The same tools built to manipulate people into buying things, are used to manipulate them into thinking and acting in ways that could be beneficial to someone. Advertising and propaganda use the same tactics, after all. When these tools are accessible to anyone, including political adversaries, it would be naive to think that they're not being used for information warfare.
The Cambridge Analytica leak was just the tip of the iceberg. These companies and agencies are still operating at a global scale, and business is booming. Why adtech companies weren't heavily investigated and regulated after this became public is beyond me. These are matters of national security, which anyone sane would consider more important than any financial or practical value they might have.
Banning TikTok was a step in the right direction, but that's far from the only service that needs to be heavily regulated. And even that decision is flip-flopped and very controversial, so the idea of going beyond must be unthinkable. Yet not doing so will lead to the eventual downfall of the US, and the current western hegemony. The instability we're seeing now is just the beginning, and my only hope is that it doesn't escalate to a major global conflict.
I see it like politics ( at least the way it's managed in the UK ) - democracy means everyone get's to vote, leaflet door to door, politically organise etc. However there are ( in the non-online space ) strict regulations about money not being able to buy a larger voice - political spending is(was) strictly limited. You can't use broadcast media for political ads, apart from the government allocated slots.....
The regulations haven't kept up with the digital world - but they need to. Looking at what unfettered money has done to US politics is all the incentive you need.
One of the core problems is astroturfing is so easy online - money pretending to be people - in the end, I think the only solution is the loss of anonymity online - anonymity enables sock puppetry and astroturfing.
ie if we want to keep people's freedoms online to say what they want ( but within the law ), but at the same time stop money drowning out all voices, then you have to know what's automated and what's real - and people need to be held accountable for what they say or do - that's how the real world works.
You don't need authoritarian laws regulating content - social peer pressure is quite effective - after all democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Ok, Mark. That's enough.
Any coder can build a tool that allows individuals to connect and share. It's not a unique feature of Meta tools.
The unique property of Meta is that they have a hegemony. Which is ok.
They went further than that, though, and built the infrastructure for influencing the decisions of individuals. That's no longer ok.
It's either free and supported by ads, or self hosted or comes with a cost and doesn't gain mass adoption.
When did the comments here get to the point they can't think past 1st order magnitude effects or remember genuinely how things actually were. Your grandma didn't have a blog to follow the grandkids. Yeah, there's a one off exception or two, but nothing at the scale of MySpace and later social media companies.
Blogs require an effort to post sth because you cannot get away with posting a catchy 2-phrases sentence or a photo (you can, but that's not what they are for mainly). In this sense, yes, social media won because of convenience among other things. But the same convenience is what I find as problem with them.
And where are we now? The role of social media as "grandmothers sharing with grandkids" are long gone, in most places at least (cannot speak of the whole world). Very few from my social circles post in social media any mode. Most of the content is direct or indirect advertising (if it's not meta, it is the next door bar or yoga studio broadcasting posts), (semi-)professional content creators/influencers and, lastly, a lot of AI slop. Most people I know use facebook for events and the like, and which is definitely not what facebook optimises for or profits from. Now, most of the sharing-role has fled in closed group chat platforms (whatsapp, viber, messenger and the like).
The only thing that seems to still hold some livelihood is microblogging platforms (xtwitter and clones) which are also what replaced part of the blogosphere. But a rant about these would be too large to fit in a comment here.
Yes , with the NSA, MI6 and other 3 letter agencies. The best democracy ever.
"Internal studies dating back to 2012 indicated that Meta knew its algorithms could result in serious real-world harms. In 2016, Meta’s own research clearly acknowledged that “our recommendation systems grow the problem” of extremism."
They knew there was a problem, but refused to act until Myanmar's government shut them down in 2014. After that, their response was half-hearted, inept, and actually made things worse[2].
Governments should not simply be paying attention to what users publish on Facebook, but also how Facebook's algorithms promote material to its users. Meta has demonstrated they will not take preventative action themselves. Meta needs to be carefully and extensively regulated by the government of any jurisdiction Facebook operates in.
It's easy to appreciate concerns that regulating social media could result in state propaganda or censorship. However, regimes likely to do this are probably already using other forms of control anyways. Taking Meta's remorselessly proft-seeking engagement algorithms out of the picture may be the lesser evil by a substantial margin.
[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
[2]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2022/09/29/rohingya...
Since most western citizens would object to this, surely middle ground solutions can be found that would prevent abuse and foreign (and domestic) manipulation, while preserving democracy, free speech and individual freedoms. I'm inclined to believe that democracy and authoritarianism doesn't have to be zero-sum, and that a balance can exist that allows societies to prosper even among hostile actors.
