]> pere.pagekite.me Git - text-destroy-surveillance.git/blob - po/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.pl.po
Fix link.
[text-destroy-surveillance.git] / po / how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.pl.po
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.
5 #
6 msgid ""
7 msgstr ""
8 "Project-Id-Version: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism n/a\n"
9 "POT-Creation-Date: 2021-01-24 19:27+0100\n"
10 "PO-Revision-Date: 2020-12-09 15:29+0000\n"
11 "Last-Translator: Stanisław Stefan Krukowski <pet209a1@riseup.net>\n"
12 "Language-Team: Polish <https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/rms-personal-data-"
13 "safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/pl/>\n"
14 "Language: pl\n"
15 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
16 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
17 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
18 "Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 "
19 "|| n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;\n"
20 "X-Generator: Weblate 4.4-dev\n"
21
22 #. type: Attribute 'lang' of: <article>
23 msgid "en"
24 msgstr "en"
25
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"
37
38 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><publisher><address>
39 #, no-wrap
40 msgid "<city>Oslo</city>"
41 msgstr "<city>Oslo</city>"
42
43 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo>
44 msgid ""
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>2021</year> "
48 "<holder>Petter Reinholdtsen</holder> </copyright>"
49 msgstr ""
50 "<publisher> <publishername>Petter Reinholdtsen</publishername> <placeholder "
51 "type=\"address\" id=\"0\"/> </publisher> <copyright> <year>2020</year> "
52 "<holder>Cory Doctorow</holder> </copyright> <copyright> <year>2021</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 "<ulink url=\"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/\"/>."
67 msgstr ""
68
69 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
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
77 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
78 msgid ""
79 "This book is available for purchase from <ulink url=\"https://www.lulu.com/"
80 "\"/>."
81 msgstr ""
82 "Ta książka jest dostępna w sprzedaży na <ulink url=\"https://www.lulu.com/\"/"
83 ">."
84
85 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para><inlinemediaobject>
86 msgid ""
87 "<imageobject> <imagedata fileref=\"images/cc-some-rights-reserved.png\" "
88 "contentdepth=\"3em\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\"/> </imageobject> "
89 "<imageobject> <imagedata fileref=\"images/cc-some-rights-reserved.svg\" "
90 "contentdepth=\"3em\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\"/> </imageobject>"
91 msgstr ""
92 "<imageobject> <imagedata fileref=\"images/cc-some-rights-reserved.png\" "
93 "contentdepth=\"3em\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\"/> </imageobject> "
94 "<imageobject> <imagedata fileref=\"images/cc-some-rights-reserved.svg\" "
95 "contentdepth=\"3em\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\"/> </imageobject>"
96
97 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para><inlinemediaobject><textobject><phrase>
98 msgid "Creative Commons, Some rights reserved"
99 msgstr "Creative Commons, Pewne prawa zastrzeżone"
100
101 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
102 msgid "<placeholder type=\"inlinemediaobject\" id=\"0\"/>"
103 msgstr "<placeholder type=\"inlinemediaobject\" id=\"0\"/>"
104
105 #. type: Content of: <article><articleinfo><legalnotice><para>
106 msgid ""
107 "This book is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This license permits "
108 "any use of this work, so long as attribution is given and no derivatived "
109 "material is distributed. For more information about the license visit "
110 "<ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
111 msgstr ""
112 "Ta książka jest wydana na licencji Creative Commons. Licencja ta pozwala na "
113 "dowolny użytek tej pracy tak długo, jak długo podane jest jej autorstwo i "
114 "nie jest rozpowszechniany żaden materiał pochodny. Więcej informacji na "
115 "temat tej licencji znajdziesz na <ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/"
116 "licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
117
118 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
119 msgid "The net of a thousand lies"
120 msgstr "Sieć tysięcy kłamstw"
121
122 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
123 msgid ""
124 "The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st "
125 "century is just how widespread the evidence against them is. You can "
126 "understand how, centuries ago, people who’d never gained a high-enough "
127 "vantage point from which to see the Earth’s curvature might come to the "
128 "commonsense belief that the flat-seeming Earth was, indeed, flat."
129 msgstr ""
130 "Najbardziej zaskakującą kwestią w dziedzinie powtórnych narodzin `płaskich` "
131 "Ziemian w XXI wieku jest to, jak szeroko rozpowszechnione są przeciwko nim "
132 "dowody. Można teraz zrozumieć, jak przed wiekami ludzie, którzy nigdy nie "
133 "mieli okazji zobaczyć Ziemi z orbity ziemskiej, mogli dojść do przekonania, "
134 "opartego na zdrowym rozsądku, że Ziemia - wyglądająca na płaską - jest "
135 "faktycznie, płaska."
136
137 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
138 msgid ""
139 "But today, when elementary schools routinely dangle GoPro cameras from "
140 "balloons and loft them high enough to photograph the Earth’s curve — to say "
141 "nothing of the unexceptional sight of the curved Earth from an airplane "
142 "window — it takes a heroic effort to maintain the belief that the world is "
143 "flat."
144 msgstr ""
145 "Lecz dzisiaj, gdy szkoły podstawowe rutynowo podczepiają do balonów kamery "
146 "GoPro i umieszczają je na tyle wysoko, aby sfotografować krzywą Ziemi — nie "
147 "mówiąc już o niezrównanie wyjątkowym widoku zakrzywionej Ziemi z okna "
148 "samolotu — trzeba naprawdę heroicznego wysiłku, aby uwierzyć, że Ziemia jest "
149 "płaska."
150
151 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
152 msgid ""
153 "Likewise for white nationalism and eugenics: In an age where you can become "
154 "a computational genomics datapoint by swabbing your cheek and mailing it to "
155 "a gene-sequencing company along with a modest sum of money, <quote>race "
156 "science</quote> has never been easier to refute."
157 msgstr ""
158 "Podobnie jest z eugeniką i białym nacjonalizmem: w epoce, w której można "
159 "stać się obliczeniowym punktem danych genomicznych, poprzez pobranie wymazu "
160 "z policzka, i przesłanie go — za pomocą poczty elektronicznej — do firmy "
161 "sekwencjonujoącej geny, wraz ze skromną sumą pieniędzy, nigdy nie było "
162 "łatwiej zaprzeczyć twierdzeniom wysuwanym podczas <quote>naukowego wyścigu "
163 "po sukces</quote>."
164
165 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
166 msgid ""
167 "We are living through a golden age of both readily available facts and "
168 "denial of those facts. Terrible ideas that have lingered on the fringes for "
169 "decades or even centuries have gone mainstream seemingly overnight."
170 msgstr ""
171 "Żyjemy w złotej epoce, zarówno łatwo dostępnych faktów, jak i zaprzeczenia "
172 "tym faktom. Okropne idee, które pozostawały na marginesie przez "
173 "dziesięciolecia, a nawet stulecia, z dnia na dzień weszły do głównego nurtu."
174
175 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
176 msgid ""
177 "When an obscure idea gains currency, there are only two things that can "
178 "explain its ascendance: Either the person expressing that idea has gotten a "
179 "lot better at stating their case, or the proposition has become harder to "
180 "deny in the face of mounting evidence. In other words, if we want people to "
181 "take climate change seriously, we can get a bunch of Greta Thunbergs to make "
182 "eloquent, passionate arguments from podiums, winning our hearts and minds, "
183 "or we can wait for flood, fire, broiling sun, and pandemics to make the case "
184 "for us. In practice, we’ll probably have to do some of both: The more we’re "
185 "boiling and burning and drowning and wasting away, the easier it will be for "
186 "the Greta Thunbergs of the world to convince us."
187 msgstr ""
188 "Kiedy niejasny pomysł zyskuje na popularności, istnieją tylko dwie rzeczy, "
189 "które mogą wyjaśnić jego przewagę: albo osoba wyrażająca ten pomysł znacznie "
190 "lepiej radzi sobie z przedstawieniem swojej racji, albo twierdzenie staje "
191 "się trudniejsze do zaprzeczenia w obliczu rosnących dowodów. Innymi słowy, "
192 "jeśli chcemy, aby ludzie poważnie podchodzili do zmian klimatycznych, możemy "
193 "skłonić grupę Grety Thunberg do wyrażenia wymownych, namiętnych argumentów w "
194 "sposób publiczny, przez co zdobędzie ona nasze serca i umysły, lub możemy "
195 "poczekać na powódź, ogień, palące słońce i pandemie, aby przemówiła za nami. "
196 "W praktyce prawdopodobnie będziemy musieli zrobić jedno i drugie: im więcej "
197 "będziemy gotować, palić, topić i marnować, tym łatwiej będzie Grecie "
198 "Thunberg nas przekonać."
199
200 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
201 msgid ""
202 "The arguments for ridiculous beliefs in odious conspiracies like anti-"
203 "vaccination, climate denial, a flat Earth, and eugenics are no better than "
204 "they were a generation ago. Indeed, they’re worse because they are being "
205 "pitched to people who have at least a background awareness of the refuting "
206 "facts."
207 msgstr ""
208 "Argumenty za absurdalnymi wierzeniami w oparciu o teorie spiskowe, takie jak "
209 "teoria antyszczepionkowa, teoria negująca zmiany klimatu, teoria o istnieniu "
210 "płaskiej Ziemi i teoria eugeniczna, wcale nie są lepsze niż w pokoleniu "
211 "wcześniejszym. W rzeczywistości, są gorsze, ponieważ są przedstawiane "
212 "ludziom, którzy mają przynajmniej podstawową świadomość faktów obalających "
213 "te teorie."
214
215 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
216 msgid ""
217 "Anti-vax has been around since the first vaccines, but the early anti-"
218 "vaxxers were pitching people who were less equipped to understand even the "
219 "most basic ideas from microbiology, and moreover, those people had not "
220 "witnessed the extermination of mass-murdering diseases like polio, smallpox, "
221 "and measles. Today’s anti-vaxxers are no more eloquent than their forebears, "
222 "and they have a much harder job."
223 msgstr ""
224 "Antyszczepionkowcy pojawiali się już od czasu wynalezienia pierwszych "
225 "szczepionek, lecz pierwsi z nich byli ludźmi słabo przygotowanymi do "
226 "zrozumienia nawet najbardziej podstawowych kwestii mikrobiologii, a – "
227 "ponadto - ludzie ci nie byli świadkami masowej eksterminacji, spowodowanej "
228 "takimi morderczymi chorobami, jak polio, ospa czy odra. Dzisiejsi "
229 "przeciwnicy szczepień nie są bardziej elokwentni niż ich przodkowie, a mają "
230 "znacznie cięższą pracę."
231
232 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
233 msgid ""
234 "So can these far-fetched conspiracy theorists really be succeeding on the "
235 "basis of superior arguments?"
236 msgstr ""
237 "A więc, czy ci wyrafinowani zwolennicy teorii spiskowych mogą, tak naprawdę, "
238 "odnieść sukces w oparciu o lepsze argumenty?"
239
240 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
241 msgid ""
242 "Some people think so. Today, there is a widespread belief that machine "
243 "learning and commercial surveillance can turn even the most fumble-tongued "
244 "conspiracy theorist into a svengali who can warp your perceptions and win "
245 "your belief by locating vulnerable people and then pitching them with A.I.-"
246 "refined arguments that bypass their rational faculties and turn everyday "
247 "people into flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or even Nazis. When the RAND "
248 "Corporation <ulink url=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/"
249 "research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf\">blames Facebook for "
250 "<quote>radicalization</quote></ulink> and when Facebook’s role in spreading "
251 "coronavirus misinformation is <ulink url=\"https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/"
252 "en/facebook_threat_health/\">blamed on its algorithm</ulink>, the implicit "
253 "message is that machine learning and surveillance are causing the changes in "
254 "our consensus about what’s true."
255 msgstr ""
256 "Niektórzy ludzie myślą, że tak. Obecnie panuje powszechne przekonanie, że "
257 "uczenie maszynowe i komercyjne systemy inwigilacji mogą zmienić nawet "
258 "najbardziej nieudolnego teoretyka spiskowego w `swengali`, osobę, która może "
259 "wypaczyć czyjeś spostrzeżenia i zdobyć jego /jej zaufanie, lokalizując osoby "
260 "wrażliwe, a następnie przedstawiając im wyrafinowane argumenty Sztucznej "
261 "Inteligencji, omijające racjonalne umiejętności ludzi i zmieniające ich w "
262 "`płaskich` Ziemian, przeciwników szczepień, a nawet nazistów. Gdy the RAND "
263 "Corporation <ulink url=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/"
264 "research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf\">oskarża Facebook'a za "
265 "<quote>radykalizację</quote></ulink>, kiedy Facebook'a oskarża się o "
266 "rozpowszechnianie dezinformacji na temat koronawirusa, <ulink url = "
267 "\"https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/facebook_threat_health/\">a jest to "
268 "spowodowane jego algorytmem</ulink>, to domyślnym przesłaniem jest fakt, że "
269 "uczenie maszynowe i systemy inwigilacyjnego nadzoru powodują zmiany w naszym "
270 "konsensusie wobec tego, co jest prawdą."
271
272 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
273 msgid ""
274 "After all, in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories "
275 "like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, "
276 "<emphasis>something</emphasis> must be afoot."
277 msgstr ""
278 "W końcu, w świecie, w którym rozległe i niespójne teorie spiskowe, takie jak "
279 "Pizzagate i jej nastepczyni, QAnon, mają szeroko rozpowszechnionych "
280 "następców, <emphasis>coś</emphasis>, musi trwać nadal."
281
282 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
283 msgid ""
284 "But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material "
285 "circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for "
286 "these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through "
287 "<emphasis>real conspiracies</emphasis> all around us — conspiracies among "
288 "wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts "
289 "and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as "
290 "<quote>corruption</quote>) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy "
291 "theories?"
292 msgstr ""
293 "Lecz co zrobić, jeśli jest inne wytłumaczenie? Jeśli są to warunki "
294 "materialne, a nie argumenty, stanowiące różnicę dla tych wygadanych "
295 "zwolenników konspiracji? A co, jeśli trauma spowodowana życiem w "
296 "<emphasis>rzeczywistych konspiracjach</emphasis> wszystkiego wokół nas — "
297 "konspiracjach ludzi bogatych, ich lobbystów i prawników, ukrywających "
298 "niewygodne fakty i dowody wykróczeń (te konspiracje są powszechnie znane "
299 "jako <quote>korupcja</quote> — tworzy ludzi podatnych na teorie "
300 "konspiracyjne?"
301
302 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
303 msgid ""
304 "If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology — "
305 "that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive "
306 "misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean our "
307 "computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work of "
308 "locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of ever-more-"
309 "extreme ideas and communities."
310 msgstr ""
311 "Jeśli to trauma, materialne uwarunkowania a nie „zaraza” ideologiczna "
312 "stanowią dziś różnicę i umożliwiają tworzenienie odpychających dezinformacji "
313 "w obliczu łatwo obserwowalnych faktów, nie oznacza to jeszcze, że nasze "
314 "sieci komputerowe są bez winy. Nadal wykonują one ciężką pracę, polegającą "
315 "na lokalizowaniu osób bezbronnych i prowadzeniu ich przez serię coraz "
316 "bardziej ekstremalnych pomysłów i społeczności."
317
318 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
319 msgid ""
320 "Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and poses "
321 "real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics <ulink url=\"https://"
322 "www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html\">kicked off by vaccine denial</"
323 "ulink> to genocides <ulink url=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/"
324 "technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html\">kicked off by racist "
325 "conspiracies</ulink> to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate "
326 "inaction. Our world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to "
327 "figure out how to help people see the truth of the world through the "
328 "conspiracies they’ve been confused by."
329 msgstr ""
330 "Wiara w konspirację to szalejący pożar, który wyrządził już rzeczywiste "
331 "szkody i stał się realnym zagrożeniem dla naszej planety i jej gatunków w "
332 "wyniku epidemii <ulink url=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html"
333 "\">rozpoczętej odmową szczepień</ulink> poprzez ludobójstwa <ulink url="
334 "\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide."
335 "html\">wywołane przez rasistowskich konspiratorów</ulink>. Prowadzi to do "
336 "planetarnego stapiającego wszystko tygla, spowodowanego bezczynnością, "
337 "zainspirowaną zaprzeczeniem problemu klimatycznego. Nasz świat płonie, więc "
338 "musimy ugasić pożary, aby dowiedzieć się, jak pomóc ludziom w zobaczeniu "
339 "prawdy o świecie poprzez spiski, które ich zmyliły."
340
341 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
342 msgid ""
343 "But firefighting is reactive. We need fire <emphasis>prevention</emphasis>. "
344 "We need to strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people "
345 "vulnerable to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to "
346 "play."
347 msgstr ""
348 "Ale gaszenie pożarów jest ma reaktywny charakter. Musimy "
349 "także<emphasis>zapobiegać</emphasis> pożarom. Musimy uderzyć w traumatyczne "
350 "warunki materialne, które czynią ludzi podatnymi na zarażenie konspiracją. "
351 "Tutaj również technologia ma do odegrania ważną rolę."
352
353 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
354 msgid ""
355 "There’s no shortage of proposals to address this. From the EU’s <ulink url="
356 "\"https://edri.org/tag/terreg/\">Terrorist Content Regulation</ulink>, which "
357 "requires platforms to police and remove <quote>extremist</quote> content, to "
358 "the U.S. proposals to <ulink url=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/"
359 "earn-it-act-violates-constitution\">force tech companies to spy on their "
360 "users</ulink> and hold them liable <ulink url=\"https://www.natlawreview.com/"
361 "article/repeal-cda-section-230\">for their users’ bad speech</ulink>, "
362 "there’s a lot of energy to force tech companies to solve the problems they "
363 "created."
364 msgstr ""
365
366 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
367 msgid ""
368 "There’s a critical piece missing from the debate, though. All these "
369 "solutions assume that tech companies are a fixture, that their dominance "
370 "over the internet is a permanent fact. Proposals to replace Big Tech with a "
371 "more diffused, pluralistic internet are nowhere to be found. Worse: The "
372 "<quote>solutions</quote> on the table today <emphasis>require</emphasis> Big "
373 "Tech to stay big because only the very largest companies can afford to "
374 "implement the systems these laws demand."
375 msgstr ""
376
377 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
378 msgid ""
379 "Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re going to "
380 "get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re trying to "
381 "figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that dominate our "
382 "internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by unshackling it from Big "
383 "Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we have to choose."
384 msgstr ""
385
386 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
387 msgid ""
388 "I want us to choose wisely. Taming Big Tech is integral to fixing the "
389 "Internet, and for that, we need digital rights activism."
390 msgstr ""
391
392 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
393 msgid "Digital rights activism, a quarter-century on"
394 msgstr "Aktywizm praw cyfrowych, krótka historia 25 lat działalności"
395
396 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
397 msgid ""
398 "Digital rights activism is more than 30 years old now. The Electronic "
399 "Frontier Foundation turned 30 this year; the Free Software Foundation "
400 "launched in 1985. For most of the history of the movement, the most "
401 "prominent criticism leveled against it was that it was irrelevant: The real "
402 "activist causes were real-world causes (think of the skepticism when <ulink "
403 "url=\"https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/finland-legal-right-to-"
404 "broadband-for-all-citizens/#:~:text=Global%20Legal%20Monitor,-Home%20%7C"
405 "%20Search%20%7C%20Browse&amp;text=(July%206%2C%202010)%20On,connection"
406 "%20100%20MBPS%20by%202015.\">Finland declared broadband a human right in "
407 "2010</ulink>), and real-world activism was shoe-leather activism (think of "
408 "Malcolm Gladwell’s <ulink url=\"https://www.newyorker.com/"
409 "magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell\">contempt for "
410 "<quote>clicktivism</quote></ulink>). But as tech has grown more central to "
411 "our daily lives, these accusations of irrelevance have given way first to "
412 "accusations of insincerity (<quote>You only care about tech because you’re "
413 "<ulink url=\"https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/06/04/report-engine-eff-shills-"
414 "google-patent-reform/id=98007/\">shilling for tech companies</ulink></"
415 "quote>) to accusations of negligence (<quote>Why didn’t you foresee that "
416 "tech could be such a destructive force?</quote>). But digital rights "
417 "activism is right where it’s always been: looking out for the humans in a "
418 "world where tech is inexorably taking over."
419 msgstr ""
420
421 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
422 msgid ""
423 "The latest version of this critique comes in the form of <quote>surveillance "
424 "capitalism,</quote> a term coined by business professor Shoshana Zuboff in "
425 "her long and influential 2019 book, <emphasis>The Age of Surveillance "
426 "Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power</"
427 "emphasis>. Zuboff argues that <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> is a "
428 "unique creature of the tech industry and that it is unlike any other abusive "
429 "commercial practice in history, one that is <quote>constituted by unexpected "
430 "and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control "
431 "that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new "
432 "markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism "
433 "challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long "
434 "evolution of market capitalism.</quote> It is a new and deadly form of "
435 "capitalism, a <quote>rogue capitalism,</quote> and our lack of understanding "
436 "of its unique capabilities and dangers represents an existential, species-"
437 "wide threat. She’s right that capitalism today threatens our species, and "
438 "she’s right that tech poses unique challenges to our species and "
439 "civilization, but she’s really wrong about how tech is different and why it "
440 "threatens our species."
441 msgstr ""
442
443 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
444 msgid ""
445 "What’s more, I think that her incorrect diagnosis will lead us down a path "
446 "that ends up making Big Tech stronger, not weaker. We need to take down Big "
447 "Tech, and to do that, we need to start by correctly identifying the problem."
448 msgstr ""
449
450 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
451 msgid "Tech exceptionalism, then and now"
452 msgstr "Wyjątkowość Technologii, dawniej i obecnie"
453
454 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
455 msgid ""
456 "Early critics of the digital rights movement — perhaps best represented by "
457 "campaigning organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free "
458 "Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and others that focused on preserving "
459 "and enhancing basic human rights in the digital realm — damned activists for "
460 "practicing <quote>tech exceptionalism.</quote> Around the turn of the "
461 "millennium, serious people ridiculed any claim that tech policy mattered in "
462 "the <quote>real world.</quote> Claims that tech rules had implications for "
463 "speech, association, privacy, search and seizure, and fundamental rights and "
464 "equities were treated as ridiculous, an elevation of the concerns of sad "
465 "nerds arguing about <emphasis>Star Trek</emphasis> on bulletin board systems "
466 "above the struggles of the Freedom Riders, Nelson Mandela, or the Warsaw "
467 "ghetto uprising."
468 msgstr ""
469
470 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
471 msgid ""
472 "In the decades since, accusations of <quote>tech exceptionalism</quote> have "
473 "only sharpened as tech’s role in everyday life has expanded: Now that tech "
474 "has infiltrated every corner of our life and our online lives have been "
475 "monopolized by a handful of giants, defenders of digital freedoms are "
476 "accused of carrying water for Big Tech, providing cover for its self-"
477 "interested negligence (or worse, nefarious plots)."
478 msgstr ""
479
480 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
481 msgid ""
482 "From my perspective, the digital rights movement has remained stationary "
483 "while the rest of the world has moved. From the earliest days, the "
484 "movement’s concern was users and the toolsmiths who provided the code they "
485 "needed to realize their fundamental rights. Digital rights activists only "
486 "cared about companies to the extent that companies were acting to uphold "
487 "users’ rights (or, just as often, when companies were acting so foolishly "
488 "that they threatened to bring down new rules that would also make it harder "
489 "for good actors to help users)."
490 msgstr ""
491
492 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
493 msgid ""
494 "The <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> critique recasts the digital "
495 "rights movement in a new light again: not as alarmists who overestimate the "
496 "importance of their shiny toys nor as shills for big tech but as serene deck-"
497 "chair rearrangers whose long-standing activism is a liability because it "
498 "makes them incapable of perceiving novel threats as they continue to fight "
499 "the last century’s tech battles."
500 msgstr ""
501
502 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
503 msgid "But tech exceptionalism is a sin no matter who practices it."
504 msgstr ""
505
506 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
507 msgid "Don’t believe the hype"
508 msgstr "Nie wierz 'szumom' medialnym"
509
510 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
511 msgid ""
512 "You’ve probably heard that <quote>if you’re not paying for the product, "
513 "you’re the product.</quote> As we’ll see below, that’s true, if incomplete. "
514 "But what is <emphasis>absolutely</emphasis> true is that ad-driven Big "
515 "Tech’s customers are advertisers, and what companies like Google and "
516 "Facebook sell is their ability to convince <emphasis>you</emphasis> to buy "
517 "stuff. Big Tech’s product is persuasion. The services — social media, search "
518 "engines, maps, messaging, and more — are delivery systems for persuasion."
519 msgstr ""
520
521 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
522 msgid ""
523 "The fear of surveillance capitalism starts from the (correct) presumption "
524 "that everything Big Tech says about itself is probably a lie. But the "
525 "surveillance capitalism critique makes an exception for the claims Big Tech "
526 "makes in its sales literature — the breathless hype in the pitches to "
527 "potential advertisers online and in ad-tech seminars about the efficacy of "
528 "its products: It assumes that Big Tech is as good at influencing us as they "
529 "claim they are when they’re selling influencing products to credulous "
530 "customers. That’s a mistake because sales literature is not a reliable "
531 "indicator of a product’s efficacy."
