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   1 <html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><title>Wie man den Überwachungskapitalismus zerstört</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.79.1"><style type="text/css">
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   9      }</style></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div lang="de" class="article"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a name="index"></a>Wie man den Überwachungskapitalismus zerstört</h2></div><div><div class="authorgroup"><div class="author"><h3 class="author"><span class="firstname">Cory</span> <span class="surname">Doctorow</span></h3></div></div></div><div><p class="copyright">Copyright © 2020 Cory Doctorow</p></div><div><p class="copyright">Copyright © 2020 Petter Reinholdtsen</p></div><div><div class="legalnotice"><a name="idm18"></a><p>
  10       Wie man den Überwachungskapitalismus zerstört, von Cory Doctorow.
  11     </p><p>
  12       Published by Petter Reinholdtsen.
  13     </p><p>
  14       ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (hard cover)
  15     </p><p>
  16       ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (paperback)
  17     </p><p>
  18       ISBN 978-82-93828-XX-X (ePub)
  19     </p><p>
  20       Dieses Buch kann unter <a class="ulink" href="https://www.lulu.com/" target="_top">https://www.lulu.com/</a> erworben werden.
  21     </p><p>
  22       Falls du Rechtschreibfehler oder sonstige Fehler findest, oder falls du
  23 Verbesserungsvorschläge die Übersetzung betreffend hast, pflege diese auf
  24 <a class="ulink" href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/rms-personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/de/" target="_top">https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/rms-personal-data-safe/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/de/</a>
  25 ein.
  26     </p><p>
  27       <span class="inlinemediaobject"><img src="images/cc-some-rights-reserved.png" align="middle" height="38" alt="Creative Commons, einige Rechte vorbehalten"></span>
  28     </p><p>
  29       Dieses Buch steht unter einer Creative-Commons-Lizenz. Diese Lizenz erlaubt
  30 beliebige Nutzung dieses Werks, so lange eine Namensnennung erfolgt und
  31 keine Bearbeitungen erfolgen. Weitere Informationen über diese Lizenz
  32 findest du unter <a class="ulink" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" target="_top">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/</a>.
  33     </p></div></div></div><hr></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Inhaltsverzeichnis</b></p><dl class="toc"><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#the-net-of-a-thousand-lies">Das Netz aus tausend Lügen</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#digital-rights-activism-a-quarter-century-on">Digitaler-Rechte-Aktivismus, in einem Vierteljahrhundert</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#tech-exceptionalism-then-and-now">Tech-Exzeptionalismus, damals und heute</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#dont-believe-the-hype">Glaube nicht an den Hype</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#what-is-persuasion">What is persuasion?</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#segmenting">1. Segmenting</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#deception">2. Deception</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#domination">3. Domination</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#bypassing-our-rational-faculties">4. Bypassing our rational faculties</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#if-data-is-the-new-oil-then-surveillance-capitalisms-engine-has-a-leak">If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#what-is-facebook">What is Facebook?</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#monopoly-and-the-right-to-the-future-tense">Monopoly and the right to the future tense</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#search-order-and-the-right-to-the-future-tense">Search order and the right to the future tense</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#monopolists-can-afford-sleeping-pills-for-watchdogs">Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#privacy-and-monopoly">Privacy and monopoly</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#ronald-reagan-pioneer-of-tech-monopolism">Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#steering-with-the-windshield-wipers">Steering with the windshield wipers</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#surveillance-still-matters">Surveillance still matters</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#dignity-and-sanctuary">Dignity and sanctuary</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#afflicting-the-afflicted">Afflicting the afflicted</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#any-data-you-collect-and-retain-will-eventually-leak">Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#critical-tech-exceptionalism-is-still-tech-exceptionalism">Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#how-monopolies-not-mind-control-drive-surveillance-capitalism-the-snapchat-story">How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The
  34 Snapchat story</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#a-monopoly-over-your-friends">A monopoly over your friends</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#fake-news-is-an-epistemological-crisis">Fake news is an epistemological crisis</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#tech-is-different">Tech is different</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#ownership-of-facts">Ownership of facts</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#persuasion-works-slowly">Persuasion works… slowly</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#paying-wont-help">Paying won’t help</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#an-ecology-moment-for-trustbusting">An <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">ecology</span>“</span> moment for trustbusting</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#make-big-tech-small-again">Make Big Tech small again</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#goto-10">20 GOTO 10</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#up-and-through">Up and through</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="the-net-of-a-thousand-lies"></a>Das Netz aus tausend Lügen</h2></div></div></div><p>
  35     Am meisten überrascht am Wiederaufkommen der „Flat Earther“ im
  36 21. Jahrhundert, wie allgegenwärtig die Beweise gegen diese Theorie
  37 sind. Man mag noch einsehen, dass vor hunderten von Jahren Leute
  38 vernünftigerweise denken durften, dass die Erde flach sei, da sie keinen
  39 ausreichend hohen Beobachtungspunkt erreichen konnten, von dem aus sie die
  40 Erdkrümmung hätten sehen können.
  41   </p><p>
  42     Aber heutzutage braucht es schon einen außergewöhnlichen Glauben, um
  43 weiterhin an die Theorie der Flachen Erde zu glauben - wo man doch bereits
  44 in Grundschulen GoPro-Kameras an Ballons befestigt und sie hoch genug
  45 aufsteigen lässt, um die Erdkrümmung zu fotografieren, vom gewöhnlichen
  46 Ausblick aus einem Flugzeugfenster ganz zu schweigen.
  47   </p><p>
  48     Ähnlich verhält es sich mit Weißem Nationalismus und Eugenik: In einem
  49 Zeitalter, in dem jeder durch eine Postsendung eines Rachenabstrichs und
  50 etwas Geld an eine DNA-Sequenzierungs-Firma zu einem Genom-Datenpunkt werden
  51 kann, war das Wiederlegen von <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Rassentheorie</span>“</span> noch nie so
  52 einfach.
  53   </p><p>
  54     Wir durchleben ein goldenes Zeitalter von sowohl sofort verfügbaren Fakten
  55 als auch deren Leugnung. Furchtbare, randständige Vorstellungen, die
  56 Jahrzehnte oder gar Jahrhunderte geschlummert haben, haben es
  57 augenscheinlich über Nacht in den Mainstream geschafft.
  58   </p><p>
  59     Wenn eine obskure Idee an Auftrieb erlangt, gibt es nur zwei Erklärungen
  60 dafür: Entweder ist die Person, die die Idee verbeitet, besser darin
  61 geworden, ihre Ansicht zu vertreten, oder die Ansicht ist angesichts sich
  62 anhäufender Beweise schwerer zu leugnen geworden. Anders gesagt: Wenn wir
  63 möchten, dass die Leute den Klimawandel ernst nehmen, können wir einen
  64 Haufen Greta Thunbergs wortgewandte, emotionale Reden auf Podien halten
  65 lassen und damit unsere Herzen und unseren Verstand gewinnen, oder wir
  66 können Fluten, Feuersbrünste, eine mörderische Sonne und Pandemien für uns
  67 sprechen lassen. In der Praxis sollten wir wohl von beidem etwas tun: Je
  68 mehr wir schmoren, brennen, ertrinken und dahinschwinden, umso einfacher
  69 wird es für die Greta Thunbergs dieser Welt, uns zu überzeugen.
  70   </p><p>
  71     Die Argumente für den absurden Glauben an hasserfüllte Verschwörungen wie
  72 Impfgegnerschaft, Klimaleugnung, eine flache Erde und Eugenik sind nicht
  73 besser als vor einer Generation. Sie sind sogar schlechter, weil sie Leuten
  74 schmackhaft gemacht werden, die wenigstens ein Gespür für die widerlegenden
  75 Fakten haben.
  76   </p><p>
  77     Impfgegnerschaft gibt es bereits seit den ersten Impfstoffen, aber frühere
  78 Impfgegner hatten es auf Leute abgesehen, die nicht einmal ein grundlegendes
  79 Verständnis von Mikrobiologie hatten, und überdies waren jene Impfgegner
  80 nicht Zeugen massenmörderischer Krankheiten wie Polio, Pocken und Masern
  81 geworden. Impfgegner von heute sind nicht eloquenter als frührere Impfgegner
  82 und haben es heute schwieriger.
  83   </p><p>
  84     Können diese Verschwörungstheoretiker wirklich im Ansatz ihrer wichtigsten
  85 Argumente erfolgreich sein?
  86   </p><p>
  87     Manche denken ja. Heutzutage gibt es den weitverbreiteten Glauben, dass
  88 maschinelles Lernen und kommerzielle Überwachung sogar den schwurbelnsten
  89 Verschwörungstheoretiker in einen Marionettenspieler verwandeln können, der
  90 anfälligen Leuten mit K.I.-gestützten, das rationale Denken austricksenden
  91 Argumenten die Wahrnehmung verbiegt und sie, normale Leute, schließlich in
  92 Flacherdler, Impfgegner oder gar Nazis verwandelt. Wenn die
  93 RAND-Corporation<a class="ulink" href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf" target="_top">
  94 Facebook für <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Radikalisierung</span>“</span></a> verantwortlich macht und
  95 wenn Facebook das Verbreiten von Falschinformationen in Bezug auf SARS-CoV-2
  96 <a class="ulink" href="https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/facebook_threat_health/" target="_top">seinen
  97 Algorithmen in die Schuhe schiebt</a>, dann ist die verdeckte Botschaft,
  98 dass maschinelles Lernen und Überwachung die Änderungen in unserem Konsens
  99 darüber hervorrufen, was wahr ist.
 100   </p><p>
 101     Schließlich muss in einer Welt, in der wuchernde und inkohärente
 102 Verschwörungstheorien wie Pizzagate und sein Nachfolger QAnon zahlreiche
 103 Anhänger haben, <span class="emphasis"><em> einiges </em></span> im Gange sein.
 104   </p><p>
 105     Aber was, wenn es eine andere Erklärung gibt? Was, wenn es die wesentlichen
 106 Umstände und nicht die Argumente sind, die diesen Verschwörungstheoretikern
 107 Aufwind geben? Was, wenn die Traumata vom Durchleben <span class="emphasis"><em>echter
 108 Verschwörungen</em></span> um uns herum - Verschwörungen zwischen Reichen,
 109 deren Lobbyisten und Gesetzemachern, um unangenehme Fakten und Beweise von
 110 unlauterem Verhalten zu vertuschen (solche Verschwörungen nennt man
 111 üblicherweise <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Korruption</span>“</span>) - Leute anfällig für
 112 Verschwörungstheorien macht?
 113   </p><p>
 114     Wenn es Trauma und keine ansteckende Krankheit - materielle Umstände und
 115 nicht Ideologie - ist, die heutzutage den Unterschied macht und abstoßenden
 116 Falschinformationen angesichts leicht beobachtbarer Fakten Auftrieb gibt,
 117 heißt das nicht, dass unsere Computernetzwerke keine Schuld haben. Sie
 118 tragen immer noch den Großteil dazu bei, indem sie anfällige Leute
 119 identifizieren und sie nach und nach zu immer extremeren Ideen und
 120 Communities führen.
 121   </p><p>
 122     Der Glaube an Verschwörungen ist ein wütendes Feuer, das reellen Schaden
 123 angerichtet hat und eine echte Bedrohung für unseren Planeten und unsere
 124 Spezies ist, von Epidemien <a class="ulink" href="https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html" target="_top">, die von Impfgegnern
 125 ausgelöst wurden,</a> bis zu Massenmorden <a class="ulink" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html" target="_top">,
 126 ausgelöst von rassistischen Verschwörungstheorien,</a> bis zum Sterben
 127 unseres Planeten, ausgelöst von Klimawandel-leugnerischer Passivität. Unsere
 128 Welt brennt, und wir müssen diese Brände löschen - indem wir herausfinden,
 129 wir die Leute die Wahrheit der Welt durch die Verschwörungen erkennen lassen
 130 können, durch sie verwirrt wurden.
 131   </p><p>
 132     Aber das Löschen von Bränden ist reaktiv. Wir müssen die
 133 <span class="emphasis"><em>Prävention</em></span> befeuern.  Wir müssen auf die traumatischen
 134 realen Umstände abzielen, die Leute anfällig für die Pandemie von
 135 Verschwörungstheorien machen. Auch darin spielt Technologie eine Rolle.
 136   </p><p>
 137     Vorschläge hierfür gibt es genug. Von der  <a class="ulink" href="https://edri.org/tag/terreg/" target="_top">Terrorist Content Regulation</a> der
 138 Europäischen Union, welche Plattformen zwingt, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">extremistische</span>“</span>
 139 Inhalte zu überwachen und zu entfernen, über die Vorschläge der Vereinigten
 140 Staaten, wonach <a class="ulink" href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-constitution" target="_top">Tech-Firmen
 141 ihre Nutzer ausspähen</a> und <a class="ulink" href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/repeal-cda-section-230" target="_top">für deren
 142 „bad speech“</a> haftbar zu machen, gibt es zahlreiche Anstrengunen, um
 143 Tech-Firmen dazu zu zwingen, die Probleme zu lösen, die sie selbst
 144 geschaffen haben.
 145   </p><p>
 146     Dennoch fehlt ein wesentlicher Aspekt in dieser Debatte. All diese Lösungen
 147 setzen voraus, dass Techfirmen ein Fixum sind, dass ihre Dominanz über das
 148 Internet ein dauerhaftes Faktum ist. Vorschläge, „Big Tech”-Firmen mit einem
 149 dezentralerem, pluralistischerem Internet zu ersetzen, finden sich
 150 nirgendwo. Die <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Lösungen</span>“</span>, die heute zur Debatte stehen,
 151 <span class="emphasis"><em>setzen voraus</em></span>, dass Big Tech „big“ bleibt, weil nur die
 152 größten Unternehmen es sich leisten können, entsprechende gesetzeskonforme
 153 Systeme zu etablieren.
 154   </p><p>
 155     Wir müssen herausfinden, wie unsere Technologie aussehen soll, wenn wir aus
 156 diesem Schlamassel wieder herauskommen wollen. Wir stehen heute an einem
 157 Scheideweg, wo wir uns entscheiden müssen, ob wir die „Big Tech“-Firmen
 158 reparieren wollen, die das Internet kontrollieren, oder ob wir das Internet
 159 reparieren wollen, indem wir es aus dem Klammergriff von „Big Tech“
 160 befreien. Beides gleichzeitig geht nicht, so dass wir uns entscheiden
 161 müssen.
 162   </p><p>
 163     Ich möchte, dass wir uns weise entscheiden. Zur Reparatur ist es essentiell,
 164 dass „Big Tech“ gezähmt wird, und dafür brauchen wir
 165 Digitalen-Rechte-Aktivismus.
 166   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="digital-rights-activism-a-quarter-century-on"></a>Digitaler-Rechte-Aktivismus, in einem Vierteljahrhundert</h2></div></div></div><p>
 167     Digitaler-Rechte-Aktivismus ist mehr als 30 Jahre alt. Die Eletronic
 168 Frontier Foundation ist in diesem Jahr 30 Jahre alt geworden; die Free
 169 Software Foundation wurde 1985 gegründet. Das am meisten im Laufe der
 170 Geschichte der Bewegung gegen sie vorgebrachte Argument war, dass sie
 171 irrelevant sei: Die Themen „echter“ Aktivisten wären auch
 172 „echte-Welt“-Probleme (man denke an den Skeptizismus, als <a class="ulink" href="https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/finland-legal-right-to-broadband-for-all-citizens/#:~:text=Global%20Legal%20Monitor,-Home%20%7C%20Search%20%7C%20Browse&amp;text=(July%206%2C%202010)%20On,connection%20100%20MBPS%20by%202015." target="_top">Finnland
 173 im Jahr 2010 einen Breitbandinternetzugang zum Menschenrecht erklärte
 174 </a>), und „echter-Welt“-Aktivismus noch als Stiefel-Aktivismus („shoe
 175 leather activism”) galt (man denke an Malcolm Gladwells <a class="ulink" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell" target="_top">Geringschätzung
 176 für  <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Clicktivism</span>“</span></a>). Aber je zentraler Technologien für
 177 unseren Alltag wurde, desto mehr sind die Irrelevanz-Vorwürfe Vorwürfen von
 178 Unehrlichkeit gewichen (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Du sorgst dich nur um Tech, weil du  <a class="ulink" href="https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/06/04/report-engine-eff-shills-google-patent-reform/id=98007/" target="_top">für
 179 Technologie-Unternehmen Werbung machen
 180 möchtest</a></span>“</span>). (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Wie konntest du nur nicht vorhersehen,
 181 dass Tech solch eine zerstörerische Kraft sein kann?</span>“</span>). Aber
 182 Digitaler-Rechte-Aktivismus steht nach wie vor dafür: auf die Menschen in
 183 einer Welt achtgeben, die unausweichlich von Technologie übernommen wird.
 184   </p><p>
 185     Die neueste Form dieser Kritik kommt in der Form des
 186 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Überwachungskapitalismus</span>“</span>, einem Begriff, der von der
 187 Business-Professorin Shoshana Zuboff in ihrem langen und einflussreichen
 188 Buch <span class="emphasis"><em>Das Zeitalter des Überwachungskapitalismus</em></span> geprägt
 189 wurde, das 2019 erschienen ist. Zuboff argumentiert, dass
 190 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Überwachungskapitalismus</span>“</span> ein einzigartigs Geschöpf der
 191 Tech-Industrie sei und dass es es sich von allen anderen ausbeuterischen
 192 kommerziellen Praktiken Geschichte unterscheide; ein Geschöpf, das <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">
 193 sich aus unerwarteten und unverständlichen Mechanismen aus Extrahierung,
 194 Kommodifizierung und Kontrolle zusammensetze, das Menschen schließlich von
 195 ihrem eigenen Verhalten loslöse und dabei neue Märkte von
 196 Verhaltensvorhersage und -manipulation schaffe.</span>“</span> Es handelt sich
 197 dabei um eine neue tödliche Form von Kapitalismus, einen
 198 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">schurkenhaften Kapitalismus</span>“</span>, und unsere Unfähigkeit, dessen
 199 einzigartigen Fähigkeiten und Gefahren zu verstehen, stellt eine
 200 existenzielle und speziesweite Bedrohung dar. Sie hat insofern recht, als
 201 Kapitalismus unsere Spezies heute bedroht, und sie hat auch recht insofern,
 202 als Technologie unsere Spezies und Zivilisation vor einzigartige
 203 Herausforderungen stellt, aber sie irrt sich darin, inwiefern Technologie
 204 andersartig ist und warum es unsere Spezies bedroht.
 205   </p><p>
 206     Genauer gesagt, denke ich, dass ihre falsche Diagnose uns einen Weg
 207 hinabführt, der Big Tech stärker macht, nicht schwächer. Wir müssen Big Tech
 208 zu Fall bringen, und um das zu tun, müssen wir zunächst das Problem korrekt
 209 identifizieren.
 210   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="tech-exceptionalism-then-and-now"></a>Tech-Exzeptionalismus, damals und heute</h2></div></div></div><p>
 211     Frühe Kritiker des Digitalen-Rechte-Managements - die am wohl am besten
 212 durch Organisationen wie die Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free
 213 Software Foundation, Public Knowledge und andere vertreten werden, die ihren
 214 Fokus auf die Bewahrung und Stärkung elementarer Menschenrechte in der
 215 digitalen Welt legen - verurteilten Aktivisten für die Ausübung von
 216 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Tech-Exzeptionalismus</span>“</span>. Um die Jahrtausendwende machten
 217 bedeutende Leute jegliche Behauptung, dass Tech-Regularien in der
 218 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">echten Welt</span>“</span> eine Rolle spielten, lächerlich. Behauptungen,
 219 wonach Tech-Regularien Folgen für Speech, Zusammenschlüsse, Privatsphäre,
 220 Durchsuchungen und Konfiskationen, sowie für grundlegende Rechte und
 221 Gleichheit haben konnten, wurden verlacht - verlacht als Besorgnis, die von
 222 traurigen Nerds, die sonst in Webforen über <span class="emphasis"><em> Star Trek</em></span>
 223 diskutierten, geschürt und gar über die Freiheitskämpfe der Freedom Rider,
 224 Nelson Mandela oder des Warschauer Ghetto-Aufstandes erhoben würden.
 225   </p><p>
 226     In den seitdem vergangenen Jahrzehnten wurden die Vorwürfe von
 227 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Tech-Exzeptionalismus</span>“</span> schärfer, zumal sich die Bedeutung von
 228 Technologie im Alltag ausgeweitet hat: Jetzt, da Technologie jede Nische
 229 unseres Lebens infiltriert hat und unsere Online-Leben von einer Handvoll
 230 Giganten monopolisiert wurden, werden die Verteidiger der digitalen
 231 Freiheiten Beschuldigt, Wasserträger von „Big Tech“ zu sein und Deckung für
 232 dessen von eigenen Interessen geleiteter Fahrlässigkeit (oder schlimmer
 233 noch: ruchlose Pläne) zu bieten.
 234   </p><p>
 235     Nach meiner Aufassung ist die Digitale-Rechte-Bewegung stehen geblieben,
 236 während der Rest der Welt sich weiterbewegt hat. Von den frühesten Tagen an
 237 war das Anliegen der Bewegung, dass Nutzer und Programmierer ihre
 238 grundlegenden Rechte verwirklichen Rechte können. Digitale-Rechte-Aktivisten
 239 kümmerten sich nur soweit um Firmen, als sie die Rechte ihrer Nutzen
 240 achteten (oder, wie so oft, wenn sich Unternehmen so töricht verhielten und
 241 neue Regularien zu Fall zu bringen drohten, was es auch guten Akteuren
 242 schwerer gemacht hätte, Nutzen zu helfen).