Wondering what has changed in the meantime.
You can tell how smart everyone is by looking at our excellent voter turnout, especially in local elections
China isn't really communist, and neither was the ussr. It's just a regressive authoritarian regime with different propaganda.
Authoritarianism is fundamentally right wing. Freedom for the right wing is fundamentally doublespeak for freedom for the oligarchs to gain power and oppress. Secondarily that freedom to acquire and impose power is granted to racists so the oligarchs have their foot soldiers.
Go look at a political compass. Authoritarianism is when you use force to push your ideals, whether they be radical/liberal (left) or orthodox/conservative)(right) ideals on a populace with extreme authority. Communism is considered left/radical, if you use government force to make people adopt it, that's using authority, hence authoritarianism. Please learn definitions and political axis before making silly arguments.
China isn't really communist because they tried it and people starved, then they had to go back to capitalism or some degree of it, but kept the authoritarianism, and effectively became some hybrid version that leans fascist.
Communism simply never works at scale, socialism can to an extent, assuming its not abused and there's a homogeneous society with shared cultural values and purpose that includes to contribute and to not abuse it. Hence Nordic socialism, which of course breaks down when you bring in those that don't share those values as its doing now. I've heard enough Swedes bitch about Eastern European migrants abusing their social welfare to say nothing of now to see the idealism fall apart when self interested parties without the same cultural values enter en masse.
Human psychology being about protecting and serving the interests of your tribe and things like "Dunbar's number" and the limit of the number of people you can literally care about and prioritize makes it impossible at scale. Families can be communist, even a small group of 10-50 people (more or less a cult or small tribe), massive populations can not. They simply are not going to work for the benefit of others without receiving something in exchange, unless you use a gun to their head, which is why all communist regimes start out authoritarian, but holding a gun to someone's head for 10-50 years won't change 200k years of evolutionary programming. Hence why Marx is good at pointing out capitalism's flaws, but he's naive and even more fundamentally flawed when it comes to prescribing a solution that does way more harm in the end.
Truth is most successful societies adopt a hybrid solution, socialism at the community or local level where everyone works for a shared purpose and contributes to the local community, whether that be through a church, small local government, etc. with capitalism that allows trade and mutually beneficial deals to happen with those outside of that community.
When and where was that?
Except, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, all wrote about how important it was to be self critical, how important it was to stay grounded in reality, to make reality drive your decision making and goals.
And then they all purposely and aggressively built themselves cults of personality with the express purpose of being just garden variety dictators. They surrounded themselves with boring "Yes men" by murdering anyone who pointed out the clear contradiction between their writing/philosophy/"theory" and reality.
There's a grand canyon between what they all wrote about, and what they clearly did. The closest they ever came was Mao being like "Whoops, a lot of people died, maybe it's partially my fault" but that sure didn't dissuade him, or make him change direction.
Meanwhile their hundreds of millions of insane, murderous followers had no qualms about such a contradiction, such a destruction of reality, because they had been so poorly treated for so long in the old system that all they really cared about was tearing it down (gee, sound familiar?).
A Cult of personality is toxic to functionality. It's toxic to any progress. It's toxic to productivity and success. It's toxic to competence. It's toxic to reality.
Marx aimed to theorize on a worker based authority. Anti dictator or anti oligarchy, sure.
Unfortunatley he outlined inadequate protections against an oligarchy, because he believed a society could self regulate equality (between workers).
Google: Marx on Authority
He also fundamentally misunderstands human nature and our ability to care about anything outside a "tribe" or rather put aside our own desires for those not in our immediate tribe. It simply breaks down at scale.
Just because someone can adequately critique and point out the flaws in a system does not make them qualified to architect a working solution. Especially first draft. The problem with communism is will always devolve into authoritarianism, because its the only way to enforce people putting the needs of others over their own, not to mention those in charge will do whats best to serve their own ruling tribe.
It's how we evolved, its human psychology, and at mass population scale you can't escape it. Capitalism or trade at least to some extent incentivizes mutual benefits on a basic level, but Marx tosses out the one thing about it that works, otherwise the same problems that occur in capitalism as it devolves come about the same way they do in every other form of human governance, with groups/organizations with a shared purpose or identity (tribes) jockeying for authority and power to serve their own interests.
Unless Congress asks for the testimony, which is probably why Meta tried to stop the hearing.
No. Not only does SLAPP prevent that, a rich, unpopular company trying to silence a whistleblower through tort is running a PR campaign for their legal defence fund.
More realistic: being blacklisted from employment.
Yes and no.
I have successfully defended myself from a SLAPP lawsuit. I have also been arrested. To quote the arresting officer of the unrelated (and questionable) arrest:
"You may beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride!"
