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2 # Copyright (C) YEAR Cory Doctorow
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4 # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
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26 msgid "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism"
27 msgstr "Hvordan knuse overvåkningskapitalismen"
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33 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><authorgroup><author><surname>
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46 "<holder>Petter Reinholdtsen</holder> </copyright>"
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50 "<holder>Petter Reinholdtsen</holder> </copyright>"
52 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
53 msgid "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow."
54 msgstr "Hvordan knuse overvåkningskapitalismen av Cory Doctorow."
56 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
57 msgid "Published by Petter Reinholdtsen."
58 msgstr "Gitt ut av Petter Reinholdtsen."
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80 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
82 "This book is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This license permits "
83 "any use of this work, so long as attribution is given and no derivatived "
84 "material is distributed. For more information about the license visit "
85 "<ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
87 "Denne boken er lisensiert med en Creative Commons-lisens. Denne lisensen "
88 "tillater all bruk av dette arbeidet, så lenge opphavet navngis og intet "
89 "avledet materiale distribueres. Hvis du vil ha mer informasjon om lisensen, "
90 "besøk <ulink url=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/\"/>."
92 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
93 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-05-1 (hard cover)"
94 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-05-1 (innbundet)"
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97 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-06-8 (paperback)"
98 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-06-8 (heftet)"
100 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
101 msgid "ISBN 978-82-93828-07-5 (ePub)"
102 msgstr "ISBN 978-82-93828-07-5 (ePub)"
104 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
105 msgid "The net of a thousand lies"
106 msgstr "Nettverket av tusen løgner"
108 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
110 "The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st "
111 "century is just how widespread the evidence against them is. You can "
112 "understand how, centuries ago, people who’d never gained a high-enough "
113 "vantage point from which to see the Earth’s curvature might come to the "
114 "commonsense belief that the flat-seeming Earth was, indeed, flat."
116 "Den mest overraskende momentet med tilbakekomsten av flatjordtilhengere i "
117 "det 21. århundre er hvor viden tilgjengelig bevisene mot dem er. En kan "
118 "forstå hvordan folk, for noen århundrer siden, som aldri hadde tilgang på et "
119 "høyt nok utsiktspunkt til å se jordens krumning, kunne ende opp med en "
120 "rimelig fornuftig tro på at den tilsynelatende flate jorden, rent faktisk "
123 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
125 "But today, when elementary schools routinely dangle GoPro cameras from "
126 "balloons and loft them high enough to photograph the Earth’s curve — to say "
127 "nothing of the unexceptional sight of the curved Earth from an airplane "
128 "window — it takes a heroic effort to maintain the belief that the world is "
131 "Men idag, når grunnskoler rutinemessig henger GoPro-kamera fra ballonger og "
132 "sender dem høyt nok til å fotografere jordens krumning, for ikke å snakke om "
133 "det lite eksepsjonelle synet av en krummet jord fra vinduet på et fly. Det "
134 "kreves en heroisk innsats for å holde på troen om at jorden er flat."
136 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
138 "Likewise for white nationalism and eugenics: In an age where you can become "
139 "a computational genomics datapoint by swabbing your cheek and mailing it to "
140 "a gene-sequencing company along with a modest sum of money, <quote>race "
141 "science</quote> has never been easier to refute."
143 "På samme måten er det med hvit nasjonalisme og eugenikk. I en tidsalder der "
144 "du kan bli et datamaskinberegnet genomdatapunkt ved å sveipe innsiden av "
145 "munnhulen og sende resultatet til et gensekvensieringsselskap sammen med en "
146 "beskjeden sum penger, så har <quote>rasevitenskap</quote> aldri vært enklere "
149 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
151 "We are living through a golden age of both readily available facts and "
152 "denial of those facts. Terrible ideas that have lingered on the fringes for "
153 "decades or even centuries have gone mainstream seemingly overnight."
155 "Vi lever i en gullalder både med hensyn til enkel faktatilgang og "
156 "fornektelse av dem. Forferdelige idéer som har svevd i utkanten i tiår eller "
157 "til og med århundrer har blitt allemannseie tilsynelatende over natten."
159 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
161 "When an obscure idea gains currency, there are only two things that can "
162 "explain its ascendance: Either the person expressing that idea has gotten a "
163 "lot better at stating their case, or the proposition has become harder to "
164 "deny in the face of mounting evidence. In other words, if we want people to "
165 "take climate change seriously, we can get a bunch of Greta Thunbergs to make "
166 "eloquent, passionate arguments from podiums, winning our hearts and minds, "
167 "or we can wait for flood, fire, broiling sun, and pandemics to make the case "
168 "for us. In practice, we’ll probably have to do some of both: The more we’re "
169 "boiling and burning and drowning and wasting away, the easier it will be for "
170 "the Greta Thunbergs of the world to convince us."
172 "Når obskure idéer får fotfeste, er det kun to ting som kan forklare at de "
173 "kommer til overflaten: Enten har personen som uttrykker idéen forbedret sin "
174 "formidling av den, eller så har forgodtbefinnendet blitt vanskeligere å "
175 "fornekte i lys av mer bevis. Med andre ord, hvis vi ønsker at folk skal ta "
176 "klimaendringer seriøst, kan vi få et utall Greta Thunberg til å gi "
177 "velformulerte, oppofrende argumenter fra talerstoler, til hjertets og "
178 "sinnets dyst, eller vi kan vente på floden, den stekende sol, og pandemier "
179 "lager argumentene for oss. I praksis må vi antagelig gjøre litt av begge "
180 "deler: Desto mer vi steker, brenner, drukner og forvitrer, dess enklere vil "
181 "det være for dem av oss som Greta Thunberg å overbevise oss."
183 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
185 "The arguments for ridiculous beliefs in odious conspiracies like anti-"
186 "vaccination, climate denial, a flat Earth, and eugenics are no better than "
187 "they were a generation ago. Indeed, they’re worse because they are being "
188 "pitched to people who have at least a background awareness of the refuting "
191 "De iboende argumentet for ting som eksempelvis teorien om flat jord har ikke "
192 "blitt bedre i den vordende generasjonen. Faktisk har ting blitt verre, fordi "
193 "folk uten bakgrunn i kildekritikk er gjenstand for dem."
195 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
197 "Anti-vax has been around since the first vaccines, but the early anti-"
198 "vaxxers were pitching people who were less equipped to understand even the "
199 "most basic ideas from microbiology, and moreover, those people had not "
200 "witnessed the extermination of mass-murdering diseases like polio, smallpox, "
201 "and measles. Today’s anti-vaxxers are no more eloquent than their forebears, "
202 "and they have a much harder job."
204 "Idéen om en flat jord er like gammel som idéene og forståelsen av dem. De "
205 "første presentasjonene av denne teorien kom folk for øre som ikke forstod "
206 "selv grunnleggende geometri. De hadde til gode å se tilbake på det "
207 "heliosentrikere og storsirkelnavigasjon bragte siden. Dagens tilhengere er "
208 "mer finslepne enn tidligere tiders religiøse verdensanskuelse, og de har en "
209 "mye vanskeligere jobb."
211 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
213 "So can these far-fetched conspiracy theorists really be succeeding on the "
214 "basis of superior arguments?"
216 "Er det tilfelle at disse konspiratorikerne lykkes med utgangspunkt i bedre "
219 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
221 "Some people think so. Today, there is a widespread belief that machine "
222 "learning and commercial surveillance can turn even the most fumble-tongued "
223 "conspiracy theorist into a svengali who can warp your perceptions and win "
224 "your belief by locating vulnerable people and then pitching them with A.I.-"
225 "refined arguments that bypass their rational faculties and turn everyday "
226 "people into flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or even Nazis. When the RAND "
227 "Corporation <ulink url=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/"
228 "research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf\">blames Facebook for "
229 "<quote>radicalization</quote></ulink> and when Facebook’s role in spreading "
230 "coronavirus misinformation is <ulink url=\"https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/"
231 "en/facebook_threat_health/\">blamed on its algorithm</ulink>, the implicit "
232 "message is that machine learning and surveillance are causing the changes in "
233 "our consensus about what’s true."
235 "Noen synes å tro det. I dag er troen hengitt at maskinlæring og kommersiell "
236 "overvåkning kan gjøre selv en konspirasjonsteoretiker uten taleevner til "
237 "trådtrekker med KI-refinerte argumenter som verktøy til et omvendt "
238 "dukketeater som omgår alle rasjonelle evner. Når RAND <ulink url=\"https"
239 "://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453"
240 ".pdf\">beskylder Facebook for <quote>radikalisering</quote></ulink> og når "
241 "Facebook sin rolle i å spre coronavirus-misinformasjon <ulink url=\"https"
242 "://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/facebook_threat_health/\"> blir bortforklart "
243 "i deres algoritme</ulink>, er det underforstått at maskinlæring og "
244 "overvåkning endrer vår oppfattelse av hva som sant er."
246 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
248 "After all, in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories "
249 "like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, "
250 "<emphasis>something</emphasis> must be afoot."
252 "I en verden der enhver konspirasjonsteori har sine ihuga tilhengere, må "
253 "<emphasis>noe</emphasis> være i gjerde."
255 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
257 "But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material "
258 "circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for "
259 "these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through "
260 "<emphasis>real conspiracies</emphasis> all around us — conspiracies among "
261 "wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts "
262 "and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as "
263 "<quote>corruption</quote>) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy "
266 "Hva om det har sin naturlige forklaring? Er det kanskje ikke argumentene som "
267 "utgjør tyngden på vektskåla for dem? Hva om <emphasis>de ekte "
268 "konspirasjonene</emphasis> vi omgås hvordan det daglige stormaktsspillet og "
269 "i kapitalerværvelsen mellom fut og fogd gravlegger ubeleilig fakta og bevis "
270 "på mislighold? Slike ting som i beste fall kalles korrupsjon, gjør de folk "
271 "sårbare for fiktive konspirasjonsteorier?"
273 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
275 "If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology — "
276 "that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive "
277 "misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean our "
278 "computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work of "
279 "locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of ever-more-"
280 "extreme ideas and communities."
282 "Hvis det er slagskade og ikke smitte – materielle forhold og ikke ideologi – "
283 "som utgjør forskjellen i dag og gjør økningen i frastøtende feilinformasjon "
284 "mulig, i møte med lett observerte fakta, så betyr det ikke at "
285 "datanettverkene vår ikke kan lastes. De gjør fortsatt grovarbeidet med å "
286 "spore opp sårbare mennesker og lede dem gjennom en rekke av stadig mer "
287 "ekstreme ideer og lokalsamfunn."
289 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
291 "Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and poses "
292 "real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics <ulink url=\"https://"
293 "www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html\">kicked off by vaccine denial</"
294 "ulink> to genocides <ulink url=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/"
295 "technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html\">kicked off by racist "
296 "conspiracies</ulink> to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate "
297 "inaction. Our world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to "
298 "figure out how to help people see the truth of the world through the "
299 "conspiracies they’ve been confused by."
301 "Troen på fiktive konspirasjoner har gjort skade og utgjør en fare for "
302 "planeten. Fornektelse av kunstig vaksinasjon kan medføre epidimier, og "
303 "rasisme fører gjerne til folkemord. Det kan tenkes man kan hjelpe folk å se "
304 "sannheten gjennom konspirasjonsteoriene de har blitt forvirret av."
306 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
308 "But firefighting is reactive. We need fire <emphasis>prevention</emphasis>. "
309 "We need to strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people "
310 "vulnerable to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to "
313 "Brannslokking er reaktivt. Det trengs <emphasis>forebygging</emphasis>. Den "
314 "materielle tilværelsen hvis innvirken på folks svakhet for den, smitter over "
315 "i handling. Her kan også teknologi ha noe å si."
317 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
319 "There’s no shortage of proposals to address this. From the EU’s <ulink url="
320 "\"https://edri.org/tag/terreg/\">Terrorist Content Regulation</ulink>, which "
321 "requires platforms to police and remove <quote>extremist</quote> content, to "
322 "the U.S. proposals to <ulink url=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/"
323 "earn-it-act-violates-constitution\">force tech companies to spy on their "
324 "users</ulink> and hold them liable <ulink url=\"https://www.natlawreview.com/"
325 "article/repeal-cda-section-230\">for their users’ bad speech</ulink>, "
326 "there’s a lot of energy to force tech companies to solve the problems they "
329 "Det skorter ikke på tilsvarsforslag. Fra EU sin <ulink url=\"https://edri."
330 "org/tag/terreg/\">Terroristinnhold-regulering</ulink> som krever at "
331 "plattformer håndhever og fjerner <quote>ekstremistisk</quote>-innhold, til "
332 "USAs forslag om å <ulink url=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-"
333 "act-violates-constitution\">tvinge teknologiselskaper til å spionere på sine "
334 "brukere</ulink> og holde dem ansvarlige <ulink url=\"https://www.natlawreview"
335 ".com/article/repeal-cda-section-230\">for brukernes ytringsfrihet</ulink>. "
336 "Det er mange krefter i sving som kan svinge tilbake slik at "
337 "teknologiselskaper må løse problemene de utgjør."
339 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
341 "There’s a critical piece missing from the debate, though. All these "
342 "solutions assume that tech companies are a fixture, that their dominance "
343 "over the internet is a permanent fact. Proposals to replace Big Tech with a "
344 "more diffused, pluralistic internet are nowhere to be found. Worse: The "
345 "<quote>solutions</quote> on the table today <emphasis>require</emphasis> Big "
346 "Tech to stay big because only the very largest companies can afford to "
347 "implement the systems these laws demand."
349 "Her mangler en kritisk del av debatten. Alle disse løsningene antar at "
350 "teknologiselskaper er en bruksgjenstand, at deres dominanse over Internett "
351 "er evig. Forslag til endring av storteknologien til et mer finmasket, "
352 "mangeslynget Internett lar vente på seg. <quote>Løsningene</quote> som "
353 "forefinnes <emphasis>krever</emphasis> at storteknologien skal forbli "
354 "storartet smålig, fordi kun de største selskapene får råd til å sette i verk "
355 "systemene disse lovene krever."
357 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
359 "Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re going to "
360 "get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re trying to "
361 "figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that dominate our "
362 "internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by unshackling it from Big "
363 "Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we have to choose."
365 "Løsningen på hva teknologien skal være er svaret på hva som skal til for å "
366 "komme oss ut av knipa. I dag er vi på perrongen og prøver å finne ut hva "
367 "tabellen storteknologien har lagt fore skal bety for vårt Internett i "
368 "fortsettelsen, eller om det går noen tog andre veien. Enveisbilletten har vi "
371 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
373 "I want us to choose wisely. Taming Big Tech is integral to fixing the "
374 "internet, and for that, we need digital rights activism."
376 "Velg med omhu. Temming av storteknologien er iboende viktig for løsningen på "
377 "Internett. Hvorfra vi setter ut i det, en digital rettighetsaktivisme til."
379 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
380 msgid "Digital rights activism, a quarter-century on"
381 msgstr "Digital rettighetsaktivisme, et kvart århundre senere"
383 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
385 "Digital rights activism is more than 30 years old now. The Electronic "
386 "Frontier Foundation turned 30 this year; the Free Software Foundation "
387 "launched in 1985. For most of the history of the movement, the most "
388 "prominent criticism leveled against it was that it was irrelevant: The real "
389 "activist causes were real-world causes (think of the skepticism when <ulink "
390 "url=\"https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/finland-legal-right-to-"
391 "broadband-for-all-citizens/#:~:text=Global%20Legal%20Monitor,-Home%20%7C"
392 "%20Search%20%7C%20Browse&text=(July%206%2C%202010)%20On,connection"
393 "%20100%20MBPS%20by%202015.\">Finland declared broadband a human right in "
394 "2010</ulink>), and real-world activism was shoe-leather activism (think of "
395 "Malcolm Gladwell’s <ulink url=\"https://www.newyorker.com/"
396 "magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell\">contempt for "
397 "<quote>clicktivism</quote></ulink>). But as tech has grown more central to "
398 "our daily lives, these accusations of irrelevance have given way first to "
399 "accusations of insincerity (<quote>You only care about tech because you’re "
400 "<ulink url=\"https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/06/04/report-engine-eff-shills-"
401 "google-patent-reform/id=98007/\">shilling for tech companies</ulink></"
402 "quote>) to accusations of negligence (<quote>Why didn’t you foresee that "
403 "tech could be such a destructive force?</quote>). But digital rights "
404 "activism is right where it’s always been: looking out for the humans in a "
405 "world where tech is inexorably taking over."
407 "Digital rettighetsaktivisme er eldre enn Internett. GNU-prosjektet er fra "
408 "1983. Elektronisk forpost fra 1990. I brorparten av tiden denne har "
409 "eksistert, var hovedkritikken rettet mot dens formål at det hele var "
410 "irrelevant: De sanne aktivistparolene var blitt virkelighet i lys av "
411 "skepsis. Tenk over hva som ble sagt da <ulink url=\"https://www.loc.gov/law/"
412 "foreign-news/article/finland-legal-right-to-broadband-for-all-citizens/#:~:te"
413 "xt=Global%20Legal%20Monitor,-Home%20%7C%20Search%20%7C%20Browse&text=(Jul"
414 "y%206%2C%202010)%20On,connection%20100%20MBPS%20by%202015.\">Finland snudde "
415 "kjæringa og erklærte breiband en mennskerett i 2010</ulink>. Sann aktivisme "
416 "var for smørkrise å regne den gang. Tenk over Malcolm Gladwell sin <ulink "
417 "url=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-"
418 "gladwell\">forakt for at Finland gjorde resten av verden til skamme i 2010</"
419 "ulink> da han kalte det <quote>klikktivisme.</quote>. Etter at "
420 "storteknologien har blitt sentral i våre liv, om ikke erstattet noen av dem "
421 "helt, har disse uverdige kritikkene blitt kritikk verdige. Først lød pipa av "
422 "at <quote>Du bryr deg kun om teknologi fordi du <ulink url=\"https://www."
423 "ipwatchdog.com/2018/06/04/report-engine-eff-shills-google-patent-reform/id="
424 "98007/\">er en undersått av et teknologiselskap</ulink></quote>. Så ble "
425 "lyden tonelydende <quote>Hvorfor forutså du ikke at teknologi kom til å bli "
426 "en så destruktiv kraft?</quote>. Digital rettighetsaktivisme er riktig der "
427 "det alltid har vært rett: voktende over menneskene i en verden der teknologi "
428 "ubønnhørlig tar grep."
430 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
432 "The latest version of this critique comes in the form of <quote>surveillance "
433 "capitalism,</quote> a term coined by business professor Shoshana Zuboff in "
434 "her long and influential 2019 book, <emphasis>The Age of Surveillance "
435 "Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power</"
436 "emphasis>. Zuboff argues that <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> is a "
437 "unique creature of the tech industry and that it is unlike any other abusive "
438 "commercial practice in history, one that is <quote>constituted by unexpected "
439 "and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control "
440 "that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new "
441 "markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism "
442 "challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long "
443 "evolution of market capitalism.</quote> It is a new and deadly form of "
444 "capitalism, a <quote>rogue capitalism,</quote> and our lack of understanding "
445 "of its unique capabilities and dangers represents an existential, species-"
446 "wide threat. She’s right that capitalism today threatens our species, and "
447 "she’s right that tech poses unique challenges to our species and "
448 "civilization, but she’s really wrong about how tech is different and why it "
449 "threatens our species."
451 "Siste versjon av kritikken plystrer til takten av "
452 "<quote>overvåkningskapitalismen</quote>, et begrep Shoshana Zuboff førte i "
453 "pennen i sin innflytelsesrike og lange bok fra 2019, <emphasis>Tidsalderen "
454 "overvåkningskapitalismen: Kampen om en human fremtid i maktens nye "
455 "frontlinjer</emphasis>. Zuboff argumenterer at "
456 "<quote>overvåkningskapitalisme</quote> er en unik funksjon av teknologi-"
457 "industrien, og at til forskjell fra andre skadeinnvirkende kommersielle "
458 "gesjefter i historiens løp, at denne <quote>skriver seg fra uventede og "
459 "illegale mekanismer for utnyttelse, verdiskapning og kontroll som effektivt "
460 "sett løsriver folk fra deres adferd, mens den lager nye markeder for å "
461 "forutsi oppførselsforutsigbarhet og endring av den. Overvåkningskapitalisme "
462 "utfordrer demokratiske normer, og tar avskjed med århundrers "
463 "markedskapitalisme på sentrale punkter.</quote> Det er en ny og dødlig form "
464 "for kapitalisme, en <quote>ukontrollert kapitalisme</quote>, og vår "
465 "forståelsesmangel i dens unike muligheter og farer representerer en "
466 "eksistensiell, artsomfattende trussel. Hun skal ha rett i at dagens "
467 "kapitalisme truer vårt artsmangfold, og hun framfører riktig nok at vår art "
468 "og sivilisasjon har utfordringer. Dog tar hun kanskje virkelig feil av "
469 "hvordan teknologi er forskjellig, og hvordan det truer vår art."
471 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
473 "What’s more, I think that her incorrect diagnosis will lead us down a path "
474 "that ends up making Big Tech stronger, not weaker. We need to take down Big "
475 "Tech, and to do that, we need to start by correctly identifying the problem."
477 "En slik feildiagnostisering vil forlede oss inn på et spor der "
478 "storteknologien har penset inn allerede. Ned med storteknologien, er ikke en "
479 "avsporing av problemet."
481 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
482 msgid "Tech exceptionalism, then and now"
483 msgstr "Teknologieksepsjonalisme, da og nå"
485 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
487 "Early critics of the digital rights movement — perhaps best represented by "
488 "campaigning organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free "
489 "Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and others that focused on preserving "
490 "and enhancing basic human rights in the digital realm — damned activists for "
491 "practicing <quote>tech exceptionalism.</quote> Around the turn of the "
492 "millennium, serious people ridiculed any claim that tech policy mattered in "
493 "the <quote>real world.</quote> Claims that tech rules had implications for "
494 "speech, association, privacy, search and seizure, and fundamental rights and "
495 "equities were treated as ridiculous, an elevation of the concerns of sad "
496 "nerds arguing about <emphasis>Star Trek</emphasis> on bulletin board systems "
497 "above the struggles of the Freedom Riders, Nelson Mandela, or the Warsaw "
500 "Tidligere kritikere av bevegelsen av og for digitale rettigheter—kanskje "
501 "best representert ved organisasjoner som GNU-prosjektet, Elektronisk "
502 "forpost, Public Knowledge, og andre som fokuserer på ivaretagelse og "
503 "forbedring av grunnleggende rettigheter fra og i den digitale sfære—ble kalt "
504 "aktivister for å praktisere <quote>teknologieksepsjonalisme</quote>. Rundt "
505 "tusenårets slutt drev seriøse mennesker gjøn og påstod at teknologi-praksis "
506 "ikke hadde innvirkning på den <quote>virkelige verden</quote>. Påstander om "
507 "at teknologiregler hadde innvirkning på talefrihet, assosiasjonsfrihet, vern "
508 "av privatsfæren, ransakelsesordrer, og fundamentale rettigheter og verdier "
509 "ble antatt for latterlige å være, en videre trist fabulering om "
510 "<emphasis>Star Trek</emphasis> på digitale oppslagstavler istedenfor Nelson "
513 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
515 "In the decades since, accusations of <quote>tech exceptionalism</quote> have "
516 "only sharpened as tech’s role in everyday life has expanded: Now that tech "
517 "has infiltrated every corner of our life and our online lives have been "
518 "monopolized by a handful of giants, defenders of digital freedoms are "
519 "accused of carrying water for Big Tech, providing cover for its self-"
520 "interested negligence (or worse, nefarious plots)."
522 "I årtiene som fulgte, har anklagene om <quote>teknologi-eksepsjonalisme</"
523 "quote> økt etter som teknologi har fått en større rolle i folks hverdagsliv. "
524 "Nå som teknologi har infiltrert hver krink og krok i våre liv, og våre "
525 "nettbaserte liv kun har kommet et knippe monopolister i hende, blir digitale "
526 "rettighetsforkjempere anklaget for å gå storteknologiens ærend, og støtter "
527 "deres uaktsomhet som tjener deres egeninteresse (eller verre, skumle "
530 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
532 "From my perspective, the digital rights movement has remained stationary "
533 "while the rest of the world has moved. From the earliest days, the "
534 "movement’s concern was users and the toolsmiths who provided the code they "
535 "needed to realize their fundamental rights. Digital rights activists only "
536 "cared about companies to the extent that companies were acting to uphold "
537 "users’ rights (or, just as often, when companies were acting so foolishly "
538 "that they threatened to bring down new rules that would also make it harder "
539 "for good actors to help users)."
541 "Fra eget perspektiv har bevegelsen for digitale rettigheter forholdt seg der "
542 "den startet, mens resten av verden har flyttet seg. Helt fra dens tidligste "
543 "dager, var det dens brukere også dem som skrev koden fra tanke til "
544 "fundamentale verktøy. Digitale rettighetsaktivister brød seg kun om "
545 "selskaper i den grad de brydde seg om brukernes rettigheter (eller, vel så "
546 "ofte, når selskaper gjorde så tåpelige ting at det truet med nye regelsett "
547 "som også gjorde det vanskeligere for rasjonelle aktører å hjelpe brukere)."
549 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
551 "The <quote>surveillance capitalism</quote> critique recasts the digital "
552 "rights movement in a new light again: not as alarmists who overestimate the "
553 "importance of their shiny toys nor as shills for big tech but as serene deck-"
554 "chair rearrangers whose long-standing activism is a liability because it "
555 "makes them incapable of perceiving novel threats as they continue to fight "
556 "the last century’s tech battles."
558 "<quote>Overvåkningskapitalisems</quote> kritiker kommer så med en ny "
559 "vinkling mot bevegelsen for digitale rettigheter: Ikke som varslere som "
560 "overdriver hvor viktig de nye leketøyene deres er, ei heller som "
561 "håndtlangere for storteknologien, men som velmenende stolflyttere hvis "
562 "langvarige aktivisme er en belastning fordi det gjør det ute av stand til å "
563 "oppfatte nye truslene som finnes fordi de er opptatt med forrige århundres "
566 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
567 msgid "But tech exceptionalism is a sin no matter who practices it."
568 msgstr "Men teknologieksepsjonalisme er en synd, uavsett hvem som bedriver den."
570 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
571 msgid "Don’t believe the hype"
572 msgstr "Ikke fest din lit til oppstuss"
574 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
576 "You’ve probably heard that <quote>if you’re not paying for the product, "
577 "you’re the product.</quote> As we’ll see below, that’s true, if incomplete. "
578 "But what is <emphasis>absolutely</emphasis> true is that ad-driven Big "
579 "Tech’s customers are advertisers, and what companies like Google and "
580 "Facebook sell is their ability to convince <emphasis>you</emphasis> to buy "
581 "stuff. Big Tech’s product is persuasion. The services — social media, search "
582 "engines, maps, messaging, and more — are delivery systems for persuasion."
584 "Du har antagelig hørt at <quote>om du ikke betaler for noe, er det du som er "
585 "produktet</quote>. Som vi ser nedenfor, er det riktig, men ikke hele bildet. "
586 "Det som er <emphasis>helt</emphasis> riktig om reklamefinansiert "
587 "storteknologi, er at dens kunder er de som reklamerer, og det selskaper som "
588 "Google og Facebook selger, er deres evne til å overbevise <emphasis>deg</"
589 "emphasis> om å kjøpe ting. Tjenestene—sosiale media, søkemotorer, kart, "
590 "meldingstjenester, med mer—er leveringssystemer for overbeviselse."