 243   </p><p>
 244     Der Kritiker des <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Überwachungskapitalismus</span>“</span> lässt die
 245 Digitale-Rechte-Bewegung erneut in einem neuen Licht erscheinen: nicht als
 246 Alarmisten, die die Wichtigkeit ihrer Spielzeuge überschätzen oder als
 247 Sprecher für Big Tech, sondern als gelassene Sessel-Aktivisten, deren
 248 langjähriger Aktivismus zur Last geworden ist, weil es sie unfähig macht,
 249 neuartige Bedrohungen zu erkennen, während sie weiterhin Tech-Schlachten des
 250 vorigen Jahrhunderts schlagen.
 251   </p><p>
 252     Aber Tech-Exzeptionalismus ist eine Sünde, unabhängig davon, wer ihn
 253 betreibt.
 254   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="dont-believe-the-hype"></a>Glaube nicht an den Hype</h2></div></div></div><p>
 255     Du hast wahrscheinlich schon einmal gehört, dass <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">du das Produkt bist,
 256 wenn du nicht für das Produkt bezahlst </span>“</span>. Wie wir noch sehen werden,
 257 ist diese Aussage im Grunde richtig, aber nicht vollständig. Aber es
 258 stimmt<span class="emphasis"><em>definitiv</em></span> ,  dass die Kunden von Big Tech
 259 Werbeunternehmen sind, und das Geschäftsmodell von Google und Facebook ist
 260 letztlich ihre Fähigkeit, <span class="emphasis"><em>dich</em></span> zu Käufen zu
 261 verleiten. Das Produkt von Big Tech ist die Überzeugungskunst. Die Dienste -
 262 soziale Medien, Suchmaschinen, Karten- und Kurznachrichtendienste und
 263 weitere - sind  schlicht Vehikel, um dessen Nutzer von etwas zu überzeugen
 264 und zu etwas zu verleiten.
 265   </p><p>
 266     Die Angst vor Überwachungskapitalismus basiert zunächst auf der (korrekten)
 267 Annahme, dass alles, was Big Tech über sich selbst sagt, wahrscheinlich eine
 268 Lüge ist. Aber der Kritiker des Überwachungskapitalismus macht hiervon eine
 269 Ausnahme, soweit es Big Techs eigene Behauptungen in seinen
 270 Verkaufsprospekten sind - der atemlose Hype, der potentiellen
 271 Werbeunternehmen online und in Werbetechnologie-Seminaren über die
 272 Wirksamkeit seiner Produkte angedient wird: Dem Hype zufolge kann uns Big
 273 Tech so gut wie von ihm behauptet beeinflussen. Das ist jedoch falsch, weil
 274 Verkaufsprospekte kein zuverlässiger Indikator für die Wirksamkeit eines
 275 Produkts ist.
 276   </p><p>
 277     Überwachungskapitalismus geht davon aus, dass Big Tech etwas Reales
 278 verkauft, weil Werbeunternehmen viel von dem kaufen, was Big Tech
 279 verkauft. Aber die massiven Umsatzzahlen von Big Tech könnten einfach auch
 280 nur das Produkt einer weit verbreiteten Täuschung sein, oder schlimmer noch:
 281 eines monopolistischen Kontrolle über unser aller Kommunikation und Handel.
 282   </p><p>
 283     Being watched changes your behavior, and not for the better. It creates
 284 risks for our social progress. Zuboff’s book features beautifully wrought
 285 explanations of these phenomena. But Zuboff also claims that surveillance
 286 literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal data is mixed
 287 with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion so devastating that
 288 we are helpless before it.  That is, Facebook uses an algorithm to analyze
 289 the data it nonconsensually extracts from your daily life and uses it to
 290 customize your feed in ways that get you to buy stuff. It is a mind-control
 291 ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded by mad scientists whose
 292 supercomputers guarantee them perpetual and total world domination.
 293   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="what-is-persuasion"></a>What is persuasion?</h2></div></div></div><p>
 294     To understand why you shouldn’t worry about mind-control rays — but why you
 295 <span class="emphasis"><em>should</em></span> worry about surveillance
 296 <span class="emphasis"><em>and</em></span> Big Tech — we must start by unpacking what we mean
 297 by <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">persuasion.</span>“</span>
 298   </p><p>
 299     Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists promise their customers
 300 (the advertisers) that if they use machine-learning tools trained on
 301 unimaginably large data sets of nonconsensually harvested personal
 302 information, they will be able to uncover ways to bypass the rational
 303 faculties of the public and direct their behavior, creating a stream of
 304 purchases, votes, and other desired outcomes.
 305   </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
 306       The impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be
 307 central to our analysis and any remedies we seek.
 308     </p></blockquote></div><p>
 309     But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the predictions
 310 that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are much less
 311 impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational faculties,
 312 surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one or more of three
 313 things:
 314   </p><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="segmenting"></a>1. Segmenting</h3></div></div></div><p>
 315       If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to people
 316 in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity ward just
 317 had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the market for
 318 diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of being in the
 319 market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly correlated with
 320 having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards (and even pitchmen
 321 for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with baskets full of freebies).
 322     </p><p>
 323       Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors can go
 324 way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, too, with
 325 things like location-based mobile ads).  They can target you based on
 326 whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, or a host of
 327 other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious keywords to advertise
 328 against. They can target you based on the articles you’ve recently
 329 read. They can target you based on what you’ve recently purchased. They can
 330 target you based on whether you receive emails or private messages about
 331 these subjects — or even if you speak aloud about them (though Facebook and
 332 the like convincingly claim that’s not happening — yet).
 333     </p><p>
 334       This is seriously creepy.
 335     </p><p>
 336       But it’s not mind control.
 337     </p><p>
 338       It doesn’t deprive you of your free will. It doesn’t trick you.
 339     </p><p>
 340       Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics.  Surveillance
 341 capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate people
 342 who might be receptive to their pitch.  Candidates campaigning on finance
 343 industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates campaigning
 344 on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have always targeted
 345 their message whether their intentions were honorable or not: Union
 346 organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white supremacists hand out
 347 fliers at John Birch Society meetings.
 348     </p><p>
 349       But this is an inexact and thus wasteful practice. The union organizer can’t
 350 know which worker to approach on the way out of the factory gates and may
 351 waste their time on a covert John Birch Society member; the white
 352 supremacist doesn’t know which of the Birchers are so delusional that making
 353 it to a meeting is as much as they can manage and which ones might be
 354 convinced to cross the country to carry a tiki torch through the streets of
 355 Charlottesville, Virginia.
 356     </p><p>
 357       Because targeting improves the yields on political pitches, it can
 358 accelerate the pace of political upheaval by making it possible for everyone
 359 who has secretly wished for the toppling of an autocrat — or just an 11-term
 360 incumbent politician — to find everyone else who feels the same way at very
 361 low cost. This has been critical to the rapid crystallization of recent
 362 political movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as
 363 well as less savory players like the far-right white nationalist movements
 364 that marched in Charlottesville.
 365     </p><p>
 366       It’s important to differentiate this kind of political organizing from
 367 influence campaigns; finding people who secretly agree with you isn’t the
 368 same as convincing people to agree with you. The rise of phenomena like
 369 nonbinary or otherwise nonconforming gender identities is often
 370 characterized by reactionaries as the result of online brainwashing
 371 campaigns that convince impressionable people that they have been secretly
 372 queer all along.
 373     </p><p>
 374       But the personal accounts of those who have come out tell a different story
 375 where people who long harbored a secret about their gender were emboldened
 376 by others coming forward and where people who knew that they were different
 377 but lacked a vocabulary for discussing that difference learned the right
 378 words from these low-cost means of finding people and learning about their
 379 ideas.
 380     </p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="deception"></a>2. Deception</h3></div></div></div><p>
 381       Lies and fraud are pernicious, and surveillance capitalism supercharges them
 382 through targeting. If you want to sell a fraudulent payday loan or subprime
 383 mortgage, surveillance capitalism can help you find people who are both
 384 desperate and unsophisticated and thus receptive to your pitch. This
 385 accounts for the rise of many phenomena, like multilevel marketing schemes,
 386 in which deceptive claims about potential earnings and the efficacy of sales
 387 techniques are targeted at desperate people by advertising against search
 388 queries that indicate, for example, someone struggling with ill-advised
 389 loans.
 390     </p><p>
 391       Surveillance capitalism also abets fraud by making it easy to locate other
 392 people who have been similarly deceived, forming a community of people who
 393 reinforce one another’s false beliefs.  Think of <a class="ulink" href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/the-dream-podcast-review.html" target="_top">the
 394 forums</a> where people who are being victimized by multilevel marketing
 395 frauds gather to trade tips on how to improve their luck in peddling the
 396 product.
 397     </p><p>
 398       Sometimes, online deception involves replacing someone’s correct beliefs
 399 with incorrect ones, as it does in the anti-vaccination movement, whose
 400 victims are often people who start out believing in vaccines but are
 401 convinced by seemingly plausible evidence that leads them into the false
 402 belief that vaccines are harmful.
 403     </p><p>
 404       But it’s much more common for fraud to succeed when it doesn’t have to
 405 displace a true belief. When my daughter contracted head lice at daycare,
 406 one of the daycare workers told me I could get rid of them by treating her
 407 hair and scalp with olive oil. I didn’t know anything about head lice, and I
 408 assumed that the daycare worker did, so I tried it (it didn’t work, and it
 409 doesn’t work). It’s easy to end up with false beliefs when you simply don’t
 410 know any better and when those beliefs are conveyed by someone who seems to
 411 know what they’re doing.
 412     </p><p>
 413       This is pernicious and difficult — and it’s also the kind of thing the
 414 internet can help guard against by making true information available,
 415 especially in a form that exposes the underlying deliberations among parties
 416 with sharply divergent views, such as Wikipedia. But it’s not brainwashing;
 417 it’s fraud. In the <a class="ulink" href="https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/" target="_top">majority of cases</a>,
 418 the victims of these fraud campaigns have an informational void filled in
 419 the customary way, by consulting a seemingly reliable source. If I look up
 420 the length of the Brooklyn Bridge and learn that it is 5,800 feet long, but
 421 in reality, it is 5,989 feet long, the underlying deception is a problem,
 422 but it’s a problem with a simple remedy. It’s a very different problem from
 423 the anti-vax issue in which someone’s true belief is displaced by a false
 424 one by means of sophisticated persuasion.
 425     </p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="domination"></a>3. Domination</h3></div></div></div><p>
 426       Surveillance capitalism is the result of monopoly. Monopoly is the cause,
 427 and surveillance capitalism and its negative outcomes are the effects of
 428 monopoly. I’ll get into this in depth later, but for now, suffice it to say
 429 that the tech industry has grown up with a radical theory of antitrust that
 430 has allowed companies to grow by merging with their rivals, buying up their
 431 nascent competitors, and expanding to control whole market verticals.
 432     </p><p>
 433       One example of how monopolism aids in persuasion is through dominance:
 434 Google makes editorial decisions about its algorithms that determine the
 435 sort order of the responses to our queries. If a cabal of fraudsters have
 436 set out to trick the world into thinking that the Brooklyn Bridge is 5,800
 437 feet long, and if Google gives a high search rank to this group in response
 438 to queries like <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?</span>“</span> then the
 439 first eight or 10 screens’ worth of Google results could be wrong. And since
 440 most people don’t go beyond the first couple of results — let alone the
 441 first <span class="emphasis"><em>page</em></span> of results — Google’s choice means that many
 442 people will be deceived.
 443     </p><p>
 444       Google’s dominance over search — more than 86% of web searches are performed
 445 through Google — means that the way it orders its search results has an
 446 outsized effect on public beliefs. Ironically, Google claims this is why it
 447 can’t afford to have any transparency in its algorithm design: Google’s
 448 search dominance makes the results of its sorting too important to risk
 449 telling the world how it arrives at those results lest some bad actor
 450 discover a flaw in the ranking system and exploit it to push its point of
 451 view to the top of the search results. There’s an obvious remedy to a
 452 company that is too big to audit: break it up into smaller pieces.
 453     </p><p>
 454       Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism</span>“</span> whose
 455 data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. But
 456 influence campaigns that seek to displace existing, correct beliefs with
 457 false ones have an effect that is small and temporary while monopolistic
 458 dominance over informational systems has massive, enduring
 459 effects. Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means
 460 controlling access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, control
 461 over much of the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how corporations are
 462 foreclosing on our ability to make up our own minds and determine our own
 463 futures, the impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and
 464 should be central to our analysis and any remedies we seek.
 465     </p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="bypassing-our-rational-faculties"></a>4. Bypassing our rational faculties</h3></div></div></div><p>
 466       <span class="emphasis"><em>This</em></span> is the good stuff: using machine learning,
 467 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">dark patterns,</span>“</span> engagement hacking, and other techniques to
 468 get us to do things that run counter to our better judgment. This is mind
 469 control.
 470     </p><p>
 471       Some of these techniques have proven devastatingly effective (if only in the
 472 short term). The use of countdown timers on a purchase completion page can
 473 create a sense of urgency that causes you to ignore the nagging internal
 474 voice suggesting that you should shop around or sleep on your decision. The
 475 use of people from your social graph in ads can provide <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">social
 476 proof</span>“</span> that a purchase is worth making. Even the auction system
 477 pioneered by eBay is calculated to play on our cognitive blind spots,
 478 letting us feel like we <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">own</span>“</span> something because we bid on it,
 479 thus encouraging us to bid again when we are outbid to ensure that
 480 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">our</span>“</span> things stay ours.
 481     </p><p>
 482       Games are extraordinarily good at this. <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Free to play</span>“</span> games
 483 manipulate us through many techniques, such as presenting players with a
 484 series of smoothly escalating challenges that create a sense of mastery and
 485 accomplishment but which sharply transition into a set of challenges that
 486 are impossible to overcome without paid upgrades. Add some social proof to
 487 the mix — a stream of notifications about how well your friends are faring —
 488 and before you know it, you’re buying virtual power-ups to get to the next
 489 level.
 490     </p><p>
 491       Companies have risen and fallen on these techniques, and the
 492 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">fallen</span>“</span> part is worth paying attention to. In general, living
 493 things adapt to stimulus: Something that is very compelling or noteworthy
 494 when you first encounter it fades with repetition until you stop noticing it
 495 altogether. Consider the refrigerator hum that irritates you when it starts
 496 up but disappears into the background so thoroughly that you only notice it
 497 when it stops again.
 498     </p><p>
 499       That’s why behavioral conditioning uses <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">intermittent reinforcement
 500 schedules.</span>“</span> Instead of giving you a steady drip of encouragement or
 501 setbacks, games and gamified services scatter rewards on a randomized
 502 schedule — often enough to keep you interested and random enough that you
 503 can never quite find the pattern that would make it boring.
 504     </p><p>
 505       Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful behavioral tool, but it also
 506 represents a collective action problem for surveillance capitalism. The
 507 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">engagement techniques</span>“</span> invented by the behaviorists of
 508 surveillance capitalist companies are quickly copied across the whole sector
 509 so that what starts as a mysteriously compelling fillip in the design of a
 510 service—like <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">pull to refresh</span>“</span> or alerts when someone likes
 511 your posts or side quests that your characters get invited to while in the
 512 midst of main quests—quickly becomes dully ubiquitous. The
 513 impossible-to-nail-down nonpattern of randomized drips from your phone
 514 becomes a grey-noise wall of sound as every single app and site starts to
 515 make use of whatever seems to be working at the time.
 516     </p><p>
 517       From the surveillance capitalist’s point of view, our adaptive capacity is
 518 like a harmful bacterium that deprives it of its food source — our attention
 519 — and novel techniques for snagging that attention are like new antibiotics
 520 that can be used to breach our defenses and destroy our
 521 self-determination. And there <span class="emphasis"><em>are</em></span> techniques like
 522 that. Who can forget the Great Zynga Epidemic, when all of our friends were
 523 caught in <span class="emphasis"><em>FarmVille</em></span>’s endless, mindless dopamine loops?
 524 But every new attention-commanding technique is jumped on by the whole
 525 industry and used so indiscriminately that antibiotic resistance sets
 526 in. Given enough repetition, almost all of us develop immunity to even the
 527 most powerful techniques — by 2013, two years after Zynga’s peak, its user
 528 base had halved.
 529     </p><p>
 530       Not everyone, of course. Some people never adapt to stimulus, just as some
 531 people never stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator.  This is why most
 532 people who are exposed to slot machines play them for a while and then move
 533 on while a small and tragic minority liquidate their kids’ college funds,
 534 buy adult diapers, and position themselves in front of a machine until they
 535 collapse.
 536     </p><p>
 537       But surveillance capitalism’s margins on behavioral modification
 538 suck. Tripling the rate at which someone buys a widget sounds great <a class="ulink" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2018/03/09/the-advertising-conversion-rates-for-every-major-tech-platform/#2f6a67485957" target="_top">unless
 539 the base rate is way less than 1%</a> with an improved rate of… still
 540 less than 1%. Even penny slot machines pull down pennies for every spin
 541 while surveillance capitalism rakes in infinitesimal penny fractions.
 542     </p><p>
 543       Slot machines’ high returns mean that they can be profitable just by
 544 draining the fortunes of the small rump of people who are pathologically
 545 vulnerable to them and unable to adapt to their tricks. But surveillance
 546 capitalism can’t survive on the fractional pennies it brings down from that
 547 vulnerable sliver — that’s why, after the Great Zynga Epidemic had finally
 548 burned itself out, the small number of still-addicted players left behind
 549 couldn’t sustain it as a global phenomenon. And new powerful attention
 550 weapons aren’t easy to find, as is evidenced by the long years since the
 551 last time Zynga had a hit. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that
 552 Zynga has to spend on developing new tools to blast through our adaptation,
 553 it has never managed to repeat the lucky accident that let it snag so much
 554 of our attention for a brief moment in 2009. Powerhouses like Supercell have
 555 fared a little better, but they are rare and throw away many failures for
 556 every success.
 557     </p><p>
 558       The vulnerability of small segments of the population to dramatic, efficient
 559 corporate manipulation is a real concern that’s worthy of our attention and
 560 energy. But it’s not an existential threat to society.
 561     </p></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="if-data-is-the-new-oil-then-surveillance-capitalisms-engine-has-a-leak"></a>If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak</h2></div></div></div><p>
 562     This adaptation problem offers an explanation for one of surveillance
 563 capitalism’s most alarming traits: its relentless hunger for data and its
 564 endless expansion of data-gathering capabilities through the spread of
 565 sensors, online surveillance, and acquisition of data streams from third
 566 parties.
 567   </p><p>
 568     Zuboff observes this phenomenon and concludes that data must be very
 569 valuable if surveillance capitalism is so hungry for it. (In her words:
 570 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous
 571 intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists and
 572 their market players are now locked into the continuous intensification of
 573 the means of behavioral modification and the gathering might of
 574 instrumentarian power.</span>“</span>) But what if the voracious appetite is
 575 because data has such a short half-life — because people become inured so
 576 quickly to new, data-driven persuasion techniques — that the companies are
 577 locked in an arms race with our limbic system? What if it’s all a Red
 578 Queen’s race where they have to run ever faster — collect ever-more data —
 579 just to stay in the same spot?
 580   </p><p>
 581     Of course, all of Big Tech’s persuasion techniques work in concert with one
 582 another, and collecting data is useful beyond mere behavioral trickery.
 583   </p><p>
 584     If someone wants to recruit you to buy a refrigerator or join a pogrom, they
 585 might use profiling and targeting to send messages to people they judge to
 586 be good sales prospects. The messages themselves may be deceptive, making
 587 claims about things you’re not very knowledgeable about (food safety and
 588 energy efficiency or eugenics and historical claims about racial
 589 superiority). They might use search engine optimization and/or armies of
 590 fake reviewers and commenters and/or paid placement to dominate the
 591 discourse so that any search for further information takes you back to their
 592 messages.  And finally, they may refine the different pitches using machine
 593 learning and other techniques to figure out what kind of pitch works best on
 594 someone like you.
 595   </p><p>
 596     Each phase of this process benefits from surveillance: The more data they
 597 have, the more precisely they can profile you and target you with specific
 598 messages. Think of how you’d sell a fridge if you knew that the warranty on
 599 your prospect’s fridge just expired and that they were expecting a tax
 600 rebate in April.
 601   </p><p>
 602     Also, the more data they have, the better they can craft deceptive messages
 603 — if I know that you’re into genealogy, I might not try to feed you
 604 pseudoscience about genetic differences between <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">races,</span>“</span>
 605 sticking instead to conspiratorial secret histories of <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">demographic
 606 replacement</span>“</span> and the like.
 607   </p><p>
 608     Facebook also helps you locate people who have the same odious or antisocial
 609 views as you. It makes it possible to find other people who want to carry
 610 tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville in Confederate
 611 cosplay. It can help you find other people who want to join your militia and
 612 go to the border to look for undocumented migrants to terrorize. It can help
 613 you find people who share your belief that vaccines are poison and that the
 614 Earth is flat.
 615   </p><p>
 616     There is one way in which targeted advertising uniquely benefits those
 617 advocating for socially unacceptable causes: It is invisible.  Racism is
 618 widely geographically dispersed, and there are few places where racists —
 619 and only racists — gather. This is similar to the problem of selling
 620 refrigerators in that potential refrigerator purchasers are geographically
 621 dispersed and there are few places where you can buy an ad that will be
 622 primarily seen by refrigerator customers. But buying a refrigerator is
 623 socially acceptable while being a Nazi is not, so you can buy a billboard or
 624 advertise in the newspaper sports section for your refrigerator business,
 625 and the only potential downside is that your ad will be seen by a lot of
 626 people who don’t want refrigerators, resulting in a lot of wasted expense.
 627   </p><p>
 628     But even if you wanted to advertise your Nazi movement on a billboard or
 629 prime-time TV or the sports section, you would struggle to find anyone
 630 willing to sell you the space for your ad partly because they disagree with
 631 your views and partly because they fear censure (boycott, reputational
 632 damage, etc.) from other people who disagree with your views.