532 msgstr ""
533
534 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
535 msgid ""
536 "Surveillance capitalism assumes that because advertisers buy a lot of what "
537 "Big Tech is selling, Big Tech must be selling something real. But Big Tech’s "
538 "massive sales could just as easily be the result of a popular delusion or "
539 "something even more pernicious: monopolistic control over our communications "
540 "and commerce."
541 msgstr ""
542
543 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
544 msgid ""
545 "Being watched changes your behavior, and not for the better. It creates "
546 "risks for our social progress. Zuboff’s book features beautifully wrought "
547 "explanations of these phenomena. But Zuboff also claims that surveillance "
548 "literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal data is mixed "
549 "with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion so devastating that "
550 "we are helpless before it. That is, Facebook uses an algorithm to analyze "
551 "the data it nonconsensually extracts from your daily life and uses it to "
552 "customize your feed in ways that get you to buy stuff. It is a mind-control "
553 "ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded by mad scientists whose "
554 "supercomputers guarantee them perpetual and total world domination."
555 msgstr ""
556
557 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
558 msgid "What is persuasion?"
559 msgstr "Co to jest przekonywanie?"
560
561 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
562 msgid ""
563 "To understand why you shouldn’t worry about mind-control rays — but why you "
564 "<emphasis>should</emphasis> worry about surveillance <emphasis>and</"
565 "emphasis> Big Tech — we must start by unpacking what we mean by "
566 "<quote>persuasion.</quote>"
567 msgstr ""
568
569 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
570 msgid ""
571 "Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists promise their customers "
572 "(the advertisers) that if they use machine-learning tools trained on "
573 "unimaginably large data sets of nonconsensually harvested personal "
574 "information, they will be able to uncover ways to bypass the rational "
575 "faculties of the public and direct their behavior, creating a stream of "
576 "purchases, votes, and other desired outcomes."
577 msgstr ""
578
579 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
580 msgid ""
581 "The impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
582 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
583 msgstr ""
584
585 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
586 msgid ""
587 "But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the predictions "
588 "that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are much less "
589 "impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational faculties, "
590 "surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one or more of three "
591 "things:"
592 msgstr ""
593
594 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
595 msgid "1. Segmenting"
596 msgstr "1. Segmentacja"
597
598 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
599 msgid ""
600 "If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to people "
601 "in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity ward just "
602 "had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the market for "
603 "diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of being in the "
604 "market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly correlated with "
605 "having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards (and even pitchmen "
606 "for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with baskets full of freebies)."
607 msgstr ""
608
609 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
610 msgid ""
611 "Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors can go "
612 "way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, too, with "
613 "things like location-based mobile ads). They can target you based on "
614 "whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, or a host of "
615 "other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious keywords to advertise "
616 "against. They can target you based on the articles you’ve recently read. "
617 "They can target you based on what you’ve recently purchased. They can target "
618 "you based on whether you receive emails or private messages about these "
619 "subjects — or even if you speak aloud about them (though Facebook and the "
620 "like convincingly claim that’s not happening — yet)."
621 msgstr ""
622
623 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
624 msgid "This is seriously creepy."
625 msgstr ""
626
627 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
628 msgid "But it’s not mind control."
629 msgstr ""
630
631 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
632 msgid "It doesn’t deprive you of your free will. It doesn’t trick you."
633 msgstr ""
634
635 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
636 msgid ""
637 "Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics. Surveillance "
638 "capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate people "
639 "who might be receptive to their pitch. Candidates campaigning on finance "
640 "industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates campaigning "
641 "on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have always targeted "
642 "their message whether their intentions were honorable or not: Union "
643 "organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white supremacists hand out "
644 "fliers at John Birch Society meetings."
645 msgstr ""
646
647 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
648 msgid ""
649 "But this is an inexact and thus wasteful practice. The union organizer can’t "
650 "know which worker to approach on the way out of the factory gates and may "
651 "waste their time on a covert John Birch Society member; the white "
652 "supremacist doesn’t know which of the Birchers are so delusional that making "
653 "it to a meeting is as much as they can manage and which ones might be "
654 "convinced to cross the country to carry a tiki torch through the streets of "
655 "Charlottesville, Virginia."
656 msgstr ""
657
658 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
659 msgid ""
660 "Because targeting improves the yields on political pitches, it can "
661 "accelerate the pace of political upheaval by making it possible for everyone "
662 "who has secretly wished for the toppling of an autocrat — or just an 11-term "
663 "incumbent politician — to find everyone else who feels the same way at very "
664 "low cost. This has been critical to the rapid crystallization of recent "
665 "political movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as "
666 "well as less savory players like the far-right white nationalist movements "
667 "that marched in Charlottesville."
668 msgstr ""
669
670 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
671 msgid ""
672 "It’s important to differentiate this kind of political organizing from "
673 "influence campaigns; finding people who secretly agree with you isn’t the "
674 "same as convincing people to agree with you. The rise of phenomena like "
675 "nonbinary or otherwise nonconforming gender identities is often "
676 "characterized by reactionaries as the result of online brainwashing "
677 "campaigns that convince impressionable people that they have been secretly "
678 "queer all along."
679 msgstr ""
680
681 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
682 msgid ""
683 "But the personal accounts of those who have come out tell a different story "
684 "where people who long harbored a secret about their gender were emboldened "
685 "by others coming forward and where people who knew that they were different "
686 "but lacked a vocabulary for discussing that difference learned the right "
687 "words from these low-cost means of finding people and learning about their "
688 "ideas."
689 msgstr ""
690
691 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
692 msgid "2. Deception"
693 msgstr "2. Podstęp"
694
695 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
696 msgid ""
697 "Lies and fraud are pernicious, and surveillance capitalism supercharges them "
698 "through targeting. If you want to sell a fraudulent payday loan or subprime "
699 "mortgage, surveillance capitalism can help you find people who are both "
700 "desperate and unsophisticated and thus receptive to your pitch. This "
701 "accounts for the rise of many phenomena, like multilevel marketing schemes, "
702 "in which deceptive claims about potential earnings and the efficacy of sales "
703 "techniques are targeted at desperate people by advertising against search "
704 "queries that indicate, for example, someone struggling with ill-advised "
705 "loans."
706 msgstr ""
707
708 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
709 msgid ""
710 "Surveillance capitalism also abets fraud by making it easy to locate other "
711 "people who have been similarly deceived, forming a community of people who "
712 "reinforce one another’s false beliefs. Think of <ulink url=\"https://www."
713 "vulture.com/2020/01/the-dream-podcast-review.html\">the forums</ulink> where "
714 "people who are being victimized by multilevel marketing frauds gather to "
715 "trade tips on how to improve their luck in peddling the product."
716 msgstr ""
717
718 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
719 msgid ""
720 "Sometimes, online deception involves replacing someone’s correct beliefs "
721 "with incorrect ones, as it does in the anti-vaccination movement, whose "
722 "victims are often people who start out believing in vaccines but are "
723 "convinced by seemingly plausible evidence that leads them into the false "
724 "belief that vaccines are harmful."
725 msgstr ""
726
727 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
728 msgid ""
729 "But it’s much more common for fraud to succeed when it doesn’t have to "
730 "displace a true belief. When my daughter contracted head lice at daycare, "
731 "one of the daycare workers told me I could get rid of them by treating her "
732 "hair and scalp with olive oil. I didn’t know anything about head lice, and I "
733 "assumed that the daycare worker did, so I tried it (it didn’t work, and it "
734 "doesn’t work). It’s easy to end up with false beliefs when you simply don’t "
735 "know any better and when those beliefs are conveyed by someone who seems to "
736 "know what they’re doing."
737 msgstr ""
738
739 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
740 msgid ""
741 "This is pernicious and difficult — and it’s also the kind of thing the "
742 "internet can help guard against by making true information available, "
743 "especially in a form that exposes the underlying deliberations among parties "
744 "with sharply divergent views, such as Wikipedia. But it’s not brainwashing; "
745 "it’s fraud. In the <ulink url=\"https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/"
746 "\">majority of cases</ulink>, the victims of these fraud campaigns have an "
747 "informational void filled in the customary way, by consulting a seemingly "
748 "reliable source. If I look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge and learn "
749 "that it is 5,800 feet long, but in reality, it is 5,989 feet long, the "
750 "underlying deception is a problem, but it’s a problem with a simple remedy. "
751 "It’s a very different problem from the anti-vax issue in which someone’s "
752 "true belief is displaced by a false one by means of sophisticated persuasion."
753 msgstr ""
754
755 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
756 msgid "3. Domination"
757 msgstr "3. Dominacja"
758
759 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
760 msgid ""
761 "Surveillance capitalism is the result of monopoly. Monopoly is the cause, "
762 "and surveillance capitalism and its negative outcomes are the effects of "
763 "monopoly. I’ll get into this in depth later, but for now, suffice it to say "
764 "that the tech industry has grown up with a radical theory of antitrust that "
765 "has allowed companies to grow by merging with their rivals, buying up their "
766 "nascent competitors, and expanding to control whole market verticals."
767 msgstr ""
768
769 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
770 msgid ""
771 "One example of how monopolism aids in persuasion is through dominance: "
772 "Google makes editorial decisions about its algorithms that determine the "
773 "sort order of the responses to our queries. If a cabal of fraudsters have "
774 "set out to trick the world into thinking that the Brooklyn Bridge is 5,800 "
775 "feet long, and if Google gives a high search rank to this group in response "
776 "to queries like <quote>How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?</quote> then the "
777 "first eight or 10 screens’ worth of Google results could be wrong. And since "
778 "most people don’t go beyond the first couple of results — let alone the "
779 "first <emphasis>page</emphasis> of results — Google’s choice means that many "
780 "people will be deceived."
781 msgstr ""
782
783 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
784 msgid ""
785 "Google’s dominance over search — more than 86% of web searches are performed "
786 "through Google — means that the way it orders its search results has an "
787 "outsized effect on public beliefs. Ironically, Google claims this is why it "
788 "can’t afford to have any transparency in its algorithm design: Google’s "
789 "search dominance makes the results of its sorting too important to risk "
790 "telling the world how it arrives at those results lest some bad actor "
791 "discover a flaw in the ranking system and exploit it to push its point of "
792 "view to the top of the search results. There’s an obvious remedy to a "
793 "company that is too big to audit: break it up into smaller pieces."
794 msgstr ""
795
796 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
797 msgid ""
798 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> whose "
799 "data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. But "
800 "influence campaigns that seek to displace existing, correct beliefs with "
801 "false ones have an effect that is small and temporary while monopolistic "
802 "dominance over informational systems has massive, enduring effects. "
803 "Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means controlling "
804 "access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, control over much of "
805 "the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how corporations are foreclosing on "
806 "our ability to make up our own minds and determine our own futures, the "
807 "impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
808 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
809 msgstr ""
810
811 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><title>
812 msgid "4. Bypassing our rational faculties"
813 msgstr "4. Omijanie naszych racjonalnych zdolności"
814
815 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
816 msgid ""
817 "<emphasis>This</emphasis> is the good stuff: using machine learning, "
818 "<quote>dark patterns,</quote> engagement hacking, and other techniques to "
819 "get us to do things that run counter to our better judgment. This is mind "
820 "control."
821 msgstr ""
822
823 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
824 msgid ""
825 "Some of these techniques have proven devastatingly effective (if only in the "
826 "short term). The use of countdown timers on a purchase completion page can "
827 "create a sense of urgency that causes you to ignore the nagging internal "
828 "voice suggesting that you should shop around or sleep on your decision. The "
829 "use of people from your social graph in ads can provide <quote>social proof</"
830 "quote> that a purchase is worth making. Even the auction system pioneered by "
831 "eBay is calculated to play on our cognitive blind spots, letting us feel "
832 "like we <quote>own</quote> something because we bid on it, thus encouraging "
833 "us to bid again when we are outbid to ensure that <quote>our</quote> things "
834 "stay ours."
835 msgstr ""
836
837 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
838 msgid ""
839 "Games are extraordinarily good at this. <quote>Free to play</quote> games "
840 "manipulate us through many techniques, such as presenting players with a "
841 "series of smoothly escalating challenges that create a sense of mastery and "
842 "accomplishment but which sharply transition into a set of challenges that "
843 "are impossible to overcome without paid upgrades. Add some social proof to "
844 "the mix — a stream of notifications about how well your friends are faring — "
845 "and before you know it, you’re buying virtual power-ups to get to the next "
846 "level."
847 msgstr ""
848
849 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
850 msgid ""
851 "Companies have risen and fallen on these techniques, and the <quote>fallen</"
852 "quote> part is worth paying attention to. In general, living things adapt to "
853 "stimulus: Something that is very compelling or noteworthy when you first "
854 "encounter it fades with repetition until you stop noticing it altogether. "
855 "Consider the refrigerator hum that irritates you when it starts up but "
856 "disappears into the background so thoroughly that you only notice it when it "
857 "stops again."
858 msgstr ""
859
860 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
861 msgid ""
862 "That’s why behavioral conditioning uses <quote>intermittent reinforcement "
863 "schedules.</quote> Instead of giving you a steady drip of encouragement or "
864 "setbacks, games and gamified services scatter rewards on a randomized "
865 "schedule — often enough to keep you interested and random enough that you "
866 "can never quite find the pattern that would make it boring."
867 msgstr ""
868
869 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
870 msgid ""
871 "Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful behavioral tool, but it also "
872 "represents a collective action problem for surveillance capitalism. The "
873 "<quote>engagement techniques</quote> invented by the behaviorists of "
874 "surveillance capitalist companies are quickly copied across the whole sector "
875 "so that what starts as a mysteriously compelling fillip in the design of a "
876 "service—like <quote>pull to refresh</quote> or alerts when someone likes "
877 "your posts or side quests that your characters get invited to while in the "
878 "midst of main quests—quickly becomes dully ubiquitous. The impossible-to-"
879 "nail-down nonpattern of randomized drips from your phone becomes a grey-"
880 "noise wall of sound as every single app and site starts to make use of "
881 "whatever seems to be working at the time."
882 msgstr ""
883
884 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
885 msgid ""
886 "From the surveillance capitalist’s point of view, our adaptive capacity is "
887 "like a harmful bacterium that deprives it of its food source — our attention "
888 "— and novel techniques for snagging that attention are like new antibiotics "
889 "that can be used to breach our defenses and destroy our self-determination. "
890 "And there <emphasis>are</emphasis> techniques like that. Who can forget the "
891 "Great Zynga Epidemic, when all of our friends were caught in "
892 "<emphasis>FarmVille</emphasis>’s endless, mindless dopamine loops? But every "
893 "new attention-commanding technique is jumped on by the whole industry and "
894 "used so indiscriminately that antibiotic resistance sets in. Given enough "
895 "repetition, almost all of us develop immunity to even the most powerful "
896 "techniques — by 2013, two years after Zynga’s peak, its user base had halved."
897 msgstr ""
898
899 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
900 msgid ""
901 "Not everyone, of course. Some people never adapt to stimulus, just as some "
902 "people never stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator. This is why most "
903 "people who are exposed to slot machines play them for a while and then move "
904 "on while a small and tragic minority liquidate their kids’ college funds, "
905 "buy adult diapers, and position themselves in front of a machine until they "
906 "collapse."
907 msgstr ""
908
909 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
910 msgid ""
911 "But surveillance capitalism’s margins on behavioral modification suck. "
912 "Tripling the rate at which someone buys a widget sounds great <ulink url="
913 "\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2018/03/09/the-advertising-"
914 "conversion-rates-for-every-major-tech-platform/#2f6a67485957\">unless the "
915 "base rate is way less than 1%</ulink> with an improved rate of… still less "
916 "than 1%. Even penny slot machines pull down pennies for every spin while "
917 "surveillance capitalism rakes in infinitesimal penny fractions."
918 msgstr ""
919
920 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
921 msgid ""
922 "Slot machines’ high returns mean that they can be profitable just by "
923 "draining the fortunes of the small rump of people who are pathologically "
924 "vulnerable to them and unable to adapt to their tricks. But surveillance "
925 "capitalism can’t survive on the fractional pennies it brings down from that "
926 "vulnerable sliver — that’s why, after the Great Zynga Epidemic had finally "
927 "burned itself out, the small number of still-addicted players left behind "
928 "couldn’t sustain it as a global phenomenon. And new powerful attention "
929 "weapons aren’t easy to find, as is evidenced by the long years since the "
930 "last time Zynga had a hit. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that "
931 "Zynga has to spend on developing new tools to blast through our adaptation, "
932 "it has never managed to repeat the lucky accident that let it snag so much "
933 "of our attention for a brief moment in 2009. Powerhouses like Supercell have "
934 "fared a little better, but they are rare and throw away many failures for "
935 "every success."
936 msgstr ""
937
938 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><sect2><para>
939 msgid ""
940 "The vulnerability of small segments of the population to dramatic, efficient "
941 "corporate manipulation is a real concern that’s worthy of our attention and "
942 "energy. But it’s not an existential threat to society."
943 msgstr ""
944
945 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
946 msgid ""
947 "If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak"
948 msgstr ""
949 "Jeśli dane są nowym paliwem, to silnik kapitalistycznych systemów nadzoru ma "
950 "wyciek"
951
952 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
953 msgid ""
954 "This adaptation problem offers an explanation for one of surveillance "
955 "capitalism’s most alarming traits: its relentless hunger for data and its "
956 "endless expansion of data-gathering capabilities through the spread of "
957 "sensors, online surveillance, and acquisition of data streams from third "
958 "parties."
959 msgstr ""
960
961 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
962 msgid ""
963 "Zuboff observes this phenomenon and concludes that data must be very "
964 "valuable if surveillance capitalism is so hungry for it. (In her words: "
965 "<quote>Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous "
966 "intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists and "
967 "their market players are now locked into the continuous intensification of "
968 "the means of behavioral modification and the gathering might of "
969 "instrumentarian power.</quote>) But what if the voracious appetite is "
970 "because data has such a short half-life — because people become inured so "
971 "quickly to new, data-driven persuasion techniques — that the companies are "
972 "locked in an arms race with our limbic system? What if it’s all a Red "
973 "Queen’s race where they have to run ever faster — collect ever-more data — "
974 "just to stay in the same spot?"
975 msgstr ""
976
977 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
978 msgid ""
979 "Of course, all of Big Tech’s persuasion techniques work in concert with one "
980 "another, and collecting data is useful beyond mere behavioral trickery."
981 msgstr ""
982
983 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
984 msgid ""
985 "If someone wants to recruit you to buy a refrigerator or join a pogrom, they "
986 "might use profiling and targeting to send messages to people they judge to "
987 "be good sales prospects. The messages themselves may be deceptive, making "
988 "claims about things you’re not very knowledgeable about (food safety and "
989 "energy efficiency or eugenics and historical claims about racial "
990 "superiority). They might use search engine optimization and/or armies of "
991 "fake reviewers and commenters and/or paid placement to dominate the "
992 "discourse so that any search for further information takes you back to their "
993 "messages. And finally, they may refine the different pitches using machine "
994 "learning and other techniques to figure out what kind of pitch works best on "
995 "someone like you."
996 msgstr ""
997
998 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
999 msgid ""
1000 "Each phase of this process benefits from surveillance: The more data they "
1001 "have, the more precisely they can profile you and target you with specific "
1002 "messages. Think of how you’d sell a fridge if you knew that the warranty on "
1003 "your prospect’s fridge just expired and that they were expecting a tax "
1004 "rebate in April."
1005 msgstr ""
1006
1007 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1008 msgid ""
1009 "Also, the more data they have, the better they can craft deceptive messages "
1010 "— if I know that you’re into genealogy, I might not try to feed you "
1011 "pseudoscience about genetic differences between <quote>races,</quote> "
1012 "sticking instead to conspiratorial secret histories of <quote>demographic "
1013 "replacement</quote> and the like."
1014 msgstr ""
1015
1016 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1017 msgid ""
1018 "Facebook also helps you locate people who have the same odious or antisocial "
1019 "views as you. It makes it possible to find other people who want to carry "
1020 "tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville in Confederate cosplay. "
1021 "It can help you find other people who want to join your militia and go to "
1022 "the border to look for undocumented migrants to terrorize. It can help you "
1023 "find people who share your belief that vaccines are poison and that the "
1024 "Earth is flat."
1025 msgstr ""
1026
1027 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1028 msgid ""
1029 "There is one way in which targeted advertising uniquely benefits those "
1030 "advocating for socially unacceptable causes: It is invisible. Racism is "
1031 "widely geographically dispersed, and there are few places where racists — "
1032 "and only racists — gather. This is similar to the problem of selling "
1033 "refrigerators in that potential refrigerator purchasers are geographically "
1034 "dispersed and there are few places where you can buy an ad that will be "
1035 "primarily seen by refrigerator customers. But buying a refrigerator is "
1036 "socially acceptable while being a Nazi is not, so you can buy a billboard or "
1037 "advertise in the newspaper sports section for your refrigerator business, "
1038 "and the only potential downside is that your ad will be seen by a lot of "
1039 "people who don’t want refrigerators, resulting in a lot of wasted expense."
1040 msgstr ""
1041
1042 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1043 msgid ""
1044 "But even if you wanted to advertise your Nazi movement on a billboard or "
1045 "prime-time TV or the sports section, you would struggle to find anyone "
1046 "willing to sell you the space for your ad partly because they disagree with "
1047 "your views and partly because they fear censure (boycott, reputational "
1048 "damage, etc.) from other people who disagree with your views."
1049 msgstr ""
1050
1051 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1052 msgid ""
1053 "Targeted ads solve this problem: On the internet, every ad unit can be "
1054 "different for every person, meaning that you can buy ads that are only shown "
1055 "to people who appear to be Nazis and not to people who hate Nazis. When "
1056 "there’s spillover — when someone who hates racism is shown a racist "
1057 "recruiting ad — there is some fallout; the platform or publication might get "
1058 "an angry public or private denunciation. But the nature of the risk assumed "
1059 "by an online ad buyer is different than the risks to a traditional publisher "
1060 "or billboard owner who might want to run a Nazi ad."
1061 msgstr ""
1062
1063 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1064 msgid ""
1065 "Online ads are placed by algorithms that broker between a diverse ecosystem "
1066 "of self-serve ad platforms that anyone can buy an ad through, so the Nazi ad "
1067 "that slips onto your favorite online publication isn’t seen as their moral "
1068 "failing but rather as a failure in some distant, upstream ad supplier. When "
1069 "a publication gets a complaint about an offensive ad that’s appearing in one "
1070 "of its units, it can take some steps to block that ad, but the Nazi might "
1071 "buy a slightly different ad from a different broker serving the same unit. "
1072 "And in any event, internet users increasingly understand that when they see "
1073 "an ad, it’s likely that the advertiser did not choose that publication and "
1074 "that the publication has no idea who its advertisers are."
1075 msgstr ""
1076
1077 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1078 msgid ""
1079 "These layers of indirection between advertisers and publishers serve as "
1080 "moral buffers: Today’s moral consensus is largely that publishers shouldn’t "
1081 "be held responsible for the ads that appear on their pages because they’re "
1082 "not actively choosing to put those ads there. Because of this, Nazis are "
1083 "able to overcome significant barriers to organizing their movement."
1084 msgstr ""
1085
1086 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1087 msgid ""
1088 "Data has a complex relationship with domination. Being able to spy on your "
1089 "customers can alert you to their preferences for your rivals and allow you "
1090 "to head off your rivals at the pass."
1091 msgstr ""
1092
1093 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1094 msgid ""
1095 "More importantly, if you can dominate the information space while also "
1096 "gathering data, then you make other deceptive tactics stronger because it’s "
1097 "harder to break out of the web of deceit you’re spinning. Domination — that "
1098 "is, ultimately becoming a monopoly — and not the data itself is the "
1099 "supercharger that makes every tactic worth pursuing because monopolistic "
1100 "domination deprives your target of an escape route."
1101 msgstr ""
1102
1103 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1104 msgid ""
1105 "If you’re a Nazi who wants to ensure that your prospects primarily see "
1106 "deceptive, confirming information when they search for more, you can improve "
1107 "your odds by seeding the search terms they use through your initial "
1108 "communications. You don’t need to own the top 10 results for <quote>voter "
1109 "suppression</quote> if you can convince your marks to confine their search "
1110 "terms to <quote>voter fraud,</quote> which throws up a very different set of "
1111 "search results."
1112 msgstr ""
1113
1114 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1115 msgid ""
1116 "Surveillance capitalists are like stage mentalists who claim that their "
1117 "extraordinary insights into human behavior let them guess the word that you "
1118 "wrote down and folded up in your pocket but who really use shills, hidden "
1119 "cameras, sleight of hand, and brute-force memorization to amaze you."
1120 msgstr ""
1121
1122 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1123 msgid ""
1124 "Or perhaps they’re more like pick-up artists, the misogynistic cult that "
1125 "promises to help awkward men have sex with women by teaching them "
1126 "<quote>neurolinguistic programming</quote> phrases, body language "
1127 "techniques, and psychological manipulation tactics like <quote>negging</"
1128 "quote> — offering unsolicited negative feedback to women to lower their self-"
1129 "esteem and prick their interest."