592 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
594 "The fear of surveillance capitalism starts from the (correct) presumption "
595 "that everything Big Tech says about itself is probably a lie. But the "
596 "surveillance capitalism critique makes an exception for the claims Big Tech "
597 "makes in its sales literature — the breathless hype in the pitches to "
598 "potential advertisers online and in ad-tech seminars about the efficacy of "
599 "its products: It assumes that Big Tech is as good at influencing us as they "
600 "claim they are when they’re selling influencing products to credulous "
601 "customers. That’s a mistake because sales literature is not a reliable "
602 "indicator of a product’s efficacy."
604 "Frykten for overvåkningskapitalismen utgår fra den (korrekte) antagelsen om "
605 "at alt Storteknologien sier om seg selv antagelig er løgn. Men kritikken av "
606 "overvåkningskapitalismen gjør unntak fra påstandene Storteknologien kommer "
607 "med i salgsmateriellet sitt - overdrivelsene som tar pusten fra deg i "
608 "salgsfremstøtene til potensielle annonsekjøpere på nettet og i deres "
609 "reklameteknologiseminarer om effekten av produktene. Den antar at "
610 "Storteknologien er så god til å påvirke oss som de påstår de er når de "
611 "selger påvirkningsprodukter til pålitelige kunder. Dette er en tabbe, da "
612 "salgsmateriell ikke er en pålitelig indikator på et produkts "
613 "gjennomføringsevne."
615 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
617 "Surveillance capitalism assumes that because advertisers buy a lot of what "
618 "Big Tech is selling, Big Tech must be selling something real. But Big Tech’s "
619 "massive sales could just as easily be the result of a popular delusion or "
620 "something even more pernicious: monopolistic control over our communications "
623 "Overvåkningskapitalismen antar det at det kjøpes mye av markedsføringen som "
624 "Storteknologien selges, så må Storteknologien selge noe som virker. Men det "
625 "enorme salget til Storteknologien kan like gjerne være et resultat av en "
626 "felles vrangforestilling eller noe enda mer skadelig, monopolistisk kontroll "
627 "over kommunikasjonen og handelen vår."
629 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
631 "Being watched changes your behavior, and not for the better. It creates "
632 "risks for our social progress. Zuboff’s book features beautifully wrought "
633 "explanations of these phenomena. But Zuboff also claims that surveillance "
634 "literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal data is mixed "
635 "with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion so devastating that "
636 "we are helpless before it. That is, Facebook uses an algorithm to analyze "
637 "the data it nonconsensually extracts from your daily life and uses it to "
638 "customize your feed in ways that get you to buy stuff. It is a mind-control "
639 "ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded by mad scientists whose "
640 "supercomputers guarantee them perpetual and total world domination."
642 "Du endrer oppførsel når noen ser på deg, og ikke til det bedre. Det skaper "
643 "risiko for vår sosiale fremgang. Zuboffs bok inneholder vakkert formulerte "
644 "forklaringer av disse fenomenene. Men Zuboff påstår også at overvåkning "
645 "bokstavlig talt fjerner vår frie vilje, at når våre personlige data blandes "
646 "med maskinlæring, så oppstår et overtalelsessystem så ødeleggende at vi er "
647 "helt hjelpeløse i møte med det. Det vil si at Facebook med en algoritme til "
648 "å analysere data som det henter ut fra ditt daglige liv uten samtykke, "
649 "tilpasser feeden din slik at du kjøper ting. Det er en tankekontrollstråle "
650 "rett ut av en femtitalls-tegneserie, der brukt av gale forskere hvis "
651 "superdatamaskiner garanterer dem evigvarende og total verdensherredømme."
653 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
654 msgid "What is persuasion?"
655 msgstr "Hva er overtalelse?"
657 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
659 "To understand why you shouldn’t worry about mind-control rays — but why you "
660 "<emphasis>should</emphasis> worry about surveillance <emphasis>and</"
661 "emphasis> Big Tech — we must start by unpacking what we mean by "
662 "<quote>persuasion.</quote>"
664 "For å forstå hvorfor du ikke bør bekymre deg over tankekontrollstråler, men "
665 "hvorfor du <emphasis>bør</emphasis> bekymre deg over overvåkning "
666 "<emphasis>og</emphasis> Storteknologi, så må vi starte ved å se på hva vi "
667 "mener med <quote>overtalelse</quote>."
669 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
671 "Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists promise their customers "
672 "(the advertisers) that if they use machine-learning tools trained on "
673 "unimaginably large data sets of nonconsensually harvested personal "
674 "information, they will be able to uncover ways to bypass the rational "
675 "faculties of the public and direct their behavior, creating a stream of "
676 "purchases, votes, and other desired outcomes."
678 "Google, Facebook, og andre overvåkningskapitalister lover sine kunder (de "
679 "som markedsfører) at hvis de bruker maskinlæringsverktøy opptrent på "
680 "ufattelig store datasett av personinformasjon høstet inn uten samtykke, så "
681 "vil de være i stand til å finne måter å overstyre de rasjonale evnene til "
682 "folket og styre deres oppførsel, og slik skape en strøm av kjøp, stemmer og "
683 "andre ønskede resultater."
685 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><blockquote><para>
687 "The impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
688 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
690 "Effekten av dominans er mye større enn effekten av manipulering og bør "
691 "derfor være hovedfokus i vår analyse og bestemmende for hvilke avhjelpende "
694 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
696 "But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the predictions "
697 "that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are much less "
698 "impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational faculties, "
699 "surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one or more of three "
702 "Men det finnes få indiser på at det er dette som skjer. I stedet er "
703 "forutsigelsene som overvåkningskapitalismen leverer til sine kunder mye "
704 "mindre imponerende. I stedet for å finne måter å omgå våre rasjonelle evner, "
705 "så gjør overvåkningskapitaliser som Mark Zuckerberg i hovedsak en eller "
708 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><title>
709 msgid "1. Segmenting"
710 msgstr "1. Segmentering"
712 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
714 "If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to people "
715 "in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity ward just "
716 "had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the market for "
717 "diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of being in the "
718 "market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly correlated with "
719 "having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards (and even pitchmen "
720 "for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with baskets full of freebies)."
722 "Hvis du selger bleier, så er det større sjanse for et salg hvis du forsøker "
723 "å selge dem til folk som er innom fødeavdelinger. Slett ikke alle som "
724 "ankommer eller forlater en fødeavdeling har nettopp fått en baby, og ikke "
725 "alle som har fått en baby er i markedet etter bleier. Men det å ha en baby "
726 "er svært nært knyttet til det å være ute etter å kjøpe bleier, og det å være "
727 "på en fødestue er svært nært knyttet til det å ha en baby. Dermed er det "
728 "bleiereklamer i nærheten av fødeavdelinger (samt selgere av babyprodukter, "
729 "som henger rundt fødeavdelinger med favnen full av gratispakker)."
731 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
733 "Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors can go "
734 "way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, too, with "
735 "things like location-based mobile ads). They can target you based on "
736 "whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, or a host of "
737 "other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious keywords to advertise "
738 "against. They can target you based on the articles you’ve recently read. "
739 "They can target you based on what you’ve recently purchased. They can target "
740 "you based on whether you receive emails or private messages about these "
741 "subjects — or even if you speak aloud about them (though Facebook and the "
742 "like convincingly claim that’s not happening — yet)."
744 "Overvåkningskapitalisem er segmentering ganger en milliard. "
745 "Bleieprodusenter kan langt overgå å fokusere på folk på fødestuer (selv om "
746 "de også kan gjøre slikt, ved å bruke stedsbaserte mobilreklager). De kan "
747 "rette reklamen mot deg basert på om du leser artikler om barneoppdragelse, "
748 "bleier, eller en hel rekke andre tema, og datautvinningen kan foreslå ikke-"
749 "åpenbare nøkkelord å rette reklamen mot. De kan rette reklamen mot deg "
750 "basert på artikler du nylig har lest. De kan rette reklamen mot deg baser "
751 "på det du nylig har kjøpt. De kan rette reklamen mot deg basert på om du har "
752 "mottatt epost eller private meldinger om disse temaene — eller til og med om "
753 "du snakker høyt om dem (selv om Facebook og dets like overbevisende påstår "
754 "at dette ikke gjøres — ennå)."
756 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
757 msgid "This is seriously creepy."
758 msgstr "Dette er veldig ekkelt."
760 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
761 msgid "But it’s not mind control."
762 msgstr "Men det er ikke tankekontroll."
764 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
765 msgid "It doesn’t deprive you of your free will. It doesn’t trick you."
766 msgstr "Det fratar deg ikke din frie vilje. Det lurer deg ikke."
768 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
770 "Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics. Surveillance "
771 "capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate people "
772 "who might be receptive to their pitch. Candidates campaigning on finance "
773 "industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates campaigning "
774 "on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have always targeted "
775 "their message whether their intentions were honorable or not: Union "
776 "organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white supremacists hand out "
777 "fliers at John Birch Society meetings."
779 "Se hvordan overvåkningskapitalisem virker i politikken. "
780 "Overvåkningskapitalistselskapene selger til politiske aktører evnen til å "
781 "spore opp folk som er mottakelige for deres argumenter. Kandidater som "
782 "kjører valgkamp på korrupsjon i finansbransjen leter etter folk som sliter "
783 "med gjeld. Kandidater som kjører valgkamp på fremmedfrykt leter etter "
784 "rasister. Politiske aktører har alltid rettet sine budskap uansett om "
785 "intensjonene var hederlige eller ikke. De som danner fagforeninger sprer "
786 "budskapet ved fabrikkportene, og forkjemperne for hvit overherredømme deler "
787 "ut foldere på møter i John Birch Society (FIXME bedre med norsk analogi?)."
789 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
791 "But this is an inexact and thus wasteful practice. The union organizer can’t "
792 "know which worker to approach on the way out of the factory gates and may "
793 "waste their time on a covert John Birch Society member; the white "
794 "supremacist doesn’t know which of the Birchers are so delusional that making "
795 "it to a meeting is as much as they can manage and which ones might be "
796 "convinced to cross the country to carry a tiki torch through the streets of "
797 "Charlottesville, Virginia."
799 "Men dette er en unøyaktig og ressurssløsende praksis. Fagforeningenfyren kan "
800 "ikke vite hvilken arbeider de bør ta kontakt med på vei ut fra fabrikken, og "
801 "kan kaste bort tiden sin på en som er John Birch Society-medlem i skjul, og "
802 "forkjemperen for hvitt overherredømme kan ikke hvem ar John Birch Society-"
803 "medlemmene som er så fjern at det å komme seg på et møte er det meste de "
804 "klarer, og hvilke som kan overtales til å reise tvers over hele landet for å "
805 "bære en tiki-fakkel gjennom gatene i Charlottesville, Virginia."
807 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
809 "Because targeting improves the yields on political pitches, it can "
810 "accelerate the pace of political upheaval by making it possible for everyone "
811 "who has secretly wished for the toppling of an autocrat — or just an 11-term "
812 "incumbent politician — to find everyone else who feels the same way at very "
813 "low cost. This has been critical to the rapid crystallization of recent "
814 "political movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as "
815 "well as less savory players like the far-right white nationalist movements "
816 "that marched in Charlottesville."
818 "Fordi målretting forbedrer nedslagsfeltet i politiske leire, kan det "
819 "akselerere tempoet i en politisk omveltning ved å åpne for at alle som i "
820 "hemmelighet ønsket å velte en autokrat - eller bare en politiker som har "
821 "sittet i elleve perioder - i å finne alle andre som mener det samme, og til "
822 "en lav kostnad. Dette har vært avgjørende for den raske utkrystalliseringen "
823 "av de siste politiske bevegelsene, inkludert Black Lives Matter og Occupy "
824 "Wall Street, samt mindre tiltalende aktører, som ytre høyrehvite "
825 "nasjonalistiske bevegelser som marsjerte i Charlottesville."
827 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
829 "It’s important to differentiate this kind of political organizing from "
830 "influence campaigns; finding people who secretly agree with you isn’t the "
831 "same as convincing people to agree with you. The rise of phenomena like "
832 "nonbinary or otherwise nonconforming gender identities is often "
833 "characterized by reactionaries as the result of online brainwashing "
834 "campaigns that convince impressionable people that they have been secretly "
837 "Det er viktig å skille denne typen politisk organisering fra "
838 "påvirkningskampanjer; å finne folk som i hemmelighet er enige med deg er "
839 "ikke det samme som å overbevise folk til å være enig med deg. Fremveksten av "
840 "fenomener som ikke-binære eller på annen måte avvikende kjønnsidentiteter er "
841 "ofte preget av reaksjonære som følge av hjernevaskingskampanjer på nettet "
842 "som overbeviser påvirkbare mennesker at i hemmelighet her vært skeive hele "
845 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
847 "But the personal accounts of those who have come out tell a different story "
848 "where people who long harbored a secret about their gender were emboldened "
849 "by others coming forward and where people who knew that they were different "
850 "but lacked a vocabulary for discussing that difference learned the right "
851 "words from these low-cost means of finding people and learning about their "
854 "Men de personlige beretningene til de som har trådt frem, forteller en annen "
855 "historie hvor folk som lenge hadde en hemmelighet om deres kjønn, ble "
856 "styrket av andre som trådte frem, og der folk som visste at de var "
857 "forskjellige, men manglet et ordforråd for å diskutere denne forskjellen, "
858 "lærte de riktige ordene på disse rimelige måtene ved å finne folk på og lære "
861 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><title>
863 msgstr "2. Villedning"
865 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
867 "Lies and fraud are pernicious, and surveillance capitalism supercharges them "
868 "through targeting. If you want to sell a fraudulent payday loan or subprime "
869 "mortgage, surveillance capitalism can help you find people who are both "
870 "desperate and unsophisticated and thus receptive to your pitch. This "
871 "accounts for the rise of many phenomena, like multilevel marketing schemes, "
872 "in which deceptive claims about potential earnings and the efficacy of sales "
873 "techniques are targeted at desperate people by advertising against search "
874 "queries that indicate, for example, someone struggling with ill-advised "
877 "Løgner og svindel er skadelige, og overvåkingskapitalismen overbelaster dem "
878 "gjennom målretting. Hvis du ønsker å selge et uredelig forskuddslån frem til "
879 "lønningsdagen eller et overbelastet boliglån, kan overvåkingskapitalismen "
880 "hjelpe deg å finne folk som er både desperate og usofistikerte og dermed "
881 "mottakelig for ditt påhopp. Dette står for fremveksten av mange fenomener, "
882 "som flernivå markedsføringsopplegg, der villedende påstander om potensiell "
883 "inntjening og effektive av salgsteknikker er rettet mot desperate mennesker "
884 "ved å annonsere mot søk som indikerer, for eksempel, at noen sliter med lån "
885 "som resultat av dårlig rådgiving."
887 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
889 "Surveillance capitalism also abets fraud by making it easy to locate other "
890 "people who have been similarly deceived, forming a community of people who "
891 "reinforce one another’s false beliefs. Think of <ulink url=\"https://www."
892 "vulture.com/2020/01/the-dream-podcast-review.html\">the forums</ulink> where "
893 "people who are being victimized by multilevel marketing frauds gather to "
894 "trade tips on how to improve their luck in peddling the product."
896 "Overvåkingskapitalismen fremmer også svindel ved å gjøre det enkelt å finne "
897 "andre mennesker som har blitt tilsvarende bedratt, og danner et fellesskap "
898 "av mennesker som forsterker hverandres falske tro. Tenk på <ulink url="
899 "\"https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/the-dream-podcast-review.html\">forumene</"
900 "ulink> hvor folk, som blir utsatt for flernivå markedsføringssvindel, samles "
901 "for å utveksle tips om hvordan de kan forbedre sin situasjon ved å selv "
904 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
906 "Sometimes, online deception involves replacing someone’s correct beliefs "
907 "with incorrect ones, as it does in the anti-vaccination movement, whose "
908 "victims are often people who start out believing in vaccines but are "
909 "convinced by seemingly plausible evidence that leads them into the false "
910 "belief that vaccines are harmful."
912 "Noen ganger innebærer villedning på nett å erstatte noens korrekte tro med "
913 "feil, som det gjør i anti-vaksinasjonsbevegelsen, hvis ofre ofte er folk som "
914 "begynner å tro på vaksiner, men er overbevist av tilsynelatende plausible "
915 "bevis som fører dem inn i den falske troen på at vaksiner er skadelige."
917 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
919 "But it’s much more common for fraud to succeed when it doesn’t have to "
920 "displace a true belief. When my daughter contracted head lice at daycare, "
921 "one of the daycare workers told me I could get rid of them by treating her "
922 "hair and scalp with olive oil. I didn’t know anything about head lice, and I "
923 "assumed that the daycare worker did, so I tried it (it didn’t work, and it "
924 "doesn’t work). It’s easy to end up with false beliefs when you simply don’t "
925 "know any better and when those beliefs are conveyed by someone who seems to "
926 "know what they’re doing."
928 "Men det er mye mer vanlig for svindel å lykkes når den ikke trenger å "
929 "fortrenge en riktig overbevisning. Da datteren min fikk hodelus i "
930 "barnehagen, fortalte en av barnehagearbeiderne meg at jeg kunne bli kvitt "
931 "dem ved å behandle håret og hodebunnen med olivenolje. Jeg visste ikke noe "
932 "om hodelus, og jeg antok at barnehagearbeideren gjorde det, så jeg prøvde "
933 "det (det fungerte ikke, og det virker ikke). Det er lett å ende opp med "
934 "falske tro når du rett og slett ikke vet noe bedre, og når disse "
935 "overbevisningene formidles av noen som synes å vite hva de gjør."
937 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
939 "This is pernicious and difficult — and it’s also the kind of thing the "
940 "internet can help guard against by making true information available, "
941 "especially in a form that exposes the underlying deliberations among parties "
942 "with sharply divergent views, such as Wikipedia. But it’s not brainwashing; "
943 "it’s fraud. In the <ulink url=\"https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/"
944 "\">majority of cases</ulink>, the victims of these fraud campaigns have an "
945 "informational void filled in the customary way, by consulting a seemingly "
946 "reliable source. If I look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge and learn "
947 "that it is 5,800 feet long, but in reality, it is 5,989 feet long, the "
948 "underlying deception is a problem, but it’s a problem with a simple remedy. "
949 "It’s a very different problem from the anti-vax issue in which someone’s "
950 "true belief is displaced by a false one by means of sophisticated persuasion."
952 "Dette er skadelig og vanskelig - og det er også den typen ting Internett kan "
953 "bidra til å beskytte mot. Ved å gjøre sann informasjon tilgjengelig, "
954 "spesielt i en form som avslører de underliggende overveielsene blant parter "
955 "med skarpt divergerende synspunkter, som i Wikipedia. Men dette er ikke "
956 "hjernevasking; det er svindel. I <ulink url=\"https://datasociety.net/"
957 "library/data-voids/\">de fleste tilfellene</ulink>, har ofrene for disse "
958 "svindelkampanjene fått et informasjonstomrom fylt på vanlig måte, ved å "
959 "konsultere en tilsynelatende pålitelig kilde. Hvis jeg undersøker lengden på "
960 "Brooklyn Bridge,og finner at den er 5800 fot lang, men i virkeligheten er "
961 "den 5989 fot lang, er det underliggende villedningen er et problem, men det "
962 "er et problem med et enkelt hjelpemiddel. Det er et helt annet problem enn "
963 "anti-vaksineproblemet, der noens korrekte oppfatning er erstattet av en "
964 "falsk ved hjelp av sofistikert overtalelse."
966 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><title>
967 msgid "3. Domination"
970 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
972 "Surveillance capitalism is the result of monopoly. Monopoly is the cause, "
973 "and surveillance capitalism and its negative outcomes are the effects of "
974 "monopoly. I’ll get into this in depth later, but for now, suffice it to say "
975 "that the tech industry has grown up with a radical theory of antitrust that "
976 "has allowed companies to grow by merging with their rivals, buying up their "
977 "nascent competitors, and expanding to control whole market verticals."
979 "Overvåkingskapitalismen er et resultat av monopol. Monopol er årsaken, og "
980 "overvåkingskapitalismen og dens negative resultater er virkningene av "
981 "monopol. Jeg vil gå dypere inn i dette senere, men nå er det nok å si at "
982 "teknologi-industrien har vokst opp med en radikal teori om antitrust, som "
983 "har tillatt selskaper å vokse ved å fusjonere med sine rivaler, kjøpe opp "
984 "sine gryende konkurrenter, og utvidet til å kontrollere hele markedet "
987 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
989 "One example of how monopolism aids in persuasion is through dominance: "
990 "Google makes editorial decisions about its algorithms that determine the "
991 "sort order of the responses to our queries. If a cabal of fraudsters have "
992 "set out to trick the world into thinking that the Brooklyn Bridge is 5,800 "
993 "feet long, and if Google gives a high search rank to this group in response "
994 "to queries like <quote>How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?</quote> then the "
995 "first eight or 10 screens’ worth of Google results could be wrong. And since "
996 "most people don’t go beyond the first couple of results — let alone the "
997 "first <emphasis>page</emphasis> of results — Google’s choice means that many "
998 "people will be deceived."
1000 "Et eksempel på hvordan monopolopptreden hjelper til å overtalelse gjennom "
1001 "dominans: Google tar redaksjonelle beslutninger om sine algoritmer som "
1002 "bestemmer sorteringsrekkefølgen for svarene på våre søk. Hvis en samling "
1003 "svindlere vil lure verden til å tro at Brooklyn Bridge er 5800 fot lang, og "
1004 "hvis Google gir en høy søkerangering til den gruppen som svar på spørsmål "
1005 "som <quote>Hvor lang er Brooklyn Bridge? </quote> Da kan de første åtte "
1006 "eller ti Google- skjermene ha feil verdier. Og siden de fleste ikke går "
1007 "lengre enn de første par resultatene – enn si resultatene på den første "
1008 "<emphasis>siden</emphasis> med resultater – betyr Googles valg, at mange "
1009 "mennesker vil bli ført bak lyset."
1011 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1013 "Google’s dominance over search — more than 86% of web searches are performed "
1014 "through Google — means that the way it orders its search results has an "
1015 "outsized effect on public beliefs. Ironically, Google claims this is why it "
1016 "can’t afford to have any transparency in its algorithm design: Google’s "
1017 "search dominance makes the results of its sorting too important to risk "
1018 "telling the world how it arrives at those results lest some bad actor "
1019 "discover a flaw in the ranking system and exploit it to push its point of "
1020 "view to the top of the search results. There’s an obvious remedy to a "
1021 "company that is too big to audit: break it up into smaller pieces."
1023 "Googles dominans over søk – mer enn 86 % av nettsøkene utføres via Google – "
1024 "betyr at måten de organiserer søkeresultatene på, har en stor effekt på den "
1025 "offentlige oppfatningen. Ironisk nok hevder Google at det er derfor det ikke "
1026 "har råd til å ha noen åpenhet i sin algoritmedesign: Googles søkedominans "
1027 "gjør resultatene av sorteringen er for viktig til å risikere å fortelle "
1028 "verden hvordan den kommer til disse resultatene, om ikke en dårlig aktør "
1029 "oppdager en feil i rangeringssystemet, og utnytter det til å presse sitt syn "
1030 "frem til toppen av søkeresultatene. Det er et åpenbart hjelpemiddel overfor "
1031 "et selskap som er for stort til å bli gjennomgått: Å bryte det opp i mindre "
1034 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1036 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> whose "
1037 "data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. But "
1038 "influence campaigns that seek to displace existing, correct beliefs with "
1039 "false ones have an effect that is small and temporary while monopolistic "
1040 "dominance over informational systems has massive, enduring effects. "
1041 "Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means controlling "
1042 "access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, control over much of "
1043 "the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how corporations are foreclosing on "
1044 "our ability to make up our own minds and determine our own futures, the "
1045 "impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be "
1046 "central to our analysis and any remedies we seek."
1048 "Zuboff kaller overvåkingskapitalismen en <quote>ukontrollert kapitalisme</"
1049 "quote> hvis datahamstring og maskinlæringsteknikker frarøver oss vår frie "
1050 "vilje. Men påvirkningskampanjer som søker å fortrenge eksisterende, korrekte "
1051 "overbevisninger med falsk, har en effekt som er liten og midlertidig, mens "
1052 "monopolistisk dominans over informasjonssystemer har massive, varige "
1053 "effekter. Å kontrollere resultatene til verdens søk, betyr å kontrollere "
1054 "tilgang både til argumenter og deres motsvar, og dermed kontroll over mye av "
1055 "hva verdens tror på. Hvis vår bekymring er hvordan selskaper foregriper vår "
1056 "muligheter å gjøre opp våre egne oppfatninger og bestemme vår egen fremtid, "
1057 "så overstiger virkningen av slik dominans langt virkningen av manipulasjon "
1058 "og bør stå sentralt i vår analyse og for alle utbedringer vi går for."
1060 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><title>
1061 msgid "4. Bypassing our rational faculties"
1062 msgstr "4. Omgåelse av våre rasjonelle evner"
1064 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1066 "<emphasis>This</emphasis> is the good stuff: using machine learning, "
1067 "<quote>dark patterns,</quote> engagement hacking, and other techniques to "
1068 "get us to do things that run counter to our better judgment. This is mind "
1071 "<emphasis>Dette</emphasis> er de gode greiene: ved hjelp av maskinlæring, "
1072 "<quote>mørke mønstre</quote>, \"engagement hacking\" (FIXME) og andre "
1073 "teknikker for å få oss til å gjøre ting som er i strid med vår egen sunne "
1074 "fornuft. Dette er tankekontroll."
1076 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1078 "Some of these techniques have proven devastatingly effective (if only in the "
1079 "short term). The use of countdown timers on a purchase completion page can "
1080 "create a sense of urgency that causes you to ignore the nagging internal "
1081 "voice suggesting that you should shop around or sleep on your decision. The "
1082 "use of people from your social graph in ads can provide <quote>social proof</"
1083 "quote> that a purchase is worth making. Even the auction system pioneered by "
1084 "eBay is calculated to play on our cognitive blind spots, letting us feel "
1085 "like we <quote>own</quote> something because we bid on it, thus encouraging "
1086 "us to bid again when we are outbid to ensure that <quote>our</quote> things "
1089 "Noen av disse teknikkene har vist seg ødeleggende effektive (om bare på kort "
1090 "sikt). Bruk av nedtellingstidtakere på en kjøpsfullføringsside kan skape en "
1091 "følelse av hast som får deg til å ignorere den gnagende interne stemmen, som "
1092 "antyder at du bør undersøke flere alternativer eller sove på avgjørelsen "
1093 "din. Bruken av personer fra den sosiale grafen i annonser kan gi "
1094 "<quote>sosiale bevis</quote> at et kjøp er verdt å gjøre. Selv "
1095 "auksjonssystemet som eBay har utviklet, er beregnet til å spille på våre "
1096 "kognitive blindsoner, slik at vi kan føle at vi <quote>eier</quote> noe "
1097 "fordi vi byr på det, og dermed oppmuntrer oss til å by igjen, når vi blir "
1098 "overbydd, for å sikre at <quote>våre</quote> ting forblir våre."
