From c88c31f05f6ea7f2ef5df3bb41e607f6e951ede1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2020 10:09:33 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] First draft for docbook generated PDF. --- Makefile | 40 + book.xml | 49 + how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.rst | 3147 ++++++++++++++++++++ images/cc.png | Bin 0 -> 32636 bytes images/cc.svg | 107 + 5 files changed, 3343 insertions(+) create mode 100644 Makefile create mode 100644 book.xml create mode 100644 how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.rst create mode 100644 images/cc.png create mode 100644 images/cc.svg diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0d4741 --- /dev/null +++ b/Makefile @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +SOURCE=how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism +GENERATED = $(SOURCE).xml $(SOURCE).pdf + +PANDOC_OPTS = \ + --top-level-division=chapter \ + -t docbook4 + +DBLATEX_OPTS = \ + -P page.width=6in \ + -P page.height=9in \ + -P page.margin.inner=0.8in \ + -P page.margin.outer=0.55in \ + -P page.margin.top=0.55in \ + -P page.margin.bottom=0.55in \ + -P ulink.show=1 \ + -P ulink.footnotes=1 \ + -P double.sided=1 \ + -P doc.collab.show=0 \ + -P latex.output.revhistory=0 \ + -P draft.mode=yes -Pdraft.watermark=1 + +all: $(GENERATED) + +# Workaround for missing titles +complete-book.xml: $(SOURCE).xml Makefile book.xml + xmllint --nonet --xinclude --postvalid book.xml > $@.new && \ + mv $@.new $@ + +$(SOURCE).pdf: complete-book.xml Makefile + dblatex $(DBLATEX_OPTS) complete-book.xml -o $@ + +$(SOURCE).xml: $(SOURCE).rst Makefile + pandoc -s -o $@ $(PANDOC_OPTS) $(SOURCE).rst + +XMLLINTOPTS = --nonet --noout --xinclude --postvalid +lint: book.xml + xmllint $(XMLLINTOPTS) $^ + +clean: + $(RM) $(GENERATED) complete-book.xml diff --git a/book.xml b/book.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd345f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/book.xml @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ + + + + + + + How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism + + 2020-??-?? + 1 + git-utgaven + + + Cory + Doctorow + + + + Petter Reinholdtsen +
Oslo
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + Creative Commons, Some rights reserved + + + + + + This book is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This + license permits any use of this work, so long as attribution + is given. For more information about the license visit + . + + + + + diff --git a/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.rst b/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfd6680 --- /dev/null +++ b/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism.rst @@ -0,0 +1,3147 @@ +How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism +====================================== + +The net of a thousand lies +-------------------------- + +The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st +century is just how widespread the evidence against them is. You can +understand how, centuries ago, people who’d never gained a high-enough +vantage point from which to see the Earth’s curvature might come to the +commonsense belief that the flat-seeming Earth was, indeed, flat. + +But today, when elementary schools routinely dangle GoPro cameras from +balloons and loft them high enough to photograph the Earth’s curve — to +say nothing of the unexceptional sight of the curved Earth from an +airplane window — it takes a heroic effort to maintain the belief that +the world is flat. + +Likewise for white nationalism and eugenics: In an age where you can +become a computational genomics datapoint by swabbing your cheek and +mailing it to a gene-sequencing company along with a modest sum of +money, “race science” has never been easier to refute. + +We are living through a golden age of both readily available facts and +denial of those facts. Terrible ideas that have lingered on the fringes +for decades or even centuries have gone mainstream seemingly overnight. + +When an obscure idea gains currency, there are only two things that can +explain its ascendance: Either the person expressing that idea has +gotten a lot better at stating their case, or the proposition has become +harder to deny in the face of mounting evidence. In other words, if we +want people to take climate change seriously, we can get a bunch of +Greta Thunbergs to make eloquent, passionate arguments from podiums, +winning our hearts and minds, or we can wait for flood, fire, broiling +sun, and pandemics to make the case for us. In practice, we’ll probably +have to do some of both: The more we’re boiling and burning and drowning +and wasting away, the easier it will be for the Greta Thunbergs of the +world to convince us. + +The arguments for ridiculous beliefs in odious conspiracies like +anti-vaccination, climate denial, a flat Earth, and eugenics are no +better than they were a generation ago. Indeed, they’re worse because +they are being pitched to people who have at least a background +awareness of the refuting facts. + +Anti-vax has been around since the first vaccines, but the early +anti-vaxxers were pitching people who were less equipped to understand +even the most basic ideas from microbiology, and moreover, those people +had not witnessed the extermination of mass-murdering diseases like +polio, smallpox, and measles. Today’s anti-vaxxers are no more eloquent +than their forebears, and they have a much harder job. + +So can these far-fetched conspiracy theorists really be succeeding on +the basis of superior arguments? + +Some people think so. Today, there is a widespread belief that machine +learning and commercial surveillance can turn even the most +fumble-tongued conspiracy theorist into a svengali who can warp your +perceptions and win your belief by locating vulnerable people and then +pitching them with A.I.-refined arguments that bypass their rational +faculties and turn everyday people into flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, or +even Nazis. When the RAND Corporation `blames Facebook for +“radicalization” `__ +and when Facebook’s role in spreading coronavirus misinformation is +`blamed on its +algorithm `__, +the implicit message is that machine learning and surveillance are +causing the changes in our consensus about what’s true. + +After all, in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories +like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, +*something* must be afoot. + +But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material +circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for +these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through *real +conspiracies* all around us — conspiracies among wealthy people, their +lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts and evidence of +wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as “corruption”) — is +making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories? + +If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology +— that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive +misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean +our computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work +of locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of +ever-more-extreme ideas and communities. + +Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and +poses real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics `kicked off +by vaccine denial `__ +to genocides `kicked off by racist +conspiracies `__ +to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate inaction. Our +world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to figure out +how to help people see the truth of the world through the conspiracies +they’ve been confused by. + +But firefighting is reactive. We need fire *prevention*. We need to +strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people vulnerable +to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to play. + +There’s no shortage of proposals to address this. From the EU’s +`Terrorist Content Regulation `__, which +requires platforms to police and remove “extremist” content, to the U.S. +proposals to `force tech companies to spy on their +users `__ +and hold them liable `for their users’ bad +speech `__, +there’s a lot of energy to force tech companies to solve the problems +they created. + +There’s a critical piece missing from the debate, though. All these +solutions assume that tech companies are a fixture, that their dominance +over the internet is a permanent fact. Proposals to replace Big Tech +with a more diffused, pluralistic internet are nowhere to be found. +Worse: The “solutions” on the table today *require* Big Tech to stay big +because only the very largest companies can afford to implement the +systems these laws demand. + +Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re +going to get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re +trying to figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that +dominate our internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by +unshackling it from Big Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we +have to choose. + +I want us to choose wisely. Taming Big Tech is integral to fixing the +internet, and for that, we need digital rights activism. + +Digital rights activism, a quarter-century on +--------------------------------------------- + +Digital rights activism is more than 30 years old now. The Electronic +Frontier Foundation turned 30 this year; the Free Software Foundation +launched in 1985. For most of the history of the movement, the most +prominent criticism leveled against it was that it was irrelevant: The +real activist causes were real-world causes (think of the skepticism +when `Finland declared broadband a human right in +2010 `__), +and real-world activism was shoe-leather activism (think of Malcolm +Gladwell’s `contempt for +“clicktivism” `__). +But as tech has grown more central to our daily lives, these accusations +of irrelevance have given way first to accusations of insincerity (“You +only care about tech because you’re `shilling for tech +companies `__\ ”) +to accusations of negligence (“Why didn’t you foresee that tech could be +such a destructive force?”). But digital rights activism is right where +it’s always been: looking out for the humans in a world where tech is +inexorably taking over. + +The latest version of this critique comes in the form of “surveillance +capitalism,” a term coined by business professor Shoshana Zuboff in her +long and influential 2019 book, *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The +Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power*. Zuboff argues +that “surveillance capitalism” is a unique creature of the tech industry +and that it is unlike any other abusive commercial practice in history, +one that is “constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of +extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons +from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral +prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges +democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long +evolution of market capitalism.” It is a new and deadly form of +capitalism, a “rogue capitalism,” and our lack of understanding of its +unique capabilities and dangers represents an existential, species-wide +threat. She’s right that capitalism today threatens our species, and +she’s right that tech poses unique challenges to our species and +civilization, but she’s really wrong about how tech is different and why +it threatens our species. + +What’s more, I think that her incorrect diagnosis will lead us down a +path that ends up making Big Tech stronger, not weaker. We need to take +down Big Tech, and to do that, we need to start by correctly identifying +the problem. + +Tech exceptionalism, then and now +--------------------------------- + +Early critics of the digital rights movement — perhaps best represented +by campaigning organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, +the Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and others that focused +on preserving and enhancing basic human rights in the digital realm — +damned activists for practicing “tech exceptionalism.” Around the turn +of the millennium, serious people ridiculed any claim that tech policy +mattered in the “real world.” Claims that tech rules had implications +for speech, association, privacy, search and seizure, and fundamental +rights and equities were treated as ridiculous, an elevation of the +concerns of sad nerds arguing about *Star Trek* on bulletin board +systems above the struggles of the Freedom Riders, Nelson Mandela, or +the Warsaw ghetto uprising. + +In the decades since, accusations of “tech exceptionalism” have only +sharpened as tech’s role in everyday life has expanded: Now that tech +has infiltrated every corner of our life and our online lives have been +monopolized by a handful of giants, defenders of digital freedoms are +accused of carrying water for Big Tech, providing cover for its +self-interested negligence (or worse, nefarious plots). + +From my perspective, the digital rights movement has remained stationary +while the rest of the world has moved. From the earliest days, the +movement’s concern was users and the toolsmiths who provided the code +they needed to realize their fundamental rights. Digital rights +activists only cared about companies to the extent that companies were +acting to uphold users’ rights (or, just as often, when companies were +acting so foolishly that they threatened to bring down new rules that +would also make it harder for good actors to help users). + +The “surveillance capitalism” critique recasts the digital rights +movement in a new light again: not as alarmists who overestimate the +importance of their shiny toys nor as shills for big tech but as serene +deck-chair rearrangers whose long-standing activism is a liability +because it makes them incapable of perceiving novel threats as they +continue to fight the last century’s tech battles. + +But tech exceptionalism is a sin no matter who practices it. + +Don’t believe the hype +----------------------- + +You’ve probably heard that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re +the product.” As we’ll see below, that’s true, if incomplete. But what +is *absolutely* true is that ad-driven Big Tech’s customers are +advertisers, and what companies like Google and Facebook sell is their +ability to convince *you* to buy stuff. Big Tech’s product is +persuasion. The services — social media, search engines, maps, +messaging, and more — are delivery systems for persuasion. + +The fear of surveillance capitalism starts from the (correct) +presumption that everything Big Tech says about itself is probably a +lie. But the surveillance capitalism critique makes an exception for the +claims Big Tech makes in its sales literature — the breathless hype in +the pitches to potential advertisers online and in ad-tech seminars +about the efficacy of its products: It assumes that Big Tech is as good +at influencing us as they claim they are when they’re selling +influencing products to credulous customers. That’s a mistake because +sales literature is not a reliable indicator of a product’s efficacy. + +Surveillance capitalism assumes that because advertisers buy a lot of +what Big Tech is selling, Big Tech must be selling something real. But +Big Tech’s massive sales could just as easily be the result of a popular +delusion or something even more pernicious: monopolistic control over +our communications and commerce. + +Being watched changes your behavior, and not for the better. It creates +risks for our social progress. Zuboff’s book features beautifully +wrought explanations of these phenomena. But Zuboff also claims that +surveillance literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal +data is mixed with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion +so devastating that we are helpless before it. That is, Facebook uses an +algorithm to analyze the data it nonconsensually extracts from your +daily life and uses it to customize your feed in ways that get you to +buy stuff. It is a mind-control ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded +by mad scientists whose supercomputers guarantee them perpetual and +total world domination. + +What is persuasion? +------------------- + +To understand why you shouldn’t worry about mind-control rays — but why +you *should* worry about surveillance *and* Big Tech — we must start by +unpacking what we mean by “persuasion.” + +Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists promise their +customers (the advertisers) that if they use machine-learning tools +trained on unimaginably large data sets of nonconsensually harvested +personal information, they will be able to uncover ways to bypass the +rational faculties of the public and direct their behavior, creating a +stream of purchases, votes, and other desired outcomes. + + The impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and + should be central to our analysis and any remedies we seek. + +But there’s little evidence that this is happening. Instead, the +predictions that surveillance capitalism delivers to its customers are +much less impressive. Rather than finding ways to bypass our rational +faculties, surveillance capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg mostly do one +or more of three things: + +1. Segmenting +------------- + +If you’re selling diapers, you have better luck if you pitch them to +people in maternity wards. Not everyone who enters or leaves a maternity +ward just had a baby, and not everyone who just had a baby is in the +market for diapers. But having a baby is a really reliable correlate of +being in the market for diapers, and being in a maternity ward is highly +correlated with having a baby. Hence diaper ads around maternity wards +(and even pitchmen for baby products, who haunt maternity wards with +baskets full of freebies). + +Surveillance capitalism is segmenting times a billion. Diaper vendors +can go way beyond people in maternity wards (though they can do that, +too, with things like location-based mobile ads). They can target you +based on whether you’re reading articles about child-rearing, diapers, +or a host of other subjects, and data mining can suggest unobvious +keywords to advertise against. They can target you based on the articles +you’ve recently read. They can target you based on what you’ve recently +purchased. They can target you based on whether you receive emails or +private messages about these subjects — or even if you speak aloud about +them (though Facebook and the like convincingly claim that’s not +happening — yet). + +This is seriously creepy. + +But it’s not mind control. + +It doesn’t deprive you of your free will. It doesn’t trick you. + +Think of how surveillance capitalism works in politics. Surveillance +capitalist companies sell political operatives the power to locate +people who might be receptive to their pitch. Candidates campaigning on +finance industry corruption seek people struggling with debt; candidates +campaigning on xenophobia seek out racists. Political operatives have +always targeted their message whether their intentions were honorable or +not: Union organizers set up pitches at factory gates, and white +supremacists hand out fliers at John Birch Society meetings. + +But this is an inexact and thus wasteful practice. The union organizer +can’t know which worker to approach on the way out of the factory gates +and may waste their time on a covert John Birch Society member; the +white supremacist doesn’t know which of the Birchers are so delusional +that making it to a meeting is as much as they can manage and which ones +might be convinced to cross the country to carry a tiki torch through +the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. + +Because targeting improves the yields on political pitches, it can +accelerate the pace of political upheaval by making it possible for +everyone who has secretly wished for the toppling of an autocrat — or +just an 11-term incumbent politician — to find everyone else who feels +the same way at very low cost. This has been critical to the rapid +crystallization of recent political movements including Black Lives +Matter and Occupy Wall Street as well as less savory players like the +far-right white nationalist movements that marched in Charlottesville. + +It’s important to differentiate this kind of political organizing from +influence campaigns; finding people who secretly agree with you isn’t +the same as convincing people to agree with you. The rise of phenomena +like nonbinary or otherwise nonconforming gender identities is often +characterized by reactionaries as the result of online brainwashing +campaigns that convince impressionable people that they have been +secretly queer all along. + +But the personal accounts of those who have come out tell a different +story where people who long harbored a secret about their gender were +emboldened by others coming forward and where people who knew that they +were different but lacked a vocabulary for discussing that difference +learned the right words from these low-cost means of finding people and +learning about their ideas. + +2. Deception +------------ + +Lies and fraud are pernicious, and surveillance capitalism supercharges +them through targeting. If you want to sell a fraudulent payday loan or +subprime mortgage, surveillance capitalism can help you find people who +are both desperate and unsophisticated and thus receptive to your pitch. +This accounts for the rise of many phenomena, like multilevel marketing +schemes, in which deceptive claims about potential earnings and the +efficacy of sales techniques are targeted at desperate people by +advertising against search queries that indicate, for example, someone +struggling with ill-advised loans. + +Surveillance capitalism also abets fraud by making it easy to locate +other people who have been similarly deceived, forming a community of +people who reinforce one another’s false beliefs. Think of `the +forums `__ +where people who are being victimized by multilevel marketing frauds +gather to trade tips on how to improve their luck in peddling the +product. + +Sometimes, online deception involves replacing someone’s correct beliefs +with incorrect ones, as