 633   </p><p>
 634     Targeted ads solve this problem: On the internet, every ad unit can be
 635 different for every person, meaning that you can buy ads that are only shown
 636 to people who appear to be Nazis and not to people who hate Nazis. When
 637 there’s spillover — when someone who hates racism is shown a racist
 638 recruiting ad — there is some fallout; the platform or publication might get
 639 an angry public or private denunciation. But the nature of the risk assumed
 640 by an online ad buyer is different than the risks to a traditional publisher
 641 or billboard owner who might want to run a Nazi ad.
 642   </p><p>
 643     Online ads are placed by algorithms that broker between a diverse ecosystem
 644 of self-serve ad platforms that anyone can buy an ad through, so the Nazi ad
 645 that slips onto your favorite online publication isn’t seen as their moral
 646 failing but rather as a failure in some distant, upstream ad supplier. When
 647 a publication gets a complaint about an offensive ad that’s appearing in one
 648 of its units, it can take some steps to block that ad, but the Nazi might
 649 buy a slightly different ad from a different broker serving the same
 650 unit. And in any event, internet users increasingly understand that when
 651 they see an ad, it’s likely that the advertiser did not choose that
 652 publication and that the publication has no idea who its advertisers are.
 653   </p><p>
 654     These layers of indirection between advertisers and publishers serve as
 655 moral buffers: Today’s moral consensus is largely that publishers shouldn’t
 656 be held responsible for the ads that appear on their pages because they’re
 657 not actively choosing to put those ads there.  Because of this, Nazis are
 658 able to overcome significant barriers to organizing their movement.
 659   </p><p>
 660     Data has a complex relationship with domination. Being able to spy on your
 661 customers can alert you to their preferences for your rivals and allow you
 662 to head off your rivals at the pass.
 663   </p><p>
 664     More importantly, if you can dominate the information space while also
 665 gathering data, then you make other deceptive tactics stronger because it’s
 666 harder to break out of the web of deceit you’re spinning. Domination — that
 667 is, ultimately becoming a monopoly — and not the data itself is the
 668 supercharger that makes every tactic worth pursuing because monopolistic
 669 domination deprives your target of an escape route.
 670   </p><p>
 671     If you’re a Nazi who wants to ensure that your prospects primarily see
 672 deceptive, confirming information when they search for more, you can improve
 673 your odds by seeding the search terms they use through your initial
 674 communications. You don’t need to own the top 10 results for <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">voter
 675 suppression</span>“</span> if you can convince your marks to confine their search
 676 terms to <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">voter fraud,</span>“</span> which throws up a very different set of
 677 search results.
 678   </p><p>
 679     Surveillance capitalists are like stage mentalists who claim that their
 680 extraordinary insights into human behavior let them guess the word that you
 681 wrote down and folded up in your pocket but who really use shills, hidden
 682 cameras, sleight of hand, and brute-force memorization to amaze you.
 683   </p><p>
 684     Or perhaps they’re more like pick-up artists, the misogynistic cult that
 685 promises to help awkward men have sex with women by teaching them
 686 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">neurolinguistic programming</span>“</span> phrases, body language
 687 techniques, and psychological manipulation tactics like
 688 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">negging</span>“</span> — offering unsolicited negative feedback to women to
 689 lower their self-esteem and prick their interest.
 690   </p><p>
 691     Some pick-up artists eventually manage to convince women to go home with
 692 them, but it’s not because these men have figured out how to bypass women’s
 693 critical faculties. Rather, pick-up artists’ <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">success</span>“</span> stories
 694 are a mix of women who were incapable of giving consent, women who were
 695 coerced, women who were intoxicated, self-destructive women, and a few women
 696 who were sober and in command of their faculties but who didn’t realize
 697 straightaway that they were with terrible men but rectified the error as
 698 soon as they could.
 699   </p><p>
 700     Pick-up artists <span class="emphasis"><em>believe</em></span> they have figured out a secret
 701 back door that bypasses women’s critical faculties, but they haven’t. Many
 702 of the tactics they deploy, like negging, became the butt of jokes (just
 703 like people joke about bad ad targeting), and there’s a good chance that
 704 anyone they try these tactics on will immediately recognize them and dismiss
 705 the men who use them as irredeemable losers.
 706   </p><p>
 707     Pick-up artists are proof that people can believe they have developed a
 708 system of mind control <span class="emphasis"><em>even when it doesn’t
 709 work</em></span>. Pick-up artists simply exploit the fact that
 710 one-in-a-million chances can come through for you if you make a million
 711 attempts, and then they assume that the other 999,999 times, they simply
 712 performed the technique incorrectly and commit themselves to doing better
 713 next time. There’s only one group of people who find pick-up artist lore
 714 reliably convincing: other would-be pick-up artists whose anxiety and
 715 insecurity make them vulnerable to scammers and delusional men who convince
 716 them that if they pay for tutelage and follow instructions, then they will
 717 someday succeed. Pick-up artists assume they fail to entice women because
 718 they are bad at being pick-up artists, not because pick-up artistry is
 719 bullshit. Pick-up artists are bad at selling themselves to women, but
 720 they’re much better at selling themselves to men who pay to learn the
 721 secrets of pick-up artistry.
 722   </p><p>
 723     Department store pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have lamented,
 724 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I
 725 don’t know which half.</span>“</span> The fact that Wanamaker thought that only
 726 half of his advertising spending was wasted is a tribute to the
 727 persuasiveness of advertising executives, who are <span class="emphasis"><em>much</em></span>
 728 better at convincing potential clients to buy their services than they are
 729 at convincing the general public to buy their clients’ wares.
 730   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="what-is-facebook"></a>What is Facebook?</h2></div></div></div><p>
 731     Facebook is heralded as the origin of all of our modern plagues, and it’s
 732 not hard to see why. Some tech companies want to lock their users in but
 733 make their money by monopolizing access to the market for apps for their
 734 devices and gouging them on prices rather than by spying on them (like
 735 Apple). Some companies don’t care about locking in users because they’ve
 736 figured out how to spy on them no matter where they are and what they’re
 737 doing and can turn that surveillance into money (Google). Facebook alone
 738 among the Western tech giants has built a business based on locking in its
 739 users <span class="emphasis"><em>and</em></span> spying on them all the time.
 740   </p><p>
 741     Facebook’s surveillance regime is really without parallel in the Western
 742 world. Though Facebook tries to prevent itself from being visible on the
 743 public web, hiding most of what goes on there from people unless they’re
 744 logged into Facebook, the company has nevertheless booby-trapped the entire
 745 web with surveillance tools in the form of Facebook <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Like</span>“</span>
 746 buttons that web publishers include on their sites to boost their Facebook
 747 profiles. Facebook also makes various libraries and other useful code
 748 snippets available to web publishers that act as surveillance tendrils on
 749 the sites where they’re used, funneling information about visitors to the
 750 site — newspapers, dating sites, message boards — to Facebook.
 751   </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
 752       Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but
 753 because it is <span class="emphasis"><em>big</em></span>.
 754     </p></blockquote></div><p>
 755     Facebook offers similar tools to app developers, so the apps — games, fart
 756 machines, business review services, apps for keeping abreast of your kid’s
 757 schooling — you use will send information about your activities to Facebook
 758 even if you don’t have a Facebook account and even if you don’t download or
 759 use Facebook apps. On top of all that, Facebook buys data from third-party
 760 brokers on shopping habits, physical location, use of <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">loyalty</span>“</span>
 761 programs, financial transactions, etc., and cross-references that with the
 762 dossiers it develops on activity on Facebook and with apps and the public
 763 web.
 764   </p><p>
 765     Though it’s easy to integrate the web with Facebook — linking to news
 766 stories and such — Facebook products are generally not available to be
 767 integrated back into the web itself. You can embed a tweet in a Facebook
 768 post, but if you embed a Facebook post in a tweet, you just get a link back
 769 to Facebook and must log in before you can see it. Facebook has used extreme
 770 technological and legal countermeasures to prevent rivals from allowing
 771 their users to embed Facebook snippets in competing services or to create
 772 alternative interfaces to Facebook that merge your Facebook inbox with those
 773 of other services that you use.
 774   </p><p>
 775     And Facebook is incredibly popular, with 2.3 billion claimed users (though
 776 many believe this figure to be inflated). Facebook has been used to organize
 777 genocidal pogroms, racist riots, anti-vaccination movements, flat Earth
 778 cults, and the political lives of some of the world’s ugliest, most brutal
 779 autocrats. There are some really alarming things going on in the world, and
 780 Facebook is implicated in many of them, so it’s easy to conclude that these
 781 bad things are the result of Facebook’s mind-control system, which it rents
 782 out to anyone with a few bucks to spend.
 783   </p><p>
 784     To understand what role Facebook plays in the formulation and mobilization
 785 of antisocial movements, we need to understand the dual nature of Facebook.
 786   </p><p>
 787     Because it has a lot of users and a lot of data about those users, Facebook
 788 is a very efficient tool for locating people with hard-to-find traits, the
 789 kinds of traits that are widely diffused in the population such that
 790 advertisers have historically struggled to find a cost-effective way to
 791 reach them. Think back to refrigerators: Most of us only replace our major
 792 appliances a few times in our entire lives. If you’re a refrigerator
 793 manufacturer or retailer, you have these brief windows in the life of a
 794 consumer during which they are pondering a purchase, and you have to somehow
 795 reach them. Anyone who’s ever registered a title change after buying a house
 796 can attest that appliance manufacturers are incredibly desperate to reach
 797 anyone who has even the slenderest chance of being in the market for a new
 798 fridge.
 799   </p><p>
 800     Facebook makes finding people shopping for refrigerators a
 801 <span class="emphasis"><em>lot</em></span> easier. It can target ads to people who’ve
 802 registered a new home purchase, to people who’ve searched for refrigerator
 803 buying advice, to people who have complained about their fridge dying, or
 804 any combination thereof. It can even target people who’ve recently bought
 805 <span class="emphasis"><em>other</em></span> kitchen appliances on the theory that someone
 806 who’s just replaced their stove and dishwasher might be in a fridge-buying
 807 kind of mood. The vast majority of people who are reached by these ads will
 808 not be in the market for a new fridge, but — crucially — the percentage of
 809 people who <span class="emphasis"><em>are</em></span> looking for fridges that these ads reach
 810 is <span class="emphasis"><em>much</em></span> larger than it is than for any group that might
 811 be subjected to traditional, offline targeted refrigerator marketing.
 812   </p><p>
 813     Facebook also makes it a lot easier to find people who have the same rare
 814 disease as you, which might have been impossible in earlier eras — the
 815 closest fellow sufferer might otherwise be hundreds of miles away. It makes
 816 it easier to find people who went to the same high school as you even though
 817 decades have passed and your former classmates have all been scattered to
 818 the four corners of the Earth.
 819   </p><p>
 820     Facebook also makes it much easier to find people who hold the same rare
 821 political beliefs as you. If you’ve always harbored a secret affinity for
 822 socialism but never dared utter this aloud lest you be demonized by your
 823 neighbors, Facebook can help you discover other people who feel the same way
 824 (and it might just demonstrate to you that your affinity is more widespread
 825 than you ever suspected). It can make it easier to find people who share
 826 your sexual identity.  And again, it can help you to understand that what
 827 you thought was a shameful secret that affected only you was really a widely
 828 shared trait, giving you both comfort and the courage to come out to the
 829 people in your life.
 830   </p><p>
 831     All of this presents a dilemma for Facebook: Targeting makes the company’s
 832 ads more effective than traditional ads, but it also lets advertisers see
 833 just how effective their ads are. While advertisers are pleased to learn
 834 that Facebook ads are more effective than ads on systems with less
 835 sophisticated targeting, advertisers can also see that in nearly every case,
 836 the people who see their ads ignore them. Or, at best, the ads work on a
 837 subconscious level, creating nebulous unmeasurables like <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">brand
 838 recognition.</span>“</span> This means that the price per ad is very low in nearly
 839 every case.
 840   </p><p>
 841     To make things worse, many Facebook groups spark precious little
 842 discussion. Your little-league soccer team, the people with the same rare
 843 disease as you, and the people you share a political affinity with may
 844 exchange the odd flurry of messages at critical junctures, but on a daily
 845 basis, there’s not much to say to your old high school chums or other
 846 hockey-card collectors.
 847   </p><p>
 848     With nothing but <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">organic</span>“</span> discussion, Facebook would not
 849 generate enough traffic to sell enough ads to make the money it needs to
 850 continually expand by buying up its competitors while returning handsome
 851 sums to its investors.
 852   </p><p>
 853     So Facebook has to gin up traffic by sidetracking its own forums: Every time
 854 Facebook’s algorithm injects controversial materials — inflammatory
 855 political articles, conspiracy theories, outrage stories — into a group, it
 856 can hijack that group’s nominal purpose with its desultory discussions and
 857 supercharge those discussions by turning them into bitter, unproductive
 858 arguments that drag on and on. Facebook is optimized for engagement, not
 859 happiness, and it turns out that automated systems are pretty good at
 860 figuring out things that people will get angry about.
 861   </p><p>
 862     Facebook <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> modify our behavior but only in a couple
 863 of trivial ways. First, it can lock in all your friends and family members
 864 so that you check and check and check with Facebook to find out what they
 865 are up to; and second, it can make you angry and anxious. It can force you
 866 to choose between being interrupted constantly by updates — a process that
 867 breaks your concentration and makes it hard to be introspective — and
 868 staying in touch with your friends. This is a very limited form of mind
 869 control, and it can only really make us miserable, angry, and anxious.
 870   </p><p>
 871     This is why Facebook’s targeting systems — both the ones it shows to
 872 advertisers and the ones that let users find people who share their
 873 interests — are so next-gen and smooth and easy to use as well as why its
 874 message boards have a toolset that seems like it hasn’t changed since the
 875 mid-2000s. If Facebook delivered an equally flexible, sophisticated
 876 message-reading system to its users, those users could defend themselves
 877 against being nonconsensually eyeball-fucked with Donald Trump headlines.
 878   </p><p>
 879     The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads it gets to show you. The
 880 solution to Facebook’s ads only working one in a thousand times is for the
 881 company to try to increase how much time you spend on Facebook by a factor
 882 of a thousand. Rather than thinking of Facebook as a company that has
 883 figured out how to show you exactly the right ad in exactly the right way to
 884 get you to do what its advertisers want, think of it as a company that has
 885 figured out how to make you slog through an endless torrent of arguments
 886 even though they make you miserable, spending so much time on the site that
 887 it eventually shows you at least one ad that you respond to.
 888   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="monopoly-and-the-right-to-the-future-tense"></a>Monopoly and the right to the future tense</h2></div></div></div><p>
 889     Zuboff and her cohort are particularly alarmed at the extent to which
 890 surveillance allows corporations to influence our decisions, taking away
 891 something she poetically calls <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">the right to the future tense</span>“</span>
 892 — that is, the right to decide for yourself what you will do in the future.
 893   </p><p>
 894     It’s true that advertising can tip the scales one way or another: When
 895 you’re thinking of buying a fridge, a timely fridge ad might end the search
 896 on the spot. But Zuboff puts enormous and undue weight on the persuasive
 897 power of surveillance-based influence techniques. Most of these don’t work
 898 very well, and the ones that do won’t work for very long. The makers of
 899 these influence tools are confident they will someday refine them into
 900 systems of total control, but they are hardly unbiased observers, and the
 901 risks from their dreams coming true are very speculative.
 902   </p><p>
 903     By contrast, Zuboff is rather sanguine about 40 years of lax antitrust
 904 practice that has allowed a handful of companies to dominate the internet,
 905 ushering in an information age with, <a class="ulink" href="https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040" target="_top">as one person
 906 on Twitter noted</a>, five giant websites each filled with screenshots
 907 of the other four.
 908   </p><p>
 909     However, if we are to be alarmed that we might lose the right to choose for
 910 ourselves what our future will hold, then monopoly’s nonspeculative,
 911 concrete, here-and-now harms should be front and center in our debate over
 912 tech policy.
 913   </p><p>
 914     Start with <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">digital rights management.</span>“</span> In 1998, Bill Clinton
 915 signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. It’s a complex
 916 piece of legislation with many controversial clauses but none more so than
 917 Section 1201, the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">anti-circumvention</span>“</span> rule.
 918   </p><p>
 919     This is a blanket ban on tampering with systems that restrict access to
 920 copyrighted works. The ban is so thoroughgoing that it prohibits removing a
 921 copyright lock even when no copyright infringement takes place. This is by
 922 design: The activities that the DMCA’s Section 1201 sets out to ban are not
 923 copyright infringements; rather, they are legal activities that frustrate
 924 manufacturers’ commercial plans.
 925   </p><p>
 926     For example, Section 1201’s first major application was on DVD players as a
 927 means of enforcing the region coding built into those devices. DVD-CCA, the
 928 body that standardized DVDs and DVD players, divided the world into six
 929 regions and specified that DVD players must check each disc to determine
 930 which regions it was authorized to be played in. DVD players would have
 931 their own corresponding region (a DVD player bought in the U.S. would be
 932 region 1 while one bought in India would be region 5). If the player and the
 933 disc’s region matched, the player would play the disc; otherwise, it would
 934 reject it.
 935   </p><p>
 936     However, watching a lawfully produced disc in a country other than the one
 937 where you purchased it is not copyright infringement — it’s the
 938 opposite. Copyright law imposes this duty on customers for a movie: You must
 939 go into a store, find a licensed disc, and pay the asking price. Do that —
 940 and <span class="emphasis"><em>nothing else</em></span> — and you and copyright are square
 941 with one another.
 942   </p><p>
 943     The fact that a movie studio wants to charge Indians less than Americans or
 944 release in Australia later than it releases in the U.K.  has no bearing on
 945 copyright law. Once you lawfully acquire a DVD, it is no copyright
 946 infringement to watch it no matter where you happen to be.
 947   </p><p>
 948     So DVD and DVD player manufacturers would not be able to use accusations of
 949 abetting copyright infringement to punish manufacturers who made
 950 noncompliant players that would play discs from any region or repair shops
 951 that modified players to let you watch out-of-region discs or software
 952 programmers who created programs to let you do this.
 953   </p><p>
 954     That’s where Section 1201 of the DMCA comes in: By banning tampering with an
 955 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">access control,</span>“</span> the rule gave manufacturers and rights
 956 holders standing to sue competitors who released superior products with
 957 lawful features that the market demanded (in this case, region-free
 958 players).
 959   </p><p>
 960     This is an odious scam against consumers, but as time went by, Section 1201
 961 grew to encompass a rapidly expanding constellation of devices and services
 962 as canny manufacturers have realized certain things:
 963   </p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist compact" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>
 964         Any device with software in it contains a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">copyrighted work</span>“</span> —
 965 i.e., the software.
 966       </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
 967         A device can be designed so that reconfiguring the software requires
 968 bypassing an <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">access control for copyrighted works,</span>“</span> which is a
 969 potential felony under Section 1201.
 970       </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
 971         Thus, companies can control their customers’ behavior after they take home
 972 their purchases by designing products so that all unpermitted uses require
 973 modifications that fall afoul of Section 1201.
 974       </p></li></ul></div><p>
 975     Section 1201 then becomes a means for manufacturers of all descriptions to
 976 force their customers to arrange their affairs to benefit the manufacturers’
 977 shareholders instead of themselves.
 978   </p><p>
 979     This manifests in many ways: from a new generation of inkjet printers that
 980 use countermeasures to prevent third-party ink that cannot be bypassed
 981 without legal risks to similar systems in tractors that prevent third-party
 982 technicians from swapping in the manufacturer’s own parts that are not
 983 recognized by the tractor’s control system until it is supplied with a
 984 manufacturer’s unlock code.
 985   </p><p>
 986     Closer to home, Apple’s iPhones use these measures to prevent both
 987 third-party service and third-party software installation. This allows Apple
 988 to decide when an iPhone is beyond repair and must be shredded and
 989 landfilled as opposed to the iPhone’s purchaser. (Apple is notorious for its
 990 environmentally catastrophic policy of destroying old electronics rather
 991 than permitting them to be cannibalized for parts.) This is a very useful
 992 power to wield, especially in light of CEO Tim Cook’s January 2019 warning
 993 to investors that the company’s profits are endangered by customers choosing
 994 to hold onto their phones for longer rather than replacing them.
 995   </p><p>
 996     Apple’s use of copyright locks also allows it to establish a monopoly over
 997 how its customers acquire software for their mobile devices. The App Store’s
 998 commercial terms guarantee Apple a share of all revenues generated by the
 999 apps sold there, meaning that Apple gets paid when you buy an app from its
1000 store and then continues to get paid every time you buy something using that
1001 app. This comes out of the bottom line of software developers, who must
1002 either charge more or accept lower profits for their products.