1100 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1102 "Games are extraordinarily good at this. <quote>Free to play</quote> games "
1103 "manipulate us through many techniques, such as presenting players with a "
1104 "series of smoothly escalating challenges that create a sense of mastery and "
1105 "accomplishment but which sharply transition into a set of challenges that "
1106 "are impossible to overcome without paid upgrades. Add some social proof to "
1107 "the mix — a stream of notifications about how well your friends are faring — "
1108 "and before you know it, you’re buying virtual power-ups to get to the next "
1111 "Spill er usedvanlig gode på dette. <quote> Gratis å spille</quote>-spill "
1112 "manipulere oss gjennom mange teknikker, for eksempel ved å presentere "
1113 "spillere med en rekke jevnt eskalerende utfordringer, som skaper en følelse "
1114 "av mestring og prestasjon, men som skarpt går over til et sett med "
1115 "utfordringer som er umulige å overvinne uten betalte oppgraderinger. Legg "
1116 "til noen sosiale bevis i blandingen – en strøm av varsler om hvor godt "
1117 "vennene dine klarer det – og før du vet av det, kjøper du virtuelle "
1118 "oppgraderinger for å komme opp til neste nivå."
1120 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1122 "Companies have risen and fallen on these techniques, and the <quote>fallen</"
1123 "quote> part is worth paying attention to. In general, living things adapt to "
1124 "stimulus: Something that is very compelling or noteworthy when you first "
1125 "encounter it fades with repetition until you stop noticing it altogether. "
1126 "Consider the refrigerator hum that irritates you when it starts up but "
1127 "disappears into the background so thoroughly that you only notice it when it "
1130 "Selskaper har steget og falt på disse teknikkene, og de <quote>fallende</"
1131 "quote> delen er verdt å vie oppmerksomhet. Generelt tilpasser levende ting "
1132 "seg til stimuli: Noe som er veldig overbevisende eller bemerkelsesverdig når "
1133 "du først møter det, falmer med repetisjon til du slutter å legge merke til "
1134 "det helt. Tenk på lyden fra kjøleskapet, som irriterer deg når det starter "
1135 "opp, men som forsvinner helt i bakgrunnen, slik at du bare legger merke til "
1136 "den når det stopper igjen."
1138 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1140 "That’s why behavioral conditioning uses <quote>intermittent reinforcement "
1141 "schedules.</quote> Instead of giving you a steady drip of encouragement or "
1142 "setbacks, games and gamified services scatter rewards on a randomized "
1143 "schedule — often enough to keep you interested and random enough that you "
1144 "can never quite find the pattern that would make it boring."
1146 "Det er derfor atferdskondisjonering bruker <quote>periodiske "
1147 "forsterkningsmetodikker.</quote> I stedet for å gi deg et jevnt drypp av "
1148 "oppmuntring eller tilbakeslag, fordeler spill og spill-lignende tjenester "
1149 "belønninger med et randomisert oppsett - ofte nok til å holde deg "
1150 "interessert og tilfeldig nok til at du aldri helt kan finne mønsteret som "
1151 "ville gjøre det kjedelig."
1153 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1155 "Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful behavioral tool, but it also "
1156 "represents a collective action problem for surveillance capitalism. The "
1157 "<quote>engagement techniques</quote> invented by the behaviorists of "
1158 "surveillance capitalist companies are quickly copied across the whole sector "
1159 "so that what starts as a mysteriously compelling fillip in the design of a "
1160 "service—like <quote>pull to refresh</quote> or alerts when someone likes "
1161 "your posts or side quests that your characters get invited to while in the "
1162 "midst of main quests—quickly becomes dully ubiquitous. The impossible-to-"
1163 "nail-down nonpattern of randomized drips from your phone becomes a grey-"
1164 "noise wall of sound as every single app and site starts to make use of "
1165 "whatever seems to be working at the time."
1167 "Periodiske forsterkninger er et kraftig atferdsverktøy, men det "
1168 "representerer også et kollektivt handlingsproblem for "
1169 "overvåkingskapitalismen. <quote>Engasjementsteknikkene</quote> er oppfunnet "
1170 "av atferdseksperter i overvåkingskapitalistiske selskaper og kopieres raskt "
1171 "over hele sektoren. Slik at det som starter som en mystisk overbevisende "
1172 "stimuli i utformingen av en tjeneste – som <quote>trykk for å oppdatere</"
1173 "quote> eller varsler når noen liker innleggene eller siden din, og som "
1174 "karakteren din inviteres til, mens den er midt i et kjedelig, "
1175 "allestedsnærværende hovedoppdrag. Videre tikker de tilfeldige dryppene fra "
1176 "din mobil, som det er umulig å ta tak i, og som blir til en grå lydvegg når "
1177 "hver enkelt app og nettsted arbeider."
1179 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1181 "From the surveillance capitalist’s point of view, our adaptive capacity is "
1182 "like a harmful bacterium that deprives it of its food source — our attention "
1183 "— and novel techniques for snagging that attention are like new antibiotics "
1184 "that can be used to breach our defenses and destroy our self-determination. "
1185 "And there <emphasis>are</emphasis> techniques like that. Who can forget the "
1186 "Great Zynga Epidemic, when all of our friends were caught in "
1187 "<emphasis>FarmVille</emphasis>’s endless, mindless dopamine loops? But every "
1188 "new attention-commanding technique is jumped on by the whole industry and "
1189 "used so indiscriminately that antibiotic resistance sets in. Given enough "
1190 "repetition, almost all of us develop immunity to even the most powerful "
1191 "techniques — by 2013, two years after Zynga’s peak, its user base had halved."
1193 "Fra overvåkingskapitalistens synspunkt blir vår adaptive kapasitet som en "
1194 "skadelig bakterie som frarøver den matkilden – som er vår oppmerksomhet – og "
1195 "nye teknikker for å hekte denne oppmerksomheten er som ny antibiotika som "
1196 "kan brukes til å bryte vårt forsvar og ødelegge vår selvbestemmelse. Og der "
1197 "<emphasis> er</emphasis> slike teknikker. Hvem kan glemme den store Zynga-"
1198 "epidemien, da alle våre venner ble fanget i <emphasis>FarmVille</emphasis>s "
1199 "endeløse, tankeløse dopaminsløyfer? Men hele bransjen hopper på hver ny "
1200 "oppmerksomhets-kommanderende teknikk, som så brukes så ukritisk at "
1201 "antibiotikaresistens setter inn. Gitt nok repetisjon utvikler nesten alle "
1202 "immunitet mot selv de kraftigste teknikkene - og innen 2013, to år etter "
1203 "Zyngas topp, hadde brukerbasen halvert seg."
1205 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1207 "Not everyone, of course. Some people never adapt to stimulus, just as some "
1208 "people never stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator. This is why most "
1209 "people who are exposed to slot machines play them for a while and then move "
1210 "on while a small and tragic minority liquidate their kids’ college funds, "
1211 "buy adult diapers, and position themselves in front of a machine until they "
1214 "Ikke alle, selvfølgelig. Noen mennesker tilpasser seg aldri stimulanser, "
1215 "akkurat som noen mennesker aldri slutter å høre summingen av kjøleskapet. "
1216 "Dette er grunnen til at de fleste som er utsatt for spilleautomater spille "
1217 "dem for en stund og deretter går videre mens en liten og tragisk minoritet "
1218 "bruker barnas oppsparte studiemidler, kjøper voksen bleier, og plasserer seg "
1219 "foran en maskin til de kollapser."
1221 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1223 "But surveillance capitalism’s margins on behavioral modification suck. "
1224 "Tripling the rate at which someone buys a widget sounds great <ulink url="
1225 "\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2018/03/09/the-advertising-"
1226 "conversion-rates-for-every-major-tech-platform/#2f6a67485957\">unless the "
1227 "base rate is way less than 1%</ulink> with an improved rate of… still less "
1228 "than 1%. Even penny slot machines pull down pennies for every spin while "
1229 "surveillance capitalism rakes in infinitesimal penny fractions."
1231 "Men overvåkingskapitalismens marginer på atferdsendring stinker. Tredobling "
1232 "av hastigheten når noen kjøper et skjermelement høres bra ut <ulink url="
1233 "\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2018/03/09/"
1234 "the-advertising-conversion-rates-for-every-major-tech-platform/#"
1235 "2f6a67485957\"> med mindre grunnprisen er langt mindre enn 1 % </ulink> med "
1236 "en forbedret hastighet på ... fortsatt mindre enn 1 %. Selv spilleautomater "
1237 "med mynt bruker mynter for hvert spinn, mens overvåkingskapitalismen raker "
1238 "inn uendelige brøkerdeler av mynter."
1240 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1242 "Slot machines’ high returns mean that they can be profitable just by "
1243 "draining the fortunes of the small rump of people who are pathologically "
1244 "vulnerable to them and unable to adapt to their tricks. But surveillance "
1245 "capitalism can’t survive on the fractional pennies it brings down from that "
1246 "vulnerable sliver — that’s why, after the Great Zynga Epidemic had finally "
1247 "burned itself out, the small number of still-addicted players left behind "
1248 "couldn’t sustain it as a global phenomenon. And new powerful attention "
1249 "weapons aren’t easy to find, as is evidenced by the long years since the "
1250 "last time Zynga had a hit. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that "
1251 "Zynga has to spend on developing new tools to blast through our adaptation, "
1252 "it has never managed to repeat the lucky accident that let it snag so much "
1253 "of our attention for a brief moment in 2009. Powerhouses like Supercell have "
1254 "fared a little better, but they are rare and throw away many failures for "
1257 "Spilleautomatenes høye avkastning betyr at de kan være lønnsomme bare ved å "
1258 "tømme formuene til den lille gjenstående delen av personer som er patologisk "
1259 "sårbare for dem og ikke kan tilpasse seg triksene deres. Men "
1260 "overvåkingskapitalismen kan ikke overleve på brøkdeler av mynter som bringes "
1261 "inn fra sårbare. Det er derfor, etter at den store Zynga epidemien endelig "
1262 "hadde brent seg ut, kunne det lille antallet fortsatt avhengige spillere "
1263 "fortsatt opprettholde spillet som et globalt fenomen. Og nye kraftige "
1264 "oppmerksomhetsvåpen er ikke lett å finne, som det fremgår av de mange årene "
1265 "siden forrige gang Zynga hadde en hit. Til tross for hundrevis av millioner "
1266 "dollar som Zynga må bruke på å utvikle nye verktøy for å sprenge gjennom vår "
1267 "tilpasning, har det aldri klart å gjenta den heldige treffet som haket inn "
1268 "så mye av vår oppmerksomhet for et kort øyeblikk i 2009. Kraftsentra, som "
1269 "Supercell, har klart seg litt bedre, men de er sjeldne har mange bortkastede "
1270 "feil for hver suksess."
1272 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><sect2><para>
1274 "The vulnerability of small segments of the population to dramatic, efficient "
1275 "corporate manipulation is a real concern that’s worthy of our attention and "
1276 "energy. But it’s not an existential threat to society."
1278 "Sårbarheten fra avgrensede deler av befolkningen til dramatisk, effektiv "
1279 "bedriftsmanipulasjon, er et reelt anliggende som er verdig vår oppmerksomhet "
1280 "og energi. Men det er ikke en eksistensiell trussel mot samfunnet."
1282 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
1284 "If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak"
1285 msgstr "Hvis data er den nye oljen, er motorlekkasje overvåkningskapitalismen"
1287 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1289 "This adaptation problem offers an explanation for one of surveillance "
1290 "capitalism’s most alarming traits: its relentless hunger for data and its "
1291 "endless expansion of data-gathering capabilities through the spread of "
1292 "sensors, online surveillance, and acquisition of data streams from third "
1295 "Dette tilpasningsproblemet gir en forklaring på en av "
1296 "overvåkingskapitalismens mest alarmerende egenskaper: dens nådeløse sult "
1297 "etter data og dens endeløse utvidelse av evnen til datainnsamling ved "
1298 "spredning av sensorer, nettovervåking og oppkjøp av datastrømmer fra "
1301 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1303 "Zuboff observes this phenomenon and concludes that data must be very "
1304 "valuable if surveillance capitalism is so hungry for it. (In her words: "
1305 "<quote>Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous "
1306 "intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists and "
1307 "their market players are now locked into the continuous intensification of "
1308 "the means of behavioral modification and the gathering might of "
1309 "instrumentarian power.</quote>) But what if the voracious appetite is "
1310 "because data has such a short half-life — because people become inured so "
1311 "quickly to new, data-driven persuasion techniques — that the companies are "
1312 "locked in an arms race with our limbic system? What if it’s all a Red "
1313 "Queen’s race where they have to run ever faster — collect ever-more data — "
1314 "just to stay in the same spot?"
1316 "Zuboff observerer dette fenomenet og konkluderer med at data må være svært "
1317 "verdifulle hvis overvåkingskapitalismen er så sulten på det. (I hennes ord: "
1318 "<quote>Akkurat som industriell kapitalisme ble drevet til kontinuerlig "
1319 "intensivering av produksjonsmidlene, så nå er overvåkingskapitalister og "
1320 "deres markedsaktører låst inn i den kontinuerlige intensiveringen av "
1321 "virkemidler for atferdsmodifisering og innsamlingskraftens makt. </quote>) "
1322 "Men hva om den grådige appetitten er fordi dataene har en så kort "
1323 "halveringstid - fordi folk så raskt herdes mot nye, datadrevne "
1324 "overtalelsesteknikker - at selskapene er låst i et våpenkappløp mot vårt "
1325 "glemsomme system? Hva om det hele er en Red Queen's rase hvor de må løpe "
1326 "stadig raskere - samle stadig mer data - bare for å holde seg på samme sted?"
1328 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1330 "Of course, all of Big Tech’s persuasion techniques work in concert with one "
1331 "another, and collecting data is useful beyond mere behavioral trickery."
1333 "Selvfølgelig fungerer alle Big Techs overtalelsesteknikker sammen med "
1334 "hverandre, og innsamling av data er nyttig utover bare til atferdsmessig "
1337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1339 "If someone wants to recruit you to buy a refrigerator or join a pogrom, they "
1340 "might use profiling and targeting to send messages to people they judge to "
1341 "be good sales prospects. The messages themselves may be deceptive, making "
1342 "claims about things you’re not very knowledgeable about (food safety and "
1343 "energy efficiency or eugenics and historical claims about racial "
1344 "superiority). They might use search engine optimization and/or armies of "
1345 "fake reviewers and commenters and/or paid placement to dominate the "
1346 "discourse so that any search for further information takes you back to their "
1347 "messages. And finally, they may refine the different pitches using machine "
1348 "learning and other techniques to figure out what kind of pitch works best on "
1351 "Hvis noen ønsker å rekruttere deg til å kjøpe et kjøleskap eller bli med i "
1352 "en pogrom, kan de bruke profilering og målretting for å sende meldinger til "
1353 "folk de bedømmer for å gi gode salgsutsikter. Meldingene i seg selv kan være "
1354 "villedende, og gjør påstander om ting du ikke er veldig kunnskapsrik om ("
1355 "matsikkerhet og energieffektivitet, eller eugenikk og historiske påstander "
1356 "om rasemessig overlegenhet). De kan bruke søkemotoroptimalisering og/eller "
1357 "hærer av falske korrekturlesere og kommentatorer og/eller betalt plassering "
1358 "for å dominere diskursen, slik at ethvert søk etter ytterligere informasjon "
1359 "tar deg tilbake til meldingene sine. Og til slutt kan de avgrense de "
1360 "forskjellige banene ved hjelp av maskinlæring og andre teknikker for å finne "
1361 "ut hva slags tonehøyde som fungerer best på noen som deg."
1363 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1365 "Each phase of this process benefits from surveillance: The more data they "
1366 "have, the more precisely they can profile you and target you with specific "
1367 "messages. Think of how you’d sell a fridge if you knew that the warranty on "
1368 "your prospect’s fridge just expired and that they were expecting a tax "
1371 "Hver fase av denne prosessen drar nytte av overvåking: Jo flere data de har, "
1372 "jo mer presist kan de profilere deg og målrette deg mot bestemte meldinger. "
1373 "Tenk på hvordan du ville selge et kjøleskap, hvis du visste at garantien på "
1374 "prospektets kjøleskap nettopp er utløpt, og at de forventer en skatterabatt "
1377 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1379 "Also, the more data they have, the better they can craft deceptive messages "
1380 "— if I know that you’re into genealogy, I might not try to feed you "
1381 "pseudoscience about genetic differences between <quote>races,</quote> "
1382 "sticking instead to conspiratorial secret histories of <quote>demographic "
1383 "replacement</quote> and the like."
1385 "Jo mer data de har, desto bedre kan de lage villedende meldinger - hvis jeg "
1386 "vet at du liker slektsforskning, kan jeg ikke prøve å mate deg "
1387 "pseudovitenskap om genetiske forskjeller mellom <quote> raser,</quote> "
1388 "stikker i stedet til konspiratoriske hemmelige historier om <quote> "
1389 "demografi</quote> og lignende."
1391 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1393 "Facebook also helps you locate people who have the same odious or antisocial "
1394 "views as you. It makes it possible to find other people who want to carry "
1395 "tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville in Confederate cosplay. "
1396 "It can help you find other people who want to join your militia and go to "
1397 "the border to look for undocumented migrants to terrorize. It can help you "
1398 "find people who share your belief that vaccines are poison and that the "
1401 "Facebook hjelper deg også med å finne personer som har de samme motbydelige "
1402 "eller antisosiale synspunktene som deg. Det gjør det mulig å finne andre "
1403 "mennesker som ønsker å bære bambusfakler gjennom gatene i Charlottesville i "
1404 "Confederate-utstyr. Det kan hjelpe deg med å finne andre mennesker som "
1405 "ønsker å bli med i militsen din og gå til grensen i å lete etter "
1406 "udokumenterte innvandrere å terrorisere. Det kan hjelpe deg å finne folk som "
1407 "deler din tro på at vaksiner er gift og at jorden er flat."
1409 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1411 "There is one way in which targeted advertising uniquely benefits those "
1412 "advocating for socially unacceptable causes: It is invisible. Racism is "
1413 "widely geographically dispersed, and there are few places where racists — "
1414 "and only racists — gather. This is similar to the problem of selling "
1415 "refrigerators in that potential refrigerator purchasers are geographically "
1416 "dispersed and there are few places where you can buy an ad that will be "
1417 "primarily seen by refrigerator customers. But buying a refrigerator is "
1418 "socially acceptable while being a Nazi is not, so you can buy a billboard or "
1419 "advertise in the newspaper sports section for your refrigerator business, "
1420 "and the only potential downside is that your ad will be seen by a lot of "
1421 "people who don’t want refrigerators, resulting in a lot of wasted expense."
1423 "Det er en måte der målrettet markedsføring særskilt har fordeler for de som "
1424 "fremmer sosialt uakseptable saker: Den er usynlig. Rasisme er spredt over "
1425 "et stort geografisk områdæ, og det er få plasser der rasister — og kun "
1426 "rasister — samles. Dette tilsvarer problemet med å selge kjøleskap i at "
1427 "potensielle kjøleskapskjøpere er geografisk spredt og det er få plasser der "
1428 "du kan kjøpe reklameplass som i all hovedsak kun vil bli sett av "
1429 "kjøleskapskunder. Men kjøp av kjøleskap er sosialt akseptabelt, mens det å "
1430 "være nazist er det ikke, så du kan kjøpe en reklametavle eller reklamere i "
1431 "avisens sportsdel for kjøleskapene, og den eneste potensielle ulempen er at "
1432 "reklamen din vil bli sett av masse folk som ikke ønsker å kjøpe kjøleskap "
1433 "som gir store unødvendige kostnader."
1435 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1437 "But even if you wanted to advertise your Nazi movement on a billboard or "
1438 "prime-time TV or the sports section, you would struggle to find anyone "
1439 "willing to sell you the space for your ad partly because they disagree with "
1440 "your views and partly because they fear censure (boycott, reputational "
1441 "damage, etc.) from other people who disagree with your views."
1443 "Men selv om du ønsker å reklamere for din nazi-bevegelse på en reklametavle "
1444 "eller på TV i beste sendetid eller i sportsdelen av avisen, så vil du slite "
1445 "med å finne noen som er villig til å selge deg reklameplass, delvis fordi de "
1446 "er uenige i ditt syn og delvis fordi de frykter negative konsekvenser ("
1447 "boykott, skadet omdømme, etc) fra andre folk som er uenige med deg."
1449 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1451 "Targeted ads solve this problem: On the internet, every ad unit can be "
1452 "different for every person, meaning that you can buy ads that are only shown "
1453 "to people who appear to be Nazis and not to people who hate Nazis. When "
1454 "there’s spillover — when someone who hates racism is shown a racist "
1455 "recruiting ad — there is some fallout; the platform or publication might get "
1456 "an angry public or private denunciation. But the nature of the risk assumed "
1457 "by an online ad buyer is different than the risks to a traditional publisher "
1458 "or billboard owner who might want to run a Nazi ad."
1460 "Målrettet reklame løser dette problemet: På Internettet kan hver person få "
1461 "forskjellige reklameeksponeringer, som betyr at du kan kjøpe reklamer som "
1462 "kun vises til personer som gir inntrykk av å være nazister, og ikke til folk "
1463 "som hater nazister. Når budskapet når feil mottaker, når noen som hater "
1464 "rasisme blir vist reklame for å rekruttere rasister, så kan det bli litt "
1465 "krøll. Plattformen eller publikasjonen kan få rasende fordømmelser enten "
1466 "offentlig eller privat. Men egenskapene til risikoen som en kjøper av "
1467 "reklame på nettet tar på seg, er forskjellig fra risikoen til en "
1468 "tradisjonell utgiver eller reklametavleeier som ønsker å publisere nazi-"
1471 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1473 "Online ads are placed by algorithms that broker between a diverse ecosystem "
1474 "of self-serve ad platforms that anyone can buy an ad through, so the Nazi ad "
1475 "that slips onto your favorite online publication isn’t seen as their moral "
1476 "failing but rather as a failure in some distant, upstream ad supplier. When "
1477 "a publication gets a complaint about an offensive ad that’s appearing in one "
1478 "of its units, it can take some steps to block that ad, but the Nazi might "
1479 "buy a slightly different ad from a different broker serving the same unit. "
1480 "And in any event, internet users increasingly understand that when they see "
1481 "an ad, it’s likely that the advertiser did not choose that publication and "
1482 "that the publication has no idea who its advertisers are."
1484 "Reklamer på nettet plasseres av algoritmer som megler mellom ulike "
1485 "økosystemer av selvbetjente plastformer som enhver kan kjøpe reklame "
1486 "gjennom, hvilket gjør at nazi-reklame som dukker opp i din "
1487 "favorittpublikasjon på nettet ses ikke på publikasjonens moralske fallitt, "
1488 "men derimot som en feil som oppstår i en fjern underleverandør av reklame. "
1489 "Når en publikasjon får klager om en støtende annonse som dukker opp på et av "
1490 "sine enheter, så kan den ta noen grep for å blokkere den reklamen, men "
1491 "nazistene kan kjøpe en litt anderledes reklame fra en annen megler rettet "
1492 "mot den samme enhet. Og uansett forstår Internettbrukerne i stadig større "
1493 "grad at når de ser en reklame, så er det sannsynlig at de som reklamerer "
1494 "ikke valgte publikasjonen, og at publikasjonen ikke aner hvem som reklamerer "
1497 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1499 "These layers of indirection between advertisers and publishers serve as "
1500 "moral buffers: Today’s moral consensus is largely that publishers shouldn’t "
1501 "be held responsible for the ads that appear on their pages because they’re "
1502 "not actively choosing to put those ads there. Because of this, Nazis are "
1503 "able to overcome significant barriers to organizing their movement."
1505 "Disse lagene av omdirigering mellom de som reklamerer og utgiverne fungerer "
1506 "som moralske buffer: Dagens moralske konsensus er i stor grad at utgiverne "
1507 "ikke bør holdes ansvarlig for reklamen som dukker opp på sidene deres fordi "
1508 "de ikke har aktivt valgt å plassere disse reklamene der. Nazistene er, "
1509 "takket være dette, i stand til å overkomme signifikante hindre for å "
1510 "organisere sin bevegelse."
1512 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1514 "Data has a complex relationship with domination. Being able to spy on your "
1515 "customers can alert you to their preferences for your rivals and allow you "
1516 "to head off your rivals at the pass."
1518 "Data har et komplekst forhold til det å dominere. Når du kan spionere på "
1519 "kundene dine så kan du få varsel når de foretrekker dine rivaler og det gir "
1520 "deg mulighet til å gjøre det bedre enn konkurrentene dine i neste omgang."
1522 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1524 "More importantly, if you can dominate the information space while also "
1525 "gathering data, then you make other deceptive tactics stronger because it’s "
1526 "harder to break out of the web of deceit you’re spinning. Domination — that "
1527 "is, ultimately becoming a monopoly — and not the data itself is the "
1528 "supercharger that makes every tactic worth pursuing because monopolistic "
1529 "domination deprives your target of an escape route."
1531 "Viktigere, hvis du kan dominere informasjonsområdet samtidig med innsamling "
1532 "av data, så kan du forsterke andre villedende taktikker fordi det er "
1533 "vanskeligere å bryte ut av nettet av svik som du spinner. Dominering, det "
1534 "vil si til slutt å bli et monopol, og ikke dataene i seg selv, er "
1535 "drivkraften som gjør enhver taktikk verdt å utnytte fordi monopolistisk "
1536 "dominering fratar ditt mål enhver fluktrute."
1538 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1540 "If you’re a Nazi who wants to ensure that your prospects primarily see "
1541 "deceptive, confirming information when they search for more, you can improve "
1542 "your odds by seeding the search terms they use through your initial "
1543 "communications. You don’t need to own the top 10 results for <quote>voter "
1544 "suppression</quote> if you can convince your marks to confine their search "
1545 "terms to <quote>voter fraud,</quote> which throws up a very different set of "
1548 "Hvis du er en nazist som vil sikre at dine potensielle kun ser villedende og "
1549 "bekreftende informasjon når de søker etter mer, så kan du forbedre oddsene "
1550 "dine ved å gi dem søkeord som de vil bruke i din initielle kommunikasjon. Du "
1551 "trenger ikke eie de 10 første resultatene for <quote>undertrykking av "
1552 "stemmer</quote> hvis du kan overbevise dine mål om å begrense sine søke ord "
1553 "til <quote>stemmejuks</quote>, hvilket gir en helt annen gruppe "
1556 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1558 "Surveillance capitalists are like stage mentalists who claim that their "
1559 "extraordinary insights into human behavior let them guess the word that you "
1560 "wrote down and folded up in your pocket but who really use shills, hidden "
1561 "cameras, sleight of hand, and brute-force memorization to amaze you."
1563 "Overvåkningskapitalister er som scenementalister som påstår at deres "
1564 "ekstraordinære forståelse av menneskelig oppførsel lar dem gjette hvilket "
1565 "ord du skrev ned og brettet sammen i lommen din, men som i virkeligheten "
1566 "bruker fordekte hjelpere, skulte kamera, fingerferdigheter og direkte "
1567 "memorering for å gjøre deg forbløffet."
1569 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1571 "Or perhaps they’re more like pick-up artists, the misogynistic cult that "
1572 "promises to help awkward men have sex with women by teaching them "
1573 "<quote>neurolinguistic programming</quote> phrases, body language "
1574 "techniques, and psychological manipulation tactics like <quote>negging</"
1575 "quote> — offering unsolicited negative feedback to women to lower their self-"
1576 "esteem and prick their interest."
1579 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1581 "Some pick-up artists eventually manage to convince women to go home with "
1582 "them, but it’s not because these men have figured out how to bypass women’s "
1583 "critical faculties. Rather, pick-up artists’ <quote>success</quote> stories "
1584 "are a mix of women who were incapable of giving consent, women who were "
1585 "coerced, women who were intoxicated, self-destructive women, and a few women "
1586 "who were sober and in command of their faculties but who didn’t realize "
1587 "straightaway that they were with terrible men but rectified the error as "
1588 "soon as they could."