1130 msgstr ""
1131
1132 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1133 msgid ""
1134 "Some pick-up artists eventually manage to convince women to go home with "
1135 "them, but it’s not because these men have figured out how to bypass women’s "
1136 "critical faculties. Rather, pick-up artists’ <quote>success</quote> stories "
1137 "are a mix of women who were incapable of giving consent, women who were "
1138 "coerced, women who were intoxicated, self-destructive women, and a few women "
1139 "who were sober and in command of their faculties but who didn’t realize "
1140 "straightaway that they were with terrible men but rectified the error as "
1141 "soon as they could."
1142 msgstr ""
1143
1144 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1145 msgid ""
1146 "Pick-up artists <emphasis>believe</emphasis> they have figured out a secret "
1147 "back door that bypasses women’s critical faculties, but they haven’t. Many "
1148 "of the tactics they deploy, like negging, became the butt of jokes (just "
1149 "like people joke about bad ad targeting), and there’s a good chance that "
1150 "anyone they try these tactics on will immediately recognize them and dismiss "
1151 "the men who use them as irredeemable losers."
1152 msgstr ""
1153
1154 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1155 msgid ""
1156 "Pick-up artists are proof that people can believe they have developed a "
1157 "system of mind control <emphasis>even when it doesn’t work</emphasis>. Pick-"
1158 "up artists simply exploit the fact that one-in-a-million chances can come "
1159 "through for you if you make a million attempts, and then they assume that "
1160 "the other 999,999 times, they simply performed the technique incorrectly and "
1161 "commit themselves to doing better next time. There’s only one group of "
1162 "people who find pick-up artist lore reliably convincing: other would-be pick-"
1163 "up artists whose anxiety and insecurity make them vulnerable to scammers and "
1164 "delusional men who convince them that if they pay for tutelage and follow "
1165 "instructions, then they will someday succeed. Pick-up artists assume they "
1166 "fail to entice women because they are bad at being pick-up artists, not "
1167 "because pick-up artistry is bullshit. Pick-up artists are bad at selling "
1168 "themselves to women, but they’re much better at selling themselves to men "
1169 "who pay to learn the secrets of pick-up artistry."
1170 msgstr ""
1171
1172 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1173 msgid ""
1174 "Department store pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have lamented, "
1175 "<quote>Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I "
1176 "don’t know which half.</quote> The fact that Wanamaker thought that only "
1177 "half of his advertising spending was wasted is a tribute to the "
1178 "persuasiveness of advertising executives, who are <emphasis>much</emphasis> "
1179 "better at convincing potential clients to buy their services than they are "
1180 "at convincing the general public to buy their clients’ wares."
1181 msgstr ""
1182
1183 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1184 msgid "What is Facebook?"
1185 msgstr "Co to jest Facebook?"
1186
1187 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1188 msgid ""
1189 "Facebook is heralded as the origin of all of our modern plagues, and it’s "
1190 "not hard to see why. Some tech companies want to lock their users in but "
1191 "make their money by monopolizing access to the market for apps for their "
1192 "devices and gouging them on prices rather than by spying on them (like "
1193 "Apple). Some companies don’t care about locking in users because they’ve "
1194 "figured out how to spy on them no matter where they are and what they’re "
1195 "doing and can turn that surveillance into money (Google). Facebook alone "
1196 "among the Western tech giants has built a business based on locking in its "
1197 "users <emphasis>and</emphasis> spying on them all the time."
1198 msgstr ""
1199
1200 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1201 msgid ""
1202 "Facebook’s surveillance regime is really without parallel in the Western "
1203 "world. Though Facebook tries to prevent itself from being visible on the "
1204 "public web, hiding most of what goes on there from people unless they’re "
1205 "logged into Facebook, the company has nevertheless booby-trapped the entire "
1206 "web with surveillance tools in the form of Facebook <quote>Like</quote> "
1207 "buttons that web publishers include on their sites to boost their Facebook "
1208 "profiles. Facebook also makes various libraries and other useful code "
1209 "snippets available to web publishers that act as surveillance tendrils on "
1210 "the sites where they’re used, funneling information about visitors to the "
1211 "site — newspapers, dating sites, message boards — to Facebook."
1212 msgstr ""
1213
1214 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
1215 msgid ""
1216 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
1217 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>."
1218 msgstr ""
1219
1220 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1221 msgid ""
1222 "Facebook offers similar tools to app developers, so the apps — games, fart "
1223 "machines, business review services, apps for keeping abreast of your kid’s "
1224 "schooling — you use will send information about your activities to Facebook "
1225 "even if you don’t have a Facebook account and even if you don’t download or "
1226 "use Facebook apps. On top of all that, Facebook buys data from third-party "
1227 "brokers on shopping habits, physical location, use of <quote>loyalty</quote> "
1228 "programs, financial transactions, etc., and cross-references that with the "
1229 "dossiers it develops on activity on Facebook and with apps and the public "
1230 "web."
1231 msgstr ""
1232
1233 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1234 msgid ""
1235 "Though it’s easy to integrate the web with Facebook — linking to news "
1236 "stories and such — Facebook products are generally not available to be "
1237 "integrated back into the web itself. You can embed a tweet in a Facebook "
1238 "post, but if you embed a Facebook post in a tweet, you just get a link back "
1239 "to Facebook and must log in before you can see it. Facebook has used extreme "
1240 "technological and legal countermeasures to prevent rivals from allowing "
1241 "their users to embed Facebook snippets in competing services or to create "
1242 "alternative interfaces to Facebook that merge your Facebook inbox with those "
1243 "of other services that you use."
1244 msgstr ""
1245
1246 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1247 msgid ""
1248 "And Facebook is incredibly popular, with 2.3 billion claimed users (though "
1249 "many believe this figure to be inflated). Facebook has been used to organize "
1250 "genocidal pogroms, racist riots, anti-vaccination movements, flat Earth "
1251 "cults, and the political lives of some of the world’s ugliest, most brutal "
1252 "autocrats. There are some really alarming things going on in the world, and "
1253 "Facebook is implicated in many of them, so it’s easy to conclude that these "
1254 "bad things are the result of Facebook’s mind-control system, which it rents "
1255 "out to anyone with a few bucks to spend."
1256 msgstr ""
1257
1258 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1259 msgid ""
1260 "To understand what role Facebook plays in the formulation and mobilization "
1261 "of antisocial movements, we need to understand the dual nature of Facebook."
1262 msgstr ""
1263
1264 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1265 msgid ""
1266 "Because it has a lot of users and a lot of data about those users, Facebook "
1267 "is a very efficient tool for locating people with hard-to-find traits, the "
1268 "kinds of traits that are widely diffused in the population such that "
1269 "advertisers have historically struggled to find a cost-effective way to "
1270 "reach them. Think back to refrigerators: Most of us only replace our major "
1271 "appliances a few times in our entire lives. If you’re a refrigerator "
1272 "manufacturer or retailer, you have these brief windows in the life of a "
1273 "consumer during which they are pondering a purchase, and you have to somehow "
1274 "reach them. Anyone who’s ever registered a title change after buying a house "
1275 "can attest that appliance manufacturers are incredibly desperate to reach "
1276 "anyone who has even the slenderest chance of being in the market for a new "
1277 "fridge."
1278 msgstr ""
1279
1280 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1281 msgid ""
1282 "Facebook makes finding people shopping for refrigerators a <emphasis>lot</"
1283 "emphasis> easier. It can target ads to people who’ve registered a new home "
1284 "purchase, to people who’ve searched for refrigerator buying advice, to "
1285 "people who have complained about their fridge dying, or any combination "
1286 "thereof. It can even target people who’ve recently bought <emphasis>other</"
1287 "emphasis> kitchen appliances on the theory that someone who’s just replaced "
1288 "their stove and dishwasher might be in a fridge-buying kind of mood. The "
1289 "vast majority of people who are reached by these ads will not be in the "
1290 "market for a new fridge, but — crucially — the percentage of people who "
1291 "<emphasis>are</emphasis> looking for fridges that these ads reach is "
1292 "<emphasis>much</emphasis> larger than it is than for any group that might be "
1293 "subjected to traditional, offline targeted refrigerator marketing."
1294 msgstr ""
1295
1296 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1297 msgid ""
1298 "Facebook also makes it a lot easier to find people who have the same rare "
1299 "disease as you, which might have been impossible in earlier eras — the "
1300 "closest fellow sufferer might otherwise be hundreds of miles away. It makes "
1301 "it easier to find people who went to the same high school as you even though "
1302 "decades have passed and your former classmates have all been scattered to "
1303 "the four corners of the Earth."
1304 msgstr ""
1305
1306 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1307 msgid ""
1308 "Facebook also makes it much easier to find people who hold the same rare "
1309 "political beliefs as you. If you’ve always harbored a secret affinity for "
1310 "socialism but never dared utter this aloud lest you be demonized by your "
1311 "neighbors, Facebook can help you discover other people who feel the same way "
1312 "(and it might just demonstrate to you that your affinity is more widespread "
1313 "than you ever suspected). It can make it easier to find people who share "
1314 "your sexual identity. And again, it can help you to understand that what "
1315 "you thought was a shameful secret that affected only you was really a widely "
1316 "shared trait, giving you both comfort and the courage to come out to the "
1317 "people in your life."
1318 msgstr ""
1319
1320 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1321 msgid ""
1322 "All of this presents a dilemma for Facebook: Targeting makes the company’s "
1323 "ads more effective than traditional ads, but it also lets advertisers see "
1324 "just how effective their ads are. While advertisers are pleased to learn "
1325 "that Facebook ads are more effective than ads on systems with less "
1326 "sophisticated targeting, advertisers can also see that in nearly every case, "
1327 "the people who see their ads ignore them. Or, at best, the ads work on a "
1328 "subconscious level, creating nebulous unmeasurables like <quote>brand "
1329 "recognition.</quote> This means that the price per ad is very low in nearly "
1330 "every case."
1331 msgstr ""
1332
1333 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1334 msgid ""
1335 "To make things worse, many Facebook groups spark precious little discussion. "
1336 "Your little-league soccer team, the people with the same rare disease as "
1337 "you, and the people you share a political affinity with may exchange the odd "
1338 "flurry of messages at critical junctures, but on a daily basis, there’s not "
1339 "much to say to your old high school chums or other hockey-card collectors."
1340 msgstr ""
1341
1342 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1343 msgid ""
1344 "With nothing but <quote>organic</quote> discussion, Facebook would not "
1345 "generate enough traffic to sell enough ads to make the money it needs to "
1346 "continually expand by buying up its competitors while returning handsome "
1347 "sums to its investors."
1348 msgstr ""
1349
1350 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1351 msgid ""
1352 "So Facebook has to gin up traffic by sidetracking its own forums: Every time "
1353 "Facebook’s algorithm injects controversial materials — inflammatory "
1354 "political articles, conspiracy theories, outrage stories — into a group, it "
1355 "can hijack that group’s nominal purpose with its desultory discussions and "
1356 "supercharge those discussions by turning them into bitter, unproductive "
1357 "arguments that drag on and on. Facebook is optimized for engagement, not "
1358 "happiness, and it turns out that automated systems are pretty good at "
1359 "figuring out things that people will get angry about."
1360 msgstr ""
1361
1362 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1363 msgid ""
1364 "Facebook <emphasis>can</emphasis> modify our behavior but only in a couple "
1365 "of trivial ways. First, it can lock in all your friends and family members "
1366 "so that you check and check and check with Facebook to find out what they "
1367 "are up to; and second, it can make you angry and anxious. It can force you "
1368 "to choose between being interrupted constantly by updates — a process that "
1369 "breaks your concentration and makes it hard to be introspective — and "
1370 "staying in touch with your friends. This is a very limited form of mind "
1371 "control, and it can only really make us miserable, angry, and anxious."
1372 msgstr ""
1373
1374 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1375 msgid ""
1376 "This is why Facebook’s targeting systems — both the ones it shows to "
1377 "advertisers and the ones that let users find people who share their "
1378 "interests — are so next-gen and smooth and easy to use as well as why its "
1379 "message boards have a toolset that seems like it hasn’t changed since the "
1380 "mid-2000s. If Facebook delivered an equally flexible, sophisticated message-"
1381 "reading system to its users, those users could defend themselves against "
1382 "being nonconsensually eyeball-fucked with Donald Trump headlines."
1383 msgstr ""
1384
1385 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1386 msgid ""
1387 "The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads it gets to show you. The "
1388 "solution to Facebook’s ads only working one in a thousand times is for the "
1389 "company to try to increase how much time you spend on Facebook by a factor "
1390 "of a thousand. Rather than thinking of Facebook as a company that has "
1391 "figured out how to show you exactly the right ad in exactly the right way to "
1392 "get you to do what its advertisers want, think of it as a company that has "
1393 "figured out how to make you slog through an endless torrent of arguments "
1394 "even though they make you miserable, spending so much time on the site that "
1395 "it eventually shows you at least one ad that you respond to."
1396 msgstr ""
1397
1398 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1399 msgid "Monopoly and the right to the future tense"
1400 msgstr "Monopol i prawo do czasu przyszłego"
1401
1402 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1403 msgid ""
1404 "Zuboff and her cohort are particularly alarmed at the extent to which "
1405 "surveillance allows corporations to influence our decisions, taking away "
1406 "something she poetically calls <quote>the right to the future tense</quote> "
1407 "— that is, the right to decide for yourself what you will do in the future."
1408 msgstr ""
1409
1410 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1411 msgid ""
1412 "It’s true that advertising can tip the scales one way or another: When "
1413 "you’re thinking of buying a fridge, a timely fridge ad might end the search "
1414 "on the spot. But Zuboff puts enormous and undue weight on the persuasive "
1415 "power of surveillance-based influence techniques. Most of these don’t work "
1416 "very well, and the ones that do won’t work for very long. The makers of "
1417 "these influence tools are confident they will someday refine them into "
1418 "systems of total control, but they are hardly unbiased observers, and the "
1419 "risks from their dreams coming true are very speculative."
1420 msgstr ""
1421
1422 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1423 msgid ""
1424 "By contrast, Zuboff is rather sanguine about 40 years of lax antitrust "
1425 "practice that has allowed a handful of companies to dominate the internet, "
1426 "ushering in an information age with, <ulink url=\"https://twitter.com/"
1427 "tveastman/status/1069674780826071040\">as one person on Twitter noted</"
1428 "ulink>, five giant websites each filled with screenshots of the other four."
1429 msgstr ""
1430
1431 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1432 msgid ""
1433 "However, if we are to be alarmed that we might lose the right to choose for "
1434 "ourselves what our future will hold, then monopoly’s nonspeculative, "
1435 "concrete, here-and-now harms should be front and center in our debate over "
1436 "tech policy."
1437 msgstr ""
1438
1439 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1440 msgid ""
1441 "Start with <quote>digital rights management.</quote> In 1998, Bill Clinton "
1442 "signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. It’s a complex "
1443 "piece of legislation with many controversial clauses but none more so than "
1444 "Section 1201, the <quote>anti-circumvention</quote> rule."
1445 msgstr ""
1446
1447 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1448 msgid ""
1449 "This is a blanket ban on tampering with systems that restrict access to "
1450 "copyrighted works. The ban is so thoroughgoing that it prohibits removing a "
1451 "copyright lock even when no copyright infringement takes place. This is by "
1452 "design: The activities that the DMCA’s Section 1201 sets out to ban are not "
1453 "copyright infringements; rather, they are legal activities that frustrate "
1454 "manufacturers’ commercial plans."
1455 msgstr ""
1456
1457 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1458 msgid ""
1459 "For example, Section 1201’s first major application was on DVD players as a "
1460 "means of enforcing the region coding built into those devices. DVD-CCA, the "
1461 "body that standardized DVDs and DVD players, divided the world into six "
1462 "regions and specified that DVD players must check each disc to determine "
1463 "which regions it was authorized to be played in. DVD players would have "
1464 "their own corresponding region (a DVD player bought in the U.S. would be "
1465 "region 1 while one bought in India would be region 5). If the player and the "
1466 "disc’s region matched, the player would play the disc; otherwise, it would "
1467 "reject it."
1468 msgstr ""
1469
1470 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1471 msgid ""
1472 "However, watching a lawfully produced disc in a country other than the one "
1473 "where you purchased it is not copyright infringement — it’s the opposite. "
1474 "Copyright law imposes this duty on customers for a movie: You must go into a "
1475 "store, find a licensed disc, and pay the asking price. Do that — and "
1476 "<emphasis>nothing else</emphasis> — and you and copyright are square with "
1477 "one another."
1478 msgstr ""
1479
1480 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1481 msgid ""
1482 "The fact that a movie studio wants to charge Indians less than Americans or "
1483 "release in Australia later than it releases in the U.K. has no bearing on "
1484 "copyright law. Once you lawfully acquire a DVD, it is no copyright "
1485 "infringement to watch it no matter where you happen to be."
1486 msgstr ""
1487
1488 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1489 msgid ""
1490 "So DVD and DVD player manufacturers would not be able to use accusations of "
1491 "abetting copyright infringement to punish manufacturers who made "
1492 "noncompliant players that would play discs from any region or repair shops "
1493 "that modified players to let you watch out-of-region discs or software "
1494 "programmers who created programs to let you do this."
1495 msgstr ""
1496
1497 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1498 msgid ""
1499 "That’s where Section 1201 of the DMCA comes in: By banning tampering with an "
1500 "<quote>access control,</quote> the rule gave manufacturers and rights "
1501 "holders standing to sue competitors who released superior products with "
1502 "lawful features that the market demanded (in this case, region-free players)."
1503 msgstr ""
1504
1505 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1506 msgid ""
1507 "This is an odious scam against consumers, but as time went by, Section 1201 "
1508 "grew to encompass a rapidly expanding constellation of devices and services "
1509 "as canny manufacturers have realized certain things:"
1510 msgstr ""
1511
1512 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1513 msgid ""
1514 "Any device with software in it contains a <quote>copyrighted work</quote> — "
1515 "i.e., the software."
1516 msgstr ""
1517
1518 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1519 msgid ""
1520 "A device can be designed so that reconfiguring the software requires "
1521 "bypassing an <quote>access control for copyrighted works,</quote> which is a "
1522 "potential felony under Section 1201."
1523 msgstr ""
1524
1525 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
1526 msgid ""
1527 "Thus, companies can control their customers’ behavior after they take home "
1528 "their purchases by designing products so that all unpermitted uses require "
1529 "modifications that fall afoul of Section 1201."
1530 msgstr ""
1531
1532 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1533 msgid ""
1534 "Section 1201 then becomes a means for manufacturers of all descriptions to "
1535 "force their customers to arrange their affairs to benefit the manufacturers’ "
1536 "shareholders instead of themselves."
1537 msgstr ""
1538
1539 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1540 msgid ""
1541 "This manifests in many ways: from a new generation of inkjet printers that "
1542 "use countermeasures to prevent third-party ink that cannot be bypassed "
1543 "without legal risks to similar systems in tractors that prevent third-party "
1544 "technicians from swapping in the manufacturer’s own parts that are not "
1545 "recognized by the tractor’s control system until it is supplied with a "
1546 "manufacturer’s unlock code."
1547 msgstr ""
1548
1549 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1550 msgid ""
1551 "Closer to home, Apple’s iPhones use these measures to prevent both third-"
1552 "party service and third-party software installation. This allows Apple to "
1553 "decide when an iPhone is beyond repair and must be shredded and landfilled "
1554 "as opposed to the iPhone’s purchaser. (Apple is notorious for its "
1555 "environmentally catastrophic policy of destroying old electronics rather "
1556 "than permitting them to be cannibalized for parts.) This is a very useful "
1557 "power to wield, especially in light of CEO Tim Cook’s January 2019 warning "
1558 "to investors that the company’s profits are endangered by customers choosing "
1559 "to hold onto their phones for longer rather than replacing them."
1560 msgstr ""
1561
1562 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1563 msgid ""
1564 "Apple’s use of copyright locks also allows it to establish a monopoly over "
1565 "how its customers acquire software for their mobile devices. The App Store’s "
1566 "commercial terms guarantee Apple a share of all revenues generated by the "
1567 "apps sold there, meaning that Apple gets paid when you buy an app from its "
1568 "store and then continues to get paid every time you buy something using that "
1569 "app. This comes out of the bottom line of software developers, who must "
1570 "either charge more or accept lower profits for their products."
1571 msgstr ""
1572
1573 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1574 msgid ""
1575 "Crucially, Apple’s use of copyright locks gives it the power to make "
1576 "editorial decisions about which apps you may and may not install on your own "
1577 "device. Apple has used this power to <ulink url=\"https://www.telegraph.co."
1578 "uk/technology/apple/5982243/Apple-bans-dictionary-from-App-Store-over-swear-"
1579 "words.html\">reject dictionaries</ulink> for containing obscene words; to "
1580 "<ulink url=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-"
1581 "app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again\">limit political speech</ulink>, "
1582 "especially from apps that make sensitive political commentary such as an app "
1583 "that notifies you every time a U.S. drone kills someone somewhere in the "
1584 "world; and to <ulink url=\"https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-19-"
1585 "palestinian-indie-game-must-not-be-called-a-game-apple-says\">object to a "
1586 "game</ulink> that commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict."
1587 msgstr ""
1588
1589 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1590 msgid ""
1591 "Apple often justifies monopoly power over software installation in the name "
1592 "of security, arguing that its vetting of apps for its store means that it "
1593 "can guard its users against apps that contain surveillance code. But this "
1594 "cuts both ways. In China, the government <ulink url=\"https://www.ft.com/"
1595 "content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc\">ordered Apple to prohibit the "
1596 "sale of privacy tools</ulink> like VPNs with the exception of VPNs that had "
1597 "deliberately introduced flaws designed to let the Chinese state eavesdrop on "
1598 "users. Because Apple uses technological countermeasures — with legal "
1599 "backstops — to block customers from installing unauthorized apps, Chinese "
1600 "iPhone owners cannot readily (or legally) acquire VPNs that would protect "
1601 "them from Chinese state snooping."
1602 msgstr ""
1603
1604 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1605 msgid ""
1606 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote> "
1607 "Theoreticians of capitalism claim that its virtue is that it <ulink url="
1608 "\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_signal\">aggregates information in the "
1609 "form of consumers’ decisions</ulink>, producing efficient markets. "
1610 "Surveillance capitalism’s supposed power to rob its victims of their free "
1611 "will through computationally supercharged influence campaigns means that our "
1612 "markets no longer aggregate customers’ decisions because we customers no "
1613 "longer decide — we are given orders by surveillance capitalism’s mind-"
1614 "control rays."
1615 msgstr ""
1616
1617 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1618 msgid ""
1619 "If our concern is that markets cease to function when consumers can no "
1620 "longer make choices, then copyright locks should concern us at "
1621 "<emphasis>least</emphasis> as much as influence campaigns. An influence "
1622 "campaign might nudge you to buy a certain brand of phone; but the copyright "
1623 "locks on that phone absolutely determine where you get it serviced, which "
1624 "apps can run on it, and when you have to throw it away rather than fixing it."
1625 msgstr ""
1626
1627 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1628 msgid "Search order and the right to the future tense"
1629 msgstr "Porządek wyszukiwania i prawo do czasu przyszłego"
1630
1631 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1632 msgid ""
1633 "Markets are posed as a kind of magic: By discovering otherwise hidden "
1634 "information conveyed by the free choices of consumers, those consumers’ "
1635 "local knowledge is integrated into a self-correcting system that makes "
1636 "efficient allocations—more efficient than any computer could calculate. But "
1637 "monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one app "
1638 "store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the range of "
1639 "choices. As Boss Tweed once said, <quote>I don’t care who does the electing, "
1640 "so long as I get to do the nominating.</quote> A monopolized market is an "
1641 "election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist."
1642 msgstr ""
1643
1644 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1645 msgid ""
1646 "This ballot rigging is made more pernicious by the existence of monopolies "
1647 "over search order. Google’s search market share is about 90%. When Google’s "
1648 "ranking algorithm puts a result for a popular search term in its top 10, "
1649 "that helps determine the behavior of millions of people. If Google’s answer "
1650 "to <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</quote> is a page that rebuts anti-vax "
1651 "conspiracy theories, then a sizable portion of the public will learn that "
1652 "vaccines are safe. If, on the other hand, Google sends those people to a "
1653 "site affirming the anti-vax conspiracies, a sizable portion of those "
1654 "millions will come away convinced that vaccines are dangerous."
1655 msgstr ""
1656
1657 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1658 msgid ""
1659 "Google’s algorithm is often tricked into serving disinformation as a "
1660 "prominent search result. But in these cases, Google isn’t persuading people "
1661 "to change their minds; it’s just presenting something untrue as fact when "
1662 "the user has no cause to doubt it."
1663 msgstr ""
1664
1665 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1666 msgid ""
1667 "This is true whether the search is for <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</"
1668 "quote> or <quote>best restaurants near me.</quote> Most users will never "
1669 "look past the first page of search results, and when the overwhelming "
1670 "majority of people all use the same search engine, the ranking algorithm "
1671 "deployed by that search engine will determine myriad outcomes (whether to "
1672 "adopt a child, whether to have cancer surgery, where to eat dinner, where to "
1673 "move, where to apply for a job) to a degree that vastly outstrips any "
1674 "behavioral outcomes dictated by algorithmic persuasion techniques."