1003   </p><p>
1004     Crucially, Apple’s use of copyright locks gives it the power to make
1005 editorial decisions about which apps you may and may not install on your own
1006 device. Apple has used this power to <a class="ulink" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/5982243/Apple-bans-dictionary-from-App-Store-over-swear-words.html" target="_top">reject
1007 dictionaries</a> for containing obscene words; to <a class="ulink" href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again" target="_top">limit
1008 political speech</a>, especially from apps that make sensitive political
1009 commentary such as an app that notifies you every time a U.S. drone kills
1010 someone somewhere in the world; and to <a class="ulink" href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-19-palestinian-indie-game-must-not-be-called-a-game-apple-says" target="_top">object
1011 to a game</a> that commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
1012   </p><p>
1013     Apple often justifies monopoly power over software installation in the name
1014 of security, arguing that its vetting of apps for its store means that it
1015 can guard its users against apps that contain surveillance code. But this
1016 cuts both ways. In China, the government <a class="ulink" href="https://www.ft.com/content/ad42e536-cf36-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc" target="_top">ordered
1017 Apple to prohibit the sale of privacy tools</a> like VPNs with the
1018 exception of VPNs that had deliberately introduced flaws designed to let the
1019 Chinese state eavesdrop on users. Because Apple uses technological
1020 countermeasures — with legal backstops — to block customers from installing
1021 unauthorized apps, Chinese iPhone owners cannot readily (or legally) acquire
1022 VPNs that would protect them from Chinese state snooping.
1023   </p><p>
1024     Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism.</span>“</span>
1025 Theoreticians of capitalism claim that its virtue is that it <a class="ulink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_signal" target="_top">aggregates information in
1026 the form of consumers’ decisions</a>, producing efficient
1027 markets. Surveillance capitalism’s supposed power to rob its victims of
1028 their free will through computationally supercharged influence campaigns
1029 means that our markets no longer aggregate customers’ decisions because we
1030 customers no longer decide — we are given orders by surveillance
1031 capitalism’s mind-control rays.
1032   </p><p>
1033     If our concern is that markets cease to function when consumers can no
1034 longer make choices, then copyright locks should concern us at
1035 <span class="emphasis"><em>least</em></span> as much as influence campaigns. An influence
1036 campaign might nudge you to buy a certain brand of phone; but the copyright
1037 locks on that phone absolutely determine where you get it serviced, which
1038 apps can run on it, and when you have to throw it away rather than fixing
1039 it.
1040   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="search-order-and-the-right-to-the-future-tense"></a>Search order and the right to the future tense</h2></div></div></div><p>
1041     Markets are posed as a kind of magic: By discovering otherwise hidden
1042 information conveyed by the free choices of consumers, those consumers’
1043 local knowledge is integrated into a self-correcting system that makes
1044 efficient allocations—more efficient than any computer could calculate. But
1045 monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one app
1046 store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the range of
1047 choices. As Boss Tweed once said, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">I don’t care who does the electing,
1048 so long as I get to do the nominating.</span>“</span> A monopolized market is an
1049 election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist.
1050   </p><p>
1051     This ballot rigging is made more pernicious by the existence of monopolies
1052 over search order. Google’s search market share is about 90%. When Google’s
1053 ranking algorithm puts a result for a popular search term in its top 10,
1054 that helps determine the behavior of millions of people. If Google’s answer
1055 to <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Are vaccines dangerous?</span>“</span> is a page that rebuts anti-vax
1056 conspiracy theories, then a sizable portion of the public will learn that
1057 vaccines are safe. If, on the other hand, Google sends those people to a
1058 site affirming the anti-vax conspiracies, a sizable portion of those
1059 millions will come away convinced that vaccines are dangerous.
1060   </p><p>
1061     Google’s algorithm is often tricked into serving disinformation as a
1062 prominent search result. But in these cases, Google isn’t persuading people
1063 to change their minds; it’s just presenting something untrue as fact when
1064 the user has no cause to doubt it.
1065   </p><p>
1066     This is true whether the search is for <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Are vaccines
1067 dangerous?</span>“</span> or <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">best restaurants near me.</span>“</span> Most users
1068 will never look past the first page of search results, and when the
1069 overwhelming majority of people all use the same search engine, the ranking
1070 algorithm deployed by that search engine will determine myriad outcomes
1071 (whether to adopt a child, whether to have cancer surgery, where to eat
1072 dinner, where to move, where to apply for a job) to a degree that vastly
1073 outstrips any behavioral outcomes dictated by algorithmic persuasion
1074 techniques.
1075   </p><p>
1076     Many of the questions we ask search engines have no empirically correct
1077 answers: <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Where should I eat dinner?</span>“</span> is not an objective
1078 question. Even questions that do have correct answers (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Are vaccines
1079 dangerous?</span>“</span>) don’t have one empirically superior source for that
1080 answer. Many pages affirm the safety of vaccines, so which one goes first?
1081 Under conditions of competition, consumers can choose from many search
1082 engines and stick with the one whose algorithmic judgment suits them best,
1083 but under conditions of monopoly, we all get our answers from the same
1084 place.
1085   </p><p>
1086     Google’s search dominance isn’t a matter of pure merit: The company has
1087 leveraged many tactics that would have been prohibited under classical,
1088 pre-Ronald-Reagan antitrust enforcement standards to attain its
1089 dominance. After all, this is a company that has developed two major
1090 products: a really good search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. Every
1091 other major success it’s had — Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. — has
1092 come through an acquisition of a nascent competitor. Many of the company’s
1093 key divisions, such as the advertising technology of DoubleClick, violate
1094 the historical antitrust principle of structural separation, which forbade
1095 firms from owning subsidiaries that competed with their
1096 customers. Railroads, for example, were barred from owning freight companies
1097 that competed with the shippers whose freight they carried.
1098   </p><p>
1099     If we’re worried about giant companies subverting markets by stripping
1100 consumers of their ability to make free choices, then vigorous antitrust
1101 enforcement seems like an excellent remedy. If we’d denied Google the right
1102 to effect its many mergers, we would also have probably denied it its total
1103 search dominance. Without that dominance, the pet theories, biases, errors
1104 (and good judgment, too) of Google search engineers and product managers
1105 would not have such an outsized effect on consumer choice.
1106   </p><p>
1107     This goes for many other companies. Amazon, a classic surveillance
1108 capitalist, is obviously the dominant tool for searching Amazon — though
1109 many people find their way to Amazon through Google searches and Facebook
1110 posts — and obviously, Amazon controls Amazon search.  That means that
1111 Amazon’s own self-serving editorial choices—like promoting its own house
1112 brands over rival goods from its sellers as well as its own pet theories,
1113 biases, and errors— determine much of what we buy on Amazon. And since
1114 Amazon is the dominant e-commerce retailer outside of China and since it
1115 attained that dominance by buying up both large rivals and nascent
1116 competitors in defiance of historical antitrust rules, we can blame the
1117 monopoly for stripping consumers of their right to the future tense and the
1118 ability to shape markets by making informed choices.
1119   </p><p>
1120     Not every monopolist is a surveillance capitalist, but that doesn’t mean
1121 they’re not able to shape consumer choices in wide-ranging ways. Zuboff
1122 lauds Apple for its App Store and iTunes Store, insisting that adding price
1123 tags to the features on its platforms has been the secret to resisting
1124 surveillance and thus creating markets. But Apple is the only retailer
1125 allowed to sell on its platforms, and it’s the second-largest mobile device
1126 vendor in the world. The independent software vendors that sell through
1127 Apple’s marketplace accuse the company of the same surveillance sins as
1128 Amazon and other big retailers: spying on its customers to find lucrative
1129 new products to launch, effectively using independent software vendors as
1130 free-market researchers, then forcing them out of any markets they discover.
1131   </p><p>
1132     Because of its use of copyright locks, Apple’s mobile customers are not
1133 legally allowed to switch to a rival retailer for its apps if they want to
1134 do so on an iPhone. Apple, obviously, is the only entity that gets to decide
1135 how it ranks the results of search queries in its stores. These decisions
1136 ensure that some apps are often installed (because they appear on page one)
1137 and others are never installed (because they appear on page one
1138 million). Apple’s search-ranking design decisions have a vastly more
1139 significant effect on consumer behaviors than influence campaigns delivered
1140 by surveillance capitalism’s ad-serving bots.
1141   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="monopolists-can-afford-sleeping-pills-for-watchdogs"></a>Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs</h2></div></div></div><p>
1142     Only the most extreme market ideologues think that markets can self-regulate
1143 without state oversight. Markets need watchdogs — regulators, lawmakers, and
1144 other elements of democratic control — to keep them honest. When these
1145 watchdogs sleep on the job, then markets cease to aggregate consumer choices
1146 because those choices are constrained by illegitimate and deceptive
1147 activities that companies are able to get away with because no one is
1148 holding them to account.
1149   </p><p>
1150     But this kind of regulatory capture doesn’t come cheap. In competitive
1151 sectors, where rivals are constantly eroding one another’s margins,
1152 individual firms lack the surplus capital to effectively lobby for laws and
1153 regulations that serve their ends.
1154   </p><p>
1155     Many of the harms of surveillance capitalism are the result of weak or
1156 nonexistent regulation. Those regulatory vacuums spring from the power of
1157 monopolists to resist stronger regulation and to tailor what regulation
1158 exists to permit their existing businesses.
1159   </p><p>
1160     Here’s an example: When firms over-collect and over-retain our data, they
1161 are at increased risk of suffering a breach — you can’t leak data you never
1162 collected, and once you delete all copies of that data, you can no longer
1163 leak it. For more than a decade, we’ve lived through an endless parade of
1164 ever-worsening data breaches, each one uniquely horrible in the scale of
1165 data breached and the sensitivity of that data.
1166   </p><p>
1167     But still, firms continue to over-collect and over-retain our data for three
1168 reasons:
1169   </p><p>
1170     <span class="strong"><strong>1. They are locked in the aforementioned limbic arms
1171 race with our capacity to shore up our attentional defense systems to resist
1172 their new persuasion techniques.</strong></span> They’re also locked in an arms
1173 race with their competitors to find new ways to target people for sales
1174 pitches. As soon as they discover a soft spot in our attentional defenses (a
1175 counterintuitive, unobvious way to target potential refrigerator buyers),
1176 the public begins to wise up to the tactic, and their competitors leap on
1177 it, hastening the day in which all potential refrigerator buyers have been
1178 inured to the pitch.
1179   </p><p>
1180     <span class="strong"><strong>2. They believe the surveillance capitalism
1181 story.</strong></span> Data is cheap to aggregate and store, and both proponents
1182 and opponents of surveillance capitalism have assured managers and product
1183 designers that if you collect enough data, you will be able to perform
1184 sorcerous acts of mind control, thus supercharging your sales. Even if you
1185 never figure out how to profit from the data, someone else will eventually
1186 offer to buy it from you to give it a try. This is the hallmark of all
1187 economic bubbles: acquiring an asset on the assumption that someone else
1188 will buy it from you for more than you paid for it, often to sell to someone
1189 else at an even greater price.
1190   </p><p>
1191     <span class="strong"><strong>3. The penalties for leaking data are
1192 negligible.</strong></span> Most countries limit these penalties to actual
1193 damages, meaning that consumers who’ve had their data breached have to show
1194 actual monetary harms to get a reward. In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it
1195 had lost credit-card data for 53 million of its customers, but it settled
1196 the matter by paying those customers about $0.34 each — and a third of that
1197 $0.34 wasn’t even paid in cash. It took the form of a credit to procure a
1198 largely ineffectual credit-monitoring service.
1199   </p><p>
1200     But the harms from breaches are much more extensive than these
1201 actual-damages rules capture. Identity thieves and fraudsters are wily and
1202 endlessly inventive. All the vast breaches of our century are being
1203 continuously recombined, the data sets merged and mined for new ways to
1204 victimize the people whose data was present in them.  Any reasonable,
1205 evidence-based theory of deterrence and compensation for breaches would not
1206 confine damages to actual damages but rather would allow users to claim
1207 these future harms.
1208   </p><p>
1209     However, even the most ambitious privacy rules, such as the EU General Data
1210 Protection Regulation, fall far short of capturing the negative
1211 externalities of the platforms’ negligent over-collection and
1212 over-retention, and what penalties they do provide are not aggressively
1213 pursued by regulators.
1214   </p><p>
1215     This tolerance of — or indifference to — data over-collection and
1216 over-retention can be ascribed in part to the sheer lobbying muscle of the
1217 platforms. They are so profitable that they can handily afford to divert
1218 gigantic sums to fight any real change — that is, change that would force
1219 them to internalize the costs of their surveillance activities.
1220   </p><p>
1221     And then there’s state surveillance, which the surveillance capitalism story
1222 dismisses as a relic of another era when the big worry was being jailed for
1223 your dissident speech, not having your free will stripped away with machine
1224 learning.
1225   </p><p>
1226     But state surveillance and private surveillance are intimately related. As
1227 we saw when Apple was conscripted by the Chinese government as a vital
1228 collaborator in state surveillance, the only really affordable and tractable
1229 way to conduct mass surveillance on the scale practiced by modern states —
1230 both <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">free</span>“</span> and autocratic states — is to suborn commercial
1231 services.
1232   </p><p>
1233     Whether it’s Google being used as a location tracking tool by local law
1234 enforcement across the U.S. or the use of social media tracking by the
1235 Department of Homeland Security to build dossiers on participants in
1236 protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family separation
1237 practices, any hard limits on surveillance capitalism would hamstring the
1238 state’s own surveillance capability. Without Palantir, Amazon, Google, and
1239 other major tech contractors, U.S. cops would not be able to spy on Black
1240 people, ICE would not be able to manage the caging of children at the U.S.
1241 border, and state welfare systems would not be able to purge their rolls by
1242 dressing up cruelty as empiricism and claiming that poor and vulnerable
1243 people are ineligible for assistance. At least some of the states’
1244 unwillingness to take meaningful action to curb surveillance should be
1245 attributed to this symbiotic relationship.  There is no mass state
1246 surveillance without mass commercial surveillance.
1247   </p><p>
1248     Monopolism is key to the project of mass state surveillance. It’s true that
1249 smaller tech firms are apt to be less well-defended than Big Tech, whose
1250 security experts are drawn from the tops of their field and who are given
1251 enormous resources to secure and monitor their systems against
1252 intruders. But smaller firms also have less to protect: fewer users whose
1253 data is more fragmented across more systems and have to be suborned one at a
1254 time by state actors.
1255   </p><p>
1256     A concentrated tech sector that works with authorities is a much more
1257 powerful ally in the project of mass state surveillance than a fragmented
1258 one composed of smaller actors. The U.S. tech sector is small enough that
1259 all of its top executives fit around a single boardroom table in Trump Tower
1260 in 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Most of its biggest players bid
1261 to win JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense
1262 Infrastructure cloud contract. Like other highly concentrated industries,
1263 Big Tech rotates its key employees in and out of government service, sending
1264 them to serve in the Department of Defense and the White House, then hiring
1265 ex-Pentagon and ex-DOD top staffers and officers to work in their own
1266 government relations departments.
1267   </p><p>
1268     They can even make a good case for doing this: After all, when there are
1269 only four or five big companies in an industry, everyone qualified to
1270 regulate those companies has served as an executive in at least a couple of
1271 them — because, likewise, when there are only five companies in an industry,
1272 everyone qualified for a senior role at any of them is by definition working
1273 at one of the other ones.
1274   </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
1275       While surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies certainly abet
1276 surveillance.
1277     </p></blockquote></div><p>
1278     Industries that are competitive are fragmented — composed of companies that
1279 are at each other’s throats all the time and eroding one another’s margins
1280 in bids to steal their best customers. This leaves them with much more
1281 limited capital to use to lobby for favorable rules and a much harder job of
1282 getting everyone to agree to pool their resources to benefit the industry as
1283 a whole.
1284   </p><p>
1285     Surveillance combined with machine learning is supposed to be an existential
1286 crisis, a species-defining moment at which our free will is just a few more
1287 advances in the field from being stripped away. I am skeptical of this
1288 claim, but I <span class="emphasis"><em>do</em></span> think that tech poses an existential
1289 threat to our society and possibly our species.
1290   </p><p>
1291     But that threat grows out of monopoly.
1292   </p><p>
1293     One of the consequences of tech’s regulatory capture is that it can shift
1294 liability for poor security decisions onto its customers and the wider
1295 society. It is absolutely normal in tech for companies to obfuscate the
1296 workings of their products, to make them deliberately hard to understand,
1297 and to threaten security researchers who seek to independently audit those
1298 products.
1299   </p><p>
1300     IT is the only field in which this is practiced: No one builds a bridge or a
1301 hospital and keeps the composition of the steel or the equations used to
1302 calculate load stresses a secret. It is a frankly bizarre practice that
1303 leads, time and again, to grotesque security defects on farcical scales,
1304 with whole classes of devices being revealed as vulnerable long after they
1305 are deployed in the field and put into sensitive places.
1306   </p><p>
1307     The monopoly power that keeps any meaningful consequences for breaches at
1308 bay means that tech companies continue to build terrible products that are
1309 insecure by design and that end up integrated into our lives, in possession
1310 of our data, and connected to our physical world. For years, Boeing has
1311 struggled with the aftermath of a series of bad technology decisions that
1312 made its 737 fleet a global pariah, a rare instance in which bad tech
1313 decisions have been seriously punished in the market.
1314   </p><p>
1315     These bad security decisions are compounded yet again by the use of
1316 copyright locks to enforce business-model decisions against
1317 consumers. Recall that these locks have become the go-to means for shaping
1318 consumer behavior, making it technically impossible to use third-party ink,
1319 insulin, apps, or service depots in connection with your lawfully acquired
1320 property.
1321   </p><p>
1322     Recall also that these copyright locks are backstopped by legislation (such
1323 as Section 1201 of the DMCA or Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive)
1324 that ban tampering with (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">circumventing</span>“</span>) them, and these
1325 statutes have been used to threaten security researchers who make
1326 disclosures about vulnerabilities without permission from manufacturers.
1327   </p><p>
1328     This amounts to a manufacturer’s veto over safety warnings and
1329 criticism. While this is far from the legislative intent of the DMCA and its
1330 sister statutes around the world, Congress has not intervened to clarify the
1331 statute nor will it because to do so would run counter to the interests of
1332 powerful, large firms whose lobbying muscle is unstoppable.
1333   </p><p>
1334     Copyright locks are a double whammy: They create bad security decisions that
1335 can’t be freely investigated or discussed. If markets are supposed to be
1336 machines for aggregating information (and if surveillance capitalism’s
1337 notional mind-control rays are what make it a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue
1338 capitalism</span>“</span> because it denies consumers the power to make decisions),
1339 then a program of legally enforced ignorance of the risks of products makes
1340 monopolism even more of a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism</span>“</span> than surveillance
1341 capitalism’s influence campaigns.
1342   </p><p>
1343     And unlike mind-control rays, enforced silence over security is an
1344 immediate, documented problem, and it <span class="emphasis"><em>does</em></span> constitute
1345 an existential threat to our civilization and possibly our species. The
1346 proliferation of insecure devices — especially devices that spy on us and
1347 especially when those devices also can manipulate the physical world by,
1348 say, steering your car or flipping a breaker at a power station — is a kind
1349 of technology debt.
1350   </p><p>
1351     In software design, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">technology debt</span>“</span> refers to old, baked-in
1352 decisions that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. Perhaps a long-ago
1353 developer decided to incorporate a networking protocol made by a vendor that
1354 has since stopped supporting it. But everything in the product still relies
1355 on that superannuated protocol, and so, with each revision, the product team
1356 has to work around this obsolete core, adding compatibility layers,
1357 surrounding it with security checks that try to shore up its defenses, and
1358 so on. These Band-Aid measures compound the debt because every subsequent
1359 revision has to make allowances for <span class="emphasis"><em>them</em></span>, too, like
1360 interest mounting on a predatory subprime loan. And like a subprime loan,
1361 the interest mounts faster than you can hope to pay it off: The product team
1362 has to put so much energy into maintaining this complex, brittle system that
1363 they don’t have any time left over to refactor the product from the ground
1364 up and <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">pay off the debt</span>“</span> once and for all.
1365   </p><p>
1366     Typically, technology debt results in a technological bankruptcy: The
1367 product gets so brittle and unsustainable that it fails
1368 catastrophically. Think of the antiquated COBOL-based banking and accounting
1369 systems that fell over at the start of the pandemic emergency when
1370 confronted with surges of unemployment claims.  Sometimes that ends the
1371 product; sometimes it takes the company down with it. Being caught in the
1372 default of a technology debt is scary and traumatic, just like losing your
1373 house due to bankruptcy is scary and traumatic.
1374   </p><p>
1375     But the technology debt created by copyright locks isn’t individual debt;
1376 it’s systemic. Everyone in the world is exposed to this over-leverage, as
1377 was the case with the 2008 financial crisis. When that debt comes due — when
1378 we face a cascade of security breaches that threaten global shipping and
1379 logistics, the food supply, pharmaceutical production pipelines, emergency
1380 communications, and other critical systems that are accumulating technology
1381 debt in part due to the presence of deliberately insecure and deliberately
1382 unauditable copyright locks — it will indeed pose an existential risk.
1383   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="privacy-and-monopoly"></a>Privacy and monopoly</h2></div></div></div><p>
1384     Many tech companies are gripped by an orthodoxy that holds that if they just
1385 gather enough data on enough of our activities, everything else is possible
1386 — the mind control and endless profits. This is an unfalsifiable hypothesis:
1387 If data gives a tech company even a tiny improvement in behavior prediction
1388 and modification, the company declares that it has taken the first step
1389 toward global domination with no end in sight. If a company
1390 <span class="emphasis"><em>fails</em></span> to attain any improvements from gathering and
1391 analyzing data, it declares success to be just around the corner, attainable
1392 once more data is in hand.
1393   </p><p>
1394     Surveillance tech is far from the first industry to embrace a nonsensical,
1395 self-serving belief that harms the rest of the world, and it is not the
1396 first industry to profit handsomely from such a delusion. Long before
1397 hedge-fund managers were claiming (falsely)  that they could beat the
1398 S&amp;P 500, there were plenty of other <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">respectable</span>“</span>
1399 industries that have been revealed as quacks in hindsight. From the makers
1400 of radium suppositories (a real thing!)  to the cruel sociopaths who claimed
1401 they could <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">cure</span>“</span> gay people, history is littered with the
1402 formerly respectable titans of discredited industries.
1403   </p><p>
1404     This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech and its
1405 ideological addiction to data. While surveillance’s benefits are mostly
1406 overstated, its harms are, if anything, <span class="emphasis"><em>understated</em></span>.