1590 "Noen sjekke-kunstnere klarer til slutt å overbeviser kvinner om å bli med "
1591 "dem hjem, men det er ikke fordi disse mennene har klart å finne ut hvordan "
1592 "overstyre kvinners kritiske tankeevner. I stedet er sjekke-kunstnernes "
1593 "<quote>suksess</quote>-historier en blanding av kvinner som var ute av stand "
1594 "til å samtykke, kvinner som ble presset, kvinner som var beruset, selv-"
1595 "destruktive kvinner, og noen få kvinner som var edru og hadde kontroll over "
1596 "seg selv, men som ikke forsto med en gang at de var sammen med forferdelige "
1597 "menn og korrigerte feilen så raskt de kunne."
1599 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1601 "Pick-up artists <emphasis>believe</emphasis> they have figured out a secret "
1602 "back door that bypasses women’s critical faculties, but they haven’t. Many "
1603 "of the tactics they deploy, like negging, became the butt of jokes (just "
1604 "like people joke about bad ad targeting), and there’s a good chance that "
1605 "anyone they try these tactics on will immediately recognize them and dismiss "
1606 "the men who use them as irredeemable losers."
1608 "Sjekke-kunstnere <emphasis>tror</emphasis> de har oppdaget en hemmelig "
1609 "bakdør som overstyrer kvinners kritiske evner, men det har de ikke. Mange av "
1610 "taktikkene de benytter seg av, som negging, er blitt poenget i vitser (på "
1611 "samme måte som folk vitser om dårlig annonsemålretting), og det er en stor "
1612 "sjanse for at enhver de forsøker disse teknikkene på, umiddelbart vil "
1613 "gjenkjenne teknikken og avvise mennene som bruker dem som uhelbredelige "
1616 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1618 "Pick-up artists are proof that people can believe they have developed a "
1619 "system of mind control <emphasis>even when it doesn’t work</emphasis>. Pick-"
1620 "up artists simply exploit the fact that one-in-a-million chances can come "
1621 "through for you if you make a million attempts, and then they assume that "
1622 "the other 999,999 times, they simply performed the technique incorrectly and "
1623 "commit themselves to doing better next time. There’s only one group of "
1624 "people who find pick-up artist lore reliably convincing: other would-be pick-"
1625 "up artists whose anxiety and insecurity make them vulnerable to scammers and "
1626 "delusional men who convince them that if they pay for tutelage and follow "
1627 "instructions, then they will someday succeed. Pick-up artists assume they "
1628 "fail to entice women because they are bad at being pick-up artists, not "
1629 "because pick-up artistry is bullshit. Pick-up artists are bad at selling "
1630 "themselves to women, but they’re much better at selling themselves to men "
1631 "who pay to learn the secrets of pick-up artistry."
1634 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1636 "Department store pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have lamented, "
1637 "<quote>Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I "
1638 "don’t know which half.</quote> The fact that Wanamaker thought that only "
1639 "half of his advertising spending was wasted is a tribute to the "
1640 "persuasiveness of advertising executives, who are <emphasis>much</emphasis> "
1641 "better at convincing potential clients to buy their services than they are "
1642 "at convincing the general public to buy their clients’ wares."
1644 "Dagligvarehandelpioneren John Wanamaker sies å ha klaget over at "
1645 "<quote>Halvparten av pengene jeg bruker på markedsføring er bortkastet. "
1646 "Problemet er at jeg vet ikke hvilken halvpart.</quote> Det faktum at "
1647 "Wanamaker tenkte at kun halvparten av hans markedsføringsutgifter var "
1648 "bortkastet er hyllest til hvor overbevisende lederne i markedsføringbransjen "
1649 "er, som er <emphasis>mye</emphasis> flinkere til å overtale potensielle "
1650 "klienter om å kjøpe tjenester fra dem enn de er til å overbevise allmenheten "
1651 "om å kjøpe varene fra kundene deres."
1653 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
1654 msgid "What is Facebook?"
1655 msgstr "Hva er Facebook?"
1657 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1659 "Facebook is heralded as the origin of all of our modern plagues, and it’s "
1660 "not hard to see why. Some tech companies want to lock their users in but "
1661 "make their money by monopolizing access to the market for apps for their "
1662 "devices and gouging them on prices rather than by spying on them (like "
1663 "Apple). Some companies don’t care about locking in users because they’ve "
1664 "figured out how to spy on them no matter where they are and what they’re "
1665 "doing and can turn that surveillance into money (Google). Facebook alone "
1666 "among the Western tech giants has built a business based on locking in its "
1667 "users <emphasis>and</emphasis> spying on them all the time."
1669 "Facebook meldes å være kilden til all moderne pest, og det er ikke vanskelig "
1670 "å forstå hvorfor. Noen teknologiselskaper ønsker å låse kundene sine inne "
1671 "mens de tjener penger på å kontrollere tilgangen til markedet for "
1672 "programvare på enhetene deres, og melker dem på pris i stedet for å spionere "
1673 "på dem (som Apple). Noen selskaper bryr seg ikke om innlåsing av brukerne "
1674 "fordi de har funnet ut hvordan de kan spionere på dem uansett hvor de er og "
1675 "hva de gjør, og klart å omforme denne overvåkningen til penger (Google). "
1676 "Facebook er alene blant de vestlige teknologigigantene i å ha bygget sin "
1677 "forretning basert på å låse inne brukerne sine <emphasis>og samtidig</"
1678 "emphasis> spionere på dem."
1680 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1682 "Facebook’s surveillance regime is really without parallel in the Western "
1683 "world. Though Facebook tries to prevent itself from being visible on the "
1684 "public web, hiding most of what goes on there from people unless they’re "
1685 "logged into Facebook, the company has nevertheless booby-trapped the entire "
1686 "web with surveillance tools in the form of Facebook <quote>Like</quote> "
1687 "buttons that web publishers include on their sites to boost their Facebook "
1688 "profiles. Facebook also makes various libraries and other useful code "
1689 "snippets available to web publishers that act as surveillance tendrils on "
1690 "the sites where they’re used, funneling information about visitors to the "
1691 "site — newspapers, dating sites, message boards — to Facebook."
1693 "Overvåkningsregimet til Facebook er i grunnen helt uten like i den vestlige "
1694 "verden. Selv om Facebook forsøker å unngå at de er synlige på den offentlige "
1695 "verdensveven, ved å skjule det meste av det som foregår der fra folk med "
1696 "mindre de er logget inn på Facebook, så har selskapet likevel minelagt de "
1697 "fleste nettsider med overvåkningsverktøy i form av Facebook "
1698 "<quote>Lik</quote>-knapper som de som publiserer nettsider tar med på sine "
1699 "nettsteder for å fremme sine Facebook-profiler. Facebook gjør også ulike "
1700 "biblioteker og andre nyttige kodesnutter tilgjengelig for de som publiserer "
1701 "nettsider, som fungerer som overvåkningstentakler på nettsteder der de blir "
1702 "brukt, og sluser informasjon om besøkende på nettstedene — aviser, "
1703 "sjekkesteder, oppslagstavler — til Facebook."
1705 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><blockquote><para>
1707 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
1708 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>."
1710 "Det er ikke på grunn av at den er teknologi at Storteknologien kan utøve "
1711 "overvåkning, men på grunn av at den er <emphasis>stor</emphasis>."
1713 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1715 "Facebook offers similar tools to app developers, so the apps — games, fart "
1716 "machines, business review services, apps for keeping abreast of your kid’s "
1717 "schooling — you use will send information about your activities to Facebook "
1718 "even if you don’t have a Facebook account and even if you don’t download or "
1719 "use Facebook apps. On top of all that, Facebook buys data from third-party "
1720 "brokers on shopping habits, physical location, use of <quote>loyalty</quote> "
1721 "programs, financial transactions, etc., and cross-references that with the "
1722 "dossiers it develops on activity on Facebook and with apps and the public "
1725 "Facebook tilbyr lignende verktøy til app-utviklere, slik at app-ene du "
1726 "bruker — spill, prompemaskiner, selskapsvurderingstjenester, app-er for å "
1727 "holde styr på skolehverdagen til ungene dine — vil sende informasjon om det "
1728 "du driver med til Facebook selv om du ikke har Facebook-konto og selv om du "
1729 "ikke laster ned eller bruker Facebook-app-er. Ikke nok med det, Facebook "
1730 "kjøper data fra tredjeparts datameglere om handlevaner, fysisk plassering, "
1731 "bruk av <quote>loyalitetsprogrammer</quote>, finansielle transaksjoner, etc, "
1732 "og kobler dette med personprofiler som utvikles basert på aktiviteten på "
1733 "Facebook, med app-er og den offentlige verdensveven."
1735 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1737 "Though it’s easy to integrate the web with Facebook — linking to news "
1738 "stories and such — Facebook products are generally not available to be "
1739 "integrated back into the web itself. You can embed a tweet in a Facebook "
1740 "post, but if you embed a Facebook post in a tweet, you just get a link back "
1741 "to Facebook and must log in before you can see it. Facebook has used extreme "
1742 "technological and legal countermeasures to prevent rivals from allowing "
1743 "their users to embed Facebook snippets in competing services or to create "
1744 "alternative interfaces to Facebook that merge your Facebook inbox with those "
1745 "of other services that you use."
1748 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1750 "And Facebook is incredibly popular, with 2.3 billion claimed users (though "
1751 "many believe this figure to be inflated). Facebook has been used to organize "
1752 "genocidal pogroms, racist riots, anti-vaccination movements, flat Earth "
1753 "cults, and the political lives of some of the world’s ugliest, most brutal "
1754 "autocrats. There are some really alarming things going on in the world, and "
1755 "Facebook is implicated in many of them, so it’s easy to conclude that these "
1756 "bad things are the result of Facebook’s mind-control system, which it rents "
1757 "out to anyone with a few bucks to spend."
1760 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1762 "To understand what role Facebook plays in the formulation and mobilization "
1763 "of antisocial movements, we need to understand the dual nature of Facebook."
1766 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1768 "Because it has a lot of users and a lot of data about those users, Facebook "
1769 "is a very efficient tool for locating people with hard-to-find traits, the "
1770 "kinds of traits that are widely diffused in the population such that "
1771 "advertisers have historically struggled to find a cost-effective way to "
1772 "reach them. Think back to refrigerators: Most of us only replace our major "
1773 "appliances a few times in our entire lives. If you’re a refrigerator "
1774 "manufacturer or retailer, you have these brief windows in the life of a "
1775 "consumer during which they are pondering a purchase, and you have to somehow "
1776 "reach them. Anyone who’s ever registered a title change after buying a house "
1777 "can attest that appliance manufacturers are incredibly desperate to reach "
1778 "anyone who has even the slenderest chance of being in the market for a new "
1782 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1784 "Facebook makes finding people shopping for refrigerators a <emphasis>lot</"
1785 "emphasis> easier. It can target ads to people who’ve registered a new home "
1786 "purchase, to people who’ve searched for refrigerator buying advice, to "
1787 "people who have complained about their fridge dying, or any combination "
1788 "thereof. It can even target people who’ve recently bought <emphasis>other</"
1789 "emphasis> kitchen appliances on the theory that someone who’s just replaced "
1790 "their stove and dishwasher might be in a fridge-buying kind of mood. The "
1791 "vast majority of people who are reached by these ads will not be in the "
1792 "market for a new fridge, but — crucially — the percentage of people who "
1793 "<emphasis>are</emphasis> looking for fridges that these ads reach is "
1794 "<emphasis>much</emphasis> larger than it is than for any group that might be "
1795 "subjected to traditional, offline targeted refrigerator marketing."
1798 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1800 "Facebook also makes it a lot easier to find people who have the same rare "
1801 "disease as you, which might have been impossible in earlier eras — the "
1802 "closest fellow sufferer might otherwise be hundreds of miles away. It makes "
1803 "it easier to find people who went to the same high school as you even though "
1804 "decades have passed and your former classmates have all been scattered to "
1805 "the four corners of the Earth."
1808 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1810 "Facebook also makes it much easier to find people who hold the same rare "
1811 "political beliefs as you. If you’ve always harbored a secret affinity for "
1812 "socialism but never dared utter this aloud lest you be demonized by your "
1813 "neighbors, Facebook can help you discover other people who feel the same way "
1814 "(and it might just demonstrate to you that your affinity is more widespread "
1815 "than you ever suspected). It can make it easier to find people who share "
1816 "your sexual identity. And again, it can help you to understand that what "
1817 "you thought was a shameful secret that affected only you was really a widely "
1818 "shared trait, giving you both comfort and the courage to come out to the "
1819 "people in your life."
1822 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1824 "All of this presents a dilemma for Facebook: Targeting makes the company’s "
1825 "ads more effective than traditional ads, but it also lets advertisers see "
1826 "just how effective their ads are. While advertisers are pleased to learn "
1827 "that Facebook ads are more effective than ads on systems with less "
1828 "sophisticated targeting, advertisers can also see that in nearly every case, "
1829 "the people who see their ads ignore them. Or, at best, the ads work on a "
1830 "subconscious level, creating nebulous unmeasurables like <quote>brand "
1831 "recognition.</quote> This means that the price per ad is very low in nearly "
1835 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1837 "To make things worse, many Facebook groups spark precious little discussion. "
1838 "Your little-league soccer team, the people with the same rare disease as "
1839 "you, and the people you share a political affinity with may exchange the odd "
1840 "flurry of messages at critical junctures, but on a daily basis, there’s not "
1841 "much to say to your old high school chums or other hockey-card collectors."
1844 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1846 "With nothing but <quote>organic</quote> discussion, Facebook would not "
1847 "generate enough traffic to sell enough ads to make the money it needs to "
1848 "continually expand by buying up its competitors while returning handsome "
1849 "sums to its investors."
1852 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1854 "So Facebook has to gin up traffic by sidetracking its own forums: Every time "
1855 "Facebook’s algorithm injects controversial materials — inflammatory "
1856 "political articles, conspiracy theories, outrage stories — into a group, it "
1857 "can hijack that group’s nominal purpose with its desultory discussions and "
1858 "supercharge those discussions by turning them into bitter, unproductive "
1859 "arguments that drag on and on. Facebook is optimized for engagement, not "
1860 "happiness, and it turns out that automated systems are pretty good at "
1861 "figuring out things that people will get angry about."
1864 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1866 "Facebook <emphasis>can</emphasis> modify our behavior but only in a couple "
1867 "of trivial ways. First, it can lock in all your friends and family members "
1868 "so that you check and check and check with Facebook to find out what they "
1869 "are up to; and second, it can make you angry and anxious. It can force you "
1870 "to choose between being interrupted constantly by updates — a process that "
1871 "breaks your concentration and makes it hard to be introspective — and "
1872 "staying in touch with your friends. This is a very limited form of mind "
1873 "control, and it can only really make us miserable, angry, and anxious."
1876 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1878 "This is why Facebook’s targeting systems — both the ones it shows to "
1879 "advertisers and the ones that let users find people who share their "
1880 "interests — are so next-gen and smooth and easy to use as well as why its "
1881 "message boards have a toolset that seems like it hasn’t changed since the "
1882 "mid-2000s. If Facebook delivered an equally flexible, sophisticated message-"
1883 "reading system to its users, those users could defend themselves against "
1884 "being nonconsensually eyeball-fucked with Donald Trump headlines."
1887 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1889 "The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads it gets to show you. The "
1890 "solution to Facebook’s ads only working one in a thousand times is for the "
1891 "company to try to increase how much time you spend on Facebook by a factor "
1892 "of a thousand. Rather than thinking of Facebook as a company that has "
1893 "figured out how to show you exactly the right ad in exactly the right way to "
1894 "get you to do what its advertisers want, think of it as a company that has "
1895 "figured out how to make you slog through an endless torrent of arguments "
1896 "even though they make you miserable, spending so much time on the site that "
1897 "it eventually shows you at least one ad that you respond to."
1900 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
1901 msgid "Monopoly and the right to the future tense"
1904 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1906 "Zuboff and her cohort are particularly alarmed at the extent to which "
1907 "surveillance allows corporations to influence our decisions, taking away "
1908 "something she poetically calls <quote>the right to the future tense</quote> "
1909 "— that is, the right to decide for yourself what you will do in the future."
1912 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1914 "It’s true that advertising can tip the scales one way or another: When "
1915 "you’re thinking of buying a fridge, a timely fridge ad might end the search "
1916 "on the spot. But Zuboff puts enormous and undue weight on the persuasive "
1917 "power of surveillance-based influence techniques. Most of these don’t work "
1918 "very well, and the ones that do won’t work for very long. The makers of "
1919 "these influence tools are confident they will someday refine them into "
1920 "systems of total control, but they are hardly unbiased observers, and the "
1921 "risks from their dreams coming true are very speculative."
1924 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1926 "By contrast, Zuboff is rather sanguine about 40 years of lax antitrust "
1927 "practice that has allowed a handful of companies to dominate the internet, "
1928 "ushering in an information age with, <ulink url=\"https://twitter.com/"
1929 "tveastman/status/1069674780826071040\">as one person on Twitter noted</"
1930 "ulink>, five giant websites each filled with screenshots of the other four."
1933 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1935 "However, if we are to be alarmed that we might lose the right to choose for "
1936 "ourselves what our future will hold, then monopoly’s nonspeculative, "
1937 "concrete, here-and-now harms should be front and center in our debate over "
1941 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1943 "Start with <quote>digital rights management.</quote> In 1998, Bill Clinton "
1944 "signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. It’s a complex "
1945 "piece of legislation with many controversial clauses but none more so than "
1946 "Section 1201, the <quote>anti-circumvention</quote> rule."
1949 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1951 "This is a blanket ban on tampering with systems that restrict access to "
1952 "copyrighted works. The ban is so thoroughgoing that it prohibits removing a "
1953 "copyright lock even when no copyright infringement takes place. This is by "
1954 "design: The activities that the DMCA’s Section 1201 sets out to ban are not "
1955 "copyright infringements; rather, they are legal activities that frustrate "
1956 "manufacturers’ commercial plans."
1959 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1961 "For example, Section 1201’s first major application was on DVD players as a "
1962 "means of enforcing the region coding built into those devices. DVD-CCA, the "
1963 "body that standardized DVDs and DVD players, divided the world into six "
1964 "regions and specified that DVD players must check each disc to determine "
1965 "which regions it was authorized to be played in. DVD players would have "
1966 "their own corresponding region (a DVD player bought in the U.S. would be "
1967 "region 1 while one bought in India would be region 5). If the player and the "
1968 "disc’s region matched, the player would play the disc; otherwise, it would "
1972 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1974 "However, watching a lawfully produced disc in a country other than the one "
1975 "where you purchased it is not copyright infringement — it’s the opposite. "
1976 "Copyright law imposes this duty on customers for a movie: You must go into a "
1977 "store, find a licensed disc, and pay the asking price. Do that — and "
1978 "<emphasis>nothing else</emphasis> — and you and copyright are square with "
1982 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1984 "The fact that a movie studio wants to charge Indians less than Americans or "
1985 "release in Australia later than it releases in the U.K. has no bearing on "
1986 "copyright law. Once you lawfully acquire a DVD, it is no copyright "
1987 "infringement to watch it no matter where you happen to be."
1990 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
1992 "So DVD and DVD player manufacturers would not be able to use accusations of "
1993 "abetting copyright infringement to punish manufacturers who made "
1994 "noncompliant players that would play discs from any region or repair shops "
1995 "that modified players to let you watch out-of-region discs or software "
1996 "programmers who created programs to let you do this."
1999 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2001 "That’s where Section 1201 of the DMCA comes in: By banning tampering with an "
2002 "<quote>access control,</quote> the rule gave manufacturers and rights "
2003 "holders standing to sue competitors who released superior products with "
2004 "lawful features that the market demanded (in this case, region-free players)."
2007 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2009 "This is an odious scam against consumers, but as time went by, Section 1201 "
2010 "grew to encompass a rapidly expanding constellation of devices and services "
2011 "as canny manufacturers have realized certain things:"
2014 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
2016 "Any device with software in it contains a <quote>copyrighted work</quote> — "
2017 "i.e., the software."
2020 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
2022 "A device can be designed so that reconfiguring the software requires "
2023 "bypassing an <quote>access control for copyrighted works,</quote> which is a "
2024 "potential felony under Section 1201."
2027 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
2029 "Thus, companies can control their customers’ behavior after they take home "
2030 "their purchases by designing products so that all unpermitted uses require "
2031 "modifications that fall afoul of Section 1201."
2034 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2036 "Section 1201 then becomes a means for manufacturers of all descriptions to "
2037 "force their customers to arrange their affairs to benefit the manufacturers’ "
2038 "shareholders instead of themselves."
2041 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2043 "This manifests in many ways: from a new generation of inkjet printers that "
2044 "use countermeasures to prevent third-party ink that cannot be bypassed "
2045 "without legal risks to similar systems in tractors that prevent third-party "
2046 "technicians from swapping in the manufacturer’s own parts that are not "
2047 "recognized by the tractor’s control system until it is supplied with a "
2048 "manufacturer’s unlock code."
2051 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2053 "Closer to home, Apple’s iPhones use these measures to prevent both third-"
2054 "party service and third-party software installation. This allows Apple to "
2055 "decide when an iPhone is beyond repair and must be shredded and landfilled "
2056 "as opposed to the iPhone’s purchaser. (Apple is notorious for its "
2057 "environmentally catastrophic policy of destroying old electronics rather "
2058 "than permitting them to be cannibalized for parts.) This is a very useful "
2059 "power to wield, especially in light of CEO Tim Cook’s January 2019 warning "
2060 "to investors that the company’s profits are endangered by customers choosing "
2061 "to hold onto their phones for longer rather than replacing them."
2064 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2066 "Apple’s use of copyright locks also allows it to establish a monopoly over "
2067 "how its customers acquire software for their mobile devices. The App Store’s "
2068 "commercial terms guarantee Apple a share of all revenues generated by the "
2069 "apps sold there, meaning that Apple gets paid when you buy an app from its "
2070 "store and then continues to get paid every time you buy something using that "
2071 "app. This comes out of the bottom line of software developers, who must "
2072 "either charge more or accept lower profits for their products."
2075 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2077 "Crucially, Apple’s use of copyright locks gives it the power to make "
2078 "editorial decisions about which apps you may and may not install on your own "
2079 "device. Apple has used this power to <ulink url=\"https://www.telegraph.co."
2080 "uk/technology/apple/5982243/Apple-bans-dictionary-from-App-Store-over-swear-"
2081 "words.html\">reject dictionaries</ulink> for containing obscene words; to "
2082 "<ulink url=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-"
2083 "app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again\">limit political speech</ulink>, "
2084 "especially from apps that make sensitive political commentary such as an app "
2085 "that notifies you every time a U.S. drone kills someone somewhere in the "
2086 "world; and to <ulink url=\"https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-19-"
2087 "palestinian-indie-game-must-not-be-called-a-game-apple-says\">object to a "
2088 "game</ulink> that commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict."
2091 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2093 "Apple often justifies monopoly power over software installation in the name "
2094 "of security, arguing that its vetting of apps for its store means that it "
2095 "can guard its users against apps that contain surveillance code. But this "
2096 "cuts both ways. In China, the government <ulink url=\"https://www.ft.com/"
2097 "content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc\">ordered Apple to prohibit the "
2098 "sale of privacy tools</ulink> like VPNs with the exception of VPNs that had "
2099 "deliberately introduced flaws designed to let the Chinese state eavesdrop on "
2100 "users. Because Apple uses technological countermeasures — with legal "
2101 "backstops — to block customers from installing unauthorized apps, Chinese "
2102 "iPhone owners cannot readily (or legally) acquire VPNs that would protect "
2103 "them from Chinese state snooping."
2106 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2108 "Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote> "
2109 "Theoreticians of capitalism claim that its virtue is that it <ulink url="
2110 "\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_signal\">aggregates information in the "
2111 "form of consumers’ decisions</ulink>, producing efficient markets. "
2112 "Surveillance capitalism’s supposed power to rob its victims of their free "
2113 "will through computationally supercharged influence campaigns means that our "
2114 "markets no longer aggregate customers’ decisions because we customers no "
2115 "longer decide — we are given orders by surveillance capitalism’s mind-"
2119 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2121 "If our concern is that markets cease to function when consumers can no "
2122 "longer make choices, then copyright locks should concern us at "
2123 "<emphasis>least</emphasis> as much as influence campaigns. An influence "
2124 "campaign might nudge you to buy a certain brand of phone; but the copyright "
2125 "locks on that phone absolutely determine where you get it serviced, which "
2126 "apps can run on it, and when you have to throw it away rather than fixing it."
2129 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2130 msgid "Search order and the right to the future tense"
2133 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2135 "Markets are posed as a kind of magic: By discovering otherwise hidden "
2136 "information conveyed by the free choices of consumers, those consumers’ "
2137 "local knowledge is integrated into a self-correcting system that makes "
2138 "efficient allocations—more efficient than any computer could calculate. But "
2139 "monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one app "
2140 "store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the range of "
2141 "choices. As Boss Tweed once said, <quote>I don’t care who does the electing, "
2142 "so long as I get to do the nominating.</quote> A monopolized market is an "
2143 "election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist."
2146 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2148 "This ballot rigging is made more pernicious by the existence of monopolies "
2149 "over search order. Google’s search market share is about 90%. When Google’s "
2150 "ranking algorithm puts a result for a popular search term in its top 10, "
2151 "that helps determine the behavior of millions of people. If Google’s answer "
2152 "to <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</quote> is a page that rebuts anti-vax "
2153 "conspiracy theories, then a sizable portion of the public will learn that "
2154 "vaccines are safe. If, on the other hand, Google sends those people to a "
2155 "site affirming the anti-vax conspiracies, a sizable portion of those "
2156 "millions will come away convinced that vaccines are dangerous."
2159 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2161 "Google’s algorithm is often tricked into serving disinformation as a "
2162 "prominent search result. But in these cases, Google isn’t persuading people "
2163 "to change their minds; it’s just presenting something untrue as fact when "
2164 "the user has no cause to doubt it."
2167 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2169 "This is true whether the search is for <quote>Are vaccines dangerous?</"
2170 "quote> or <quote>best restaurants near me.</quote> Most users will never "
2171 "look past the first page of search results, and when the overwhelming "
2172 "majority of people all use the same search engine, the ranking algorithm "
2173 "deployed by that search engine will determine myriad outcomes (whether to "
2174 "adopt a child, whether to have cancer surgery, where to eat dinner, where to "
2175 "move, where to apply for a job) to a degree that vastly outstrips any "
2176 "behavioral outcomes dictated by algorithmic persuasion techniques."
2179 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2181 "Many of the questions we ask search engines have no empirically correct "
2182 "answers: <quote>Where should I eat dinner?</quote> is not an objective "
2183 "question. Even questions that do have correct answers (<quote>Are vaccines "
2184 "dangerous?</quote>) don’t have one empirically superior source for that "
2185 "answer. Many pages affirm the safety of vaccines, so which one goes first? "
2186 "Under conditions of competition, consumers can choose from many search "
2187 "engines and stick with the one whose algorithmic judgment suits them best, "
2188 "but under conditions of monopoly, we all get our answers from the same place."