1675 msgstr ""
1676
1677 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1678 msgid ""
1679 "Many of the questions we ask search engines have no empirically correct "
1680 "answers: <quote>Where should I eat dinner?</quote> is not an objective "
1681 "question. Even questions that do have correct answers (<quote>Are vaccines "
1682 "dangerous?</quote>) don’t have one empirically superior source for that "
1683 "answer. Many pages affirm the safety of vaccines, so which one goes first? "
1684 "Under conditions of competition, consumers can choose from many search "
1685 "engines and stick with the one whose algorithmic judgment suits them best, "
1686 "but under conditions of monopoly, we all get our answers from the same place."
1687 msgstr ""
1688
1689 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1690 msgid ""
1691 "Google’s search dominance isn’t a matter of pure merit: The company has "
1692 "leveraged many tactics that would have been prohibited under classical, pre-"
1693 "Ronald-Reagan antitrust enforcement standards to attain its dominance. After "
1694 "all, this is a company that has developed two major products: a really good "
1695 "search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. Every other major success "
1696 "it’s had — Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. — has come through an "
1697 "acquisition of a nascent competitor. Many of the company’s key divisions, "
1698 "such as the advertising technology of DoubleClick, violate the historical "
1699 "antitrust principle of structural separation, which forbade firms from "
1700 "owning subsidiaries that competed with their customers. Railroads, for "
1701 "example, were barred from owning freight companies that competed with the "
1702 "shippers whose freight they carried."
1703 msgstr ""
1704
1705 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1706 msgid ""
1707 "If we’re worried about giant companies subverting markets by stripping "
1708 "consumers of their ability to make free choices, then vigorous antitrust "
1709 "enforcement seems like an excellent remedy. If we’d denied Google the right "
1710 "to effect its many mergers, we would also have probably denied it its total "
1711 "search dominance. Without that dominance, the pet theories, biases, errors "
1712 "(and good judgment, too) of Google search engineers and product managers "
1713 "would not have such an outsized effect on consumer choice."
1714 msgstr ""
1715
1716 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1717 msgid ""
1718 "This goes for many other companies. Amazon, a classic surveillance "
1719 "capitalist, is obviously the dominant tool for searching Amazon — though "
1720 "many people find their way to Amazon through Google searches and Facebook "
1721 "posts — and obviously, Amazon controls Amazon search. That means that "
1722 "Amazon’s own self-serving editorial choices—like promoting its own house "
1723 "brands over rival goods from its sellers as well as its own pet theories, "
1724 "biases, and errors— determine much of what we buy on Amazon. And since "
1725 "Amazon is the dominant e-commerce retailer outside of China and since it "
1726 "attained that dominance by buying up both large rivals and nascent "
1727 "competitors in defiance of historical antitrust rules, we can blame the "
1728 "monopoly for stripping consumers of their right to the future tense and the "
1729 "ability to shape markets by making informed choices."
1730 msgstr ""
1731
1732 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1733 msgid ""
1734 "Not every monopolist is a surveillance capitalist, but that doesn’t mean "
1735 "they’re not able to shape consumer choices in wide-ranging ways. Zuboff "
1736 "lauds Apple for its App Store and iTunes Store, insisting that adding price "
1737 "tags to the features on its platforms has been the secret to resisting "
1738 "surveillance and thus creating markets. But Apple is the only retailer "
1739 "allowed to sell on its platforms, and it’s the second-largest mobile device "
1740 "vendor in the world. The independent software vendors that sell through "
1741 "Apple’s marketplace accuse the company of the same surveillance sins as "
1742 "Amazon and other big retailers: spying on its customers to find lucrative "
1743 "new products to launch, effectively using independent software vendors as "
1744 "free-market researchers, then forcing them out of any markets they discover."
1745 msgstr ""
1746
1747 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1748 msgid ""
1749 "Because of its use of copyright locks, Apple’s mobile customers are not "
1750 "legally allowed to switch to a rival retailer for its apps if they want to "
1751 "do so on an iPhone. Apple, obviously, is the only entity that gets to decide "
1752 "how it ranks the results of search queries in its stores. These decisions "
1753 "ensure that some apps are often installed (because they appear on page one) "
1754 "and others are never installed (because they appear on page one million). "
1755 "Apple’s search-ranking design decisions have a vastly more significant "
1756 "effect on consumer behaviors than influence campaigns delivered by "
1757 "surveillance capitalism’s ad-serving bots."
1758 msgstr ""
1759
1760 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
1761 msgid "Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs"
1762 msgstr "Monopoliści mogą sobie pozwolić na proszki nasenne dla strażników"
1763
1764 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1765 msgid ""
1766 "Only the most extreme market ideologues think that markets can self-regulate "
1767 "without state oversight. Markets need watchdogs — regulators, lawmakers, and "
1768 "other elements of democratic control — to keep them honest. When these "
1769 "watchdogs sleep on the job, then markets cease to aggregate consumer choices "
1770 "because those choices are constrained by illegitimate and deceptive "
1771 "activities that companies are able to get away with because no one is "
1772 "holding them to account."
1773 msgstr ""
1774
1775 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1776 msgid ""
1777 "But this kind of regulatory capture doesn’t come cheap. In competitive "
1778 "sectors, where rivals are constantly eroding one another’s margins, "
1779 "individual firms lack the surplus capital to effectively lobby for laws and "
1780 "regulations that serve their ends."
1781 msgstr ""
1782
1783 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1784 msgid ""
1785 "Many of the harms of surveillance capitalism are the result of weak or "
1786 "nonexistent regulation. Those regulatory vacuums spring from the power of "
1787 "monopolists to resist stronger regulation and to tailor what regulation "
1788 "exists to permit their existing businesses."
1789 msgstr ""
1790
1791 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1792 msgid ""
1793 "Here’s an example: When firms over-collect and over-retain our data, they "
1794 "are at increased risk of suffering a breach — you can’t leak data you never "
1795 "collected, and once you delete all copies of that data, you can no longer "
1796 "leak it. For more than a decade, we’ve lived through an endless parade of "
1797 "ever-worsening data breaches, each one uniquely horrible in the scale of "
1798 "data breached and the sensitivity of that data."
1799 msgstr ""
1800
1801 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1802 msgid ""
1803 "But still, firms continue to over-collect and over-retain our data for three "
1804 "reasons:"
1805 msgstr ""
1806
1807 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1808 msgid ""
1809 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">1. They are locked in the aforementioned limbic "
1810 "arms race with our capacity to shore up our attentional defense systems to "
1811 "resist their new persuasion techniques.</emphasis> They’re also locked in an "
1812 "arms race with their competitors to find new ways to target people for sales "
1813 "pitches. As soon as they discover a soft spot in our attentional defenses (a "
1814 "counterintuitive, unobvious way to target potential refrigerator buyers), "
1815 "the public begins to wise up to the tactic, and their competitors leap on "
1816 "it, hastening the day in which all potential refrigerator buyers have been "
1817 "inured to the pitch."
1818 msgstr ""
1819
1820 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1821 msgid ""
1822 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">2. They believe the surveillance capitalism story."
1823 "</emphasis> Data is cheap to aggregate and store, and both proponents and "
1824 "opponents of surveillance capitalism have assured managers and product "
1825 "designers that if you collect enough data, you will be able to perform "
1826 "sorcerous acts of mind control, thus supercharging your sales. Even if you "
1827 "never figure out how to profit from the data, someone else will eventually "
1828 "offer to buy it from you to give it a try. This is the hallmark of all "
1829 "economic bubbles: acquiring an asset on the assumption that someone else "
1830 "will buy it from you for more than you paid for it, often to sell to someone "
1831 "else at an even greater price."
1832 msgstr ""
1833
1834 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1835 msgid ""
1836 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">3. The penalties for leaking data are negligible.</"
1837 "emphasis> Most countries limit these penalties to actual damages, meaning "
1838 "that consumers who’ve had their data breached have to show actual monetary "
1839 "harms to get a reward. In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it had lost credit-"
1840 "card data for 53 million of its customers, but it settled the matter by "
1841 "paying those customers about $0.34 each — and a third of that $0.34 wasn’t "
1842 "even paid in cash. It took the form of a credit to procure a largely "
1843 "ineffectual credit-monitoring service."
1844 msgstr ""
1845
1846 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1847 msgid ""
1848 "But the harms from breaches are much more extensive than these actual-"
1849 "damages rules capture. Identity thieves and fraudsters are wily and "
1850 "endlessly inventive. All the vast breaches of our century are being "
1851 "continuously recombined, the data sets merged and mined for new ways to "
1852 "victimize the people whose data was present in them. Any reasonable, "
1853 "evidence-based theory of deterrence and compensation for breaches would not "
1854 "confine damages to actual damages but rather would allow users to claim "
1855 "these future harms."
1856 msgstr ""
1857
1858 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1859 msgid ""
1860 "However, even the most ambitious privacy rules, such as the EU General Data "
1861 "Protection Regulation, fall far short of capturing the negative "
1862 "externalities of the platforms’ negligent over-collection and over-"
1863 "retention, and what penalties they do provide are not aggressively pursued "
1864 "by regulators."
1865 msgstr ""
1866
1867 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1868 msgid ""
1869 "This tolerance of — or indifference to — data over-collection and over-"
1870 "retention can be ascribed in part to the sheer lobbying muscle of the "
1871 "platforms. They are so profitable that they can handily afford to divert "
1872 "gigantic sums to fight any real change — that is, change that would force "
1873 "them to internalize the costs of their surveillance activities."
1874 msgstr ""
1875
1876 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1877 msgid ""
1878 "And then there’s state surveillance, which the surveillance capitalism story "
1879 "dismisses as a relic of another era when the big worry was being jailed for "
1880 "your dissident speech, not having your free will stripped away with machine "
1881 "learning."
1882 msgstr ""
1883
1884 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1885 msgid ""
1886 "But state surveillance and private surveillance are intimately related. As "
1887 "we saw when Apple was conscripted by the Chinese government as a vital "
1888 "collaborator in state surveillance, the only really affordable and tractable "
1889 "way to conduct mass surveillance on the scale practiced by modern states — "
1890 "both <quote>free</quote> and autocratic states — is to suborn commercial "
1891 "services."
1892 msgstr ""
1893
1894 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1895 msgid ""
1896 "Whether it’s Google being used as a location tracking tool by local law "
1897 "enforcement across the U.S. or the use of social media tracking by the "
1898 "Department of Homeland Security to build dossiers on participants in "
1899 "protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family separation "
1900 "practices, any hard limits on surveillance capitalism would hamstring the "
1901 "state’s own surveillance capability. Without Palantir, Amazon, Google, and "
1902 "other major tech contractors, U.S. cops would not be able to spy on Black "
1903 "people, ICE would not be able to manage the caging of children at the U.S. "
1904 "border, and state welfare systems would not be able to purge their rolls by "
1905 "dressing up cruelty as empiricism and claiming that poor and vulnerable "
1906 "people are ineligible for assistance. At least some of the states’ "
1907 "unwillingness to take meaningful action to curb surveillance should be "
1908 "attributed to this symbiotic relationship. There is no mass state "
1909 "surveillance without mass commercial surveillance."
1910 msgstr ""
1911
1912 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1913 msgid ""
1914 "Monopolism is key to the project of mass state surveillance. It’s true that "
1915 "smaller tech firms are apt to be less well-defended than Big Tech, whose "
1916 "security experts are drawn from the tops of their field and who are given "
1917 "enormous resources to secure and monitor their systems against intruders. "
1918 "But smaller firms also have less to protect: fewer users whose data is more "
1919 "fragmented across more systems and have to be suborned one at a time by "
1920 "state actors."
1921 msgstr ""
1922
1923 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1924 msgid ""
1925 "A concentrated tech sector that works with authorities is a much more "
1926 "powerful ally in the project of mass state surveillance than a fragmented "
1927 "one composed of smaller actors. The U.S. tech sector is small enough that "
1928 "all of its top executives fit around a single boardroom table in Trump Tower "
1929 "in 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Most of its biggest players bid "
1930 "to win JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense "
1931 "Infrastructure cloud contract. Like other highly concentrated industries, "
1932 "Big Tech rotates its key employees in and out of government service, sending "
1933 "them to serve in the Department of Defense and the White House, then hiring "
1934 "ex-Pentagon and ex-DOD top staffers and officers to work in their own "
1935 "government relations departments."
1936 msgstr ""
1937
1938 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1939 msgid ""
1940 "They can even make a good case for doing this: After all, when there are "
1941 "only four or five big companies in an industry, everyone qualified to "
1942 "regulate those companies has served as an executive in at least a couple of "
1943 "them — because, likewise, when there are only five companies in an industry, "
1944 "everyone qualified for a senior role at any of them is by definition working "
1945 "at one of the other ones."
1946 msgstr ""
1947
1948 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
1949 msgid ""
1950 "While surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies certainly abet "
1951 "surveillance."
1952 msgstr ""
1953
1954 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1955 msgid ""
1956 "Industries that are competitive are fragmented — composed of companies that "
1957 "are at each other’s throats all the time and eroding one another’s margins "
1958 "in bids to steal their best customers. This leaves them with much more "
1959 "limited capital to use to lobby for favorable rules and a much harder job of "
1960 "getting everyone to agree to pool their resources to benefit the industry as "
1961 "a whole."
1962 msgstr ""
1963
1964 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1965 msgid ""
1966 "Surveillance combined with machine learning is supposed to be an existential "
1967 "crisis, a species-defining moment at which our free will is just a few more "
1968 "advances in the field from being stripped away. I am skeptical of this "
1969 "claim, but I <emphasis>do</emphasis> think that tech poses an existential "
1970 "threat to our society and possibly our species."
1971 msgstr ""
1972
1973 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1974 msgid "But that threat grows out of monopoly."
1975 msgstr ""
1976
1977 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1978 msgid ""
1979 "One of the consequences of tech’s regulatory capture is that it can shift "
1980 "liability for poor security decisions onto its customers and the wider "
1981 "society. It is absolutely normal in tech for companies to obfuscate the "
1982 "workings of their products, to make them deliberately hard to understand, "
1983 "and to threaten security researchers who seek to independently audit those "
1984 "products."
1985 msgstr ""
1986
1987 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1988 msgid ""
1989 "IT is the only field in which this is practiced: No one builds a bridge or a "
1990 "hospital and keeps the composition of the steel or the equations used to "
1991 "calculate load stresses a secret. It is a frankly bizarre practice that "
1992 "leads, time and again, to grotesque security defects on farcical scales, "
1993 "with whole classes of devices being revealed as vulnerable long after they "
1994 "are deployed in the field and put into sensitive places."
1995 msgstr ""
1996
1997 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
1998 msgid ""
1999 "The monopoly power that keeps any meaningful consequences for breaches at "
2000 "bay means that tech companies continue to build terrible products that are "
2001 "insecure by design and that end up integrated into our lives, in possession "
2002 "of our data, and connected to our physical world. For years, Boeing has "
2003 "struggled with the aftermath of a series of bad technology decisions that "
2004 "made its 737 fleet a global pariah, a rare instance in which bad tech "
2005 "decisions have been seriously punished in the market."
2006 msgstr ""
2007
2008 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2009 msgid ""
2010 "These bad security decisions are compounded yet again by the use of "
2011 "copyright locks to enforce business-model decisions against consumers. "
2012 "Recall that these locks have become the go-to means for shaping consumer "
2013 "behavior, making it technically impossible to use third-party ink, insulin, "
2014 "apps, or service depots in connection with your lawfully acquired property."
2015 msgstr ""
2016
2017 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2018 msgid ""
2019 "Recall also that these copyright locks are backstopped by legislation (such "
2020 "as Section 1201 of the DMCA or Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive) "
2021 "that ban tampering with (<quote>circumventing</quote>) them, and these "
2022 "statutes have been used to threaten security researchers who make "
2023 "disclosures about vulnerabilities without permission from manufacturers."
2024 msgstr ""
2025
2026 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2027 msgid ""
2028 "This amounts to a manufacturer’s veto over safety warnings and criticism. "
2029 "While this is far from the legislative intent of the DMCA and its sister "
2030 "statutes around the world, Congress has not intervened to clarify the "
2031 "statute nor will it because to do so would run counter to the interests of "
2032 "powerful, large firms whose lobbying muscle is unstoppable."
2033 msgstr ""
2034
2035 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2036 msgid ""
2037 "Copyright locks are a double whammy: They create bad security decisions that "
2038 "can’t be freely investigated or discussed. If markets are supposed to be "
2039 "machines for aggregating information (and if surveillance capitalism’s "
2040 "notional mind-control rays are what make it a <quote>rogue capitalism</"
2041 "quote> because it denies consumers the power to make decisions), then a "
2042 "program of legally enforced ignorance of the risks of products makes "
2043 "monopolism even more of a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> than surveillance "
2044 "capitalism’s influence campaigns."
2045 msgstr ""
2046
2047 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2048 msgid ""
2049 "And unlike mind-control rays, enforced silence over security is an "
2050 "immediate, documented problem, and it <emphasis>does</emphasis> constitute "
2051 "an existential threat to our civilization and possibly our species. The "
2052 "proliferation of insecure devices — especially devices that spy on us and "
2053 "especially when those devices also can manipulate the physical world by, "
2054 "say, steering your car or flipping a breaker at a power station — is a kind "
2055 "of technology debt."
2056 msgstr ""
2057
2058 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2059 msgid ""
2060 "In software design, <quote>technology debt</quote> refers to old, baked-in "
2061 "decisions that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. Perhaps a long-ago "
2062 "developer decided to incorporate a networking protocol made by a vendor that "
2063 "has since stopped supporting it. But everything in the product still relies "
2064 "on that superannuated protocol, and so, with each revision, the product team "
2065 "has to work around this obsolete core, adding compatibility layers, "
2066 "surrounding it with security checks that try to shore up its defenses, and "
2067 "so on. These Band-Aid measures compound the debt because every subsequent "
2068 "revision has to make allowances for <emphasis>them</emphasis>, too, like "
2069 "interest mounting on a predatory subprime loan. And like a subprime loan, "
2070 "the interest mounts faster than you can hope to pay it off: The product team "
2071 "has to put so much energy into maintaining this complex, brittle system that "
2072 "they don’t have any time left over to refactor the product from the ground "
2073 "up and <quote>pay off the debt</quote> once and for all."
2074 msgstr ""
2075
2076 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2077 msgid ""
2078 "Typically, technology debt results in a technological bankruptcy: The "
2079 "product gets so brittle and unsustainable that it fails catastrophically. "
2080 "Think of the antiquated COBOL-based banking and accounting systems that fell "
2081 "over at the start of the pandemic emergency when confronted with surges of "
2082 "unemployment claims. Sometimes that ends the product; sometimes it takes "
2083 "the company down with it. Being caught in the default of a technology debt "
2084 "is scary and traumatic, just like losing your house due to bankruptcy is "
2085 "scary and traumatic."
2086 msgstr ""
2087
2088 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2089 msgid ""
2090 "But the technology debt created by copyright locks isn’t individual debt; "
2091 "it’s systemic. Everyone in the world is exposed to this over-leverage, as "
2092 "was the case with the 2008 financial crisis. When that debt comes due — when "
2093 "we face a cascade of security breaches that threaten global shipping and "
2094 "logistics, the food supply, pharmaceutical production pipelines, emergency "
2095 "communications, and other critical systems that are accumulating technology "
2096 "debt in part due to the presence of deliberately insecure and deliberately "
2097 "unauditable copyright locks — it will indeed pose an existential risk."
2098 msgstr ""
2099
2100 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2101 msgid "Privacy and monopoly"
2102 msgstr "Prywatność a monopol"
2103
2104 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2105 msgid ""
2106 "Many tech companies are gripped by an orthodoxy that holds that if they just "
2107 "gather enough data on enough of our activities, everything else is possible "
2108 "— the mind control and endless profits. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis: "
2109 "If data gives a tech company even a tiny improvement in behavior prediction "
2110 "and modification, the company declares that it has taken the first step "
2111 "toward global domination with no end in sight. If a company <emphasis>fails</"
2112 "emphasis> to attain any improvements from gathering and analyzing data, it "
2113 "declares success to be just around the corner, attainable once more data is "
2114 "in hand."
2115 msgstr ""
2116
2117 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2118 msgid ""
2119 "Surveillance tech is far from the first industry to embrace a nonsensical, "
2120 "self-serving belief that harms the rest of the world, and it is not the "
2121 "first industry to profit handsomely from such a delusion. Long before hedge-"
2122 "fund managers were claiming (falsely) that they could beat the S&amp;P 500, "
2123 "there were plenty of other <quote>respectable</quote> industries that have "
2124 "been revealed as quacks in hindsight. From the makers of radium "
2125 "suppositories (a real thing!) to the cruel sociopaths who claimed they "
2126 "could <quote>cure</quote> gay people, history is littered with the formerly "
2127 "respectable titans of discredited industries."
2128 msgstr ""
2129
2130 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2131 msgid ""
2132 "This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech and its "
2133 "ideological addiction to data. While surveillance’s benefits are mostly "
2134 "overstated, its harms are, if anything, <emphasis>understated</emphasis>."
2135 msgstr ""
2136
2137 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2138 msgid ""
2139 "There’s real irony here. The belief in surveillance capitalism as a "
2140 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is driven by the belief that markets "
2141 "wouldn’t tolerate firms that are gripped by false beliefs. An oil company "
2142 "that has false beliefs about where the oil is will eventually go broke "
2143 "digging dry wells after all."
2144 msgstr ""
2145
2146 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2147 msgid ""
2148 "But monopolists get to do terrible things for a long time before they pay "
2149 "the price. Think of how concentration in the finance sector allowed the "
2150 "subprime crisis to fester as bond-rating agencies, regulators, investors, "
2151 "and critics all fell under the sway of a false belief that complex "
2152 "mathematics could construct <quote>fully hedged</quote> debt instruments "
2153 "that could not possibly default. A small bank that engaged in this kind of "
2154 "malfeasance would simply go broke rather than outrunning the inevitable "
2155 "crisis, perhaps growing so big that it averted it altogether. But large "
2156 "banks were able to continue to attract investors, and when they finally "
2157 "<emphasis>did</emphasis> come a-cropper, the world’s governments bailed them "
2158 "out. The worst offenders of the subprime crisis are bigger than they were in "
2159 "2008, bringing home more profits and paying their execs even larger sums."
2160 msgstr ""
2161
2162 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2163 msgid ""
2164 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
2165 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>. The reason every web publisher "
2166 "embeds a Facebook <quote>Like</quote> button is that Facebook dominates the "
2167 "internet’s social media referrals — and every one of those <quote>Like</"
2168 "quote> buttons spies on everyone who lands on a page that contains them (see "
2169 "also: Google Analytics embeds, Twitter buttons, etc.)."
2170 msgstr ""
2171
2172 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2173 msgid ""
2174 "The reason the world’s governments have been slow to create meaningful "
2175 "penalties for privacy breaches is that Big Tech’s concentration produces "
2176 "huge profits that can be used to lobby against those penalties — and Big "
2177 "Tech’s concentration means that the companies involved are able to arrive at "
2178 "a unified negotiating position that supercharges the lobbying."
2179 msgstr ""
2180
2181 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2182 msgid ""
2183 "The reason that the smartest engineers in the world want to work for Big "
2184 "Tech is that Big Tech commands the lion’s share of tech industry jobs."
2185 msgstr ""
2186
2187 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2188 msgid ""
2189 "The reason people who are aghast at Facebook’s and Google’s and Amazon’s "
2190 "data-handling practices continue to use these services is that all their "
2191 "friends are on Facebook; Google dominates search; and Amazon has put all the "
2192 "local merchants out of business."
2193 msgstr ""
2194
2195 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2196 msgid ""
2197 "Competitive markets would weaken the companies’ lobbying muscle by reducing "
2198 "their profits and pitting them against each other in regulatory forums. It "
2199 "would give customers other places to go to get their online services. It "
2200 "would make the companies small enough to regulate and pave the way to "
2201 "meaningful penalties for breaches. It would let engineers with ideas that "
2202 "challenged the surveillance orthodoxy raise capital to compete with the "
2203 "incumbents. It would give web publishers multiple ways to reach audiences "
2204 "and make the case against Facebook and Google and Twitter embeds."
2205 msgstr ""
2206
2207 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2208 msgid ""
2209 "In other words, while surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies "
2210 "certainly abet surveillance."
2211 msgstr ""
2212
2213 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2214 msgid "Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism"
2215 msgstr "Ronald Reagan, pionier monopolizmu technologicznego"
2216
2217 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2218 msgid ""
2219 "Technology exceptionalism is a sin, whether it’s practiced by technology’s "
2220 "blind proponents or by its critics. Both of these camps are prone to "
2221 "explaining away monopolistic concentration by citing some special "
2222 "characteristic of the tech industry, like network effects or first-mover "
2223 "advantage. The only real difference between these two groups is that the "
2224 "tech apologists say monopoly is inevitable so we should just let tech get "
2225 "away with its abuses while competition regulators in the U.S. and the EU say "
2226 "monopoly is inevitable so we should punish tech for its abuses but not try "
2227 "to break up the monopolies."