1407   </p><p>
1408     There’s real irony here. The belief in surveillance capitalism as a
1409 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism</span>“</span> is driven by the belief that markets
1410 wouldn’t tolerate firms that are gripped by false beliefs. An oil company
1411 that has false beliefs about where the oil is will eventually go broke
1412 digging dry wells after all.
1413   </p><p>
1414     But monopolists get to do terrible things for a long time before they pay
1415 the price. Think of how concentration in the finance sector allowed the
1416 subprime crisis to fester as bond-rating agencies, regulators, investors,
1417 and critics all fell under the sway of a false belief that complex
1418 mathematics could construct <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">fully hedged</span>“</span> debt instruments
1419 that could not possibly default. A small bank that engaged in this kind of
1420 malfeasance would simply go broke rather than outrunning the inevitable
1421 crisis, perhaps growing so big that it averted it altogether. But large
1422 banks were able to continue to attract investors, and when they finally
1423 <span class="emphasis"><em>did</em></span> come a-cropper, the world’s governments bailed them
1424 out. The worst offenders of the subprime crisis are bigger than they were in
1425 2008, bringing home more profits and paying their execs even larger sums.
1426   </p><p>
1427     Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech but
1428 because it is <span class="emphasis"><em>big</em></span>. The reason every web publisher
1429 embeds a Facebook <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Like</span>“</span> button is that Facebook dominates the
1430 internet’s social media referrals — and every one of those
1431 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Like</span>“</span> buttons spies on everyone who lands on a page that
1432 contains them (see also: Google Analytics embeds, Twitter buttons, etc.).
1433   </p><p>
1434     The reason the world’s governments have been slow to create meaningful
1435 penalties for privacy breaches is that Big Tech’s concentration produces
1436 huge profits that can be used to lobby against those penalties — and Big
1437 Tech’s concentration means that the companies involved are able to arrive at
1438 a unified negotiating position that supercharges the lobbying.
1439   </p><p>
1440     The reason that the smartest engineers in the world want to work for Big
1441 Tech is that Big Tech commands the lion’s share of tech industry jobs.
1442   </p><p>
1443     The reason people who are aghast at Facebook’s and Google’s and Amazon’s
1444 data-handling practices continue to use these services is that all their
1445 friends are on Facebook; Google dominates search; and Amazon has put all the
1446 local merchants out of business.
1447   </p><p>
1448     Competitive markets would weaken the companies’ lobbying muscle by reducing
1449 their profits and pitting them against each other in regulatory forums. It
1450 would give customers other places to go to get their online services. It
1451 would make the companies small enough to regulate and pave the way to
1452 meaningful penalties for breaches. It would let engineers with ideas that
1453 challenged the surveillance orthodoxy raise capital to compete with the
1454 incumbents. It would give web publishers multiple ways to reach audiences
1455 and make the case against Facebook and Google and Twitter embeds.
1456   </p><p>
1457     In other words, while surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies
1458 certainly abet surveillance.
1459   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="ronald-reagan-pioneer-of-tech-monopolism"></a>Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism</h2></div></div></div><p>
1460     Technology exceptionalism is a sin, whether it’s practiced by technology’s
1461 blind proponents or by its critics. Both of these camps are prone to
1462 explaining away monopolistic concentration by citing some special
1463 characteristic of the tech industry, like network effects or first-mover
1464 advantage. The only real difference between these two groups is that the
1465 tech apologists say monopoly is inevitable so we should just let tech get
1466 away with its abuses while competition regulators in the U.S. and the EU say
1467 monopoly is inevitable so we should punish tech for its abuses but not try
1468 to break up the monopolies.
1469   </p><p>
1470     To understand how tech became so monopolistic, it’s useful to look at the
1471 dawn of the consumer tech industry: 1979, the year the Apple II Plus
1472 launched and became the first successful home computer. That also happens to
1473 be the year that Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail for the 1980
1474 presidential race — a race he won, leading to a radical shift in the way
1475 that antitrust concerns are handled in America. Reagan’s cohort of
1476 politicians — including Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Brian Mulroney in
1477 Canada, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile — went on to
1478 enact similar reforms that eventually spread around the world.
1479   </p><p>
1480     Antitrust’s story began nearly a century before all that with laws like the
1481 Sherman Act, which took aim at monopolists on the grounds that monopolies
1482 were bad in and of themselves — squeezing out competitors, creating
1483 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">diseconomies of scale</span>“</span> (when a company is so big that its
1484 constituent parts go awry and it is seemingly helpless to address the
1485 problems), and capturing their regulators to such a degree that they can get
1486 away with a host of evils.
1487   </p><p>
1488     Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who
1489 Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
1490 and who had created an alternate legislative history of the Sherman Act and
1491 its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that these statutes were
1492 never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary,
1493 including the transcribed speeches of the acts’ authors) but, rather, that
1494 they were intended to prevent <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">consumer harm</span>“</span> — in the form of
1495 higher prices.
1496   </p><p>
1497     Bork was a crank, but he was a crank with a theory that rich people really
1498 liked. Monopolies are a great way to make rich people richer by allowing
1499 them to receive <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">monopoly rents</span>“</span> (that is, bigger profits) and
1500 capture regulators, leading to a weaker, more favorable regulatory
1501 environment with fewer protections for customers, suppliers, the
1502 environment, and workers.
1503   </p><p>
1504     Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who
1505 backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies began
1506 to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement decisions
1507 (Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork flunked the
1508 Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, D.C. insiders use
1509 the term <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">borked</span>“</span> to refer to any catastrophically bad
1510 political performance).
1511   </p><p>
1512     Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their backers
1513 began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on junkets where
1514 members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun outdoor
1515 activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the consumer
1516 harm theory of antitrust. The more Bork’s theories took hold, the more money
1517 the monopolists were making — and the more surplus capital they had at their
1518 disposal to lobby for even more Borkian antitrust influence campaigns.
1519   </p><p>
1520     The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the
1521 kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns us
1522 against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy.  But Bork didn’t
1523 change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over a
1524 generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed
1525 oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts in
1526 public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that wealth is
1527 a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to form a
1528 coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue.
1529   </p><p>
1530     Today, many fear that machine learning allows surveillance capitalism to
1531 sell <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Bork-as-a-Service,</span>“</span> at internet speeds, so that you can
1532 contract a machine-learning company to engineer <span class="emphasis"><em>rapid</em></span>
1533 shifts in public sentiment without needing the capital to sustain a
1534 multipronged, multigenerational project working at the local, state,
1535 national, and global levels in business, law, and philosophy. I do not
1536 believe that such a project is plausible, though I agree that this is
1537 basically what the platforms claim to be selling. They’re just lying about
1538 it. Big Tech lies all the time, <span class="emphasis"><em>including</em></span> in their
1539 sales literature.
1540   </p><p>
1541     The idea that tech forms <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">natural monopolies</span>“</span> (monopolies that
1542 are the inevitable result of the realities of an industry, such as the
1543 monopolies that accrue the first company to run long-haul phone lines or
1544 rail lines) is belied by tech’s own history: In the absence of
1545 anti-competitive tactics, Google was able to unseat AltaVista and Yahoo;
1546 Facebook was able to head off Myspace. There are some advantages to
1547 gathering mountains of data, but those mountains of data also have
1548 disadvantages: liability (from leaking), diminishing returns (from old
1549 data), and institutional inertia (big companies, like science, progress one
1550 funeral at a time).
1551   </p><p>
1552     Indeed, the birth of the web saw a mass-extinction event for the existing
1553 giant, wildly profitable proprietary technologies that had capital, network
1554 effects, and walls and moats surrounding their businesses. The web showed
1555 that when a new industry is built around a protocol, rather than a product,
1556 the combined might of everyone who uses the protocol to reach their
1557 customers or users or communities outweighs even the most massive
1558 products. CompuServe, AOL, MSN, and a host of other proprietary walled
1559 gardens learned this lesson the hard way: Each believed it could stay
1560 separate from the web, offering <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">curation</span>“</span> and a guarantee of
1561 consistency and quality instead of the chaos of an open system. Each was
1562 wrong and ended up being absorbed into the public web.
1563   </p><p>
1564     Yes, tech is heavily monopolized and is now closely associated with industry
1565 concentration, but this has more to do with a matter of timing than its
1566 intrinsically monopolistic tendencies. Tech was born at the moment that
1567 antitrust enforcement was being dismantled, and tech fell into exactly the
1568 same pathologies that antitrust was supposed to guard against. To a first
1569 approximation, it is reasonable to assume that tech’s monopolies are the
1570 result of a lack of anti-monopoly action and not the much-touted unique
1571 characteristics of tech, such as network effects, first-mover advantage, and
1572 so on.
1573   </p><p>
1574     In support of this thesis, I offer the concentration that every
1575 <span class="emphasis"><em>other</em></span> industry has undergone over the same period. From
1576 professional wrestling to consumer packaged goods to commercial property
1577 leasing to banking to sea freight to oil to record labels to newspaper
1578 ownership to theme parks, <span class="emphasis"><em>every</em></span> industry has undergone
1579 a massive shift toward concentration. There’s no obvious network effects or
1580 first-mover advantage at play in these industries. However, in every case,
1581 these industries attained their concentrated status through tactics that
1582 were prohibited before Bork’s triumph: merging with major competitors,
1583 buying out innovative new market entrants, horizontal and vertical
1584 integration, and a suite of anti-competitive tactics that were once illegal
1585 but are not any longer.
1586   </p><p>
1587     Again: When you change the laws intended to prevent monopolies and then
1588 monopolies form in exactly the way the law was supposed to prevent, it is
1589 reasonable to suppose that these facts are related.  Tech’s concentration
1590 can be readily explained without recourse to radical theories of network
1591 effects — but only if you’re willing to indict unregulated markets as
1592 tending toward monopoly. Just as a lifelong smoker can give you a hundred
1593 reasons why their smoking didn’t cause their cancer (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">It was the
1594 environmental toxins</span>“</span>), true believers in unregulated markets have a
1595 whole suite of unconvincing explanations for monopoly in tech that leave
1596 capitalism intact.
1597   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="steering-with-the-windshield-wipers"></a>Steering with the windshield wipers</h2></div></div></div><p>
1598     It’s been 40 years since Bork’s project to rehabilitate monopolies achieved
1599 liftoff, and that is a generation and a half, which is plenty of time to
1600 take a common idea and make it seem outlandish and vice versa. Before the
1601 1940s, affluent Americans dressed their baby boys in pink while baby girls
1602 wore blue (a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">delicate and dainty</span>“</span> color). While gendered
1603 colors are obviously totally arbitrary, many still greet this news with
1604 amazement and find it hard to imagine a time when pink connoted masculinity.
1605   </p><p>
1606     After 40 years of studiously ignoring antitrust analysis and enforcement,
1607 it’s not surprising that we’ve all but forgotten that antitrust exists, that
1608 in living memory, growth through mergers and acquisitions were largely
1609 prohibited under law, that market-cornering strategies like vertical
1610 integration could land a company in court.
1611   </p><p>
1612     Antitrust is a market society’s steering wheel, the control of first resort
1613 to keep would-be masters of the universe in their lanes. But Bork and his
1614 cohort ripped out our steering wheel 40 years ago. The car is still
1615 barreling along, and so we’re yanking as hard as we can on all the
1616 <span class="emphasis"><em>other</em></span> controls in the car as well as desperately
1617 flapping the doors and rolling the windows up and down in the hopes that one
1618 of these other controls can be repurposed to let us choose where we’re
1619 heading before we careen off a cliff.
1620   </p><p>
1621     It’s like a 1960s science-fiction plot come to life: People stuck in a
1622 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">generation ship,</span>“</span> plying its way across the stars, a ship once
1623 piloted by their ancestors; and now, after a great cataclysm, the ship’s
1624 crew have forgotten that they’re in a ship at all and no longer remember
1625 where the control room is. Adrift, the ship is racing toward its extinction,
1626 and unless we can seize the controls and execute emergency course
1627 correction, we’re all headed for a fiery death in the heart of a sun.
1628   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="surveillance-still-matters"></a>Surveillance still matters</h2></div></div></div><p>
1629     None of this is to minimize the problems with surveillance.  Surveillance
1630 matters, and Big Tech’s use of surveillance <span class="emphasis"><em>is</em></span> an
1631 existential risk to our species, but that’s not because surveillance and
1632 machine learning rob us of our free will.
1633   </p><p>
1634     Surveillance has become <span class="emphasis"><em>much</em></span> more efficient thanks to
1635 Big Tech. In 1989, the Stasi — the East German secret police — had the whole
1636 country under surveillance, a massive undertaking that recruited one out of
1637 every 60 people to serve as an informant or intelligence operative.
1638   </p><p>
1639     Today, we know that the NSA is spying on a significant fraction of the
1640 entire world’s population, and its ratio of surveillance operatives to the
1641 surveilled is more like 1:10,000 (that’s probably on the low side since it
1642 assumes that every American with top-secret clearance is working for the NSA
1643 on this project — we don’t know how many of those cleared people are
1644 involved in NSA spying, but it’s definitely not all of them).
1645   </p><p>
1646     How did the ratio of surveillable citizens expand from 1:60 to 1:10,000 in
1647 less than 30 years? It’s thanks to Big Tech. Our devices and services gather
1648 most of the data that the NSA mines for its surveillance project. We pay for
1649 these devices and the services they connect to, and then we painstakingly
1650 perform the data-entry tasks associated with logging facts about our lives,
1651 opinions, and preferences. This mass surveillance project has been largely
1652 useless for fighting terrorism: The NSA can <a class="ulink" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-of-phone-data-collection-program/2013/08/08/fc915e5a-feda-11e2-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html" target="_top">only
1653 point to a single minor success story</a> in which it used its data
1654 collection program to foil an attempt by a U.S. resident to wire a few
1655 thousand dollars to an overseas terror group. It’s ineffective for much the
1656 same reason that commercial surveillance projects are largely ineffective at
1657 targeting advertising: The people who want to commit acts of terror, like
1658 people who want to buy a refrigerator, are extremely rare. If you’re trying
1659 to detect a phenomenon whose base rate is one in a million with an
1660 instrument whose accuracy is only 99%, then every true positive will come at
1661 the cost of 9,999 false positives.
1662   </p><p>
1663     Let me explain that again: If one in a million people is a terrorist, then
1664 there will only be about one terrorist in a random sample of one million
1665 people. If your test for detecting terrorists is 99% accurate, it will
1666 identify 10,000 terrorists in your million-person sample (1% of one million
1667 is 10,000). For every true positive, you’ll get 9,999 false positives.
1668   </p><p>
1669     In reality, the accuracy of algorithmic terrorism detection falls far short
1670 of the 99% mark, as does refrigerator ad targeting. The difference is that
1671 being falsely accused of wanting to buy a fridge is a minor nuisance while
1672 being falsely accused of planning a terror attack can destroy your life and
1673 the lives of everyone you love.
1674   </p><p>
1675     Mass state surveillance is only feasible because of surveillance capitalism
1676 and its extremely low-yield ad-targeting systems, which require a constant
1677 feed of personal data to remain barely viable.  Surveillance capitalism’s
1678 primary failure mode is mistargeted ads while mass state surveillance’s
1679 primary failure mode is grotesque human rights abuses, tending toward
1680 totalitarianism.
1681   </p><p>
1682     State surveillance is no mere parasite on Big Tech, sucking up its data and
1683 giving nothing in return. In truth, the two are symbiotes: Big Tech sucks up
1684 our data for spy agencies, and spy agencies ensure that governments don’t
1685 limit Big Tech’s activities so severely that it would no longer serve the
1686 spy agencies’ needs. There is no firm distinction between state surveillance
1687 and surveillance capitalism; they are dependent on one another.
1688   </p><p>
1689     To see this at work today, look no further than Amazon’s home surveillance
1690 device, the Ring doorbell, and its associated app, Neighbors. Ring — a
1691 product that Amazon acquired and did not develop in house — makes a
1692 camera-enabled doorbell that streams footage from your front door to your
1693 mobile device. The Neighbors app allows you to form a neighborhood-wide
1694 surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through which you can share
1695 clips of <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">suspicious characters.</span>“</span> If you’re thinking that this
1696 sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists supercharge their
1697 suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down their blocks, <a class="ulink" href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/amazons-ring-enables-over-policing-efforts-some-americas-deadliest-law-enforcement" target="_top">you’re
1698 right</a>. Ring has become a <span class="emphasis"><em>de facto,</em></span>
1699 off-the-books arm of the police without any of the pesky oversight or rules.
1700   </p><p>
1701     In mid-2019, a series of public records requests revealed that Amazon had
1702 struck confidential deals with more than 400 local law enforcement agencies
1703 through which the agencies would promote Ring and Neighbors and in exchange
1704 get access to footage from Ring cameras. In theory, cops would need to
1705 request this footage through Amazon (and internal documents reveal that
1706 Amazon devotes substantial resources to coaching cops on how to spin a
1707 convincing story when doing so), but in practice, when a Ring customer turns
1708 down a police request, Amazon only requires the agency to formally request
1709 the footage from the company, which it will then produce.
1710   </p><p>
1711     Ring and law enforcement have found many ways to intertwine their
1712 activities. Ring strikes secret deals to acquire real-time access to 911
1713 dispatch and then streams alarming crime reports to Neighbors users, which
1714 serve as convincers for anyone who’s contemplating a surveillance doorbell
1715 but isn’t sure whether their neighborhood is dangerous enough to warrant it.
1716   </p><p>
1717     The more the cops buzz-market the surveillance capitalist Ring, the more
1718 surveillance capability the state gets. Cops who rely on private entities
1719 for law-enforcement roles then brief against any controls on the deployment
1720 of that technology while the companies return the favor by lobbying against
1721 rules requiring public oversight of police surveillance technology. The more
1722 the cops rely on Ring and Neighbors, the harder it will be to pass laws to
1723 curb them. The fewer laws there are against them, the more the cops will
1724 rely on them.
1725   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="dignity-and-sanctuary"></a>Dignity and sanctuary</h2></div></div></div><p>
1726     But even if we could exercise democratic control over our states and force
1727 them to stop raiding surveillance capitalism’s reservoirs of behavioral
1728 data, surveillance capitalism would still harm us.
1729   </p><p>
1730     This is an area where Zuboff shines. Her chapter on <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">sanctuary</span>“</span>
1731 — the feeling of being unobserved — is a beautiful hymn to introspection,
1732 calmness, mindfulness, and tranquility.
1733   </p><p>
1734     When you are watched, something changes. Anyone who has ever raised a child
1735 knows this. You might look up from your book (or more realistically, from
1736 your phone) and catch your child in a moment of profound realization and
1737 growth, a moment where they are learning something that is right at the edge
1738 of their abilities, requiring their entire ferocious concentration. For a
1739 moment, you’re transfixed, watching that rare and beautiful moment of focus
1740 playing out before your eyes, and then your child looks up and sees you
1741 seeing them, and the moment collapses. To grow, you need to be and expose
1742 your authentic self, and in that moment, you are vulnerable like a hermit
1743 crab scuttling from one shell to the next. The tender, unprotected tissues
1744 you expose in that moment are too delicate to reveal in the presence of
1745 another, even someone you trust as implicitly as a child trusts their
1746 parent.
1747   </p><p>
1748     In the digital age, our authentic selves are inextricably tied to our
1749 digital lives. Your search history is a running ledger of the questions
1750 you’ve pondered. Your location history is a record of the places you’ve
1751 sought out and the experiences you’ve had there. Your social graph reveals
1752 the different facets of your identity, the people you’ve connected with.
1753   </p><p>
1754     To be observed in these activities is to lose the sanctuary of your
1755 authentic self.
1756   </p><p>
1757     There’s another way in which surveillance capitalism robs us of our capacity
1758 to be our authentic selves: by making us anxious.  Surveillance capitalism
1759 isn’t really a mind-control ray, but you don’t need a mind-control ray to
1760 make someone anxious. After all, another word for anxiety is agitation, and
1761 to make someone experience agitation, you need merely to agitate them. To
1762 poke them and prod them and beep at them and buzz at them and bombard them
1763 on an intermittent schedule that is just random enough that our limbic
1764 systems never quite become inured to it.
1765   </p><p>
1766     Our devices and services are <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">general purpose</span>“</span> in that they can
1767 connect anything or anyone to anything or anyone else and that they can run
1768 any program that can be written. This means that the distraction rectangles
1769 in our pockets hold our most precious moments with our most beloved people
1770 and their most urgent or time-sensitive communications (from <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">running
1771 late can you get the kid?</span>“</span> to <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">doctor gave me bad news and I
1772 need to talk to you RIGHT NOW</span>“</span>) as well as ads for refrigerators and
1773 recruiting messages from Nazis.
1774   </p><p>
1775     All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration and
1776 tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think through
1777 difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated them like
1778 this, we’d call it <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">sleep deprivation torture,</span>“</span> and it would be
1779 <a class="ulink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SKpRbvnx6g" target="_top">a war crime under
1780 the Geneva Conventions</a>.
1781   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="afflicting-the-afflicted"></a>Afflicting the afflicted</h2></div></div></div><p>
1782     The effects of surveillance on our ability to be our authentic selves are
1783 not equal for all people. Some of us are lucky enough to live in a time and
1784 place in which all the most important facts of our lives are widely and
1785 roundly socially acceptable and can be publicly displayed without the risk
1786 of social consequence.
1787   </p><p>
1788     But for many of us, this is not true. Recall that in living memory, many of
1789 the ways of being that we think of as socially acceptable today were once
1790 cause for dire social sanction or even imprisonment.  If you are 65 years
1791 old, you have lived through a time in which people living in <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">free
1792 societies</span>“</span> could be imprisoned or sanctioned for engaging in
1793 homosexual activity, for falling in love with a person whose skin was a
1794 different color than their own, or for smoking weed.