2191 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2193 "Google’s search dominance isn’t a matter of pure merit: The company has "
2194 "leveraged many tactics that would have been prohibited under classical, pre-"
2195 "Ronald-Reagan antitrust enforcement standards to attain its dominance. After "
2196 "all, this is a company that has developed two major products: a really good "
2197 "search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. Every other major success "
2198 "it’s had — Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. — has come through an "
2199 "acquisition of a nascent competitor. Many of the company’s key divisions, "
2200 "such as the advertising technology of DoubleClick, violate the historical "
2201 "antitrust principle of structural separation, which forbade firms from "
2202 "owning subsidiaries that competed with their customers. Railroads, for "
2203 "example, were barred from owning freight companies that competed with the "
2204 "shippers whose freight they carried."
2207 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2209 "If we’re worried about giant companies subverting markets by stripping "
2210 "consumers of their ability to make free choices, then vigorous antitrust "
2211 "enforcement seems like an excellent remedy. If we’d denied Google the right "
2212 "to effect its many mergers, we would also have probably denied it its total "
2213 "search dominance. Without that dominance, the pet theories, biases, errors "
2214 "(and good judgment, too) of Google search engineers and product managers "
2215 "would not have such an outsized effect on consumer choice."
2218 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2220 "This goes for many other companies. Amazon, a classic surveillance "
2221 "capitalist, is obviously the dominant tool for searching Amazon — though "
2222 "many people find their way to Amazon through Google searches and Facebook "
2223 "posts — and obviously, Amazon controls Amazon search. That means that "
2224 "Amazon’s own self-serving editorial choices—like promoting its own house "
2225 "brands over rival goods from its sellers as well as its own pet theories, "
2226 "biases, and errors— determine much of what we buy on Amazon. And since "
2227 "Amazon is the dominant e-commerce retailer outside of China and since it "
2228 "attained that dominance by buying up both large rivals and nascent "
2229 "competitors in defiance of historical antitrust rules, we can blame the "
2230 "monopoly for stripping consumers of their right to the future tense and the "
2231 "ability to shape markets by making informed choices."
2234 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2236 "Not every monopolist is a surveillance capitalist, but that doesn’t mean "
2237 "they’re not able to shape consumer choices in wide-ranging ways. Zuboff "
2238 "lauds Apple for its App Store and iTunes Store, insisting that adding price "
2239 "tags to the features on its platforms has been the secret to resisting "
2240 "surveillance and thus creating markets. But Apple is the only retailer "
2241 "allowed to sell on its platforms, and it’s the second-largest mobile device "
2242 "vendor in the world. The independent software vendors that sell through "
2243 "Apple’s marketplace accuse the company of the same surveillance sins as "
2244 "Amazon and other big retailers: spying on its customers to find lucrative "
2245 "new products to launch, effectively using independent software vendors as "
2246 "free-market researchers, then forcing them out of any markets they discover."
2249 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2251 "Because of its use of copyright locks, Apple’s mobile customers are not "
2252 "legally allowed to switch to a rival retailer for its apps if they want to "
2253 "do so on an iPhone. Apple, obviously, is the only entity that gets to decide "
2254 "how it ranks the results of search queries in its stores. These decisions "
2255 "ensure that some apps are often installed (because they appear on page one) "
2256 "and others are never installed (because they appear on page one million). "
2257 "Apple’s search-ranking design decisions have a vastly more significant "
2258 "effect on consumer behaviors than influence campaigns delivered by "
2259 "surveillance capitalism’s ad-serving bots."
2262 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2263 msgid "Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs"
2264 msgstr "Monopolister har råd til sovepiller for vakthundene"
2266 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2268 "Only the most extreme market ideologues think that markets can self-regulate "
2269 "without state oversight. Markets need watchdogs — regulators, lawmakers, and "
2270 "other elements of democratic control — to keep them honest. When these "
2271 "watchdogs sleep on the job, then markets cease to aggregate consumer choices "
2272 "because those choices are constrained by illegitimate and deceptive "
2273 "activities that companies are able to get away with because no one is "
2274 "holding them to account."
2277 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2279 "But this kind of regulatory capture doesn’t come cheap. In competitive "
2280 "sectors, where rivals are constantly eroding one another’s margins, "
2281 "individual firms lack the surplus capital to effectively lobby for laws and "
2282 "regulations that serve their ends."
2285 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2287 "Many of the harms of surveillance capitalism are the result of weak or "
2288 "nonexistent regulation. Those regulatory vacuums spring from the power of "
2289 "monopolists to resist stronger regulation and to tailor what regulation "
2290 "exists to permit their existing businesses."
2292 "Mye av skadene fra overvåkningskapitalisem er resultat av svak eller "
2293 "manglende regulering. Dette fravær av regulering kommer av makten "
2294 "monopolistene har til å hindre sterkere regulering og å tilpasse den "
2295 "reguleringen som finnes slik at det gjør deres eksisterende "
2296 "forretningsmodell mulig."
2298 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2300 "Here’s an example: When firms over-collect and over-retain our data, they "
2301 "are at increased risk of suffering a breach — you can’t leak data you never "
2302 "collected, and once you delete all copies of that data, you can no longer "
2303 "leak it. For more than a decade, we’ve lived through an endless parade of "
2304 "ever-worsening data breaches, each one uniquely horrible in the scale of "
2305 "data breached and the sensitivity of that data."
2308 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2310 "But still, firms continue to over-collect and over-retain our data for three "
2314 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2316 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">1. They are locked in the aforementioned limbic "
2317 "arms race with our capacity to shore up our attentional defense systems to "
2318 "resist their new persuasion techniques.</emphasis> They’re also locked in an "
2319 "arms race with their competitors to find new ways to target people for sales "
2320 "pitches. As soon as they discover a soft spot in our attentional defenses (a "
2321 "counterintuitive, unobvious way to target potential refrigerator buyers), "
2322 "the public begins to wise up to the tactic, and their competitors leap on "
2323 "it, hastening the day in which all potential refrigerator buyers have been "
2324 "inured to the pitch."
2327 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2329 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">2. They believe the surveillance capitalism story."
2330 "</emphasis> Data is cheap to aggregate and store, and both proponents and "
2331 "opponents of surveillance capitalism have assured managers and product "
2332 "designers that if you collect enough data, you will be able to perform "
2333 "sorcerous acts of mind control, thus supercharging your sales. Even if you "
2334 "never figure out how to profit from the data, someone else will eventually "
2335 "offer to buy it from you to give it a try. This is the hallmark of all "
2336 "economic bubbles: acquiring an asset on the assumption that someone else "
2337 "will buy it from you for more than you paid for it, often to sell to someone "
2338 "else at an even greater price."
2341 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2343 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">3. The penalties for leaking data are negligible.</"
2344 "emphasis> Most countries limit these penalties to actual damages, meaning "
2345 "that consumers who’ve had their data breached have to show actual monetary "
2346 "harms to get a reward. In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it had lost credit-"
2347 "card data for 53 million of its customers, but it settled the matter by "
2348 "paying those customers about $0.34 each — and a third of that $0.34 wasn’t "
2349 "even paid in cash. It took the form of a credit to procure a largely "
2350 "ineffectual credit-monitoring service."
2353 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2355 "But the harms from breaches are much more extensive than these actual-"
2356 "damages rules capture. Identity thieves and fraudsters are wily and "
2357 "endlessly inventive. All the vast breaches of our century are being "
2358 "continuously recombined, the data sets merged and mined for new ways to "
2359 "victimize the people whose data was present in them. Any reasonable, "
2360 "evidence-based theory of deterrence and compensation for breaches would not "
2361 "confine damages to actual damages but rather would allow users to claim "
2362 "these future harms."
2365 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2367 "However, even the most ambitious privacy rules, such as the EU General Data "
2368 "Protection Regulation, fall far short of capturing the negative "
2369 "externalities of the platforms’ negligent over-collection and over-"
2370 "retention, and what penalties they do provide are not aggressively pursued "
2374 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2376 "This tolerance of — or indifference to — data over-collection and over-"
2377 "retention can be ascribed in part to the sheer lobbying muscle of the "
2378 "platforms. They are so profitable that they can handily afford to divert "
2379 "gigantic sums to fight any real change — that is, change that would force "
2380 "them to internalize the costs of their surveillance activities."
2383 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2385 "And then there’s state surveillance, which the surveillance capitalism story "
2386 "dismisses as a relic of another era when the big worry was being jailed for "
2387 "your dissident speech, not having your free will stripped away with machine "
2391 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2393 "But state surveillance and private surveillance are intimately related. As "
2394 "we saw when Apple was conscripted by the Chinese government as a vital "
2395 "collaborator in state surveillance, the only really affordable and tractable "
2396 "way to conduct mass surveillance on the scale practiced by modern states — "
2397 "both <quote>free</quote> and autocratic states — is to suborn commercial "
2400 "Men statlig og privat overvåkning er nært relatert. Som vi så ble Apple "
2401 "innrullert av de kinesiske myndighetene som en vital samarbeidspartner i "
2402 "statlig overvåkning, og den eneste kostnadseffektive og gjennomførbare måten "
2403 "å gjennomføre masseovervåkning i den skalaen det gjøres av moderne stater, "
2404 "både <quote>frie</quote> og autokratiske stater, er å ta i bruk kommersielle "
2407 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2409 "Whether it’s Google being used as a location tracking tool by local law "
2410 "enforcement across the U.S. or the use of social media tracking by the "
2411 "Department of Homeland Security to build dossiers on participants in "
2412 "protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family separation "
2413 "practices, any hard limits on surveillance capitalism would hamstring the "
2414 "state’s own surveillance capability. Without Palantir, Amazon, Google, and "
2415 "other major tech contractors, U.S. cops would not be able to spy on Black "
2416 "people, ICE would not be able to manage the caging of children at the U.S. "
2417 "border, and state welfare systems would not be able to purge their rolls by "
2418 "dressing up cruelty as empiricism and claiming that poor and vulnerable "
2419 "people are ineligible for assistance. At least some of the states’ "
2420 "unwillingness to take meaningful action to curb surveillance should be "
2421 "attributed to this symbiotic relationship. There is no mass state "
2422 "surveillance without mass commercial surveillance."
2425 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2427 "Monopolism is key to the project of mass state surveillance. It’s true that "
2428 "smaller tech firms are apt to be less well-defended than Big Tech, whose "
2429 "security experts are drawn from the tops of their field and who are given "
2430 "enormous resources to secure and monitor their systems against intruders. "
2431 "But smaller firms also have less to protect: fewer users whose data is more "
2432 "fragmented across more systems and have to be suborned one at a time by "
2436 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2438 "A concentrated tech sector that works with authorities is a much more "
2439 "powerful ally in the project of mass state surveillance than a fragmented "
2440 "one composed of smaller actors. The U.S. tech sector is small enough that "
2441 "all of its top executives fit around a single boardroom table in Trump Tower "
2442 "in 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Most of its biggest players bid "
2443 "to win JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense "
2444 "Infrastructure cloud contract. Like other highly concentrated industries, "
2445 "Big Tech rotates its key employees in and out of government service, sending "
2446 "them to serve in the Department of Defense and the White House, then hiring "
2447 "ex-Pentagon and ex-DOD top staffers and officers to work in their own "
2448 "government relations departments."
2451 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2453 "They can even make a good case for doing this: After all, when there are "
2454 "only four or five big companies in an industry, everyone qualified to "
2455 "regulate those companies has served as an executive in at least a couple of "
2456 "them — because, likewise, when there are only five companies in an industry, "
2457 "everyone qualified for a senior role at any of them is by definition working "
2458 "at one of the other ones."
2461 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><blockquote><para>
2463 "While surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies certainly abet "
2467 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2469 "Industries that are competitive are fragmented — composed of companies that "
2470 "are at each other’s throats all the time and eroding one another’s margins "
2471 "in bids to steal their best customers. This leaves them with much more "
2472 "limited capital to use to lobby for favorable rules and a much harder job of "
2473 "getting everyone to agree to pool their resources to benefit the industry as "
2477 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2479 "Surveillance combined with machine learning is supposed to be an existential "
2480 "crisis, a species-defining moment at which our free will is just a few more "
2481 "advances in the field from being stripped away. I am skeptical of this "
2482 "claim, but I <emphasis>do</emphasis> think that tech poses an existential "
2483 "threat to our society and possibly our species."
2486 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2487 msgid "But that threat grows out of monopoly."
2490 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2492 "One of the consequences of tech’s regulatory capture is that it can shift "
2493 "liability for poor security decisions onto its customers and the wider "
2494 "society. It is absolutely normal in tech for companies to obfuscate the "
2495 "workings of their products, to make them deliberately hard to understand, "
2496 "and to threaten security researchers who seek to independently audit those "
2500 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2502 "IT is the only field in which this is practiced: No one builds a bridge or a "
2503 "hospital and keeps the composition of the steel or the equations used to "
2504 "calculate load stresses a secret. It is a frankly bizarre practice that "
2505 "leads, time and again, to grotesque security defects on farcical scales, "
2506 "with whole classes of devices being revealed as vulnerable long after they "
2507 "are deployed in the field and put into sensitive places."
2510 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2512 "The monopoly power that keeps any meaningful consequences for breaches at "
2513 "bay means that tech companies continue to build terrible products that are "
2514 "insecure by design and that end up integrated into our lives, in possession "
2515 "of our data, and connected to our physical world. For years, Boeing has "
2516 "struggled with the aftermath of a series of bad technology decisions that "
2517 "made its 737 fleet a global pariah, a rare instance in which bad tech "
2518 "decisions have been seriously punished in the market."
2521 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2523 "These bad security decisions are compounded yet again by the use of "
2524 "copyright locks to enforce business-model decisions against consumers. "
2525 "Recall that these locks have become the go-to means for shaping consumer "
2526 "behavior, making it technically impossible to use third-party ink, insulin, "
2527 "apps, or service depots in connection with your lawfully acquired property."
2530 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2532 "Recall also that these copyright locks are backstopped by legislation (such "
2533 "as Section 1201 of the DMCA or Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive) "
2534 "that ban tampering with (<quote>circumventing</quote>) them, and these "
2535 "statutes have been used to threaten security researchers who make "
2536 "disclosures about vulnerabilities without permission from manufacturers."
2539 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2541 "This amounts to a manufacturer’s veto over safety warnings and criticism. "
2542 "While this is far from the legislative intent of the DMCA and its sister "
2543 "statutes around the world, Congress has not intervened to clarify the "
2544 "statute nor will it because to do so would run counter to the interests of "
2545 "powerful, large firms whose lobbying muscle is unstoppable."
2548 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2550 "Copyright locks are a double whammy: They create bad security decisions that "
2551 "can’t be freely investigated or discussed. If markets are supposed to be "
2552 "machines for aggregating information (and if surveillance capitalism’s "
2553 "notional mind-control rays are what make it a <quote>rogue capitalism</"
2554 "quote> because it denies consumers the power to make decisions), then a "
2555 "program of legally enforced ignorance of the risks of products makes "
2556 "monopolism even more of a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> than surveillance "
2557 "capitalism’s influence campaigns."
2560 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2562 "And unlike mind-control rays, enforced silence over security is an "
2563 "immediate, documented problem, and it <emphasis>does</emphasis> constitute "
2564 "an existential threat to our civilization and possibly our species. The "
2565 "proliferation of insecure devices — especially devices that spy on us and "
2566 "especially when those devices also can manipulate the physical world by, "
2567 "say, steering your car or flipping a breaker at a power station — is a kind "
2568 "of technology debt."
2571 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2573 "In software design, <quote>technology debt</quote> refers to old, baked-in "
2574 "decisions that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. Perhaps a long-ago "
2575 "developer decided to incorporate a networking protocol made by a vendor that "
2576 "has since stopped supporting it. But everything in the product still relies "
2577 "on that superannuated protocol, and so, with each revision, the product team "
2578 "has to work around this obsolete core, adding compatibility layers, "
2579 "surrounding it with security checks that try to shore up its defenses, and "
2580 "so on. These Band-Aid measures compound the debt because every subsequent "
2581 "revision has to make allowances for <emphasis>them</emphasis>, too, like "
2582 "interest mounting on a predatory subprime loan. And like a subprime loan, "
2583 "the interest mounts faster than you can hope to pay it off: The product team "
2584 "has to put so much energy into maintaining this complex, brittle system that "
2585 "they don’t have any time left over to refactor the product from the ground "
2586 "up and <quote>pay off the debt</quote> once and for all."
2589 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2591 "Typically, technology debt results in a technological bankruptcy: The "
2592 "product gets so brittle and unsustainable that it fails catastrophically. "
2593 "Think of the antiquated COBOL-based banking and accounting systems that fell "
2594 "over at the start of the pandemic emergency when confronted with surges of "
2595 "unemployment claims. Sometimes that ends the product; sometimes it takes "
2596 "the company down with it. Being caught in the default of a technology debt "
2597 "is scary and traumatic, just like losing your house due to bankruptcy is "
2598 "scary and traumatic."
2601 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2603 "But the technology debt created by copyright locks isn’t individual debt; "
2604 "it’s systemic. Everyone in the world is exposed to this over-leverage, as "
2605 "was the case with the 2008 financial crisis. When that debt comes due — when "
2606 "we face a cascade of security breaches that threaten global shipping and "
2607 "logistics, the food supply, pharmaceutical production pipelines, emergency "
2608 "communications, and other critical systems that are accumulating technology "
2609 "debt in part due to the presence of deliberately insecure and deliberately "
2610 "unauditable copyright locks — it will indeed pose an existential risk."
2613 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2614 msgid "Privacy and monopoly"
2615 msgstr "Monopol og vern av privatsfæren"
2617 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2619 "Many tech companies are gripped by an orthodoxy that holds that if they just "
2620 "gather enough data on enough of our activities, everything else is possible "
2621 "— the mind control and endless profits. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis: "
2622 "If data gives a tech company even a tiny improvement in behavior prediction "
2623 "and modification, the company declares that it has taken the first step "
2624 "toward global domination with no end in sight. If a company <emphasis>fails</"
2625 "emphasis> to attain any improvements from gathering and analyzing data, it "
2626 "declares success to be just around the corner, attainable once more data is "
2630 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2632 "Surveillance tech is far from the first industry to embrace a nonsensical, "
2633 "self-serving belief that harms the rest of the world, and it is not the "
2634 "first industry to profit handsomely from such a delusion. Long before hedge-"
2635 "fund managers were claiming (falsely) that they could beat the S&P 500, "
2636 "there were plenty of other <quote>respectable</quote> industries that have "
2637 "been revealed as quacks in hindsight. From the makers of radium "
2638 "suppositories (a real thing!) to the cruel sociopaths who claimed they "
2639 "could <quote>cure</quote> gay people, history is littered with the formerly "
2640 "respectable titans of discredited industries."
2643 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2645 "This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech and its "
2646 "ideological addiction to data. While surveillance’s benefits are mostly "
2647 "overstated, its harms are, if anything, <emphasis>understated</emphasis>."
2650 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2652 "There’s real irony here. The belief in surveillance capitalism as a "
2653 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is driven by the belief that markets "
2654 "wouldn’t tolerate firms that are gripped by false beliefs. An oil company "
2655 "that has false beliefs about where the oil is will eventually go broke "
2656 "digging dry wells after all."
2659 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2661 "But monopolists get to do terrible things for a long time before they pay "
2662 "the price. Think of how concentration in the finance sector allowed the "
2663 "subprime crisis to fester as bond-rating agencies, regulators, investors, "
2664 "and critics all fell under the sway of a false belief that complex "
2665 "mathematics could construct <quote>fully hedged</quote> debt instruments "
2666 "that could not possibly default. A small bank that engaged in this kind of "
2667 "malfeasance would simply go broke rather than outrunning the inevitable "
2668 "crisis, perhaps growing so big that it averted it altogether. But large "
2669 "banks were able to continue to attract investors, and when they finally "
2670 "<emphasis>did</emphasis> come a-cropper, the world’s governments bailed them "
2671 "out. The worst offenders of the subprime crisis are bigger than they were in "
2672 "2008, bringing home more profits and paying their execs even larger sums."
2675 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2677 "Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but "
2678 "because it is <emphasis>big</emphasis>. The reason every web publisher "
2679 "embeds a Facebook <quote>Like</quote> button is that Facebook dominates the "
2680 "internet’s social media referrals — and every one of those <quote>Like</"
2681 "quote> buttons spies on everyone who lands on a page that contains them (see "
2682 "also: Google Analytics embeds, Twitter buttons, etc.)."
2685 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2687 "The reason the world’s governments have been slow to create meaningful "
2688 "penalties for privacy breaches is that Big Tech’s concentration produces "
2689 "huge profits that can be used to lobby against those penalties — and Big "
2690 "Tech’s concentration means that the companies involved are able to arrive at "
2691 "a unified negotiating position that supercharges the lobbying."
2694 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2696 "The reason that the smartest engineers in the world want to work for Big "
2697 "Tech is that Big Tech commands the lion’s share of tech industry jobs."
2700 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2702 "The reason people who are aghast at Facebook’s and Google’s and Amazon’s "
2703 "data-handling practices continue to use these services is that all their "
2704 "friends are on Facebook; Google dominates search; and Amazon has put all the "
2705 "local merchants out of business."
2708 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2710 "Competitive markets would weaken the companies’ lobbying muscle by reducing "
2711 "their profits and pitting them against each other in regulatory forums. It "
2712 "would give customers other places to go to get their online services. It "
2713 "would make the companies small enough to regulate and pave the way to "
2714 "meaningful penalties for breaches. It would let engineers with ideas that "
2715 "challenged the surveillance orthodoxy raise capital to compete with the "
2716 "incumbents. It would give web publishers multiple ways to reach audiences "
2717 "and make the case against Facebook and Google and Twitter embeds."
2720 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2722 "In other words, while surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies "
2723 "certainly abet surveillance."
2726 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2727 msgid "Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism"
2730 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2732 "Technology exceptionalism is a sin, whether it’s practiced by technology’s "
2733 "blind proponents or by its critics. Both of these camps are prone to "
2734 "explaining away monopolistic concentration by citing some special "
2735 "characteristic of the tech industry, like network effects or first-mover "
2736 "advantage. The only real difference between these two groups is that the "
2737 "tech apologists say monopoly is inevitable so we should just let tech get "
2738 "away with its abuses while competition regulators in the U.S. and the EU say "
2739 "monopoly is inevitable so we should punish tech for its abuses but not try "
2740 "to break up the monopolies."
2743 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2745 "To understand how tech became so monopolistic, it’s useful to look at the "
2746 "dawn of the consumer tech industry: 1979, the year the Apple II Plus "
2747 "launched and became the first successful home computer. That also happens to "
2748 "be the year that Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail for the 1980 "
2749 "presidential race — a race he won, leading to a radical shift in the way "
2750 "that antitrust concerns are handled in America. Reagan’s cohort of "
2751 "politicians — including Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Brian Mulroney in "
2752 "Canada, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile — went on to "
2753 "enact similar reforms that eventually spread around the world."
2756 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2758 "Antitrust’s story began nearly a century before all that with laws like the "
2759 "Sherman Act, which took aim at monopolists on the grounds that monopolies "
2760 "were bad in and of themselves — squeezing out competitors, creating "
2761 "<quote>diseconomies of scale</quote> (when a company is so big that its "
2762 "constituent parts go awry and it is seemingly helpless to address the "
2763 "problems), and capturing their regulators to such a degree that they can get "
2764 "away with a host of evils."
2767 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2769 "Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who "
2770 "Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit "
2771 "and who had created an alternate legislative history of the Sherman Act and "
2772 "its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that these statutes were "
2773 "never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, "
2774 "including the transcribed speeches of the acts’ authors) but, rather, that "
2775 "they were intended to prevent <quote>consumer harm</quote> — in the form of "
2779 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2781 "Bork was a crank, but he was a crank with a theory that rich people really "
2782 "liked. Monopolies are a great way to make rich people richer by allowing "
2783 "them to receive <quote>monopoly rents</quote> (that is, bigger profits) and "
2784 "capture regulators, leading to a weaker, more favorable regulatory "
2785 "environment with fewer protections for customers, suppliers, the "
2786 "environment, and workers."
2789 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2791 "Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who "
2792 "backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies began "
2793 "to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement decisions "
2794 "(Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork flunked the "
2795 "Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, D.C. insiders use "
2796 "the term <quote>borked</quote> to refer to any catastrophically bad "
2797 "political performance)."
2800 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2802 "Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their backers "
2803 "began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on junkets where "
2804 "members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun outdoor "
2805 "activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the consumer "
2806 "harm theory of antitrust. The more Bork’s theories took hold, the more money "
2807 "the monopolists were making — and the more surplus capital they had at their "
2808 "disposal to lobby for even more Borkian antitrust influence campaigns."
2811 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2813 "The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the "
2814 "kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns us "
2815 "against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy. But Bork didn’t "
2816 "change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over a "
2817 "generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed "
2818 "oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts in "
2819 "public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that wealth is "
2820 "a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to form a "
2821 "coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue."
2824 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2826 "Today, many fear that machine learning allows surveillance capitalism to "
2827 "sell <quote>Bork-as-a-Service,</quote> at internet speeds, so that you can "
2828 "contract a machine-learning company to engineer <emphasis>rapid</emphasis> "
2829 "shifts in public sentiment without needing the capital to sustain a "
2830 "multipronged, multigenerational project working at the local, state, "
2831 "national, and global levels in business, law, and philosophy. I do not "
2832 "believe that such a project is plausible, though I agree that this is "
2833 "basically what the platforms claim to be selling. They’re just lying about "
2834 "it. Big Tech lies all the time, <emphasis>including</emphasis> in their "
2838 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2840 "The idea that tech forms <quote>natural monopolies</quote> (monopolies that "
2841 "are the inevitable result of the realities of an industry, such as the "
2842 "monopolies that accrue the first company to run long-haul phone lines or "
2843 "rail lines) is belied by tech’s own history: In the absence of anti-"
2844 "competitive tactics, Google was able to unseat AltaVista and Yahoo; Facebook "
2845 "was able to head off Myspace. There are some advantages to gathering "
2846 "mountains of data, but those mountains of data also have disadvantages: "
2847 "liability (from leaking), diminishing returns (from old data), and "
2848 "institutional inertia (big companies, like science, progress one funeral at "
2852 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2854 "Indeed, the birth of the web saw a mass-extinction event for the existing "
2855 "giant, wildly profitable proprietary technologies that had capital, network "
2856 "effects, and walls and moats surrounding their businesses. The web showed "
2857 "that when a new industry is built around a protocol, rather than a product, "
2858 "the combined might of everyone who uses the protocol to reach their "
2859 "customers or users or communities outweighs even the most massive products. "
2860 "CompuServe, AOL, MSN, and a host of other proprietary walled gardens learned "
2861 "this lesson the hard way: Each believed it could stay separate from the web, "
2862 "offering <quote>curation</quote> and a guarantee of consistency and quality "
2863 "instead of the chaos of an open system. Each was wrong and ended up being "
2864 "absorbed into the public web."
2867 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2869 "Yes, tech is heavily monopolized and is now closely associated with industry "
2870 "concentration, but this has more to do with a matter of timing than its "
2871 "intrinsically monopolistic tendencies. Tech was born at the moment that "
2872 "antitrust enforcement was being dismantled, and tech fell into exactly the "
2873 "same pathologies that antitrust was supposed to guard against. To a first "
2874 "approximation, it is reasonable to assume that tech’s monopolies are the "
2875 "result of a lack of anti-monopoly action and not the much-touted unique "
2876 "characteristics of tech, such as network effects, first-mover advantage, and "
2880 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2882 "In support of this thesis, I offer the concentration that every "
2883 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> industry has undergone over the same period. From "
2884 "professional wrestling to consumer packaged goods to commercial property "
2885 "leasing to banking to sea freight to oil to record labels to newspaper "
2886 "ownership to theme parks, <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry has undergone "
2887 "a massive shift toward concentration. There’s no obvious network effects or "
2888 "first-mover advantage at play in these industries. However, in every case, "
2889 "these industries attained their concentrated status through tactics that "
2890 "were prohibited before Bork’s triumph: merging with major competitors, "
2891 "buying out innovative new market entrants, horizontal and vertical "
2892 "integration, and a suite of anti-competitive tactics that were once illegal "
2893 "but are not any longer."
