Planning For History

The Casualties of a War Without Heroes

The community of internet users is starving for a leader. Not a leader in size, technology, finance, data, algorithms. A leader in thought, imagination and daring vision.

We had such things in simpler times, but when things got complicated in 2005–2006 no one wanted to discuss policy, threats, impact or how we should protect users. No one wanted to be that leader. The internet would self-regulate. Users would be the leaders. That was the idea anyway.

In the internet world we all strive to be the first, the best, the successful, the brightest. Yet it seems, none of us wants to take on the responsibilities inherent in being the leader — taking responsibility for the bad and the good. Even doing the assessment of the bad and good takes a thick-skin that much of our digital world seems to have lost overnight. Those few industry thought leaders that do exist lead in finding ways to allow dangerous, hateful and unregulated content. Very few companies in the web world are pro-actively self-examining their impact on the young, the vulnerable or the susceptible segments of the world.

Being the leading social media platform, search engine, blog or forum, the leading e-commerce, fund raising or currency exchange all carry an inherent responsibility. In part, that responsibility comes from the information each company manages and the success they have achieved as a result of marketing their user’s data. They owe the users. You owe them a safe, secure stable product. Ultimately, if you plan to keep your users, you owe them your best efforts to remain current and grow the product itself. There is also the obligation to the industry community and staff. However, there are other obligations to owners, investors, stockholders and profit, which are often prioritized over all others.

There has been progress. Money is now being actively funneled towards the study, detection and removal of hateful, exploitative and dangerous content. But the solution to the problem is not as easy as saying, “we are on the right path.” The new research, the new monitoring and enforcement efforts, the money now being spent all shows that there was indeed a problem. For over 10 years internet users, young and old, have been subject to seriously problematic content. Just as some people have benefited greatly from the internet, others have been greatly harmed. Personal lives, careers, self-esteem and even basic human judgement and trust, for some, has suffered. In these cases, the damage was often inflicted with a few mouse-clicks. Repairing the harm is not nearly as easy. The ability for the average person to address the damage from cyber-stalking, exploitation, reputation assassination, bullying and abuse can easily take orders of magnitude more effort to undo that it took to inflict in the first place.

It is time to look towards healing, repairing and rebuilding. Trying to bring back to life some of what has died in so many internet users. Maybe even making them whole again.

As it is so easy to inflict pain on others online, it was equally easy to not address the problem. Just as it takes many more times the effort to address the hate than to make it, so healing the residual damage caused by the hate will take significant effort.

The time to start is now. We need to begin enabling people, not just to flag hateful content, but to level the playing field by making those who post hateful content responsible for defending it with the same effort required by their targets to have it removed.

This starts with making resources available to targets and victims of bullying, abuse and cyberhate. Those most often victimized are predominantly, marginalized, underrepresented and under resourced.

Targeted Groups and People Need to be Empowered.

Funds and guidance for victims to hire experts to help undertake critical tasks required to make a case for their plight to the Internet platforms. In order to gain the attention of the platforms and to establish credibility for their situations, it is necessary for victims to identify the volume, frequency, nature and character of the problem material as well as the underlying connection or source the material may have to established hate groups, organizations or political movements. No small undertaking. This type of research often requires technology, resources and experience not available to many. The documentation, presentation and implementation of solutions is often a specialized practice. If legal assistance is required there are certainly expenses. The resources needed can easily represent tens of thousands of dollars in time and money, which the targets must endure and that the perpetrator did not.

Another option is for targets of abuse to acquire training in how to handle the tasks necessary to identify, characterize, communicate it to platforms and mitigate cyber abuse. This may not be as expensive, but there is a learning curve. Not everyone is equally capable of doing the types of research necessary and sometimes, time is of the essence.

Counseling for victims must be made available. Regardless of how they have been affected, whether by bullying, revenge porn or scams, they all need to know they are not alone. Support groups led by industry sponsored experts could provide an immeasurable benefit to victims. The perpetrators of abuse must also be made aware that their victims have allies and resources. Just as victims often give-up trying to fight the hate, perhaps abusers will be dissuaded when they realize victims are well equipped and supported to thwart them.