1795   </p><p>
1796     Today, these activities aren’t just decriminalized in much of the world,
1797 they’re considered normal, and the fallen prohibitions are viewed as
1798 shameful, regrettable relics of the past.
1799   </p><p>
1800     How did we get from prohibition to normalization? Through private, personal
1801 activity: People who were secretly gay or secret pot-smokers or who secretly
1802 loved someone with a different skin color were vulnerable to retaliation if
1803 they made their true selves known and were limited in how much they could
1804 advocate for their own right to exist in the world and be true to
1805 themselves. But because there was a private sphere, these people could form
1806 alliances with their friends and loved ones who did not share their
1807 disfavored traits by having private conversations in which they came out,
1808 disclosing their true selves to the people around them and bringing them to
1809 their cause one conversation at a time.
1810   </p><p>
1811     The right to choose the time and manner of these conversations was key to
1812 their success. It’s one thing to come out to your dad while you’re on a
1813 fishing trip away from the world and another thing entirely to blurt it out
1814 over the Christmas dinner table while your racist Facebook uncle is there to
1815 make a scene.
1816   </p><p>
1817     Without a private sphere, there’s a chance that none of these changes would
1818 have come to pass and that the people who benefited from these changes would
1819 have either faced social sanction for coming out to a hostile world or would
1820 have never been able to reveal their true selves to the people they love.
1821   </p><p>
1822     The corollary is that, unless you think that our society has attained social
1823 perfection — that your grandchildren in 50 years will ask you to tell them
1824 the story of how, in 2020, every injustice had been righted and no further
1825 change had to be made — then you should expect that right now, at this
1826 minute, there are people you love, whose happiness is key to your own, who
1827 have a secret in their hearts that stops them from ever being their
1828 authentic selves with you. These people are sorrowing and will go to their
1829 graves with that secret sorrow in their hearts, and the source of that
1830 sorrow will be the falsity of their relationship to you.
1831   </p><p>
1832     A private realm is necessary for human progress.
1833   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="any-data-you-collect-and-retain-will-eventually-leak"></a>Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak</h2></div></div></div><p>
1834     The lack of a private life can rob vulnerable people of the chance to be
1835 their authentic selves and constrain our actions by depriving us of
1836 sanctuary, but there is another risk that is borne by everyone, not just
1837 people with a secret: crime.
1838   </p><p>
1839     Personally identifying information is of very limited use for the purpose of
1840 controlling peoples’ minds, but identity theft — really a catchall term for
1841 a whole constellation of terrible criminal activities that can destroy your
1842 finances, compromise your personal integrity, ruin your reputation, or even
1843 expose you to physical danger — thrives on it.
1844   </p><p>
1845     Attackers are not limited to using data from one breached source,
1846 either. Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names,
1847 addresses, phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work
1848 performance, brushes with the criminal justice system, family details,
1849 genetic information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits,
1850 search histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other
1851 sensitive information. Attackers can merge data from these different
1852 breaches to build up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and then
1853 use different parts of the data for different criminal purposes.
1854   </p><p>
1855     For example, attackers can use leaked username and password combinations to
1856 hijack whole fleets of commercial vehicles that <a class="ulink" href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmpx4x/hacker-monitor-cars-kill-engine-gps-tracking-apps" target="_top">have
1857 been fitted with anti-theft GPS trackers and immobilizers</a> or to
1858 hijack baby monitors in order to <a class="ulink" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/23/how-nest-designed-keep-intruders-out-peoples-homes-effectively-allowed-hackers-get/?utm_term=.15220e98c550" target="_top">terrorize
1859 toddlers with the audio tracks from pornography</a>. Attackers use
1860 leaked data to trick phone companies into giving them your phone number,
1861 then they intercept SMS-based two-factor authentication codes in order to
1862 take over your email, bank account, and/or cryptocurrency wallets.
1863   </p><p>
1864     Attackers are endlessly inventive in the pursuit of creative ways to
1865 weaponize leaked data. One common use of leaked data is to penetrate
1866 companies in order to access <span class="emphasis"><em>more</em></span> data.
1867   </p><p>
1868     Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies
1869 over-collecting and over-retaining our data. Spy agencies sometimes pay
1870 companies for access to their data or intimidate them into giving it up, but
1871 sometimes they work just like criminals do — by <a class="ulink" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24751821" target="_top">sneaking data out of
1872 companies’ databases</a>.
1873   </p><p>
1874     The over-collection of data has a host of terrible social consequences, from
1875 the erosion of our authentic selves to the undermining of social progress,
1876 from state surveillance to an epidemic of online crime. Commercial
1877 surveillance is also a boon to people running influence campaigns, but
1878 that’s the least of our troubles.
1879   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="critical-tech-exceptionalism-is-still-tech-exceptionalism"></a>Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism</h2></div></div></div><p>
1880     Big Tech has long practiced technology exceptionalism: the idea that it
1881 should not be subject to the mundane laws and norms of
1882 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">meatspace.</span>“</span> Mottoes like Facebook’s <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">move fast and break
1883 things</span>“</span> attracted justifiable scorn of the companies’ self-serving
1884 rhetoric.
1885   </p><p>
1886     Tech exceptionalism got us all into a lot of trouble, so it’s ironic and
1887 distressing to see Big Tech’s critics committing the same sin.
1888   </p><p>
1889     Big Tech is not a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism</span>“</span> that cannot be cured
1890 through the traditional anti-monopoly remedies of trustbusting (forcing
1891 companies to divest of competitors they have acquired) and bans on mergers
1892 to monopoly and other anti-competitive tactics. Big Tech does not have the
1893 power to use machine learning to influence our behavior so thoroughly that
1894 markets lose the ability to punish bad actors and reward superior
1895 competitors. Big Tech has no rule-writing mind-control ray that necessitates
1896 ditching our old toolbox.
1897   </p><p>
1898     The thing is, people have been claiming to have perfected mind-control rays
1899 for centuries, and every time, it turned out to be a con — though sometimes
1900 the con artists were also conning themselves.
1901   </p><p>
1902     For generations, the advertising industry has been steadily improving its
1903 ability to sell advertising services to businesses while only making
1904 marginal gains in selling those businesses’ products to prospective
1905 customers. John Wanamaker’s lament that <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">50% of my advertising budget
1906 is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%</span>“</span> is a testament to the triumph
1907 of <span class="emphasis"><em>ad executives</em></span>, who successfully convinced Wanamaker
1908 that only half of the money he spent went to waste.
1909   </p><p>
1910     The tech industry has made enormous improvements in the science of
1911 convincing businesses that they’re good at advertising while their actual
1912 improvements to advertising — as opposed to targeting — have been pretty
1913 ho-hum. The vogue for machine learning — and the mystical invocation of
1914 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">artificial intelligence</span>“</span> as a synonym for straightforward
1915 statistical inference techniques — has greatly boosted the efficacy of Big
1916 Tech’s sales pitch as marketers have exploited potential customers’ lack of
1917 technical sophistication to get away with breathtaking acts of overpromising
1918 and underdelivering.
1919   </p><p>
1920     It’s tempting to think that if businesses are willing to pour billions into
1921 a venture that the venture must be a good one. Yet there are plenty of times
1922 when this rule of thumb has led us astray.  For example, it’s virtually
1923 unheard of for managed investment funds to outperform simple index funds,
1924 and investors who put their money into the hands of expert money managers
1925 overwhelmingly fare worse than those who entrust their savings to index
1926 funds. But managed funds still account for the majority of the money
1927 invested in the markets, and they are patronized by some of the richest,
1928 most sophisticated investors in the world. Their vote of confidence in an
1929 underperforming sector is a parable about the role of luck in wealth
1930 accumulation, not a sign that managed funds are a good buy.
1931   </p><p>
1932     The claims of Big Tech’s mind-control system are full of tells that the
1933 enterprise is a con. For example, <a class="ulink" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01415/full" target="_top">the
1934 reliance on the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Big Five</span>“</span> personality traits</a> as a
1935 primary means of influencing people even though the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Big Five</span>“</span>
1936 theory is unsupported by any large-scale, peer-reviewed studies and is
1937 <a class="ulink" href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/" target="_top">mostly
1938 the realm of marketing hucksters and pop psych</a>.
1939   </p><p>
1940     Big Tech’s promotional materials also claim that their algorithms can
1941 accurately perform <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">sentiment analysis</span>“</span> or detect peoples’
1942 moods based on their <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">microexpressions,</span>“</span> but <a class="ulink" href="https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/647040758/advertising-on-facebook-is-it-worth-it" target="_top">these
1943 are marketing claims, not scientific ones</a>. These methods are largely
1944 untested by independent scientific experts, and where they have been tested,
1945 they’ve been found sorely wanting.  Microexpressions are particularly
1946 suspect as the companies that specialize in training people to detect them
1947 <a class="ulink" href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/tsas-own-files-show-doubtful-science-behind-its-behavior-screening-program/" target="_top">have
1948 been shown</a> to underperform relative to random chance.
1949   </p><p>
1950     Big Tech has been so good at marketing its own supposed superpowers that
1951 it’s easy to believe that they can market everything else with similar
1952 acumen, but it’s a mistake to believe the hype. Any statement a company
1953 makes about the quality of its products is clearly not impartial. The fact
1954 that we distrust all the things that Big Tech says about its data handling,
1955 compliance with privacy laws, etc., is only reasonable — but why on Earth
1956 would we treat Big Tech’s marketing literature as the gospel truth? Big Tech
1957 lies about just about <span class="emphasis"><em>everything</em></span>, including how well
1958 its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work.
1959   </p><p>
1960     That skepticism should infuse all of our evaluations of Big Tech and its
1961 supposed abilities, including our perusal of its patents. Zuboff vests these
1962 patents with enormous significance, pointing out that Google claimed
1963 extensive new persuasion capabilities in <a class="ulink" href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050131762A1/en" target="_top">its patent
1964 filings</a>. These claims are doubly suspect: first, because they are so
1965 self-serving, and second, because the patent itself is so notoriously an
1966 invitation to exaggeration.
1967   </p><p>
1968     Patent applications take the form of a series of claims and range from broad
1969 to narrow. A typical patent starts out by claiming that its authors have
1970 invented a method or system for doing every conceivable thing that anyone
1971 might do, ever, with any tool or device. Then it narrows that claim in
1972 successive stages until we get to the actual <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">invention</span>“</span> that
1973 is the true subject of the patent.  The hope is that the patent examiner —
1974 who is almost certainly overworked and underinformed — will miss the fact
1975 that some or all of these claims are ridiculous, or at least suspect, and
1976 grant the patent’s broader claims. Patents for unpatentable things are still
1977 incredibly useful because they can be wielded against competitors who might
1978 license that patent or steer clear of its claims rather than endure the
1979 lengthy, expensive process of contesting it.
1980   </p><p>
1981     What’s more, software patents are routinely granted even though the filer
1982 doesn’t have any evidence that they can do the thing claimed by the
1983 patent. That is, you can patent an <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">invention</span>“</span> that you haven’t
1984 actually made and that you don’t know how to make.
1985   </p><p>
1986     With these considerations in hand, it becomes obvious that the fact that a
1987 Big Tech company has patented what it <span class="emphasis"><em>says</em></span> is an
1988 effective mind-control ray is largely irrelevant to whether Big Tech can in
1989 fact control our minds.
1990   </p><p>
1991     Big Tech collects our data for many reasons, including the diminishing
1992 returns on existing stores of data. But many tech companies also collect
1993 data out of a mistaken tech exceptionalist belief in the network effects of
1994 data. Network effects occur when each new user in a system increases its
1995 value. The classic example is fax machines: A single fax machine is of no
1996 use, two fax machines are of limited use, but every new fax machine that’s
1997 put to use after the first doubles the number of possible fax-to-fax links.
1998   </p><p>
1999     Data mined for predictive systems doesn’t necessarily produce these
2000 dividends. Think of Netflix: The predictive value of the data mined from a
2001 million English-speaking Netflix viewers is hardly improved by the addition
2002 of one more user’s viewing data. Most of the data Netflix acquires after
2003 that first minimum viable sample duplicates existing data and produces only
2004 minimal gains. Meanwhile, retraining models with new data gets progressively
2005 more expensive as the number of data points increases, and manual tasks like
2006 labeling and validating data do not get cheaper at scale.
2007   </p><p>
2008     Businesses pursue fads to the detriment of their profits all the time,
2009 especially when the businesses and their investors are not motivated by the
2010 prospect of becoming profitable but rather by the prospect of being acquired
2011 by a Big Tech giant or by having an IPO.  For these firms, ticking faddish
2012 boxes like <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">collects as much data as possible</span>“</span> might realize a
2013 bigger return on investment than <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">collects a business-appropriate
2014 quantity of data.</span>“</span>
2015   </p><p>
2016     This is another harm of tech exceptionalism: The belief that more data
2017 always produces more profits in the form of more insights that can be
2018 translated into better mind-control rays drives firms to over-collect and
2019 over-retain data beyond all rationality. And since the firms are behaving
2020 irrationally, a good number of them will go out of business and become ghost
2021 ships whose cargo holds are stuffed full of data that can harm people in
2022 myriad ways — but which no one is responsible for antey longer. Even if the
2023 companies don’t go under, the data they collect is maintained behind the
2024 minimum viable security — just enough security to keep the company viable
2025 while it waits to get bought out by a tech giant, an amount calculated to
2026 spend not one penny more than is necessary on protecting data.
2027   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="how-monopolies-not-mind-control-drive-surveillance-capitalism-the-snapchat-story"></a>How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The
2028 Snapchat story</h2></div></div></div><p>
2029     For the first decade of its existence, Facebook competed with the social
2030 media giants of the day (Myspace, Orkut, etc.) by presenting itself as the
2031 pro-privacy alternative. Indeed, Facebook justified its walled garden —
2032 which let users bring in data from the web but blocked web services like
2033 Google Search from indexing and caching Facebook pages — as a pro-privacy
2034 measure that protected users from the surveillance-happy winners of the
2035 social media wars like Myspace.
2036   </p><p>
2037     Despite frequent promises that it would never collect or analyze its users’
2038 data, Facebook periodically created initiatives that did just that, like the
2039 creepy, ham-fisted Beacon tool, which spied on you as you moved around the
2040 web and then added your online activities to your public timeline, allowing
2041 your friends to monitor your browsing habits. Beacon sparked a user
2042 revolt. Every time, Facebook backed off from its surveillance initiative,
2043 but not all the way; inevitably, the new Facebook would be more surveilling
2044 than the old Facebook, though not quite as surveilling as the intermediate
2045 Facebook following the launch of the new product or service.
2046   </p><p>
2047     The pace at which Facebook ramped up its surveillance efforts seems to have
2048 been set by Facebook’s competitive landscape. The more competitors Facebook
2049 had, the better it behaved. Every time a major competitor foundered,
2050 Facebook’s behavior <a class="ulink" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362" target="_top">got
2051 markedly worse</a>.
2052   </p><p>
2053     All the while, Facebook was prodigiously acquiring companies, including a
2054 company called Onavo. Nominally, Onavo made a battery-monitoring mobile
2055 app. But the permissions that Onavo required were so expansive that the app
2056 was able to gather fine-grained telemetry on everything users did with their
2057 phones, including which apps they used and how they were using them.
2058   </p><p>
2059     Through Onavo, Facebook discovered that it was losing market share to
2060 Snapchat, an app that — like Facebook a decade before — billed itself as the
2061 pro-privacy alternative to the status quo. Through Onavo, Facebook was able
2062 to mine data from the devices of Snapchat users, including both current and
2063 former Snapchat users. This spurred Facebook to acquire Instagram — some
2064 features of which competed with Snapchat — and then allowed Facebook to
2065 fine-tune Instagram’s features and sales pitch to erode Snapchat’s gains and
2066 ensure that Facebook would not have to face the kinds of competitive
2067 pressures it had earlier inflicted on Myspace and Orkut.
2068   </p><p>
2069     The story of how Facebook crushed Snapchat reveals the relationship between
2070 monopoly and surveillance capitalism. Facebook combined surveillance with
2071 lax antitrust enforcement to spot the competitive threat of Snapchat on its
2072 horizon and then take decisive action against it. Facebook’s surveillance
2073 capitalism let it avert competitive pressure with anti-competitive
2074 tactics. Facebook users still want privacy — Facebook hasn’t used
2075 surveillance to brainwash them out of it — but they can’t get it because
2076 Facebook’s surveillance lets it destroy any hope of a rival service emerging
2077 that competes on privacy features.
2078   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="a-monopoly-over-your-friends"></a>A monopoly over your friends</h2></div></div></div><p>
2079     A decentralization movement has tried to erode the dominance of Facebook and
2080 other Big Tech companies by fielding <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">indieweb</span>“</span> alternatives —
2081 Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, Diaspora as a Facebook alternative,
2082 etc. — but these efforts have failed to attain any kind of liftoff.
2083   </p><p>
2084     Fundamentally, each of these services is hamstrung by the same problem:
2085 Every potential user for a Facebook or Twitter alternative has to convince
2086 all their friends to follow them to a decentralized web alternative in order
2087 to continue to realize the benefit of social media. For many of us, the only
2088 reason to have a Facebook account is that our friends have Facebook
2089 accounts, and the reason they have Facebook accounts is that
2090 <span class="emphasis"><em>we</em></span> have Facebook accounts.
2091   </p><p>
2092     All of this has conspired to make Facebook — and other dominant platforms —
2093 into <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">kill zones</span>“</span> that investors will not fund new entrants
2094 for.
2095   </p><p>
2096     And yet, all of today’s tech giants came into existence despite the
2097 entrenched advantage of the companies that came before them. To understand
2098 how that happened, you have to understand both interoperability and
2099 adversarial interoperability.
2100   </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
2101       The hard problem of our species is coordination.
2102     </p></blockquote></div><p>
2103     <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Interoperability</span>“</span> is the ability of two technologies to work
2104 with one another: Anyone can make an LP that will play on any record player,
2105 anyone can make a filter you can install in your stove’s extractor fan,
2106 anyone can make gasoline for your car, anyone can make a USB phone charger
2107 that fits in your car’s cigarette lighter receptacle, anyone can make a
2108 light bulb that works in your light socket, anyone can make bread that will
2109 toast in your toaster.
2110   </p><p>
2111     Interoperability is often a source of innovation and consumer benefit: Apple
2112 made the first commercially successful PC, but millions of independent
2113 software vendors made interoperable programs that ran on the Apple II
2114 Plus. The simple analog antenna inputs on the back of TVs first allowed
2115 cable operators to connect directly to TVs, then they allowed game console
2116 companies and then personal computer companies to use standard televisions
2117 as displays. Standard RJ-11 telephone jacks allowed for the production of
2118 phones from a variety of vendors in a variety of forms, from the free
2119 football-shaped phone that came with a <span class="emphasis"><em>Sports
2120 Illustrated</em></span> subscription to business phones with speakers, hold
2121 functions, and so on and then answering machines and finally modems, paving
2122 the way for the internet revolution.
2123   </p><p>
2124     <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Interoperability</span>“</span> is often used interchangeably with
2125 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">standardization,</span>“</span> which is the process when manufacturers and
2126 other stakeholders hammer out a set of agreed-upon rules for implementing a
2127 technology, such as the electrical plug on your wall, the CAN bus used by
2128 your car’s computer systems, or the HTML instructions that your browser
2129 interprets.
2130   </p><p>
2131     But interoperability doesn’t require standardization — indeed,
2132 standardization often proceeds from the chaos of ad hoc interoperability
2133 measures. The inventor of the cigarette-lighter USB charger didn’t need to
2134 get permission from car manufacturers or even the manufacturers of the
2135 dashboard lighter subcomponent. The automakers didn’t take any
2136 countermeasures to prevent the use of these aftermarket accessories by their
2137 customers, but they also didn’t do anything to make life easier for the
2138 chargers’ manufacturers. This is a kind of <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">neutral
2139 interoperability.</span>“</span>
2140   </p><p>
2141     Beyond neutral interoperability, there is <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">adversarial
2142 interoperability.</span>“</span> That’s when a manufacturer makes a product that
2143 interoperates with another manufacturer’s product <span class="emphasis"><em>despite the
2144 second manufacturer’s objections</em></span> and <span class="emphasis"><em>even if that means
2145 bypassing a security system designed to prevent interoperability</em></span>.
2146   </p><p>
2147     Probably the most familiar form of adversarial interoperability is
2148 third-party printer ink. Printer manufacturers claim that they sell printers
2149 below cost and that the only way they can recoup the losses they incur is by
2150 charging high markups on ink. To prevent the owners of printers from buying
2151 ink elsewhere, the printer companies deploy a suite of anti-customer
2152 security systems that detect and reject both refilled and third-party
2153 cartridges.
2154   </p><p>
2155     Owners of printers take the position that HP and Epson and Brother are not
2156 charities and that customers for their wares have no obligation to help them
2157 survive, and so if the companies choose to sell their products at a loss,
2158 that’s their foolish choice and their consequences to live with. Likewise,
2159 competitors who make ink or refill kits observe that they don’t owe printer
2160 companies anything, and their erosion of printer companies’ margins are the
2161 printer companies’ problems, not their competitors’. After all, the printer
2162 companies shed no tears when they drive a refiller out of business, so why
2163 should the refillers concern themselves with the economic fortunes of the
2164 printer companies?