it does in the anti-vaccination movement, whose +victims are often people who start out believing in vaccines but are +convinced by seemingly plausible evidence that leads them into the false +belief that vaccines are harmful. + +But it’s much more common for fraud to succeed when it doesn’t have to +displace a true belief. When my daughter contracted head lice at +daycare, one of the daycare workers told me I could get rid of them by +treating her hair and scalp with olive oil. I didn’t know anything about +head lice, and I assumed that the daycare worker did, so I tried it (it +didn’t work, and it doesn’t work). It’s easy to end up with false +beliefs when you simply don’t know any better and when those beliefs are +conveyed by someone who seems to know what they’re doing. + +This is pernicious and difficult — and it’s also the kind of thing the +internet can help guard against by making true information available, +especially in a form that exposes the underlying deliberations among +parties with sharply divergent views, such as Wikipedia. But it’s not +brainwashing; it’s fraud. In the `majority of +cases `__, the victims of +these fraud campaigns have an informational void filled in the customary +way, by consulting a seemingly reliable source. If I look up the length +of the Brooklyn Bridge and learn that it is 5,800 feet long, but in +reality, it is 5,989 feet long, the underlying deception is a problem, +but it’s a problem with a simple remedy. It’s a very different problem +from the anti-vax issue in which someone’s true belief is displaced by a +false one by means of sophisticated persuasion. + +3. Domination +------------- + +Surveillance capitalism is the result of monopoly. Monopoly is the +cause, and surveillance capitalism and its negative outcomes are the +effects of monopoly. I’ll get into this in depth later, but for now, +suffice it to say that the tech industry has grown up with a radical +theory of antitrust that has allowed companies to grow by merging with +their rivals, buying up their nascent competitors, and expanding to +control whole market verticals. + +One example of how monopolism aids in persuasion is through dominance: +Google makes editorial decisions about its algorithms that determine the +sort order of the responses to our queries. If a cabal of fraudsters +have set out to trick the world into thinking that the Brooklyn Bridge +is 5,800 feet long, and if Google gives a high search rank to this group +in response to queries like “How long is the Brooklyn Bridge?” then the +first eight or 10 screens’ worth of Google results could be wrong. And +since most people don’t go beyond the first couple of results — let +alone the first *page* of results — Google’s choice means that many +people will be deceived. + +Google’s dominance over search — more than 86% of web searches are +performed through Google — means that the way it orders its search +results has an outsized effect on public beliefs. Ironically, Google +claims this is why it can’t afford to have any transparency in its +algorithm design: Google’s search dominance makes the results of its +sorting too important to risk telling the world how it arrives at those +results lest some bad actor discover a flaw in the ranking system and +exploit it to push its point of view to the top of the search results. +There’s an obvious remedy to a company that is too big to audit: break +it up into smaller pieces. + +Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a “rogue capitalism” whose +data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. +But influence campaigns that seek to displace existing, correct beliefs +with false ones have an effect that is small and temporary while +monopolistic dominance over informational systems has massive, enduring +effects. Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means +controlling access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, +control over much of the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how +corporations are foreclosing on our ability to make up our own minds and +determine our own futures, the impact of dominance far exceeds the +impact of manipulation and should be central to our analysis and any +remedies we seek. + +4. Bypassing our rational faculties +----------------------------------- + +*This* is the good stuff: using machine learning, “dark patterns,” +engagement hacking, and other techniques to get us to do things that run +counter to our better judgment. This is mind control. + +Some of these techniques have proven devastatingly effective (if only in +the short term). The use of countdown timers on a purchase completion +page can create a sense of urgency that causes you to ignore the nagging +internal voice suggesting that you should shop around or sleep on your +decision. The use of people from your social graph in ads can provide +“social proof” that a purchase is worth making. Even the auction system +pioneered by eBay is calculated to play on our cognitive blind spots, +letting us feel like we “own” something because we bid on it, thus +encouraging us to bid again when we are outbid to ensure that “our” +things stay ours. + +Games are extraordinarily good at this. “Free to play” games manipulate +us through many techniques, such as presenting players with a series of +smoothly escalating challenges that create a sense of mastery and +accomplishment but which sharply transition into a set of challenges +that are impossible to overcome without paid upgrades. Add some social +proof to the mix — a stream of notifications about how well your friends +are faring — and before you know it, you’re buying virtual power-ups to +get to the next level. + +Companies have risen and fallen on these techniques, and the “fallen” +part is worth paying attention to. In general, living things adapt to +stimulus: Something that is very compelling or noteworthy when you first +encounter it fades with repetition until you stop noticing it +altogether. Consider the refrigerator hum that irritates you when it +starts up but disappears into the background so thoroughly that you only +notice it when it stops again. + +That’s why behavioral conditioning uses “intermittent reinforcement +schedules.” Instead of giving you a steady drip of encouragement or +setbacks, games and gamified services scatter rewards on a randomized +schedule — often enough to keep you interested and random enough that +you can never quite find the pattern that would make it boring. + +Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful behavioral tool, but it also +represents a collective action problem for surveillance capitalism. The +“engagement techniques” invented by the behaviorists of surveillance +capitalist companies are quickly copied across the whole sector so that +what starts as a mysteriously compelling fillip in the design of a +service—like “pull to refresh” or alerts when someone likes your posts +or side quests that your characters get invited to while in the midst of +main quests—quickly becomes dully ubiquitous. The +impossible-to-nail-down nonpattern of randomized drips from your phone +becomes a grey-noise wall of sound as every single app and site starts +to make use of whatever seems to be working at the time. + +From the surveillance capitalist’s point of view, our adaptive capacity +is like a harmful bacterium that deprives it of its food source — our +attention — and novel techniques for snagging that attention are like +new antibiotics that can be used to breach our defenses and destroy our +self-determination. And there *are* techniques like that. Who can forget +the Great Zynga Epidemic, when all of our friends were caught in +*FarmVille*\ ’s endless, mindless dopamine loops? But every new +attention-commanding technique is jumped on by the whole industry and +used so indiscriminately that antibiotic resistance sets in. Given +enough repetition, almost all of us develop immunity to even the most +powerful techniques — by 2013, two years after Zynga’s peak, its user +base had halved. + +Not everyone, of course. Some people never adapt to stimulus, just as +some people never stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator. This is why +most people who are exposed to slot machines play them for a while and +then move on while a small and tragic minority liquidate their kids’ +college funds, buy adult diapers, and position themselves in front of a +machine until they collapse. + +But surveillance capitalism’s margins on behavioral modification suck. +Tripling the rate at which someone buys a widget sounds great `unless +the base rate is way less than +1% `__ +with an improved rate of… still less than 1%. Even penny slot machines +pull down pennies for every spin while surveillance capitalism rakes in +infinitesimal penny fractions. + +Slot machines’ high returns mean that they can be profitable just by +draining the fortunes of the small rump of people who are pathologically +vulnerable to them and unable to adapt to their tricks. But surveillance +capitalism can’t survive on the fractional pennies it brings down from +that vulnerable sliver — that’s why, after the Great Zynga Epidemic had +finally burned itself out, the small number of still-addicted players +left behind couldn’t sustain it as a global phenomenon. And new powerful +attention weapons aren’t easy to find, as is evidenced by the long years +since the last time Zynga had a hit. Despite the hundreds of millions of +dollars that Zynga has to spend on developing new tools to blast through +our adaptation, it has never managed to repeat the lucky accident that +let it snag so much of our attention for a brief moment in 2009. +Powerhouses like Supercell have fared a little better, but they are rare +and throw away many failures for every success. + +The vulnerability of small segments of the population to dramatic, +efficient corporate manipulation is a real concern that’s worthy of our +attention and energy. But it’s not an existential threat to society. + +If data is the new oil, then surveillance capitalism’s engine has a leak +------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +This adaptation problem offers an explanation for one of surveillance +capitalism’s most alarming traits: its relentless hunger for data and +its endless expansion of data-gathering capabilities through the spread +of sensors, online surveillance, and acquisition of data streams from +third parties. + +Zuboff observes this phenomenon and concludes that data must be very +valuable if surveillance capitalism is so hungry for it. (In her words: +“Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous +intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists +and their market players are now locked into the continuous +intensification of the means of behavioral modification and the +gathering might of instrumentarian power.”) But what if the voracious +appetite is because data has such a short half-life — because people +become inured so quickly to new, data-driven persuasion techniques — +that the companies are locked in an arms race with our limbic system? +What if it’s all a Red Queen’s race where they have to run ever faster — +collect ever-more data — just to stay in the same spot? + +Of course, all of Big Tech’s persuasion techniques work in concert with +one another, and collecting data is useful beyond mere behavioral +trickery. + +If someone wants to recruit you to buy a refrigerator or join a pogrom, +they might use profiling and targeting to send messages to people they +judge to be good sales prospects. The messages themselves may be +deceptive, making claims about things you’re not very knowledgeable +about (food safety and energy efficiency or eugenics and historical +claims about racial superiority). They might use search engine +optimization and/or armies of fake reviewers and commenters and/or paid +placement to dominate the discourse so that any search for further +information takes you back to their messages. And finally, they may +refine the different pitches using machine learning and other techniques +to figure out what kind of pitch works best on someone like you. + +Each phase of this process benefits from surveillance: The more data +they have, the more precisely they can profile you and target you with +specific messages. Think of how you’d sell a fridge if you knew that the +warranty on your prospect’s fridge just expired and that they were +expecting a tax rebate in April. + +Also, the more data they have, the better they can craft deceptive +messages — if I know that you’re into genealogy, I might not try to feed +you pseudoscience about genetic differences between “races,” sticking +instead to conspiratorial secret histories of “demographic replacement” +and the like. + +Facebook also helps you locate people who have the same odious or +antisocial views as you. It makes it possible to find other people who +want to carry tiki torches through the streets of Charlottesville in +Confederate cosplay. It can help you find other people who want to join +your militia and go to the border to look for undocumented migrants to +terrorize. It can help you find people who share your belief that +vaccines are poison and that the Earth is flat. + +There is one way in which targeted advertising uniquely benefits those +advocating for socially unacceptable causes: It is invisible. Racism is +widely geographically dispersed, and there are few places where racists +— and only racists — gather. This is similar to the problem of selling +refrigerators in that potential refrigerator purchasers are +geographically dispersed and there are few places where you can buy an +ad that will be primarily seen by refrigerator customers. But buying a +refrigerator is socially acceptable while being a Nazi is not, so you +can buy a billboard or advertise in the newspaper sports section for +your refrigerator business, and the only potential downside is that your +ad will be seen by a lot of people who don’t want refrigerators, +resulting in a lot of wasted expense. + +But even if you wanted to advertise your Nazi movement on a billboard or +prime-time TV or the sports section, you would struggle to find anyone +willing to sell you the space for your ad partly because they disagree +with your views and partly because they fear censure (boycott, +reputational damage, etc.) from other people who disagree with your +views. + +Targeted ads solve this problem: On the internet, every ad unit can be +different for every person, meaning that you can buy ads that are only +shown to people who appear to be Nazis and not to people who hate Nazis. +When there’s spillover — when someone who hates racism is shown a racist +recruiting ad — there is some fallout; the platform or publication might +get an angry public or private denunciation. But the nature of the risk +assumed by an online ad buyer is different than the risks to a +traditional publisher or billboard owner who might want to run a Nazi +ad. + +Online ads are placed by algorithms that broker between a diverse +ecosystem of self-serve ad platforms that anyone can buy an ad through, +so the Nazi ad that slips onto your favorite online publication isn’t +seen as their moral failing but rather as a failure in some distant, +upstream ad supplier. When a publication gets a complaint about an +offensive ad that’s appearing in one of its units, it can take some +steps to block that ad, but the Nazi might buy a slightly different ad +from a different broker serving the same unit. And in any event, +internet users increasingly understand that when they see an ad, it’s +likely that the advertiser did not choose that publication and that the +publication has no idea who its advertisers are. + +These layers of indirection between advertisers and publishers serve as +moral buffers: Today’s moral consensus is largely that publishers +shouldn’t be held responsible for the ads that appear on their pages +because they’re not actively choosing to put those ads there. Because of +this, Nazis are able to overcome significant barriers to organizing +their movement. + +Data has a complex relationship with domination. Being able to spy on +your customers can alert you to their preferences for your rivals and +allow you to head off your rivals at the pass. + +More importantly, if you can dominate the information space while also +gathering data, then you make other deceptive tactics stronger because +it’s harder to break out of the web of deceit you’re spinning. +Domination — that is, ultimately becoming a monopoly — and not the data +itself is the supercharger that makes every tactic worth pursuing +because monopolistic domination deprives your target of an escape route. + +If you’re a Nazi who wants to ensure that your prospects primarily see +deceptive, confirming information when they search for more, you can +improve your odds by seeding the search terms they use through your +initial communications. You don’t need to own the top 10 results for +“voter suppression” if you can convince your marks to confine their +search terms to “voter fraud,” which throws up a very different set of +search results. + +Surveillance capitalists are like stage mentalists who claim that their +extraordinary insights into human behavior let them guess the word that +you wrote down and folded up in your pocket but who really use shills, +hidden cameras, sleight of hand, and brute-force memorization to amaze +you. + +Or perhaps they’re more like pick-up artists, the misogynistic cult that +promises to help awkward men have sex with women by teaching them +“neurolinguistic programming” phrases, body language techniques, and +psychological manipulation tactics like “negging” — offering unsolicited +negative feedback to women to lower their self-esteem and prick their +interest. + +Some pick-up artists eventually manage to convince women to go home with +them, but it’s not because these men have figured out how to bypass +women’s critical faculties. Rather, pick-up artists’ “success” stories +are a mix of women who were incapable of giving consent, women who were +coerced, women who were intoxicated, self-destructive women, and a few +women who were sober and in command of their faculties but who didn’t +realize straightaway that they were with terrible men but rectified the +error as soon as they could. + +Pick-up artists *believe* they have figured out a secret back door that +bypasses women’s critical faculties, but they haven’t. Many of the +tactics they deploy, like negging, became the butt of jokes (just like +people joke about bad ad targeting), and there’s a good chance that +anyone they try these tactics on will immediately recognize them and +dismiss the men who use them as irredeemable losers. + +Pick-up artists are proof that people can believe they have developed a +system of mind control *even when it doesn’t work*. Pick-up artists +simply exploit the fact that one-in-a-million chances can come through +for you if you make a million attempts, and then they assume that the +other 999,999 times, they simply performed the technique incorrectly and +commit themselves to doing better next time. There’s only one group of +people who find pick-up artist lore reliably convincing: other would-be +pick-up artists whose anxiety and insecurity make them vulnerable to +scammers and delusional men who convince them that if they pay for +tutelage and follow instructions, then they will someday succeed. +Pick-up artists assume they fail to entice women because they are bad at +being pick-up artists, not because pick-up artistry is bullshit. Pick-up +artists are bad at selling themselves to women, but they’re much better +at selling themselves to men who pay to learn the secrets of pick-up +artistry. + +Department store pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have lamented, “Half +the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know +which half.” The fact that Wanamaker thought that only half of his +advertising spending was wasted is a tribute to the persuasiveness of +advertising executives, who are *much* better at convincing potential +clients to buy their services than they are at convincing the general +public to buy their clients’ wares. + +What is Facebook? +----------------- + +Facebook is heralded as the origin of all of our modern plagues, and +it’s not hard to see why. Some tech companies want to lock their users +in but make their money by monopolizing access to the market for apps +for their devices and gouging them on prices rather than by spying on +them (like Apple). Some companies don’t care about locking in users +because they’ve figured out how to spy on them no matter where they are +and what they’re doing and can turn that surveillance into money +(Google). Facebook alone among the Western tech giants has built a +business based on locking in its users *and* spying on them all the +time. + +Facebook’s surveillance regime is really without parallel in the Western +world. Though Facebook tries to prevent itself from being visible on the +public web, hiding most of what goes on there from people unless they’re +logged into Facebook, the company has nevertheless booby-trapped the +entire web with surveillance tools in the form of Facebook “Like” +buttons that web publishers include on their sites to boost their +Facebook profiles. Facebook also makes various libraries and other +useful code snippets available to web publishers that act as +surveillance tendrils on the sites where they’re used, funneling +information about visitors to the site — newspapers, dating sites, +message boards — to Facebook. + + Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech + but because it is *big*. + +Facebook offers similar tools to app developers, so the apps — games, +fart machines, business review services, apps for keeping abreast of +your kid’s schooling — you use will send information about your +activities to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account and +even if you don’t download or use Facebook apps. On top of all that, +Facebook buys data from third-party brokers on shopping habits, physical +location, use of “loyalty” programs, financial transactions, etc., and +cross-references that with the dossiers it develops on activity on +Facebook and with apps and the public web. + +Though it’s easy to integrate the web with Facebook — linking to news +stories and such — Facebook products are generally not available to be +integrated back into the web itself. You can embed a tweet in a Facebook +post, but if you embed a Facebook post in a tweet, you just get a link +back to Facebook and must log in before you can see it. Facebook has +used extreme technological and legal countermeasures to prevent rivals +from allowing their users to embed Facebook snippets in competing +services or to create alternative interfaces to Facebook that merge your +Facebook inbox with those of other services that you use. + +And Facebook is incredibly popular, with 2.3 billion claimed users +(though many believe this figure to be inflated). Facebook has been used +to organize genocidal pogroms, racist riots, anti-vaccination movements, +flat Earth cults, and the political lives of some of the world’s +ugliest, most brutal autocrats. There are some really alarming things +going on in the world, and Facebook is implicated in many of them, so +it’s easy to conclude that these bad things are the result of Facebook’s +mind-control system, which it rents out to anyone with a few bucks to +spend. + +To understand what role Facebook plays in the formulation and +mobilization of antisocial movements, we need to understand the dual +nature of Facebook. + +Because it has a lot of users and a lot of data about those users, +Facebook is a very efficient tool for locating people with hard-to-find +traits, the kinds of traits that are widely diffused in the population +such that advertisers have historically struggled to find a +cost-effective way to reach them. Think back to refrigerators: Most of +us only replace our major appliances a few times in our entire lives. If +you’re a refrigerator manufacturer or retailer, you have these brief +windows in the life of a consumer during which they are pondering a +purchase, and you have to somehow reach them. Anyone who’s ever +registered a title change after buying a house can attest that appliance +manufacturers are incredibly desperate to reach anyone who has even the +slenderest chance of being in the market for a new fridge. + +Facebook makes finding people shopping for refrigerators a *lot* easier. +It can target ads to people who’ve registered a new home purchase, to +people who’ve searched for refrigerator buying advice, to people who +have complained about their fridge dying, or any combination thereof. It +can even target people who’ve recently bought *other* kitchen appliances +on the theory that someone who’s just replaced their stove and +dishwasher might be in a fridge-buying kind of mood. The vast majority +of people who are reached by these ads will not be in the market for a +new fridge, but — crucially — the percentage of people who *are* looking +for fridges that these ads reach is *much* larger than it is than for +any group that might be subjected to traditional, offline targeted +refrigerator marketing. + +Facebook also makes it a lot easier to find people who have the same +rare disease as you, which might have been impossible in earlier eras — +the closest fellow sufferer might otherwise be hundreds of miles away. +It makes it easier to find people who went to the same high school as +you even though decades have passed and your former classmates have all +been scattered to the four corners of the Earth. + +Facebook also makes it much easier to find people who hold the same rare +political beliefs as you. If you’ve always harbored a secret affinity +for socialism but never dared utter this aloud lest you be demonized by +your neighbors, Facebook can help you discover other people who feel the +same way (and it might just demonstrate to you that your affinity is +more widespread than you ever suspected). It can make it easier to find +people who share your sexual identity. And again, it can help you to +understand that what you thought was a shameful secret that affected +only you was really a widely shared trait, giving you both comfort and +the courage to come out to the people in your life. + +All of this presents a dilemma for Facebook: Targeting makes the +company’s ads more effective than traditional ads, but it also lets +advertisers see just how effective their ads are. While advertisers are +pleased to learn that Facebook ads are more effective than ads on +systems with less sophisticated targeting, advertisers can also see that +in nearly every case, the people who see their ads ignore them. Or, at +best, the ads work on a subconscious level, creating nebulous +unmeasurables like “brand recognition.” This means that the price per ad +is very low in nearly every case. + +To make things worse, many Facebook groups spark precious little +discussion. Your little-league soccer team, the people with the same +rare disease as you, and the people you share a political affinity with +may exchange the odd flurry of messages at critical junctures, but on a +daily basis, there’s not much to say to your old high school chums or +other hockey-card collectors. + +With nothing but “organic” discussion, Facebook would not generate +enough traffic to sell enough ads to make the money it needs to +continually expand by buying up its competitors while returning handsome +sums to its investors. + +So Facebook has to gin up traffic by sidetracking its own forums: Every +time Facebook’s algorithm injects controversial materials — inflammatory +political articles, conspiracy theories, outrage stories — into a group, +it can hijack that group’s nominal purpose with its desultory +discussions and supercharge those discussions by turning them into +bitter, unproductive arguments that drag on and on. Facebook is +optimized for engagement, not happiness, and it turns out that automated +systems are pretty good at figuring out things that people will get +angry about. + +Facebook *can* modify our behavior but only in a couple of trivial ways. +First, it can lock in all your friends and family members so that you +check and check and check with Facebook to find out what they are up to; +and second, it can make you angry and anxious. It can force you to +choose between being interrupted constantly by updates — a process that +breaks your concentration and makes it hard to be introspective — and +staying in touch with your friends. This is a very limited form of mind +control, and it can only really make us miserable, angry, and anxious. + +This is why Facebook’s targeting systems — both the ones it shows to +advertisers and the ones that let users find people who share their +interests — are so next-gen and smooth and easy to use as well as why +its message boards have a toolset that seems like it hasn’t changed +since the mid-2000s. If Facebook delivered an equally flexible, +sophisticated message-reading system to its users, those users could +defend themselves against being nonconsensually eyeball-fucked with +Donald Trump headlines. + +The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads it gets to show you. +The solution to Facebook’s ads only working one in a thousand times is +for the company to try to increase how much time you spend on Facebook +by a factor of a thousand. Rather than thinking of Facebook as a company +that has figured out how to show you exactly the right ad in exactly the +right way to get you to do what its advertisers want, think of it as a +company that has figured out how to make you slog through an endless +torrent of arguments even though they make you miserable, spending so +much time on the site that it eventually shows you at least one ad that +you respond to. + +Monopoly and the right to the future tense +------------------------------------------ + +Zuboff and her cohort are particularly alarmed at the extent to which +surveillance allows corporations to influence our decisions, taking away +something she poetically calls “the right to the future tense” — that +is, the right to decide for yourself what you will do in the future. + +It’s true that advertising can tip the scales one way or another: When +you’re thinking of buying a fridge, a timely fridge ad might end the +search on the spot. But Zuboff puts enormous and undue weight on the +persuasive power of surveillance-based influence techniques. Most of +these don’t work very well, and the ones that do won’t work for very +long. The makers of these influence tools are confident they will +someday refine them into systems of total control, but they are hardly +unbiased observers, and the risks from their dreams coming true are very +speculative. + +By contrast, Zuboff is rather sanguine about 40 years of lax antitrust +practice that has allowed a handful of companies to dominate the +internet, ushering in an information age with, `as one person on Twitter +noted `__, +five giant websites each filled with screenshots of the other four. + +However, if we are to be alarmed that we might lose the right to choose +for ourselves what our future will hold, then monopoly’s nonspeculative, +concrete, here-and-now harms should be front and center in our debate +over tech policy. + +Start with “digital rights management.” In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the +Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. It’s a complex piece +of legislation with many controversial clauses but none more so than +Section 1201, the “anti-circumvention” rule. + +This is a blanket ban on tampering with systems that restrict access to +copyrighted works. The ban is so thoroughgoing that it prohibits +removing a copyright lock even when no copyright infringement takes +place. This is by design: The activities that the DMCA’s Section 1201 +sets out to ban are not copyright infringements; rather, they are legal +activities that frustrate manufacturers’ commercial plans. + +For example, Section 1201’s first major application was on DVD players +as a means of enforcing the region coding built into those devices. +DVD-CCA, the body that standardized DVDs and DVD players, divided the +world into six regions and specified that DVD players must check each +disc to determine which regions it was authorized to be played in. DVD +players would have their own corresponding region (a DVD player bought +in the U.S. would be region 1 while one bought in India would be region +5). If the player and the disc’s region matched, the player would play +the disc; otherwise, it would reject it. + +However, watching a lawfully produced disc in a country other than the +one where you purchased it is not copyright infringement — it’s the +opposite. Copyright law imposes this duty on customers for a movie: You +must go into a store, find a licensed disc, and pay the asking price. Do +that — and *nothing else* — and you and copyright are square with one +another. + +The fact that a movie studio wants to charge Indians less than Americans +or release in Australia later than it releases in the U.K. has no +bearing on copyright law. Once you lawfully acquire a DVD, it is no +copyright infringement to watch it no matter where you happen to be. + +So DVD and DVD player manufacturers would not be able to use accusations +of abetting copyright infringement to punish manufacturers who made +noncompliant players that would play discs from any region or repair +shops that modified players to let you watch out-of-region discs or +software programmers who created programs to let you do this. + +That’s where Section 1201 of the DMCA comes in: By banning tampering +with an “access control,” the rule gave manufacturers and rights holders +standing to sue competitors who released superior products with lawful +features that the market demanded (in this case, region-free players). + +This is an odious scam against consumers, but as time went by, Section +1201 grew to encompass a rapidly expanding constellation of devices and +services as canny manufacturers have realized certain things: + +- Any device with software in it contains a “copyrighted work” — i.e., + the software. +- A device can be designed so that reconfiguring the software requires + bypassing an “access control for copyrighted works,” which is a + potential felony under Section 1201. +- Thus, companies can control their customers’ behavior after they take + home their purchases by designing products so that all unpermitted + uses require modifications that fall afoul of Section 1201. + +Section 1201 then becomes a means for manufacturers of all descriptions +to force their customers to arrange their affairs to benefit the +manufacturers’ shareholders instead of themselves. + +This manifests in many ways: from a new generation of inkjet printers +that use countermeasures to prevent third-party ink that cannot be +bypassed without legal risks to similar systems in tractors that prevent +third-party technicians from swapping in the manufacturer’s own parts +that are not recognized by the tractor’s control system until it is +supplied with a manufacturer’s unlock code. + +Closer to home, Apple’s iPhones use these measures to prevent both +third-party service and third-party software installation. This allows +Apple to decide when an iPhone is beyond repair and must be shredded and +landfilled as opposed to the iPhone’s purchaser. (Apple is notorious for +its environmentally catastrophic policy of destroying old electronics +rather than permitting them to be cannibalized for parts.) This is a +very useful power to wield, especially in light of CEO Tim Cook’s +January 2019 warning to investors that the company’s profits are +endangered by customers choosing to hold onto their phones for longer +rather than replacing them. + +Apple’s use of copyright locks also allows it to establish a monopoly +over how its customers acquire software for their mobile devices. The +App Store’s commercial terms guarantee Apple a share of all revenues +generated by the apps sold there, meaning that Apple gets paid when you +buy an app from its store and then continues to get paid every time you +buy something using that app. This comes out of the bottom line of +software developers, who must either charge more or accept lower profits +for their products. + +Crucially, Apple’s use of copyright locks gives it the power to make +editorial decisions about which apps you may and may not install on your +own device. Apple has used this power to `reject +dictionaries `__ +for containing obscene words; to `limit political +speech `__, +especially from apps that make sensitive political commentary such as an +app that notifies you every time a U.S. drone kills someone somewhere in +the world; and to `object to a +game `__ +that commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict. + +Apple often justifies monopoly power over software installation in the +name of security, arguing that its vetting of apps for its store means +that it can guard its users against apps that contain surveillance code. +But this cuts both ways. In China, the government `ordered Apple to +prohibit the sale of privacy +tools `__ +like VPNs with the exception of VPNs that had deliberately introduced +flaws designed to let the Chinese state eavesdrop on users. Because +Apple uses technological countermeasures — with legal backstops — to +block customers from installing unauthorized apps, Chinese iPhone owners +cannot readily (or legally) acquire VPNs that would protect them from +Chinese state snooping. + +Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a “rogue capitalism.” Theoreticians +of capitalism claim that its virtue is that it `aggregates information +in the form of consumers’ +decisions `__, producing +efficient markets. Surveillance capitalism’s supposed power to rob its +victims of their free will through computationally supercharged +influence campaigns means that our markets no longer aggregate +customers’ decisions because we customers no longer decide — we are +given orders by surveillance capitalism’s mind-control rays. + +If our concern is that markets cease to function when consumers can no +longer make choices, then copyright locks should concern us at *least* +as much as influence campaigns. An influence campaign might nudge you to +buy a certain brand of phone; but the copyright locks on that phone +absolutely determine where you get it serviced, which apps can run on +it, and when you have to throw it away rather than fixing it. + +Search order and the right to the future tense +---------------------------------------------- + +Markets are posed as a kind of magic: By discovering otherwise hidden +information conveyed by the free choices of consumers, those consumers’ +local knowledge is integrated into a self-correcting system that makes +efficient allocations—more efficient than any computer could calculate. +But monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one +app store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the +range of choices. As Boss Tweed once said, “I don’t care who does the +electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.” A monopolized market +is an election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist. + +This ballot rigging is made more pernicious by the existence of +monopolies over search order. Google’s search market share is about 90%. +When Google’s ranking algorithm puts a result for a popular search term +in its top 10, that helps determine the behavior of millions of people. +If Google’s answer to “Are vaccines dangerous?” is a page that rebuts +anti-vax conspiracy theories, then a sizable portion of the public will +learn that vaccines are safe. If, on the other hand, Google sends those +people to a site affirming the anti-vax conspiracies, a sizable portion +of those millions will come away convinced that vaccines are dangerous. + +Google’s algorithm is often tricked into serving disinformation as a +prominent search result. But in these cases, Google isn’t persuading +people to change their minds; it’s just presenting something untrue as +fact when the user has no cause to doubt it. + +This is true whether the search is for “Are vaccines dangerous?” or +“best restaurants near me.” Most users will never look past the first +page of search results, and when the overwhelming majority of people all +use the same search engine, the ranking algorithm deployed by that +search engine will determine myriad outcomes (whether to adopt a child, +whether to have cancer surgery, where to eat dinner, where to move, +where to apply for a job) to a degree that vastly outstrips any +behavioral outcomes dictated by algorithmic persuasion techniques. + +Many of the questions we ask search engines have no empirically correct +answers: “Where should I eat dinner?” is not an objective question. Even +questions that do have correct answers (“Are vaccines dangerous?”) don’t +have one empirically superior source for that answer. Many pages affirm +the safety of vaccines, so which one goes first? Under conditions of +competition, consumers can choose from many search engines and stick +with the one whose algorithmic judgment suits them best, but under +conditions of monopoly, we all get our answers from the same place. + +Google’s search dominance isn’t a matter of pure merit: The company has +leveraged many tactics that would have been prohibited under classical, +pre-Ronald-Reagan antitrust enforcement standards to attain its +dominance. After all, this is a company that has developed two major +products: a really good search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. +Every other major success it’s had — Android, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. +— has come through an acquisition of a nascent competitor. Many of the +company’s key divisions, such as the advertising technology of +DoubleClick, violate the historical antitrust principle of structural +separation, which forbade firms from owning subsidiaries that competed +with their customers. Railroads, for example, were barred from owning +freight companies that competed with the shippers whose freight they +carried. + +If we’re worried about giant companies subverting markets by stripping +consumers of their ability to make free choices, then vigorous antitrust +enforcement seems like an excellent remedy. If we’d denied Google the +right to effect its many mergers, we would also have probably denied it +its total search dominance. Without that dominance, the pet theories, +biases, errors (and good judgment, too) of Google search engineers and +product managers would not have such an outsized effect on consumer +choice. + +This goes for many other companies. Amazon, a classic surveillance +capitalist, is obviously the dominant tool for searching Amazon — though +many people find their way to Amazon through Google searches and +Facebook posts — and obviously, Amazon controls Amazon search. That +means that Amazon’s own self-serving editorial choices—like promoting +its own house brands over rival goods from its sellers as well as its +own pet theories, biases, and errors— determine much of what we buy on +Amazon. And since Amazon is the dominant e-commerce retailer outside of +China and since it attained that dominance by buying up both large +rivals and nascent competitors in defiance of historical antitrust +rules, we can blame the monopoly for stripping consumers of their right +to the future tense and the ability to shape markets by making informed +choices. + +Not every monopolist is a surveillance capitalist, but that doesn’t mean +they’re not able to shape consumer choices in wide-ranging ways. Zuboff +lauds Apple for its App Store and iTunes Store, insisting that adding +price tags to the features on its platforms has been the secret to +resisting surveillance and thus creating markets. But Apple is the only +retailer allowed to sell on its platforms, and it’s the second-largest +mobile device vendor in the world. The independent software vendors that +sell through Apple’s marketplace accuse the company of the same +surveillance sins as Amazon and other big retailers: spying on its +customers to find lucrative new products to launch, effectively using +independent software vendors as free-market researchers, then forcing +them out of any markets they discover. + +Because of its use of copyright locks, Apple’s mobile customers are not +legally allowed to switch to a rival retailer for its apps if they want +to do so on an iPhone. Apple, obviously, is the only entity that gets to +decide how it ranks the results of search queries in its stores. These +decisions ensure that some apps are often installed (because they appear +on page one) and others are never installed (because they appear on page +one million). Apple’s search-ranking design decisions have a vastly more +significant effect on consumer behaviors than influence campaigns +delivered by surveillance capitalism’s ad-serving bots. + +Monopolists can afford sleeping pills for watchdogs +--------------------------------------------------- + +Only the most extreme market ideologues think that markets can +self-regulate without state oversight. Markets need watchdogs — +regulators, lawmakers, and other elements of democratic control — to +keep them honest. When these watchdogs sleep on the job, then markets +cease to aggregate consumer choices because those choices are +constrained by illegitimate and deceptive activities that companies are +able to get away with because no one is holding them to account. + +But this kind of regulatory capture doesn’t come cheap. In competitive +sectors, where rivals are constantly eroding one another’s margins, +individual firms lack the surplus capital to effectively lobby for laws +and regulations that serve their ends. + +Many of the harms of surveillance capitalism are the result of weak or +nonexistent regulation. Those regulatory vacuums spring from the power +of monopolists to resist stronger regulation and to tailor what +regulation exists to permit their existing businesses. + +Here’s an example: When firms over-collect and over-retain our data, +they are at increased risk of suffering a breach — you can’t leak data +you never collected, and once you delete all copies of that data, you +can no longer leak it. For more than a decade, we’ve lived through an +endless parade of ever-worsening data breaches, each one uniquely +horrible in the scale of data breached and the sensitivity of that data. + +But still, firms continue to over-collect and over-retain our data for +three reasons: + +**1. They are locked in the aforementioned limbic arms race with our +capacity to shore up our attentional defense systems to resist their new +persuasion techniques.