2896 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2898 "Again: When you change the laws intended to prevent monopolies and then "
2899 "monopolies form in exactly the way the law was supposed to prevent, it is "
2900 "reasonable to suppose that these facts are related. Tech’s concentration "
2901 "can be readily explained without recourse to radical theories of network "
2902 "effects — but only if you’re willing to indict unregulated markets as "
2903 "tending toward monopoly. Just as a lifelong smoker can give you a hundred "
2904 "reasons why their smoking didn’t cause their cancer (<quote>It was the "
2905 "environmental toxins</quote>), true believers in unregulated markets have a "
2906 "whole suite of unconvincing explanations for monopoly in tech that leave "
2907 "capitalism intact."
2910 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2911 msgid "Steering with the windshield wipers"
2914 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2916 "It’s been 40 years since Bork’s project to rehabilitate monopolies achieved "
2917 "liftoff, and that is a generation and a half, which is plenty of time to "
2918 "take a common idea and make it seem outlandish and vice versa. Before the "
2919 "1940s, affluent Americans dressed their baby boys in pink while baby girls "
2920 "wore blue (a <quote>delicate and dainty</quote> color). While gendered "
2921 "colors are obviously totally arbitrary, many still greet this news with "
2922 "amazement and find it hard to imagine a time when pink connoted masculinity."
2925 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2927 "After 40 years of studiously ignoring antitrust analysis and enforcement, "
2928 "it’s not surprising that we’ve all but forgotten that antitrust exists, that "
2929 "in living memory, growth through mergers and acquisitions were largely "
2930 "prohibited under law, that market-cornering strategies like vertical "
2931 "integration could land a company in court."
2934 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2936 "Antitrust is a market society’s steering wheel, the control of first resort "
2937 "to keep would-be masters of the universe in their lanes. But Bork and his "
2938 "cohort ripped out our steering wheel 40 years ago. The car is still "
2939 "barreling along, and so we’re yanking as hard as we can on all the "
2940 "<emphasis>other</emphasis> controls in the car as well as desperately "
2941 "flapping the doors and rolling the windows up and down in the hopes that one "
2942 "of these other controls can be repurposed to let us choose where we’re "
2943 "heading before we careen off a cliff."
2946 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2948 "It’s like a 1960s science-fiction plot come to life: People stuck in a "
2949 "<quote>generation ship,</quote> plying its way across the stars, a ship once "
2950 "piloted by their ancestors; and now, after a great cataclysm, the ship’s "
2951 "crew have forgotten that they’re in a ship at all and no longer remember "
2952 "where the control room is. Adrift, the ship is racing toward its extinction, "
2953 "and unless we can seize the controls and execute emergency course "
2954 "correction, we’re all headed for a fiery death in the heart of a sun."
2957 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
2958 msgid "Surveillance still matters"
2961 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2963 "None of this is to minimize the problems with surveillance. Surveillance "
2964 "matters, and Big Tech’s use of surveillance <emphasis>is</emphasis> an "
2965 "existential risk to our species, but that’s not because surveillance and "
2966 "machine learning rob us of our free will."
2969 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2971 "Surveillance has become <emphasis>much</emphasis> more efficient thanks to "
2972 "Big Tech. In 1989, the Stasi — the East German secret police — had the whole "
2973 "country under surveillance, a massive undertaking that recruited one out of "
2974 "every 60 people to serve as an informant or intelligence operative."
2977 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2979 "Today, we know that the NSA is spying on a significant fraction of the "
2980 "entire world’s population, and its ratio of surveillance operatives to the "
2981 "surveilled is more like 1:10,000 (that’s probably on the low side since it "
2982 "assumes that every American with top-secret clearance is working for the NSA "
2983 "on this project — we don’t know how many of those cleared people are "
2984 "involved in NSA spying, but it’s definitely not all of them)."
2987 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
2989 "How did the ratio of surveillable citizens expand from 1:60 to 1:10,000 in "
2990 "less than 30 years? It’s thanks to Big Tech. Our devices and services gather "
2991 "most of the data that the NSA mines for its surveillance project. We pay for "
2992 "these devices and the services they connect to, and then we painstakingly "
2993 "perform the data-entry tasks associated with logging facts about our lives, "
2994 "opinions, and preferences. This mass surveillance project has been largely "
2995 "useless for fighting terrorism: The NSA can <ulink url=\"https://www."
2996 "washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-of-"
2997 "phone-data-collection-program/2013/08/08/fc915e5a-feda-11e2-96a8-"
2998 "d3b921c0924a_story.html\">only point to a single minor success story</ulink> "
2999 "in which it used its data collection program to foil an attempt by a U.S. "
3000 "resident to wire a few thousand dollars to an overseas terror group. It’s "
3001 "ineffective for much the same reason that commercial surveillance projects "
3002 "are largely ineffective at targeting advertising: The people who want to "
3003 "commit acts of terror, like people who want to buy a refrigerator, are "
3004 "extremely rare. If you’re trying to detect a phenomenon whose base rate is "
3005 "one in a million with an instrument whose accuracy is only 99%, then every "
3006 "true positive will come at the cost of 9,999 false positives."
3009 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3011 "Let me explain that again: If one in a million people is a terrorist, then "
3012 "there will only be about one terrorist in a random sample of one million "
3013 "people. If your test for detecting terrorists is 99% accurate, it will "
3014 "identify 10,000 terrorists in your million-person sample (1% of one million "
3015 "is 10,000). For every true positive, you’ll get 9,999 false positives."
3018 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3020 "In reality, the accuracy of algorithmic terrorism detection falls far short "
3021 "of the 99% mark, as does refrigerator ad targeting. The difference is that "
3022 "being falsely accused of wanting to buy a fridge is a minor nuisance while "
3023 "being falsely accused of planning a terror attack can destroy your life and "
3024 "the lives of everyone you love."
3027 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3029 "Mass state surveillance is only feasible because of surveillance capitalism "
3030 "and its extremely low-yield ad-targeting systems, which require a constant "
3031 "feed of personal data to remain barely viable. Surveillance capitalism’s "
3032 "primary failure mode is mistargeted ads while mass state surveillance’s "
3033 "primary failure mode is grotesque human rights abuses, tending toward "
3037 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3039 "State surveillance is no mere parasite on Big Tech, sucking up its data and "
3040 "giving nothing in return. In truth, the two are symbiotes: Big Tech sucks up "
3041 "our data for spy agencies, and spy agencies ensure that governments don’t "
3042 "limit Big Tech’s activities so severely that it would no longer serve the "
3043 "spy agencies’ needs. There is no firm distinction between state surveillance "
3044 "and surveillance capitalism; they are dependent on one another."
3047 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3049 "To see this at work today, look no further than Amazon’s home surveillance "
3050 "device, the Ring doorbell, and its associated app, Neighbors. Ring — a "
3051 "product that Amazon acquired and did not develop in house — makes a camera-"
3052 "enabled doorbell that streams footage from your front door to your mobile "
3053 "device. The Neighbors app allows you to form a neighborhood-wide "
3054 "surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through which you can share "
3055 "clips of <quote>suspicious characters.</quote> If you’re thinking that this "
3056 "sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists supercharge their "
3057 "suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down their blocks, <ulink url="
3058 "\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/amazons-ring-enables-over-policing-"
3059 "efforts-some-americas-deadliest-law-enforcement\">you’re right</ulink>. Ring "
3060 "has become a <emphasis>de facto,</emphasis> off-the-books arm of the police "
3061 "without any of the pesky oversight or rules."
3064 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3066 "In mid-2019, a series of public records requests revealed that Amazon had "
3067 "struck confidential deals with more than 400 local law enforcement agencies "
3068 "through which the agencies would promote Ring and Neighbors and in exchange "
3069 "get access to footage from Ring cameras. In theory, cops would need to "
3070 "request this footage through Amazon (and internal documents reveal that "
3071 "Amazon devotes substantial resources to coaching cops on how to spin a "
3072 "convincing story when doing so), but in practice, when a Ring customer turns "
3073 "down a police request, Amazon only requires the agency to formally request "
3074 "the footage from the company, which it will then produce."
3077 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3079 "Ring and law enforcement have found many ways to intertwine their "
3080 "activities. Ring strikes secret deals to acquire real-time access to 911 "
3081 "dispatch and then streams alarming crime reports to Neighbors users, which "
3082 "serve as convincers for anyone who’s contemplating a surveillance doorbell "
3083 "but isn’t sure whether their neighborhood is dangerous enough to warrant it."
3086 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3088 "The more the cops buzz-market the surveillance capitalist Ring, the more "
3089 "surveillance capability the state gets. Cops who rely on private entities "
3090 "for law-enforcement roles then brief against any controls on the deployment "
3091 "of that technology while the companies return the favor by lobbying against "
3092 "rules requiring public oversight of police surveillance technology. The more "
3093 "the cops rely on Ring and Neighbors, the harder it will be to pass laws to "
3094 "curb them. The fewer laws there are against them, the more the cops will "
3098 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3099 msgid "Dignity and sanctuary"
3102 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3104 "But even if we could exercise democratic control over our states and force "
3105 "them to stop raiding surveillance capitalism’s reservoirs of behavioral "
3106 "data, surveillance capitalism would still harm us."
3109 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3111 "This is an area where Zuboff shines. Her chapter on <quote>sanctuary</quote> "
3112 "— the feeling of being unobserved — is a beautiful hymn to introspection, "
3113 "calmness, mindfulness, and tranquility."
3116 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3118 "When you are watched, something changes. Anyone who has ever raised a child "
3119 "knows this. You might look up from your book (or more realistically, from "
3120 "your phone) and catch your child in a moment of profound realization and "
3121 "growth, a moment where they are learning something that is right at the edge "
3122 "of their abilities, requiring their entire ferocious concentration. For a "
3123 "moment, you’re transfixed, watching that rare and beautiful moment of focus "
3124 "playing out before your eyes, and then your child looks up and sees you "
3125 "seeing them, and the moment collapses. To grow, you need to be and expose "
3126 "your authentic self, and in that moment, you are vulnerable like a hermit "
3127 "crab scuttling from one shell to the next. The tender, unprotected tissues "
3128 "you expose in that moment are too delicate to reveal in the presence of "
3129 "another, even someone you trust as implicitly as a child trusts their parent."
3132 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3134 "In the digital age, our authentic selves are inextricably tied to our "
3135 "digital lives. Your search history is a running ledger of the questions "
3136 "you’ve pondered. Your location history is a record of the places you’ve "
3137 "sought out and the experiences you’ve had there. Your social graph reveals "
3138 "the different facets of your identity, the people you’ve connected with."
3141 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3143 "To be observed in these activities is to lose the sanctuary of your "
3147 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3149 "There’s another way in which surveillance capitalism robs us of our capacity "
3150 "to be our authentic selves: by making us anxious. Surveillance capitalism "
3151 "isn’t really a mind-control ray, but you don’t need a mind-control ray to "
3152 "make someone anxious. After all, another word for anxiety is agitation, and "
3153 "to make someone experience agitation, you need merely to agitate them. To "
3154 "poke them and prod them and beep at them and buzz at them and bombard them "
3155 "on an intermittent schedule that is just random enough that our limbic "
3156 "systems never quite become inured to it."
3159 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3161 "Our devices and services are <quote>general purpose</quote> in that they can "
3162 "connect anything or anyone to anything or anyone else and that they can run "
3163 "any program that can be written. This means that the distraction rectangles "
3164 "in our pockets hold our most precious moments with our most beloved people "
3165 "and their most urgent or time-sensitive communications (from <quote>running "
3166 "late can you get the kid?</quote> to <quote>doctor gave me bad news and I "
3167 "need to talk to you RIGHT NOW</quote>) as well as ads for refrigerators and "
3168 "recruiting messages from Nazis."
3171 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3173 "All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration and "
3174 "tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think through "
3175 "difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated them like "
3176 "this, we’d call it <quote>sleep deprivation torture,</quote> and it would be "
3177 "<ulink url=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SKpRbvnx6g\">a war crime under "
3178 "the Geneva Conventions</ulink>."
3181 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3182 msgid "Afflicting the afflicted"
3185 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3187 "The effects of surveillance on our ability to be our authentic selves are "
3188 "not equal for all people. Some of us are lucky enough to live in a time and "
3189 "place in which all the most important facts of our lives are widely and "
3190 "roundly socially acceptable and can be publicly displayed without the risk "
3191 "of social consequence."
3194 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3196 "But for many of us, this is not true. Recall that in living memory, many of "
3197 "the ways of being that we think of as socially acceptable today were once "
3198 "cause for dire social sanction or even imprisonment. If you are 65 years "
3199 "old, you have lived through a time in which people living in <quote>free "
3200 "societies</quote> could be imprisoned or sanctioned for engaging in "
3201 "homosexual activity, for falling in love with a person whose skin was a "
3202 "different color than their own, or for smoking weed."
3205 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3207 "Today, these activities aren’t just decriminalized in much of the world, "
3208 "they’re considered normal, and the fallen prohibitions are viewed as "
3209 "shameful, regrettable relics of the past."
3212 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3214 "How did we get from prohibition to normalization? Through private, personal "
3215 "activity: People who were secretly gay or secret pot-smokers or who secretly "
3216 "loved someone with a different skin color were vulnerable to retaliation if "
3217 "they made their true selves known and were limited in how much they could "
3218 "advocate for their own right to exist in the world and be true to "
3219 "themselves. But because there was a private sphere, these people could form "
3220 "alliances with their friends and loved ones who did not share their "
3221 "disfavored traits by having private conversations in which they came out, "
3222 "disclosing their true selves to the people around them and bringing them to "
3223 "their cause one conversation at a time."
3226 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3228 "The right to choose the time and manner of these conversations was key to "
3229 "their success. It’s one thing to come out to your dad while you’re on a "
3230 "fishing trip away from the world and another thing entirely to blurt it out "
3231 "over the Christmas dinner table while your racist Facebook uncle is there to "
3235 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3237 "Without a private sphere, there’s a chance that none of these changes would "
3238 "have come to pass and that the people who benefited from these changes would "
3239 "have either faced social sanction for coming out to a hostile world or would "
3240 "have never been able to reveal their true selves to the people they love."
3243 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3245 "The corollary is that, unless you think that our society has attained social "
3246 "perfection — that your grandchildren in 50 years will ask you to tell them "
3247 "the story of how, in 2020, every injustice had been righted and no further "
3248 "change had to be made — then you should expect that right now, at this "
3249 "minute, there are people you love, whose happiness is key to your own, who "
3250 "have a secret in their hearts that stops them from ever being their "
3251 "authentic selves with you. These people are sorrowing and will go to their "
3252 "graves with that secret sorrow in their hearts, and the source of that "
3253 "sorrow will be the falsity of their relationship to you."
3256 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3257 msgid "A private realm is necessary for human progress."
3260 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3261 msgid "Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak"
3262 msgstr "Alle data du samler og tar vare på vil til slutt lekke"
3264 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3266 "The lack of a private life can rob vulnerable people of the chance to be "
3267 "their authentic selves and constrain our actions by depriving us of "
3268 "sanctuary, but there is another risk that is borne by everyone, not just "
3269 "people with a secret: crime."
3272 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3274 "Personally identifying information is of very limited use for the purpose of "
3275 "controlling peoples’ minds, but identity theft — really a catchall term for "
3276 "a whole constellation of terrible criminal activities that can destroy your "
3277 "finances, compromise your personal integrity, ruin your reputation, or even "
3278 "expose you to physical danger — thrives on it."
3281 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3283 "Attackers are not limited to using data from one breached source, either. "
3284 "Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names, addresses, "
3285 "phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work performance, "
3286 "brushes with the criminal justice system, family details, genetic "
3287 "information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits, search "
3288 "histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other sensitive "
3289 "information. Attackers can merge data from these different breaches to build "
3290 "up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and then use different "
3291 "parts of the data for different criminal purposes."
3294 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3296 "For example, attackers can use leaked username and password combinations to "
3297 "hijack whole fleets of commercial vehicles that <ulink url=\"https://www."
3298 "vice.com/en_us/article/zmpx4x/hacker-monitor-cars-kill-engine-gps-tracking-"
3299 "apps\">have been fitted with anti-theft GPS trackers and immobilizers</"
3300 "ulink> or to hijack baby monitors in order to <ulink url=\"https://www."
3301 "washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/23/how-nest-designed-keep-intruders-"
3302 "out-peoples-homes-effectively-allowed-hackers-get/?"
3303 "utm_term=.15220e98c550\">terrorize toddlers with the audio tracks from "
3304 "pornography</ulink>. Attackers use leaked data to trick phone companies into "
3305 "giving them your phone number, then they intercept SMS-based two-factor "
3306 "authentication codes in order to take over your email, bank account, and/or "
3307 "cryptocurrency wallets."
3310 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3312 "Attackers are endlessly inventive in the pursuit of creative ways to "
3313 "weaponize leaked data. One common use of leaked data is to penetrate "
3314 "companies in order to access <emphasis>more</emphasis> data."
3317 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3319 "Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies over-"
3320 "collecting and over-retaining our data. Spy agencies sometimes pay companies "
3321 "for access to their data or intimidate them into giving it up, but sometimes "
3322 "they work just like criminals do — by <ulink url=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/"
3323 "world-us-canada-24751821\">sneaking data out of companies’ databases</ulink>."
3326 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3328 "The over-collection of data has a host of terrible social consequences, from "
3329 "the erosion of our authentic selves to the undermining of social progress, "
3330 "from state surveillance to an epidemic of online crime. Commercial "
3331 "surveillance is also a boon to people running influence campaigns, but "
3332 "that’s the least of our troubles."
3335 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3336 msgid "Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism"
3339 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3341 "Big Tech has long practiced technology exceptionalism: the idea that it "
3342 "should not be subject to the mundane laws and norms of <quote>meatspace.</"
3343 "quote> Mottoes like Facebook’s <quote>move fast and break things</quote> "
3344 "attracted justifiable scorn of the companies’ self-serving rhetoric."
3347 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3349 "Tech exceptionalism got us all into a lot of trouble, so it’s ironic and "
3350 "distressing to see Big Tech’s critics committing the same sin."
3353 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3355 "Big Tech is not a <quote>rogue capitalism</quote> that cannot be cured "
3356 "through the traditional anti-monopoly remedies of trustbusting (forcing "
3357 "companies to divest of competitors they have acquired) and bans on mergers "
3358 "to monopoly and other anti-competitive tactics. Big Tech does not have the "
3359 "power to use machine learning to influence our behavior so thoroughly that "
3360 "markets lose the ability to punish bad actors and reward superior "
3361 "competitors. Big Tech has no rule-writing mind-control ray that necessitates "
3362 "ditching our old toolbox."
3365 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3367 "The thing is, people have been claiming to have perfected mind-control rays "
3368 "for centuries, and every time, it turned out to be a con — though sometimes "
3369 "the con artists were also conning themselves."
3372 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3374 "For generations, the advertising industry has been steadily improving its "
3375 "ability to sell advertising services to businesses while only making "
3376 "marginal gains in selling those businesses’ products to prospective "
3377 "customers. John Wanamaker’s lament that <quote>50% of my advertising budget "
3378 "is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%</quote> is a testament to the triumph "
3379 "of <emphasis>ad executives</emphasis>, who successfully convinced Wanamaker "
3380 "that only half of the money he spent went to waste."
3383 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3385 "The tech industry has made enormous improvements in the science of "
3386 "convincing businesses that they’re good at advertising while their actual "
3387 "improvements to advertising — as opposed to targeting — have been pretty ho-"
3388 "hum. The vogue for machine learning — and the mystical invocation of "
3389 "<quote>artificial intelligence</quote> as a synonym for straightforward "
3390 "statistical inference techniques — has greatly boosted the efficacy of Big "
3391 "Tech’s sales pitch as marketers have exploited potential customers’ lack of "
3392 "technical sophistication to get away with breathtaking acts of overpromising "
3393 "and underdelivering."
3396 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3398 "It’s tempting to think that if businesses are willing to pour billions into "
3399 "a venture that the venture must be a good one. Yet there are plenty of times "
3400 "when this rule of thumb has led us astray. For example, it’s virtually "
3401 "unheard of for managed investment funds to outperform simple index funds, "
3402 "and investors who put their money into the hands of expert money managers "
3403 "overwhelmingly fare worse than those who entrust their savings to index "
3404 "funds. But managed funds still account for the majority of the money "
3405 "invested in the markets, and they are patronized by some of the richest, "
3406 "most sophisticated investors in the world. Their vote of confidence in an "
3407 "underperforming sector is a parable about the role of luck in wealth "
3408 "accumulation, not a sign that managed funds are a good buy."
3411 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3413 "The claims of Big Tech’s mind-control system are full of tells that the "
3414 "enterprise is a con. For example, <ulink url=\"https://www.frontiersin.org/"
3415 "articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01415/full\">the reliance on the <quote>Big "
3416 "Five</quote> personality traits</ulink> as a primary means of influencing "
3417 "people even though the <quote>Big Five</quote> theory is unsupported by any "
3418 "large-scale, peer-reviewed studies and is <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/"
3419 "story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/\">mostly the realm of "
3420 "marketing hucksters and pop psych</ulink>."
3423 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3425 "Big Tech’s promotional materials also claim that their algorithms can "
3426 "accurately perform <quote>sentiment analysis</quote> or detect peoples’ "
3427 "moods based on their <quote>microexpressions,</quote> but <ulink url="
3428 "\"https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/647040758/advertising-on-facebook-is-it-"
3429 "worth-it\">these are marketing claims, not scientific ones</ulink>. These "
3430 "methods are largely untested by independent scientific experts, and where "
3431 "they have been tested, they’ve been found sorely wanting. Microexpressions "
3432 "are particularly suspect as the companies that specialize in training people "
3433 "to detect them <ulink url=\"https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/tsas-own-"
3434 "files-show-doubtful-science-behind-its-behavior-screening-program/\">have "
3435 "been shown</ulink> to underperform relative to random chance."
3438 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3440 "Big Tech has been so good at marketing its own supposed superpowers that "
3441 "it’s easy to believe that they can market everything else with similar "
3442 "acumen, but it’s a mistake to believe the hype. Any statement a company "
3443 "makes about the quality of its products is clearly not impartial. The fact "
3444 "that we distrust all the things that Big Tech says about its data handling, "
3445 "compliance with privacy laws, etc., is only reasonable — but why on Earth "
3446 "would we treat Big Tech’s marketing literature as the gospel truth? Big Tech "
3447 "lies about just about <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, including how well "
3448 "its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work."
3451 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3453 "That skepticism should infuse all of our evaluations of Big Tech and its "
3454 "supposed abilities, including our perusal of its patents. Zuboff vests these "
3455 "patents with enormous significance, pointing out that Google claimed "
3456 "extensive new persuasion capabilities in <ulink url=\"https://patents.google."
3457 "com/patent/US20050131762A1/en\">its patent filings</ulink>. These claims are "
3458 "doubly suspect: first, because they are so self-serving, and second, because "
3459 "the patent itself is so notoriously an invitation to exaggeration."
3462 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3464 "Patent applications take the form of a series of claims and range from broad "
3465 "to narrow. A typical patent starts out by claiming that its authors have "
3466 "invented a method or system for doing every conceivable thing that anyone "
3467 "might do, ever, with any tool or device. Then it narrows that claim in "
3468 "successive stages until we get to the actual <quote>invention</quote> that "
3469 "is the true subject of the patent. The hope is that the patent examiner — "
3470 "who is almost certainly overworked and underinformed — will miss the fact "
3471 "that some or all of these claims are ridiculous, or at least suspect, and "
3472 "grant the patent’s broader claims. Patents for unpatentable things are still "
3473 "incredibly useful because they can be wielded against competitors who might "
3474 "license that patent or steer clear of its claims rather than endure the "
3475 "lengthy, expensive process of contesting it."
3478 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3480 "What’s more, software patents are routinely granted even though the filer "
3481 "doesn’t have any evidence that they can do the thing claimed by the patent. "
3482 "That is, you can patent an <quote>invention</quote> that you haven’t "
3483 "actually made and that you don’t know how to make."
3486 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3488 "With these considerations in hand, it becomes obvious that the fact that a "
3489 "Big Tech company has patented what it <emphasis>says</emphasis> is an "
3490 "effective mind-control ray is largely irrelevant to whether Big Tech can in "
3491 "fact control our minds."
3494 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3496 "Big Tech collects our data for many reasons, including the diminishing "
3497 "returns on existing stores of data. But many tech companies also collect "
3498 "data out of a mistaken tech exceptionalist belief in the network effects of "
3499 "data. Network effects occur when each new user in a system increases its "
3500 "value. The classic example is fax machines: A single fax machine is of no "
3501 "use, two fax machines are of limited use, but every new fax machine that’s "
3502 "put to use after the first doubles the number of possible fax-to-fax links."
3505 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3507 "Data mined for predictive systems doesn’t necessarily produce these "
3508 "dividends. Think of Netflix: The predictive value of the data mined from a "
3509 "million English-speaking Netflix viewers is hardly improved by the addition "
3510 "of one more user’s viewing data. Most of the data Netflix acquires after "
3511 "that first minimum viable sample duplicates existing data and produces only "
3512 "minimal gains. Meanwhile, retraining models with new data gets progressively "
3513 "more expensive as the number of data points increases, and manual tasks like "
3514 "labeling and validating data do not get cheaper at scale."
3517 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3519 "Businesses pursue fads to the detriment of their profits all the time, "
3520 "especially when the businesses and their investors are not motivated by the "
3521 "prospect of becoming profitable but rather by the prospect of being acquired "
3522 "by a Big Tech giant or by having an IPO. For these firms, ticking faddish "
3523 "boxes like <quote>collects as much data as possible</quote> might realize a "
3524 "bigger return on investment than <quote>collects a business-appropriate "
3525 "quantity of data.</quote>"
3528 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3530 "This is another harm of tech exceptionalism: The belief that more data "
3531 "always produces more profits in the form of more insights that can be "
3532 "translated into better mind-control rays drives firms to over-collect and "
3533 "over-retain data beyond all rationality. And since the firms are behaving "
3534 "irrationally, a good number of them will go out of business and become ghost "
3535 "ships whose cargo holds are stuffed full of data that can harm people in "
3536 "myriad ways — but which no one is responsible for antey longer. Even if the "
3537 "companies don’t go under, the data they collect is maintained behind the "
3538 "minimum viable security — just enough security to keep the company viable "
3539 "while it waits to get bought out by a tech giant, an amount calculated to "
3540 "spend not one penny more than is necessary on protecting data."
3543 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3545 "How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The "
3549 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3551 "For the first decade of its existence, Facebook competed with the social "
3552 "media giants of the day (Myspace, Orkut, etc.) by presenting itself as the "
3553 "pro-privacy alternative. Indeed, Facebook justified its walled garden — "
3554 "which let users bring in data from the web but blocked web services like "
3555 "Google Search from indexing and caching Facebook pages — as a pro-privacy "
3556 "measure that protected users from the surveillance-happy winners of the "
3557 "social media wars like Myspace."
