Geert Lovink on Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:04:34 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> social media critique: next steps? |
Lots going on in the field of ‘social media critique’. A few days ago I received an interesting email from someone I met recently for the first time, a somewhat older, nice man, based in the official reality. “You are right and prescient about Facebook. It looks like a major battle to undercut it. I have almost no presence on it - how can I protest against it in a meaningful (but small) way?” I wrote back: “I can recommend a small and light gesture. Pick a date, write a short txt why you want to leave FB and ask people to join your Quit Facebook Day (let’s say on Valentine's Day). It is not a lot of work and has huge impact. Even if 50-100 people join you, that’s a lot. To delete your account by yourself is fine too but a public gesture is so much more powerful. We know this from experience. It may still be controversial. You can make this campaign as big or as small as you like. Of course there’s tons of software, platforms and apps that can replace FB. This is not the issue. The fear of exodus is a social thing. Assist the herd. Liberate them, let them liberate themselves.” Then there was Soros’ speech in Davos. Here are the Bloomberg headlines: SOROS: FACEBOOK, GOOGLE ARE OBSTACLES TO INNOVATION SOROS: FACEBOOK'S NETWORK EFFECT GROWTH UNSUSTAINABLE SOROS: FACEBOOK WILL RUN OUT OF PEOPLE TO CONVERT IN 3 YEARS SOROS: FACEBOOK, GOOGLE AS NEAR-MONOPOLIES NEED MORE REGULATION SOROS: TECH COS. SERVICE BUNDLE, DISCRIM PRICING BAD FOR ECO SOROS: SOCIAL MEDIA INDUCE CONSUMERS TO GIVE UP AUTONOMY I immediately read the Guardian headline “Facebook and Google a menace to society” in the wrong way. Facebook and Google: George Soros a menace to society. Everyone who has been following this topic for some time would know why I made that Freudian mistake, as this is the standard algo talk if people look up Soros. I was wandering if Soros and his speech writers deliberately chose these words to mirror the tech-linguistic discourse that is haunting them. Here is the relevant part of the speech: https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum/ "I want to spend the bulk of my remaining time on another global problem: the
rise and monopolistic behavior of the giant IT platform companies. These
companies have often played an innovative and liberating role. But as Facebook
and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies, they have become
obstacles to innovation, and they have caused a variety of problems of which we
are only now beginning to become aware. Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil
companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the
social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media
companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware
of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of
democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections. The distinguishing feature of internet platform companies is that they are
networks and they enjoy rising marginal returns; that accounts for their
phenomenal growth. The network effect is truly unprecedented and
transformative, but it is also unsustainable. It took Facebook eight and a half
years to reach a billion users and half that time to reach the second billion.
At this rate, Facebook will run out of people to convert in less than 3 years. Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all internet
advertising revenue. To maintain their dominance, they need to expand their
networks and increase their share of users’ attention. Currently they do this
by providing users with a convenient platform. The more time users spend on the
platform, the more valuable they become to the companies. Content providers also contribute to the profitability of social media
companies because they cannot avoid using the platforms and they have to accept
whatever terms they are offered. The exceptional profitability of these companies is largely a function of
their avoiding responsibility for– and avoiding paying for– the content on
their platforms. They claim they are merely distributing information. But the fact that they
are near- monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject
them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition,
innovation, and fair and open universal access. The business model of social media companies is based on advertising. Their
true customers are the advertisers. But gradually a new business model is
emerging, based not only on advertising but on selling products and services
directly to users. They exploit the data they control, bundle the services they
offer and use discriminatory pricing to keep for themselves more of the benefits
that otherwise they would have to share with consumers. This enhances their
profitability even further – but the bundling of services and discriminatory
pricing undermine the efficiency of the market economy. Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention
and directing it towards their own commercial purposes. They
deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very
harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms
and gambling companies. Casinos have developed techniques to hook gamblers to
the point where they gamble away all their money, even money they don’t have. Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human
attention in our digital age. Not just distraction or addiction; social media
companies are inducing people to give up their autonomy. The power to shape
people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few
companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill
called “the freedom of mind.” There is a possibility that once lost, people who
grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have
far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be
easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the future; it already
played an important role in the 2016 US presidential elections. But there is an even more alarming prospect on the horizon. There could be
an alliance between authoritarian states and these large, data-rich IT
monopolies that would bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance
with an already developed system of state-sponsored surveillance. This may well
result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous
Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined. The countries in which such unholy marriages are likely to occur first are
Russia and China. The Chinese IT companies in particular are fully equal to the
American ones. They also enjoy the full support and protection of the Xi
Jingping regime. The government of China is strong enough to protect its
national champions, at least within its borders. US-based IT monopolies are already tempted to compromise themselves in order
to gain entrance to these vast and fast growing markets. The dictatorial
leaders in these countries may be only too happy to collaborate with them since
they want to improve their methods of control over their own populations and
expand their power and influence in the United States and the rest of the
world. The owners of the platform giants consider themselves the masters of the
universe, but in fact they are slaves to preserving their dominant position. It
is only a matter of time before the global dominance of the US IT monopolies is
broken. Davos is a good place to announce that their days are numbered.
Regulation and taxation will be their undoing and EU Competition Commissioner
Vestager will be their nemesis. There is also a growing recognition of a connection between the dominance of
the platform monopolies and the rising level of inequality. The concentration
of share ownership in the hands of a few private individuals plays some role
but the peculiar position occupied by the IT giants is even more important.
They have achieved monopoly power but at the same time they are also competing
against each other. They are big enough to swallow start-ups that could develop
into competitors, but only the giants have the resources to invade each other’s
territory. They are poised to dominate the new growth areas that artificial
intelligence is opening up, like driverless cars. The impact of innovations on unemployment depends on government policies.
The European Union and particularly the Nordic countries are much more
farsighted in their social policies than the United States. They protect the
workers, not the jobs. They are willing to pay for re-training or retiring
displaced workers. This gives workers in Nordic countries a greater sense of
security and makes them more supportive of technological innovations than
workers in the US. The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect
society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a
menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against
them. In the US, the regulators are not strong enough to stand up against their
political influence. The European Union is better situated because it doesn’t
have any platform giants of its own. The European Union uses a different definition of monopoly power from the
United States. US law enforcement focuses primarily on monopolies created by
acquisitions, whereas EU law prohibits the abuse of monopoly power irrespective
of how it is achieved. Europe has much stronger privacy and data protection
laws than America. Moreover, US law has adopted a strange doctrine: it measures
harm as an increase in the price paid by customers for services received – and
that is almost impossible to prove when most services are provided for free.
This leaves out of consideration the valuable data platform companies collect
from their users. Commissioner Vestager is the champion of the European approach. It took the EU seven years to build a case against Google, but as a result of her success the process has been greatly accelerated. Due to her proselytizing, the European approach has begun to affect attitudes in the United States as well." |
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