You think Google is a freedom fighter? Or Twitter?
February 13, 2018 6:16 PM Subscribe
Digital is killing democracy. Renegade Inc. interviews political scientist André Krouwel about his contrarian views on how technology is hindering rather than helping democracies.
A big assumption we make when talking about the internet and social media is that it is a power for good and enhances democracy. But what if this assumption is out of date and instead of improving our understanding and informing our political choices, social networks and social media actually narrow the debate and close down free speech? What if electorates across the world are being manipulated by tech monopolies that are collating our data and using it to appeal to our prejudices? In short, what if digital is killing democracy?
Full interview in video on page (27m52s), direct link (SL Vimeo).
Bonus
André Krouwel Bio.
A big assumption we make when talking about the internet and social media is that it is a power for good and enhances democracy. But what if this assumption is out of date and instead of improving our understanding and informing our political choices, social networks and social media actually narrow the debate and close down free speech? What if electorates across the world are being manipulated by tech monopolies that are collating our data and using it to appeal to our prejudices? In short, what if digital is killing democracy?
Full interview in video on page (27m52s), direct link (SL Vimeo).
Bonus
André Krouwel Bio.
"A big assumption we make when talking about the internet and social media is that it is a power for good and enhances democracy."
As someone who definitely used to assume this, I stopped assuming this in about 2012, and so did a lot of other reasonably savvy people I know who work in areas related to media and development. Insofar as I can determine, pretty much no one but Mark Zuckerberg still believes this in the Year of Our Lord 2018. I mean, he's making good points, but dude is a little bit late to the party. At least four or five years late to the party.
posted by faineg at 6:30 PM on February 13, 2018 [10 favorites]
As someone who definitely used to assume this, I stopped assuming this in about 2012, and so did a lot of other reasonably savvy people I know who work in areas related to media and development. Insofar as I can determine, pretty much no one but Mark Zuckerberg still believes this in the Year of Our Lord 2018. I mean, he's making good points, but dude is a little bit late to the party. At least four or five years late to the party.
posted by faineg at 6:30 PM on February 13, 2018 [10 favorites]
You guys, I know it's supposed to aid in digestion and promote overall wellbeing, but I'm starting to think smoking a pack a day might actually be bad for me.
posted by duffell at 6:51 PM on February 13, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by duffell at 6:51 PM on February 13, 2018 [20 favorites]
It's not the medium that is killing democracy.
The medium is the message, though. "Social media is killing democracy" is a zero effort hot take, and here we are giving it our time and effort on metafilter.
posted by MillMan at 7:24 PM on February 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
The medium is the message, though. "Social media is killing democracy" is a zero effort hot take, and here we are giving it our time and effort on metafilter.
posted by MillMan at 7:24 PM on February 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
It's not the medium that is killing democracy. It is that the brutes always muscle their way in and people don't think that's a problem until it explodes into one. People have managed to kill democracies with the help of the Internet. We are a destructive species; so it's on us, not our toys.
Eh, the medium is functionally different than print for many reasons. It's allowed for re-figuration of human networks in ways that print media never did. The broader set of weak-ties and bridging ties means both information and misinformation can spread more rapidly than ever was possible before. Pair this with algorithmic mediation yielding a crippled epistemology (whereby people who think they have diversity in their news habits due to volume) but are actually being fed content which they want to see, and you have a recipe for undermining democracy and fracturing society.
If you're not building your tools being aware that you live in a world with brutes, you're hopelessly naive, which is what much of the liberation technology community has unfortunately proven itself.
posted by mountainherder at 7:35 PM on February 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
Eh, the medium is functionally different than print for many reasons. It's allowed for re-figuration of human networks in ways that print media never did. The broader set of weak-ties and bridging ties means both information and misinformation can spread more rapidly than ever was possible before. Pair this with algorithmic mediation yielding a crippled epistemology (whereby people who think they have diversity in their news habits due to volume) but are actually being fed content which they want to see, and you have a recipe for undermining democracy and fracturing society.
If you're not building your tools being aware that you live in a world with brutes, you're hopelessly naive, which is what much of the liberation technology community has unfortunately proven itself.
posted by mountainherder at 7:35 PM on February 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
Uh, the naïvete in this piece is palpable.
If the Eternal September, Canter & Siegel, and the intervening 25 years has taught us anything, it's that (a) some arsehole, somewhere, will abuse the internet for their own purposes, whether they be power, profit, or just plain for the fuck of it; (b) the internet itself is not equipped to deal with that; and so (c) the assumption that "the internet and social media is … a power for good and enhances democracy" is based on wishful thinking rather than reality, history, or even previous personal experience.