** They’re also locked in an arms race with their +competitors to find new ways to target people for sales pitches. As soon +as they discover a soft spot in our attentional defenses (a +counterintuitive, unobvious way to target potential refrigerator +buyers), the public begins to wise up to the tactic, and their +competitors leap on it, hastening the day in which all potential +refrigerator buyers have been inured to the pitch. + +**2. They believe the surveillance capitalism story.** Data is cheap to +aggregate and store, and both proponents and opponents of surveillance +capitalism have assured managers and product designers that if you +collect enough data, you will be able to perform sorcerous acts of mind +control, thus supercharging your sales. Even if you never figure out how +to profit from the data, someone else will eventually offer to buy it +from you to give it a try. This is the hallmark of all economic bubbles: +acquiring an asset on the assumption that someone else will buy it from +you for more than you paid for it, often to sell to someone else at an +even greater price. + +**3. The penalties for leaking data are negligible.** Most countries +limit these penalties to actual damages, meaning that consumers who’ve +had their data breached have to show actual monetary harms to get a +reward. In 2014, Home Depot disclosed that it had lost credit-card data +for 53 million of its customers, but it settled the matter by paying +those customers about $0.34 each — and a third of that $0.34 wasn’t even +paid in cash. It took the form of a credit to procure a largely +ineffectual credit-monitoring service. + +But the harms from breaches are much more extensive than these +actual-damages rules capture. Identity thieves and fraudsters are wily +and endlessly inventive. All the vast breaches of our century are being +continuously recombined, the data sets merged and mined for new ways to +victimize the people whose data was present in them. Any reasonable, +evidence-based theory of deterrence and compensation for breaches would +not confine damages to actual damages but rather would allow users to +claim these future harms. + +However, even the most ambitious privacy rules, such as the EU General +Data Protection Regulation, fall far short of capturing the negative +externalities of the platforms’ negligent over-collection and +over-retention, and what penalties they do provide are not aggressively +pursued by regulators. + +This tolerance of — or indifference to — data over-collection and +over-retention can be ascribed in part to the sheer lobbying muscle of +the platforms. They are so profitable that they can handily afford to +divert gigantic sums to fight any real change — that is, change that +would force them to internalize the costs of their surveillance +activities. + +And then there’s state surveillance, which the surveillance capitalism +story dismisses as a relic of another era when the big worry was being +jailed for your dissident speech, not having your free will stripped +away with machine learning. + +But state surveillance and private surveillance are intimately related. +As we saw when Apple was conscripted by the Chinese government as a +vital collaborator in state surveillance, the only really affordable and +tractable way to conduct mass surveillance on the scale practiced by +modern states — both “free” and autocratic states — is to suborn +commercial services. + +Whether it’s Google being used as a location tracking tool by local law +enforcement across the U.S. or the use of social media tracking by the +Department of Homeland Security to build dossiers on participants in +protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family separation +practices, any hard limits on surveillance capitalism would hamstring +the state’s own surveillance capability. Without Palantir, Amazon, +Google, and other major tech contractors, U.S. cops would not be able to +spy on Black people, ICE would not be able to manage the caging of +children at the U.S. border, and state welfare systems would not be able +to purge their rolls by dressing up cruelty as empiricism and claiming +that poor and vulnerable people are ineligible for assistance. At least +some of the states’ unwillingness to take meaningful action to curb +surveillance should be attributed to this symbiotic relationship. There +is no mass state surveillance without mass commercial surveillance. + +Monopolism is key to the project of mass state surveillance. It’s true +that smaller tech firms are apt to be less well-defended than Big Tech, +whose security experts are drawn from the tops of their field and who +are given enormous resources to secure and monitor their systems against +intruders. But smaller firms also have less to protect: fewer users +whose data is more fragmented across more systems and have to be +suborned one at a time by state actors. + +A concentrated tech sector that works with authorities is a much more +powerful ally in the project of mass state surveillance than a +fragmented one composed of smaller actors. The U.S. tech sector is small +enough that all of its top executives fit around a single boardroom +table in Trump Tower in 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Most +of its biggest players bid to win JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint +Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract. Like other highly +concentrated industries, Big Tech rotates its key employees in and out +of government service, sending them to serve in the Department of +Defense and the White House, then hiring ex-Pentagon and ex-DOD top +staffers and officers to work in their own government relations +departments. + +They can even make a good case for doing this: After all, when there are +only four or five big companies in an industry, everyone qualified to +regulate those companies has served as an executive in at least a couple +of them — because, likewise, when there are only five companies in an +industry, everyone qualified for a senior role at any of them is by +definition working at one of the other ones. + + While surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies certainly + abet surveillance. + +Industries that are competitive are fragmented — composed of companies +that are at each other’s throats all the time and eroding one another’s +margins in bids to steal their best customers. This leaves them with +much more limited capital to use to lobby for favorable rules and a much +harder job of getting everyone to agree to pool their resources to +benefit the industry as a whole. + +Surveillance combined with machine learning is supposed to be an +existential crisis, a species-defining moment at which our free will is +just a few more advances in the field from being stripped away. I am +skeptical of this claim, but I *do* think that tech poses an existential +threat to our society and possibly our species. + +But that threat grows out of monopoly. + +One of the consequences of tech’s regulatory capture is that it can +shift liability for poor security decisions onto its customers and the +wider society. It is absolutely normal in tech for companies to +obfuscate the workings of their products, to make them deliberately hard +to understand, and to threaten security researchers who seek to +independently audit those products. + +IT is the only field in which this is practiced: No one builds a bridge +or a hospital and keeps the composition of the steel or the equations +used to calculate load stresses a secret. It is a frankly bizarre +practice that leads, time and again, to grotesque security defects on +farcical scales, with whole classes of devices being revealed as +vulnerable long after they are deployed in the field and put into +sensitive places. + +The monopoly power that keeps any meaningful consequences for breaches +at bay means that tech companies continue to build terrible products +that are insecure by design and that end up integrated into our lives, +in possession of our data, and connected to our physical world. For +years, Boeing has struggled with the aftermath of a series of bad +technology decisions that made its 737 fleet a global pariah, a rare +instance in which bad tech decisions have been seriously punished in the +market. + +These bad security decisions are compounded yet again by the use of +copyright locks to enforce business-model decisions against consumers. +Recall that these locks have become the go-to means for shaping consumer +behavior, making it technically impossible to use third-party ink, +insulin, apps, or service depots in connection with your lawfully +acquired property. + +Recall also that these copyright locks are backstopped by legislation +(such as Section 1201 of the DMCA or Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright +Directive) that ban tampering with (“circumventing”) them, and these +statutes have been used to threaten security researchers who make +disclosures about vulnerabilities without permission from manufacturers. + +This amounts to a manufacturer’s veto over safety warnings and +criticism. While this is far from the legislative intent of the DMCA and +its sister statutes around the world, Congress has not intervened to +clarify the statute nor will it because to do so would run counter to +the interests of powerful, large firms whose lobbying muscle is +unstoppable. + +Copyright locks are a double whammy: They create bad security decisions +that can’t be freely investigated or discussed. If markets are supposed +to be machines for aggregating information (and if surveillance +capitalism’s notional mind-control rays are what make it a “rogue +capitalism” because it denies consumers the power to make decisions), +then a program of legally enforced ignorance of the risks of products +makes monopolism even more of a “rogue capitalism” than surveillance +capitalism’s influence campaigns. + +And unlike mind-control rays, enforced silence over security is an +immediate, documented problem, and it *does* constitute an existential +threat to our civilization and possibly our species. The proliferation +of insecure devices — especially devices that spy on us and especially +when those devices also can manipulate the physical world by, say, +steering your car or flipping a breaker at a power station — is a kind +of technology debt. + +In software design, “technology debt” refers to old, baked-in decisions +that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. Perhaps a long-ago developer +decided to incorporate a networking protocol made by a vendor that has +since stopped supporting it. But everything in the product still relies +on that superannuated protocol, and so, with each revision, the product +team has to work around this obsolete core, adding compatibility layers, +surrounding it with security checks that try to shore up its defenses, +and so on. These Band-Aid measures compound the debt because every +subsequent revision has to make allowances for *them*, too, like +interest mounting on a predatory subprime loan. And like a subprime +loan, the interest mounts faster than you can hope to pay it off: The +product team has to put so much energy into maintaining this complex, +brittle system that they don’t have any time left over to refactor the +product from the ground up and “pay off the debt” once and for all. + +Typically, technology debt results in a technological bankruptcy: The +product gets so brittle and unsustainable that it fails +catastrophically. Think of the antiquated COBOL-based banking and +accounting systems that fell over at the start of the pandemic emergency +when confronted with surges of unemployment claims. Sometimes that ends +the product; sometimes it takes the company down with it. Being caught +in the default of a technology debt is scary and traumatic, just like +losing your house due to bankruptcy is scary and traumatic. + +But the technology debt created by copyright locks isn’t individual +debt; it’s systemic. Everyone in the world is exposed to this +over-leverage, as was the case with the 2008 financial crisis. When that +debt comes due — when we face a cascade of security breaches that +threaten global shipping and logistics, the food supply, pharmaceutical +production pipelines, emergency communications, and other critical +systems that are accumulating technology debt in part due to the +presence of deliberately insecure and deliberately unauditable copyright +locks — it will indeed pose an existential risk. + +Privacy and monopoly +-------------------- + +Many tech companies are gripped by an orthodoxy that holds that if they +just gather enough data on enough of our activities, everything else is +possible — the mind control and endless profits. This is an +unfalsifiable hypothesis: If data gives a tech company even a tiny +improvement in behavior prediction and modification, the company +declares that it has taken the first step toward global domination with +no end in sight. If a company *fails* to attain any improvements from +gathering and analyzing data, it declares success to be just around the +corner, attainable once more data is in hand. + +Surveillance tech is far from the first industry to embrace a +nonsensical, self-serving belief that harms the rest of the world, and +it is not the first industry to profit handsomely from such a delusion. +Long before hedge-fund managers were claiming (falsely) that they could +beat the S&P 500, there were plenty of other “respectable” industries +that have been revealed as quacks in hindsight. From the makers of +radium suppositories (a real thing!) to the cruel sociopaths who claimed +they could “cure” gay people, history is littered with the formerly +respectable titans of discredited industries. + +This is not to say that there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech and its +ideological addiction to data. While surveillance’s benefits are mostly +overstated, its harms are, if anything, *understated*. + +There’s real irony here. The belief in surveillance capitalism as a +“rogue capitalism” is driven by the belief that markets wouldn’t +tolerate firms that are gripped by false beliefs. An oil company that +has false beliefs about where the oil is will eventually go broke +digging dry wells after all. + +But monopolists get to do terrible things for a long time before they +pay the price. Think of how concentration in the finance sector allowed +the subprime crisis to fester as bond-rating agencies, regulators, +investors, and critics all fell under the sway of a false belief that +complex mathematics could construct “fully hedged” debt instruments that +could not possibly default. A small bank that engaged in this kind of +malfeasance would simply go broke rather than outrunning the inevitable +crisis, perhaps growing so big that it averted it altogether. But large +banks were able to continue to attract investors, and when they finally +*did* come a-cropper, the world’s governments bailed them out. The worst +offenders of the subprime crisis are bigger than they were in 2008, +bringing home more profits and paying their execs even larger sums. + +Big Tech is able to practice surveillance not just because it is tech +but because it is *big*. The reason every web publisher embeds a +Facebook “Like” button is that Facebook dominates the internet’s social +media referrals — and every one of those “Like” buttons spies on +everyone who lands on a page that contains them (see also: Google +Analytics embeds, Twitter buttons, etc.). + +The reason the world’s governments have been slow to create meaningful +penalties for privacy breaches is that Big Tech’s concentration produces +huge profits that can be used to lobby against those penalties — and Big +Tech’s concentration means that the companies involved are able to +arrive at a unified negotiating position that supercharges the lobbying. + +The reason that the smartest engineers in the world want to work for Big +Tech is that Big Tech commands the lion’s share of tech industry jobs. + +The reason people who are aghast at Facebook’s and Google’s and Amazon’s +data-handling practices continue to use these services is that all their +friends are on Facebook; Google dominates search; and Amazon has put all +the local merchants out of business. + +Competitive markets would weaken the companies’ lobbying muscle by +reducing their profits and pitting them against each other in regulatory +forums. It would give customers other places to go to get their online +services. It would make the companies small enough to regulate and pave +the way to meaningful penalties for breaches. It would let engineers +with ideas that challenged the surveillance orthodoxy raise capital to +compete with the incumbents. It would give web publishers multiple ways +to reach audiences and make the case against Facebook and Google and +Twitter embeds. + +In other words, while surveillance doesn’t cause monopolies, monopolies +certainly abet surveillance. + +Ronald Reagan, pioneer of tech monopolism +----------------------------------------- + +Technology exceptionalism is a sin, whether it’s practiced by +technology’s blind proponents or by its critics. Both of these camps are +prone to explaining away monopolistic concentration by citing some +special characteristic of the tech industry, like network effects or +first-mover advantage. The only real difference between these two groups +is that the tech apologists say monopoly is inevitable so we should just +let tech get away with its abuses while competition regulators in the +U.S. and the EU say monopoly is inevitable so we should punish tech for +its abuses but not try to break up the monopolies. + +To understand how tech became so monopolistic, it’s useful to look at +the dawn of the consumer tech industry: 1979, the year the Apple II Plus +launched and became the first successful home computer. That also +happens to be the year that Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail for the +1980 presidential race — a race he won, leading to a radical shift in +the way that antitrust concerns are handled in America. Reagan’s cohort +of politicians — including Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Brian Mulroney +in Canada, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile — went +on to enact similar reforms that eventually spread around the world. + +Antitrust’s story began nearly a century before all that with laws like +the Sherman Act, which took aim at monopolists on the grounds that +monopolies were bad in and of themselves — squeezing out competitors, +creating “diseconomies of scale” (when a company is so big that its +constituent parts go awry and it is seemingly helpless to address the +problems), and capturing their regulators to such a degree that they can +get away with a host of evils. + +Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who +Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. +Circuit and who had created an alternate legislative history of the +Sherman Act and its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that +these statutes were never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of +evidence to the contrary, including the transcribed speeches of the +acts’ authors) but, rather, that they were intended to prevent “consumer +harm” — in the form of higher prices. + +Bork was a crank, but he was a crank with a theory that rich people +really liked. Monopolies are a great way to make rich people richer by +allowing them to receive “monopoly rents” (that is, bigger profits) and +capture regulators, leading to a weaker, more favorable regulatory +environment with fewer protections for customers, suppliers, the +environment, and workers. + +Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who +backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies +began to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement +decisions (Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork +flunked the Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, +D.C. insiders use the term “borked” to refer to any catastrophically bad +political performance). + +Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their +backers began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on +junkets where members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun +outdoor activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the +consumer harm theory of