2165   </p><p>
2166     Adversarial interoperability has played an outsized role in the history of
2167 the tech industry: from the founding of the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">alt.*</span>“</span> Usenet
2168 hierarchy (which was started against the wishes of Usenet’s maintainers and
2169 which grew to be bigger than all of Usenet combined)  to the browser wars
2170 (when Netscape and Microsoft devoted massive engineering efforts to making
2171 their browsers incompatible with the other’s special commands and
2172 peccadilloes) to Facebook (whose success was built in part by helping its
2173 new users stay in touch with friends they’d left behind on Myspace because
2174 Facebook supplied them with a tool that scraped waiting messages from
2175 Myspace and imported them into Facebook, effectively creating an
2176 Facebook-based Myspace reader).
2177   </p><p>
2178     Today, incumbency is seen as an unassailable advantage. Facebook is where
2179 all of your friends are, so no one can start a Facebook competitor. But
2180 adversarial compatibility reverses the competitive advantage: If you were
2181 allowed to compete with Facebook by providing a tool that imported all your
2182 users’ waiting Facebook messages into an environment that competed on lines
2183 that Facebook couldn’t cross, like eliminating surveillance and ads, then
2184 Facebook would be at a huge disadvantage. It would have assembled all
2185 possible ex-Facebook users into a single, easy-to-find service; it would
2186 have educated them on how a Facebook-like service worked and what its
2187 potential benefits were; and it would have provided an easy means for
2188 disgruntled Facebook users to tell their friends where they might expect
2189 better treatment.
2190   </p><p>
2191     Adversarial interoperability was once the norm and a key contributor to the
2192 dynamic, vibrant tech scene, but now it is stuck behind a thicket of laws
2193 and regulations that add legal risks to the tried-and-true tactics of
2194 adversarial interoperability. New rules and new interpretations of existing
2195 rules mean that a would-be adversarial interoperator needs to steer clear of
2196 claims under copyright, terms of service, trade secrecy, tortious
2197 interference, and patent.
2198   </p><p>
2199     In the absence of a competitive market, lawmakers have resorted to assigning
2200 expensive, state-like duties to Big Tech firms, such as automatically
2201 filtering user contributions for copyright infringement or terrorist and
2202 extremist content or detecting and preventing harassment in real time or
2203 controlling access to sexual material.
2204   </p><p>
2205     These measures put a floor under how small we can make Big Tech because only
2206 the very largest companies can afford the humans and automated filters
2207 needed to perform these duties.
2208   </p><p>
2209     But that’s not the only way in which making platforms responsible for
2210 policing their users undermines competition. A platform that is expected to
2211 police its users’ conduct must prevent many vital adversarial
2212 interoperability techniques lest these subvert its policing measures. For
2213 example, if someone using a Twitter replacement like Mastodon is able to
2214 push messages into Twitter and read messages out of Twitter, they could
2215 avoid being caught by automated systems that detect and prevent harassment
2216 (such as systems that use the timing of messages or IP-based rules to make
2217 guesses about whether someone is a harasser).
2218   </p><p>
2219     To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather
2220 than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for
2221 better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform
2222 out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their
2223 communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to
2224 block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal
2225 enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial
2226 interoperability.
2227   </p><p>
2228     Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts
2229 by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to
2230 size. But we can’t do both. To replace today’s giant products with
2231 pluralistic protocols, we need to clear the legal thicket that prevents
2232 adversarial interoperability so that tomorrow’s nimble, personal,
2233 small-scale products can federate themselves with giants like Facebook,
2234 allowing the users who’ve left to continue to communicate with users who
2235 haven’t left yet, reaching tendrils over Facebook’s garden wall that
2236 Facebook’s trapped users can use to scale the walls and escape to the
2237 global, open web.
2238   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="fake-news-is-an-epistemological-crisis"></a>Fake news is an epistemological crisis</h2></div></div></div><p>
2239     Tech is not the only industry that has undergone massive concentration since
2240 the Reagan era. Virtually every major industry — from oil to newspapers to
2241 meatpacking to sea freight to eyewear to online pornography — has become a
2242 clubby oligarchy that just a few players dominate.
2243   </p><p>
2244     At the same time, every industry has become something of a tech industry as
2245 general-purpose computers and general-purpose networks and the promise of
2246 efficiencies through data-driven analysis infuse every device, process, and
2247 firm with tech.
2248   </p><p>
2249     This phenomenon of industrial concentration is part of a wider story about
2250 wealth concentration overall as a smaller and smaller number of people own
2251 more and more of our world. This concentration of both wealth and industries
2252 means that our political outcomes are increasingly beholden to the parochial
2253 interests of the people and companies with all the money.
2254   </p><p>
2255     That means that whenever a regulator asks a question with an obvious,
2256 empirical answer (<span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Are humans causing climate change?</span>“</span> or
2257 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Should we let companies conduct commercial mass surveillance?</span>“</span>
2258 or <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Does society benefit from allowing network neutrality
2259 violations?</span>“</span>), the answer that comes out is only correct if that
2260 correctness meets with the approval of rich people and the industries that
2261 made them so wealthy.
2262   </p><p>
2263     Rich people have always played an outsized role in politics and more so
2264 since the Supreme Court’s <span class="emphasis"><em>Citizens United</em></span> decision
2265 eliminated key controls over political spending. Widening inequality and
2266 wealth concentration means that the very richest people are now a lot richer
2267 and can afford to spend a lot more money on political projects than ever
2268 before. Think of the Koch brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates.
2269   </p><p>
2270     But the policy distortions of rich individuals pale in comparison to the
2271 policy distortions that concentrated industries are capable of.  The
2272 companies in highly concentrated industries are much more profitable than
2273 companies in competitive industries — no competition means not having to
2274 reduce prices or improve quality to win customers — leaving them with bigger
2275 capital surpluses to spend on lobbying.
2276   </p><p>
2277     Concentrated industries also find it easier to collaborate on policy
2278 objectives than competitive ones. When all the top execs from your industry
2279 can fit around a single boardroom table, they often do. And
2280 <span class="emphasis"><em>when</em></span> they do, they can forge a consensus position on
2281 regulation.
2282   </p><p>
2283     Rising through the ranks in a concentrated industry generally means working
2284 at two or three of the big companies. When there are only relatively few
2285 companies in a given industry, each company has a more ossified executive
2286 rank, leaving ambitious execs with fewer paths to higher positions unless
2287 they are recruited to a rival. This means that the top execs in concentrated
2288 industries are likely to have been colleagues at some point and socialize in
2289 the same circles — connected through social ties or, say, serving as
2290 trustees for each others’ estates. These tight social bonds foster a
2291 collegial, rather than competitive, attitude.
2292   </p><p>
2293     Highly concentrated industries also present a regulatory conundrum.  When an
2294 industry is dominated by just four or five companies, the only people who
2295 are likely to truly understand the industry’s practices are its veteran
2296 executives. This means that top regulators are often former execs of the
2297 companies they are supposed to be regulating. These turns in government are
2298 often tacitly understood to be leaves of absence from industry, with former
2299 employers welcoming their erstwhile watchdogs back into their executive
2300 ranks once their terms have expired.
2301   </p><p>
2302     All this is to say that the tight social bonds, small number of firms, and
2303 regulatory capture of concentrated industries give the companies that
2304 comprise them the power to dictate many, if not all, of the regulations that
2305 bind them.
2306   </p><p>
2307     This is increasingly obvious. Whether it’s payday lenders <a class="ulink" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/25/how-payday-lending-industry-insider-tilted-academic-research-its-favor/" target="_top">winning
2308 the right to practice predatory lending</a> or Apple <a class="ulink" href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mgxayp/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation" target="_top">winning
2309 the right to decide who can fix your phone</a> or Google and Facebook
2310 winning the right to breach your private data without suffering meaningful
2311 consequences or victories for pipeline companies or impunity for opioid
2312 manufacturers or massive tax subsidies for incredibly profitable dominant
2313 businesses, it’s increasingly apparent that many of our official,
2314 evidence-based truth-seeking processes are, in fact, auctions for sale to
2315 the highest bidder.
2316   </p><p>
2317     It’s really impossible to overstate what a terrifying prospect this is. We
2318 live in an incredibly high-tech society, and none of us could acquire the
2319 expertise to evaluate every technological proposition that stands between us
2320 and our untimely, horrible deaths. You might devote your life to acquiring
2321 the media literacy to distinguish good scientific journals from corrupt
2322 pay-for-play lookalikes and the statistical literacy to evaluate the quality
2323 of the analysis in the journals as well as the microbiology and epidemiology
2324 knowledge to determine whether you can trust claims about the safety of
2325 vaccines — but that would still leave you unqualified to judge whether the
2326 wiring in your home will give you a lethal shock <span class="emphasis"><em>and</em></span>
2327 whether your car’s brakes’ software will cause them to fail unpredictably
2328 <span class="emphasis"><em>and</em></span> whether the hygiene standards at your butcher are
2329 sufficient to keep you from dying after you finish your dinner.
2330   </p><p>
2331     In a world as complex as this one, we have to defer to authorities, and we
2332 keep them honest by making those authorities accountable to us and binding
2333 them with rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We can’t possibly acquire
2334 the expertise to adjudicate conflicting claims about the best way to make
2335 the world safe and prosperous, but we <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> determine
2336 whether the adjudication process itself is trustworthy.
2337   </p><p>
2338     Right now, it’s obviously not.
2339   </p><p>
2340     The past 40 years of rising inequality and industry concentration, together
2341 with increasingly weak accountability and transparency for expert agencies,
2342 has created an increasingly urgent sense of impending doom, the sense that
2343 there are vast conspiracies afoot that operate with tacit official approval
2344 despite the likelihood they are working to better themselves by ruining the
2345 rest of us.
2346   </p><p>
2347     For example, it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that
2348 its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those
2349 decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and
2350 sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the
2351 cooperation of many public officials.  When the survival of you and everyone
2352 you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start
2353 questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether
2354 they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy.
2355   </p><p>
2356     The collapse of the credibility of our systems for divining and upholding
2357 truths has left us in a state of epistemological chaos.  Once, most of us
2358 might have assumed that the system was working and that our regulations
2359 reflected our best understanding of the empirical truths of the world as
2360 they were best understood — now we have to find our own experts to help us
2361 sort the true from the false.
2362   </p><p>
2363     If you’re like me, you probably believe that vaccines are safe, but you
2364 (like me) probably also can’t explain the microbiology or statistics. Few of
2365 us have the math skills to review the literature on vaccine safety and
2366 describe why their statistical reasoning is sound. Likewise, few of us can
2367 review the stats in the (now discredited) literature on opioid safety and
2368 explain how those stats were manipulated. Both vaccines and opioids were
2369 embraced by medical authorities, after all, and one is safe while the other
2370 could ruin your life. You’re left with a kind of inchoate constellation of
2371 rules of thumb about which experts you trust to fact-check controversial
2372 claims and then to explain how all those respectable doctors with their
2373 peer-reviewed research on opioid safety <span class="emphasis"><em>were</em></span> an
2374 aberration and then how you know that the doctors writing about vaccine
2375 safety are <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> an aberration.
2376   </p><p>
2377     I’m 100% certain that vaccinating is safe and effective, but I’m also at
2378 something of a loss to explain exactly, <span class="emphasis"><em>precisely,</em></span> why
2379 I believe this, given all the corruption I know about and the many times the
2380 stamp of certainty has turned out to be a parochial lie told to further
2381 enrich the super rich.
2382   </p><p>
2383     Fake news — conspiracy theories, racist ideologies, scientific denialism —
2384 has always been with us. What’s changed today is not the mix of ideas in the
2385 public discourse but the popularity of the worst ideas in that
2386 mix. Conspiracy and denial have skyrocketed in lockstep with the growth of
2387 Big Inequality, which has also tracked the rise of Big Tech and Big Pharma
2388 and Big Wrestling and Big Car and Big Movie Theater and Big Everything Else.
2389   </p><p>
2390     No one can say for certain why this has happened, but the two dominant camps
2391 are idealism (the belief that the people who argue for these conspiracies
2392 have gotten better at explaining them, maybe with the help of
2393 machine-learning tools) or materialism (the ideas have become more
2394 attractive because of material conditions in the world).
2395   </p><p>
2396     I’m a materialist. I’ve been exposed to the arguments of conspiracy
2397 theorists all my life, and I have not experienced any qualitative leap in
2398 the quality of those arguments.
2399   </p><p>
2400     The major difference is in the world, not the arguments. In a time where
2401 actual conspiracies are commonplace, conspiracy theories acquire a ring of
2402 plausibility.
2403   </p><p>
2404     We have always had disagreements about what’s true, but today, we have a
2405 disagreement over how we know whether something is true. This is an
2406 epistemological crisis, not a crisis over belief. It’s a crisis over the
2407 credibility of our truth-seeking exercises, from scientific journals (in an
2408 era where the biggest journal publishers have been caught producing
2409 pay-to-play journals for junk science) to regulations (in an era where
2410 regulators are routinely cycling in and out of business) to education (in an
2411 era where universities are dependent on corporate donations to keep their
2412 lights on).
2413   </p><p>
2414     Targeting — surveillance capitalism — makes it easier to find people who are
2415 undergoing this epistemological crisis, but it doesn’t create the
2416 crisis. For that, you need to look to corruption.
2417   </p><p>
2418     And, conveniently enough, it’s corruption that allows surveillance
2419 capitalism to grow by dismantling monopoly protections, by permitting
2420 reckless collection and retention of personal data, by allowing ads to be
2421 targeted in secret, and by foreclosing on the possibility of going somewhere
2422 else where you might continue to enjoy your friends without subjecting
2423 yourself to commercial surveillance.
2424   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="tech-is-different"></a>Tech is different</h2></div></div></div><p>
2425     I reject both iterations of technological exceptionalism. I reject the idea
2426 that tech is uniquely terrible and led by people who are greedier or worse
2427 than the leaders of other industries, and I reject the idea that tech is so
2428 good — or so intrinsically prone to concentration — that it can’t be blamed
2429 for its present-day monopolistic status.
2430   </p><p>
2431     I think tech is just another industry, albeit one that grew up in the
2432 absence of real monopoly constraints. It may have been first, but it isn’t
2433 the worst nor will it be the last.
2434   </p><p>
2435     But there’s one way in which I <span class="emphasis"><em>am</em></span> a tech
2436 exceptionalist. I believe that online tools are the key to overcoming
2437 problems that are much more urgent than tech monopolization: climate change,
2438 inequality, misogyny, and discrimination on the basis of race, gender
2439 identity, and other factors. The internet is how we will recruit people to
2440 fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor. Tech is not a
2441 substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or
2442 stability — but it’s a means to achieve these things.
2443   </p><p>
2444     The hard problem of our species is coordination. Everything from climate
2445 change to social change to running a business to making a family work can be
2446 viewed as a collective action problem.
2447   </p><p>
2448     The internet makes it easier than at any time before to find people who want
2449 to work on a project with you — hence the success of free and open-source
2450 software, crowdfunding, and racist terror groups — and easier than ever to
2451 coordinate the work you do.
2452   </p><p>
2453     The internet and the computers we connect to it also possess an exceptional
2454 quality: general-purposeness. The internet is designed to allow any two
2455 parties to communicate any data, using any protocol, without permission from
2456 anyone else. The only production design we have for computers is the
2457 general-purpose, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Turing complete</span>“</span> computer that can run every
2458 program we can express in symbolic logic.
2459   </p><p>
2460     This means that every time someone with a special communications need
2461 invests in infrastructure and techniques to make the internet faster,
2462 cheaper, and more robust, this benefit redounds to everyone else who is
2463 using the internet to communicate. And this also means that every time
2464 someone with a special computing need invests to make computers faster,
2465 cheaper, and more robust, every other computing application is a potential
2466 beneficiary of this work.
2467   </p><p>
2468     For these reasons, every type of communication is gradually absorbed into
2469 the internet, and every type of device — from airplanes to pacemakers —
2470 eventually becomes a computer in a fancy case.
2471   </p><p>
2472     While these considerations don’t preclude regulating networks and computers,
2473 they do call for gravitas and caution when doing so because changes to
2474 regulatory frameworks could ripple out to have unintended consequences in
2475 many, many other domains.
2476   </p><p>
2477     The upshot of this is that our best hope of solving the big coordination
2478 problems — climate change, inequality, etc. — is with free, fair, and open
2479 tech. Our best hope of keeping tech free, fair, and open is to exercise
2480 caution in how we regulate tech and to attend closely to the ways in which
2481 interventions to solve one problem might create problems in other domains.
2482   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="ownership-of-facts"></a>Ownership of facts</h2></div></div></div><p>
2483     Big Tech has a funny relationship with information. When you’re generating
2484 information — anything from the location data streaming off your mobile
2485 device to the private messages you send to friends on a social network — it
2486 claims the rights to make unlimited use of that data.
2487   </p><p>
2488     But when you have the audacity to turn the tables — to use a tool that
2489 blocks ads or slurps your waiting updates out of a social network and puts
2490 them in another app that lets you set your own priorities and suggestions or
2491 crawls their system to allow you to start a rival business — they claim that
2492 you’re stealing from them.
2493   </p><p>
2494     The thing is, information is a very bad fit for any kind of private property
2495 regime. Property rights are useful for establishing markets that can lead to
2496 the effective development of fallow assets. These markets depend on clear
2497 titles to ensure that the things being bought and sold in them can, in fact,
2498 be bought and sold.
2499   </p><p>
2500     Information rarely has such a clear title. Take phone numbers: There’s
2501 clearly something going wrong when Facebook slurps up millions of users’
2502 address books and uses the phone numbers it finds in them to plot out social
2503 graphs and fill in missing information about other users.
2504   </p><p>
2505     But the phone numbers Facebook nonconsensually acquires in this transaction
2506 are not the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">property</span>“</span> of the users they’re taken from nor do
2507 they belong to the people whose phones ring when you dial those numbers. The
2508 numbers are mere integers, 10 digits in the U.S.  and Canada, and they
2509 appear in millions of places, including somewhere deep in pi as well as
2510 numerous other contexts. Giving people ownership titles to integers is an
2511 obviously terrible idea.
2512   </p><p>
2513     Likewise for the facts that Facebook and other commercial surveillance
2514 operators acquire about us, like that we are the children of our parents or
2515 the parents to our children or that we had a conversation with someone else
2516 or went to a public place.  These data points can’t be property in the sense
2517 that your house or your shirt is your property because the title to them is
2518 intrinsically muddy: Does your mom own the fact that she is your mother? Do
2519 you? Do both of you? What about your dad — does he own this fact too, or
2520 does he have to license the fact from you (or your mom or both of you) in
2521 order to use this fact? What about the hundreds or thousands of other people
2522 who know these facts?
2523   </p><p>
2524     If you go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, do the other demonstrators
2525 need your permission to post their photos from the event? The online fights
2526 over <a class="ulink" href="https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-take-photos-at-protests/" target="_top">when and
2527 how to post photos from demonstrations</a> reveal a nuanced, complex
2528 issue that cannot be easily hand-waved away by giving one party a property
2529 right that everyone else in the mix has to respect.
2530   </p><p>
2531     The fact that information isn’t a good fit with property and markets doesn’t
2532 mean that it’s not valuable. Babies aren’t property, but they’re inarguably
2533 valuable. In fact, we have a whole set of rules just for babies as well as a
2534 subset of those rules that apply to humans more generally. Someone who
2535 argues that babies won’t be truly valuable until they can be bought and sold
2536 like loaves of bread would be instantly and rightfully condemned as a
2537 monster.
2538   </p><p>
2539     It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your
2540 information like a nail — not least because Big Tech are such prolific
2541 abusers of property hammers when it comes to <span class="emphasis"><em>their</em></span>
2542 information. But this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use
2543 of our information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market
2544 where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as to
2545 be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of zero in a
2546 click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to modify.
2547   </p><p>
2548     Meanwhile, establishing property rights over information will create
2549 insurmountable barriers to independent data processing. Imagine that we
2550 require a license to be negotiated when a translated document is compared
2551 with its original, something Google has done and continues to do billions of
2552 times to train its automated language translation tools. Google can afford
2553 this, but independent third parties cannot.  Google can staff a clearances
2554 department to negotiate one-time payments to the likes of the EU (one of the
2555 major repositories of translated documents) while independent watchdogs
2556 wanting to verify that the translations are well-prepared, or to root out
2557 bias in translations, will find themselves needing a staffed-up legal
2558 department and millions for licenses before they can even get started.
2559   </p><p>
2560     The same goes for things like search indexes of the web or photos of
2561 peoples’ houses, which have become contentious thanks to Google’s Street
2562 View project. Whatever problems may exist with Google’s photographing of
2563 street scenes, resolving them by letting people decide who can take pictures
2564 of the facades of their homes from a public street will surely create even
2565 worse ones. Think of how street photography is important for newsgathering —
2566 including informal newsgathering, like photographing abuses of authority —
2567 and how being able to document housing and street life are important for
2568 contesting eminent domain, advocating for social aid, reporting planning and
2569 zoning violations, documenting discriminatory and unequal living conditions,
2570 and more.
2571   </p><p>
2572     The ownership of facts is antithetical to many kinds of human progress. It’s
2573 hard to imagine a rule that limits Big Tech’s exploitation of our collective
2574 labors without inadvertently banning people from gathering data on online
2575 harassment or compiling indexes of changes in language or simply
2576 investigating how the platforms are shaping our discourse — all of which
2577 require scraping data that other people have created and subjecting it to
2578 scrutiny and analysis.
2579   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="persuasion-works-slowly"></a>Persuasion works… slowly</h2></div></div></div><p>
2580     The platforms may oversell their ability to persuade people, but obviously,
2581 persuasion works sometimes. Whether it’s the private realm that LGBTQ people
2582 used to recruit allies and normalize sexual diversity or the decadeslong
2583 project to convince people that markets are the only efficient way to solve
2584 complicated resource allocation problems, it’s clear that our societal
2585 attitudes <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> change.
2586   </p><p>
2587     The project of shifting societal attitudes is a game of inches and
2588 years. For centuries, svengalis have purported to be able to accelerate this
2589 process, but even the most brutal forms of propaganda have struggled to make
2590 permanent changes. Joseph Goebbels was able to subject Germans to daily,
2591 mandatory, hourslong radio broadcasts, to round up and torture and murder
2592 dissidents, and to seize full control over their children’s education while
2593 banning any literature, broadcasts, or films that did not comport with his
2594 worldview.
