, and the reason they have Facebook accounts is that <emphasis>we</"
3146 "emphasis> have Facebook accounts."
3147 msgstr ""
3148
3149 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3150 msgid ""
3151 "All of this has conspired to make Facebook — and other dominant platforms — "
3152 "into <quote>kill zones</quote> that investors will not fund new entrants for."
3153 msgstr ""
3154
3155 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3156 msgid ""
3157 "And yet, all of today’s tech giants came into existence despite the "
3158 "entrenched advantage of the companies that came before them. To understand "
3159 "how that happened, you have to understand both interoperability and "
3160 "adversarial interoperability."
3161 msgstr ""
3162
3163 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
3164 msgid "The hard problem of our species is coordination."
3165 msgstr "Trudnym problemem naszego gatunku jest koordynacja."
3166
3167 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3168 msgid ""
3169 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is the ability of two technologies to work "
3170 "with one another: Anyone can make an LP that will play on any record player, "
3171 "anyone can make a filter you can install in your stove’s extractor fan, "
3172 "anyone can make gasoline for your car, anyone can make a USB phone charger "
3173 "that fits in your car’s cigarette lighter receptacle, anyone can make a "
3174 "light bulb that works in your light socket, anyone can make bread that will "
3175 "toast in your toaster."
3176 msgstr ""
3177
3178 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3179 msgid ""
3180 "Interoperability is often a source of innovation and consumer benefit: Apple "
3181 "made the first commercially successful PC, but millions of independent "
3182 "software vendors made interoperable programs that ran on the Apple II Plus. "
3183 "The simple analog antenna inputs on the back of TVs first allowed cable "
3184 "operators to connect directly to TVs, then they allowed game console "
3185 "companies and then personal computer companies to use standard televisions "
3186 "as displays. Standard RJ-11 telephone jacks allowed for the production of "
3187 "phones from a variety of vendors in a variety of forms, from the free "
3188 "football-shaped phone that came with a <emphasis>Sports Illustrated</"
3189 "emphasis> subscription to business phones with speakers, hold functions, and "
3190 "so on and then answering machines and finally modems, paving the way for the "
3191 "internet revolution."
3192 msgstr ""
3193
3194 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3195 msgid ""
3196 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is often used interchangeably with "
3197 "<quote>standardization,</quote> which is the process when manufacturers and "
3198 "other stakeholders hammer out a set of agreed-upon rules for implementing a "
3199 "technology, such as the electrical plug on your wall, the CAN bus used by "
3200 "your car’s computer systems, or the HTML instructions that your browser "
3201 "interprets."
3202 msgstr ""
3203
3204 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3205 msgid ""
3206 "But interoperability doesn’t require standardization — indeed, "
3207 "standardization often proceeds from the chaos of ad hoc interoperability "
3208 "measures. The inventor of the cigarette-lighter USB charger didn’t need to "
3209 "get permission from car manufacturers or even the manufacturers of the "
3210 "dashboard lighter subcomponent. The automakers didn’t take any "
3211 "countermeasures to prevent the use of these aftermarket accessories by their "
3212 "customers, but they also didn’t do anything to make life easier for the "
3213 "chargers’ manufacturers. This is a kind of <quote>neutral interoperability.</"
3214 "quote>"
3215 msgstr ""
3216
3217 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3218 msgid ""
3219 "Beyond neutral interoperability, there is <quote>adversarial "
3220 "interoperability.</quote> That’s when a manufacturer makes a product that "
3221 "interoperates with another manufacturer’s product <emphasis>despite the "
3222 "second manufacturer’s objections</emphasis> and <emphasis>even if that means "
3223 "bypassing a security system designed to prevent interoperability</emphasis>."
3224 msgstr ""
3225
3226 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3227 msgid ""
3228 "Probably the most familiar form of adversarial interoperability is third-"
3229 "party printer ink. Printer manufacturers claim that they sell printers below "
3230 "cost and that the only way they can recoup the losses they incur is by "
3231 "charging high markups on ink. To prevent the owners of printers from buying "
3232 "ink elsewhere, the printer companies deploy a suite of anti-customer "
3233 "security systems that detect and reject both refilled and third-party "
3234 "cartridges."
3235 msgstr ""
3236
3237 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3238 msgid ""
3239 "Owners of printers take the position that HP and Epson and Brother are not "
3240 "charities and that customers for their wares have no obligation to help them "
3241 "survive, and so if the companies choose to sell their products at a loss, "
3242 "that’s their foolish choice and their consequences to live with. Likewise, "
3243 "competitors who make ink or refill kits observe that they don’t owe printer "
3244 "companies anything, and their erosion of printer companies’ margins are the "
3245 "printer companies’ problems, not their competitors’. After all, the printer "
3246 "companies shed no tears when they drive a refiller out of business, so why "
3247 "should the refillers concern themselves with the economic fortunes of the "
3248 "printer companies?"
3249 msgstr ""
3250
3251 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3252 msgid ""
3253 "Adversarial interoperability has played an outsized role in the history of "
3254 "the tech industry: from the founding of the <quote>alt.*</quote> Usenet "
3255 "hierarchy (which was started against the wishes of Usenet’s maintainers and "
3256 "which grew to be bigger than all of Usenet combined) to the browser wars "
3257 "(when Netscape and Microsoft devoted massive engineering efforts to making "
3258 "their browsers incompatible with the other’s special commands and "
3259 "peccadilloes) to Facebook (whose success was built in part by helping its "
3260 "new users stay in touch with friends they’d left behind on Myspace because "
3261 "Facebook supplied them with a tool that scraped waiting messages from "
3262 "Myspace and imported them into Facebook, effectively creating an Facebook-"
3263 "based Myspace reader)."
3264 msgstr ""
3265
3266 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3267 msgid ""
3268 "Today, incumbency is seen as an unassailable advantage. Facebook is where "
3269 "all of your friends are, so no one can start a Facebook competitor. But "
3270 "adversarial compatibility reverses the competitive advantage: If you were "
3271 "allowed to compete with Facebook by providing a tool that imported all your "
3272 "users’ waiting Facebook messages into an environment that competed on lines "
3273 "that Facebook couldn’t cross, like eliminating surveillance and ads, then "
3274 "Facebook would be at a huge disadvantage. It would have assembled all "
3275 "possible ex-Facebook users into a single, easy-to-find service; it would "
3276 "have educated them on how a Facebook-like service worked and what its "
3277 "potential benefits were; and it would have provided an easy means for "
3278 "disgruntled Facebook users to tell their friends where they might expect "
3279 "better treatment."
3280 msgstr ""
3281
3282 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3283 msgid ""
3284 "Adversarial interoperability was once the norm and a key contributor to the "
3285 "dynamic, vibrant tech scene, but now it is stuck behind a thicket of laws "
3286 "and regulations that add legal risks to the tried-and-true tactics of "
3287 "adversarial interoperability. New rules and new interpretations of existing "
3288 "rules mean that a would-be adversarial interoperator needs to steer clear of "
3289 "claims under copyright, terms of service, trade secrecy, tortious "
3290 "interference, and patent."
3291 msgstr ""
3292
3293 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3294 msgid ""
3295 "In the absence of a competitive market, lawmakers have resorted to assigning "
3296 "expensive, state-like duties to Big Tech firms, such as automatically "
3297 "filtering user contributions for copyright infringement or terrorist and "
3298 "extremist content or detecting and preventing harassment in real time or "
3299 "controlling access to sexual material."