antitrust. The more Bork’s theories took hold, +the more money the monopolists were making — and the more surplus +capital they had at their disposal to lobby for even more Borkian +antitrust influence campaigns. + +The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the +kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns +us against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy. But Bork +didn’t change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over +a generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed +oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts +in public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that +wealth is a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to +form a coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue. + +Today, many fear that machine learning allows surveillance capitalism to +sell “Bork-as-a-Service,” at internet speeds, so that you can contract a +machine-learning company to engineer *rapid* shifts in public sentiment +without needing the capital to sustain a multipronged, multigenerational +project working at the local, state, national, and global levels in +business, law, and philosophy. I do not believe that such a project is +plausible, though I agree that this is basically what the platforms +claim to be selling. They’re just lying about it. Big Tech lies all the +time, *including* in their sales literature. + +The idea that tech forms “natural monopolies” (monopolies that are the +inevitable result of the realities of an industry, such as the +monopolies that accrue the first company to run long-haul phone lines or +rail lines) is belied by tech’s own history: In the absence of +anti-competitive tactics, Google was able to unseat AltaVista and Yahoo; +Facebook was able to head off Myspace. There are some advantages to +gathering mountains of data, but those mountains of data also have +disadvantages: liability (from leaking), diminishing returns (from old +data), and institutional inertia (big companies, like science, progress +one funeral at a time). + +Indeed, the birth of the web saw a mass-extinction event for the +existing giant, wildly profitable proprietary technologies that had +capital, network effects, and walls and moats surrounding their +businesses. The web showed that when a new industry is built around a +protocol, rather than a product, the combined might of everyone who uses +the protocol to reach their customers or users or communities outweighs +even the most massive products. CompuServe, AOL, MSN, and a host of +other proprietary walled gardens learned this lesson the hard way: Each +believed it could stay separate from the web, offering “curation” and a +guarantee of consistency and quality instead of the chaos of an open +system. Each was wrong and ended up being absorbed into the public web. + +Yes, tech is heavily monopolized and is now closely associated with +industry concentration, but this has more to do with a matter of timing +than its intrinsically monopolistic tendencies. Tech was born at the +moment that antitrust enforcement was being dismantled, and tech fell +into exactly the same pathologies that antitrust was supposed to guard +against. To a first approximation, it is reasonable to assume that +tech’s monopolies are the result of a lack of anti-monopoly action and +not the much-touted unique characteristics of tech, such as network +effects, first-mover advantage, and so on. + +In support of this thesis, I offer the concentration that every *other* +industry has undergone over the same period. From professional wrestling +to consumer packaged goods to commercial property leasing to banking to +sea freight to oil to record labels to newspaper ownership to theme +parks, *every* industry has undergone a massive shift toward +concentration. There’s no obvious network effects or first-mover +advantage at play in these industries. However, in every case, these +industries attained their concentrated status through tactics that were +prohibited before Bork’s triumph: merging with major competitors, buying +out innovative new market entrants, horizontal and vertical integration, +and a suite of anti-competitive tactics that were once illegal but are +not any longer. + +Again: When you change the laws intended to prevent monopolies and then +monopolies form in exactly the way the law was supposed to prevent, it +is reasonable to suppose that these facts are related. Tech’s +concentration can be readily explained without recourse to radical +theories of network effects — but only if you’re willing to indict +unregulated markets as tending toward monopoly. Just as a lifelong +smoker can give you a hundred reasons why their smoking didn’t cause +their cancer (“It was the environmental toxins”), true believers in +unregulated markets have a whole suite of unconvincing explanations for +monopoly in tech that leave capitalism intact. + +Steering with the windshield wipers +----------------------------------- + +It’s been 40 years since Bork’s project to rehabilitate monopolies +achieved liftoff, and that is a generation and a half, which is plenty +of time to take a common idea and make it seem outlandish and vice +versa. Before the 1940s, affluent Americans dressed their baby boys in +pink while baby girls wore blue (a “delicate and dainty” color). While +gendered colors are obviously totally arbitrary, many still greet this +news with amazement and find it hard to imagine a time when pink +connoted masculinity. + +After 40 years of studiously ignoring antitrust analysis and +enforcement, it’s not surprising that we’ve all but forgotten that +antitrust exists, that in living memory, growth through mergers and +acquisitions were largely prohibited under law, that market-cornering +strategies like vertical integration could land a company in court. + +Antitrust is a market society’s steering wheel, the control of first +resort to keep would-be masters of the universe in their lanes. But Bork +and his cohort ripped out our steering wheel 40 years ago. The car is +still barreling along, and so we’re yanking as hard as we can on all the +*other* controls in the car as well as desperately flapping the doors +and rolling the windows up and down in the hopes that one of these other +controls can be repurposed to let us choose where we’re heading before +we careen off a cliff. + +It’s like a 1960s science-fiction plot come to life: People stuck in a +“generation ship,” plying its way across the stars, a ship once piloted +by their ancestors; and now, after a great cataclysm, the ship’s crew +have forgotten that they’re in a ship at all and no longer remember +where the control room is. Adrift, the ship is racing toward its +extinction, and unless we can seize the controls and execute emergency +course correction, we’re all headed for a fiery death in the heart of a +sun. + +Surveillance still matters +-------------------------- + +None of this is to minimize the problems with surveillance. Surveillance +matters, and Big Tech’s use of surveillance *is* an existential risk to +our species, but that’s not because surveillance and machine learning +rob us of our free will. + +Surveillance has become *much* more efficient thanks to Big Tech. In +1989, the Stasi — the East German secret police — had the whole country +under surveillance, a massive undertaking that recruited one out of +every 60 people to serve as an informant or intelligence operative. + +Today, we know that the NSA is spying on a significant fraction of the +entire world’s population, and its ratio of surveillance operatives to +the surveilled is more like 1:10,000 (that’s probably on the low side +since it assumes that every American with top-secret clearance is +working for the NSA on this project — we don’t know how many of those +cleared people are involved in NSA spying, but it’s definitely not all +of them). + +How did the ratio of surveillable citizens expand from 1:60 to 1:10,000 +in less than 30 years? It’s thanks to Big Tech. Our devices and services +gather most of the data that the NSA mines for its surveillance project. +We pay for these devices and the services they connect to, and then we +painstakingly perform the data-entry tasks associated with logging facts +about our lives, opinions, and preferences. This mass surveillance +project has been largely useless for fighting terrorism: The NSA can +`only point to a single minor success +story `__ +in which it used its data collection program to foil an attempt by a +U.S. resident to wire a few thousand dollars to an overseas terror +group. It’s ineffective for much the same reason that commercial +surveillance projects are largely ineffective at targeting advertising: +The people who want to commit acts of terror, like people who want to +buy a refrigerator, are extremely rare. If you’re trying to detect a +phenomenon whose base rate is one in a million with an instrument whose +accuracy is only 99%, then every true positive will come at the cost of +9,999 false positives. + +Let me explain that again: If one in a million people is a terrorist, +then there will only be about one terrorist in a random sample of one +million people. If your test for detecting terrorists is 99% accurate, +it will identify 10,000 terrorists in your million-person sample (1% of +one million is 10,000). For every true positive, you’ll get 9,999 false +positives. + +In reality, the accuracy of algorithmic terrorism detection falls far +short of the 99% mark, as does refrigerator ad targeting. The difference +is that being falsely accused of wanting to buy a fridge is a minor +nuisance while being falsely accused of planning a terror attack can +destroy your life and the lives of everyone you love. + +Mass state surveillance is only feasible because of surveillance +capitalism and its extremely low-yield ad-targeting systems, which +require a constant feed of personal data to remain barely viable. +Surveillance capitalism’s primary failure mode is mistargeted ads while +mass state surveillance’s primary failure mode is grotesque human rights +abuses, tending toward totalitarianism. + +State surveillance is no mere parasite on Big Tech, sucking up its data +and giving nothing in return. In truth, the two are symbiotes: Big Tech +sucks up our data for spy agencies, and spy agencies ensure that +governments don’t limit Big Tech’s activities so severely that it would +no longer serve the spy agencies’ needs. There is no firm distinction +between state surveillance and surveillance capitalism; they are +dependent on one another. + +To see this at work today, look no further than Amazon’s home +surveillance device, the Ring doorbell, and its associated app, +Neighbors. Ring — a product that Amazon acquired and did not develop in +house — makes a camera-enabled doorbell that streams footage from your +front door to your mobile device. The Neighbors app allows you to form a +neighborhood-wide surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through +which you can share clips of “suspicious characters.” If you’re thinking +that this sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists +supercharge their suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down +their blocks, `you’re +right `__. +Ring has become a *de facto,* off-the-books arm of the police without +any of the pesky oversight or rules. + +In mid-2019, a series of public records requests revealed that Amazon +had struck confidential deals with more than 400 local law enforcement +agencies through which the agencies would promote Ring and Neighbors and +in exchange get access to footage from Ring cameras. In theory, cops +would need to request this footage through Amazon (and internal +documents reveal that Amazon devotes substantial resources to coaching +cops on how to spin a convincing story when doing so), but in practice, +when a Ring customer turns down a police request, Amazon only requires +the agency to formally request the footage from the company, which it +will then produce. + +Ring and law enforcement have found many ways to intertwine their +activities. Ring strikes secret deals to acquire real-time access to 911 +dispatch and then streams alarming crime reports to Neighbors users, +which serve as convincers for anyone who’s contemplating a surveillance +doorbell but isn’t sure whether their neighborhood is dangerous enough +to warrant it. + +The more the cops buzz-market the surveillance capitalist Ring, the more +surveillance capability the state gets. Cops who rely on private +entities for law-enforcement roles then brief against any controls on +the deployment of that technology while the companies return the favor +by lobbying against rules requiring public oversight of police +surveillance technology. The more the cops rely on Ring and Neighbors, +the harder it will be to pass laws to curb them. The fewer laws there +are against them, the more the cops will rely on them. + +Dignity and sanctuary +--------------------- + +But even if we could exercise democratic control over our states and +force them to stop raiding surveillance capitalism’s reservoirs of +behavioral data, surveillance capitalism would still harm us. + +This is an area where Zuboff shines. Her chapter on “sanctuary” — the +feeling of being unobserved — is a beautiful hymn to introspection, +calmness, mindfulness, and tranquility. + +When you are watched, something changes. Anyone who has ever raised a +child knows this. You might look up from your book (or more +realistically, from your phone) and catch your child in a moment of +profound realization and growth, a moment where they are learning +something that is right at the edge of their abilities, requiring their +entire ferocious concentration. For a moment, you’re transfixed, +watching that rare and beautiful moment of focus playing out before your +eyes, and then your child looks up and sees you seeing them, and the +moment collapses. To grow, you need to be and expose your authentic +self, and in that moment, you are vulnerable like a hermit crab +scuttling from one shell to the next. The tender, unprotected tissues +you expose in that moment are too delicate to reveal in the presence of +another, even someone you trust as implicitly as a child trusts their +parent. + +In the digital age, our authentic selves are inextricably tied to our +digital lives. Your search history is a running ledger of the questions +you’ve pondered. Your location history is a record of the places you’ve +sought out and the experiences you’ve had there. Your social graph +reveals the different facets of your identity, the people you’ve +connected with. + +To be observed in these activities is to lose the sanctuary of your +authentic self. + +There’s another way in which surveillance capitalism robs us of our +capacity to be our authentic selves: by making us anxious. Surveillance +capitalism isn’t really a mind-control ray, but you don’t need a +mind-control ray to make someone anxious. After all, another word for +anxiety is agitation, and to make someone experience agitation, you need +merely to agitate them. To poke them and prod them and beep at them and +buzz at them and bombard them on an intermittent schedule that is just +random enough that our limbic systems never quite become inured to it. + +Our devices and services are “general purpose” in that they can connect +anything or anyone to anything or anyone else and that they can run any +program that can be written. This means that the distraction rectangles +in our pockets hold our most precious moments with our most beloved +people and their most urgent or time-sensitive communications (from +“running late can you get the kid?” to “doctor gave me bad news and I +need to talk to you RIGHT NOW”) as well as ads for refrigerators and +recruiting messages from Nazis. + +All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration +and tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think +through difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated +them like this, we’d call it “sleep deprivation torture,” and it would +be `a war crime under the Geneva +Conventions `__. + +Afflicting the afflicted +------------------------ + +The effects of surveillance on our ability to be our authentic selves +are not equal for all people. Some of us are lucky enough to live in a +time and place in which all the most important facts of our lives are +widely and roundly socially acceptable and can be publicly displayed +without the risk of social consequence. + +But for many of us, this is not true. Recall that in living memory, many +of the ways of being that we think of as socially acceptable today were +once cause for dire social sanction or even imprisonment. If you are 65 +years old, you have lived through a time in which people living in “free +societies” could be imprisoned or sanctioned for engaging in homosexual +activity, for falling in love with a person whose skin was a different +color than their own, or for smoking weed. + +Today, these activities aren’t just decriminalized in much of the world, +they’re considered normal, and the fallen prohibitions are viewed as +shameful, regrettable relics of the past. + +How did we get from prohibition to normalization? Through private, +personal activity: People who were secretly gay or secret pot-smokers or +who secretly loved someone with a different skin color were vulnerable +to retaliation if they made their true selves known and were limited in +how much they could advocate for their own right to exist in the world +and be true to themselves. But because there was a private sphere, these +people could form alliances with their friends and loved ones who did +not share their disfavored traits by having private conversations in +which they came out, disclosing their true selves to the people around +them and bringing them to their cause one conversation at a time. + +The right to choose the time and manner of these conversations was key +to their success. It’s one thing to come out to your dad while you’re on +a fishing trip away from the world and another thing entirely to blurt +it out over the Christmas dinner table while your racist Facebook uncle +is there to make a scene. + +Without a private sphere, there’s a chance that none of these changes +would have come to pass and that the people who benefited from these +changes would have either faced social sanction for coming out to a +hostile world or would have never been able to reveal their true selves +to the people they love. + +The corollary is that, unless you think that our society has attained +social perfection — that your grandchildren in 50 years will ask you to +tell them the story of how, in 2020, every injustice had been righted +and no further change had to be made — then you should expect that right +now, at this minute, there are people you love, whose happiness is key +to your own, who have a secret in their hearts that stops them from ever +being their authentic selves with you. These people are sorrowing and +will go to their graves with that secret sorrow in their hearts, and the +source of that sorrow will be the falsity of their relationship to you. + +A private realm is necessary for human progress. + +Any data you collect and retain will eventually leak +---------------------------------------------------- + +The lack of a private life can rob vulnerable people of the chance to be +their authentic selves and constrain our actions by depriving us of +sanctuary, but there is another risk that is borne by everyone, not just +people with a secret: crime. + +Personally identifying information is of very limited use for the +purpose of controlling peoples’ minds, but identity theft — really a +catchall term for a whole constellation of terrible criminal activities +that can destroy your finances, compromise your personal integrity, ruin +your reputation, or even expose you to physical danger — thrives on it. + +Attackers are not limited to using data from one breached source, +either. Multiple services have suffered breaches that exposed names, +addresses, phone numbers, passwords, sexual tastes, school grades, work +performance, brushes with the criminal justice system, family details, +genetic information, fingerprints and other biometrics, reading habits, +search histories, literary tastes, pseudonymous identities, and other +sensitive information. Attackers can merge data from these different +breaches to build up extremely detailed dossiers on random subjects and +then use different parts of the data for different criminal purposes. + +For example, attackers can use leaked username and password combinations +to hijack whole fleets of commercial vehicles that `have been fitted +with anti-theft GPS trackers and +immobilizers `__ +or to hijack baby monitors in order to `terrorize toddlers with the +audio tracks from +pornography `__. +Attackers use leaked data to trick phone companies into giving them your +phone number, then they intercept SMS-based two-factor authentication +codes in order to take over your email, bank account, and/or +cryptocurrency wallets. + +Attackers are endlessly inventive in the pursuit of creative ways to +weaponize leaked data. One common use of leaked data is to penetrate +companies in order to access *more* data. + +Like spies, online fraudsters are totally dependent on companies +over-collecting and over-retaining our data. Spy agencies sometimes pay +companies for access to their data or intimidate them into giving it up, +but sometimes they work just like criminals do — by `sneaking data out +of companies’ +databases `__. + +The over-collection of data has a host of terrible social consequences, +from the erosion of our authentic selves to the undermining of social +progress, from state surveillance to an epidemic of online crime. +Commercial surveillance is also a boon to people running influence +campaigns, but that’s the least of our troubles. + +Critical tech exceptionalism is still tech exceptionalism +--------------------------------------------------------- + +Big Tech has long practiced technology exceptionalism: the idea that it +should not be subject to the mundane laws and norms of “meatspace.” +Mottoes like Facebook’s “move fast and break things” attracted +justifiable scorn of the companies’ self-serving rhetoric. + +Tech exceptionalism got us all into a lot of trouble, so it’s ironic and +distressing to see Big Tech’s critics committing the same