2228 msgstr ""
2229
2230 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2231 msgid ""
2232 "To understand how tech became so monopolistic, it’s useful to look at the "
2233 "dawn of the consumer tech industry: 1979, the year the Apple II Plus "
2234 "launched and became the first successful home computer. That also happens to "
2235 "be the year that Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail for the 1980 "
2236 "presidential race — a race he won, leading to a radical shift in the way "
2237 "that antitrust concerns are handled in America. Reagan’s cohort of "
2238 "politicians — including Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Brian Mulroney in "
2239 "Canada, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile — went on to "
2240 "enact similar reforms that eventually spread around the world."
2241 msgstr ""
2242
2243 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2244 msgid ""
2245 "Antitrust’s story began nearly a century before all that with laws like the "
2246 "Sherman Act, which took aim at monopolists on the grounds that monopolies "
2247 "were bad in and of themselves — squeezing out competitors, creating "
2248 "<quote>diseconomies of scale</quote> (when a company is so big that its "
2249 "constituent parts go awry and it is seemingly helpless to address the "
2250 "problems), and capturing their regulators to such a degree that they can get "
2251 "away with a host of evils."
2252 msgstr ""
2253
2254 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2255 msgid ""
2256 "Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who "
2257 "Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit "
2258 "and who had created an alternate legislative history of the Sherman Act and "
2259 "its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that these statutes were "
2260 "never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, "
2261 "including the transcribed speeches of the acts’ authors) but, rather, that "
2262 "they were intended to prevent <quote>consumer harm</quote> — in the form of "
2263 "higher prices."
2264 msgstr ""
2265
2266 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2267 msgid ""
2268 "Bork was a crank, but he was a crank with a theory that rich people really "
2269 "liked. Monopolies are a great way to make rich people richer by allowing "
2270 "them to receive <quote>monopoly rents</quote> (that is, bigger profits) and "
2271 "capture regulators, leading to a weaker, more favorable regulatory "
2272 "environment with fewer protections for customers, suppliers, the "
2273 "environment, and workers."
2274 msgstr ""
2275
2276 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2277 msgid ""
2278 "Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who "
2279 "backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies began "
2280 "to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement decisions "
2281 "(Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork flunked the "
2282 "Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, D.C. insiders use "
2283 "the term <quote>borked</quote> to refer to any catastrophically bad "
2284 "political performance)."
2285 msgstr ""
2286
2287 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2288 msgid ""
2289 "Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their backers "
2290 "began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on junkets where "
2291 "members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun outdoor "
2292 "activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the consumer "
2293 "harm theory of antitrust. The more Bork’s theories took hold, the more money "
2294 "the monopolists were making — and the more surplus capital they had at their "
2295 "disposal to lobby for even more Borkian antitrust influence campaigns."
2296 msgstr ""
2297
2298 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2299 msgid ""
2300 "The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the "
2301 "kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns us "
2302 "against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy. But Bork didn’t "
2303 "change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over a "
2304 "generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed "
2305 "oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts in "
2306 "public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that wealth is "
2307 "a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to form a "
2308 "coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue."
2309 msgstr ""
2310
2311 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2312 msgid ""
2313 "Today, many fear that machine learning allows surveillance capitalism to "
2314 "sell <quote>Bork-as-a-Service,</quote> at internet speeds, so that you can "
2315 "contract a machine-learning company to engineer <emphasis>rapid</emphasis> "
2316 "shifts in public sentiment without needing the capital to sustain a "
2317 "multipronged, multigenerational project working at the local, state, "
2318 "national, and global levels in business, law, and philosophy. I do not "
2319 "believe that such a project is plausible, though I agree that this is "
2320 "basically what the platforms claim to be selling. They’re just lying about "
2321 "it. Big Tech lies all the time, <emphasis>including</emphasis> in their "
2322 "sales literature."
2323 msgstr ""
2324
2325 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2326 msgid ""
2327 "The idea that tech forms <quote>natural monopolies</quote> (monopolies that "
2328 "are the inevitable result of the realities of an industry, such as the "
2329 "monopolies that accrue the first company to run long-haul phone lines or "
2330 "rail lines) is belied by tech’s own history: In the absence of anti-"
2331 "competitive tactics, Google was able to unseat AltaVista and Yahoo; Facebook "
2332 "was able to head off Myspace. There are some advantages to gathering "
2333 "mountains of data, but those mountains of data also have disadvantages: "
2334 "liability (from leaking), diminishing returns (from old data), and "
2335 "institutional inertia (big companies, like science, progress one funeral at "
2336 "a time)."
2337 msgstr ""
2338
2339 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2340 msgid ""
2341 "Indeed, the birth of the web saw a mass-extinction event for the existing "
2342 "giant, wildly profitable proprietary technologies that had capital, network "
2343 "effects, and walls and moats surrounding their businesses. The web showed "
2344 "that when a new industry is built around a protocol, rather than a product, "
2345 "the combined might of everyone who uses the protocol to reach their "
2346 "customers or users or communities outweighs even the most massive products. "
2347 "CompuServe, AOL, MSN, and a host of other proprietary walled gardens learned "
2348 "this lesson the hard way: Each believed it could stay separate from the web, "
2349 "offering <quote>curation</quote> and a guarantee of consistency and quality "
2350 "instead of the chaos of an open system. Each was wrong and ended up being "
2351 "absorbed into the public web."
2352 msgstr ""
2353
2354 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2355 msgid ""
2356 "Yes, tech is heavily monopolized and is now closely associated with industry "
2357 "concentration, but this has more to do with a matter of timing than its "
2358 "intrinsically monopolistic tendencies. Tech was born at the moment that "
2359 "antitrust enforcement was being dismantled, and tech fell into exactly the "
2360 "same pathologies that antitrust was supposed to guard against. To a first "
2361 "approximation, it is reasonable to assume that tech’s monopolies are the "
2362 "result of a lack of anti-monopoly action and not the much-touted unique "
2363 "characteristics of tech, such as network effects, first-mover advantage, and "
2364 "so on."
2365 msgstr ""
2366
2367 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2368 msgid ""
2369 "In support of this thesis, I offer the concentration that every "
2370 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> industry has undergone over the same period. From "
2371 "professional wrestling to consumer packaged goods to commercial property "
2372 "leasing to banking to sea freight to oil to record labels to newspaper "
2373 "ownership to theme parks, <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry has undergone "
2374 "a massive shift toward concentration. There’s no obvious network effects or "
2375 "first-mover advantage at play in these industries. However, in every case, "
2376 "these industries attained their concentrated status through tactics that "
2377 "were prohibited before Bork’s triumph: merging with major competitors, "
2378 "buying out innovative new market entrants, horizontal and vertical "
2379 "integration, and a suite of anti-competitive tactics that were once illegal "
2380 "but are not any longer."
2381 msgstr ""
2382
2383 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2384 msgid ""
2385 "Again: When you change the laws intended to prevent monopolies and then "
2386 "monopolies form in exactly the way the law was supposed to prevent, it is "
2387 "reasonable to suppose that these facts are related. Tech’s concentration "
2388 "can be readily explained without recourse to radical theories of network "
2389 "effects — but only if you’re willing to indict unregulated markets as "
2390 "tending toward monopoly. Just as a lifelong smoker can give you a hundred "
2391 "reasons why their smoking didn’t cause their cancer (<quote>It was the "
2392 "environmental toxins</quote>), true believers in unregulated markets have a "
2393 "whole suite of unconvincing explanations for monopoly in tech that leave "
2394 "capitalism intact."
2395 msgstr ""
2396
2397 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2398 msgid "Steering with the windshield wipers"
2399 msgstr "Sterowanie za pomocą wycieraczek przedniej szyby"
2400
2401 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2402 msgid ""
2403 "It’s been 40 years since Bork’s project to rehabilitate monopolies achieved "
2404 "liftoff, and that is a generation and a half, which is plenty of time to "
2405 "take a common idea and make it seem outlandish and vice versa. Before the "
2406 "1940s, affluent Americans dressed their baby boys in pink while baby girls "
2407 "wore blue (a <quote>delicate and dainty</quote> color). While gendered "
2408 "colors are obviously totally arbitrary, many still greet this news with "
2409 "amazement and find it hard to imagine a time when pink connoted masculinity."
2410 msgstr ""
2411
2412 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2413 msgid ""
2414 "After 40 years of studiously ignoring antitrust analysis and enforcement, "
2415 "it’s not surprising that we’ve all but forgotten that antitrust exists, that "
2416 "in living memory, growth through mergers and acquisitions were largely "
2417 "prohibited under law, that market-cornering strategies like vertical "
2418 "integration could land a company in court."
2419 msgstr ""
2420
2421 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2422 msgid ""
2423 "Antitrust is a market society’s steering wheel, the control of first resort "
2424 "to keep would-be masters of the universe in their lanes. But Bork and his "
2425 "cohort ripped out our steering wheel 40 years ago. The car is still "
2426 "barreling along, and so we’re yanking as hard as we can on all the "
2427 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> controls in the car as well as desperately "
2428 "flapping the doors and rolling the windows up and down in the hopes that one "
2429 "of these other controls can be repurposed to let us choose where we’re "
2430 "heading before we careen off a cliff."
2431 msgstr ""
2432
2433 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2434 msgid ""
2435 "It’s like a 1960s science-fiction plot come to life: People stuck in a "
2436 "<quote>generation ship,</quote> plying its way across the stars, a ship once "
2437 "piloted by their ancestors; and now, after a great cataclysm, the ship’s "
2438 "crew have forgotten that they’re in a ship at all and no longer remember "
2439 "where the control room is. Adrift, the ship is racing toward its extinction, "
2440 "and unless we can seize the controls and execute emergency course "
2441 "correction, we’re all headed for a fiery death in the heart of a sun."
2442 msgstr ""
2443
2444 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2445 msgid "Surveillance still matters"
2446 msgstr "Systemy nadzoru mają ciągle znaczenie"
2447
2448 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2449 msgid ""
2450 "None of this is to minimize the problems with surveillance. Surveillance "
2451 "matters, and Big Tech’s use of surveillance <emphasis>is</emphasis> an "
2452 "existential risk to our species, but that’s not because surveillance and "
2453 "machine learning rob us of our free will."
2454 msgstr ""
2455
2456 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2457 msgid ""
2458 "Surveillance has become <emphasis>much</emphasis> more efficient thanks to "
2459 "Big Tech. In 1989, the Stasi — the East German secret police — had the whole "
2460 "country under surveillance, a massive undertaking that recruited one out of "
2461 "every 60 people to serve as an informant or intelligence operative."
2462 msgstr ""
2463
2464 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2465 msgid ""
2466 "Today, we know that the NSA is spying on a significant fraction of the "
2467 "entire world’s population, and its ratio of surveillance operatives to the "
2468 "surveilled is more like 1:10,000 (that’s probably on the low side since it "
2469 "assumes that every American with top-secret clearance is working for the NSA "
2470 "on this project — we don’t know how many of those cleared people are "
2471 "involved in NSA spying, but it’s definitely not all of them)."
2472 msgstr ""
2473
2474 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2475 msgid ""
2476 "How did the ratio of surveillable citizens expand from 1:60 to 1:10,000 in "
2477 "less than 30 years? It’s thanks to Big Tech. Our devices and services gather "
2478 "most of the data that the NSA mines for its surveillance project. We pay for "
2479 "these devices and the services they connect to, and then we painstakingly "
2480 "perform the data-entry tasks associated with logging facts about our lives, "
2481 "opinions, and preferences. This mass surveillance project has been largely "
2482 "useless for fighting terrorism: The NSA can <ulink url=\"https://www."
2483 "washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-of-"
2484 "phone-data-collection-program/2013/08/08/fc915e5a-feda-11e2-96a8-"
2485 "d3b921c0924a_story.html\">only point to a single minor success story</ulink> "
2486 "in which it used its data collection program to foil an attempt by a U.S. "
2487 "resident to wire a few thousand dollars to an overseas terror group. It’s "
2488 "ineffective for much the same reason that commercial surveillance projects "
2489 "are largely ineffective at targeting advertising: The people who want to "
2490 "commit acts of terror, like people who want to buy a refrigerator, are "
2491 "extremely rare. If you’re trying to detect a phenomenon whose base rate is "
2492 "one in a million with an instrument whose accuracy is only 99%, then every "
2493 "true positive will come at the cost of 9,999 false positives."
2494 msgstr ""
2495
2496 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2497 msgid ""
2498 "Let me explain that again: If one in a million people is a terrorist, then "
2499 "there will only be about one terrorist in a random sample of one million "
2500 "people. If your test for detecting terrorists is 99% accurate, it will "
2501 "identify 10,000 terrorists in your million-person sample (1% of one million "
2502 "is 10,000). For every true positive, you’ll get 9,999 false positives."
2503 msgstr ""
2504
2505 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2506 msgid ""
2507 "In reality, the accuracy of algorithmic terrorism detection falls far short "
2508 "of the 99% mark, as does refrigerator ad targeting. The difference is that "
2509 "being falsely accused of wanting to buy a fridge is a minor nuisance while "
2510 "being falsely accused of planning a terror attack can destroy your life and "
2511 "the lives of everyone you love."
2512 msgstr ""
2513
2514 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2515 msgid ""
2516 "Mass state surveillance is only feasible because of surveillance capitalism "
2517 "and its extremely low-yield ad-targeting systems, which require a constant "
2518 "feed of personal data to remain barely viable. Surveillance capitalism’s "
2519 "primary failure mode is mistargeted ads while mass state surveillance’s "
2520 "primary failure mode is grotesque human rights abuses, tending toward "
2521 "totalitarianism."
2522 msgstr ""
2523
2524 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2525 msgid ""
2526 "State surveillance is no mere parasite on Big Tech, sucking up its data and "
2527 "giving nothing in return. In truth, the two are symbiotes: Big Tech sucks up "
2528 "our data for spy agencies, and spy agencies ensure that governments don’t "
2529 "limit Big Tech’s activities so severely that it would no longer serve the "
2530 "spy agencies’ needs. There is no firm distinction between state surveillance "
2531 "and surveillance capitalism; they are dependent on one another."
2532 msgstr ""
2533
2534 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2535 msgid ""
2536 "To see this at work today, look no further than Amazon’s home surveillance "
2537 "device, the Ring doorbell, and its associated app, Neighbors. Ring — a "
2538 "product that Amazon acquired and did not develop in house — makes a camera-"
2539 "enabled doorbell that streams footage from your front door to your mobile "
2540 "device. The Neighbors app allows you to form a neighborhood-wide "
2541 "surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through which you can share "
2542 "clips of <quote>suspicious characters.</quote> If you’re thinking that this "
2543 "sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists supercharge their "
2544 "suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down their blocks, <ulink url="
2545 "\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/amazons-ring-enables-over-policing-"
2546 "efforts-some-americas-deadliest-law-enforcement\">you’re right</ulink>. Ring "
2547 "has become a <emphasis>de facto,</emphasis> off-the-books arm of the police "
2548 "without any of the pesky oversight or rules."
2549 msgstr ""
2550
2551 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2552 msgid ""
2553 "In mid-2019, a series of public records requests revealed that Amazon had "
2554 "struck confidential deals with more than 400 local law enforcement agencies "
2555 "through which the agencies would promote Ring and Neighbors and in exchange "
2556 "get access to footage from Ring cameras. In theory, cops would need to "
2557 "request this footage through Amazon (and internal documents reveal that "
2558 "Amazon devotes substantial resources to coaching cops on how to spin a "
2559 "convincing story when doing so), but in practice, when a Ring customer turns "
2560 "down a police request, Amazon only requires the agency to formally request "
2561 "the footage from the company, which it will then produce."
2562 msgstr ""
2563
2564 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2565 msgid ""
2566 "Ring and law enforcement have found many ways to intertwine their "
2567 "activities. Ring strikes secret deals to acquire real-time access to 911 "
2568 "dispatch and then streams alarming crime reports to Neighbors users, which "
2569 "serve as convincers for anyone who’s contemplating a surveillance doorbell "
2570 "but isn’t sure whether their neighborhood is dangerous enough to warrant it."
2571 msgstr ""
2572
2573 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2574 msgid ""
2575 "The more the cops buzz-market the surveillance capitalist Ring, the more "
2576 "surveillance capability the state gets. Cops who rely on private entities "
2577 "for law-enforcement roles then brief against any controls on the deployment "
2578 "of that technology while the companies return the favor by lobbying against "
2579 "rules requiring public oversight of police surveillance technology. The more "
2580 "the cops rely on Ring and Neighbors, the harder it will be to pass laws to "
2581 "curb them. The fewer laws there are against them, the more the cops will "
2582 "rely on them."
2583 msgstr ""
2584
2585 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2586 msgid "Dignity and sanctuary"
2587 msgstr "Godność i sanktuarium"
2588
2589 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2590 msgid ""
2591 "But even if we could exercise democratic control over our states and force "
2592 "them to stop raiding surveillance capitalism’s reservoirs of behavioral "
2593 "data, surveillance capitalism would still harm us."
2594 msgstr ""
2595
2596 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2597 msgid ""
2598 "This is an area where Zuboff shines. Her chapter on <quote>sanctuary</quote> "
2599 "— the feeling of being unobserved — is a beautiful hymn to introspection, "
2600 "calmness, mindfulness, and tranquility."
2601 msgstr ""
2602
2603 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2604 msgid ""
2605 "When you are watched, something changes. Anyone who has ever raised a child "
2606 "knows this. You might look up from your book (or more realistically, from "
2607 "your phone) and catch your child in a moment of profound realization and "
2608 "growth, a moment where they are learning something that is right at the edge "
2609 "of their abilities, requiring their entire ferocious concentration. For a "
2610 "moment, you’re transfixed, watching that rare and beautiful moment of focus "
2611 "playing out before your eyes, and then your child looks up and sees you "
2612 "seeing them, and the moment collapses. To grow, you need to be and expose "
2613 "your authentic self, and in that moment, you are vulnerable like a hermit "
2614 "crab scuttling from one shell to the next. The tender, unprotected tissues "
2615 "you expose in that moment are too delicate to reveal in the presence of "
2616 "another, even someone you trust as implicitly as a child trusts their parent."
2617 msgstr ""
2618
2619 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2620 msgid ""
2621 "In the digital age, our authentic selves are inextricably tied to our "
2622 "digital lives. Your search history is a running ledger of the questions "
2623 "you’ve pondered. Your location history is a record of the places you’ve "
2624 "sought out and the experiences you’ve had there. Your social graph reveals "
2625 "the different facets of your identity, the people you’ve connected with."
2626 msgstr ""
2627
2628 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2629 msgid ""
2630 "To be observed in these activities is to lose the sanctuary of your "
2631 "authentic self."
2632 msgstr ""
2633
2634 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2635 msgid ""
2636 "There’s another way in which surveillance capitalism robs us of our capacity "
2637 "to be our authentic selves: by making us anxious. Surveillance capitalism "
2638 "isn’t really a mind-control ray, but you don’t need a mind-control ray to "
2639 "make someone anxious. After all, another word for anxiety is agitation, and "
2640 "to make someone experience agitation, you need merely to agitate them. To "
2641 "poke them and prod them and beep at them and buzz at them and bombard them "
2642 "on an intermittent schedule that is just random enough that our limbic "
2643 "systems never quite become inured to it."
2644 msgstr ""
2645
2646 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2647 msgid ""
2648 "Our devices and services are <quote>general purpose</quote> in that they can "
2649 "connect anything or anyone to anything or anyone else and that they can run "
2650 "any program that can be written. This means that the distraction rectangles "
2651 "in our pockets hold our most precious moments with our most beloved people "
2652 "and their most urgent or time-sensitive communications (from <quote>running "
2653 "late can you get the kid?</quote> to <quote>doctor gave me bad news and I "
2654 "need to talk to you RIGHT NOW</quote>) as well as ads for refrigerators and "
2655 "recruiting messages from Nazis."
2656 msgstr ""
2657
2658 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2659 msgid ""
2660 "All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration and "
2661 "tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think through "
2662 "difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated them like "
2663 "this, we’d call it <quote>sleep deprivation torture,</quote> and it would be "
2664 "<ulink url=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SKpRbvnx6g\">a war crime under "
2665 "the Geneva Conventions</ulink>."
2666 msgstr ""
2667
2668 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2669 msgid "Afflicting the afflicted"
2670 msgstr "Dręczenie udręczonych"
2671
2672 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2673 msgid ""
2674 "The effects of surveillance on our ability to be our authentic selves are "
2675 "not equal for all people. Some of us are lucky enough to live in a time and "
2676 "place in which all the most important facts of our lives are widely and "
2677 "roundly socially acceptable and can be publicly displayed without the risk "
2678 "of social consequence."
2679 msgstr ""
2680
2681 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2682 msgid ""
2683 "But for many of us, this is not true. Recall that in living memory, many of "
2684 "the ways of being that we think of as socially acceptable today were once "
2685 "cause for dire social sanction or even imprisonment. If you are 65 years "
2686 "old, you have lived through a time in which people living in <quote>free "
2687 "societies</quote> could be imprisoned or sanctioned for engaging in "
2688 "homosexual activity, for falling in love with a person whose skin was a "
2689 "different color than their own, or for smoking weed."
2690 msgstr ""
2691
2692 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2693 msgid ""
2694 "Today, these activities aren’t just decriminalized in much of the world, "
2695 "they’re considered normal, and the fallen prohibitions are viewed as "
2696 "shameful, regrettable relics of the past."
2697 msgstr ""
2698
2699 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2700 msgid ""
2701 "How did we get from prohibition to normalization? Through private, personal "
2702 "activity: People who were secretly gay or secret pot-smokers or who secretly "
2703 "loved someone with a different skin color were vulnerable to retaliation if "
2704 "they made their true selves known and were limited in how much they could "
2705 "advocate for their own right to exist in the world and be true to "
2706 "themselves. But because there was a private sphere, these people could form "
2707 "alliances with their friends and loved ones who did not share their "
2708 "disfavored traits by having private conversations in which they came out, "
2709 "disclosing their true selves to the people around them and bringing them to "
2710 "their cause one conversation at a time."
2711 msgstr ""
2712
2713 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2714 msgid ""
2715 "The right to choose the time and manner of these conversations was key to "
2716 "their success. It’s one thing to come out to your dad while you’re on a "
2717 "fishing trip away from the world and another thing entirely to blurt it out "
2718 "over the Christmas dinner table while your racist Facebook uncle is there to "
2719 "make a scene."
2720 msgstr ""
2721
2722 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2723 msgid ""
2724 "Without a private sphere, there’s a chance that none of these changes would "
2725 "have come to pass and that the people who benefited from these changes would "
2726 "have either faced social sanction for coming out to a hostile world or would "
2727 "have never been able to reveal their true selves to the people they love."
2728 msgstr ""
2729
2730 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2731 msgid ""
2732 "The corollary is that, unless you think that our society has attained social "
2733 "perfection — that your grandchildren in 50 years will ask you to tell them "
2734 "the story of how, in 2020, every injustice had been righted and no further "
2735 "change had to be made — then you should expect that right now, at this "
2736 "minute, there are people you love, whose happiness is key to your own, who "
2737 "have a secret in their hearts that stops them from ever being their "
2738 "authentic selves with you. These people are sorrowing and will go to their "
2739 "graves with that secret sorrow in their hearts, and the source of that "
2740 "sorrow will be the falsity of their relationship to you."
2741 msgstr ""
2742
2743 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2744 msgid "A private realm is necessary for human progress."
2745 msgstr "Prywatna rzeczywistość jest konieczna dla rozwoju ludzkości."
2746
2747 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2748 msgid "Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak"
2749 msgstr ""
2750 "Jakiekolwiek dane, które zbierasz i przetwarzasz, kiedyś w końcu wyciekną"
2751
2752 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2753 msgid ""
2754 "The lack of a private life can rob vulnerable people of the chance to be "
2755 "their authentic selves and constrain our actions by depriving us of "
2756 "sanctuary, but there is another risk that is borne by everyone, not just "
2757 "people with a secret: crime."
2758 msgstr ""
2759
2760 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2761 msgid ""
2762 "Personally identifying information is of very limited use for the purpose of "
2763 "controlling peoples’ minds, but identity theft — really a catchall term for "
2764 "a whole constellation of terrible criminal activities that can destroy your "
2765 "finances, compromise your personal integrity, ruin your reputation, or even "
2766 "expose you to physical danger — thrives on it."
2767 msgstr ""
2768
2769 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2770 msgid ""
2771 "Attackers are not limited to using data from one breached source, either. "
2772 "Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names, addresses, "
2773 "phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work performance, "
2774 "brushes with the criminal justice system, family details, genetic "
2775 "information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits, search "
2776 "histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other sensitive "
2777 "information. Attackers can merge data from these different breaches to build "
2778 "up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and then use different "
2779 "parts of the data for different criminal purposes."
2780 msgstr ""
2781
2782 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2783 msgid ""
2784 "For example, attackers can use leaked username and password combinations to "
2785 "hijack whole fleets of commercial vehicles that <ulink url=\"https://www."
2786 "vice.com/en_us/article/zmpx4x/hacker-monitor-cars-kill-engine-gps-tracking-"
2787 "apps\">have been fitted with anti-theft GPS trackers and immobilizers</"
2788 "ulink> or to hijack baby monitors in order to <ulink url=\"https://www."
2789 "washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/23/how-nest-designed-keep-intruders-"
2790 "out-peoples-homes-effectively-allowed-hackers-get/?"
