Could Better Data Protections Reduce Big Tech's Polarizing Power? (nbcnews.com) 39
"What if the big tech companies achieved their ultimate business goal — maximizing engagement on their platforms — in a way that has undermined our ability to function as an open society?"
That's the question being asked by Chuck Todd, chief political analyst for NBC News: What if they realized that when folks agree on a solution to a problem, they are most likely to log off a site or move on? It sure looks like the people at these major data-hoarding companies have optimized their algorithms to do just that. As a new book argues, Big Tech appears to have perfected a model that has created rhetorical paralysis. Using our own data against us to create dopamine triggers, tech platforms have created "a state of perpetual disagreement across the divide and a concurrent state of perpetual agreement within each side," authors Frank McCourt and Michael Casey write, adding: "Once this uneasy state of divisive 'equilibrium' is established, it creates profit-making opportunities for the platforms to generate revenue from advertisers who prize the sticky highly engaged audiences it generates."
In their new book, "Our Biggest Fight," McCourt (a longtime businessman and onetime owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Casey are attempting a call to action akin to Thomas Paine's 18th century-era "Common Sense." The book argues that "we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow." The authors believe many of the current ills in society can be traced to how the internet works. "Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our three-decade-old digital system for distributing it is fatally corrupt at its heart," they write. "It has failed to function as a trusted, neutral exchange of facts and ideas and has therefore catastrophically hindered our ability to gather respectfully to debate, to compromise and to hash out solutions.... Everything, ultimately, comes down to our ability to communicate openly and truthfully with one another. We have lost that ability — thanks to how the internet has evolved away from its open, decentralized ideals...."
Ultimately, what the authors are imagining is a new internet that essentially flips the user agreement 180 degrees, so that a tech company has to agree to your terms and conditions to use your data and has to seek your permission (perhaps with compensation) to access your entire social map of whom and what you engage with on the internet. Most important, under such an arrangement, these companies couldn't prevent you from using their services if you refused to let them have your data... Unlike most anti-Big Tech books, this one isn't calling for the breakup of companies like Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft or Apple. Instead, it's calling for a new set of laws that protect data so none of those companies gets to own it, either specifically or in the aggregate...
The authors seem mindful that this Congress or a new one isn't going to act unless the public demands action. And people may not demand this change in our relationship with tech if they don't have an alternative to point to. That's why McCourt, through an organization he founded called Project Liberty, is trying to build our new internet with new protocols that make individual data management a lot easier and second nature. (If you want to understand the tech behind this new internet more, read the book!)
Wait, there's more. The article adds that the authors "envision an internet where all apps and the algorithms that power them are open source and can be audited at will. They believe that simply preventing these private companies from owning and mapping our data will deprive them of the manipulative marketing and behavioral tactics they've used to derive their own power and fortunes at the expense of democracy."
And the NBC News analyst seems to agree. "For whatever reason, despite our societal fear of government databases and government surveillance, we've basically handed our entire personas to the techies of Silicon Valley."
That's the question being asked by Chuck Todd, chief political analyst for NBC News: What if they realized that when folks agree on a solution to a problem, they are most likely to log off a site or move on? It sure looks like the people at these major data-hoarding companies have optimized their algorithms to do just that. As a new book argues, Big Tech appears to have perfected a model that has created rhetorical paralysis. Using our own data against us to create dopamine triggers, tech platforms have created "a state of perpetual disagreement across the divide and a concurrent state of perpetual agreement within each side," authors Frank McCourt and Michael Casey write, adding: "Once this uneasy state of divisive 'equilibrium' is established, it creates profit-making opportunities for the platforms to generate revenue from advertisers who prize the sticky highly engaged audiences it generates."
In their new book, "Our Biggest Fight," McCourt (a longtime businessman and onetime owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Casey are attempting a call to action akin to Thomas Paine's 18th century-era "Common Sense." The book argues that "we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow." The authors believe many of the current ills in society can be traced to how the internet works. "Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our three-decade-old digital system for distributing it is fatally corrupt at its heart," they write. "It has failed to function as a trusted, neutral exchange of facts and ideas and has therefore catastrophically hindered our ability to gather respectfully to debate, to compromise and to hash out solutions.... Everything, ultimately, comes down to our ability to communicate openly and truthfully with one another. We have lost that ability — thanks to how the internet has evolved away from its open, decentralized ideals...."