3300 msgstr ""
3301
3302 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3303 msgid ""
3304 "These measures put a floor under how small we can make Big Tech because only "
3305 "the very largest companies can afford the humans and automated filters "
3306 "needed to perform these duties."
3307 msgstr ""
3308
3309 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3310 msgid ""
3311 "But that’s not the only way in which making platforms responsible for "
3312 "policing their users undermines competition. A platform that is expected to "
3313 "police its users’ conduct must prevent many vital adversarial "
3314 "interoperability techniques lest these subvert its policing measures. For "
3315 "example, if someone using a Twitter replacement like Mastodon is able to "
3316 "push messages into Twitter and read messages out of Twitter, they could "
3317 "avoid being caught by automated systems that detect and prevent harassment "
3318 "(such as systems that use the timing of messages or IP-based rules to make "
3319 "guesses about whether someone is a harasser)."
3320 msgstr ""
3321
3322 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3323 msgid ""
3324 "To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather "
3325 "than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for "
3326 "better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform "
3327 "out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their "
3328 "communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to "
3329 "block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal "
3330 "enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial interoperability."
3331 msgstr ""
3332
3333 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3334 msgid ""
3335 "Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts "
3336 "by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to "
3337 "size. But we can’t do both. To replace today’s giant products with "
3338 "pluralistic protocols, we need to clear the legal thicket that prevents "
3339 "adversarial interoperability so that tomorrow’s nimble, personal, small-"
3340 "scale products can federate themselves with giants like Facebook, allowing "
3341 "the users who’ve left to continue to communicate with users who haven’t left "
3342 "yet, reaching tendrils over Facebook’s garden wall that Facebook’s trapped "
3343 "users can use to scale the walls and escape to the global, open web."
3344 msgstr ""
3345
3346 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3347 msgid "Fake news is an epistemological crisis"
3348 msgstr "Fałszywe wiadomości to oznaka kryzysu epistemologicznego"
3349
3350 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3351 msgid ""
3352 "Tech is not the only industry that has undergone massive concentration since "
3353 "the Reagan era. Virtually every major industry — from oil to newspapers to "
3354 "meatpacking to sea freight to eyewear to online pornography — has become a "
3355 "clubby oligarchy that just a few players dominate."
3356 msgstr ""
3357
3358 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3359 msgid ""
3360 "At the same time, every industry has become something of a tech industry as "
3361 "general-purpose computers and general-purpose networks and the promise of "
3362 "efficiencies through data-driven analysis infuse every device, process, and "
3363 "firm with tech."
3364 msgstr ""
3365
3366 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3367 msgid ""
3368 "This phenomenon of industrial concentration is part of a wider story about "
3369 "wealth concentration overall as a smaller and smaller number of people own "
3370 "more and more of our world. This concentration of both wealth and industries "
3371 "means that our political outcomes are increasingly beholden to the parochial "
3372 "interests of the people and companies with all the money."
3373 msgstr ""
3374
3375 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3376 msgid ""
3377 "That means that whenever a regulator asks a question with an obvious, "
3378 "empirical answer (<quote>Are humans causing climate change?</quote> or "
3379 "<quote>Should we let companies conduct commercial mass surveillance?</quote> "
3380 "or <quote>Does society benefit from allowing network neutrality violations?</"
3381 "quote>), the answer that comes out is only correct if that correctness meets "
3382 "with the approval of rich people and the industries that made them so "
3383 "wealthy."
3384 msgstr ""
3385
3386 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3387 msgid ""
3388 "Rich people have always played an outsized role in politics and more so "
3389 "since the Supreme Court’s <emphasis>Citizens United</emphasis> decision "
3390 "eliminated key controls over political spending. Widening inequality and "
3391 "wealth concentration means that the very richest people are now a lot richer "
3392 "and can afford to spend a lot more money on political projects than ever "
3393 "before. Think of the Koch brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates."
3394 msgstr ""
3395
3396 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3397 msgid ""
3398 "But the policy distortions of rich individuals pale in comparison to the "
3399 "policy distortions that concentrated industries are capable of. The "
3400 "companies in highly concentrated industries are much more profitable than "
3401 "companies in competitive industries — no competition means not having to "
3402 "reduce prices or improve quality to win customers — leaving them with bigger "
3403 "capital surpluses to spend on lobbying."
3404 msgstr ""
3405
3406 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3407 msgid ""
3408 "Concentrated industries also find it easier to collaborate on policy "
3409 "objectives than competitive ones. When all the top execs from your industry "
3410 "can fit around a single boardroom table, they often do. And <emphasis>when</"
3411 "emphasis> they do, they can forge a consensus position on regulation."
3412 msgstr ""
3413
3414 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3415 msgid ""
3416 "Rising through the ranks in a concentrated industry generally means working "
3417 "at two or three of the big companies. When there are only relatively few "
3418 "companies in a given industry, each company has a more ossified executive "
3419 "rank, leaving ambitious execs with fewer paths to higher positions unless "
3420 "they are recruited to a rival. This means that the top execs in concentrated "
3421 "industries are likely to have been colleagues at some point and socialize in "
3422 "the same circles — connected through social ties or, say, serving as "
3423 "trustees for each others’ estates. These tight social bonds foster a "
3424 "collegial, rather than competitive, attitude."
3425 msgstr ""
3426
3427 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3428 msgid ""
3429 "Highly concentrated industries also present a regulatory conundrum. When an "
3430 "industry is dominated by just four or five companies, the only people who "
3431 "are likely to truly understand the industry’s practices are its veteran "
3432 "executives. This means that top regulators are often former execs of the "
3433 "companies they are supposed to be regulating. These turns in government are "
3434 "often tacitly understood to be leaves of absence from industry, with former "
3435 "employers welcoming their erstwhile watchdogs back into their executive "
3436 "ranks once their terms have expired."
3437 msgstr ""
3438
3439 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3440 msgid ""
3441 "All this is to say that the tight social bonds, small number of firms, and "
3442 "regulatory capture of concentrated industries give the companies that "
3443 "comprise them the power to dictate many, if not all, of the regulations that "
3444 "bind them."
3445 msgstr ""
3446
3447 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3448 msgid ""
3449 "This is increasingly obvious. Whether it’s payday lenders <ulink url="
3450 "\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/25/how-payday-lending-"
3451 "industry-insider-tilted-academic-research-its-favor/\">winning the right to "
3452 "practice predatory lending</ulink> or Apple <ulink url=\"https://www.vice."
3453 "com/en_us/article/mgxayp/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation"
3454 "\">winning the right to decide who can fix your phone</ulink> or Google and "
3455 "Facebook winning the right to breach your private data without suffering "
3456 "meaningful consequences or victories for pipeline companies or impunity for "
3457 "opioid manufacturers or massive tax subsidies for incredibly profitable "
3458 "dominant businesses, it’s increasingly apparent that many of our official, "
3459 "evidence-based truth-seeking processes are, in fact, auctions for sale to "
3460 "the highest bidder."
3461 msgstr ""
3462
3463 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3464 msgid ""
3465 "It’s really impossible to overstate what a terrifying prospect this is. We "
3466 "live in an incredibly high-tech society, and none of us could acquire the "
3467 "expertise to evaluate every technological proposition that stands between us "
3468 "and our untimely, horrible deaths. You might devote your life to acquiring "
3469 "the media literacy to distinguish good scientific journals from corrupt pay-"
3470 "for-play lookalikes and the statistical literacy to evaluate the quality of "
3471 "the analysis in the journals as well as the microbiology and epidemiology "
3472 "knowledge to determine whether you can trust claims about the safety of "
3473 "vaccines — but that would still leave you unqualified to judge whether the "
3474 "wiring in your home will give you a lethal shock <emphasis>and</emphasis> "
3475 "whether your car’s brakes’ software will cause them to fail unpredictably "
3476 "<emphasis>and</emphasis> whether the hygiene standards at your butcher are "
3477 "sufficient to keep you from dying after you finish your dinner."