3560 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3562 "Despite frequent promises that it would never collect or analyze its users’ "
3563 "data, Facebook periodically created initiatives that did just that, like the "
3564 "creepy, ham-fisted Beacon tool, which spied on you as you moved around the "
3565 "web and then added your online activities to your public timeline, allowing "
3566 "your friends to monitor your browsing habits. Beacon sparked a user revolt. "
3567 "Every time, Facebook backed off from its surveillance initiative, but not "
3568 "all the way; inevitably, the new Facebook would be more surveilling than the "
3569 "old Facebook, though not quite as surveilling as the intermediate Facebook "
3570 "following the launch of the new product or service."
3573 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3575 "The pace at which Facebook ramped up its surveillance efforts seems to have "
3576 "been set by Facebook’s competitive landscape. The more competitors Facebook "
3577 "had, the better it behaved. Every time a major competitor foundered, "
3578 "Facebook’s behavior <ulink url=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?"
3579 "abstract_id=3247362\">got markedly worse</ulink>."
3582 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3584 "All the while, Facebook was prodigiously acquiring companies, including a "
3585 "company called Onavo. Nominally, Onavo made a battery-monitoring mobile app. "
3586 "But the permissions that Onavo required were so expansive that the app was "
3587 "able to gather fine-grained telemetry on everything users did with their "
3588 "phones, including which apps they used and how they were using them."
3591 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3593 "Through Onavo, Facebook discovered that it was losing market share to "
3594 "Snapchat, an app that — like Facebook a decade before — billed itself as the "
3595 "pro-privacy alternative to the status quo. Through Onavo, Facebook was able "
3596 "to mine data from the devices of Snapchat users, including both current and "
3597 "former Snapchat users. This spurred Facebook to acquire Instagram — some "
3598 "features of which competed with Snapchat — and then allowed Facebook to fine-"
3599 "tune Instagram’s features and sales pitch to erode Snapchat’s gains and "
3600 "ensure that Facebook would not have to face the kinds of competitive "
3601 "pressures it had earlier inflicted on Myspace and Orkut."
3604 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3606 "The story of how Facebook crushed Snapchat reveals the relationship between "
3607 "monopoly and surveillance capitalism. Facebook combined surveillance with "
3608 "lax antitrust enforcement to spot the competitive threat of Snapchat on its "
3609 "horizon and then take decisive action against it. Facebook’s surveillance "
3610 "capitalism let it avert competitive pressure with anti-competitive tactics. "
3611 "Facebook users still want privacy — Facebook hasn’t used surveillance to "
3612 "brainwash them out of it — but they can’t get it because Facebook’s "
3613 "surveillance lets it destroy any hope of a rival service emerging that "
3614 "competes on privacy features."
3617 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3618 msgid "A monopoly over your friends"
3619 msgstr "Et monopol over vennene dine"
3621 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3623 "A decentralization movement has tried to erode the dominance of Facebook and "
3624 "other Big Tech companies by fielding <quote>indieweb</quote> alternatives — "
3625 "Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, Diaspora as a Facebook alternative, etc. "
3626 "— but these efforts have failed to attain any kind of liftoff."
3629 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3631 "Fundamentally, each of these services is hamstrung by the same problem: "
3632 "Every potential user for a Facebook or Twitter alternative has to convince "
3633 "all their friends to follow them to a decentralized web alternative in order "
3634 "to continue to realize the benefit of social media. For many of us, the only "
3635 "reason to have a Facebook account is that our friends have Facebook "
3636 "accounts, and the reason they have Facebook accounts is that <emphasis>we</"
3637 "emphasis> have Facebook accounts."
3640 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3642 "All of this has conspired to make Facebook — and other dominant platforms — "
3643 "into <quote>kill zones</quote> that investors will not fund new entrants for."
3646 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3648 "And yet, all of today’s tech giants came into existence despite the "
3649 "entrenched advantage of the companies that came before them. To understand "
3650 "how that happened, you have to understand both interoperability and "
3651 "adversarial interoperability."
3654 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><blockquote><para>
3655 msgid "The hard problem of our species is coordination."
3658 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3660 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is the ability of two technologies to work "
3661 "with one another: Anyone can make an LP that will play on any record player, "
3662 "anyone can make a filter you can install in your stove’s extractor fan, "
3663 "anyone can make gasoline for your car, anyone can make a USB phone charger "
3664 "that fits in your car’s cigarette lighter receptacle, anyone can make a "
3665 "light bulb that works in your light socket, anyone can make bread that will "
3666 "toast in your toaster."
3669 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3671 "Interoperability is often a source of innovation and consumer benefit: Apple "
3672 "made the first commercially successful PC, but millions of independent "
3673 "software vendors made interoperable programs that ran on the Apple II Plus. "
3674 "The simple analog antenna inputs on the back of TVs first allowed cable "
3675 "operators to connect directly to TVs, then they allowed game console "
3676 "companies and then personal computer companies to use standard televisions "
3677 "as displays. Standard RJ-11 telephone jacks allowed for the production of "
3678 "phones from a variety of vendors in a variety of forms, from the free "
3679 "football-shaped phone that came with a <emphasis>Sports Illustrated</"
3680 "emphasis> subscription to business phones with speakers, hold functions, and "
3681 "so on and then answering machines and finally modems, paving the way for the "
3682 "internet revolution."
3685 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3687 "<quote>Interoperability</quote> is often used interchangeably with "
3688 "<quote>standardization,</quote> which is the process when manufacturers and "
3689 "other stakeholders hammer out a set of agreed-upon rules for implementing a "
3690 "technology, such as the electrical plug on your wall, the CAN bus used by "
3691 "your car’s computer systems, or the HTML instructions that your browser "
3695 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3697 "But interoperability doesn’t require standardization — indeed, "
3698 "standardization often proceeds from the chaos of ad hoc interoperability "
3699 "measures. The inventor of the cigarette-lighter USB charger didn’t need to "
3700 "get permission from car manufacturers or even the manufacturers of the "
3701 "dashboard lighter subcomponent. The automakers didn’t take any "
3702 "countermeasures to prevent the use of these aftermarket accessories by their "
3703 "customers, but they also didn’t do anything to make life easier for the "
3704 "chargers’ manufacturers. This is a kind of <quote>neutral interoperability.</"
3708 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3710 "Beyond neutral interoperability, there is <quote>adversarial "
3711 "interoperability.</quote> That’s when a manufacturer makes a product that "
3712 "interoperates with another manufacturer’s product <emphasis>despite the "
3713 "second manufacturer’s objections</emphasis> and <emphasis>even if that means "
3714 "bypassing a security system designed to prevent interoperability</emphasis>."
3717 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3719 "Probably the most familiar form of adversarial interoperability is third-"
3720 "party printer ink. Printer manufacturers claim that they sell printers below "
3721 "cost and that the only way they can recoup the losses they incur is by "
3722 "charging high markups on ink. To prevent the owners of printers from buying "
3723 "ink elsewhere, the printer companies deploy a suite of anti-customer "
3724 "security systems that detect and reject both refilled and third-party "
3728 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3730 "Owners of printers take the position that HP and Epson and Brother are not "
3731 "charities and that customers for their wares have no obligation to help them "
3732 "survive, and so if the companies choose to sell their products at a loss, "
3733 "that’s their foolish choice and their consequences to live with. Likewise, "
3734 "competitors who make ink or refill kits observe that they don’t owe printer "
3735 "companies anything, and their erosion of printer companies’ margins are the "
3736 "printer companies’ problems, not their competitors’. After all, the printer "
3737 "companies shed no tears when they drive a refiller out of business, so why "
3738 "should the refillers concern themselves with the economic fortunes of the "
3739 "printer companies?"
3742 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3744 "Adversarial interoperability has played an outsized role in the history of "
3745 "the tech industry: from the founding of the <quote>alt.*</quote> Usenet "
3746 "hierarchy (which was started against the wishes of Usenet’s maintainers and "
3747 "which grew to be bigger than all of Usenet combined) to the browser wars "
3748 "(when Netscape and Microsoft devoted massive engineering efforts to making "
3749 "their browsers incompatible with the other’s special commands and "
3750 "peccadilloes) to Facebook (whose success was built in part by helping its "
3751 "new users stay in touch with friends they’d left behind on Myspace because "
3752 "Facebook supplied them with a tool that scraped waiting messages from "
3753 "Myspace and imported them into Facebook, effectively creating an Facebook-"
3754 "based Myspace reader)."
3757 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3759 "Today, incumbency is seen as an unassailable advantage. Facebook is where "
3760 "all of your friends are, so no one can start a Facebook competitor. But "
3761 "adversarial compatibility reverses the competitive advantage: If you were "
3762 "allowed to compete with Facebook by providing a tool that imported all your "
3763 "users’ waiting Facebook messages into an environment that competed on lines "
3764 "that Facebook couldn’t cross, like eliminating surveillance and ads, then "
3765 "Facebook would be at a huge disadvantage. It would have assembled all "
3766 "possible ex-Facebook users into a single, easy-to-find service; it would "
3767 "have educated them on how a Facebook-like service worked and what its "
3768 "potential benefits were; and it would have provided an easy means for "
3769 "disgruntled Facebook users to tell their friends where they might expect "
3773 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3775 "Adversarial interoperability was once the norm and a key contributor to the "
3776 "dynamic, vibrant tech scene, but now it is stuck behind a thicket of laws "
3777 "and regulations that add legal risks to the tried-and-true tactics of "
3778 "adversarial interoperability. New rules and new interpretations of existing "
3779 "rules mean that a would-be adversarial interoperator needs to steer clear of "
3780 "claims under copyright, terms of service, trade secrecy, tortious "
3781 "interference, and patent."
3784 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3786 "In the absence of a competitive market, lawmakers have resorted to assigning "
3787 "expensive, state-like duties to Big Tech firms, such as automatically "
3788 "filtering user contributions for copyright infringement or terrorist and "
3789 "extremist content or detecting and preventing harassment in real time or "
3790 "controlling access to sexual material."
3793 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3795 "These measures put a floor under how small we can make Big Tech because only "
3796 "the very largest companies can afford the humans and automated filters "
3797 "needed to perform these duties."
3800 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3802 "But that’s not the only way in which making platforms responsible for "
3803 "policing their users undermines competition. A platform that is expected to "
3804 "police its users’ conduct must prevent many vital adversarial "
3805 "interoperability techniques lest these subvert its policing measures. For "
3806 "example, if someone using a Twitter replacement like Mastodon is able to "
3807 "push messages into Twitter and read messages out of Twitter, they could "
3808 "avoid being caught by automated systems that detect and prevent harassment "
3809 "(such as systems that use the timing of messages or IP-based rules to make "
3810 "guesses about whether someone is a harasser)."
3813 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3815 "To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather "
3816 "than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for "
3817 "better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform "
3818 "out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their "
3819 "communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to "
3820 "block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal "
3821 "enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial interoperability."
3824 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3826 "Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts "
3827 "by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to "
3828 "size. But we can’t do both. To replace today’s giant products with "
3829 "pluralistic protocols, we need to clear the legal thicket that prevents "
3830 "adversarial interoperability so that tomorrow’s nimble, personal, small-"
3831 "scale products can federate themselves with giants like Facebook, allowing "
3832 "the users who’ve left to continue to communicate with users who haven’t left "
3833 "yet, reaching tendrils over Facebook’s garden wall that Facebook’s trapped "
3834 "users can use to scale the walls and escape to the global, open web."
3837 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
3838 msgid "Fake news is an epistemological crisis"
3841 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3843 "Tech is not the only industry that has undergone massive concentration since "
3844 "the Reagan era. Virtually every major industry — from oil to newspapers to "
3845 "meatpacking to sea freight to eyewear to online pornography — has become a "
3846 "clubby oligarchy that just a few players dominate."
3849 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3851 "At the same time, every industry has become something of a tech industry as "
3852 "general-purpose computers and general-purpose networks and the promise of "
3853 "efficiencies through data-driven analysis infuse every device, process, and "
3857 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3859 "This phenomenon of industrial concentration is part of a wider story about "
3860 "wealth concentration overall as a smaller and smaller number of people own "
3861 "more and more of our world. This concentration of both wealth and industries "
3862 "means that our political outcomes are increasingly beholden to the parochial "
3863 "interests of the people and companies with all the money."
3866 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3868 "That means that whenever a regulator asks a question with an obvious, "
3869 "empirical answer (<quote>Are humans causing climate change?</quote> or "
3870 "<quote>Should we let companies conduct commercial mass surveillance?</quote> "
3871 "or <quote>Does society benefit from allowing network neutrality violations?</"
3872 "quote>), the answer that comes out is only correct if that correctness meets "
3873 "with the approval of rich people and the industries that made them so "
3877 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3879 "Rich people have always played an outsized role in politics and more so "
3880 "since the Supreme Court’s <emphasis>Citizens United</emphasis> decision "
3881 "eliminated key controls over political spending. Widening inequality and "
3882 "wealth concentration means that the very richest people are now a lot richer "
3883 "and can afford to spend a lot more money on political projects than ever "
3884 "before. Think of the Koch brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates."
3887 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3889 "But the policy distortions of rich individuals pale in comparison to the "
3890 "policy distortions that concentrated industries are capable of. The "
3891 "companies in highly concentrated industries are much more profitable than "
3892 "companies in competitive industries — no competition means not having to "
3893 "reduce prices or improve quality to win customers — leaving them with bigger "
3894 "capital surpluses to spend on lobbying."
3897 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3899 "Concentrated industries also find it easier to collaborate on policy "
3900 "objectives than competitive ones. When all the top execs from your industry "
3901 "can fit around a single boardroom table, they often do. And <emphasis>when</"
3902 "emphasis> they do, they can forge a consensus position on regulation."
3905 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3907 "Rising through the ranks in a concentrated industry generally means working "
3908 "at two or three of the big companies. When there are only relatively few "
3909 "companies in a given industry, each company has a more ossified executive "
3910 "rank, leaving ambitious execs with fewer paths to higher positions unless "
3911 "they are recruited to a rival. This means that the top execs in concentrated "
3912 "industries are likely to have been colleagues at some point and socialize in "
3913 "the same circles — connected through social ties or, say, serving as "
3914 "trustees for each others’ estates. These tight social bonds foster a "
3915 "collegial, rather than competitive, attitude."
3918 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3920 "Highly concentrated industries also present a regulatory conundrum. When an "
3921 "industry is dominated by just four or five companies, the only people who "
3922 "are likely to truly understand the industry’s practices are its veteran "
3923 "executives. This means that top regulators are often former execs of the "
3924 "companies they are supposed to be regulating. These turns in government are "
3925 "often tacitly understood to be leaves of absence from industry, with former "
3926 "employers welcoming their erstwhile watchdogs back into their executive "
3927 "ranks once their terms have expired."
3930 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3932 "All this is to say that the tight social bonds, small number of firms, and "
3933 "regulatory capture of concentrated industries give the companies that "
3934 "comprise them the power to dictate many, if not all, of the regulations that "
3938 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3940 "This is increasingly obvious. Whether it’s payday lenders <ulink url="
3941 "\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/25/how-payday-lending-"
3942 "industry-insider-tilted-academic-research-its-favor/\">winning the right to "
3943 "practice predatory lending</ulink> or Apple <ulink url=\"https://www.vice."
3944 "com/en_us/article/mgxayp/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation"
3945 "\">winning the right to decide who can fix your phone</ulink> or Google and "
3946 "Facebook winning the right to breach your private data without suffering "
3947 "meaningful consequences or victories for pipeline companies or impunity for "
3948 "opioid manufacturers or massive tax subsidies for incredibly profitable "
3949 "dominant businesses, it’s increasingly apparent that many of our official, "
3950 "evidence-based truth-seeking processes are, in fact, auctions for sale to "
3951 "the highest bidder."
3954 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3956 "It’s really impossible to overstate what a terrifying prospect this is. We "
3957 "live in an incredibly high-tech society, and none of us could acquire the "
3958 "expertise to evaluate every technological proposition that stands between us "
3959 "and our untimely, horrible deaths. You might devote your life to acquiring "
3960 "the media literacy to distinguish good scientific journals from corrupt pay-"
3961 "for-play lookalikes and the statistical literacy to evaluate the quality of "
3962 "the analysis in the journals as well as the microbiology and epidemiology "
3963 "knowledge to determine whether you can trust claims about the safety of "
3964 "vaccines — but that would still leave you unqualified to judge whether the "
3965 "wiring in your home will give you a lethal shock <emphasis>and</emphasis> "
3966 "whether your car’s brakes’ software will cause them to fail unpredictably "
3967 "<emphasis>and</emphasis> whether the hygiene standards at your butcher are "
3968 "sufficient to keep you from dying after you finish your dinner."
3971 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3973 "In a world as complex as this one, we have to defer to authorities, and we "
3974 "keep them honest by making those authorities accountable to us and binding "
3975 "them with rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We can’t possibly acquire "
3976 "the expertise to adjudicate conflicting claims about the best way to make "
3977 "the world safe and prosperous, but we <emphasis>can</emphasis> determine "
3978 "whether the adjudication process itself is trustworthy."
3981 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3982 msgid "Right now, it’s obviously not."
3985 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3987 "The past 40 years of rising inequality and industry concentration, together "
3988 "with increasingly weak accountability and transparency for expert agencies, "
3989 "has created an increasingly urgent sense of impending doom, the sense that "
3990 "there are vast conspiracies afoot that operate with tacit official approval "
3991 "despite the likelihood they are working to better themselves by ruining the "
3995 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
3997 "For example, it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that "
3998 "its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those "
3999 "decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and "
4000 "sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the "
4001 "cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you and everyone "
4002 "you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start "
4003 "questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether "
4004 "they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy."
4007 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4009 "The collapse of the credibility of our systems for divining and upholding "
4010 "truths has left us in a state of epistemological chaos. Once, most of us "
4011 "might have assumed that the system was working and that our regulations "
4012 "reflected our best understanding of the empirical truths of the world as "
4013 "they were best understood — now we have to find our own experts to help us "
4014 "sort the true from the false."
4017 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4019 "If you’re like me, you probably believe that vaccines are safe, but you "
4020 "(like me) probably also can’t explain the microbiology or statistics. Few of "
4021 "us have the math skills to review the literature on vaccine safety and "
4022 "describe why their statistical reasoning is sound. Likewise, few of us can "
4023 "review the stats in the (now discredited) literature on opioid safety and "
4024 "explain how those stats were manipulated. Both vaccines and opioids were "
4025 "embraced by medical authorities, after all, and one is safe while the other "
4026 "could ruin your life. You’re left with a kind of inchoate constellation of "
4027 "rules of thumb about which experts you trust to fact-check controversial "
4028 "claims and then to explain how all those respectable doctors with their peer-"
4029 "reviewed research on opioid safety <emphasis>were</emphasis> an aberration "
4030 "and then how you know that the doctors writing about vaccine safety are "
4031 "<emphasis>not</emphasis> an aberration."
4034 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4036 "I’m 100% certain that vaccinating is safe and effective, but I’m also at "
4037 "something of a loss to explain exactly, <emphasis>precisely,</emphasis> why "
4038 "I believe this, given all the corruption I know about and the many times the "
4039 "stamp of certainty has turned out to be a parochial lie told to further "
4040 "enrich the super rich."
4043 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4045 "Fake news — conspiracy theories, racist ideologies, scientific denialism — "
4046 "has always been with us. What’s changed today is not the mix of ideas in the "
4047 "public discourse but the popularity of the worst ideas in that mix. "
4048 "Conspiracy and denial have skyrocketed in lockstep with the growth of Big "
4049 "Inequality, which has also tracked the rise of Big Tech and Big Pharma and "
4050 "Big Wrestling and Big Car and Big Movie Theater and Big Everything Else."
4053 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4055 "No one can say for certain why this has happened, but the two dominant camps "
4056 "are idealism (the belief that the people who argue for these conspiracies "
4057 "have gotten better at explaining them, maybe with the help of machine-"
4058 "learning tools) or materialism (the ideas have become more attractive "
4059 "because of material conditions in the world)."
4062 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4064 "I’m a materialist. I’ve been exposed to the arguments of conspiracy "
4065 "theorists all my life, and I have not experienced any qualitative leap in "
4066 "the quality of those arguments."
4069 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4071 "The major difference is in the world, not the arguments. In a time where "
4072 "actual conspiracies are commonplace, conspiracy theories acquire a ring of "
4076 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4078 "We have always had disagreements about what’s true, but today, we have a "
4079 "disagreement over how we know whether something is true. This is an "
4080 "epistemological crisis, not a crisis over belief. It’s a crisis over the "
4081 "credibility of our truth-seeking exercises, from scientific journals (in an "
4082 "era where the biggest journal publishers have been caught producing pay-to-"
4083 "play journals for junk science) to regulations (in an era where regulators "
4084 "are routinely cycling in and out of business) to education (in an era where "
4085 "universities are dependent on corporate donations to keep their lights on)."
4088 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4090 "Targeting — surveillance capitalism — makes it easier to find people who are "
4091 "undergoing this epistemological crisis, but it doesn’t create the crisis. "
4092 "For that, you need to look to corruption."
4095 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4097 "And, conveniently enough, it’s corruption that allows surveillance "
4098 "capitalism to grow by dismantling monopoly protections, by permitting "
4099 "reckless collection and retention of personal data, by allowing ads to be "
4100 "targeted in secret, and by foreclosing on the possibility of going somewhere "
4101 "else where you might continue to enjoy your friends without subjecting "
4102 "yourself to commercial surveillance."
4105 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4106 msgid "Tech is different"
4109 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4111 "I reject both iterations of technological exceptionalism. I reject the idea "
4112 "that tech is uniquely terrible and led by people who are greedier or worse "
4113 "than the leaders of other industries, and I reject the idea that tech is so "
4114 "good — or so intrinsically prone to concentration — that it can’t be blamed "
4115 "for its present-day monopolistic status."
4118 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4120 "I think tech is just another industry, albeit one that grew up in the "
4121 "absence of real monopoly constraints. It may have been first, but it isn’t "
4122 "the worst nor will it be the last."
4125 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4127 "But there’s one way in which I <emphasis>am</emphasis> a tech "
4128 "exceptionalist. I believe that online tools are the key to overcoming "
4129 "problems that are much more urgent than tech monopolization: climate change, "
4130 "inequality, misogyny, and discrimination on the basis of race, gender "
4131 "identity, and other factors. The internet is how we will recruit people to "
4132 "fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor. Tech is not a "
4133 "substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or "
4134 "stability — but it’s a means to achieve these things."
4137 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4139 "The hard problem of our species is coordination. Everything from climate "
4140 "change to social change to running a business to making a family work can be "
4141 "viewed as a collective action problem."
4144 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4146 "The internet makes it easier than at any time before to find people who want "
4147 "to work on a project with you — hence the success of free and open-source "
4148 "software, crowdfunding, and racist terror groups — and easier than ever to "
4149 "coordinate the work you do."
4152 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4154 "The internet and the computers we connect to it also possess an exceptional "
4155 "quality: general-purposeness. The internet is designed to allow any two "
4156 "parties to communicate any data, using any protocol, without permission from "
4157 "anyone else. The only production design we have for computers is the general-"
4158 "purpose, <quote>Turing complete</quote> computer that can run every program "
4159 "we can express in symbolic logic."
4162 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4164 "This means that every time someone with a special communications need "
4165 "invests in infrastructure and techniques to make the internet faster, "
4166 "cheaper, and more robust, this benefit redounds to everyone else who is "
4167 "using the internet to communicate. And this also means that every time "
4168 "someone with a special computing need invests to make computers faster, "
4169 "cheaper, and more robust, every other computing application is a potential "
4170 "beneficiary of this work."
4173 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4175 "For these reasons, every type of communication is gradually absorbed into "
4176 "the internet, and every type of device — from airplanes to pacemakers — "
4177 "eventually becomes a computer in a fancy case."
4179 "På grunn av dette, vil enhver form for kommunikasjon gradvis absorberes inn "
4180 "i Internett, og enhver type dings — fra fly til pacemakere — på sikt bli en "
4181 "datamaskin i en stilig boks."
4183 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4185 "While these considerations don’t preclude regulating networks and computers, "
4186 "they do call for gravitas and caution when doing so because changes to "
4187 "regulatory frameworks could ripple out to have unintended consequences in "
4188 "many, many other domains."
4191 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4193 "The upshot of this is that our best hope of solving the big coordination "
4194 "problems — climate change, inequality, etc. — is with free, fair, and open "
4195 "tech. Our best hope of keeping tech free, fair, and open is to exercise "
4196 "caution in how we regulate tech and to attend closely to the ways in which "
4197 "interventions to solve one problem might create problems in other domains."
4200 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4201 msgid "Ownership of facts"
4202 msgstr "Eierskap til fakta"
4204 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4206 "Big Tech has a funny relationship with information. When you’re generating "
4207 "information — anything from the location data streaming off your mobile "
4208 "device to the private messages you send to friends on a social network — it "
4209 "claims the rights to make unlimited use of that data."
4212 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4214 "But when you have the audacity to turn the tables — to use a tool that "
4215 "blocks ads or slurps your waiting updates out of a social network and puts "
4216 "them in another app that lets you set your own priorities and suggestions or "
4217 "crawls their system to allow you to start a rival business — they claim that "
4218 "you’re stealing from them."
4221 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4223 "The thing is, information is a very bad fit for any kind of private property "
4224 "regime. Property rights are useful for establishing markets that can lead to "
4225 "the effective development of fallow assets. These markets depend on clear "
4226 "titles to ensure that the things being bought and sold in them can, in fact, "
4227 "be bought and sold."
4230 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4232 "Information rarely has such a clear title. Take phone numbers: There’s "
4233 "clearly something going wrong when Facebook slurps up millions of users’ "
4234 "address books and uses the phone numbers it finds in them to plot out social "
4235 "graphs and fill in missing information about other users."
4238 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4240 "But the phone numbers Facebook nonconsensually acquires in this transaction "
4241 "are not the <quote>property</quote> of the users they’re taken from nor do "
4242 "they belong to the people whose phones ring when you dial those numbers. The "
4243 "numbers are mere integers, 10 digits in the U.S. and Canada, and they "
4244 "appear in millions of places, including somewhere deep in pi as well as "
4245 "numerous other contexts. Giving people ownership titles to integers is an "
4246 "obviously terrible idea."
4249 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4251 "Likewise for the facts that Facebook and other commercial surveillance "
4252 "operators acquire about us, like that we are the children of our parents or "
4253 "the parents to our children or that we had a conversation with someone else "
4254 "or went to a public place. These data points can’t be property in the sense "
4255 "that your house or your shirt is your property because the title to them is "
4256 "intrinsically muddy: Does your mom own the fact that she is your mother? Do "
4257 "you? Do both of you? What about your dad — does he own this fact too, or "
4258 "does he have to license the fact from you (or your mom or both of you) in "
4259 "order to use this fact? What about the hundreds or thousands of other people "
4260 "who know these facts?"
4263 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4265 "If you go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, do the other demonstrators "
4266 "need your permission to post their photos from the event? The online fights "
4267 "over <ulink url=\"https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-take-photos-at-protests/"
4268 "\">when and how to post photos from demonstrations</ulink> reveal a nuanced, "
4269 "complex issue that cannot be easily hand-waved away by giving one party a "
4270 "property right that everyone else in the mix has to respect."
4273 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4275 "The fact that information isn’t a good fit with property and markets doesn’t "
4276 "mean that it’s not valuable. Babies aren’t property, but they’re inarguably "
4277 "valuable. In fact, we have a whole set of rules just for babies as well as a "
4278 "subset of those rules that apply to humans more generally. Someone who "
4279 "argues that babies won’t be truly valuable until they can be bought and sold "
4280 "like loaves of bread would be instantly and rightfully condemned as a "
4284 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4286 "It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your "
4287 "information like a nail — not least because Big Tech are such prolific "
4288 "abusers of property hammers when it comes to <emphasis>their</emphasis> "
4289 "information. But this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use "
4290 "of our information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market "
4291 "where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as to "
4292 "be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of zero in a "
4293 "click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to modify."