Which, since that's a message recounted in endless legends, fairy stories, and characters across the ages, seems to be a huge blind spot our species identified years ago but we seem destined to ignore…
posted by Pinback at 7:40 PM on February 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
If the Eternal September, Canter & Siegel, and the intervening 25 years has taught us anything, it's that (a) some arsehole, somewhere, will abuse the internet for their own purposes, whether they be power, profit, or just plain for the fuck of it; (b) the internet itself is not equipped to deal with that; and so (c) the assumption that "the internet and social media is … a power for good and enhances democracy" is based on wishful thinking rather than reality, history, or even previous personal experience.
Which, since that's a message recounted in endless legends, fairy stories, and characters across the ages, seems to be a huge blind spot our species identified years ago but we seem destined to ignore…
posted by Pinback at 7:40 PM on February 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
I do believe there are quite a few manuals, such as The Prince that was a guide on how to do such things.
Well, I'm pretty sure The Prince was an satirical manual, given that it says to arm the populace, install terrible governors, and heaps its highest praise on a kid who was granted the title of Duke and Cardinal at age 18 when his father(!) was elected Pope, and rapidly lost it when his father died and was replaced by an unfriendly Pope. And even then, it's arguably a story of the success of democracy: a cruel bastard whose own military base allied against him was given an unemployment check after an election tanked his party.
posted by pwnguin at 8:19 PM on February 13, 2018
Well, I'm pretty sure The Prince was an satirical manual, given that it says to arm the populace, install terrible governors, and heaps its highest praise on a kid who was granted the title of Duke and Cardinal at age 18 when his father(!) was elected Pope, and rapidly lost it when his father died and was replaced by an unfriendly Pope. And even then, it's arguably a story of the success of democracy: a cruel bastard whose own military base allied against him was given an unemployment check after an election tanked his party.
posted by pwnguin at 8:19 PM on February 13, 2018
It can be true both that the powerful have always sought and found ways to manipulate the systems in which they operate and that social media offers new, more powerful, and farther-reaching tools for them to achieve this.
It's very strange that some posters here are creating a false dichotomy between these two points, and it's very much worth thinking about the specific ways in which social media enables and enhances such manipulation, however old the lust for power may be.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:36 PM on February 13, 2018 [11 favorites]
It's very strange that some posters here are creating a false dichotomy between these two points, and it's very much worth thinking about the specific ways in which social media enables and enhances such manipulation, however old the lust for power may be.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:36 PM on February 13, 2018 [11 favorites]
I'm amused when people, who I assume are into Westphalian nationalism and electoral representative democracy, clamor for Twitter and Facebook to ban @realDonaldTrump (or candidate Paul Nehlen, as actually happened.) People gonna cheer on the rise of the sovcorps without even realizing it.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:07 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:07 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
People gonna cheer on the rise of the sovcorps without even realizing it.
I'm just hoping that I can eventually convince myself the world we live in is just my mind populating hallucinations from dystopic science fiction of the 1980s.
posted by corb at 9:11 PM on February 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm just hoping that I can eventually convince myself the world we live in is just my mind populating hallucinations from dystopic science fiction of the 1980s.
posted by corb at 9:11 PM on February 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm amused when people, who I assume are into Westphalian nationalism and electoral representative democracy, clamor for Twitter and Facebook to ban @realDonaldTrump (or candidate Paul Nehlen, as actually happened.) People gonna cheer on the rise of the sovcorps without even realizing it.
Ah yes, there is literally no alternative to complete freedom to say anything you like in any context, except dystopia. This is certainly not something that pretty much every other democracy in the world manages to deal with in a balanced and proportionate way, and there are no negative consequences to being allowed to tell lies and make threats unchecked.
Its sort of weird to me that anyone would come to MetaFilter, of all places, to make free speech absolutist claims in reference to Twitter. One is much less of an inferno of garbage and the presence of mods is not coincidental.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 9:55 PM on February 13, 2018 [28 favorites]
Ah yes, there is literally no alternative to complete freedom to say anything you like in any context, except dystopia. This is certainly not something that pretty much every other democracy in the world manages to deal with in a balanced and proportionate way, and there are no negative consequences to being allowed to tell lies and make threats unchecked.
Its sort of weird to me that anyone would come to MetaFilter, of all places, to make free speech absolutist claims in reference to Twitter. One is much less of an inferno of garbage and the presence of mods is not coincidental.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 9:55 PM on February 13, 2018 [28 favorites]
Butlerian Jihad or bust!
posted by Meatbomb at 10:11 PM on February 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Meatbomb at 10:11 PM on February 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
Maybe it's just that the structure of American democracy, government, & society makes it uniquely susceptible to sliding down a slippery slope into totalitarian dystopia as soon as they step off the pinnacle of absolute free speech*, and they think all other forms of government are the same?