3478 msgstr ""
3479
3480 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3481 msgid ""
3482 "In a world as complex as this one, we have to defer to authorities, and we "
3483 "keep them honest by making those authorities accountable to us and binding "
3484 "them with rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We can’t possibly acquire "
3485 "the expertise to adjudicate conflicting claims about the best way to make "
3486 "the world safe and prosperous, but we <emphasis>can</emphasis> determine "
3487 "whether the adjudication process itself is trustworthy."
3488 msgstr ""
3489
3490 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3491 msgid "Right now, it’s obviously not."
3492 msgstr ""
3493
3494 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3495 msgid ""
3496 "The past 40 years of rising inequality and industry concentration, together "
3497 "with increasingly weak accountability and transparency for expert agencies, "
3498 "has created an increasingly urgent sense of impending doom, the sense that "
3499 "there are vast conspiracies afoot that operate with tacit official approval "
3500 "despite the likelihood they are working to better themselves by ruining the "
3501 "rest of us."
3502 msgstr ""
3503
3504 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3505 msgid ""
3506 "For example, it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that "
3507 "its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those "
3508 "decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and "
3509 "sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the "
3510 "cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you and everyone "
3511 "you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start "
3512 "questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether "
3513 "they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy."
3514 msgstr ""
3515
3516 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3517 msgid ""
3518 "The collapse of the credibility of our systems for divining and upholding "
3519 "truths has left us in a state of epistemological chaos. Once, most of us "
3520 "might have assumed that the system was working and that our regulations "
3521 "reflected our best understanding of the empirical truths of the world as "
3522 "they were best understood — now we have to find our own experts to help us "
3523 "sort the true from the false."
3524 msgstr ""
3525
3526 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3527 msgid ""
3528 "If you’re like me, you probably believe that vaccines are safe, but you "
3529 "(like me) probably also can’t explain the microbiology or statistics. Few of "
3530 "us have the math skills to review the literature on vaccine safety and "
3531 "describe why their statistical reasoning is sound. Likewise, few of us can "
3532 "review the stats in the (now discredited) literature on opioid safety and "
3533 "explain how those stats were manipulated. Both vaccines and opioids were "
3534 "embraced by medical authorities, after all, and one is safe while the other "
3535 "could ruin your life. You’re left with a kind of inchoate constellation of "
3536 "rules of thumb about which experts you trust to fact-check controversial "
3537 "claims and then to explain how all those respectable doctors with their peer-"
3538 "reviewed research on opioid safety <emphasis>were</emphasis> an aberration "
3539 "and then how you know that the doctors writing about vaccine safety are "
3540 "<emphasis>not</emphasis> an aberration."
3541 msgstr ""
3542
3543 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3544 msgid ""
3545 "I’m 100% certain that vaccinating is safe and effective, but I’m also at "
3546 "something of a loss to explain exactly, <emphasis>precisely,</emphasis> why "
3547 "I believe this, given all the corruption I know about and the many times the "
3548 "stamp of certainty has turned out to be a parochial lie told to further "
3549 "enrich the super rich."
3550 msgstr ""
3551
3552 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3553 msgid ""
3554 "Fake news — conspiracy theories, racist ideologies, scientific denialism — "
3555 "has always been with us. What’s changed today is not the mix of ideas in the "
3556 "public discourse but the popularity of the worst ideas in that mix. "
3557 "Conspiracy and denial have skyrocketed in lockstep with the growth of Big "
3558 "Inequality, which has also tracked the rise of Big Tech and Big Pharma and "
3559 "Big Wrestling and Big Car and Big Movie Theater and Big Everything Else."
3560 msgstr ""
3561
3562 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3563 msgid ""
3564 "No one can say for certain why this has happened, but the two dominant camps "
3565 "are idealism (the belief that the people who argue for these conspiracies "
3566 "have gotten better at explaining them, maybe with the help of machine-"
3567 "learning tools) or materialism (the ideas have become more attractive "
3568 "because of material conditions in the world)."
3569 msgstr ""
3570
3571 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3572 msgid ""
3573 "I’m a materialist. I’ve been exposed to the arguments of conspiracy "
3574 "theorists all my life, and I have not experienced any qualitative leap in "
3575 "the quality of those arguments."
3576 msgstr ""
3577
3578 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3579 msgid ""
3580 "The major difference is in the world, not the arguments. In a time where "
3581 "actual conspiracies are commonplace, conspiracy theories acquire a ring of "
3582 "plausibility."
3583 msgstr ""
3584
3585 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3586 msgid ""
3587 "We have always had disagreements about what’s true, but today, we have a "
3588 "disagreement over how we know whether something is true. This is an "
3589 "epistemological crisis, not a crisis over belief. It’s a crisis over the "
3590 "credibility of our truth-seeking exercises, from scientific journals (in an "
3591 "era where the biggest journal publishers have been caught producing pay-to-"
3592 "play journals for junk science) to regulations (in an era where regulators "
3593 "are routinely cycling in and out of business) to education (in an era where "
3594 "universities are dependent on corporate donations to keep their lights on)."
3595 msgstr ""
3596
3597 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3598 msgid ""
3599 "Targeting — surveillance capitalism — makes it easier to find people who are "
3600 "undergoing this epistemological crisis, but it doesn’t create the crisis. "
3601 "For that, you need to look to corruption."
3602 msgstr ""
3603
3604 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3605 msgid ""
3606 "And, conveniently enough, it’s corruption that allows surveillance "
3607 "capitalism to grow by dismantling monopoly protections, by permitting "
3608 "reckless collection and retention of personal data, by allowing ads to be "
3609 "targeted in secret, and by foreclosing on the possibility of going somewhere "
3610 "else where you might continue to enjoy your friends without subjecting "
3611 "yourself to commercial surveillance."
3612 msgstr ""
3613
3614 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3615 msgid "Tech is different"
3616 msgstr "Technologia jest czymś odmiennym"
3617
3618 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3619 msgid ""
3620 "I reject both iterations of technological exceptionalism. I reject the idea "
3621 "that tech is uniquely terrible and led by people who are greedier or worse "
3622 "than the leaders of other industries, and I reject the idea that tech is so "
3623 "good — or so intrinsically prone to concentration — that it can’t be blamed "
3624 "for its present-day monopolistic status."
3625 msgstr ""
3626
3627 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3628 msgid ""
3629 "I think tech is just another industry, albeit one that grew up in the "
3630 "absence of real monopoly constraints. It may have been first, but it isn’t "
3631 "the worst nor will it be the last."
3632 msgstr ""
3633
3634 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3635 msgid ""
3636 "But there’s one way in which I <emphasis>am</emphasis> a tech "
3637 "exceptionalist. I believe that online tools are the key to overcoming "
3638 "problems that are much more urgent than tech monopolization: climate change, "
3639 "inequality, misogyny, and discrimination on the basis of race, gender "
3640 "identity, and other factors. The internet is how we will recruit people to "
3641 "fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor. Tech is not a "
3642 "substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or "
3643 "stability — but it’s a means to achieve these things."
3644 msgstr ""
3645
3646 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3647 msgid ""
3648 "The hard problem of our species is coordination. Everything from climate "
3649 "change to social change to running a business to making a family work can be "
3650 "viewed as a collective action problem."