As with physical abuse, cyber-abuse is also cyclical. Victims become angry, resentful and desensitized, which makes it easy for them to become the next generation of abusers.

Investing in the future of the Internet, not just the technology, or the applications, but in developing better users as well benefits everyone. This is not something that should be left to third parties alone.

This is not just about making a more civil internet, but about the survival of the internet. About keeping regulation limited and responsibility high. About making room for all opinions, but safeguarding facts, reality and history. Democracy is about speaking up without fear. Democratization of the internet starts, first and foremost, with users being able to participate without fear. Users who need a parachute should have a parachute, users who need a safety net should have a safety net and users who want a trapeze should have one. None of this is beyond our capabilities. None of this is beyond justification.

Open letter to Google, Facebook and Twitter in response to Gizmodo article “Google, Facebook, and Twitter Tell Biden Campaign They Won't Remove Defamatory Trump Ad”

“Google, Facebook, and Twitter Tell Biden Campaign They Won't Remove Defamatory Trump Ad”
https://gizmodo.com/google-facebook-and-twitter-tell-biden-…

I just saw the various platform responses refusing to remove a false and misleading ad regarding Joe Biden and his family which was placed by the Trump campaign.

Although it is easy to appreciate that Facebook, Google, Twitter and others are not directly responsible for the truthfulness of ads run on their services, it is also inappropriate for anyone to do nothing when damaging falsehoods are clear. The perpetrators of false advertising are exploiting the credibility of platforms. Equally, lies foisted on the public with the apparent complicity of internet platforms, intentionally or not, degrades the public trust in all online content.

Platforms can take a few simple steps to fulfill a basic obligation to users, in order to contextualize the ads in question, and to facilitate possible correction of the problem.

1) A disclaimer placed on all political advertising warning the audience that the content has not been reviewed for accuracy and may contain misleading information.

2) All advertising submissions should require that the originator aver that, to the best of their knowledge, the content they are providing is correct and truthful, and if found to be wrong, will correct the ad, or not object to its removal.

3) A warning that repeated submission of false and misleading ads may result in banning of the advertiser, product or sponsor.

4) An advisory that all false ads will be reported to appropriate regulatory and law enforcement agencies.

The problem with manipulation of the 2016 election was not just that the public was manipulated by foreign governments, agencies, individuals or agents, but that that the U.S. population was manipulated at all. The abuse of internet advertising and platforms during an election for political gain, regardless of political affiliation, is just wrong. The U.S. voters learned a lot in the wake of the 2016 election. Did Silicon Valley?

Desperately Seeking Digital Salvation

Our love affair with the internet is ending. It is as if we have discovered a long standing lover has  hidden being arrested numerous times for DWI and then says "it's nothing to worry about."

The US only woke up to the cultural infidelities of the internet when it threatened democracy. It seems abusing blacks, women, Jews, Muslims, LBGTQ or the physically challenged for the past 10 years wasn't really considered much of a problem. The companies were glad to let it go and the US public defended the digital industry's free speech assertion. But the Europeans were far less sympathetic and, it seems, basically correct.

Abuse and exploitation by hate groups, extremists, foreign antagonists and a variety of malcontents has certainly taken the shine off the internet. When you add toxic online social and gaming environments, over-reaching data mining and user activity tracking, the entire picture looks bad. While testifying in Europe and Washington D.C. everyone from ISP, hosts, game developers to corporate giants are left with the task of trying to paint a friendly face on an ugly canvas.

Being realistic, the internet is not entirely evil or bad, but where it has been bad, it has been awful. Some of those bad places have been very large, very influential and have done some serious damage. It is no longer practical or possible to ignore the downside of an unregulated, unmoderated internet.

Companies are not ignorant of the problem or the business implications. Users can be fickle, ask MySpace. The same goes for advertisers. Politicians are always looking for issues to build or support careers. Companies know all this and are now scrambling to make corrections that are long overdue.

Users and communities have been told numerous times about wonderful new adjustments that will greatly improve the livability of the internet. Yet old issues left dormant and unattended emerge unexpectedly to unleash new daunting problems.