(* ignoring the fact that they don't actually have that - although they believe they do…)
posted by Pinback at 10:22 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
(* ignoring the fact that they don't actually have that - although they believe they do…)
posted by Pinback at 10:22 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh, that instance involves free speech, but that's not what I'm on about. It's about relationships of power and protection (as in "racket" - exchanged for fealty, money, services). Right now the nation-state governments like to monopolize this. In the ideal, if only spottily in practice, one pays their taxes to the government and refrains from treason, receiving in return protection - from robbers and murderers, fires, attacks by other governments, contaminated foodstuffs, penury in old age, etc. But if people go to the corporations for protection from the government, Trump or the next Trump, if they have the power to provide such protection & choose to do so, now they're in charge.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:43 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:43 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
People gonna cheer on the rise of the sovcorps without even realizing it.
I think our Founding Fathers had a pretty clear grasp of the necessity of balancing competing powers against each other as a good strategy for preventing the complete dominance of any given one.
posted by praemunire at 11:20 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think our Founding Fathers had a pretty clear grasp of the necessity of balancing competing powers against each other as a good strategy for preventing the complete dominance of any given one.
posted by praemunire at 11:20 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
"Sovcorps", really? And this applies to twitter and not a meaningful independent press for example because why?
posted by Dysk at 12:30 AM on February 14, 2018
posted by Dysk at 12:30 AM on February 14, 2018
I'm amused when people, who I assume are into Westphalian nationalism and electoral representative democracy, clamor for Twitter and Facebook to ban @realDonaldTrump (or candidate Paul Nehlen, as actually happened.) People gonna cheer on the rise of the sovcorps without even realizing it.
You know how it goes, ban a few nazis from a messaging service and the next thing you know the Westphalian system is in ruins and the Sovcorps are unleashing their robot armies on us all. Why, just yesterday, readers petitioned the NYT to reconsider an opinion columnist and now I hear that the Company will be running Manhattan by next week!
It's not the medium that is killing democracy.
It isn't? I thought that was your whole shtick.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:05 AM on February 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
You know how it goes, ban a few nazis from a messaging service and the next thing you know the Westphalian system is in ruins and the Sovcorps are unleashing their robot armies on us all. Why, just yesterday, readers petitioned the NYT to reconsider an opinion columnist and now I hear that the Company will be running Manhattan by next week!
It's not the medium that is killing democracy.
It isn't? I thought that was your whole shtick.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:05 AM on February 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
"Sovcorps", really? And this applies to twitter and not a meaningful independent press for example because why?
When a company has more ostensible power than the leader of one of the major world powers, then I think it's reasonable to bring out the 'sovcorps' line, as they are clearly more powerful in that moment than at least some of the smaller nations which actually exist as sovereign nations.
And the fact that we're asking that company to do so suggests that we consider that the company should be held to ethical obligations and values for its community members - should protect its digital citizens from abuse - in the way that a government should ostensibly be doing.
The fact that we think that the US Government cannot protect us, and we are clamoring for the digital communities of which we hold dual citizenship to do so, means the sovcorps have already arrived. They just haven't showed up in their dystopic form - but we clearly feel they owe us governance.
posted by corb at 9:57 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
When a company has more ostensible power than the leader of one of the major world powers, then I think it's reasonable to bring out the 'sovcorps' line, as they are clearly more powerful in that moment than at least some of the smaller nations which actually exist as sovereign nations.
And the fact that we're asking that company to do so suggests that we consider that the company should be held to ethical obligations and values for its community members - should protect its digital citizens from abuse - in the way that a government should ostensibly be doing.
The fact that we think that the US Government cannot protect us, and we are clamoring for the digital communities of which we hold dual citizenship to do so, means the sovcorps have already arrived. They just haven't showed up in their dystopic form - but we clearly feel they owe us governance.
posted by corb at 9:57 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
When a company has more ostensible power than the leader of one of the major world powers, then I think it's reasonable to bring out the 'sovcorps' line
Really. So how many nuclear weapons does Twitter have?
This is also an argument that all private news services and social media sites MUST allow anyone and everyone compete and unfettered access to say whatever they want, up to and including sexual and racial harassment. It is in this view, completely wrong to have any standards for online behavior.
Is also self-limiting, because evidently using that absolute freedom of speech to call out others' use of speech is unacceptable.