3651 msgstr ""
3652
3653 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3654 msgid ""
3655 "The internet makes it easier than at any time before to find people who want "
3656 "to work on a project with you — hence the success of free and open-source "
3657 "software, crowdfunding, and racist terror groups — and easier than ever to "
3658 "coordinate the work you do."
3659 msgstr ""
3660
3661 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3662 msgid ""
3663 "The internet and the computers we connect to it also possess an exceptional "
3664 "quality: general-purposeness. The internet is designed to allow any two "
3665 "parties to communicate any data, using any protocol, without permission from "
3666 "anyone else. The only production design we have for computers is the general-"
3667 "purpose, <quote>Turing complete</quote> computer that can run every program "
3668 "we can express in symbolic logic."
3669 msgstr ""
3670
3671 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3672 msgid ""
3673 "This means that every time someone with a special communications need "
3674 "invests in infrastructure and techniques to make the internet faster, "
3675 "cheaper, and more robust, this benefit redounds to everyone else who is "
3676 "using the internet to communicate. And this also means that every time "
3677 "someone with a special computing need invests to make computers faster, "
3678 "cheaper, and more robust, every other computing application is a potential "
3679 "beneficiary of this work."
3680 msgstr ""
3681
3682 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3683 msgid ""
3684 "For these reasons, every type of communication is gradually absorbed into "
3685 "the internet, and every type of device — from airplanes to pacemakers — "
3686 "eventually becomes a computer in a fancy case."
3687 msgstr ""
3688
3689 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3690 msgid ""
3691 "While these considerations don’t preclude regulating networks and computers, "
3692 "they do call for gravitas and caution when doing so because changes to "
3693 "regulatory frameworks could ripple out to have unintended consequences in "
3694 "many, many other domains."
3695 msgstr ""
3696
3697 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3698 msgid ""
3699 "The upshot of this is that our best hope of solving the big coordination "
3700 "problems — climate change, inequality, etc. — is with free, fair, and open "
3701 "tech. Our best hope of keeping tech free, fair, and open is to exercise "
3702 "caution in how we regulate tech and to attend closely to the ways in which "
3703 "interventions to solve one problem might create problems in other domains."
3704 msgstr ""
3705
3706 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3707 msgid "Ownership of facts"
3708 msgstr "Własność faktów"
3709
3710 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3711 msgid ""
3712 "Big Tech has a funny relationship with information. When you’re generating "
3713 "information — anything from the location data streaming off your mobile "
3714 "device to the private messages you send to friends on a social network — it "
3715 "claims the rights to make unlimited use of that data."
3716 msgstr ""
3717
3718 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3719 msgid ""
3720 "But when you have the audacity to turn the tables — to use a tool that "
3721 "blocks ads or slurps your waiting updates out of a social network and puts "
3722 "them in another app that lets you set your own priorities and suggestions or "
3723 "crawls their system to allow you to start a rival business — they claim that "
3724 "you’re stealing from them."
3725 msgstr ""
3726
3727 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3728 msgid ""
3729 "The thing is, information is a very bad fit for any kind of private property "
3730 "regime. Property rights are useful for establishing markets that can lead to "
3731 "the effective development of fallow assets. These markets depend on clear "
3732 "titles to ensure that the things being bought and sold in them can, in fact, "
3733 "be bought and sold."
3734 msgstr ""
3735
3736 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3737 msgid ""
3738 "Information rarely has such a clear title. Take phone numbers: There’s "
3739 "clearly something going wrong when Facebook slurps up millions of users’ "
3740 "address books and uses the phone numbers it finds in them to plot out social "
3741 "graphs and fill in missing information about other users."
3742 msgstr ""
3743
3744 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3745 msgid ""
3746 "But the phone numbers Facebook nonconsensually acquires in this transaction "
3747 "are not the <quote>property</quote> of the users they’re taken from nor do "
3748 "they belong to the people whose phones ring when you dial those numbers. The "
3749 "numbers are mere integers, 10 digits in the U.S. and Canada, and they "
3750 "appear in millions of places, including somewhere deep in pi as well as "
3751 "numerous other contexts. Giving people ownership titles to integers is an "
3752 "obviously terrible idea."
3753 msgstr ""
3754
3755 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3756 msgid ""
3757 "Likewise for the facts that Facebook and other commercial surveillance "
3758 "operators acquire about us, like that we are the children of our parents or "
3759 "the parents to our children or that we had a conversation with someone else "
3760 "or went to a public place. These data points can’t be property in the sense "
3761 "that your house or your shirt is your property because the title to them is "
3762 "intrinsically muddy: Does your mom own the fact that she is your mother? Do "
3763 "you? Do both of you? What about your dad — does he own this fact too, or "
3764 "does he have to license the fact from you (or your mom or both of you) in "
3765 "order to use this fact? What about the hundreds or thousands of other people "
3766 "who know these facts?"
3767 msgstr ""
3768
3769 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3770 msgid ""
3771 "If you go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, do the other demonstrators "
3772 "need your permission to post their photos from the event? The online fights "
3773 "over <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-take-photos-at-protests/"
3774 "\">when and how to post photos from demonstrations</ulink> reveal a nuanced, "
3775 "complex issue that cannot be easily hand-waved away by giving one party a "
3776 "property right that everyone else in the mix has to respect."
3777 msgstr ""
3778
3779 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3780 msgid ""
3781 "The fact that information isn’t a good fit with property and markets doesn’t "
3782 "mean that it’s not valuable. Babies aren’t property, but they’re inarguably "
3783 "valuable. In fact, we have a whole set of rules just for babies as well as a "
3784 "subset of those rules that apply to humans more generally. Someone who "
3785 "argues that babies won’t be truly valuable until they can be bought and sold "
3786 "like loaves of bread would be instantly and rightfully condemned as a "
3787 "monster."
3788 msgstr ""
3789
3790 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3791 msgid ""
3792 "It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your "
3793 "information like a nail — not least because Big Tech are such prolific "
3794 "abusers of property hammers when it comes to <emphasis>their</emphasis> "
3795 "information. But this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use "
3796 "of our information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market "
3797 "where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as to "
3798 "be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of zero in a "
3799 "click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to modify."
3800 msgstr ""
3801
3802 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3803 msgid ""
3804 "Meanwhile, establishing property rights over information will create "
3805 "insurmountable barriers to independent data processing. Imagine that we "
3806 "require a license to be negotiated when a translated document is compared "
3807 "with its original, something Google has done and continues to do billions of "
3808 "times to train its automated language translation tools. Google can afford "
3809 "this, but independent third parties cannot. Google can staff a clearances "
3810 "department to negotiate one-time payments to the likes of the EU (one of the "
3811 "major repositories of translated documents) while independent watchdogs "
3812 "wanting to verify that the translations are well-prepared, or to root out "
3813 "bias in translations, will find themselves needing a staffed-up legal "
3814 "department and millions for licenses before they can even get started."
3815 msgstr ""
3816
3817 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3818 msgid ""
3819 "The same goes for things like search indexes of the web or photos of "
3820 "peoples’ houses, which have become contentious thanks to Google’s Street "
3821 "View project. Whatever problems may exist with Google’s photographing of "
3822 "street scenes, resolving them by letting people decide who can take pictures "
3823 "of the facades of their homes from a public street will surely create even "
3824 "worse ones. Think of how street photography is important for newsgathering — "
3825 "including informal newsgathering, like photographing abuses of authority — "
3826 "and how being able to document housing and street life are important for "
3827 "contesting eminent domain, advocating for social aid, reporting planning and "
3828 "zoning violations, documenting discriminatory and unequal living conditions, "
3829 "and more."