Defending yourself with an anti-SLAPP mechanism is expensive, time-consuming, and (even with an attorney) both parties can be made to look foolish.
In my own SLAPP lawsuit, I represented myself (so no attorney fees). I don't recommend others pick fights with megacorporations.
Everything that makes freedom of speech worth defending when the government wants your silence, also applies to businesses.
The US puts freedom of speech on a pedestal. But stuff like this makes me aware that's a lot more limited than people would like to believe.
(I've signed at least two non-disparagement agreements, but also I'm not in the US).
But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention.
Another tell that this is a stunt for attention and not a genuine issue is her trying to blame China’s progress in AI on Meta’s release of an open-source model.
It could be as simple as Meta did not want to give the Chinese government partial ownership and their IP.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea...
"They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public ... even if the statements she is making are true," he said. "Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin. They're attempting to destroy her personally, they're attempting to destroy her reputation and I think the question is, `Why?'"
"What is it they are so afraid of?" Hawley asked.""
Meta has a stellar reputation to protect. Honest people doing honest "work".
Now that the Chinese economy has become so important in the world, the ideological aspects are seeping into the economies of all countries, though it doesn't translate well into western politics. I think this is because the western political system was a limited-trust system, it only worked well when the state was anemic; if the state becomes big (cash-rich), companies will find that they can start to earn significant sums of money from the state, they will redirect their attention to catering to the needs of the state and away from the private sector. Unfortunately the western state has no intrinsic ideology, no intrinsic needs or goals, so it will lead to corruption or faux-adoption of external ideologies (as a means to serve private financial interests).
Western governments cannot form genuine ideological movements (besides the ideology of economic pragmatism) IMO because their foundations aren't designed to support anything besides that. They are founded on the principles of individualism and limited state power.
I’d say CCP and many other governments like Russia and Ukraine are FAR more corrupt than the US. Your argument really doesn’t make sense.
Feyerabend in particular would likely differ, and say instead that freedom and liberty are what emerge when mature adults democratically order their societies, irrespective (or in spite) of any ideologies used to bind them
Paul Feyerabend, a philosopher of science, argued that true freedom and liberty arise when individuals actively and democratically shape their societies, free from the dominance of any single ideology, including science. He contended that science, often regarded as the ultimate path to knowledge, is merely one of many traditions and should not hold a privileged position in society. Feyerabend advocated for a “democratic relativism,” emphasizing equal rights for all traditions and proposing a separation between the state and any specific ideology, akin to the separation of church and state. He believed that this approach would allow individuals to live according to their own values and beliefs, fostering a more inclusive and liberated society.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0020174800860189...
Feyerabend, P. (1980). Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method. Inquiry, 23(1), 3–18.
What if someone's values and beliefs are that certain other values and beliefs should not be allowed? Like what if a group believes that gay people shouldn't exist openly in society, or that certain racial groups should be genocided or stripped of their rights?
I think this is a fundamental issue of tolerance of beliefs - how do you tolerate intolerant beliefs without sliding into intolerance yourself?
He's plain wrong about that part. Science isn't another tradition, it's a way of putting the world to the test to figure out how things work. It's absurd and dangerous to maintain Feyerabend's view in the midst of a pandemic or climate change, for example, which we've seen with the alternate facts and conspiracy theories.
> [i]n a free society there is room for many strange beliefs, doctrines, institutions.
> There is nothing in science or in any other ideology that makes them inherently liberating. Ideologies can deteriorate and become dogmatic religions. They start deteriorating when they become successful... their triumph is their downfall.
> A democracy is an assembly of mature people and not a collection of sheep guided by a small clique of know-it-alls.
> The reasons were explained by Mill in his immortal essay On Liberty. It is not possible to improve upon his arguments.
> https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
Or the "speaking fees," the insider trading, etc. I could go on all day.
You think that sort of thing isn't corruption? The US has elevated official corruption into high art.
If you’re referring to actual instances of former politicians being paid exorbitant consulting fees by corporations that they helped regulate, though, I’d be interested in better understanding what’s going on there too.
I appreciate the information coming out, but in some of these situations I can't help but picture that "the worst person in the room" in regards to the offenses might also end up being the person that then becomes the most holier than thou when they get out of the company.
If you ever met someone who used to work in software ads and ask them about privacy you'll get what I mean.
I'm disinterested in who made what call because ultimately it's designed to be nebulous. Someone breaking out of that horrific cycle and telling us what it leads to is a good thing. Even though it will likely lead to nothing, like it did with Sophie Zhang [1]
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
And whatever she might be guilty of doing, the chances of her ever having the same access to sensitive information in any company has gone drastically down after coming forward with this information.