2791 "utm_term=.15220e98c550\">terrorize toddlers with the audio tracks from "
2792 "pornography</ulink>. Attackers use leaked data to trick phone companies into "
2793 "giving them your phone number, then they intercept SMS-based two-factor "
2794 "authentication codes in order to take over your email, bank account, and/or "
2795 "cryptocurrency wallets."
2796 msgstr ""
2797
2798 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2799 msgid ""
2800 "Attackers are endlessly inventive in the pursuit of creative ways to "
2801 "weaponize leaked data. One common use of leaked data is to penetrate "
2802 "companies in order to access <emphasis>more</emphasis> data."
2803 msgstr ""
2804
2805 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2806 msgid ""
2807 "Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies over-"
2808 "collecting and over-retaining our data. Spy agencies sometimes pay companies "
2809 "for access to their data or intimidate them into giving it up, but sometimes "
2810 "they work just like criminals do — by <ulink url=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/"
2811 "world-us-canada-24751821\">sneaking data out of companies’ databases</ulink>."
2812 msgstr ""
2813
2814 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2815 msgid ""
2816 "The over-collection of data has a host of terrible social consequences, from "
2817 "the erosion of our authentic selves to the undermining of social progress, "
2818 "from state surveillance to an epidemic of online crime. Commercial "
2819 "surveillance is also a boon to people running influence campaigns, but "
2820 "that’s the least of our troubles."
2821 msgstr ""
2822
2823 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
2824 msgid "Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism"
2825 msgstr ""
2826 "Przełomowa wyjątkowość technologiczna jest nadal technologiczną wyjątkowością"
2827
2828 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2829 msgid ""
2830 "Big Tech has long practiced technology exceptionalism: the idea that it "
2831 "should not be subject to the mundane laws and norms of <quote>meatspace.</"
2832 "quote> Mottoes like Facebook’s <quote>move fast and break things</quote> "
2833 "attracted justifiable scorn of the companies’ self-serving rhetoric."
2834 msgstr ""
2835
2836 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2837 msgid ""
2838 "Tech exceptionalism got us all into a lot of trouble, so it’s ironic and "
2839 "distressing to see Big Tech’s critics committing the same sin."
2840 msgstr ""
2841
2842 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2843 msgid ""
2844 "Big Tech is not a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> that cannot be cured "
2845 "through the traditional anti-monopoly remedies of trustbusting (forcing "
2846 "companies to divest of competitors they have acquired) and bans on mergers "
2847 "to monopoly and other anti-competitive tactics. Big Tech does not have the "
2848 "power to use machine learning to influence our behavior so thoroughly that "
2849 "markets lose the ability to punish bad actors and reward superior "
2850 "competitors. Big Tech has no rule-writing mind-control ray that necessitates "
2851 "ditching our old toolbox."
2852 msgstr ""
2853
2854 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2855 msgid ""
2856 "The thing is, people have been claiming to have perfected mind-control rays "
2857 "for centuries, and every time, it turned out to be a con — though sometimes "
2858 "the con artists were also conning themselves."
2859 msgstr ""
2860
2861 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2862 msgid ""
2863 "For generations, the advertising industry has been steadily improving its "
2864 "ability to sell advertising services to businesses while only making "
2865 "marginal gains in selling those businesses’ products to prospective "
2866 "customers. John Wanamaker’s lament that <quote>50% of my advertising budget "
2867 "is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%</quote> is a testament to the triumph "
2868 "of <emphasis>ad executives</emphasis>, who successfully convinced Wanamaker "
2869 "that only half of the money he spent went to waste."
2870 msgstr ""
2871
2872 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2873 msgid ""
2874 "The tech industry has made enormous improvements in the science of "
2875 "convincing businesses that they’re good at advertising while their actual "
2876 "improvements to advertising — as opposed to targeting — have been pretty ho-"
2877 "hum. The vogue for machine learning — and the mystical invocation of "
2878 "<quote>artificial intelligence</quote> as a synonym for straightforward "
2879 "statistical inference techniques — has greatly boosted the efficacy of Big "
2880 "Tech’s sales pitch as marketers have exploited potential customers’ lack of "
2881 "technical sophistication to get away with breathtaking acts of overpromising "
2882 "and underdelivering."
2883 msgstr ""
2884
2885 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2886 msgid ""
2887 "It’s tempting to think that if businesses are willing to pour billions into "
2888 "a venture that the venture must be a good one. Yet there are plenty of times "
2889 "when this rule of thumb has led us astray. For example, it’s virtually "
2890 "unheard of for managed investment funds to outperform simple index funds, "
2891 "and investors who put their money into the hands of expert money managers "
2892 "overwhelmingly fare worse than those who entrust their savings to index "
2893 "funds. But managed funds still account for the majority of the money "
2894 "invested in the markets, and they are patronized by some of the richest, "
2895 "most sophisticated investors in the world. Their vote of confidence in an "
2896 "underperforming sector is a parable about the role of luck in wealth "
2897 "accumulation, not a sign that managed funds are a good buy."
2898 msgstr ""
2899
2900 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2901 msgid ""
2902 "The claims of Big Tech’s mind-control system are full of tells that the "
2903 "enterprise is a con. For example, <ulink url=\"https://www.frontiersin.org/"
2904 "articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01415/full\">the reliance on the <quote>Big "
2905 "Five</quote> personality traits</ulink> as a primary means of influencing "
2906 "people even though the <quote>Big Five</quote> theory is unsupported by any "
2907 "large-scale, peer-reviewed studies and is <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/"
2908 "story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/\">mostly the realm of "
2909 "marketing hucksters and pop psych</ulink>."
2910 msgstr ""
2911
2912 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2913 msgid ""
2914 "Big Tech’s promotional materials also claim that their algorithms can "
2915 "accurately perform <quote>sentiment analysis</quote> or detect peoples’ "
2916 "moods based on their <quote>microexpressions,</quote> but <ulink url="
2917 "\"https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/647040758/advertising-on-facebook-is-it-"
2918 "worth-it\">these are marketing claims, not scientific ones</ulink>. These "
2919 "methods are largely untested by independent scientific experts, and where "
2920 "they have been tested, they’ve been found sorely wanting. Microexpressions "
2921 "are particularly suspect as the companies that specialize in training people "
2922 "to detect them <ulink url=\"https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/tsas-own-"
2923 "files-show-doubtful-science-behind-its-behavior-screening-program/\">have "
2924 "been shown</ulink> to underperform relative to random chance."
2925 msgstr ""
2926
2927 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2928 msgid ""
2929 "Big Tech has been so good at marketing its own supposed superpowers that "
2930 "it’s easy to believe that they can market everything else with similar "
2931 "acumen, but it’s a mistake to believe the hype. Any statement a company "
2932 "makes about the quality of its products is clearly not impartial. The fact "
2933 "that we distrust all the things that Big Tech says about its data handling, "
2934 "compliance with privacy laws, etc., is only reasonable — but why on Earth "
2935 "would we treat Big Tech’s marketing literature as the gospel truth? Big Tech "
2936 "lies about just about <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, including how well "
2937 "its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work."
2938 msgstr ""
2939
2940 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2941 msgid ""
2942 "That skepticism should infuse all of our evaluations of Big Tech and its "
2943 "supposed abilities, including our perusal of its patents. Zuboff vests these "
2944 "patents with enormous significance, pointing out that Google claimed "
2945 "extensive new persuasion capabilities in <ulink url=\"https://patents.google."
2946 "com/patent/US20050131762A1/en\">its patent filings</ulink>. These claims are "
2947 "doubly suspect: first, because they are so self-serving, and second, because "
2948 "the patent itself is so notoriously an invitation to exaggeration."
2949 msgstr ""
2950
2951 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2952 msgid ""
2953 "Patent applications take the form of a series of claims and range from broad "
2954 "to narrow. A typical patent starts out by claiming that its authors have "
2955 "invented a method or system for doing every conceivable thing that anyone "
2956 "might do, ever, with any tool or device. Then it narrows that claim in "
2957 "successive stages until we get to the actual <quote>invention</quote> that "
2958 "is the true subject of the patent. The hope is that the patent examiner — "
2959 "who is almost certainly overworked and underinformed — will miss the fact "
2960 "that some or all of these claims are ridiculous, or at least suspect, and "
2961 "grant the patent’s broader claims. Patents for unpatentable things are still "
2962 "incredibly useful because they can be wielded against competitors who might "
2963 "license that patent or steer clear of its claims rather than endure the "
2964 "lengthy, expensive process of contesting it."
2965 msgstr ""
2966
2967 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2968 msgid ""
2969 "What’s more, software patents are routinely granted even though the filer "
2970 "doesn’t have any evidence that they can do the thing claimed by the patent. "
2971 "That is, you can patent an <quote>invention</quote> that you haven’t "
2972 "actually made and that you don’t know how to make."
2973 msgstr ""
2974
2975 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2976 msgid ""
2977 "With these considerations in hand, it becomes obvious that the fact that a "
2978 "Big Tech company has patented what it <emphasis>says</emphasis> is an "
2979 "effective mind-control ray is largely irrelevant to whether Big Tech can in "
2980 "fact control our minds."
2981 msgstr ""
2982
2983 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2984 msgid ""
2985 "Big Tech collects our data for many reasons, including the diminishing "
2986 "returns on existing stores of data. But many tech companies also collect "
2987 "data out of a mistaken tech exceptionalist belief in the network effects of "
2988 "data. Network effects occur when each new user in a system increases its "
2989 "value. The classic example is fax machines: A single fax machine is of no "
2990 "use, two fax machines are of limited use, but every new fax machine that’s "
2991 "put to use after the first doubles the number of possible fax-to-fax links."
2992 msgstr ""
2993
2994 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
2995 msgid ""
2996 "Data mined for predictive systems doesn’t necessarily produce these "
2997 "dividends. Think of Netflix: The predictive value of the data mined from a "
2998 "million English-speaking Netflix viewers is hardly improved by the addition "
2999 "of one more user’s viewing data. Most of the data Netflix acquires after "
3000 "that first minimum viable sample duplicates existing data and produces only "
3001 "minimal gains. Meanwhile, retraining models with new data gets progressively "
3002 "more expensive as the number of data points increases, and manual tasks like "
3003 "labeling and validating data do not get cheaper at scale."
3004 msgstr ""
3005
3006 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3007 msgid ""
3008 "Businesses pursue fads to the detriment of their profits all the time, "
3009 "especially when the businesses and their investors are not motivated by the "
3010 "prospect of becoming profitable but rather by the prospect of being acquired "
3011 "by a Big Tech giant or by having an IPO. For these firms, ticking faddish "
3012 "boxes like <quote>collects as much data as possible</quote> might realize a "
3013 "bigger return on investment than <quote>collects a business-appropriate "
3014 "quantity of data.</quote>"
3015 msgstr ""
3016
3017 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3018 msgid ""
3019 "This is another harm of tech exceptionalism: The belief that more data "
3020 "always produces more profits in the form of more insights that can be "
3021 "translated into better mind-control rays drives firms to over-collect and "
3022 "over-retain data beyond all rationality. And since the firms are behaving "
3023 "irrationally, a good number of them will go out of business and become ghost "
3024 "ships whose cargo holds are stuffed full of data that can harm people in "
3025 "myriad ways — but which no one is responsible for antey longer. Even if the "
3026 "companies don’t go under, the data they collect is maintained behind the "
3027 "minimum viable security — just enough security to keep the company viable "
3028 "while it waits to get bought out by a tech giant, an amount calculated to "
3029 "spend not one penny more than is necessary on protecting data."
3030 msgstr ""
3031
3032 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3033 msgid ""
3034 "How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The "
3035 "Snapchat story"
3036 msgstr ""
3037 "Jak monopole, a nie kontrola umysłu, sterują kapitalizmen opartym na "
3038 "systemach nadzoru: historia Snapchat"
3039
3040 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3041 msgid ""
3042 "For the first decade of its existence, Facebook competed with the social "
3043 "media giants of the day (Myspace, Orkut, etc.) by presenting itself as the "
3044 "pro-privacy alternative. Indeed, Facebook justified its walled garden — "
3045 "which let users bring in data from the web but blocked web services like "
3046 "Google Search from indexing and caching Facebook pages — as a pro-privacy "
3047 "measure that protected users from the surveillance-happy winners of the "
3048 "social media wars like Myspace."
3049 msgstr ""
3050
3051 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3052 msgid ""
3053 "Despite frequent promises that it would never collect or analyze its users’ "
3054 "data, Facebook periodically created initiatives that did just that, like the "
3055 "creepy, ham-fisted Beacon tool, which spied on you as you moved around the "
3056 "web and then added your online activities to your public timeline, allowing "
3057 "your friends to monitor your browsing habits. Beacon sparked a user revolt. "
3058 "Every time, Facebook backed off from its surveillance initiative, but not "
3059 "all the way; inevitably, the new Facebook would be more surveilling than the "
3060 "old Facebook, though not quite as surveilling as the intermediate Facebook "
3061 "following the launch of the new product or service."
3062 msgstr ""
3063
3064 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3065 msgid ""
3066 "The pace at which Facebook ramped up its surveillance efforts seems to have "
3067 "been set by Facebook’s competitive landscape. The more competitors Facebook "
3068 "had, the better it behaved. Every time a major competitor foundered, "
3069 "Facebook’s behavior <ulink url=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?"
3070 "abstract_id=3247362\">got markedly worse</ulink>."
3071 msgstr ""
3072
3073 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3074 msgid ""
3075 "All the while, Facebook was prodigiously acquiring companies, including a "
3076 "company called Onavo. Nominally, Onavo made a battery-monitoring mobile app. "
3077 "But the permissions that Onavo required were so expansive that the app was "
3078 "able to gather fine-grained telemetry on everything users did with their "
3079 "phones, including which apps they used and how they were using them."
3080 msgstr ""
3081
3082 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3083 msgid ""
3084 "Through Onavo, Facebook discovered that it was losing market share to "
3085 "Snapchat, an app that — like Facebook a decade before — billed itself as the "
3086 "pro-privacy alternative to the status quo. Through Onavo, Facebook was able "
3087 "to mine data from the devices of Snapchat users, including both current and "
3088 "former Snapchat users. This spurred Facebook to acquire Instagram — some "
3089 "features of which competed with Snapchat — and then allowed Facebook to fine-"
3090 "tune Instagram’s features and sales pitch to erode Snapchat’s gains and "
3091 "ensure that Facebook would not have to face the kinds of competitive "
3092 "pressures it had earlier inflicted on Myspace and Orkut."
3093 msgstr ""
3094
3095 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3096 msgid ""
3097 "The story of how Facebook crushed Snapchat reveals the relationship between "
3098 "monopoly and surveillance capitalism. Facebook combined surveillance with "
3099 "lax antitrust enforcement to spot the competitive threat of Snapchat on its "
3100 "horizon and then take decisive action against it. Facebook’s surveillance "
3101 "capitalism let it avert competitive pressure with anti-competitive tactics. "
3102 "Facebook users still want privacy — Facebook hasn’t used surveillance to "
3103 "brainwash them out of it — but they can’t get it because Facebook’s "
3104 "surveillance lets it destroy any hope of a rival service emerging that "
3105 "competes on privacy features."
3106 msgstr ""
3107
3108 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3109 msgid "A monopoly over your friends"
3110 msgstr "Monopol sprawowany nad twoimi przyjaciółmi"
3111
3112 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3113 msgid ""
3114 "A decentralization movement has tried to erode the dominance of Facebook and "
3115 "other Big Tech companies by fielding <quote>indieweb</quote> alternatives — "
3116 "Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, Diaspora as a Facebook alternative, etc. "
3117 "— but these efforts have failed to attain any kind of liftoff."
3118 msgstr ""
3119
3120 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3121 msgid ""
3122 "Fundamentally, each of these services is hamstrung by the same problem: "
3123 "Every potential user for a Facebook or Twitter alternative has to convince "
3124 "all their friends to follow them to a decentralized web alternative in order "
3125 "to continue to realize the benefit of social media. For many of us, the only "
3126 "reason to have a Facebook account is that our friends have Facebook "
3127 "accounts, and the reason they have Facebook accounts is that <emphasis>we</"
3128 "emphasis> have Facebook accounts."
3129 msgstr ""
3130
3131 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3132 msgid ""
3133 "All of this has conspired to make Facebook — and other dominant platforms — "
3134 "into <quote>kill zones</quote> that investors will not fund new entrants for."
3135 msgstr ""
3136
3137 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3138 msgid ""
3139 "And yet, all of today’s tech giants came into existence despite the "
3140 "entrenched advantage of the companies that came before them. To understand "
3141 "how that happened, you have to understand both interoperability and "
3142 "adversarial interoperability."
3143 msgstr ""
3144
3145 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
3146 msgid "The hard problem of our species is coordination."
3147 msgstr "Trudnym problemem naszego gatunku jest koordynacja."
3148
3149 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3150 msgid ""
3151 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is the ability of two technologies to work "
3152 "with one another: Anyone can make an LP that will play on any record player, "
3153 "anyone can make a filter you can install in your stove’s extractor fan, "
3154 "anyone can make gasoline for your car, anyone can make a USB phone charger "
3155 "that fits in your car’s cigarette lighter receptacle, anyone can make a "
3156 "light bulb that works in your light socket, anyone can make bread that will "
3157 "toast in your toaster."
3158 msgstr ""
3159
3160 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3161 msgid ""
3162 "Interoperability is often a source of innovation and consumer benefit: Apple "
3163 "made the first commercially successful PC, but millions of independent "
3164 "software vendors made interoperable programs that ran on the Apple II Plus. "
3165 "The simple analog antenna inputs on the back of TVs first allowed cable "
3166 "operators to connect directly to TVs, then they allowed game console "
3167 "companies and then personal computer companies to use standard televisions "
3168 "as displays. Standard RJ-11 telephone jacks allowed for the production of "
3169 "phones from a variety of vendors in a variety of forms, from the free "
3170 "football-shaped phone that came with a <emphasis>Sports Illustrated</"
3171 "emphasis> subscription to business phones with speakers, hold functions, and "
3172 "so on and then answering machines and finally modems, paving the way for the "
3173 "internet revolution."
3174 msgstr ""
3175
3176 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3177 msgid ""
3178 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is often used interchangeably with "
3179 "<quote>standardization,</quote> which is the process when manufacturers and "
3180 "other stakeholders hammer out a set of agreed-upon rules for implementing a "
3181 "technology, such as the electrical plug on your wall, the CAN bus used by "
3182 "your car’s computer systems, or the HTML instructions that your browser "
3183 "interprets."
3184 msgstr ""
3185
3186 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3187 msgid ""
3188 "But interoperability doesn’t require standardization — indeed, "
3189 "standardization often proceeds from the chaos of ad hoc interoperability "
3190 "measures. The inventor of the cigarette-lighter USB charger didn’t need to "
3191 "get permission from car manufacturers or even the manufacturers of the "
3192 "dashboard lighter subcomponent. The automakers didn’t take any "
3193 "countermeasures to prevent the use of these aftermarket accessories by their "
3194 "customers, but they also didn’t do anything to make life easier for the "
3195 "chargers’ manufacturers. This is a kind of <quote>neutral interoperability.</"
3196 "quote>"
3197 msgstr ""
3198
3199 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3200 msgid ""
3201 "Beyond neutral interoperability, there is <quote>adversarial "
3202 "interoperability.</quote> That’s when a manufacturer makes a product that "
3203 "interoperates with another manufacturer’s product <emphasis>despite the "
3204 "second manufacturer’s objections</emphasis> and <emphasis>even if that means "
3205 "bypassing a security system designed to prevent interoperability</emphasis>."
3206 msgstr ""
3207
3208 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3209 msgid ""
3210 "Probably the most familiar form of adversarial interoperability is third-"
3211 "party printer ink. Printer manufacturers claim that they sell printers below "
3212 "cost and that the only way they can recoup the losses they incur is by "
3213 "charging high markups on ink. To prevent the owners of printers from buying "
3214 "ink elsewhere, the printer companies deploy a suite of anti-customer "
3215 "security systems that detect and reject both refilled and third-party "
3216 "cartridges."
3217 msgstr ""
3218
3219 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3220 msgid ""
3221 "Owners of printers take the position that HP and Epson and Brother are not "
3222 "charities and that customers for their wares have no obligation to help them "
3223 "survive, and so if the companies choose to sell their products at a loss, "
3224 "that’s their foolish choice and their consequences to live with. Likewise, "
3225 "competitors who make ink or refill kits observe that they don’t owe printer "
3226 "companies anything, and their erosion of printer companies’ margins are the "
3227 "printer companies’ problems, not their competitors’. After all, the printer "
3228 "companies shed no tears when they drive a refiller out of business, so why "
3229 "should the refillers concern themselves with the economic fortunes of the "
3230 "printer companies?"
3231 msgstr ""
3232
3233 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3234 msgid ""
3235 "Adversarial interoperability has played an outsized role in the history of "
3236 "the tech industry: from the founding of the <quote>alt.*</quote> Usenet "
3237 "hierarchy (which was started against the wishes of Usenet’s maintainers and "
3238 "which grew to be bigger than all of Usenet combined) to the browser wars "
3239 "(when Netscape and Microsoft devoted massive engineering efforts to making "
3240 "their browsers incompatible with the other’s special commands and "
3241 "peccadilloes) to Facebook (whose success was built in part by helping its "
3242 "new users stay in touch with friends they’d left behind on Myspace because "
3243 "Facebook supplied them with a tool that scraped waiting messages from "
3244 "Myspace and imported them into Facebook, effectively creating an Facebook-"
3245 "based Myspace reader)."
3246 msgstr ""
3247
3248 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3249 msgid ""
3250 "Today, incumbency is seen as an unassailable advantage. Facebook is where "
3251 "all of your friends are, so no one can start a Facebook competitor. But "
3252 "adversarial compatibility reverses the competitive advantage: If you were "
3253 "allowed to compete with Facebook by providing a tool that imported all your "
3254 "users’ waiting Facebook messages into an environment that competed on lines "
3255 "that Facebook couldn’t cross, like eliminating surveillance and ads, then "
3256 "Facebook would be at a huge disadvantage. It would have assembled all "
3257 "possible ex-Facebook users into a single, easy-to-find service; it would "
3258 "have educated them on how a Facebook-like service worked and what its "
3259 "potential benefits were; and it would have provided an easy means for "
3260 "disgruntled Facebook users to tell their friends where they might expect "
3261 "better treatment."
3262 msgstr ""
3263
3264 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3265 msgid ""
3266 "Adversarial interoperability was once the norm and a key contributor to the "
3267 "dynamic, vibrant tech scene, but now it is stuck behind a thicket of laws "
3268 "and regulations that add legal risks to the tried-and-true tactics of "
3269 "adversarial interoperability. New rules and new interpretations of existing "
3270 "rules mean that a would-be adversarial interoperator needs to steer clear of "
3271 "claims under copyright, terms of service, trade secrecy, tortious "
3272 "interference, and patent."
3273 msgstr ""
3274
3275 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3276 msgid ""
3277 "In the absence of a competitive market, lawmakers have resorted to assigning "
3278 "expensive, state-like duties to Big Tech firms, such as automatically "
3279 "filtering user contributions for copyright infringement or terrorist and "
3280 "extremist content or detecting and preventing harassment in real time or "
3281 "controlling access to sexual material."
3282 msgstr ""
3283
3284 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3285 msgid ""
3286 "These measures put a floor under how small we can make Big Tech because only "
3287 "the very largest companies can afford the humans and automated filters "
3288 "needed to perform these duties."
3289 msgstr ""
3290
3291 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3292 msgid ""
3293 "But that’s not the only way in which making platforms responsible for "
3294 "policing their users undermines competition. A platform that is expected to "
3295 "police its users’ conduct must prevent many vital adversarial "
3296 "interoperability techniques lest these subvert its policing measures. For "
3297 "example, if someone using a Twitter replacement like Mastodon is able to "
3298 "push messages into Twitter and read messages out of Twitter, they could "
3299 "avoid being caught by automated systems that detect and prevent harassment "
3300 "(such as systems that use the timing of messages or IP-based rules to make "
3301 "guesses about whether someone is a harasser)."
3302 msgstr ""
3303
3304 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3305 msgid ""
3306 "To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather "
3307 "than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for "
3308 "better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform "
3309 "out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their "
3310 "communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to "
3311 "block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal "
3312 "enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial interoperability."
3313 msgstr ""
3314
3315 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3316 msgid ""
3317 "Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts "
3318 "by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to "
3319 "size. But we can’t do both. To replace today’s giant products with "
3320 "pluralistic protocols, we need to clear the legal thicket that prevents "
3321 "adversarial interoperability so that tomorrow’s nimble, personal, small-"
3322 "scale products can federate themselves with giants like Facebook, allowing "
3323 "the users who’ve left to continue to communicate with users who haven’t left "
3324 "yet, reaching tendrils over Facebook’s garden wall that Facebook’s trapped "
3325 "users can use to scale the walls and escape to the global, open web."
3326 msgstr ""
3327
3328 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3329 msgid "Fake news is an epistemological crisis"
3330 msgstr "Fałszywe wiadomości to oznaka kryzysu epistemologicznego"
3331
3332 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3333 msgid ""
3334 "Tech is not the only industry that has undergone massive concentration since "
3335 "the Reagan era. Virtually every major industry — from oil to newspapers to "
3336 "meatpacking to sea freight to eyewear to online pornography — has become a "
3337 "clubby oligarchy that just a few players dominate."