3830 msgstr ""
3831
3832 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3833 msgid ""
3834 "The ownership of facts is antithetical to many kinds of human progress. It’s "
3835 "hard to imagine a rule that limits Big Tech’s exploitation of our collective "
3836 "labors without inadvertently banning people from gathering data on online "
3837 "harassment or compiling indexes of changes in language or simply "
3838 "investigating how the platforms are shaping our discourse — all of which "
3839 "require scraping data that other people have created and subjecting it to "
3840 "scrutiny and analysis."
3841 msgstr ""
3842
3843 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3844 msgid "Persuasion works… slowly"
3845 msgstr "Przekonywanie działa… powoli"
3846
3847 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3848 msgid ""
3849 "The platforms may oversell their ability to persuade people, but obviously, "
3850 "persuasion works sometimes. Whether it’s the private realm that LGBTQ people "
3851 "used to recruit allies and normalize sexual diversity or the decadeslong "
3852 "project to convince people that markets are the only efficient way to solve "
3853 "complicated resource allocation problems, it’s clear that our societal "
3854 "attitudes <emphasis>can</emphasis> change."
3855 msgstr ""
3856
3857 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3858 msgid ""
3859 "The project of shifting societal attitudes is a game of inches and years. "
3860 "For centuries, svengalis have purported to be able to accelerate this "
3861 "process, but even the most brutal forms of propaganda have struggled to make "
3862 "permanent changes. Joseph Goebbels was able to subject Germans to daily, "
3863 "mandatory, hourslong radio broadcasts, to round up and torture and murder "
3864 "dissidents, and to seize full control over their children’s education while "
3865 "banning any literature, broadcasts, or films that did not comport with his "
3866 "worldview."
3867 msgstr ""
3868
3869 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3870 msgid ""
3871 "Yet, after 12 years of terror, once the war ended, Nazi ideology was largely "
3872 "discredited in both East and West Germany, and a program of national truth "
3873 "and reconciliation was put in its place. Racism and authoritarianism were "
3874 "never fully abolished in Germany, but neither were the majority of Germans "
3875 "irrevocably convinced of Nazism — and the rise of racist authoritarianism in "
3876 "Germany today tells us that the liberal attitudes that replaced Nazism were "
3877 "no more permanent than Nazism itself."
3878 msgstr ""
3879
3880 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3881 msgid ""
3882 "Racism and authoritarianism have also always been with us. Anyone who’s "
3883 "reviewed the kind of messages and arguments that racists put forward today "
3884 "would be hard-pressed to say that they have gotten better at presenting "
3885 "their ideas. The same pseudoscience, appeals to fear, and circular logic "
3886 "that racists presented in the 1980s, when the cause of white supremacy was "
3887 "on the wane, are to be found in the communications of leading white "
3888 "nationalists today."
3889 msgstr ""
3890
3891 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3892 msgid ""
3893 "If racists haven’t gotten more convincing in the past decade, then how is it "
3894 "that more people were convinced to be openly racist at that time? I believe "
3895 "that the answer lies in the material world, not the world of ideas. The "
3896 "ideas haven’t gotten more convincing, but people have become more afraid. "
3897 "Afraid that the state can’t be trusted to act as an honest broker in life-or-"
3898 "death decisions, from those regarding the management of the economy to the "
3899 "regulation of painkillers to the rules for handling private information. "
3900 "Afraid that the world has become a game of musical chairs in which the "
3901 "chairs are being taken away at a never-before-seen rate. Afraid that justice "
3902 "for others will come at their expense. Monopolism isn’t the cause of these "
3903 "fears, but the inequality and material desperation and policy malpractice "
3904 "that monopolism contributes to is a significant contributor to these "
3905 "conditions. Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies and "
3906 "violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets "
3907 "opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded."
3908 msgstr ""
3909
3910 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3911 msgid "Paying won’t help"
3912 msgstr "Płacenie nie pomoże"
3913
3914 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3915 msgid ""
3916 "As the old saw goes, <quote>If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the "
3917 "product.</quote>"
3918 msgstr ""
3919
3920 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3921 msgid ""
3922 "It’s a commonplace belief today that the advent of free, ad-supported media "
3923 "was the original sin of surveillance capitalism. The reasoning is that the "
3924 "companies that charged for access couldn’t <quote>compete with free</quote> "
3925 "and so they were driven out of business. Their ad-supported competitors, "
3926 "meanwhile, declared open season on their users’ data in a bid to improve "
3927 "their ad targeting and make more money and then resorted to the most "
3928 "sensationalist tactics to generate clicks on those ads. If only we’d pay for "
3929 "media again, we’d have a better, more responsible, more sober discourse that "
3930 "would be better for democracy."
3931 msgstr ""
3932
3933 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3934 msgid ""
3935 "But the degradation of news products long precedes the advent of ad-"
3936 "supported online news. Long before newspapers were online, lax antitrust "
3937 "enforcement had opened the door for unprecedented waves of consolidation and "
3938 "roll-ups in newsrooms. Rival newspapers were merged, reporters and ad sales "
3939 "staff were laid off, physical plants were sold and leased back, leaving the "
3940 "companies loaded up with debt through leveraged buyouts and subsequent "
3941 "profit-taking by the new owners. In other words, it wasn’t merely shifts in "
3942 "the classified advertising market, which was long held to be the primary "
3943 "driver in the decline of the traditional newsroom, that made news companies "
3944 "unable to adapt to the internet — it was monopolism."
3945 msgstr ""
3946
3947 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3948 msgid ""
3949 "Then, as news companies <emphasis>did</emphasis> come online, the ad "
3950 "revenues they commanded dropped even as the number of internet users (and "
3951 "thus potential online readers) increased. That shift was a function of "
3952 "consolidation in the ad sales market, with Google and Facebook emerging as "
3953 "duopolists who made more money every year from advertising while paying less "
3954 "and less of it to the publishers whose work the ads appeared alongside. "
3955 "Monopolism created a buyer’s market for ad inventory with Facebook and "
3956 "Google acting as gatekeepers."
3957 msgstr ""
3958
3959 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3960 msgid ""
3961 "Paid services continue to exist alongside free ones, and often it is these "
3962 "paid services — anxious to prevent people from bypassing their paywalls or "
3963 "sharing paid media with freeloaders — that exert the most control over their "
3964 "customers. Apple’s iTunes and App Stores are paid services, but to maximize "
3965 "their profitability, Apple has to lock its platforms so that third parties "
3966 "can’t make compatible software without permission. These locks allow the "
3967 "company to exercise both editorial control (enabling it to exclude <ulink "
3968 "url=\"https://ncac.org/news/blog/does-apples-strict-app-store-content-policy-"
3969 "limit-freedom-of-expression\">controversial political material</ulink>) and "
3970 "technological control, including control over who can repair the devices it "
3971 "makes. If we’re worried that ad-supported products deprive people of their "
3972 "right to self-determination by using persuasion techniques to nudge their "
3973 "purchase decisions a few degrees in one direction or the other, then the "
3974 "near-total control a single company holds over the decision of who gets to "
3975 "sell you software, parts, and service for your iPhone should have us very "
3976 "worried indeed."
3977 msgstr ""
3978
3979 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3980 msgid ""
3981 "We shouldn’t just be concerned about payment and control: The idea that "
3982 "paying will improve discourse is also dangerously wrong. The poor success "
3983 "rate of targeted advertising means that the platforms have to incentivize "
3984 "you to <quote>engage</quote> with posts at extremely high levels to generate "
3985 "enough pageviews to safeguard their profits. As discussed earlier, to "
3986 "increase engagement, platforms like Facebook use machine learning to guess "
3987 "which messages will be most inflammatory and make a point of shoving those "
3988 "into your eyeballs at every turn so that you will hate-click and argue with "
3989 "people."