Some things take allot of effort to reverse. It's hard to change the recipe once the cake has been baked. In those cases, it is important to make the recipe sound good and make the icing attractive.  You really want to get it right the next time. Meanwhile, all your guests are asking if there's ice cream or fruit or something else because everybody knows bad cake when they taste it.

The Internet is Gone

The Internet you think exists, or thought exists, is gone. Been gone awhile. It was damaged beyond repair while you watched. Most people did not notice. This was not done by the right-wing, the left-wing, the media, the politicians or users alone. The ultimate attack against the internet was led by the very people who created it.

Yes, the internet has helped many people, but when it started helping the worst of people with the most malicious agendas Jack, Mark, Sergey, Jerry, Jeff  and most others, did as little as possible. At the same time racists, misogynists, extremists, elitists, abusers and malefactors of every stripe did as much as possible to erode the foundation of higher principals it aspired to foster.

There was plenty of warning.

Under the thinly veiled disguise of anonymous rumors, alternative news, suppressed facts and conspiracies an increasingly subjective definition of what are facts and truth emerged. Much of this activity centered on targeting religious groups, minorities, women or immigrants and , as such, was not widely decried. Many people did call out the companies for enabling the abuse which desensitized us to corrosive behavior. Anyone within the industry knew/knows the watchdogs who called for more aggressive action by the platforms.  Both at the companies and in society. Anyone within the industry also knows that most of these people left in frustration, disgust or disappointment when it became clear that the executives of the companies were going to let hate persist unchallenged.

This was years ago.

Now the moral fabric of the internet is in tatters and the intellectual landscape is not looking much better.

Companies prioritized evolving profitability over evolving safety and sacrificed the core of the internet's true value in the process.

Now that users are pushing back, abandoning platforms and apps which fail to protect them, the scramble is on to find a cure. But hate is like a cancer. Surgery is not always the best approach, but true solutions take time, creativity and investment and hate has a tremendous lead in that race.

The New Slave Economy

It's just like the old movie Soylent Green. Just like the slave trade. You are the product. You are what is being consumed, and you have no control, no say and in some cases, you don't even know it's happening.

The internet economy is made of people. It is consuming us as data. Without our permission, explanation or compensation.

Prevailing wisdom by the companies is that the data is aggregate, each person's data is indistinguishable in the larger structure. True and not true.  In a stew you don't know if, at any moment, you are eating the first carrot you put in or last.  The untruth is that the stew you are included in is also used to target you, because the stew always needs more carrots.. "Oh, you're a carrot? How about joining our nice stew? Many carrots here."

We have all experienced doing a web-search for a vacation, or a product, and then being bombarded with ads for those very same places or products. Or how about a major online vendor who offers product suggestions that "other people who viewed cerulean blue sneakers also liked..."  The most innocuous apps and internet connected products collect your information and whenever they can, sell it, and you. Even if you tell FB or Google not to collect or sell your information, that does not apply to third party ads, surveys and forms that you fill out while on Facebook, Google or anywhere else. There is also nothing stopping platforms, which you have asked not to gather info on you, from buying it elsewhere.

There are other services which collect information about you and many others. Some even scrape data about you from websites without the website's permission (see Cambridge Analytica for example). That data is then used to categorize society into neat little stacks for consumerization.  The data can even be bought back by the platforms you have asked not to track you in the first place.

With wearables, mobile computing, cloud systems and Internet of Things, it all gets worse.

Although the plaforms and companies are guilty of exploiting the situation, the root
problem is two fold; users lack of control of  information about them and the question of Terms of Service as a legally binding agreement between companies, users and community.

User data is a Commodity. Customized packaged and sold. Yet, consumers derive little benefit from the product crafted from information about their online activity. Companies will say the internet is the benefit. But when that benefit is used to target, sell and gather more data about you, is that true?

A more equitable system would offer specific services for users who explicitly authorized data collection for/by that service and that service only. Straight up value for value.

This would empower users in how, when and where their data is used. It would also assist in converting website's Terms of Service (TOS) into the contractually binding user protection document it should have always been.

Most companies treat their  ToS seriously. More so since the EU starting enacting strict community protection laws. The reality is that, in their current form, ToS are not binding on the company for most situations. Especially in areas not covered by law.

It may be harsh and extreme to call all this slavery, but loss of control of personal data collection can't be called freedom.