3338 msgstr ""
3339
3340 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3341 msgid ""
3342 "At the same time, every industry has become something of a tech industry as "
3343 "general-purpose computers and general-purpose networks and the promise of "
3344 "efficiencies through data-driven analysis infuse every device, process, and "
3345 "firm with tech."
3346 msgstr ""
3347
3348 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3349 msgid ""
3350 "This phenomenon of industrial concentration is part of a wider story about "
3351 "wealth concentration overall as a smaller and smaller number of people own "
3352 "more and more of our world. This concentration of both wealth and industries "
3353 "means that our political outcomes are increasingly beholden to the parochial "
3354 "interests of the people and companies with all the money."
3355 msgstr ""
3356
3357 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3358 msgid ""
3359 "That means that whenever a regulator asks a question with an obvious, "
3360 "empirical answer (<quote>Are humans causing climate change?</quote> or "
3361 "<quote>Should we let companies conduct commercial mass surveillance?</quote> "
3362 "or <quote>Does society benefit from allowing network neutrality violations?</"
3363 "quote>), the answer that comes out is only correct if that correctness meets "
3364 "with the approval of rich people and the industries that made them so "
3365 "wealthy."
3366 msgstr ""
3367
3368 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3369 msgid ""
3370 "Rich people have always played an outsized role in politics and more so "
3371 "since the Supreme Court’s <emphasis>Citizens United</emphasis> decision "
3372 "eliminated key controls over political spending. Widening inequality and "
3373 "wealth concentration means that the very richest people are now a lot richer "
3374 "and can afford to spend a lot more money on political projects than ever "
3375 "before. Think of the Koch brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates."
3376 msgstr ""
3377
3378 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3379 msgid ""
3380 "But the policy distortions of rich individuals pale in comparison to the "
3381 "policy distortions that concentrated industries are capable of. The "
3382 "companies in highly concentrated industries are much more profitable than "
3383 "companies in competitive industries — no competition means not having to "
3384 "reduce prices or improve quality to win customers — leaving them with bigger "
3385 "capital surpluses to spend on lobbying."
3386 msgstr ""
3387
3388 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3389 msgid ""
3390 "Concentrated industries also find it easier to collaborate on policy "
3391 "objectives than competitive ones. When all the top execs from your industry "
3392 "can fit around a single boardroom table, they often do. And <emphasis>when</"
3393 "emphasis> they do, they can forge a consensus position on regulation."
3394 msgstr ""
3395
3396 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3397 msgid ""
3398 "Rising through the ranks in a concentrated industry generally means working "
3399 "at two or three of the big companies. When there are only relatively few "
3400 "companies in a given industry, each company has a more ossified executive "
3401 "rank, leaving ambitious execs with fewer paths to higher positions unless "
3402 "they are recruited to a rival. This means that the top execs in concentrated "
3403 "industries are likely to have been colleagues at some point and socialize in "
3404 "the same circles — connected through social ties or, say, serving as "
3405 "trustees for each others’ estates. These tight social bonds foster a "
3406 "collegial, rather than competitive, attitude."
3407 msgstr ""
3408
3409 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3410 msgid ""
3411 "Highly concentrated industries also present a regulatory conundrum. When an "
3412 "industry is dominated by just four or five companies, the only people who "
3413 "are likely to truly understand the industry’s practices are its veteran "
3414 "executives. This means that top regulators are often former execs of the "
3415 "companies they are supposed to be regulating. These turns in government are "
3416 "often tacitly understood to be leaves of absence from industry, with former "
3417 "employers welcoming their erstwhile watchdogs back into their executive "
3418 "ranks once their terms have expired."
3419 msgstr ""
3420
3421 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3422 msgid ""
3423 "All this is to say that the tight social bonds, small number of firms, and "
3424 "regulatory capture of concentrated industries give the companies that "
3425 "comprise them the power to dictate many, if not all, of the regulations that "
3426 "bind them."
3427 msgstr ""
3428
3429 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3430 msgid ""
3431 "This is increasingly obvious. Whether it’s payday lenders <ulink url="
3432 "\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/25/how-payday-lending-"
3433 "industry-insider-tilted-academic-research-its-favor/\">winning the right to "
3434 "practice predatory lending</ulink> or Apple <ulink url=\"https://www.vice."
3435 "com/en_us/article/mgxayp/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation"
3436 "\">winning the right to decide who can fix your phone</ulink> or Google and "
3437 "Facebook winning the right to breach your private data without suffering "
3438 "meaningful consequences or victories for pipeline companies or impunity for "
3439 "opioid manufacturers or massive tax subsidies for incredibly profitable "
3440 "dominant businesses, it’s increasingly apparent that many of our official, "
3441 "evidence-based truth-seeking processes are, in fact, auctions for sale to "
3442 "the highest bidder."
3443 msgstr ""
3444
3445 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3446 msgid ""
3447 "It’s really impossible to overstate what a terrifying prospect this is. We "
3448 "live in an incredibly high-tech society, and none of us could acquire the "
3449 "expertise to evaluate every technological proposition that stands between us "
3450 "and our untimely, horrible deaths. You might devote your life to acquiring "
3451 "the media literacy to distinguish good scientific journals from corrupt pay-"
3452 "for-play lookalikes and the statistical literacy to evaluate the quality of "
3453 "the analysis in the journals as well as the microbiology and epidemiology "
3454 "knowledge to determine whether you can trust claims about the safety of "
3455 "vaccines — but that would still leave you unqualified to judge whether the "
3456 "wiring in your home will give you a lethal shock <emphasis>and</emphasis> "
3457 "whether your car’s brakes’ software will cause them to fail unpredictably "
3458 "<emphasis>and</emphasis> whether the hygiene standards at your butcher are "
3459 "sufficient to keep you from dying after you finish your dinner."
3460 msgstr ""
3461
3462 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3463 msgid ""
3464 "In a world as complex as this one, we have to defer to authorities, and we "
3465 "keep them honest by making those authorities accountable to us and binding "
3466 "them with rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We can’t possibly acquire "
3467 "the expertise to adjudicate conflicting claims about the best way to make "
3468 "the world safe and prosperous, but we <emphasis>can</emphasis> determine "
3469 "whether the adjudication process itself is trustworthy."
3470 msgstr ""
3471
3472 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3473 msgid "Right now, it’s obviously not."
3474 msgstr ""
3475
3476 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3477 msgid ""
3478 "The past 40 years of rising inequality and industry concentration, together "
3479 "with increasingly weak accountability and transparency for expert agencies, "
3480 "has created an increasingly urgent sense of impending doom, the sense that "
3481 "there are vast conspiracies afoot that operate with tacit official approval "
3482 "despite the likelihood they are working to better themselves by ruining the "
3483 "rest of us."
3484 msgstr ""
3485
3486 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3487 msgid ""
3488 "For example, it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that "
3489 "its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those "
3490 "decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and "
3491 "sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the "
3492 "cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you and everyone "
3493 "you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start "
3494 "questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether "
3495 "they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy."
3496 msgstr ""
3497
3498 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3499 msgid ""
3500 "The collapse of the credibility of our systems for divining and upholding "
3501 "truths has left us in a state of epistemological chaos. Once, most of us "
3502 "might have assumed that the system was working and that our regulations "
3503 "reflected our best understanding of the empirical truths of the world as "
3504 "they were best understood — now we have to find our own experts to help us "
3505 "sort the true from the false."
3506 msgstr ""
3507
3508 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3509 msgid ""
3510 "If you’re like me, you probably believe that vaccines are safe, but you "
3511 "(like me) probably also can’t explain the microbiology or statistics. Few of "
3512 "us have the math skills to review the literature on vaccine safety and "
3513 "describe why their statistical reasoning is sound. Likewise, few of us can "
3514 "review the stats in the (now discredited) literature on opioid safety and "
3515 "explain how those stats were manipulated. Both vaccines and opioids were "
3516 "embraced by medical authorities, after all, and one is safe while the other "
3517 "could ruin your life. You’re left with a kind of inchoate constellation of "
3518 "rules of thumb about which experts you trust to fact-check controversial "
3519 "claims and then to explain how all those respectable doctors with their peer-"
3520 "reviewed research on opioid safety <emphasis>were</emphasis> an aberration "
3521 "and then how you know that the doctors writing about vaccine safety are "
3522 "<emphasis>not</emphasis> an aberration."
3523 msgstr ""
3524
3525 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3526 msgid ""
3527 "I’m 100% certain that vaccinating is safe and effective, but I’m also at "
3528 "something of a loss to explain exactly, <emphasis>precisely,</emphasis> why "
3529 "I believe this, given all the corruption I know about and the many times the "
3530 "stamp of certainty has turned out to be a parochial lie told to further "
3531 "enrich the super rich."
3532 msgstr ""
3533
3534 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3535 msgid ""
3536 "Fake news — conspiracy theories, racist ideologies, scientific denialism — "
3537 "has always been with us. What’s changed today is not the mix of ideas in the "
3538 "public discourse but the popularity of the worst ideas in that mix. "
3539 "Conspiracy and denial have skyrocketed in lockstep with the growth of Big "
3540 "Inequality, which has also tracked the rise of Big Tech and Big Pharma and "
3541 "Big Wrestling and Big Car and Big Movie Theater and Big Everything Else."
3542 msgstr ""
3543
3544 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3545 msgid ""
3546 "No one can say for certain why this has happened, but the two dominant camps "
3547 "are idealism (the belief that the people who argue for these conspiracies "
3548 "have gotten better at explaining them, maybe with the help of machine-"
3549 "learning tools) or materialism (the ideas have become more attractive "
3550 "because of material conditions in the world)."
3551 msgstr ""
3552
3553 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3554 msgid ""
3555 "I’m a materialist. I’ve been exposed to the arguments of conspiracy "
3556 "theorists all my life, and I have not experienced any qualitative leap in "
3557 "the quality of those arguments."
3558 msgstr ""
3559
3560 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3561 msgid ""
3562 "The major difference is in the world, not the arguments. In a time where "
3563 "actual conspiracies are commonplace, conspiracy theories acquire a ring of "
3564 "plausibility."
3565 msgstr ""
3566
3567 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3568 msgid ""
3569 "We have always had disagreements about what’s true, but today, we have a "
3570 "disagreement over how we know whether something is true. This is an "
3571 "epistemological crisis, not a crisis over belief. It’s a crisis over the "
3572 "credibility of our truth-seeking exercises, from scientific journals (in an "
3573 "era where the biggest journal publishers have been caught producing pay-to-"
3574 "play journals for junk science) to regulations (in an era where regulators "
3575 "are routinely cycling in and out of business) to education (in an era where "
3576 "universities are dependent on corporate donations to keep their lights on)."
3577 msgstr ""
3578
3579 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3580 msgid ""
3581 "Targeting — surveillance capitalism — makes it easier to find people who are "
3582 "undergoing this epistemological crisis, but it doesn’t create the crisis. "
3583 "For that, you need to look to corruption."
3584 msgstr ""
3585
3586 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3587 msgid ""
3588 "And, conveniently enough, it’s corruption that allows surveillance "
3589 "capitalism to grow by dismantling monopoly protections, by permitting "
3590 "reckless collection and retention of personal data, by allowing ads to be "
3591 "targeted in secret, and by foreclosing on the possibility of going somewhere "
3592 "else where you might continue to enjoy your friends without subjecting "
3593 "yourself to commercial surveillance."
3594 msgstr ""
3595
3596 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3597 msgid "Tech is different"
3598 msgstr "Technologia jest czymś odmiennym"
3599
3600 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3601 msgid ""
3602 "I reject both iterations of technological exceptionalism. I reject the idea "
3603 "that tech is uniquely terrible and led by people who are greedier or worse "
3604 "than the leaders of other industries, and I reject the idea that tech is so "
3605 "good — or so intrinsically prone to concentration — that it can’t be blamed "
3606 "for its present-day monopolistic status."
3607 msgstr ""
3608
3609 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3610 msgid ""
3611 "I think tech is just another industry, albeit one that grew up in the "
3612 "absence of real monopoly constraints. It may have been first, but it isn’t "
3613 "the worst nor will it be the last."
3614 msgstr ""
3615
3616 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3617 msgid ""
3618 "But there’s one way in which I <emphasis>am</emphasis> a tech "
3619 "exceptionalist. I believe that online tools are the key to overcoming "
3620 "problems that are much more urgent than tech monopolization: climate change, "
3621 "inequality, misogyny, and discrimination on the basis of race, gender "
3622 "identity, and other factors. The internet is how we will recruit people to "
3623 "fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor. Tech is not a "
3624 "substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or "
3625 "stability — but it’s a means to achieve these things."
3626 msgstr ""
3627
3628 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3629 msgid ""
3630 "The hard problem of our species is coordination. Everything from climate "
3631 "change to social change to running a business to making a family work can be "
3632 "viewed as a collective action problem."
3633 msgstr ""
3634
3635 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3636 msgid ""
3637 "The internet makes it easier than at any time before to find people who want "
3638 "to work on a project with you — hence the success of free and open-source "
3639 "software, crowdfunding, and racist terror groups — and easier than ever to "
3640 "coordinate the work you do."
3641 msgstr ""
3642
3643 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3644 msgid ""
3645 "The internet and the computers we connect to it also possess an exceptional "
3646 "quality: general-purposeness. The internet is designed to allow any two "
3647 "parties to communicate any data, using any protocol, without permission from "
3648 "anyone else. The only production design we have for computers is the general-"
3649 "purpose, <quote>Turing complete</quote> computer that can run every program "
3650 "we can express in symbolic logic."
3651 msgstr ""
3652
3653 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3654 msgid ""
3655 "This means that every time someone with a special communications need "
3656 "invests in infrastructure and techniques to make the internet faster, "
3657 "cheaper, and more robust, this benefit redounds to everyone else who is "
3658 "using the internet to communicate. And this also means that every time "
3659 "someone with a special computing need invests to make computers faster, "
3660 "cheaper, and more robust, every other computing application is a potential "
3661 "beneficiary of this work."
3662 msgstr ""
3663
3664 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3665 msgid ""
3666 "For these reasons, every type of communication is gradually absorbed into "
3667 "the internet, and every type of device — from airplanes to pacemakers — "
3668 "eventually becomes a computer in a fancy case."
3669 msgstr ""
3670
3671 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3672 msgid ""
3673 "While these considerations don’t preclude regulating networks and computers, "
3674 "they do call for gravitas and caution when doing so because changes to "
3675 "regulatory frameworks could ripple out to have unintended consequences in "
3676 "many, many other domains."
3677 msgstr ""
3678
3679 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3680 msgid ""
3681 "The upshot of this is that our best hope of solving the big coordination "
3682 "problems — climate change, inequality, etc. — is with free, fair, and open "
3683 "tech. Our best hope of keeping tech free, fair, and open is to exercise "
3684 "caution in how we regulate tech and to attend closely to the ways in which "
3685 "interventions to solve one problem might create problems in other domains."
3686 msgstr ""
3687
3688 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3689 msgid "Ownership of facts"
3690 msgstr "Własność faktów"
3691
3692 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3693 msgid ""
3694 "Big Tech has a funny relationship with information. When you’re generating "
3695 "information — anything from the location data streaming off your mobile "
3696 "device to the private messages you send to friends on a social network — it "
3697 "claims the rights to make unlimited use of that data."
3698 msgstr ""
3699
3700 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3701 msgid ""
3702 "But when you have the audacity to turn the tables — to use a tool that "
3703 "blocks ads or slurps your waiting updates out of a social network and puts "
3704 "them in another app that lets you set your own priorities and suggestions or "
3705 "crawls their system to allow you to start a rival business — they claim that "
3706 "you’re stealing from them."
3707 msgstr ""
3708
3709 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3710 msgid ""
3711 "The thing is, information is a very bad fit for any kind of private property "
3712 "regime. Property rights are useful for establishing markets that can lead to "
3713 "the effective development of fallow assets. These markets depend on clear "
3714 "titles to ensure that the things being bought and sold in them can, in fact, "
3715 "be bought and sold."
3716 msgstr ""
3717
3718 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3719 msgid ""
3720 "Information rarely has such a clear title. Take phone numbers: There’s "
3721 "clearly something going wrong when Facebook slurps up millions of users’ "
3722 "address books and uses the phone numbers it finds in them to plot out social "
3723 "graphs and fill in missing information about other users."
3724 msgstr ""
3725
3726 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3727 msgid ""
3728 "But the phone numbers Facebook nonconsensually acquires in this transaction "
3729 "are not the <quote>property</quote> of the users they’re taken from nor do "
3730 "they belong to the people whose phones ring when you dial those numbers. The "
3731 "numbers are mere integers, 10 digits in the U.S. and Canada, and they "
3732 "appear in millions of places, including somewhere deep in pi as well as "
3733 "numerous other contexts. Giving people ownership titles to integers is an "
3734 "obviously terrible idea."
3735 msgstr ""
3736
3737 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3738 msgid ""
3739 "Likewise for the facts that Facebook and other commercial surveillance "
3740 "operators acquire about us, like that we are the children of our parents or "
3741 "the parents to our children or that we had a conversation with someone else "
3742 "or went to a public place. These data points can’t be property in the sense "
3743 "that your house or your shirt is your property because the title to them is "
3744 "intrinsically muddy: Does your mom own the fact that she is your mother? Do "
3745 "you? Do both of you? What about your dad — does he own this fact too, or "
3746 "does he have to license the fact from you (or your mom or both of you) in "
3747 "order to use this fact? What about the hundreds or thousands of other people "
3748 "who know these facts?"
3749 msgstr ""
3750
3751 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3752 msgid ""
3753 "If you go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, do the other demonstrators "
3754 "need your permission to post their photos from the event? The online fights "
3755 "over <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-take-photos-at-protests/"
3756 "\">when and how to post photos from demonstrations</ulink> reveal a nuanced, "
3757 "complex issue that cannot be easily hand-waved away by giving one party a "
3758 "property right that everyone else in the mix has to respect."
3759 msgstr ""
3760
3761 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3762 msgid ""
3763 "The fact that information isn’t a good fit with property and markets doesn’t "
3764 "mean that it’s not valuable. Babies aren’t property, but they’re inarguably "
3765 "valuable. In fact, we have a whole set of rules just for babies as well as a "
3766 "subset of those rules that apply to humans more generally. Someone who "
3767 "argues that babies won’t be truly valuable until they can be bought and sold "
3768 "like loaves of bread would be instantly and rightfully condemned as a "
3769 "monster."
3770 msgstr ""
3771
3772 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3773 msgid ""
3774 "It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your "
3775 "information like a nail — not least because Big Tech are such prolific "
3776 "abusers of property hammers when it comes to <emphasis>their</emphasis> "
3777 "information. But this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use "
3778 "of our information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market "
3779 "where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as to "
3780 "be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of zero in a "
3781 "click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to modify."
3782 msgstr ""
3783
3784 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3785 msgid ""
3786 "Meanwhile, establishing property rights over information will create "
3787 "insurmountable barriers to independent data processing. Imagine that we "
3788 "require a license to be negotiated when a translated document is compared "
3789 "with its original, something Google has done and continues to do billions of "
3790 "times to train its automated language translation tools. Google can afford "
3791 "this, but independent third parties cannot. Google can staff a clearances "
3792 "department to negotiate one-time payments to the likes of the EU (one of the "
3793 "major repositories of translated documents) while independent watchdogs "
3794 "wanting to verify that the translations are well-prepared, or to root out "
3795 "bias in translations, will find themselves needing a staffed-up legal "
3796 "department and millions for licenses before they can even get started."
3797 msgstr ""
3798
3799 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3800 msgid ""
3801 "The same goes for things like search indexes of the web or photos of "
3802 "peoples’ houses, which have become contentious thanks to Google’s Street "
3803 "View project. Whatever problems may exist with Google’s photographing of "
3804 "street scenes, resolving them by letting people decide who can take pictures "
3805 "of the facades of their homes from a public street will surely create even "
3806 "worse ones. Think of how street photography is important for newsgathering — "
3807 "including informal newsgathering, like photographing abuses of authority — "
3808 "and how being able to document housing and street life are important for "
3809 "contesting eminent domain, advocating for social aid, reporting planning and "
3810 "zoning violations, documenting discriminatory and unequal living conditions, "
3811 "and more."
3812 msgstr ""
3813
3814 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3815 msgid ""
3816 "The ownership of facts is antithetical to many kinds of human progress. It’s "
3817 "hard to imagine a rule that limits Big Tech’s exploitation of our collective "
3818 "labors without inadvertently banning people from gathering data on online "
3819 "harassment or compiling indexes of changes in language or simply "
3820 "investigating how the platforms are shaping our discourse — all of which "
3821 "require scraping data that other people have created and subjecting it to "
3822 "scrutiny and analysis."
3823 msgstr ""
3824
3825 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3826 msgid "Persuasion works… slowly"
3827 msgstr "Przekonywanie działa… powoli"
3828
3829 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3830 msgid ""
3831 "The platforms may oversell their ability to persuade people, but obviously, "
3832 "persuasion works sometimes. Whether it’s the private realm that LGBTQ people "
3833 "used to recruit allies and normalize sexual diversity or the decadeslong "
3834 "project to convince people that markets are the only efficient way to solve "
3835 "complicated resource allocation problems, it’s clear that our societal "
3836 "attitudes <emphasis>can</emphasis> change."
3837 msgstr ""
3838
3839 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3840 msgid ""
3841 "The project of shifting societal attitudes is a game of inches and years. "
3842 "For centuries, svengalis have purported to be able to accelerate this "
3843 "process, but even the most brutal forms of propaganda have struggled to make "
3844 "permanent changes. Joseph Goebbels was able to subject Germans to daily, "
3845 "mandatory, hourslong radio broadcasts, to round up and torture and murder "
3846 "dissidents, and to seize full control over their children’s education while "
3847 "banning any literature, broadcasts, or films that did not comport with his "
3848 "worldview."
3849 msgstr ""
3850
3851 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3852 msgid ""
3853 "Yet, after 12 years of terror, once the war ended, Nazi ideology was largely "
3854 "discredited in both East and West Germany, and a program of national truth "
3855 "and reconciliation was put in its place. Racism and authoritarianism were "
3856 "never fully abolished in Germany, but neither were the majority of Germans "
3857 "irrevocably convinced of Nazism — and the rise of racist authoritarianism in "
3858 "Germany today tells us that the liberal attitudes that replaced Nazism were "
3859 "no more permanent than Nazism itself."
3860 msgstr ""
3861
3862 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3863 msgid ""
3864 "Racism and authoritarianism have also always been with us. Anyone who’s "
3865 "reviewed the kind of messages and arguments that racists put forward today "
3866 "would be hard-pressed to say that they have gotten better at presenting "
3867 "their ideas. The same pseudoscience, appeals to fear, and circular logic "
3868 "that racists presented in the 1980s, when the cause of white supremacy was "
3869 "on the wane, are to be found in the communications of leading white "
3870 "nationalists today."
3871 msgstr ""
3872
3873 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3874 msgid ""
3875 "If racists haven’t gotten more convincing in the past decade, then how is it "
3876 "that more people were convinced to be openly racist at that time? I believe "
3877 "that the answer lies in the material world, not the world of ideas. The "
3878 "ideas haven’t gotten more convincing, but people have become more afraid. "
3879 "Afraid that the state can’t be trusted to act as an honest broker in life-or-"
3880 "death decisions, from those regarding the management of the economy to the "
3881 "regulation of painkillers to the rules for handling private information. "
3882 "Afraid that the world has become a game of musical chairs in which the "
3883 "chairs are being taken away at a never-before-seen rate. Afraid that justice "
3884 "for others will come at their expense. Monopolism isn’t the cause of these "
3885 "fears, but the inequality and material desperation and policy malpractice "
3886 "that monopolism contributes to is a significant contributor to these "
3887 "conditions. Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies and "
3888 "violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets "
3889 "opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded."
3890 msgstr ""
3891
3892 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
3893 msgid "Paying won’t help"
3894 msgstr "Płacenie nie pomoże"
3895
3896 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3897 msgid ""
3898 "As the old saw goes, <quote>If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the "
3899 "product.</quote>"
3900 msgstr ""
3901
3902 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3903 msgid ""
3904 "It’s a commonplace belief today that the advent of free, ad-supported media "
3905 "was the original sin of surveillance capitalism. The reasoning is that the "
3906 "companies that charged for access couldn’t <quote>compete with free</quote> "
3907 "and so they were driven out of business. Their ad-supported competitors, "
3908 "meanwhile, declared open season on their users’ data in a bid to improve "
3909 "their ad targeting and make more money and then resorted to the most "
3910 "sensationalist tactics to generate clicks on those ads. If only we’d pay for "
3911 "media again, we’d have a better, more responsible, more sober discourse that "
3912 "would be better for democracy."
3913 msgstr ""
3914
3915 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3916 msgid ""
3917 "But the degradation of news products long precedes the advent of ad-"
3918 "supported online news. Long before newspapers were online, lax antitrust "
3919 "enforcement had opened the door for unprecedented waves of consolidation and "
3920 "roll-ups in newsrooms. Rival newspapers were merged, reporters and ad sales "
3921 "staff were laid off, physical plants were sold and leased back, leaving the "
3922 "companies loaded up with debt through leveraged buyouts and subsequent "
3923 "profit-taking by the new owners. In other words, it wasn’t merely shifts in "
3924 "the classified advertising market, which was long held to be the primary "
3925 "driver in the decline of the traditional newsroom, that made news companies "
3926 "unable to adapt to the internet — it was monopolism."