4296 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4298 "Meanwhile, establishing property rights over information will create "
4299 "insurmountable barriers to independent data processing. Imagine that we "
4300 "require a license to be negotiated when a translated document is compared "
4301 "with its original, something Google has done and continues to do billions of "
4302 "times to train its automated language translation tools. Google can afford "
4303 "this, but independent third parties cannot. Google can staff a clearances "
4304 "department to negotiate one-time payments to the likes of the EU (one of the "
4305 "major repositories of translated documents) while independent watchdogs "
4306 "wanting to verify that the translations are well-prepared, or to root out "
4307 "bias in translations, will find themselves needing a staffed-up legal "
4308 "department and millions for licenses before they can even get started."
4311 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4313 "The same goes for things like search indexes of the web or photos of "
4314 "peoples’ houses, which have become contentious thanks to Google’s Street "
4315 "View project. Whatever problems may exist with Google’s photographing of "
4316 "street scenes, resolving them by letting people decide who can take pictures "
4317 "of the facades of their homes from a public street will surely create even "
4318 "worse ones. Think of how street photography is important for newsgathering — "
4319 "including informal newsgathering, like photographing abuses of authority — "
4320 "and how being able to document housing and street life are important for "
4321 "contesting eminent domain, advocating for social aid, reporting planning and "
4322 "zoning violations, documenting discriminatory and unequal living conditions, "
4326 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4328 "The ownership of facts is antithetical to many kinds of human progress. It’s "
4329 "hard to imagine a rule that limits Big Tech’s exploitation of our collective "
4330 "labors without inadvertently banning people from gathering data on online "
4331 "harassment or compiling indexes of changes in language or simply "
4332 "investigating how the platforms are shaping our discourse — all of which "
4333 "require scraping data that other people have created and subjecting it to "
4334 "scrutiny and analysis."
4337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4338 msgid "Persuasion works… slowly"
4339 msgstr "Overtalelse virker… sakte"
4341 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4343 "The platforms may oversell their ability to persuade people, but obviously, "
4344 "persuasion works sometimes. Whether it’s the private realm that LGBTQ people "
4345 "used to recruit allies and normalize sexual diversity or the decadeslong "
4346 "project to convince people that markets are the only efficient way to solve "
4347 "complicated resource allocation problems, it’s clear that our societal "
4348 "attitudes <emphasis>can</emphasis> change."
4351 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4353 "The project of shifting societal attitudes is a game of inches and years. "
4354 "For centuries, svengalis have purported to be able to accelerate this "
4355 "process, but even the most brutal forms of propaganda have struggled to make "
4356 "permanent changes. Joseph Goebbels was able to subject Germans to daily, "
4357 "mandatory, hourslong radio broadcasts, to round up and torture and murder "
4358 "dissidents, and to seize full control over their children’s education while "
4359 "banning any literature, broadcasts, or films that did not comport with his "
4363 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4365 "Yet, after 12 years of terror, once the war ended, Nazi ideology was largely "
4366 "discredited in both East and West Germany, and a program of national truth "
4367 "and reconciliation was put in its place. Racism and authoritarianism were "
4368 "never fully abolished in Germany, but neither were the majority of Germans "
4369 "irrevocably convinced of Nazism — and the rise of racist authoritarianism in "
4370 "Germany today tells us that the liberal attitudes that replaced Nazism were "
4371 "no more permanent than Nazism itself."
4374 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4376 "Racism and authoritarianism have also always been with us. Anyone who’s "
4377 "reviewed the kind of messages and arguments that racists put forward today "
4378 "would be hard-pressed to say that they have gotten better at presenting "
4379 "their ideas. The same pseudoscience, appeals to fear, and circular logic "
4380 "that racists presented in the 1980s, when the cause of white supremacy was "
4381 "on the wane, are to be found in the communications of leading white "
4382 "nationalists today."
4385 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4387 "If racists haven’t gotten more convincing in the past decade, then how is it "
4388 "that more people were convinced to be openly racist at that time? I believe "
4389 "that the answer lies in the material world, not the world of ideas. The "
4390 "ideas haven’t gotten more convincing, but people have become more afraid. "
4391 "Afraid that the state can’t be trusted to act as an honest broker in life-or-"
4392 "death decisions, from those regarding the management of the economy to the "
4393 "regulation of painkillers to the rules for handling private information. "
4394 "Afraid that the world has become a game of musical chairs in which the "
4395 "chairs are being taken away at a never-before-seen rate. Afraid that justice "
4396 "for others will come at their expense. Monopolism isn’t the cause of these "
4397 "fears, but the inequality and material desperation and policy malpractice "
4398 "that monopolism contributes to is a significant contributor to these "
4399 "conditions. Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies and "
4400 "violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets "
4401 "opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded."
4404 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4405 msgid "Paying won’t help"
4406 msgstr "Det hjelper ikke å betale"
4408 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4410 "As the old saw goes, <quote>If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the "
4414 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4416 "It’s a commonplace belief today that the advent of free, ad-supported media "
4417 "was the original sin of surveillance capitalism. The reasoning is that the "
4418 "companies that charged for access couldn’t <quote>compete with free</quote> "
4419 "and so they were driven out of business. Their ad-supported competitors, "
4420 "meanwhile, declared open season on their users’ data in a bid to improve "
4421 "their ad targeting and make more money and then resorted to the most "
4422 "sensationalist tactics to generate clicks on those ads. If only we’d pay for "
4423 "media again, we’d have a better, more responsible, more sober discourse that "
4424 "would be better for democracy."
4427 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4429 "But the degradation of news products long precedes the advent of ad-"
4430 "supported online news. Long before newspapers were online, lax antitrust "
4431 "enforcement had opened the door for unprecedented waves of consolidation and "
4432 "roll-ups in newsrooms. Rival newspapers were merged, reporters and ad sales "
4433 "staff were laid off, physical plants were sold and leased back, leaving the "
4434 "companies loaded up with debt through leveraged buyouts and subsequent "
4435 "profit-taking by the new owners. In other words, it wasn’t merely shifts in "
4436 "the classified advertising market, which was long held to be the primary "
4437 "driver in the decline of the traditional newsroom, that made news companies "
4438 "unable to adapt to the internet — it was monopolism."
4441 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4443 "Then, as news companies <emphasis>did</emphasis> come online, the ad "
4444 "revenues they commanded dropped even as the number of internet users (and "
4445 "thus potential online readers) increased. That shift was a function of "
4446 "consolidation in the ad sales market, with Google and Facebook emerging as "
4447 "duopolists who made more money every year from advertising while paying less "
4448 "and less of it to the publishers whose work the ads appeared alongside. "
4449 "Monopolism created a buyer’s market for ad inventory with Facebook and "
4450 "Google acting as gatekeepers."
4453 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4455 "Paid services continue to exist alongside free ones, and often it is these "
4456 "paid services — anxious to prevent people from bypassing their paywalls or "
4457 "sharing paid media with freeloaders — that exert the most control over their "
4458 "customers. Apple’s iTunes and App Stores are paid services, but to maximize "
4459 "their profitability, Apple has to lock its platforms so that third parties "
4460 "can’t make compatible software without permission. These locks allow the "
4461 "company to exercise both editorial control (enabling it to exclude <ulink "
4462 "url=\"https://ncac.org/news/blog/does-apples-strict-app-store-content-policy-"
4463 "limit-freedom-of-expression\">controversial political material</ulink>) and "
4464 "technological control, including control over who can repair the devices it "
4465 "makes. If we’re worried that ad-supported products deprive people of their "
4466 "right to self-determination by using persuasion techniques to nudge their "
4467 "purchase decisions a few degrees in one direction or the other, then the "
4468 "near-total control a single company holds over the decision of who gets to "
4469 "sell you software, parts, and service for your iPhone should have us very "
4473 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4475 "We shouldn’t just be concerned about payment and control: The idea that "
4476 "paying will improve discourse is also dangerously wrong. The poor success "
4477 "rate of targeted advertising means that the platforms have to incentivize "
4478 "you to <quote>engage</quote> with posts at extremely high levels to generate "
4479 "enough pageviews to safeguard their profits. As discussed earlier, to "
4480 "increase engagement, platforms like Facebook use machine learning to guess "
4481 "which messages will be most inflammatory and make a point of shoving those "
4482 "into your eyeballs at every turn so that you will hate-click and argue with "
4486 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4488 "Perhaps paying would fix this, the reasoning goes. If platforms could be "
4489 "economically viable even if you stopped clicking on them once your "
4490 "intellectual and social curiosity had been slaked, then they would have no "
4491 "reason to algorithmically enrage you to get more clicks out of you, right?"
4494 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4496 "There may be something to that argument, but it still ignores the wider "
4497 "economic and political context of the platforms and the world that allowed "
4498 "them to grow so dominant."
4501 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4503 "Platforms are world-spanning and all-encompassing because they are "
4504 "monopolies, and they are monopolies because we have gutted our most "
4505 "important and reliable anti-monopoly rules. Antitrust was neutered as a key "
4506 "part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project has "
4507 "worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net worth, and "
4508 "even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, undersaved for "
4509 "retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and undersecured against "
4510 "climate and technology shocks."
4513 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4515 "In this wildly unequal world, paying doesn’t improve the discourse; it "
4516 "simply prices discourse out of the range of the majority of people. Paying "
4517 "for the product is dandy, if you can afford it."
4520 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4522 "If you think today’s filter bubbles are a problem for our discourse, imagine "
4523 "what they’d be like if rich people inhabited free-flowing Athenian "
4524 "marketplaces of ideas where you have to pay for admission while everyone "
4525 "else lives in online spaces that are subsidized by wealthy benefactors who "
4526 "relish the chance to establish conversational spaces where the <quote>house "
4527 "rules</quote> forbid questioning the status quo. That is, imagine if the "
4528 "rich seceded from Facebook, and then, instead of running ads that made money "
4529 "for shareholders, Facebook became a billionaire’s vanity project that also "
4530 "happened to ensure that nobody talked about whether it was fair that only "
4531 "billionaires could afford to hang out in the rarified corners of the "
4535 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4537 "Behind the idea of paying for access is a belief that free markets will "
4538 "address Big Tech’s dysfunction. After all, to the extent that people have a "
4539 "view of surveillance at all, it is generally an unfavorable one, and the "
4540 "longer and more thoroughly one is surveilled, the less one tends to like it. "
4541 "Same goes for lock-in: If HP’s ink or Apple’s App Store were really "
4542 "obviously fantastic, they wouldn’t need technical measures to prevent users "
4543 "from choosing a rival’s product. The only reason these technical "
4544 "countermeasures exist is that the companies don’t believe their customers "
4545 "would <emphasis>voluntarily</emphasis> submit to their terms, and they want "
4546 "to deprive them of the choice to take their business elsewhere."
4549 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4551 "Advocates for markets laud their ability to aggregate the diffused knowledge "
4552 "of buyers and sellers across a whole society through demand signals, price "
4553 "signals, and so on. The argument for surveillance capitalism being a "
4554 "<quote>rogue capitalism</quote> is that machine-learning-driven persuasion "
4555 "techniques distort decision-making by consumers, leading to incorrect "
4556 "signals — consumers don’t buy what they prefer, they buy what they’re "
4557 "tricked into preferring. It follows that the monopolistic practices of lock-"
4558 "in, which do far more to constrain consumers’ free choices, are even more of "
4559 "a <quote>rogue capitalism.</quote>"
4562 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4564 "The profitability of any business is constrained by the possibility that its "
4565 "customers will take their business elsewhere. Both surveillance and lock-in "
4566 "are anti-features that no customer wants. But monopolies can capture their "
4567 "regulators, crush their competitors, insert themselves into their customers’ "
4568 "lives, and corral people into <quote>choosing</quote> their services "
4569 "regardless of whether they want them — it’s fine to be terrible when there "
4570 "is no alternative."
4573 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4575 "Ultimately, surveillance and lock-in are both simply business strategies "
4576 "that monopolists can choose. Surveillance companies like Google are "
4577 "perfectly capable of deploying lock-in technologies — just look at the "
4578 "onerous Android licensing terms that require device-makers to bundle in "
4579 "Google’s suite of applications. And lock-in companies like Apple are "
4580 "perfectly capable of subjecting their users to surveillance if it means "
4581 "keeping the Chinese government happy and preserving ongoing access to "
4582 "Chinese markets. Monopolies may be made up of good, ethical people, but as "
4583 "institutions, they are not your friend — they will do whatever they can get "
4584 "away with to maximize their profits, and the more monopolistic they are, the "
4585 "more they <emphasis>can</emphasis> get away with."
4588 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4589 msgid "An <quote>ecology</quote> moment for trustbusting"
4592 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4594 "If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re "
4595 "going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and old-"
4596 "fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of "
4597 "automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool "
4601 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4603 "Meanwhile, breaking up monopolies is something we seem to have forgotten how "
4604 "to do. There is a bipartisan, trans-Atlantic consensus that breaking up "
4605 "companies is a fool’s errand at best — liable to mire your federal "
4606 "prosecutors in decades of litigation — and counterproductive at worst, "
4607 "eroding the <quote>consumer benefits</quote> of large companies with massive "
4608 "efficiencies of scale."
4611 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4613 "But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing "
4614 "robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip "
4615 "on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the "
4616 "political will — until the people convinced politicians they’d have their "
4617 "backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world."
4620 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4621 msgid "Could we find that political will again?"
4624 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4626 "Copyright scholar James Boyle has described how the term <quote>ecology</"
4627 "quote> marked a turning point in environmental activism. Prior to the "
4628 "adoption of this term, people who wanted to preserve whale populations "
4629 "didn’t necessarily see themselves as fighting the same battle as people who "
4630 "wanted to protect the ozone layer or fight freshwater pollution or beat back "
4631 "smog or acid rain."
4634 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4636 "But the term <quote>ecology</quote> welded these disparate causes together "
4637 "into a single movement, and the members of this movement found solidarity "
4638 "with one another. The people who cared about smog signed petitions "
4639 "circulated by the people who wanted to end whaling, and the anti-whalers "
4640 "marched alongside the people demanding action on acid rain. This uniting "
4641 "behind a common cause completely changed the dynamics of environmentalism, "
4642 "setting the stage for today’s climate activism and the sense that preserving "
4643 "the habitability of the planet Earth is a shared duty among all people."
4646 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4648 "I believe we are on the verge of a new <quote>ecology</quote> moment "
4649 "dedicated to combating monopolies. After all, tech isn’t the only "
4650 "concentrated industry nor is it even the <emphasis>most</emphasis> "
4651 "concentrated of industries."
4654 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4656 "You can find partisans for trustbusting in every sector of the economy. "
4657 "Everywhere you look, you can find people who’ve been wronged by monopolists "
4658 "who’ve trashed their finances, their health, their privacy, their "
4659 "educations, and the lives of people they love. Those people have the same "
4660 "cause as the people who want to break up Big Tech and the same enemies. When "
4661 "most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a very few, it follows that "
4662 "nearly every large company will have overlapping shareholders."
4665 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4667 "That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of "
4668 "coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big "
4669 "Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook, "
4670 "then we take AT&T/WarnerMedia."
4673 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4675 "But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech "
4676 "<emphasis>instead</emphasis> of breaking up the big companies also "
4677 "forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later."
4679 "Men her er de dårlige nyhetene: Mye av det vi gjør for å temme "
4680 "Storteknologien <emphasis>i stedet</emphasis> for å bryte opp de store "
4681 "selskapene, vil gjøre det vanskeligere å bryte dem opp senere."
4683 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4685 "Big Tech’s concentration currently means that their inaction on harassment, "
4686 "for example, leaves users with an impossible choice: absent themselves from "
4687 "public discourse by, say, quitting Twitter or endure vile, constant abuse. "
4688 "Big Tech’s over-collection and over-retention of data results in horrific "
4689 "identity theft. And their inaction on extremist recruitment means that white "
4690 "supremacists who livestream their shooting rampages can reach an audience of "
4691 "billions. The combination of tech concentration and media concentration "
4692 "means that artists’ incomes are falling even as the revenue generated by "
4693 "their creations are increasing."
4696 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4698 "Yet governments confronting all of these problems all inevitably converge on "
4699 "the same solution: deputize the Big Tech giants to police their users and "
4700 "render them liable for their users’ bad actions. The drive to force Big Tech "
4701 "to use automated filters to block everything from copyright infringement to "
4702 "sex-trafficking to violent extremism means that tech companies will have to "
4703 "allocate hundreds of millions to run these compliance systems."
4706 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4708 "These rules — the EU’s new Directive on Copyright, Australia’s new terror "
4709 "regulation, America’s FOSTA/SESTA sex-trafficking law and more — are not "
4710 "just death warrants for small, upstart competitors that might challenge Big "
4711 "Tech’s dominance but who lack the deep pockets of established incumbents to "
4712 "pay for all these automated systems. Worse still, these rules put a floor "
4713 "under how small we can hope to make Big Tech."
4716 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4718 "That’s because any move to break up Big Tech and cut it down to size will "
4719 "have to cope with the hard limit of not making these companies so small that "
4720 "they can no longer afford to perform these duties — and it’s "
4721 "<emphasis>expensive</emphasis> to invest in those automated filters and "
4722 "outsource content moderation. It’s already going to be hard to unwind these "
4723 "deeply concentrated, chimeric behemoths that have been welded together in "
4724 "the pursuit of monopoly profits. Doing so while simultaneously finding some "
4725 "way to fill the regulatory void that will be left behind if these self-"
4726 "policing rulers were forced to suddenly abdicate will be much, much harder."
4729 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4731 "Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a "
4732 "dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties "
4733 "to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually "
4734 "impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms "
4735 "don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will "
4736 "create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the "
4737 "companies, which will make them bigger still."
4740 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4742 "We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them "
4743 "of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend "
4744 "their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We have to "
4745 "choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet "
4746 "commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to "
4747 "behave themselves."
4750 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4751 msgid "Make Big Tech small again"
4752 msgstr "Gjør Storteknologien liten igjen"
4754 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4756 "Trustbusting is hard. Breaking big companies into smaller ones is expensive "
4757 "and time-consuming. So time-consuming that by the time you’re done, the "
4758 "world has often moved on and rendered years of litigation irrelevant. From "
4759 "1969 to 1982, the U.S. government pursued an antitrust case against IBM over "
4760 "its dominance of mainframe computing — but the case collapsed in 1982 "
4761 "because mainframes were being speedily replaced by PCs."
4764 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><blockquote><para>
4766 "A future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general to "
4767 "enforce the law as it was written."
4769 "En fremtidig president i USA kunne ganske enkelt be sin justisminister om å "
4770 "håndheve loven slik den er skrevet."
4772 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4774 "It’s far easier to prevent concentration than to fix it, and reinstating the "
4775 "traditional contours of U.S. antitrust enforcement will, at the very least, "
4776 "prevent further concentration. That means bans on mergers between large "
4777 "companies, on big companies acquiring nascent competitors, and on platform "
4778 "companies competing directly with the companies that rely on the platforms."
4781 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4783 "These powers are all in the plain language of U.S. antitrust laws, so in "
4784 "theory, a future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general "
4785 "to enforce the law as it was written. But after decades of judicial "
4786 "<quote>education</quote> in the benefits of monopolies, after multiple "
4787 "administrations that have packed the federal courts with lifetime-appointed "
4788 "monopoly cheerleaders, it’s not clear that mere administrative action would "
4792 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4794 "If the courts frustrate the Justice Department and the president, the next "
4795 "stop would be Congress, which could eliminate any doubt about how antitrust "
4796 "law should be enforced in the U.S. by passing new laws that boil down to "
4797 "saying, <quote>Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act says. Robert "
4798 "Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, <emphasis>fuck that "
4799 "guy</emphasis>.</quote> In other words, the problem with monopolies is "
4800 "<emphasis>monopolism</emphasis> — the concentration of power into too few "
4801 "hands, which erodes our right to self-determination. If there is a monopoly, "
4802 "the law wants it gone, period. Sure, get rid of monopolies that create "
4803 "<quote>consumer harm</quote> in the form of higher prices, but also, "
4804 "<emphasis>get rid of other monopolies, too.</emphasis>"
4807 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4809 "But this only prevents things from getting worse. To help them get better, "
4810 "we will have to build coalitions with other activists in the anti-monopoly "
4811 "ecology movement — a pluralism movement or a self-determination movement — "
4812 "and target existing monopolies in every industry for breakup and structural "
4813 "separation rules that prevent, for example, the giant eyewear monopolist "
4814 "Luxottica from dominating both the sale and the manufacture of spectacles."
4817 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4819 "In an important sense, it doesn’t matter which industry the breakups begin "
4820 "in. Once they start, shareholders in <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry "
4821 "will start to eye their investments in monopolists skeptically. As "
4822 "trustbusters ride into town and start making lives miserable for "
4823 "monopolists, the debate around every corporate boardroom’s table will shift. "
4824 "People within corporations who’ve always felt uneasy about monopolism will "
4825 "gain a powerful new argument to fend off their evil rivals in the corporate "
4826 "hierarchy: <quote>If we do it my way, we make less money; if we do it your "
4827 "way, a judge will fine us billions and expose us to ridicule and public "
4828 "disapprobation. So even though I get that it would be really cool to do that "
4829 "merger, lock out that competitor, or buy that little company and kill it "
4830 "before it can threaten it, we really shouldn’t — not if we don’t want to get "
4831 "tied to the DOJ’s bumper and get dragged up and down Trustbuster Road for "
4832 "the next 10 years.</quote>"
4835 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4839 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4841 "Fixing Big Tech will require a lot of iteration. As cyber lawyer Lawrence "
4842 "Lessig wrote in his 1999 book, <emphasis>Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace</"
4843 "emphasis>, our lives are regulated by four forces: law (what’s legal), code "
4844 "(what’s technologically possible), norms (what’s socially acceptable), and "
4845 "markets (what’s profitable)."
4848 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4850 "If you could wave a wand and get Congress to pass a law that re-fanged the "
4851 "Sherman Act tomorrow, you could use the impending breakups to convince "
4852 "venture capitalists to fund competitors to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and "
4853 "Apple that would be waiting in the wings after they were cut down to size."
4855 "Hvis du kunne svinge en tryllestav å få kongressen til å vedta en lov som "
4856 "vedtok Sherman-loven på nytt i morgen, så kunne du bruke den påfølgende "
4857 "oppsplittingen til å overbevise risikokapitalister om å finansiere "
4858 "konkurrentene til Facebook, Google, Twitter og Apple som ville vente i "
4859 "utkanten etter at disse ble gjort mindre."
4861 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4863 "But getting Congress to act will require a massive normative shift, a mass "
4864 "movement of people who care about monopolies — and pulling them apart."
4866 "Men å få kongressen til å gjøre noe vil kreve en massiv normativ endring, en "
4867 "massebevegelse av folk som bryr seg om monopoler — og hvordan bryte dem opp."
4869 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4871 "Getting people to care about monopolies will take technological "
4872 "interventions that help them to see what a world free from Big Tech might "
4873 "look like. Imagine if someone could make a beloved (but unauthorized) third-"
4874 "party Facebook or Twitter client that dampens the anxiety-producing "
4875 "algorithmic drumbeat and still lets you talk to your friends without being "
4876 "spied upon — something that made social media more sociable and less toxic. "
4877 "Now imagine that it gets shut down in a brutal legal battle. It’s always "
4878 "easier to convince people that something must be done to save a thing they "
4879 "love than it is to excite them about something that doesn’t even exist yet."
4882 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4884 "Neither tech nor law nor code nor markets are sufficient to reform Big Tech. "
4885 "But a profitable competitor to Big Tech could bankroll a legislative push; "
4886 "legal reform can embolden a toolsmith to make a better tool; the tool can "
4887 "create customers for a potential business who value the benefits of the "
4888 "internet but want them delivered without Big Tech; and that business can get "
4889 "funded and divert some of its profits to legal reform. 20 GOTO 10 (or "
4890 "lather, rinse, repeat). Do it again, but this time, get farther! After all, "
4891 "this time you’re starting with weaker Big Tech adversaries, a constituency "
4892 "that understands things can be better, Big Tech rivals who’ll help ensure "
4893 "their own future by bankrolling reform, and code that other programmers can "
4894 "build on to weaken Big Tech even further."
4897 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4899 "The surveillance capitalism hypothesis — that Big Tech’s products really "
4900 "work as well as they say they do and that’s why everything is so screwed up "
4901 "— is way too easy on surveillance and even easier on capitalism. Companies "
4902 "spy because they believe their own BS, and companies spy because governments "
4903 "let them, and companies spy because any advantage from spying is so short-"
4904 "lived and minor that they have to do more and more of it just to stay in "
4908 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4910 "As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism "
4911 "that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a "
4912 "form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to "
4913 "inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason "
4914 "companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to "
4915 "both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall "
4916 "to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not "
4917 "piss off the monopolists."
4920 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4922 "Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule "
4923 "begets surveillance. Surveillance isn’t bad because it lets people "
4924 "manipulate us. It’s bad because it crushes our ability to be our authentic "
4925 "selves — and because it lets the rich and powerful figure out who might be "
4926 "thinking of building guillotines and what dirt they can use to discredit "
4927 "those embryonic guillotine-builders before they can even get to the "
4930 "Overvåkning får ikke kapitalismen ut av kontroll. Kapitalismens "
4931 "ukontrollerte styre startet før overvåkningen. Overvåkning er ikke ille "
4932 "fordi det lar folk manipulere oss. Den er ille fordi den knuser vår mulighet "
4933 "til å være oss selv — og fordi det lar de rike og mektige finne ut hvem som "
4934 "kan vurdere å bygge gilliotiner og hvilken dritt de kan bruke for å "
4935 "diskredittere disse potensielle gilliotin-byggerne før de i det hele tatt "
4936 "kommer seg til treverkforhandleren."
4938 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><title>
4939 msgid "Up and through"
4942 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4944 "With all the problems of Big Tech, it’s tempting to imagine solving the "
4945 "problem by returning to a world without tech at all. Resist that temptation."
4947 "Men alle problemene med Storteknologien, så er det fristende å forestille "
4948 "seg å løse problemet ved å gå tilbake til en verden helt uten teknologi. Stå "
4949 "imot den fristelsen."
4951 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4953 "The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our future is "
4954 "not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization has fallen. Big "
4955 "Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the "
4956 "proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the "
4957 "existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it’s up to us to seize "
4958 "the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under "
4959 "democratic, accountable control."
4962 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><sect1><para>
4964 "I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. Not "
4965 "in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to monopolize "
4966 "because it has <quote>economies of scale</quote> or some other nebulous "
4967 "feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right "
4968 "matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe — and "
4969 "doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our "
4970 "civilization, our species, and our planet."
4972 "Jeg er også, i smug, på tross av det jeg tidligere har sagt, en "
4973 "teknologieksepsjonalist. Ikke på den måten at jeg tenker at teknologi bør få "
4974 "lov til å danne monopoler fordi det har <quote>stordriftsfordeler</quote>, "
4975 "eller andre tåkeforklaring. Jeg er teknologieksepsjonalist fordi jeg tror "
4976 "det betyr noe å gjøre det riktig med teknologi, og at å gjøre det feil vil "
4977 "være en ubøtelig katastrofe — og det å gjøre det riktig kan gi oss evnen til "
4978 "å jobbe sammen om å redde sivilisasjonen, arten og planeten vår."