Ultimately, what the authors are imagining is a new internet that essentially flips the user agreement 180 degrees, so that a tech company has to agree to your terms and conditions to use your data and has to seek your permission (perhaps with compensation) to access your entire social map of whom and what you engage with on the internet. Most important, under such an arrangement, these companies couldn't prevent you from using their services if you refused to let them have your data... Unlike most anti-Big Tech books, this one isn't calling for the breakup of companies like Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft or Apple. Instead, it's calling for a new set of laws that protect data so none of those companies gets to own it, either specifically or in the aggregate...
The authors seem mindful that this Congress or a new one isn't going to act unless the public demands action. And people may not demand this change in our relationship with tech if they don't have an alternative to point to. That's why McCourt, through an organization he founded called Project Liberty, is trying to build our new internet with new protocols that make individual data management a lot easier and second nature. (If you want to understand the tech behind this new internet more, read the book!)
Wait, there's more. The article adds that the authors "envision an internet where all apps and the algorithms that power them are open source and can be audited at will. They believe that simply preventing these private companies from owning and mapping our data will deprive them of the manipulative marketing and behavioral tactics they've used to derive their own power and fortunes at the expense of democracy."
And the NBC News analyst seems to agree. "For whatever reason, despite our societal fear of government databases and government surveillance, we've basically handed our entire personas to the techies of Silicon Valley."
Could pigs fly? (Score:1)
Tracking (Score:2)
Tracking is the root problem. Remove tracking and you remove the imbalance and drive behind collecting all that meta data in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
Tracking is the root problem. Remove tracking and you remove the imbalance and drive behind collecting all that meta data in the first place.
Tracking is only the way the data is gathered.
Make it illegal to sell the data and then you make it possible for the authorities to do something about it, which reduces much of the drive behind etc etc.
Re: (Score:2)
The only realistic so
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because all of the other things which are illegal have had the incentive to do them reduced to zero.
It makes it feasible to punish the biggest offenders, who are engaging in the bulk of the crime. Whether it actually happens is another question, but at least it does sometime.
Re: (Score:2)
Make it illegal to sell the data
None of the big tech companies sell tracking data.
Re: (Score:2)
Make it illegal to sell the data
None of the big tech companies sell tracking data.
Really? You’re telling me none of those apps ask for location service access? Not even Google maps? I find that rather impossible to believe as consumers find their auto insurance companies buying tracking data up to “adjust” rates.
Re: (Score:2)
You’re telling me none of those apps ask for location service access?
"Asking" for data is not "selling" data.
auto insurance companies buying tracking data up to “adjust” rates.
That tracking data is coming from car companies, not tech companies.
Re: Tracking (Score:3)
No need to make it illegal. Just opt-in.
Re: (Score:3)
Tracking is the root problem. Remove tracking and you remove the imbalance and drive behind collecting all that meta data in the first place.
One way to slow it down is to regularly delete your cookies and cache, and log out of any accounts. Preferably every day. Every time you would visit a site they would think you are a new user because they wouldn't have any tracking on you. As for your accounts, log in, do what you need, then log out. They don't need to follow your movements on the web.
While not perfect, it at least throws in false data.
Root Cause of Tracking (Score:2)
Tracking is the root problem. Remove tracking and you remove the imbalance and drive behind collecting all that meta data in the first place.
Why do companies track you?
Companies spend millions of dollars on hardware, bandwidth, security, and payroll, and the consumer freaks out if the price tag is anything but free. The end result of that, was a society more than willing to trade their digital soul for a free price tag.
Why are they more than willing? Probably has a lot to do with the drug dealer methodology. You can addict ALL of your customers quickly if you start by giving the service away for free, and then keep giving it away for free. I
Fine Idea But... (Score:3)
The Devil Is Always In The Details
if these so-called Data Protections are enshrined in laws then they have to be accompanied by legal consequences that are not encumbered with carve-outs for every social, cultural, and political group & candidate out there.
Equal Justice For All - not laws for thee and not for me which the USA has become so famous for.
Re: (Score:2)
That and the US would never outlaw what became it's leading industry. Big tech is basically the US's #1 export now. They could be peddling drugs to grade-schoolers (which they already kinda do), but the government will turn away since the employment and taxes are more than needed right now.