3927 msgstr ""
3928
3929 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3930 msgid ""
3931 "Then, as news companies <emphasis>did</emphasis> come online, the ad "
3932 "revenues they commanded dropped even as the number of internet users (and "
3933 "thus potential online readers) increased. That shift was a function of "
3934 "consolidation in the ad sales market, with Google and Facebook emerging as "
3935 "duopolists who made more money every year from advertising while paying less "
3936 "and less of it to the publishers whose work the ads appeared alongside. "
3937 "Monopolism created a buyer’s market for ad inventory with Facebook and "
3938 "Google acting as gatekeepers."
3939 msgstr ""
3940
3941 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3942 msgid ""
3943 "Paid services continue to exist alongside free ones, and often it is these "
3944 "paid services — anxious to prevent people from bypassing their paywalls or "
3945 "sharing paid media with freeloaders — that exert the most control over their "
3946 "customers. Apple’s iTunes and App Stores are paid services, but to maximize "
3947 "their profitability, Apple has to lock its platforms so that third parties "
3948 "can’t make compatible software without permission. These locks allow the "
3949 "company to exercise both editorial control (enabling it to exclude <ulink "
3950 "url=\"https://ncac.org/news/blog/does-apples-strict-app-store-content-policy-"
3951 "limit-freedom-of-expression\">controversial political material</ulink>) and "
3952 "technological control, including control over who can repair the devices it "
3953 "makes. If we’re worried that ad-supported products deprive people of their "
3954 "right to self-determination by using persuasion techniques to nudge their "
3955 "purchase decisions a few degrees in one direction or the other, then the "
3956 "near-total control a single company holds over the decision of who gets to "
3957 "sell you software, parts, and service for your iPhone should have us very "
3958 "worried indeed."
3959 msgstr ""
3960
3961 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3962 msgid ""
3963 "We shouldn’t just be concerned about payment and control: The idea that "
3964 "paying will improve discourse is also dangerously wrong. The poor success "
3965 "rate of targeted advertising means that the platforms have to incentivize "
3966 "you to <quote>engage</quote> with posts at extremely high levels to generate "
3967 "enough pageviews to safeguard their profits. As discussed earlier, to "
3968 "increase engagement, platforms like Facebook use machine learning to guess "
3969 "which messages will be most inflammatory and make a point of shoving those "
3970 "into your eyeballs at every turn so that you will hate-click and argue with "
3971 "people."
3972 msgstr ""
3973
3974 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3975 msgid ""
3976 "Perhaps paying would fix this, the reasoning goes. If platforms could be "
3977 "economically viable even if you stopped clicking on them once your "
3978 "intellectual and social curiosity had been slaked, then they would have no "
3979 "reason to algorithmically enrage you to get more clicks out of you, right?"
3980 msgstr ""
3981
3982 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3983 msgid ""
3984 "There may be something to that argument, but it still ignores the wider "
3985 "economic and political context of the platforms and the world that allowed "
3986 "them to grow so dominant."
3987 msgstr ""
3988
3989 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
3990 msgid ""
3991 "Platforms are world-spanning and all-encompassing because they are "
3992 "monopolies, and they are monopolies because we have gutted our most "
3993 "important and reliable anti-monopoly rules. Antitrust was neutered as a key "
3994 "part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project has "
3995 "worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net worth, and "
3996 "even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, undersaved for "
3997 "retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and undersecured against "
3998 "climate and technology shocks."
3999 msgstr ""
4000
4001 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4002 msgid ""
4003 "In this wildly unequal world, paying doesn’t improve the discourse; it "
4004 "simply prices discourse out of the range of the majority of people. Paying "
4005 "for the product is dandy, if you can afford it."
4006 msgstr ""
4007
4008 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4009 msgid ""
4010 "If you think today’s filter bubbles are a problem for our discourse, imagine "
4011 "what they’d be like if rich people inhabited free-flowing Athenian "
4012 "marketplaces of ideas where you have to pay for admission while everyone "
4013 "else lives in online spaces that are subsidized by wealthy benefactors who "
4014 "relish the chance to establish conversational spaces where the <quote>house "
4015 "rules</quote> forbid questioning the status quo. That is, imagine if the "
4016 "rich seceded from Facebook, and then, instead of running ads that made money "
4017 "for shareholders, Facebook became a billionaire’s vanity project that also "
4018 "happened to ensure that nobody talked about whether it was fair that only "
4019 "billionaires could afford to hang out in the rarified corners of the "
4020 "internet."
4021 msgstr ""
4022
4023 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4024 msgid ""
4025 "Behind the idea of paying for access is a belief that free markets will "
4026 "address Big Tech’s dysfunction. After all, to the extent that people have a "
4027 "view of surveillance at all, it is generally an unfavorable one, and the "
4028 "longer and more thoroughly one is surveilled, the less one tends to like it. "
4029 "Same goes for lock-in: If HP’s ink or Apple’s App Store were really "
4030 "obviously fantastic, they wouldn’t need technical measures to prevent users "
4031 "from choosing a rival’s product. The only reason these technical "
4032 "countermeasures exist is that the companies don’t believe their customers "
4033 "would <emphasis>voluntarily</emphasis> submit to their terms, and they want "
4034 "to deprive them of the choice to take their business elsewhere."
4035 msgstr ""
4036
4037 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4038 msgid ""
4039 "Advocates for markets laud their ability to aggregate the diffused knowledge "
4040 "of buyers and sellers across a whole society through demand signals, price "
4041 "signals, and so on. The argument for surveillance capitalism being a "
4042 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is that machine-learning-driven persuasion "
4043 "techniques distort decision-making by consumers, leading to incorrect "
4044 "signals — consumers don’t buy what they prefer, they buy what they’re "
4045 "tricked into preferring. It follows that the monopolistic practices of lock-"
4046 "in, which do far more to constrain consumers’ free choices, are even more of "
4047 "a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote>"
4048 msgstr ""
4049
4050 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4051 msgid ""
4052 "The profitability of any business is constrained by the possibility that its "
4053 "customers will take their business elsewhere. Both surveillance and lock-in "
4054 "are anti-features that no customer wants. But monopolies can capture their "
4055 "regulators, crush their competitors, insert themselves into their customers’ "
4056 "lives, and corral people into <quote>choosing</quote> their services "
4057 "regardless of whether they want them — it’s fine to be terrible when there "
4058 "is no alternative."
4059 msgstr ""
4060
4061 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4062 msgid ""
4063 "Ultimately, surveillance and lock-in are both simply business strategies "
4064 "that monopolists can choose. Surveillance companies like Google are "
4065 "perfectly capable of deploying lock-in technologies — just look at the "
4066 "onerous Android licensing terms that require device-makers to bundle in "
4067 "Google’s suite of applications. And lock-in companies like Apple are "
4068 "perfectly capable of subjecting their users to surveillance if it means "
4069 "keeping the Chinese government happy and preserving ongoing access to "
4070 "Chinese markets. Monopolies may be made up of good, ethical people, but as "
4071 "institutions, they are not your friend — they will do whatever they can get "
4072 "away with to maximize their profits, and the more monopolistic they are, the "
4073 "more they <emphasis>can</emphasis> get away with."
4074 msgstr ""
4075
4076 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4077 msgid "An <quote>ecology</quote> moment for trustbusting"
4078 msgstr "<quote> ekologia</quote> chwila na zerwanie zaufania"
4079
4080 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4081 msgid ""
4082 "If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re "
4083 "going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and old-"
4084 "fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of "
4085 "automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool "
4086 "cyberpunk novel."
4087 msgstr ""
4088
4089 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4090 msgid ""
4091 "Meanwhile, breaking up monopolies is something we seem to have forgotten how "
4092 "to do. There is a bipartisan, trans-Atlantic consensus that breaking up "
4093 "companies is a fool’s errand at best — liable to mire your federal "
4094 "prosecutors in decades of litigation — and counterproductive at worst, "
4095 "eroding the <quote>consumer benefits</quote> of large companies with massive "
4096 "efficiencies of scale."
4097 msgstr ""
4098
4099 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4100 msgid ""
4101 "But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing "
4102 "robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip "
4103 "on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the "
4104 "political will — until the people convinced politicians they’d have their "
4105 "backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world."
4106 msgstr ""
4107
4108 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4109 msgid "Could we find that political will again?"
4110 msgstr "Czy moglibyśmy ponownie znaleźć tę wolę polityczną?"
4111
4112 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4113 msgid ""
4114 "Copyright scholar James Boyle has described how the term <quote>ecology</"
4115 "quote> marked a turning point in environmental activism. Prior to the "
4116 "adoption of this term, people who wanted to preserve whale populations "
4117 "didn’t necessarily see themselves as fighting the same battle as people who "
4118 "wanted to protect the ozone layer or fight freshwater pollution or beat back "
4119 "smog or acid rain."
4120 msgstr ""
4121
4122 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4123 msgid ""
4124 "But the term <quote>ecology</quote> welded these disparate causes together "
4125 "into a single movement, and the members of this movement found solidarity "
4126 "with one another. The people who cared about smog signed petitions "
4127 "circulated by the people who wanted to end whaling, and the anti-whalers "
4128 "marched alongside the people demanding action on acid rain. This uniting "
4129 "behind a common cause completely changed the dynamics of environmentalism, "
4130 "setting the stage for today’s climate activism and the sense that preserving "
4131 "the habitability of the planet Earth is a shared duty among all people."
4132 msgstr ""
4133
4134 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4135 msgid ""
4136 "I believe we are on the verge of a new <quote>ecology</quote> moment "
4137 "dedicated to combating monopolies. After all, tech isn’t the only "
4138 "concentrated industry nor is it even the <emphasis>most</emphasis> "
4139 "concentrated of industries."
4140 msgstr ""
4141
4142 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4143 msgid ""
4144 "You can find partisans for trustbusting in every sector of the economy. "
4145 "Everywhere you look, you can find people who’ve been wronged by monopolists "
4146 "who’ve trashed their finances, their health, their privacy, their "
4147 "educations, and the lives of people they love. Those people have the same "
4148 "cause as the people who want to break up Big Tech and the same enemies. When "
4149 "most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a very few, it follows that "
4150 "nearly every large company will have overlapping shareholders."
4151 msgstr ""
4152
4153 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4154 msgid ""
4155 "That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of "
4156 "coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big "
4157 "Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook, "
4158 "then we take AT&amp;T/WarnerMedia."
4159 msgstr ""
4160
4161 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4162 msgid ""
4163 "But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech "
4164 "<emphasis>instead</emphasis> of breaking up the big companies also "
4165 "forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later."
4166 msgstr ""
4167
4168 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4169 msgid ""
4170 "Big Tech’s concentration currently means that their inaction on harassment, "
4171 "for example, leaves users with an impossible choice: absent themselves from "
4172 "public discourse by, say, quitting Twitter or endure vile, constant abuse. "
4173 "Big Tech’s over-collection and over-retention of data results in horrific "
4174 "identity theft. And their inaction on extremist recruitment means that white "
4175 "supremacists who livestream their shooting rampages can reach an audience of "
4176 "billions. The combination of tech concentration and media concentration "
4177 "means that artists’ incomes are falling even as the revenue generated by "
4178 "their creations are increasing."
4179 msgstr ""
4180
4181 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4182 msgid ""
4183 "Yet governments confronting all of these problems all inevitably converge on "
4184 "the same solution: deputize the Big Tech giants to police their users and "
4185 "render them liable for their users’ bad actions. The drive to force Big Tech "
4186 "to use automated filters to block everything from copyright infringement to "
4187 "sex-trafficking to violent extremism means that tech companies will have to "
4188 "allocate hundreds of millions to run these compliance systems."
4189 msgstr ""
4190
4191 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4192 msgid ""
4193 "These rules — the EU’s new Directive on Copyright, Australia’s new terror "
4194 "regulation, America’s FOSTA/SESTA sex-trafficking law and more — are not "
4195 "just death warrants for small, upstart competitors that might challenge Big "
4196 "Tech’s dominance but who lack the deep pockets of established incumbents to "
4197 "pay for all these automated systems. Worse still, these rules put a floor "
4198 "under how small we can hope to make Big Tech."
4199 msgstr ""
4200
4201 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4202 msgid ""
4203 "That’s because any move to break up Big Tech and cut it down to size will "
4204 "have to cope with the hard limit of not making these companies so small that "
4205 "they can no longer afford to perform these duties — and it’s "
4206 "<emphasis>expensive</emphasis> to invest in those automated filters and "
4207 "outsource content moderation. It’s already going to be hard to unwind these "
4208 "deeply concentrated, chimeric behemoths that have been welded together in "
4209 "the pursuit of monopoly profits. Doing so while simultaneously finding some "
4210 "way to fill the regulatory void that will be left behind if these self-"
4211 "policing rulers were forced to suddenly abdicate will be much, much harder."
4212 msgstr ""
4213
4214 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4215 msgid ""
4216 "Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a "
4217 "dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties "
4218 "to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually "
4219 "impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms "
4220 "don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will "
4221 "create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the "
4222 "companies, which will make them bigger still."
4223 msgstr ""
4224
4225 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4226 msgid ""
4227 "We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them "
4228 "of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend "
4229 "their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We have to "
4230 "choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet "
4231 "commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to "
4232 "behave themselves."
4233 msgstr ""
4234
4235 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4236 msgid "Make Big Tech small again"
4237 msgstr "Spraw, aby 'Big Tech' stała się ponownie 'małą' technologią"
4238
4239 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4240 msgid ""
4241 "Trustbusting is hard. Breaking big companies into smaller ones is expensive "
4242 "and time-consuming. So time-consuming that by the time you’re done, the "
4243 "world has often moved on and rendered years of litigation irrelevant. From "
4244 "1969 to 1982, the U.S. government pursued an antitrust case against IBM over "
4245 "its dominance of mainframe computing — but the case collapsed in 1982 "
4246 "because mainframes were being speedily replaced by PCs."
4247 msgstr ""
4248
4249 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><blockquote><para>
4250 msgid ""
4251 "A future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general to "
4252 "enforce the law as it was written."
4253 msgstr ""
4254
4255 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4256 msgid ""
4257 "It’s far easier to prevent concentration than to fix it, and reinstating the "
4258 "traditional contours of U.S. antitrust enforcement will, at the very least, "
4259 "prevent further concentration. That means bans on mergers between large "
4260 "companies, on big companies acquiring nascent competitors, and on platform "
4261 "companies competing directly with the companies that rely on the platforms."
4262 msgstr ""
4263
4264 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4265 msgid ""
4266 "These powers are all in the plain language of U.S. antitrust laws, so in "
4267 "theory, a future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general "
4268 "to enforce the law as it was written. But after decades of judicial "
4269 "<quote>education</quote> in the benefits of monopolies, after multiple "
4270 "administrations that have packed the federal courts with lifetime-appointed "
4271 "monopoly cheerleaders, it’s not clear that mere administrative action would "
4272 "do the trick."
4273 msgstr ""
4274
4275 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4276 msgid ""
4277 "If the courts frustrate the Justice Department and the president, the next "
4278 "stop would be Congress, which could eliminate any doubt about how antitrust "
4279 "law should be enforced in the U.S. by passing new laws that boil down to "
4280 "saying, <quote>Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act says. Robert "
4281 "Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, <emphasis>fuck that "
4282 "guy</emphasis>.</quote> In other words, the problem with monopolies is "
4283 "<emphasis>monopolism</emphasis> — the concentration of power into too few "
4284 "hands, which erodes our right to self-determination. If there is a monopoly, "
4285 "the law wants it gone, period. Sure, get rid of monopolies that create "
4286 "<quote>consumer harm</quote> in the form of higher prices, but also, "
4287 "<emphasis>get rid of other monopolies, too</emphasis>."
4288 msgstr ""
4289
4290 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4291 msgid ""
4292 "But this only prevents things from getting worse. To help them get better, "
4293 "we will have to build coalitions with other activists in the anti-monopoly "
4294 "ecology movement — a pluralism movement or a self-determination movement — "
4295 "and target existing monopolies in every industry for breakup and structural "
4296 "separation rules that prevent, for example, the giant eyewear monopolist "
4297 "Luxottica from dominating both the sale and the manufacture of spectacles."
4298 msgstr ""
4299
4300 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4301 msgid ""
4302 "In an important sense, it doesn’t matter which industry the breakups begin "
4303 "in. Once they start, shareholders in <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry "
4304 "will start to eye their investments in monopolists skeptically. As "
4305 "trustbusters ride into town and start making lives miserable for "
4306 "monopolists, the debate around every corporate boardroom’s table will shift. "
4307 "People within corporations who’ve always felt uneasy about monopolism will "
4308 "gain a powerful new argument to fend off their evil rivals in the corporate "
4309 "hierarchy: <quote>If we do it my way, we make less money; if we do it your "
4310 "way, a judge will fine us billions and expose us to ridicule and public "
4311 "disapprobation. So even though I get that it would be really cool to do that "
4312 "merger, lock out that competitor, or buy that little company and kill it "
4313 "before it can threaten it, we really shouldn’t — not if we don’t want to get "
4314 "tied to the DOJ’s bumper and get dragged up and down Trustbuster Road for "
4315 "the next 10 years.</quote>"
4316 msgstr ""
4317
4318 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4319 msgid "20 GOTO 10"
4320 msgstr "20 GOTO 10"
4321
4322 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4323 msgid ""
4324 "Fixing Big Tech will require a lot of iteration. As cyber lawyer Lawrence "
4325 "Lessig wrote in his 1999 book, <emphasis>Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace</"
4326 "emphasis>, our lives are regulated by four forces: law (what’s legal), code "
4327 "(what’s technologically possible), norms (what’s socially acceptable), and "
4328 "markets (what’s profitable)."
4329 msgstr ""
4330
4331 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4332 msgid ""
4333 "If you could wave a wand and get Congress to pass a law that re-fanged the "
4334 "Sherman Act tomorrow, you could use the impending breakups to convince "
4335 "venture capitalists to fund competitors to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and "
4336 "Apple that would be waiting in the wings after they were cut down to size."
4337 msgstr ""
4338
4339 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4340 msgid ""
4341 "But getting Congress to act will require a massive normative shift, a mass "
4342 "movement of people who care about monopolies — and pulling them apart."
4343 msgstr ""
4344
4345 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4346 msgid ""
4347 "Getting people to care about monopolies will take technological "
4348 "interventions that help them to see what a world free from Big Tech might "
4349 "look like. Imagine if someone could make a beloved (but unauthorized) third-"
4350 "party Facebook or Twitter client that dampens the anxiety-producing "
4351 "algorithmic drumbeat and still lets you talk to your friends without being "
4352 "spied upon — something that made social media more sociable and less toxic. "
4353 "Now imagine that it gets shut down in a brutal legal battle. It’s always "
4354 "easier to convince people that something must be done to save a thing they "
4355 "love than it is to excite them about something that doesn’t even exist yet."
4356 msgstr ""
4357
4358 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4359 msgid ""
4360 "Neither tech nor law nor code nor markets are sufficient to reform Big Tech. "
4361 "But a profitable competitor to Big Tech could bankroll a legislative push; "
4362 "legal reform can embolden a toolsmith to make a better tool; the tool can "
4363 "create customers for a potential business who value the benefits of the "
4364 "internet but want them delivered without Big Tech; and that business can get "
4365 "funded and divert some of its profits to legal reform. 20 GOTO 10 (or "
4366 "lather, rinse, repeat). Do it again, but this time, get farther! After all, "
4367 "this time you’re starting with weaker Big Tech adversaries, a constituency "
4368 "that understands things can be better, Big Tech rivals who’ll help ensure "
4369 "their own future by bankrolling reform, and code that other programmers can "
4370 "build on to weaken Big Tech even further."
4371 msgstr ""
4372
4373 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4374 msgid ""
4375 "The surveillance capitalism hypothesis — that Big Tech’s products really "
4376 "work as well as they say they do and that’s why everything is so screwed up "
4377 "— is way too easy on surveillance and even easier on capitalism. Companies "
4378 "spy because they believe their own BS, and companies spy because governments "
4379 "let them, and companies spy because any advantage from spying is so short-"
4380 "lived and minor that they have to do more and more of it just to stay in "
4381 "place."
4382 msgstr ""
4383
4384 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4385 msgid ""
4386 "As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism "
4387 "that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a "
4388 "form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to "
4389 "inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason "
4390 "companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to "
4391 "both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall "
4392 "to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not "
4393 "piss off the monopolists."
4394 msgstr ""
4395
4396 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4397 msgid ""
4398 "Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule "
4399 "begets surveillance. Surveillance isn’t bad because it lets people "
4400 "manipulate us. It’s bad because it crushes our ability to be our authentic "
4401 "selves — and because it lets the rich and powerful figure out who might be "
4402 "thinking of building guillotines and what dirt they can use to discredit "
4403 "those embryonic guillotine-builders before they can even get to the "
4404 "lumberyard."
4405 msgstr ""
4406
4407 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><title>
4408 msgid "Up and through"
4409 msgstr "W górę i na wylot"
4410
4411 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4412 msgid ""
4413 "With all the problems of Big Tech, it’s tempting to imagine solving the "
4414 "problem by returning to a world without tech at all. Resist that temptation."
4415 msgstr ""
4416
4417 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4418 msgid ""
4419 "The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our future is "
4420 "not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization has fallen. Big "
4421 "Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the "
4422 "proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the "
4423 "existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it’s up to us to seize "
4424 "the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under "
4425 "democratic, accountable control."
4426 msgstr ""
4427
4428 #. type: Content of: <article><sect1><para>
4429 msgid ""
4430 "I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. Not "
4431 "in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to monopolize "
4432 "because it has <quote>economies of scale</quote> or some other nebulous "
4433 "feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right "
4434 "matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe — and "
4435 "doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our "
4436 "civilization, our species, and our planet."
4437 msgstr ""
4438
4439 #~ msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (hard cover)"
4440 #~ msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (oprawa twarda)"
4441
4442 #~ msgid ""
4443 #~ "If you find typos, error or have other corrections to the translated "
4444 #~ "text, please update on <ulink url=\"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/"
4445 #~ "rms-personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/nb_NO/\"/>."
4446 #~ msgstr ""
4447 #~ "Jeśli znajdziesz literówkę, błąd lub masz inne uwagi na temat poprawienia "
4448 #~ "tekstu, proszę zaktualizuj to na <ulink url=\"https://hosted.weblate.org/"
4449 #~ "projects/rms-personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/"
4450 #~ "nb_NO/\"/>."
4451
4452 #~ msgid ""
4453 #~ "Our devices and services gather most of the data that the NSA mines for "
4454 #~ "its surveillance project. We pay for these devices and the services they "
4455 #~ "connect to, and then we painstakingly perform the data-entry tasks "
4456 #~ "associated with logging facts about our lives, opinions, and preferences."
4457 #~ msgstr ""
4458 #~ "Nasze urządzenia i usługi zbierają większość danych, które NSA następnie "
4459 #~ "wydobywa w ramach swojego inwigilacyjnego projektu nadzoru. Płacimy za te "
4460 #~ "urządzenia i usługi, z którymi się łączą, a następnie skrupulatnie "
4461 #~ "wykonujemy zadania związane z wprowadzaniem danych, które rejestrują "
4462 #~ "fakty dotyczące naszego życia, opinii i preferencji."
4463
4464 #~ msgid ""
4465 #~ "Thanks to Big Tech, Surveillance capitalism is everywhere. This is not "
4466 #~ "because it is really good at manipulating our behaviour, or the rogue "
4467 #~ "abuse of corporate power. It is the result of unchecked monopolism and "
4468 #~ "the abusive behavior it abets. It is the system working as intended and "
4469 #~ "expected. Cory Doctorow has written an extended critique of Shoshana "
4470 #~ "Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future "
4471 #~ "at the New Frontier of Power, with a non-magical analysis of the problem "
4472 #~ "leading to a different proposal for a solution."
4473 #~ msgstr ""
4474 #~ "Dzięki `Big Tech` kapitalizm oparty na inwigilacyjnym systemie nadzoru "
4475 #~ "jest wszędzie. Nie dzieje się tak dlatego, że jest naprawdę dobry w "
4476 #~ "manipulowaniu naszym zachowaniem lub nieuczciwym nadużywaniu władzy "
4477 #~ "korporacji. Jest to wynik niekontrolowanego monopolizmu i obelżywego "
4478 #~ "zachowania, jakie on wywołuje. Jest to system działający zgodnie z "
4479 #~ "zamierzeniami i oczekiwaniami. Cory Doctorow napisał obszerną krytykę "
4480 #~ "książki Shoshana Zuboff pt. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight "
4481 #~ "for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, z obiektywną, nie-"
4482 #~ "magiczną analizą problemu, prowadzącą do innej propozycji jego "
4483 #~ "rozwiązania."
4484
4485 #, fuzzy
4486 #~| msgid "Doctorow"
4487 #~ msgid "Cory Doctorow"
4488 #~ msgstr "Doctorow"