3990 msgstr ""
3991
3992 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3993 msgid ""
3994 "Perhaps paying would fix this, the reasoning goes. If platforms could be "
3995 "economically viable even if you stopped clicking on them once your "
3996 "intellectual and social curiosity had been slaked, then they would have no "
3997 "reason to algorithmically enrage you to get more clicks out of you, right?"
3998 msgstr ""
3999
4000 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4001 msgid ""
4002 "There may be something to that argument, but it still ignores the wider "
4003 "economic and political context of the platforms and the world that allowed "
4004 "them to grow so dominant."
4005 msgstr ""
4006
4007 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4008 msgid ""
4009 "Platforms are world-spanning and all-encompassing because they are "
4010 "monopolies, and they are monopolies because we have gutted our most "
4011 "important and reliable anti-monopoly rules. Antitrust was neutered as a key "
4012 "part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project has "
4013 "worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net worth, and "
4014 "even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, undersaved for "
4015 "retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and undersecured against "
4016 "climate and technology shocks."
4017 msgstr ""
4018
4019 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4020 msgid ""
4021 "In this wildly unequal world, paying doesn’t improve the discourse; it "
4022 "simply prices discourse out of the range of the majority of people. Paying "
4023 "for the product is dandy, if you can afford it."
4024 msgstr ""
4025
4026 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4027 msgid ""
4028 "If you think today’s filter bubbles are a problem for our discourse, imagine "
4029 "what they’d be like if rich people inhabited free-flowing Athenian "
4030 "marketplaces of ideas where you have to pay for admission while everyone "
4031 "else lives in online spaces that are subsidized by wealthy benefactors who "
4032 "relish the chance to establish conversational spaces where the <quote>house "
4033 "rules</quote> forbid questioning the status quo. That is, imagine if the "
4034 "rich seceded from Facebook, and then, instead of running ads that made money "
4035 "for shareholders, Facebook became a billionaire’s vanity project that also "
4036 "happened to ensure that nobody talked about whether it was fair that only "
4037 "billionaires could afford to hang out in the rarified corners of the "
4038 "internet."
4039 msgstr ""
4040
4041 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4042 msgid ""
4043 "Behind the idea of paying for access is a belief that free markets will "
4044 "address Big Tech’s dysfunction. After all, to the extent that people have a "
4045 "view of surveillance at all, it is generally an unfavorable one, and the "
4046 "longer and more thoroughly one is surveilled, the less one tends to like it. "
4047 "Same goes for lock-in: If HP’s ink or Apple’s App Store were really "
4048 "obviously fantastic, they wouldn’t need technical measures to prevent users "
4049 "from choosing a rival’s product. The only reason these technical "
4050 "countermeasures exist is that the companies don’t believe their customers "
4051 "would <emphasis>voluntarily</emphasis> submit to their terms, and they want "
4052 "to deprive them of the choice to take their business elsewhere."
4053 msgstr ""
4054
4055 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4056 msgid ""
4057 "Advocates for markets laud their ability to aggregate the diffused knowledge "
4058 "of buyers and sellers across a whole society through demand signals, price "
4059 "signals, and so on. The argument for surveillance capitalism being a "
4060 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is that machine-learning-driven persuasion "
4061 "techniques distort decision-making by consumers, leading to incorrect "
4062 "signals — consumers don’t buy what they prefer, they buy what they’re "
4063 "tricked into preferring. It follows that the monopolistic practices of lock-"
4064 "in, which do far more to constrain consumers’ free choices, are even more of "
4065 "a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote>"
4066 msgstr ""
4067
4068 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4069 msgid ""
4070 "The profitability of any business is constrained by the possibility that its "
4071 "customers will take their business elsewhere. Both surveillance and lock-in "
4072 "are anti-features that no customer wants. But monopolies can capture their "
4073 "regulators, crush their competitors, insert themselves into their customers’ "
4074 "lives, and corral people into <quote>choosing</quote> their services "
4075 "regardless of whether they want them — it’s fine to be terrible when there "
4076 "is no alternative."
4077 msgstr ""
4078
4079 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4080 msgid ""
4081 "Ultimately, surveillance and lock-in are both simply business strategies "
4082 "that monopolists can choose. Surveillance companies like Google are "
4083 "perfectly capable of deploying lock-in technologies — just look at the "
4084 "onerous Android licensing terms that require device-makers to bundle in "
4085 "Google’s suite of applications. And lock-in companies like Apple are "
4086 "perfectly capable of subjecting their users to surveillance if it means "
4087 "keeping the Chinese government happy and preserving ongoing access to "
4088 "Chinese markets. Monopolies may be made up of good, ethical people, but as "
4089 "institutions, they are not your friend — they will do whatever they can get "
4090 "away with to maximize their profits, and the more monopolistic they are, the "
4091 "more they <emphasis>can</emphasis> get away with."
4092 msgstr ""
4093
4094 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4095 msgid "An <quote>ecology</quote> moment for trustbusting"
4096 msgstr "<quote> ekologia</quote> chwila na zerwanie zaufania"
4097
4098 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4099 msgid ""
4100 "If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re "
4101 "going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and old-"
4102 "fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of "
4103 "automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool "
4104 "cyberpunk novel."
4105 msgstr ""
4106
4107 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4108 msgid ""
4109 "Meanwhile, breaking up monopolies is something we seem to have forgotten how "
4110 "to do. There is a bipartisan, trans-Atlantic consensus that breaking up "
4111 "companies is a fool’s errand at best — liable to mire your federal "
4112 "prosecutors in decades of litigation — and counterproductive at worst, "
4113 "eroding the <quote>consumer benefits</quote> of large companies with massive "
4114 "efficiencies of scale."
4115 msgstr ""
4116
4117 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4118 msgid ""
4119 "But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing "
4120 "robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip "
4121 "on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the "
4122 "political will — until the people convinced politicians they’d have their "
4123 "backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world."
4124 msgstr ""
4125
4126 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4127 msgid "Could we find that political will again?"
4128 msgstr "Czy moglibyśmy ponownie znaleźć tę wolę polityczną?"
4129
4130 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4131 msgid ""
4132 "Copyright scholar James Boyle has described how the term <quote>ecology</"
4133 "quote> marked a turning point in environmental activism. Prior to the "
4134 "adoption of this term, people who wanted to preserve whale populations "
4135 "didn’t necessarily see themselves as fighting the same battle as people who "
4136 "wanted to protect the ozone layer or fight freshwater pollution or beat back "
4137 "smog or acid rain."
4138 msgstr ""
4139
4140 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4141 msgid ""
4142 "But the term <quote>ecology</quote> welded these disparate causes together "
4143 "into a single movement, and the members of this movement found solidarity "
4144 "with one another. The people who cared about smog signed petitions "
4145 "circulated by the people who wanted to end whaling, and the anti-whalers "
4146 "marched alongside the people demanding action on acid rain. This uniting "
4147 "behind a common cause completely changed the dynamics of environmentalism, "
4148 "setting the stage for today’s climate activism and the sense that preserving "
4149 "the habitability of the planet Earth is a shared duty among all people."