Honestly, both of you are being silly.
posted by happyroach at 10:29 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Really. So how many nuclear weapons does Twitter have?
This is also an argument that all private news services and social media sites MUST allow anyone and everyone compete and unfettered access to say whatever they want, up to and including sexual and racial harassment. It is in this view, completely wrong to have any standards for online behavior.
Is also self-limiting, because evidently using that absolute freedom of speech to call out others' use of speech is unacceptable.
Honestly, both of you are being silly.
posted by happyroach at 10:29 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
When a company has more ostensible power than the leader of one of the major world powers...
Twitter has more power than President Trump? Even ostensibly, I don't think this holds water.
Have you considered that Twitter can't ban Trump? I mean, they could, but social media coddles so many fascists and Nazi sympathizers that they don't want to deal with the fallout of that move (even though acting against fascists like Trump is exactly what we need to be doing). They've only just recently become profitable. So they'll dutifully deliver Trump's every word up until the end if the world.
Facebook is hemorrhaging users, especially younger users. They'll still be rich enough to not die, like Yahoo and Microsoft, but I'd hardly call them "sovcorps" like oil/finance companies or United Fruit or the VoC. At least not until Zuck gets elected President.
These social media companies have a lot of power to harm and destroy, but they don't have the power to stop harming and destroying. Including themselves.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:45 AM on February 14, 2018
Twitter has more power than President Trump? Even ostensibly, I don't think this holds water.
Have you considered that Twitter can't ban Trump? I mean, they could, but social media coddles so many fascists and Nazi sympathizers that they don't want to deal with the fallout of that move (even though acting against fascists like Trump is exactly what we need to be doing). They've only just recently become profitable. So they'll dutifully deliver Trump's every word up until the end if the world.
Facebook is hemorrhaging users, especially younger users. They'll still be rich enough to not die, like Yahoo and Microsoft, but I'd hardly call them "sovcorps" like oil/finance companies or United Fruit or the VoC. At least not until Zuck gets elected President.
These social media companies have a lot of power to harm and destroy, but they don't have the power to stop harming and destroying. Including themselves.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:45 AM on February 14, 2018
The fact that we think that the US Government cannot protect us, and we are clamoring for the digital communities of which we hold dual citizenship to do so, means the sovcorps have already arrived.
Won't isn't the same as can't. Sensible regulation would be amazing, but you've got the government that was voted in, so it's down to asking for voluntary action. That doesn't mean the government can't, mind. Just that they won't.
posted by Dysk at 11:04 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Won't isn't the same as can't. Sensible regulation would be amazing, but you've got the government that was voted in, so it's down to asking for voluntary action. That doesn't mean the government can't, mind. Just that they won't.
posted by Dysk at 11:04 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
I expect Alamo Drafthouse to kick out a loud moviegoer, and Twitter booting Trump is only separated from that by degree. Expecting a company to remove belligerent or dangerous patrons is waaaaaay at the back of the line of iffy powers we cede to private companies. I mean corporations can poison communities or blow up our entire economy and be greeted with a shrug, and dictate the direction of the country through influence on politicians, that's an awful lot scarier than banning a loud racist shithead.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:45 AM on February 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 11:45 AM on February 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
I should clarify: I don't think it's scary if they ban the racist shithead president, but I do think the fact that they have the ability to do so and it would probably seriously hamper him is indicative of the power of corporations in the current day and age. It's not that I think it's an iffy power when companies try to remove shitheads, it's that I think the demonstration of who you look to for enforcement says a lot about how we view our world.
Like we could even use it for good and it still is weird and kind of SF-y.
posted by corb at 12:51 PM on February 14, 2018
Like we could even use it for good and it still is weird and kind of SF-y.
posted by corb at 12:51 PM on February 14, 2018
I dunno, I think that there are calls for twitter to rein in the US president rather than the other way round says more about the current White House than anything else.
posted by Dysk at 12:57 PM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 12:57 PM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
What if TV (debates) are killing democracy?
What if (superhero) movies are killing democracy? (Salon.com crypto-mining warning)
What if newspapers aren't not bad for democracy?
posted by runcibleshaw at 8:01 PM on February 16, 2018
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Oh dear, Great White Man Thinker confirmation bias strikes again. As if that didn't happen with traditional media, and a world without any media before it. I do believe there are quite a few manuals, such as The Prince that was a guide on how to do such things. Machiavelli didn't have a social media feed when he thought it up, either.
It's not the medium that is killing democracy. It is that the brutes always muscle their way in and people don't think that's a problem until it explodes into one. People have managed to kill democracies with the help of the Internet. We are a destructive species; so it's on us, not our toys.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2018 [31 favorites]