2595   </p><p>
2596     Yet, after 12 years of terror, once the war ended, Nazi ideology was largely
2597 discredited in both East and West Germany, and a program of national truth
2598 and reconciliation was put in its place. Racism and authoritarianism were
2599 never fully abolished in Germany, but neither were the majority of Germans
2600 irrevocably convinced of Nazism — and the rise of racist authoritarianism in
2601 Germany today tells us that the liberal attitudes that replaced Nazism were
2602 no more permanent than Nazism itself.
2603   </p><p>
2604     Racism and authoritarianism have also always been with us. Anyone who’s
2605 reviewed the kind of messages and arguments that racists put forward today
2606 would be hard-pressed to say that they have gotten better at presenting
2607 their ideas. The same pseudoscience, appeals to fear, and circular logic
2608 that racists presented in the 1980s, when the cause of white supremacy was
2609 on the wane, are to be found in the communications of leading white
2610 nationalists today.
2611   </p><p>
2612     If racists haven’t gotten more convincing in the past decade, then how is it
2613 that more people were convinced to be openly racist at that time? I believe
2614 that the answer lies in the material world, not the world of ideas. The
2615 ideas haven’t gotten more convincing, but people have become more
2616 afraid. Afraid that the state can’t be trusted to act as an honest broker in
2617 life-or-death decisions, from those regarding the management of the economy
2618 to the regulation of painkillers to the rules for handling private
2619 information. Afraid that the world has become a game of musical chairs in
2620 which the chairs are being taken away at a never-before-seen rate. Afraid
2621 that justice for others will come at their expense. Monopolism isn’t the
2622 cause of these fears, but the inequality and material desperation and policy
2623 malpractice that monopolism contributes to is a significant contributor to
2624 these conditions. Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies
2625 and violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets
2626 opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded.
2627   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="paying-wont-help"></a>Paying won’t help</h2></div></div></div><p>
2628     As the old saw goes, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the
2629 product.</span>“</span>
2630   </p><p>
2631     It’s a commonplace belief today that the advent of free, ad-supported media
2632 was the original sin of surveillance capitalism.  The reasoning is that the
2633 companies that charged for access couldn’t <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">compete with free</span>“</span>
2634 and so they were driven out of business. Their ad-supported competitors,
2635 meanwhile, declared open season on their users’ data in a bid to improve
2636 their ad targeting and make more money and then resorted to the most
2637 sensationalist tactics to generate clicks on those ads. If only we’d pay for
2638 media again, we’d have a better, more responsible, more sober discourse that
2639 would be better for democracy.
2640   </p><p>
2641     But the degradation of news products long precedes the advent of
2642 ad-supported online news. Long before newspapers were online, lax antitrust
2643 enforcement had opened the door for unprecedented waves of consolidation and
2644 roll-ups in newsrooms. Rival newspapers were merged, reporters and ad sales
2645 staff were laid off, physical plants were sold and leased back, leaving the
2646 companies loaded up with debt through leveraged buyouts and subsequent
2647 profit-taking by the new owners. In other words, it wasn’t merely shifts in
2648 the classified advertising market, which was long held to be the primary
2649 driver in the decline of the traditional newsroom, that made news companies
2650 unable to adapt to the internet — it was monopolism.
2651   </p><p>
2652     Then, as news companies <span class="emphasis"><em>did</em></span> come online, the ad
2653 revenues they commanded dropped even as the number of internet users (and
2654 thus potential online readers) increased. That shift was a function of
2655 consolidation in the ad sales market, with Google and Facebook emerging as
2656 duopolists who made more money every year from advertising while paying less
2657 and less of it to the publishers whose work the ads appeared
2658 alongside. Monopolism created a buyer’s market for ad inventory with
2659 Facebook and Google acting as gatekeepers.
2660   </p><p>
2661     Paid services continue to exist alongside free ones, and often it is these
2662 paid services — anxious to prevent people from bypassing their paywalls or
2663 sharing paid media with freeloaders — that exert the most control over their
2664 customers. Apple’s iTunes and App Stores are paid services, but to maximize
2665 their profitability, Apple has to lock its platforms so that third parties
2666 can’t make compatible software without permission. These locks allow the
2667 company to exercise both editorial control (enabling it to exclude <a class="ulink" href="https://ncac.org/news/blog/does-apples-strict-app-store-content-policy-limit-freedom-of-expression" target="_top">controversial
2668 political material</a>) and technological control, including control
2669 over who can repair the devices it makes. If we’re worried that ad-supported
2670 products deprive people of their right to self-determination by using
2671 persuasion techniques to nudge their purchase decisions a few degrees in one
2672 direction or the other, then the near-total control a single company holds
2673 over the decision of who gets to sell you software, parts, and service for
2674 your iPhone should have us very worried indeed.
2675   </p><p>
2676     We shouldn’t just be concerned about payment and control: The idea that
2677 paying will improve discourse is also dangerously wrong. The poor success
2678 rate of targeted advertising means that the platforms have to incentivize
2679 you to <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">engage</span>“</span> with posts at extremely high levels to generate
2680 enough pageviews to safeguard their profits. As discussed earlier, to
2681 increase engagement, platforms like Facebook use machine learning to guess
2682 which messages will be most inflammatory and make a point of shoving those
2683 into your eyeballs at every turn so that you will hate-click and argue with
2684 people.
2685   </p><p>
2686     Perhaps paying would fix this, the reasoning goes. If platforms could be
2687 economically viable even if you stopped clicking on them once your
2688 intellectual and social curiosity had been slaked, then they would have no
2689 reason to algorithmically enrage you to get more clicks out of you, right?
2690   </p><p>
2691     There may be something to that argument, but it still ignores the wider
2692 economic and political context of the platforms and the world that allowed
2693 them to grow so dominant.
2694   </p><p>
2695     Platforms are world-spanning and all-encompassing because they are
2696 monopolies, and they are monopolies because we have gutted our most
2697 important and reliable anti-monopoly rules. Antitrust was neutered as a key
2698 part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project has
2699 worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net worth, and
2700 even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, undersaved for
2701 retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and undersecured against
2702 climate and technology shocks.
2703   </p><p>
2704     In this wildly unequal world, paying doesn’t improve the discourse; it
2705 simply prices discourse out of the range of the majority of people. Paying
2706 for the product is dandy, if you can afford it.
2707   </p><p>
2708     If you think today’s filter bubbles are a problem for our discourse, imagine
2709 what they’d be like if rich people inhabited free-flowing Athenian
2710 marketplaces of ideas where you have to pay for admission while everyone
2711 else lives in online spaces that are subsidized by wealthy benefactors who
2712 relish the chance to establish conversational spaces where the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">house
2713 rules</span>“</span> forbid questioning the status quo. That is, imagine if the
2714 rich seceded from Facebook, and then, instead of running ads that made money
2715 for shareholders, Facebook became a billionaire’s vanity project that also
2716 happened to ensure that nobody talked about whether it was fair that only
2717 billionaires could afford to hang out in the rarified corners of the
2718 internet.
2719   </p><p>
2720     Behind the idea of paying for access is a belief that free markets will
2721 address Big Tech’s dysfunction. After all, to the extent that people have a
2722 view of surveillance at all, it is generally an unfavorable one, and the
2723 longer and more thoroughly one is surveilled, the less one tends to like
2724 it. Same goes for lock-in: If HP’s ink or Apple’s App Store were really
2725 obviously fantastic, they wouldn’t need technical measures to prevent users
2726 from choosing a rival’s product. The only reason these technical
2727 countermeasures exist is that the companies don’t believe their customers
2728 would <span class="emphasis"><em>voluntarily</em></span> submit to their terms, and they want
2729 to deprive them of the choice to take their business elsewhere.
2730   </p><p>
2731     Advocates for markets laud their ability to aggregate the diffused knowledge
2732 of buyers and sellers across a whole society through demand signals, price
2733 signals, and so on. The argument for surveillance capitalism being a
2734 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism</span>“</span> is that machine-learning-driven persuasion
2735 techniques distort decision-making by consumers, leading to incorrect
2736 signals — consumers don’t buy what they prefer, they buy what they’re
2737 tricked into preferring. It follows that the monopolistic practices of
2738 lock-in, which do far more to constrain consumers’ free choices, are even
2739 more of a <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">rogue capitalism.</span>“</span>
2740   </p><p>
2741     The profitability of any business is constrained by the possibility that its
2742 customers will take their business elsewhere. Both surveillance and lock-in
2743 are anti-features that no customer wants.  But monopolies can capture their
2744 regulators, crush their competitors, insert themselves into their customers’
2745 lives, and corral people into <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">choosing</span>“</span> their services
2746 regardless of whether they want them — it’s fine to be terrible when there
2747 is no alternative.
2748   </p><p>
2749     Ultimately, surveillance and lock-in are both simply business strategies
2750 that monopolists can choose. Surveillance companies like Google are
2751 perfectly capable of deploying lock-in technologies — just look at the
2752 onerous Android licensing terms that require device-makers to bundle in
2753 Google’s suite of applications. And lock-in companies like Apple are
2754 perfectly capable of subjecting their users to surveillance if it means
2755 keeping the Chinese government happy and preserving ongoing access to
2756 Chinese markets.  Monopolies may be made up of good, ethical people, but as
2757 institutions, they are not your friend — they will do whatever they can get
2758 away with to maximize their profits, and the more monopolistic they are, the
2759 more they <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> get away with.
2760   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="an-ecology-moment-for-trustbusting"></a>An <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">ecology</span>“</span> moment for trustbusting</h2></div></div></div><p>
2761     If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re
2762 going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and
2763 old-fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of
2764 automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool
2765 cyberpunk novel.
2766   </p><p>
2767     Meanwhile, breaking up monopolies is something we seem to have forgotten how
2768 to do. There is a bipartisan, trans-Atlantic consensus that breaking up
2769 companies is a fool’s errand at best — liable to mire your federal
2770 prosecutors in decades of litigation — and counterproductive at worst,
2771 eroding the <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">consumer benefits</span>“</span> of large companies with massive
2772 efficiencies of scale.
2773   </p><p>
2774     But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing
2775 robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip
2776 on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the
2777 political will — until the people convinced politicians they’d have their
2778 backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world.
2779   </p><p>
2780     Could we find that political will again?
2781   </p><p>
2782     Copyright scholar James Boyle has described how the term
2783 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">ecology</span>“</span> marked a turning point in environmental
2784 activism. Prior to the adoption of this term, people who wanted to preserve
2785 whale populations didn’t necessarily see themselves as fighting the same
2786 battle as people who wanted to protect the ozone layer or fight freshwater
2787 pollution or beat back smog or acid rain.
2788   </p><p>
2789     But the term <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">ecology</span>“</span> welded these disparate causes together
2790 into a single movement, and the members of this movement found solidarity
2791 with one another. The people who cared about smog signed petitions
2792 circulated by the people who wanted to end whaling, and the anti-whalers
2793 marched alongside the people demanding action on acid rain. This uniting
2794 behind a common cause completely changed the dynamics of environmentalism,
2795 setting the stage for today’s climate activism and the sense that preserving
2796 the habitability of the planet Earth is a shared duty among all people.
2797   </p><p>
2798     I believe we are on the verge of a new <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">ecology</span>“</span> moment
2799 dedicated to combating monopolies. After all, tech isn’t the only
2800 concentrated industry nor is it even the <span class="emphasis"><em>most</em></span>
2801 concentrated of industries.
2802   </p><p>
2803     You can find partisans for trustbusting in every sector of the
2804 economy. Everywhere you look, you can find people who’ve been wronged by
2805 monopolists who’ve trashed their finances, their health, their privacy,
2806 their educations, and the lives of people they love.  Those people have the
2807 same cause as the people who want to break up Big Tech and the same
2808 enemies. When most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a very few, it
2809 follows that nearly every large company will have overlapping shareholders.
2810   </p><p>
2811     That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of
2812 coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big
2813 Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook,
2814 then we take AT&amp;T/WarnerMedia.
2815   </p><p>
2816     But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech
2817 <span class="emphasis"><em>instead</em></span> of breaking up the big companies also
2818 forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later.
2819   </p><p>
2820     Big Tech’s concentration currently means that their inaction on harassment,
2821 for example, leaves users with an impossible choice: absent themselves from
2822 public discourse by, say, quitting Twitter or endure vile, constant
2823 abuse. Big Tech’s over-collection and over-retention of data results in
2824 horrific identity theft. And their inaction on extremist recruitment means
2825 that white supremacists who livestream their shooting rampages can reach an
2826 audience of billions. The combination of tech concentration and media
2827 concentration means that artists’ incomes are falling even as the revenue
2828 generated by their creations are increasing.
2829   </p><p>
2830     Yet governments confronting all of these problems all inevitably converge on
2831 the same solution: deputize the Big Tech giants to police their users and
2832 render them liable for their users’ bad actions. The drive to force Big Tech
2833 to use automated filters to block everything from copyright infringement to
2834 sex-trafficking to violent extremism means that tech companies will have to
2835 allocate hundreds of millions to run these compliance systems.
2836   </p><p>
2837     These rules — the EU’s new Directive on Copyright, Australia’s new terror
2838 regulation, America’s FOSTA/SESTA sex-trafficking law and more — are not
2839 just death warrants for small, upstart competitors that might challenge Big
2840 Tech’s dominance but who lack the deep pockets of established incumbents to
2841 pay for all these automated systems. Worse still, these rules put a floor
2842 under how small we can hope to make Big Tech.
2843   </p><p>
2844     That’s because any move to break up Big Tech and cut it down to size will
2845 have to cope with the hard limit of not making these companies so small that
2846 they can no longer afford to perform these duties — and it’s
2847 <span class="emphasis"><em>expensive</em></span> to invest in those automated filters and
2848 outsource content moderation. It’s already going to be hard to unwind these
2849 deeply concentrated, chimeric behemoths that have been welded together in
2850 the pursuit of monopoly profits. Doing so while simultaneously finding some
2851 way to fill the regulatory void that will be left behind if these
2852 self-policing rulers were forced to suddenly abdicate will be much, much
2853 harder.
2854   </p><p>
2855     Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a
2856 dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties
2857 to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually
2858 impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms
2859 don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will
2860 create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the
2861 companies, which will make them bigger still.
2862   </p><p>
2863     We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them
2864 of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend
2865 their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We have to
2866 choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet
2867 commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to
2868 behave themselves.
2869   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="make-big-tech-small-again"></a>Make Big Tech small again</h2></div></div></div><p>
2870     Trustbusting is hard. Breaking big companies into smaller ones is expensive
2871 and time-consuming. So time-consuming that by the time you’re done, the
2872 world has often moved on and rendered years of litigation irrelevant. From
2873 1969 to 1982, the U.S. government pursued an antitrust case against IBM over
2874 its dominance of mainframe computing — but the case collapsed in 1982
2875 because mainframes were being speedily replaced by PCs.
2876   </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
2877       A future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general to
2878 enforce the law as it was written.
2879     </p></blockquote></div><p>
2880     It’s far easier to prevent concentration than to fix it, and reinstating the
2881 traditional contours of U.S. antitrust enforcement will, at the very least,
2882 prevent further concentration. That means bans on mergers between large
2883 companies, on big companies acquiring nascent competitors, and on platform
2884 companies competing directly with the companies that rely on the platforms.
2885   </p><p>
2886     These powers are all in the plain language of U.S. antitrust laws, so in
2887 theory, a future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general
2888 to enforce the law as it was written. But after decades of judicial
2889 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">education</span>“</span> in the benefits of monopolies, after multiple
2890 administrations that have packed the federal courts with lifetime-appointed
2891 monopoly cheerleaders, it’s not clear that mere administrative action would
2892 do the trick.
2893   </p><p>
2894     If the courts frustrate the Justice Department and the president, the next
2895 stop would be Congress, which could eliminate any doubt about how antitrust
2896 law should be enforced in the U.S. by passing new laws that boil down to
2897 saying, <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act says. Robert
2898 Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, <span class="emphasis"><em>fuck that
2899 guy</em></span>.</span>“</span> In other words, the problem with monopolies is
2900 <span class="emphasis"><em>monopolism</em></span> — the concentration of power into too few
2901 hands, which erodes our right to self-determination. If there is a monopoly,
2902 the law wants it gone, period. Sure, get rid of monopolies that create
2903 <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">consumer harm</span>“</span> in the form of higher prices, but also,
2904 <span class="emphasis"><em>get rid of other monopolies, too</em></span>.
2905   </p><p>
2906     But this only prevents things from getting worse. To help them get better,
2907 we will have to build coalitions with other activists in the anti-monopoly
2908 ecology movement — a pluralism movement or a self-determination movement —
2909 and target existing monopolies in every industry for breakup and structural
2910 separation rules that prevent, for example, the giant eyewear monopolist
2911 Luxottica from dominating both the sale and the manufacture of spectacles.
2912   </p><p>
2913     In an important sense, it doesn’t matter which industry the breakups begin
2914 in. Once they start, shareholders in <span class="emphasis"><em>every</em></span> industry
2915 will start to eye their investments in monopolists skeptically. As
2916 trustbusters ride into town and start making lives miserable for
2917 monopolists, the debate around every corporate boardroom’s table will
2918 shift. People within corporations who’ve always felt uneasy about monopolism
2919 will gain a powerful new argument to fend off their evil rivals in the
2920 corporate hierarchy: <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">If we do it my way, we make less money; if we do
2921 it your way, a judge will fine us billions and expose us to ridicule and
2922 public disapprobation. So even though I get that it would be really cool to
2923 do that merger, lock out that competitor, or buy that little company and
2924 kill it before it can threaten it, we really shouldn’t — not if we don’t
2925 want to get tied to the DOJ’s bumper and get dragged up and down Trustbuster
2926 Road for the next 10 years.</span>“</span>
2927   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="goto-10"></a>20 GOTO 10</h2></div></div></div><p>
2928     Fixing Big Tech will require a lot of iteration. As cyber lawyer Lawrence
2929 Lessig wrote in his 1999 book, <span class="emphasis"><em>Code and Other Laws of
2930 Cyberspace</em></span>, our lives are regulated by four forces: law (what’s
2931 legal), code (what’s technologically possible), norms (what’s socially
2932 acceptable), and markets (what’s profitable).
2933   </p><p>
2934     If you could wave a wand and get Congress to pass a law that re-fanged the
2935 Sherman Act tomorrow, you could use the impending breakups to convince
2936 venture capitalists to fund competitors to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and
2937 Apple that would be waiting in the wings after they were cut down to size.
2938   </p><p>
2939     But getting Congress to act will require a massive normative shift, a mass
2940 movement of people who care about monopolies — and pulling them apart.
2941   </p><p>
2942     Getting people to care about monopolies will take technological
2943 interventions that help them to see what a world free from Big Tech might
2944 look like. Imagine if someone could make a beloved (but unauthorized)
2945 third-party Facebook or Twitter client that dampens the anxiety-producing
2946 algorithmic drumbeat and still lets you talk to your friends without being
2947 spied upon — something that made social media more sociable and less
2948 toxic. Now imagine that it gets shut down in a brutal legal battle. It’s
2949 always easier to convince people that something must be done to save a thing
2950 they love than it is to excite them about something that doesn’t even exist
2951 yet.
2952   </p><p>
2953     Neither tech nor law nor code nor markets are sufficient to reform Big
2954 Tech. But a profitable competitor to Big Tech could bankroll a legislative
2955 push; legal reform can embolden a toolsmith to make a better tool; the tool
2956 can create customers for a potential business who value the benefits of the
2957 internet but want them delivered without Big Tech; and that business can get
2958 funded and divert some of its profits to legal reform. 20 GOTO 10 (or
2959 lather, rinse, repeat). Do it again, but this time, get farther! After all,
2960 this time you’re starting with weaker Big Tech adversaries, a constituency
2961 that understands things can be better, Big Tech rivals who’ll help ensure
2962 their own future by bankrolling reform, and code that other programmers can
2963 build on to weaken Big Tech even further.
2964   </p><p>
2965     The surveillance capitalism hypothesis — that Big Tech’s products really
2966 work as well as they say they do and that’s why everything is so screwed up
2967 — is way too easy on surveillance and even easier on capitalism. Companies
2968 spy because they believe their own BS, and companies spy because governments
2969 let them, and companies spy because any advantage from spying is so
2970 short-lived and minor that they have to do more and more of it just to stay
2971 in place.
2972   </p><p>
2973     As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism
2974 that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a
2975 form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to
2976 inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason
2977 companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to
2978 both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall
2979 to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not
2980 piss off the monopolists.
2981   </p><p>
2982     Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule
2983 begets surveillance. Surveillance isn’t bad because it lets people
2984 manipulate us. It’s bad because it crushes our ability to be our authentic
2985 selves — and because it lets the rich and powerful figure out who might be
2986 thinking of building guillotines and what dirt they can use to discredit
2987 those embryonic guillotine-builders before they can even get to the
2988 lumberyard.
2989   </p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="up-and-through"></a>Up and through</h2></div></div></div><p>
2990     With all the problems of Big Tech, it’s tempting to imagine solving the
2991 problem by returning to a world without tech at all. Resist that temptation.
2992   </p><p>
2993     The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our future is
2994 not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization has fallen. Big
2995 Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the
2996 proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the
2997 existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it’s up to us to seize
2998 the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under
2999 democratic, accountable control.
3000   </p><p>
3001     I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. Not
3002 in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to monopolize
3003 because it has <span class="quote">„<span class="quote">economies of scale</span>“</span> or some other nebulous
3004 feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right
3005 matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe — and
3006 doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our
3007 civilization, our species, and our planet.
3008   </p></div></div></body></html>