4150 msgstr ""
4151
4152 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4153 msgid ""
4154 "I believe we are on the verge of a new <quote>ecology</quote> moment "
4155 "dedicated to combating monopolies. After all, tech isn’t the only "
4156 "concentrated industry nor is it even the <emphasis>most</emphasis> "
4157 "concentrated of industries."
4158 msgstr ""
4159
4160 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4161 msgid ""
4162 "You can find partisans for trustbusting in every sector of the economy. "
4163 "Everywhere you look, you can find people who’ve been wronged by monopolists "
4164 "who’ve trashed their finances, their health, their privacy, their "
4165 "educations, and the lives of people they love. Those people have the same "
4166 "cause as the people who want to break up Big Tech and the same enemies. When "
4167 "most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a very few, it follows that "
4168 "nearly every large company will have overlapping shareholders."
4169 msgstr ""
4170
4171 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4172 msgid ""
4173 "That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of "
4174 "coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big "
4175 "Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook, "
4176 "then we take AT&amp;T/WarnerMedia."
4177 msgstr ""
4178
4179 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4180 msgid ""
4181 "But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech "
4182 "<emphasis>instead</emphasis> of breaking up the big companies also "
4183 "forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later."
4184 msgstr ""
4185
4186 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4187 msgid ""
4188 "Big Tech’s concentration currently means that their inaction on harassment, "
4189 "for example, leaves users with an impossible choice: absent themselves from "
4190 "public discourse by, say, quitting Twitter or endure vile, constant abuse. "
4191 "Big Tech’s over-collection and over-retention of data results in horrific "
4192 "identity theft. And their inaction on extremist recruitment means that white "
4193 "supremacists who livestream their shooting rampages can reach an audience of "
4194 "billions. The combination of tech concentration and media concentration "
4195 "means that artists’ incomes are falling even as the revenue generated by "
4196 "their creations are increasing."
4197 msgstr ""
4198
4199 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4200 msgid ""
4201 "Yet governments confronting all of these problems all inevitably converge on "
4202 "the same solution: deputize the Big Tech giants to police their users and "
4203 "render them liable for their users’ bad actions. The drive to force Big Tech "
4204 "to use automated filters to block everything from copyright infringement to "
4205 "sex-trafficking to violent extremism means that tech companies will have to "
4206 "allocate hundreds of millions to run these compliance systems."
4207 msgstr ""
4208
4209 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4210 msgid ""
4211 "These rules — the EU’s new Directive on Copyright, Australia’s new terror "
4212 "regulation, America’s FOSTA/SESTA sex-trafficking law and more — are not "
4213 "just death warrants for small, upstart competitors that might challenge Big "
4214 "Tech’s dominance but who lack the deep pockets of established incumbents to "
4215 "pay for all these automated systems. Worse still, these rules put a floor "
4216 "under how small we can hope to make Big Tech."
4217 msgstr ""
4218
4219 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4220 msgid ""
4221 "That’s because any move to break up Big Tech and cut it down to size will "
4222 "have to cope with the hard limit of not making these companies so small that "
4223 "they can no longer afford to perform these duties — and it’s "
4224 "<emphasis>expensive</emphasis> to invest in those automated filters and "
4225 "outsource content moderation. It’s already going to be hard to unwind these "
4226 "deeply concentrated, chimeric behemoths that have been welded together in "
4227 "the pursuit of monopoly profits. Doing so while simultaneously finding some "
4228 "way to fill the regulatory void that will be left behind if these self-"
4229 "policing rulers were forced to suddenly abdicate will be much, much harder."
4230 msgstr ""
4231
4232 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4233 msgid ""
4234 "Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a "
4235 "dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties "
4236 "to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually "
4237 "impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms "
4238 "don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will "
4239 "create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the "
4240 "companies, which will make them bigger still."
4241 msgstr ""
4242
4243 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4244 msgid ""
4245 "We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them "
4246 "of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend "
4247 "their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We have to "
4248 "choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet "
4249 "commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to "
4250 "behave themselves."
4251 msgstr ""
4252
4253 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4254 msgid "Make Big Tech small again"
4255 msgstr "Spraw, aby 'Big Tech' stała się ponownie 'małą' technologią"
4256
4257 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4258 msgid ""
4259 "Trustbusting is hard. Breaking big companies into smaller ones is expensive "
4260 "and time-consuming. So time-consuming that by the time you’re done, the "
4261 "world has often moved on and rendered years of litigation irrelevant. From "
4262 "1969 to 1982, the U.S. government pursued an antitrust case against IBM over "
4263 "its dominance of mainframe computing — but the case collapsed in 1982 "
4264 "because mainframes were being speedily replaced by PCs."
4265 msgstr ""
4266
4267 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
4268 msgid ""
4269 "A future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general to "
4270 "enforce the law as it was written."
4271 msgstr ""
4272
4273 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4274 msgid ""
4275 "It’s far easier to prevent concentration than to fix it, and reinstating the "
4276 "traditional contours of U.S. antitrust enforcement will, at the very least, "
4277 "prevent further concentration. That means bans on mergers between large "
4278 "companies, on big companies acquiring nascent competitors, and on platform "
4279 "companies competing directly with the companies that rely on the platforms."
4280 msgstr ""
4281
4282 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4283 msgid ""
4284 "These powers are all in the plain language of U.S. antitrust laws, so in "
4285 "theory, a future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general "
4286 "to enforce the law as it was written. But after decades of judicial "
4287 "<quote>education</quote> in the benefits of monopolies, after multiple "
4288 "administrations that have packed the federal courts with lifetime-appointed "
4289 "monopoly cheerleaders, it’s not clear that mere administrative action would "
4290 "do the trick."
4291 msgstr ""
4292
4293 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4294 msgid ""
4295 "If the courts frustrate the Justice Department and the president, the next "
4296 "stop would be Congress, which could eliminate any doubt about how antitrust "
4297 "law should be enforced in the U.S. by passing new laws that boil down to "
4298 "saying, <quote>Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act says. Robert "
4299 "Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, <emphasis>fuck that "
4300 "guy</emphasis>.</quote> In other words, the problem with monopolies is "
4301 "<emphasis>monopolism</emphasis> — the concentration of power into too few "
4302 "hands, which erodes our right to self-determination. If there is a monopoly, "
4303 "the law wants it gone, period. Sure, get rid of monopolies that create "
4304 "<quote>consumer harm</quote> in the form of higher prices, but also, "
4305 "<emphasis>get rid of other monopolies, too</emphasis>."
4306 msgstr ""
4307
4308 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4309 msgid ""
4310 "But this only prevents things from getting worse. To help them get better, "
4311 "we will have to build coalitions with other activists in the anti-monopoly "
4312 "ecology movement — a pluralism movement or a self-determination movement — "
4313 "and target existing monopolies in every industry for breakup and structural "
4314 "separation rules that prevent, for example, the giant eyewear monopolist "
4315 "Luxottica from dominating both the sale and the manufacture of spectacles."