sin. + +Big Tech is not a “rogue capitalism” that cannot be cured through the +traditional anti-monopoly remedies of trustbusting (forcing companies to +divest of competitors they have acquired) and bans on mergers to +monopoly and other anti-competitive tactics. Big Tech does not have the +power to use machine learning to influence our behavior so thoroughly +that markets lose the ability to punish bad actors and reward superior +competitors. Big Tech has no rule-writing mind-control ray that +necessitates ditching our old toolbox. + +The thing is, people have been claiming to have perfected mind-control +rays for centuries, and every time, it turned out to be a con — though +sometimes the con artists were also conning themselves. + +For generations, the advertising industry has been steadily improving +its ability to sell advertising services to businesses while only making +marginal gains in selling those businesses’ products to prospective +customers. John Wanamaker’s lament that “50% of my advertising budget is +wasted, I just don’t know which 50%” is a testament to the triumph of +*ad executives*, who successfully convinced Wanamaker that only half of +the money he spent went to waste. + +The tech industry has made enormous improvements in the science of +convincing businesses that they’re good at advertising while their +actual improvements to advertising — as opposed to targeting — have been +pretty ho-hum. The vogue for machine learning — and the mystical +invocation of “artificial intelligence” as a synonym for straightforward +statistical inference techniques — has greatly boosted the efficacy of +Big Tech’s sales pitch as marketers have exploited potential customers’ +lack of technical sophistication to get away with breathtaking acts of +overpromising and underdelivering. + +It’s tempting to think that if businesses are willing to pour billions +into a venture that the venture must be a good one. Yet there are plenty +of times when this rule of thumb has led us astray. For example, it’s +virtually unheard of for managed investment funds to outperform simple +index funds, and investors who put their money into the hands of expert +money managers overwhelmingly fare worse than those who entrust their +savings to index funds. But managed funds still account for the majority +of the money invested in the markets, and they are patronized by some of +the richest, most sophisticated investors in the world. Their vote of +confidence in an underperforming sector is a parable about the role of +luck in wealth accumulation, not a sign that managed funds are a good +buy. + +The claims of Big Tech’s mind-control system are full of tells that the +enterprise is a con. For example, `the reliance on the “Big Five” +personality +traits `__ +as a primary means of influencing people even though the “Big Five” +theory is unsupported by any large-scale, peer-reviewed studies and is +`mostly the realm of marketing hucksters and pop +psych `__. + +Big Tech’s promotional materials also claim that their algorithms can +accurately perform “sentiment analysis” or detect peoples’ moods based +on their “microexpressions,” but `these are marketing claims, not +scientific +ones `__. +These methods are largely untested by independent scientific experts, +and where they have been tested, they’ve been found sorely wanting. +Microexpressions are particularly suspect as the companies that +specialize in training people to detect them `have been +shown `__ +to underperform relative to random chance. + +Big Tech has been so good at marketing its own supposed superpowers that +it’s easy to believe that they can market everything else with similar +acumen, but it’s a mistake to believe the hype. Any statement a company +makes about the quality of its products is clearly not impartial. The +fact that we distrust all the things that Big Tech says about its data +handling, compliance with privacy laws, etc., is only reasonable — but +why on Earth would we treat Big Tech’s marketing literature as the +gospel truth? Big Tech lies about just about *everything*, including how +well its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work. + +That skepticism should infuse all of our evaluations of Big Tech and its +supposed abilities, including our perusal of its patents. Zuboff vests +these patents with enormous significance, pointing out that Google +claimed extensive new persuasion capabilities in `its patent +filings `__. These +claims are doubly suspect: first, because they are so self-serving, and +second, because the patent itself is so notoriously an invitation to +exaggeration. + +Patent applications take the form of a series of claims and range from +broad to narrow. A typical patent starts out by claiming that its +authors have invented a method or system for doing every conceivable +thing that anyone might do, ever, with any tool or device. Then it +narrows that claim in successive stages until we get to the actual +“invention” that is the true subject of the patent. The hope is that the +patent examiner — who is almost certainly overworked and underinformed — +will miss the fact that some or all of these claims are ridiculous, or +at least suspect, and grant the patent’s broader claims. Patents for +unpatentable things are still incredibly useful because they can be +wielded against competitors who might license that patent or steer clear +of its claims rather than endure the lengthy, expensive process of +contesting it. + +What’s more, software patents are routinely granted even though the +filer doesn’t have any evidence that they can do the thing claimed by +the patent. That is, you can patent an “invention” that you haven’t +actually made and that you don’t know how to make. + +With these considerations in hand, it becomes obvious that the fact that +a Big Tech company has patented what it *says* is an effective +mind-control ray is largely irrelevant to whether Big Tech can in fact +control our minds. + +Big Tech collects our data for many reasons, including the diminishing +returns on existing stores of data. But many tech companies also collect +data out of a mistaken tech exceptionalist belief in the network effects +of data. Network effects occur when each new user in a system increases +its value. The classic example is fax machines: A single fax machine is +of no use, two fax machines are of limited use, but every new fax +machine that’s put to use after the first doubles the number of possible +fax-to-fax links. + +Data mined for predictive systems doesn’t necessarily produce these +dividends. Think of Netflix: The predictive value of the data mined from +a million English-speaking Netflix viewers is hardly improved by the +addition of one more user’s viewing data. Most of the data Netflix +acquires after that first minimum viable sample duplicates existing data +and produces only minimal gains. Meanwhile, retraining models with new +data gets progressively more expensive as the number of data points +increases, and manual tasks like labeling and validating data do not get +cheaper at scale. + +Businesses pursue fads to the detriment of their profits all the time, +especially when the businesses and their investors are not motivated by +the prospect of becoming profitable but rather by the prospect of being +acquired by a Big Tech giant or by having an IPO. For these firms, +ticking faddish boxes like “collects as much data as possible” might +realize a bigger return on investment than “collects a +business-appropriate quantity of data.” + +This is another harm of tech exceptionalism: The belief that more data +always produces more profits in the form of more insights that can be +translated into better mind-control rays drives firms to over-collect +and over-retain data beyond all rationality. And since the firms are +behaving irrationally, a good number of them will go out of business and +become ghost ships whose cargo holds are stuffed full of data that can +harm people in myriad ways — but which no one is responsible for antey +longer. Even if the companies don’t go under, the data they collect is +maintained behind the minimum viable security — just enough security to +keep the company viable while it waits to get bought out by a tech +giant, an amount calculated to spend not one penny more than is +necessary on protecting data. + +How monopolies, not mind control, drive surveillance capitalism: The Snapchat story +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +For the first decade of its existence, Facebook competed with the social +media giants of the day (Myspace, Orkut, etc.) by presenting itself as +the pro-privacy alternative. Indeed, Facebook justified its walled +garden — which let users bring in data from the web but blocked web +services like Google Search from indexing and caching Facebook pages — +as a pro-privacy measure that protected users from the +surveillance-happy winners of the social media wars like Myspace. + +Despite frequent promises that it would never collect or analyze its +users’ data, Facebook periodically created initiatives that did just +that, like the creepy, ham-fisted Beacon tool, which spied on you as you +moved around the web and then added your online activities to your +public timeline, allowing your friends to monitor your browsing habits. +Beacon sparked a user revolt. Every time, Facebook backed off from its +surveillance initiative, but not all the way; inevitably, the new +Facebook would be more surveilling than the old Facebook, though not +quite as surveilling as the intermediate Facebook following the launch +of the new product or service. + +The pace at which Facebook ramped up its surveillance efforts seems to +have been set by Facebook’s competitive landscape. The more competitors +Facebook had, the better it behaved. Every time a major competitor +foundered, Facebook’s behavior `got markedly +worse `__. + +All the while, Facebook was prodigiously acquiring companies, including +a company called Onavo. Nominally, Onavo made a battery-monitoring +mobile app. But the permissions that Onavo required were so expansive +that the app was able to gather fine-grained telemetry on everything +users did with their phones, including which apps they used and how they +were using them. + +Through Onavo, Facebook discovered that it was losing market share to +Snapchat, an app that — like Facebook a decade before — billed itself as +the pro-privacy alternative to the status quo. Through Onavo, Facebook +was able to mine data from the devices of Snapchat users, including both +current and former Snapchat users. This spurred Facebook to acquire +Instagram — some features of which competed with Snapchat — and then +allowed Facebook to fine-tune Instagram’s features and sales pitch to +erode Snapchat’s gains and ensure that Facebook would not have to face +the kinds of competitive pressures it had earlier inflicted on Myspace +and Orkut. + +The story of how Facebook crushed Snapchat reveals the relationship +between monopoly and surveillance capitalism. Facebook combined +surveillance with lax antitrust enforcement to spot the competitive +threat of Snapchat on its horizon and then take decisive action against +it. Facebook’s surveillance capitalism let it avert competitive pressure +with anti-competitive tactics. Facebook users still want privacy — +Facebook hasn’t used surveillance to brainwash them out of it — but they +can’t get it because Facebook’s surveillance lets it destroy any hope of +a rival service emerging that competes on privacy features. + +A monopoly over your friends +---------------------------- + +A decentralization movement has tried to erode the dominance of Facebook +and other Big Tech companies by fielding “indieweb” alternatives — +Mastodon as a Twitter alternative, Diaspora as a Facebook alternative, +etc. — but these efforts have failed to attain any kind of liftoff. + +Fundamentally, each of these services is hamstrung by the same problem: +Every potential user for a Facebook or Twitter alternative has to +convince all their friends to follow them to a decentralized web +alternative in order to continue to realize the benefit of social media. +For many of us, the only reason to have a Facebook account is that our +friends have Facebook accounts, and the reason they have Facebook +accounts is that *we* have Facebook accounts. + +All of this has conspired to make Facebook — and other dominant +platforms — into “kill zones” that investors will not fund new entrants +for. + +And yet, all of today’s tech giants came into existence despite the +entrenched advantage of the companies that came before them. To +understand how that happened, you have to understand both +interoperability and adversarial interoperability. + + The hard problem of our species is coordination. + +“Interoperability” is the ability of two technologies to work with one +another: Anyone can make an LP that will play on any record player, +anyone can make a filter you can install in your stove’s extractor fan, +anyone can make gasoline for your car, anyone can make a USB phone +charger that fits in your car’s cigarette lighter receptacle, anyone can +make a light bulb that works in your light socket, anyone can make bread +that will toast in your toaster. + +Interoperability is often a source of innovation and consumer benefit: +Apple made the first commercially successful PC, but millions of +independent software vendors made interoperable programs that ran on the +Apple II Plus. The simple analog antenna inputs on the back of TVs first +allowed cable operators to connect directly to TVs, then they allowed +game console companies and then personal computer companies to use +standard televisions as displays. Standard RJ-11 telephone jacks allowed +for the production of phones from a variety of vendors in a variety of +forms, from the free football-shaped phone that came with a *Sports +Illustrated* subscription to business phones with speakers, hold +functions, and so on and then answering machines and finally modems, +paving the way for the internet revolution. + +“Interoperability” is often used interchangeably with “standardization,” +which is the process when manufacturers and other stakeholders hammer +out a set of agreed-upon rules for implementing a technology, such as +the electrical plug on your wall, the CAN bus used by your car’s +computer systems, or the HTML instructions that your browser interprets. + +But interoperability doesn’t require standardization — indeed, +standardization often proceeds from the chaos of ad hoc interoperability +measures. The inventor of the cigarette-lighter USB charger didn’t need +to get permission from car manufacturers or even the manufacturers of +the dashboard lighter subcomponent. The automakers didn’t take any +countermeasures to prevent the use of these aftermarket accessories by +their customers, but they also didn’t do anything to make life easier +for the chargers’ manufacturers. This is a kind of “neutral +interoperability.” + +Beyond neutral interoperability, there is “adversarial +interoperability.” That’s when a manufacturer makes a product that +interoperates with another manufacturer’s product *despite the second +manufacturer’s objections* and *even if that means bypassing a security +system designed to prevent interoperability*. + +Probably the most familiar form of adversarial interoperability is +third-party printer ink. Printer manufacturers claim that they sell +printers below cost and that the only way they can recoup the losses +they incur is by charging high markups on ink. To prevent the owners of +printers from buying ink elsewhere, the printer companies deploy a suite +of anti-customer security systems that detect and reject both refilled +and third-party cartridges. + +Owners of printers take the position that HP and Epson and Brother are +not charities and that customers for their wares have no obligation to +help them survive, and so if the companies choose to sell their products +at a loss, that’s their foolish choice and their consequences to live +with. Likewise, competitors who make ink or refill kits observe that +they don’t owe printer companies anything, and their erosion of printer +companies’ margins are the printer companies’ problems, not their +competitors’. After all, the printer companies shed no tears when they +drive a refiller out of business, so why should the refillers concern +themselves with the economic fortunes of the printer companies? + +Adversarial interoperability has played an outsized role in the history +of the tech industry: from the founding of the “alt.*” Usenet hierarchy +(which was started against the wishes of Usenet’s maintainers and which +grew to be bigger than all of Usenet combined) to the browser wars (when +Netscape and Microsoft devoted massive engineering efforts to making +their browsers incompatible with the other’s special commands and +peccadilloes) to Facebook (whose success was built in part by helping +its new users stay in touch with friends they’d left behind on Myspace +because Facebook supplied them with a tool that scraped waiting messages +from Myspace and imported them into Facebook, effectively creating an +Facebook-based Myspace reader). + +Today, incumbency is seen as an unassailable advantage. Facebook is +where all of your friends are, so no one can start a Facebook +competitor. But adversarial compatibility reverses the competitive +advantage: If you were allowed to compete with Facebook by providing a +tool that imported all your users’ waiting Facebook messages into an +environment that competed on lines that Facebook couldn’t cross, like +eliminating surveillance and ads, then Facebook would be at a huge +disadvantage. It would have assembled all possible ex-Facebook users +into a single, easy-to-find service; it would have educated them on how +a Facebook-like service worked and what its potential benefits were; and +it would have provided an easy means for disgruntled Facebook users to +tell their friends where they might expect better treatment. + +Adversarial interoperability was once the norm and a key contributor to +the dynamic, vibrant tech scene, but now it is stuck behind a thicket of +laws and regulations that add legal risks to the tried-and-true tactics +of adversarial interoperability. New rules and new interpretations of +existing rules mean that a would-be adversarial interoperator needs to +steer clear of claims under copyright, terms of service, trade secrecy, +tortious interference, and patent. + +In the absence of a competitive market, lawmakers have resorted to +assigning expensive, state-like duties to Big Tech firms, such as +automatically filtering user contributions for copyright infringement or +terrorist and extremist content or detecting and preventing harassment +in real time or controlling access to sexual material. + +These measures put a floor under how small we can make Big Tech because +only the very largest companies can afford the humans and automated +filters needed to perform these duties. + +But that’s not the only way in which making platforms responsible for +policing their users undermines competition. A platform that is expected +to police its users’ conduct must prevent many vital adversarial +interoperability techniques lest these subvert its policing measures. +For example, if someone using a Twitter replacement like Mastodon is +able to push messages into Twitter and read messages out of Twitter, +they could avoid being caught by automated systems that detect and +prevent harassment (such as systems that use the timing of messages or +IP-based rules to make guesses about whether someone is a harasser). + +To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather +than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for +better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a +platform out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to +their communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be +able to block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand +legal enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial +interoperability. + +Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad +acts by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech +down to size. But we can’t do both. To replace today’s giant products +with pluralistic protocols, we need to clear the legal thicket that +prevents adversarial interoperability so that tomorrow’s nimble, +personal, small-scale products can federate themselves with giants like +Facebook, allowing the users who’ve left to continue to communicate with +users who haven’t left yet, reaching tendrils over Facebook’s garden +wall that Facebook’s trapped users can use to scale the walls and escape +to the global, open web. + +Fake news is an epistemological crisis +-------------------------------------- + +Tech is not the only industry that has undergone massive concentration +since the Reagan era. Virtually every major industry — from oil to +newspapers to meatpacking to sea freight to eyewear to online +pornography — has become a clubby oligarchy that just a few players +dominate. + +At the same time, every industry has become something of a tech industry +as general-purpose computers and general-purpose networks and the +promise of efficiencies through data-driven analysis infuse every +device, process, and firm with tech. + +This phenomenon of industrial concentration is part of a wider story +about wealth concentration overall as a smaller and smaller number of +people own more and more of our world. This concentration of both wealth +and industries means that our political outcomes are increasingly +beholden to the parochial interests of the people and companies with all +the money. + +That means that whenever a regulator asks a question with an obvious, +empirical answer (“Are humans causing climate change?” or “Should we let +companies conduct commercial mass surveillance?” or “Does society +benefit from allowing network neutrality violations?”), the answer that +comes out is only correct if that correctness meets with the approval of +rich people and the industries that made them so wealthy. + +Rich people have always played an outsized role in politics and more so +since the Supreme Court’s *Citizens United* decision eliminated key +controls over political spending. Widening inequality and wealth +concentration means that the very richest people are now a lot richer +and can