Then show those documents? It's hard to take these allegations seriously when the mysterious proof is only alluded to, not submitted as part of the testimony.
Not really. If the NDA is void (such as the case with congressional hearings), there isn't going to be a lengthy legal proceeding. The judge would look at it and throw it out.
People brought before a Congressional hearing like this can be held in contempt of court for failure to cooperate. Testimony is subject to perjury laws.
This wasn't just someone writing a letter to Congress with some claims. This was a Senate hearing convened on the matter.
A corporate NDA cannot prevent you from cooperating with a Congressional hearing.
A Congressional hearing can compel people to give testimony under oath. Witnesses can be held in contempt for failure to answer questions.
> Wynn-Willias told senators that Meta built a “physical pipeline connecting the United States and China” and executives “ignored warnings that this would provide backdoor access to the Chinese Communist Party, allowing them to intercept the personal data and private messages of American citizens.”
> She said that China does not currently have access to U.S. user data only because Congress “stepped in.”
> The pipeline to China mentioned by the whistleblower, the Pacific Light Cable, was never completed.
> The cable, which was first announced in 2016 with support from Facebook, Google and other companies, was envisioned as a high-capacity fiberoptic undersea cable running thousands of miles under the Pacific Ocean connecting Los Angeles and Hong Kong.
> Bloomberg reported in 2020 that Facebook, Google and other companies abandoned their plans to link the U.S. to Hong Kong. They revised their proposal to build the link only as far as Taiwan and the Philippines, according to Bloomberg.
Real talk, I have zero idea how she could explain this one away, other than with “it came to me in a dream.”
She is not claiming the pipeline exists today.
Either there is some massive grand conspiracy going on between all those different companies (a good number of which have exactly zero products or revenue or business presence in China) and the Chinese government or, which I am leaning more towards given the claims, this is all just oversensationalized lies.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far we only got the “bush did 9/11” level of evidence for claims that are arguably even more wild and convoluted than that.
The author, for example, also claims that “yeah, this was all according to the plan, until congress stepped in to stop the fiberoptic cable due to those concerns.” Any record of congress doing that for those reasons?
What about existing fiberoptic cables going through China right now? Are those cables not as special or useful for that purpose? Why not?
I am not even defending China and their approaches. I am familiar with deep packet traffic inspection and other things of a similar nature their government does. But that’s not a blanket excuse to just claim wild massive multinational conspiracies involving so many actors, all without as much as even good reason for why it would even make sense for them all to cooperate.
I think it was part of Clean Networks Initiative, there's ongoing strategic game to cut PRC out of subsea infra business, just like telcom. IIRC a bunch of sanctions a few years ago killed many cable projects or at least pushed PRC out as partner. Cables landing in PRC didn't. Cables landing in ASEAN but with PRC suppliers/builders ended up switching to other suppliers/builders.
None of those reasons have anything to do with the congress stepping-in due to the concerns of Meta/Google/etc. conspiring with PRC, to provide them a dedicated backdoor access to american user data.
It was part of the ongoing subsea cable wars, US wanted to squeeze PRC from subsea infra game a few years ago and sanctioned a bunch of PRC companies which disrupted projects.
Every time I think “but the law/constitution won’t allow…” there’s some end run.
The rule of law is only as good as thems that rule the law.
I'm curious what the situation is: did the person speak up internally, were they disempowered, did they go along with it but then have a change of heart at some point, etc.?
The audiobook is free if you have Spotify premium.
This is phrasing is very weaselly. All foreign companies in China either partner with or are operated by a domestic company like Alibaba or Tencent. Saying "we don't operate our services in China" is like saying water is wet to people who know what that really means. It doesn't in anyway invalidate the claims made against them.
It's not clear to me why it matters that Chinese companies advertise on Facebook, nor in what way this would give them leverage to force Facebook to commit the treason alleged by this article.
Without further evidence the story isn't really adding up.
It would not require a partnership to buy stuff outside the country
Has Hawley demonstrated similar interest about Elon's business dealings in China? Elon owes much of his net worth to the CCP's Shanghai factory.
Certainly if they invade Taiwan and there's a hot response from the US
I think the same is true of next year.
That man is full of surprises.
Nothing he does or says is legitimate. It's all about power.
It's a lot easier to be a whistleblower once you're materially comfortable. More than the threat of legal action is the insidiousness of being blacklisted for employment. I wouldn't take the delay from the actions as evidence of her having ulterior motives. Just that we need contemporaneous notes and/or evidence to ensure she isn't misremembering.
Nope, if you can't convince CNN to carry your story the moment it happens, it's clearly not worth doing any law stuff about.