Like the media has any room to talk (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is what we wanted and voted for with our wallets and our attention every step of the way, so it's hard to blame companies for giving us exactly what we want even if it's bad for us. The companies that tried making the good product were driven out of business because we didn't want what they had to sell, even though we'll all loudly proclaim it's exactly what we want. Anyone stupid enough to invest in trying to satisfy this lie is just throwing away their money.
Hopefully people just get sick of all of it and disconnect entirely. Online social media platforms are not something that humans evolved to be able to use well or responsibly and are probably bad for most people's mental health, especially that of children and teenagers. The only winning move is not to play.
Seriously? (Score:2)
What if the big tech companies achieved their ultimate business goal — maximizing engagement on their platforms — in a way that has undermined our ability to function as an open society?
Why pose this as a hypothetical scenario when it's an established fact? Really, is there any serious assertion - other than from those from the tech sector's gaslighting propagandists - who doesn't admit that such platforms undermine and damage several social institutions and conventions?
Re: (Score:2)
Why pose this as a hypothetical scenario when it's an established fact?
Because it isn't an established fact.
Perhaps you are shocked to hear that people disagree with you because they formerly had no voice, not because "open society is failing."
It is hypocritical to demand that "open society" be protected by silencing those you don't like.
Re: (Score:2)
Why pose this as a hypothetical scenario when it's an established fact?
Because it isn't an established fact.
Really? Ask how many social media execs refuse to allow their own children to use their products, and why.
Maybe you’ll be shocked at that answer, because it tends to prove the parent right.
How it really works: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: How it really works: (Score:2)
All the platforms operate on the same metric (Score:2)
Popularity.
Traffic begets ad impressions. Ad impressions beget revenue.
The platforms have no incentive to assert actual morality, ethics, or responsibility, because any attempt to do so adversely affects revenue. Extremists incur consequences for self-serving PR reasons, plain and simple.
The platforms all figured out years ago that if they polarize us and push everyone into bubbles, spicier garbage from both ends of any spectrum can fly under more users' radars, and that content a user agrees with gets mo
Might be weird (Score:2)
Wrong way. Try something that'd work. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't help much to break up AT&T into Baby Bells.
I think part of that is you can't just let them merge back together 20 years later either.
But I agree on social media and I think what we need is some sort of metric to judge the size and influence of sites because I do think a tier of regulation is needed here. A guy running a hobby forum with a few thousand users should not be subject to the same regulations necessarily as Youtube or Reddit but users should be enjoined to some amount of data privacy regardless but I agree that that easing the burden for s
Collecting Data=Business Plan (Score:1)
The only reason Big Social exists at all is to surreptitiously collect data. Collecting and selling data is the very core of their business plan. Do they pay for all those servers, routers, storage, etc., out of the goodness of their heart? To “bring people closer together”? That’s laughable. A Big Social that doesn’t collect data is not a Big Social.
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason Big Social exists at all is to surreptitiously collect data.
There is nothing "surreptitious" about it.
Collecting and selling data is the very core of their business plan.
None of the big tech companies sell data.
Re: (Score:2)
Collecting and selling data is the very core of their business plan.
None of the big tech companies sell data.
Drug dealer media gives the service away for free (no revenue). They keep giving it away for free (no revenue). How exactly are they making money again? If they’re not selling the data, why are they spending millions on infrastructure and storage collecting it all?
Maybe this is one of those situations where The Product (you), doesn’t even realize you are what is being bought and sold. And since that’s not literal, you tell me what they’re
Re: (Score:1)
Nothing surreptitious? How many people have been surprised to find out how much has been collected on them – or their kids?. How many people know everything that’s collected about them? How far out of their way do they go to make sure people can easily find out all the data collected on them – compared to how difficult is it to find out everything that’s been collected? Does Big Social go out of their way to make it easy to know what is collected or do they make it difficult to k
Your Intellectual Property (Score:3)
from the "browser wars" onwards... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Wise men say the pen is mightier than the sword.
Stupid men assume by refusing the pen, the sword won’t eventually be chosen.
Compromise would be wise.
The problem is the data itself (Score:2)
Federal law needed (Score:1)