Keeping One of Hitler’s Promises

Seems insane to be writing that something Hitler said has value. The historic value in the totality of what he said is about how deep the darkness of humanity can actually become and how seductive it can be. The single thing Hitler said that has true value ultimately has nothing to do with what he meant. Delusional rantings often work that way. 

The promise of a Thousand Year Reich (Thousand Year Realm, Kingdom) was uplifting to his followers and chilling to his enemies. It was Hitler’s attempt to usurp the legacy and legitimacy of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806 AD) which has been called “The First Realm” or First Reich.   Now, mere decades after Hitler's promise of the Thousand Year Reich has been destroyed, we are faced with the sad reality that most of the world has forgotten how close we came to seeing that promise fulfilled. And so the problem – to ultimately defeat Hitler’s Reich and insure its like never returns, we must keep the truth, the reality, the nightmare alive - however long it is necessary.

According to an April article in the New York Times, over 40% of adults in the U.S. could not identify the significance of Auschwitz. In 70 years we have lost major pieces of important, tragic, instructive history.

 For a generation children have learned about Nazis from The Sound of Music. Bad Nazis, not the murderous, genocidal reality; so Nazis become less true to fact. Recently a generation has learned about Nazis form video games, where Nazis are just like any other game enemy; less real.  To the current generation, the historic videos on YouTube have no more gravity than cat videos. They are not seriously taught that Hitler drove the pageantry and adulation they see into horror.

Jews are often criticized for not "getting over" the Holocaust. History is not meant  to be gotten over. It is a learning tool, a way to benefit from our successes and our failures. Andersonville, Guernica, Ottoman genocides against the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and the treatment of Native Americans are all defining moments in their own time, but have historic value beyond their era. The difficulty in facing the facts of all those events is testimony to how important they are. The Holocaust stands out, but does not stand alone.

It is not hard to understand how some people cannot get their heads around these things. The rational mind wants to reject the implications of the horror unleashed during World War 2 by the Nazis.  In the age of computer generated images though, they let themselves believe these are just images, somehow other, unreal or manipulated.

My astoundingly unfair obligation is fostering this history into the future in whatever way I can.  If it takes a thousand year reich of teaching and memory, so be it. If it takes a  thousand years of nightmares for future generations, better that than anyone, anywhere actually living through such things again. 

Would You Stop Hate Online If You Could?

If you could stop most of the hate on the web, why wouldn't you? I know who you can ask.

Most hate online does not start on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, but that is where it finds its legs. I am not just talking about sexism, racism, ableism or other hates, but instead the ability to casually create and stigmatize any "other".

If the major platforms had put as much effort into user safety as they did into revenue streams, things might be very different.

I have seen the worst of online hate over the last decade in the Western World. It's my job. The calls for an uprising against the enemies of "civilization" (e.g. the world of white European descent) is nothing new. That a critical rhetorical mass has been reached which emboldens such things to action, that is new. It was also inevitable.

The platforms were well aware of the phenomenon of hate speech, but elected to let it remain in order to spur dynamic and heated exchanges on their services. Safety of users was not totally disregarded, but there was a gamble. All of us now know that bet was a bad one. Hate won.

The companies chose to err on the side of allowing more instead of  action that might over limit content. Hateful protagonists were quick to exploit the opportunity. Normalizing hate, camouflaging hate and encouraging hate became the order of the day.  That sliver of hate, allowed by the platforms in an earnest attempt to accommodate free speech,  was used to wedge open  the internet for seeds of  malicious content that are now a vast root network of evil.

Many argue that good and creative content would have suffered from more stringent policies. There is no question that innocent content might have been removed under such a policy. However, now that we are suffering seemingly endless online abuse, more content, innocent and otherwise, is being removed. When good content is removed people appeal to the platform. That's what they do now, that is what they would have had to do 10 years ago. The companies bought time, not progress.

It can also be said that the progress we have seen in controlling online hate, advance algorithms, fledgling A.I.s and armies of moderators, could have begun long before now. Improving the internet environment sooner was possible. In the time we waited, we lost ground to hate and incivility.

If you could stop hate online, why wouldn't you? I don't know.