afford to spend a lot more money on political projects than ever +before. Think of the Koch brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates. + +But the policy distortions of rich individuals pale in comparison to the +policy distortions that concentrated industries are capable of. The +companies in highly concentrated industries are much more profitable +than companies in competitive industries — no competition means not +having to reduce prices or improve quality to win customers — leaving +them with bigger capital surpluses to spend on lobbying. + +Concentrated industries also find it easier to collaborate on policy +objectives than competitive ones. When all the top execs from your +industry can fit around a single boardroom table, they often do. And +*when* they do, they can forge a consensus position on regulation. + +Rising through the ranks in a concentrated industry generally means +working at two or three of the big companies. When there are only +relatively few companies in a given industry, each company has a more +ossified executive rank, leaving ambitious execs with fewer paths to +higher positions unless they are recruited to a rival. This means that +the top execs in concentrated industries are likely to have been +colleagues at some point and socialize in the same circles — connected +through social ties or, say, serving as trustees for each others’ +estates. These tight social bonds foster a collegial, rather than +competitive, attitude. + +Highly concentrated industries also present a regulatory conundrum. When +an industry is dominated by just four or five companies, the only people +who are likely to truly understand the industry’s practices are its +veteran executives. This means that top regulators are often former +execs of the companies they are supposed to be regulating. These turns +in government are often tacitly understood to be leaves of absence from +industry, with former employers welcoming their erstwhile watchdogs back +into their executive ranks once their terms have expired. + +All this is to say that the tight social bonds, small number of firms, +and regulatory capture of concentrated industries give the companies +that comprise them the power to dictate many, if not all, of the +regulations that bind them. + +This is increasingly obvious. Whether it’s payday lenders `winning the +right to practice predatory +lending `__ +or Apple `winning the right to decide who can fix your +phone `__ +or Google and Facebook winning the right to breach your private data +without suffering meaningful consequences or victories for pipeline +companies or impunity for opioid manufacturers or massive tax subsidies +for incredibly profitable dominant businesses, it’s increasingly +apparent that many of our official, evidence-based truth-seeking +processes are, in fact, auctions for sale to the highest bidder. + +It’s really impossible to overstate what a terrifying prospect this is. +We live in an incredibly high-tech society, and none of us could acquire +the expertise to evaluate every technological proposition that stands +between us and our untimely, horrible deaths. You might devote your life +to acquiring the media literacy to distinguish good scientific journals +from corrupt pay-for-play lookalikes and the statistical literacy to +evaluate the quality of the analysis in the journals as well as the +microbiology and epidemiology knowledge to determine whether you can +trust claims about the safety of vaccines — but that would still leave +you unqualified to judge whether the wiring in your home will give you a +lethal shock *and* whether your car’s brakes’ software will cause them +to fail unpredictably *and* whether the hygiene standards at your +butcher are sufficient to keep you from dying after you finish your +dinner. + +In a world as complex as this one, we have to defer to authorities, and +we keep them honest by making those authorities accountable to us and +binding them with rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We can’t +possibly acquire the expertise to adjudicate conflicting claims about +the best way to make the world safe and prosperous, but we *can* +determine whether the adjudication process itself is trustworthy. + +Right now, it’s obviously not. + +The past 40 years of rising inequality and industry concentration, +together with increasingly weak accountability and transparency for +expert agencies, has created an increasingly urgent sense of impending +doom, the sense that there are vast conspiracies afoot that operate with +tacit official approval despite the likelihood they are working to +better themselves by ruining the rest of us. + +For example, it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded +that its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And +yet those decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied +governments and sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so +with the cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you +and everyone you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not +unreasonable to start questioning the things you think you know in an +attempt to determine whether they, too, are the outcome of another +conspiracy. + +The collapse of the credibility of our systems for divining and +upholding truths has left us in a state of epistemological chaos. Once, +most of us might have assumed that the system was working and that our +regulations reflected our best understanding of the empirical truths of +the world as they were best understood — now we have to find our own +experts to help us sort the true from the false. + +If you’re like me, you probably believe that vaccines are safe, but you +(like me) probably also can’t explain the microbiology or statistics. +Few of us have the math skills to review the literature on vaccine +safety and describe why their statistical reasoning is sound. Likewise, +few of us can review the stats in the (now discredited) literature on +opioid safety and explain how those stats were manipulated. Both +vaccines and opioids were embraced by medical authorities, after all, +and one is safe while the other could ruin your life. You’re left with a +kind of inchoate constellation of rules of thumb about which experts you +trust to fact-check controversial claims and then to explain how all +those respectable doctors with their peer-reviewed research on opioid +safety *were* an aberration and then how you know that the doctors +writing about vaccine safety are *not* an aberration. + +I’m 100% certain that vaccinating is safe and effective, but I’m also at +something of a loss to explain exactly, *precisely,* why I believe this, +given all the corruption I know about and the many times the stamp of +certainty has turned out to be a parochial lie told to further enrich +the super rich. + +Fake news — conspiracy theories, racist ideologies, scientific denialism +— has always been with us. What’s changed today is not the mix of ideas +in the public discourse but the popularity of the worst ideas in that +mix. Conspiracy and denial have skyrocketed in lockstep with the growth +of Big Inequality, which has also tracked the rise of Big Tech and Big +Pharma and Big Wrestling and Big Car and Big Movie Theater and Big +Everything Else. + +No one can say for certain why this has happened, but the two dominant +camps are idealism (the belief that the people who argue for these +conspiracies have gotten better at explaining them, maybe with the help +of machine-learning tools) or materialism (the ideas have become more +attractive because of material conditions in the world). + +I’m a materialist. I’ve been exposed to the arguments of conspiracy +theorists all my life, and I have not experienced any qualitative leap +in the quality of those arguments. + +The major difference is in the world, not the arguments. In a time where +actual conspiracies are commonplace, conspiracy theories acquire a ring +of plausibility. + +We have always had disagreements about what’s true, but today, we have a +disagreement over how we know whether something is true. This is an +epistemological crisis, not a crisis over belief. It’s a crisis over the +credibility of our truth-seeking exercises, from scientific journals (in +an era where the biggest journal publishers have been caught producing +pay-to-play journals for junk science) to regulations (in an era where +regulators are routinely cycling in and out of business) to education +(in an era where universities are dependent on corporate donations to +keep their lights on). + +Targeting — surveillance capitalism — makes it easier to find people who +are undergoing this epistemological crisis, but it doesn’t create the +crisis. For that, you need to look to corruption. + +And, conveniently enough, it’s corruption that allows surveillance +capitalism to grow by dismantling monopoly protections, by permitting +reckless collection and retention of personal data, by allowing ads to +be targeted in secret, and by foreclosing on the possibility of going +somewhere else where you might continue to enjoy your friends without +subjecting yourself to commercial surveillance. + +Tech is different +----------------- + +I reject both iterations of technological exceptionalism. I reject the +idea that tech is uniquely terrible and led by people who are greedier +or worse than the leaders of other industries, and I reject the idea +that tech is so good — or so intrinsically prone to concentration — that +it can’t be blamed for its present-day monopolistic status. + +I think tech is just another industry, albeit one that grew up in the +absence of real monopoly constraints. It may have been first, but it +isn’t the worst nor will it be the last. + +But there’s one way in which I *am* a tech exceptionalist. I believe +that online tools are the key to overcoming problems that are much more +urgent than tech monopolization: climate change, inequality, misogyny, +and discrimination on the basis of race, gender identity, and other +factors. The internet is how we will recruit people to fight those +fights, and how we will coordinate their labor. Tech is not a substitute +for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or stability — +but it’s a means to achieve these things. + +The hard problem of our species is coordination. Everything from climate +change to social change to running a business to making a family work +can be viewed as a collective action problem. + +The internet makes it easier than at any time before to find people who +want to work on a project with you — hence the success of free and +open-source software, crowdfunding, and racist terror groups — and +easier than ever to coordinate the work you do. + +The internet and the computers we connect to it also possess an +exceptional quality: general-purposeness. The internet is designed to +allow any two parties to communicate any data, using any protocol, +without permission from anyone else. The only production design we have +for computers is the general-purpose, “Turing complete” computer that +can run every program we can express in symbolic logic. + +This means that every time someone with a special communications need +invests in infrastructure and techniques to make the internet faster, +cheaper, and more robust, this benefit redounds to everyone else who is +using the internet to communicate. And this also means that every time +someone with a special computing need invests to make computers faster, +cheaper, and more robust, every other computing application is a +potential beneficiary of this work. + +For these reasons, every type of communication is gradually absorbed +into the internet, and every type of device — from airplanes to +pacemakers — eventually becomes a computer in a fancy case. + +While these considerations don’t preclude regulating networks and +computers, they do call for gravitas and caution when doing so because +changes to regulatory frameworks could ripple out to have unintended +consequences in many, many other domains. + +The upshot of this is that our best hope of solving the big coordination +problems — climate change, inequality, etc. — is with free, fair, and +open tech. Our best hope of keeping tech free, fair, and open is to +exercise caution in how we regulate tech and to attend closely to the +ways in which interventions to solve one problem might create problems +in other domains. + +Ownership of facts +------------------ + +Big Tech has a funny relationship with information. When you’re +generating information — anything from the location data streaming off +your mobile device to the private messages you send to friends on a +social network — it claims the rights to make unlimited use of that +data. + +But when you have the audacity to turn the tables — to use a tool that +blocks ads or slurps your waiting updates out of a social network and +puts them in another app that lets you set your own priorities and +suggestions or crawls their system to allow you to start a rival +business — they claim that you’re stealing from them. + +The thing is, information is a very bad fit for any kind of private +property regime. Property rights are useful for establishing markets +that can lead to the effective development of fallow assets. These +markets depend on clear titles to ensure that the things being bought +and sold in them can, in fact, be bought and sold. + +Information rarely has such a clear title. Take phone numbers: There’s +clearly something going wrong when Facebook slurps up millions of users’ +address books and uses the phone numbers it finds in them to plot out +social graphs and fill in missing information about other users. + +But the phone numbers Facebook nonconsensually acquires in this +transaction are not the “property” of the users they’re taken from nor +do they belong to the people whose phones ring when you dial those +numbers. The numbers are mere integers, 10 digits in the U.S. and +Canada, and they appear in millions of places, including somewhere deep +in pi as well as numerous other contexts. Giving people ownership titles +to integers is an obviously terrible idea. + +Likewise for the facts that Facebook and other commercial surveillance +operators acquire about us, like that we are the children of our parents +or the parents to our children or that we had a conversation with +someone else or went to a public place. These data points can’t be +property in the sense that your house or your shirt is your property +because the title to them is intrinsically muddy: Does your mom own the +fact that she is your mother? Do you? Do both of you? What about your +dad — does he own this fact too, or does he have to license the fact +from you (or your mom or both of you) in order to use this fact? What +about the hundreds or thousands of other people who know these facts? + +If you go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration, do the other +demonstrators need your permission to post their photos from the event? +The online fights over `when and how to post photos from +demonstrations `__ +reveal a nuanced, complex issue that cannot be easily hand-waved away by +giving one party a property right that everyone else in the mix has to +respect. + +The fact that information isn’t a good fit with property and markets +doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable. Babies aren’t property, but they’re +inarguably valuable. In fact, we have a whole set of rules just for +babies as well as a subset of those rules that apply to humans more +generally. Someone who argues that babies won’t be truly valuable until +they can be bought and sold like loaves of bread would be instantly and +rightfully condemned as a monster. + +It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your +information like a nail — not least because Big Tech are such prolific +abusers of property hammers when it comes to *their* information. But +this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use of our +information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market +where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as +to be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of +zero in a click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to +modify. + +Meanwhile, establishing property rights over information will create +insurmountable barriers to independent data processing. Imagine that we +require a license to be negotiated when a translated document is +compared with its original, something Google has done and continues to +do billions of times to train its automated language translation tools. +Google can afford this, but independent third parties cannot. Google can +staff a clearances department to negotiate one-time payments to the +likes of the EU (one of the major repositories of translated documents) +while independent watchdogs wanting to verify that the translations are +well-prepared, or to root out bias in translations, will find themselves +needing a staffed-up legal department and millions for licenses before +they can even get started. + +The same goes for things like search indexes of the web or photos of +peoples’ houses, which have become contentious thanks to Google’s Street +View project. Whatever problems may exist with Google’s photographing of +street scenes, resolving them by letting people decide who can take +pictures of the facades of their homes from a public street will surely +create even worse ones. Think of how street photography is important for +newsgathering — including informal newsgathering, like photographing +abuses of authority — and how being able to document housing and street +life are important for contesting eminent domain, advocating for social +aid, reporting planning and zoning violations, documenting +discriminatory and unequal living conditions, and more. + +The ownership of facts is antithetical to many kinds of human progress. +It’s hard to imagine a rule that limits Big Tech’s exploitation of our +collective labors without inadvertently banning people from gathering +data on online harassment or compiling indexes of changes in language or +simply investigating how the platforms are shaping our discourse — all +of which require scraping data that other people have created and +subjecting it to scrutiny and analysis. + +Persuasion works… slowly +------------------------- + +The platforms may oversell their ability to persuade people, but +obviously, persuasion works sometimes. Whether it’s the private realm +that LGBTQ people used to recruit allies and normalize sexual diversity +or the decadeslong project to convince people that markets are the only +efficient way to solve complicated resource allocation problems, it’s +clear that our societal attitudes *can* change. + +The project of shifting societal attitudes is a game of inches and +years. For centuries, svengalis have purported to be able to accelerate +this process, but even the most brutal forms of propaganda have +struggled to make permanent changes. Joseph Goebbels was able to subject +Germans to daily, mandatory, hourslong radio broadcasts, to round up and +torture and murder dissidents, and to seize full control over their +children’s education while banning any literature, broadcasts, or films +that did not comport with his worldview. + +Yet, after 12 years of terror, once the war ended, Nazi ideology was +largely discredited in both East and West Germany, and a program of +national truth and reconciliation was put in its place. Racism and +authoritarianism were never fully abolished in Germany, but neither were +the majority of Germans irrevocably convinced of Nazism — and the rise +of racist authoritarianism in Germany today tells us that the liberal +attitudes that replaced Nazism were no more permanent than Nazism +itself. + +Racism and authoritarianism have also always been with us. Anyone who’s +reviewed the kind of messages and arguments that racists put forward +today would be hard-pressed to say that they have gotten better at +presenting their ideas. The same pseudoscience, appeals to fear, and +circular logic that racists presented in the 1980s, when the cause of +white supremacy was on the wane, are to be found in the communications +of leading white nationalists today. + +If racists haven’t gotten more convincing in the past decade, then how +is it that more people were convinced to be openly racist at that time? +I believe that the answer lies in the material world, not the world of +ideas. The ideas haven’t gotten more convincing, but people have become +more afraid. Afraid that the state can’t be trusted to act as an honest +broker in life-or-death decisions, from those regarding the management +of the economy to the regulation of painkillers to the rules for +handling private information. Afraid that the world has become a game of +musical chairs in which the chairs are being taken away at a +never-before-seen rate. Afraid that justice for others will come at +their expense. Monopolism isn’t the cause of these fears, but the +inequality and material desperation and policy malpractice that +monopolism contributes to is a significant contributor to these +conditions. Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies and +violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets +opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded. + +Paying won’t help +------------------ + +As the old saw goes, “If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the +product.” + +It’s a commonplace belief today that the advent of free, ad-supported +media was the original sin of surveillance capitalism. The reasoning is +that the companies that charged for access couldn’t “compete with free” +and so they were driven out of business. Their ad-supported competitors, +meanwhile, declared open season on their users’ data in a bid to improve +their ad targeting and make more money and then resorted to the most +sensationalist tactics to generate clicks on those ads. If only we’d pay +for media again, we’d have a better, more responsible, more sober +discourse that would be better for democracy. + +But the degradation of news products long precedes the advent of +ad-supported online news. Long before newspapers were online, lax +antitrust enforcement had opened the door for unprecedented waves of +consolidation and roll-ups in newsrooms. Rival newspapers were merged, +reporters and ad sales staff were laid off, physical plants were sold +and leased back, leaving the companies loaded up with debt through +leveraged buyouts and subsequent profit-taking by the new owners. In +other words, it wasn’t merely shifts in the classified advertising +market, which was long held to be the primary driver in the decline of +the traditional newsroom, that made news companies unable to adapt to +the internet — it was monopolism. + +Then, as news companies *did* come online, the ad revenues they +commanded dropped even as the number of internet users (and thus +potential online readers) increased. That shift was a function of +consolidation in the ad sales market, with Google and Facebook emerging +as duopolists who made more money every year from advertising while +paying less and less of it to the publishers whose work the ads appeared +alongside. Monopolism created a buyer’s market for ad inventory with +Facebook and Google acting as gatekeepers. + +Paid services continue to exist alongside free ones, and often it is +these paid services — anxious to prevent people from bypassing their +paywalls or sharing paid media with freeloaders — that exert the most +control over their customers. Apple’s iTunes and App Stores are paid +services, but to maximize their profitability, Apple has to lock its +platforms so that third parties can’t make compatible software without +permission. These locks allow the company to exercise both editorial +control (enabling it to exclude `controversial political +material `__) +and technological control, including control over who can repair the +devices it makes. If we’re worried that ad-supported products deprive +people of their right to self-determination by using persuasion +techniques to nudge their purchase decisions a few degrees in one +direction or the other, then the near-total control a single company +holds over the decision of who gets to sell you software, parts, and +service for your iPhone should have us very worried indeed. + +We shouldn’t just be concerned about payment and control: The idea that +paying will improve discourse is also dangerously wrong. The poor +success rate of targeted advertising means that the platforms have to +incentivize you to “engage” with posts at extremely high levels to +generate enough pageviews to safeguard their profits. As discussed +earlier, to increase engagement, platforms like Facebook use machine +learning to guess which messages will be most inflammatory and make a +point of shoving those into your eyeballs at every turn so that you will +hate-click and argue with people. + +Perhaps paying would fix this, the reasoning goes. If platforms could be +economically viable even if you stopped clicking on them once your +intellectual and social curiosity had been slaked, then they would have +no reason to algorithmically enrage you to get more clicks out of you, +right? + +There may be something to that argument, but it still ignores the wider +economic and political context of the platforms and the world that +allowed them to grow so dominant. + +Platforms are world-spanning and all-encompassing because they are +monopolies, and they are monopolies because we have gutted our most +important and reliable anti-monopoly rules. Antitrust was neutered as a +key part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project +has worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net +worth, and even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, +undersaved for retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and +undersecured against climate and technology shocks. + +In this wildly unequal world, paying doesn’t improve the discourse; it +simply prices discourse out of the range of the majority of people. +Paying for the product is dandy, if you can afford it. + +If you think today’s filter bubbles are a problem for our discourse, +imagine what they’d be like if rich people inhabited free-flowing +Athenian marketplaces of ideas where you have to pay for admission while +everyone else lives in online spaces that are subsidized by wealthy +benefactors who relish the chance to establish conversational spaces +where the “house rules” forbid questioning the status quo. That is, +imagine if the rich seceded from Facebook, and then, instead of running +ads that made money for shareholders, Facebook became a billionaire’s +vanity project that also happened to ensure that nobody talked about +whether it was fair that only billionaires could afford to hang out in +the rarified corners of the internet. + +Behind the idea of paying for access is a belief that free markets will +address Big Tech’s dysfunction. After all, to the extent that people +have a view of surveillance at all, it is generally an unfavorable one, +and the longer and more thoroughly one is surveilled, the less one tends +to like it. Same goes for lock-in: If HP’s ink or Apple’s App Store were +really obviously fantastic, they wouldn’t need technical measures to +prevent users from choosing a rival’s product. The only reason these +technical countermeasures exist is that the companies don’t believe +their customers would *voluntarily* submit to their terms, and they want +to deprive them of the choice to take their business elsewhere. + +Advocates for markets laud their ability to aggregate the diffused +knowledge of buyers and sellers across a whole society through demand +signals, price signals, and so on. The argument for surveillance +capitalism being a “rogue capitalism” is that machine-learning-driven +persuasion techniques distort decision-making by consumers, leading to +incorrect signals — consumers don’t buy what they prefer, they buy what +they’re tricked into preferring. It follows that the monopolistic +practices of lock-in, which do far more to constrain consumers’ free +choices, are even more of a “rogue capitalism.” + +The profitability of any business is constrained by the possibility that +its customers will take their business elsewhere. Both surveillance and +lock-in are anti-features that no customer wants. But monopolies can +capture their regulators, crush their competitors, insert themselves +into their customers’ lives, and corral people into “choosing” their +services regardless of whether they want them — it’s fine to be terrible +when there is no alternative. + +Ultimately, surveillance and lock-in are both simply business strategies +that monopolists can choose. Surveillance companies like Google are +perfectly capable of deploying lock-in technologies — just look at the +onerous Android licensing terms that require device-makers to bundle in +Google’s suite of applications. And lock-in companies like Apple are +perfectly capable of subjecting their users to surveillance if it means +keeping the Chinese government happy and preserving ongoing access to +Chinese markets. Monopolies may be made up of good, ethical people, but +as institutions, they are not your friend — they will do whatever they +can get away with to maximize their profits, and the more monopolistic +they are, the more they *can* get away with. + +An “ecology” moment for trustbusting +--------------------------------------- + +If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, +we’re going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane +and old-fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the +use of automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a +really cool cyberpunk novel. + +Meanwhile, breaking up monopolies is something we seem to have forgotten +how to do. There is a bipartisan, trans-Atlantic consensus that breaking +up companies is a fool’s errand at best — liable to mire your federal +prosecutors in decades of litigation — and counterproductive at worst, +eroding the “consumer benefits” of large companies with massive +efficiencies of scale. + +But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, +terrorizing robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ +all-powerful grip on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin +until we found the political will — until the people convinced +politicians they’d have their backs when they went up against the +richest, most powerful men in the world. + +Could we find that political will again? + +Copyright scholar James Boyle has described how the term “ecology” +marked a turning point in environmental activism. Prior to the adoption +of this term, people who wanted to preserve whale populations didn’t +necessarily see themselves as fighting the same battle as people who +wanted to protect the ozone layer or fight freshwater pollution or beat +back smog or acid rain. + +But the term “ecology” welded these disparate causes together into a +single movement, and the members of this movement found solidarity with +one another. The people who cared about smog signed petitions circulated +by the people who wanted to end whaling, and the anti-whalers marched +alongside the people demanding action on acid rain. This uniting behind +a common cause completely changed the dynamics of environmentalism, +setting the stage for today’s climate activism and the sense that +preserving the habitability of the planet Earth is a shared duty among +all people. + +I believe we are on the verge of a new “ecology” moment dedicated to +combating monopolies. After all, tech isn’t the only concentrated +industry nor is it even the *most* concentrated of industries. + +You can find partisans for trustbusting in every sector of the economy. +Everywhere you look, you can find people who’ve been wronged by +monopolists who’ve trashed their finances, their health, their privacy, +their educations, and the lives of people they love. Those people have +the same cause as the people who want to break up Big Tech and the same +enemies. When most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a very few, +it follows that nearly every large company will have overlapping +shareholders. + +That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of +coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up +Big Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take +Facebook, then we take AT&T/WarnerMedia. + +But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech +*instead* of breaking up the big companies also forecloses on the +possibility of breaking them up later. + +Big Tech’s concentration currently means that their inaction on +harassment, for example, leaves users with an impossible choice: absent +themselves from public discourse by, say, quitting Twitter or endure +vile, constant abuse. Big Tech’s over-collection and over-retention of +data results in horrific identity theft. And their inaction on extremist +recruitment means that white supremacists who livestream their shooting +rampages can reach an audience of billions. The combination of tech +concentration and media concentration means that artists’ incomes are +falling even as the revenue generated by their creations are increasing. + +Yet governments confronting all of these problems all inevitably +converge on the same solution: deputize the Big Tech giants to police +their users and render them liable for their users’ bad actions. The +drive to force Big Tech to use automated filters to block everything +from copyright infringement to sex-trafficking to violent extremism +means that tech companies will have to allocate hundreds of millions to +run these compliance systems. + +These rules — the EU’s new Directive on Copyright, Australia’s new +terror regulation, America’s FOSTA/SESTA sex-trafficking law and more — +are not just death warrants for small, upstart competitors that might +challenge Big Tech’s dominance but who lack the deep pockets of +established incumbents to pay for all these automated systems. Worse +still, these rules put a floor under how small we can hope to make Big +Tech. + +That’s because any move to break up Big Tech and cut it down to size +will have to cope with the hard limit of not making these companies so +small that they can no longer afford to perform these duties — and it’s +*expensive* to invest in those automated filters and outsource content +moderation. It’s already going to be hard to unwind these deeply +concentrated, chimeric behemoths that have been welded together in the +pursuit of monopoly profits. Doing so while simultaneously finding some +way to fill the regulatory void that will be left behind if these +self-policing rulers were forced to suddenly abdicate will be much, much +harder. + +Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a +dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public +duties to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it +virtually impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the +platforms don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get +larger, they will create more problems, which will give rise to more +public duties for the companies, which will make them bigger still. + +We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving +them of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them +spend their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We +have to choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, +monopolized internet commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with +constantly to get them to behave themselves. + +Make Big Tech small again +------------------------- + +Trustbusting is hard. Breaking big companies into smaller ones is +expensive and time-consuming. So time-consuming that by the time you’re +done, the world has often moved on and rendered years of litigation +irrelevant. From 1969 to 1982, the U.S. government pursued an antitrust +case against IBM over its dominance of mainframe computing — but the +case collapsed in 1982 because mainframes were being speedily replaced +by PCs. + + A future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney general to + enforce the law as it was written. + +It’s far easier to prevent concentration than to fix it, and reinstating +the traditional contours of U.S. antitrust enforcement will, at the very +least, prevent further concentration. That means bans on mergers between +large companies, on big companies acquiring nascent competitors, and on +platform companies competing directly with the companies that rely on +the platforms. + +These powers are all in the plain language of U.S. antitrust laws, so in +theory, a future U.S. president could simply direct their attorney +general to enforce the law as it was written. But after decades of +judicial “education” in the benefits of monopolies, after multiple +administrations that have packed the federal courts with +lifetime-appointed monopoly cheerleaders, it’s not clear that mere +administrative action would do the trick. + +If the courts frustrate the Justice Department and the president, the +next stop would be Congress, which could eliminate any doubt about how +antitrust law should be enforced in the U.S. by passing new laws that +boil down to saying, “Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act +says. Robert Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, +*fuck that guy*.” In other words, the problem with monopolies is +*monopolism* — the concentration of power into too few hands, which +erodes our right to self-determination. If there is a monopoly, the law +wants it gone, period. Sure, get rid of monopolies that create “consumer +harm” in the form of higher prices, but also, *get rid of other +monopolies, too.* + +But this only prevents things from getting worse. To help them get +better, we will have to build coalitions with other activists in the +anti-monopoly ecology movement — a pluralism movement or a +self-determination movement — and target existing monopolies in every +industry for breakup and structural separation rules that prevent, for +example, the giant eyewear monopolist Luxottica from dominating both the +sale and the manufacture of spectacles. + +In an important sense, it doesn’t matter which industry the breakups +begin in. Once they start, shareholders in *every* industry will start +to eye their investments in monopolists skeptically. As trustbusters +ride into town and start making lives miserable for monopolists, the +debate around every corporate boardroom’s table will shift. People +within corporations who’ve always felt uneasy about monopolism will gain +a powerful new argument to fend off their evil rivals in the corporate +hierarchy: “If we do it my way, we make less money; if we do it your +way, a judge will fine us billions and expose us to ridicule and public +disapprobation. So even though I get that it would be really cool to do +that merger, lock out that competitor, or buy that little company and +kill it before it can threaten it, we really shouldn’t — not if we don’t +want to get tied to the DOJ’s bumper and get dragged up and down +Trustbuster Road for the next 10 years.” + +20 GOTO 10 +---------- + +Fixing Big Tech will require a lot of iteration. As cyber lawyer +Lawrence Lessig wrote in his 1999 book, *Code and Other Laws of +Cyberspace*, our lives are regulated by four forces: law (what’s legal), +code (what’s technologically possible), norms (what’s socially +acceptable), and markets (what’s profitable). + +If you could wave a wand and get Congress to pass a law that re-fanged +the Sherman Act tomorrow, you could use the impending breakups to +convince venture capitalists to fund competitors to Facebook, Google, +Twitter, and Apple that would be waiting in the wings after they were +cut down to size. + +But getting Congress to act will require a massive normative shift, a +mass movement of people who care about monopolies — and pulling them +apart. + +Getting people to care about monopolies will take technological +interventions that help them to see what a world free from Big Tech +might look like. Imagine if someone could make a beloved (but +unauthorized) third-party Facebook or Twitter client that dampens the +anxiety-producing algorithmic drumbeat and still lets you talk to your +friends without being spied upon — something that made social media more +sociable and less toxic. Now imagine that it gets shut down in a brutal +legal battle. It’s always easier to convince people that something must +be done to save a thing they love than it is to excite them about +something that doesn’t even exist yet. + +Neither tech nor law nor code nor markets are sufficient to reform Big +Tech. But a profitable competitor to Big Tech could bankroll a +legislative push; legal reform can embolden a toolsmith to make a better +tool; the tool can create customers for a potential business who value +the benefits of the internet but want them delivered without Big Tech; +and that business can get funded and divert some of its profits to legal +reform. 20 GOTO 10 (or lather, rinse, repeat). Do it again, but this +time, get farther! After all, this time you’re starting with weaker Big +Tech adversaries, a constituency that understands things can be better, +Big Tech rivals who’ll help ensure their own future by bankrolling +reform, and code that other programmers can build on to weaken Big Tech +even further. + +The surveillance capitalism hypothesis — that Big Tech’s products really +work as well as they say they do and that’s why everything is so screwed +up — is way too easy on surveillance and even easier on capitalism. +Companies spy because they believe their own BS, and companies spy +because governments let them, and companies spy because any advantage +from spying is so short-lived and minor that they have to do more and +more of it just to stay in place. + +As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the +monopolism that creates inequality and the inequality that creates +monopolism. It’s a form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who +destroy the real economy to inflate the bottom line, and they get away +with it for the same reason companies get away with spying: because our +governments are in thrall to both the ideology that says monopolies are +actually just fine and in thrall to the ideology that says that in a +monopolistic world, you’d better not piss off the monopolists. + +Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule +begets surveillance. Surveillance isn’t bad because it lets people +manipulate us. It’s bad because it crushes our ability to be our +authentic selves — and because it lets the rich and powerful figure out +who might be thinking of building guillotines and what dirt they can use +to discredit those embryonic guillotine-builders before they can even +get to the lumberyard. + +Up and through +-------------- + +With all the problems of Big Tech, it’s tempting to imagine solving the +problem by returning to a world without tech at all. Resist that +temptation. + +The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our +future is not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization +has fallen. Big Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous +system that, with the proper reforms and course corrections, is capable +of seeing us through the existential challenge of our species and +planet. Now it’s up to us to seize the means of computation, putting +that electronic nervous system under democratic, accountable control. + +I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. +Not in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to +monopolize because it has “economies of scale” or some other nebulous +feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech +right matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated +catastrophe — and doing it right can give us the power to work together +to save our civilization, our species, and our planet. diff --git a/images/cc.png b/images/cc.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..58eb423e0b68c7dcd3cb4f6ad5e6e7b924b57baf GIT binary patch literal 32636 zcmX_n1yCJb)AWVl?i$=(g1fuBJ0y5;cXuba1q%+r-Gf7LcXxOBHc$QUf2($py0G`` znd#~2>5WiQkVJ&Tg9Cv;h|*GGDj*OzC-D6c3>0w2aO#!?zCbvMNUOmBFK-yLaNuXy z?^4=MAdoiSzXMDV33VR$C9bo$mb0q8g|nNnqdCaU&5hC0&f3Y;_`5lyz2n!+b3Qx} zh!`X-CamV3b*k@{g(-ery);DGo0ys<3@eKPAs0?9HLVIE207WEO?8kB%iZzi6@r`p zLV+bWClW4DQU#V44la`PvlLQTFk~viD0t?;8hScd(DNrDPS7{tGn#+=_!z+F#1qF*7DN4aB83AZ#s?v>`kjC_ zWmg&}GdRAblX9k-vxEFeK+G625%P7Y1OM;6sN(A4gdloIe?`!y>Pq87rqXfxs#dBC zEQs$D=m)sJdG9akf^gDE;I!S|-vqj(T50UMD-g>B-ZX~_Di%7jlK2>d930S?o&_P0i|QK ztoU!zO?mFJ8(7*7Po#fscc8z~=sJgU2I?Y{4D5RI<&6WR*dq?S37g%<{rV 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