4316 msgstr ""
4317
4318 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4319 msgid ""
4320 "In an important sense, it doesn’t matter which industry the breakups begin "
4321 "in. Once they start, shareholders in <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry "
4322 "will start to eye their investments in monopolists skeptically. As "
4323 "trustbusters ride into town and start making lives miserable for "
4324 "monopolists, the debate around every corporate boardroom’s table will shift. "
4325 "People within corporations who’ve always felt uneasy about monopolism will "
4326 "gain a powerful new argument to fend off their evil rivals in the corporate "
4327 "hierarchy: <quote>If we do it my way, we make less money; if we do it your "
4328 "way, a judge will fine us billions and expose us to ridicule and public "
4329 "disapprobation. So even though I get that it would be really cool to do that "
4330 "merger, lock out that competitor, or buy that little company and kill it "
4331 "before it can threaten it, we really shouldn’t — not if we don’t want to get "
4332 "tied to the DOJ’s bumper and get dragged up and down Trustbuster Road for "
4333 "the next 10 years.</quote>"
4334 msgstr ""
4335
4336 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4337 msgid "20 GOTO 10"
4338 msgstr "20 GOTO 10"
4339
4340 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4341 msgid ""
4342 "Fixing Big Tech will require a lot of iteration. As cyber lawyer Lawrence "
4343 "Lessig wrote in his 1999 book, <emphasis>Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace</"
4344 "emphasis>, our lives are regulated by four forces: law (what’s legal), code "
4345 "(what’s technologically possible), norms (what’s socially acceptable), and "
4346 "markets (what’s profitable)."
4347 msgstr ""
4348
4349 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4350 msgid ""
4351 "If you could wave a wand and get Congress to pass a law that re-fanged the "
4352 "Sherman Act tomorrow, you could use the impending breakups to convince "
4353 "venture capitalists to fund competitors to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and "
4354 "Apple that would be waiting in the wings after they were cut down to size."
4355 msgstr ""
4356
4357 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4358 msgid ""
4359 "But getting Congress to act will require a massive normative shift, a mass "
4360 "movement of people who care about monopolies — and pulling them apart."
4361 msgstr ""
4362
4363 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4364 msgid ""
4365 "Getting people to care about monopolies will take technological "
4366 "interventions that help them to see what a world free from Big Tech might "
4367 "look like. Imagine if someone could make a beloved (but unauthorized) third-"
4368 "party Facebook or Twitter client that dampens the anxiety-producing "
4369 "algorithmic drumbeat and still lets you talk to your friends without being "
4370 "spied upon — something that made social media more sociable and less toxic. "
4371 "Now imagine that it gets shut down in a brutal legal battle. It’s always "
4372 "easier to convince people that something must be done to save a thing they "
4373 "love than it is to excite them about something that doesn’t even exist yet."
4374 msgstr ""
4375
4376 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4377 msgid ""
4378 "Neither tech nor law nor code nor markets are sufficient to reform Big Tech. "
4379 "But a profitable competitor to Big Tech could bankroll a legislative push; "
4380 "legal reform can embolden a toolsmith to make a better tool; the tool can "
4381 "create customers for a potential business who value the benefits of the "
4382 "internet but want them delivered without Big Tech; and that business can get "
4383 "funded and divert some of its profits to legal reform. 20 GOTO 10 (or "
4384 "lather, rinse, repeat). Do it again, but this time, get farther! After all, "
4385 "this time you’re starting with weaker Big Tech adversaries, a constituency "
4386 "that understands things can be better, Big Tech rivals who’ll help ensure "
4387 "their own future by bankrolling reform, and code that other programmers can "
4388 "build on to weaken Big Tech even further."
4389 msgstr ""
4390
4391 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4392 msgid ""
4393 "The surveillance capitalism hypothesis — that Big Tech’s products really "
4394 "work as well as they say they do and that’s why everything is so screwed up "
4395 "— is way too easy on surveillance and even easier on capitalism. Companies "
4396 "spy because they believe their own BS, and companies spy because governments "
4397 "let them, and companies spy because any advantage from spying is so short-"
4398 "lived and minor that they have to do more and more of it just to stay in "
4399 "place."
4400 msgstr ""
4401
4402 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4403 msgid ""
4404 "As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism "
4405 "that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a "
4406 "form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to "
4407 "inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason "
4408 "companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to "
4409 "both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall "
4410 "to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not "
4411 "piss off the monopolists."
4412 msgstr ""
4413
4414 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4415 msgid ""
4416 "Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule "
4417 "begets surveillance. Surveillance isn’t bad because it lets people "
4418 "manipulate us. It’s bad because it crushes our ability to be our authentic "
4419 "selves — and because it lets the rich and powerful figure out who might be "
4420 "thinking of building guillotines and what dirt they can use to discredit "
4421 "those embryonic guillotine-builders before they can even get to the "
4422 "lumberyard."
4423 msgstr ""
4424
4425 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4426 msgid "Up and through"
4427 msgstr "W górę i na wylot"
4428
4429 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4430 msgid ""
4431 "With all the problems of Big Tech, it’s tempting to imagine solving the "
4432 "problem by returning to a world without tech at all. Resist that temptation."
4433 msgstr ""
4434
4435 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4436 msgid ""
4437 "The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our future is "
4438 "not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization has fallen. Big "
4439 "Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the "
4440 "proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the "
4441 "existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it’s up to us to seize "
4442 "the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under "
4443 "democratic, accountable control."
4444 msgstr ""
4445
4446 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4447 msgid ""
4448 "I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. Not "
4449 "in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to monopolize "
4450 "because it has <quote>economies of scale</quote> or some other nebulous "
4451 "feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right "
4452 "matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe — and "
4453 "doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our "
4454 "civilization, our species, and our planet."
4455 msgstr ""
4456
4457 #~ msgid ""
4458 #~ "Our devices and services gather most of the data that the NSA mines for "
4459 #~ "its surveillance project. We pay for these devices and the services they "
4460 #~ "connect to, and then we painstakingly perform the data-entry tasks "
4461 #~ "associated with logging facts about our lives, opinions, and preferences."
4462 #~ msgstr ""
4463 #~ "Nasze urządzenia i usługi zbierają większość danych, które NSA następnie "
4464 #~ "wydobywa w ramach swojego inwigilacyjnego projektu nadzoru. Płacimy za te "
4465 #~ "urządzenia i usługi, z którymi się łączą, a następnie skrupulatnie "
4466 #~ "wykonujemy zadania związane z wprowadzaniem danych, które rejestrują "
4467 #~ "fakty dotyczące naszego życia, opinii i preferencji."
4468
4469 #~ msgid ""
4470 #~ "Thanks to Big Tech, Surveillance capitalism is everywhere. This is not "
4471 #~ "because it is really good at manipulating our behaviour, or the rogue "
4472 #~ "abuse of corporate power. It is the result of unchecked monopolism and "
4473 #~ "the abusive behavior it abets. It is the system working as intended and "
4474 #~ "expected. Cory Doctorow has written an extended critique of Shoshana "
4475 #~ "Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future "
4476 #~ "at the New Frontier of Power, with a non-magical analysis of the problem "
4477 #~ "leading to a different proposal for a solution."
4478 #~ msgstr ""
4479 #~ "Dzięki `Big Tech` kapitalizm oparty na inwigilacyjnym systemie nadzoru "
4480 #~ "jest wszędzie. Nie dzieje się tak dlatego, że jest naprawdę dobry w "
4481 #~ "manipulowaniu naszym zachowaniem lub nieuczciwym nadużywaniu władzy "
4482 #~ "korporacji. Jest to wynik niekontrolowanego monopolizmu i obelżywego "
4483 #~ "zachowania, jakie on wywołuje. Jest to system działający zgodnie z "
4484 #~ "zamierzeniami i oczekiwaniami. Cory Doctorow napisał obszerną krytykę "
4485 #~ "książki Shoshana Zuboff pt. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight "
4486 #~ "for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, z obiektywną, nie-"
4487 #~ "magiczną analizą problemu, prowadzącą do innej propozycji jego "
4488 #~ "rozwiązania."
4489
4490 #, fuzzy
4491 #~| msgid "Doctorow"
4492 #~ msgid "Cory Doctorow"
4493 #~ msgstr "Doctorow"