Before, we introduced a storytelling film about algorithms and surveillance capitalism Many viewers responded after the video was released We’ve known these things for a long time, but you can’t do anything Do you want to stop using YouTube Google Facebook? The book "Human Rights in the Digital Age" is the book I will face today I'm going to tell you what should we do if we cannot do without digital technology The author of this book is Australian lawyer Lizzei O'shea In this book, he analyzes the ten key controversies in the Internet age I chose five that are more relevant to everyone’s lives Let’s see how we should think about the contemporary society ruled by digital technology We talked about surveillance capitalism before It’s a digital record of how technology companies use computers, mobile phones, and home appliances. To produce your personalized data and then sell it to advertisers to make money A 2012 study pointed out The U.S. "data mining industry" has a market value of up to 156 billion 670,000 practitioners Surveillance capitalism has become a huge business opportunity But at the same time, these technology companies often promise that users can maintain privacy For example, the mobile phone can be set to "turn off location" and "incognito mode" Or use "Anonymous Browser" But information scientist Latanya Sweeney found that 87% of Americans can be identified only by postal code, gender and birthday Even if you hide all this information Data companies can still use a technique called "biometric profile" Because everyone presses the keyboard differently So as long as you analyze the mode of pressing the keyboard, you can create your personal profile In other words, there is no way to escape surveillance capitalism At this time, there are voices of various factions in the society Someone said: I haven’t done anything illegal, why should I be afraid of being monitored? Another group of people will say: they give you free software Of course you have to pay for it Another group of people will say: Recommend ads to you based on your preferences Isn't this very convenient? So at this time the question becomes: When the social network becomes a market for selling goods Keep showing your favorite ad posts and videos Is this kind of online life really a good life? For example, dating software Tinder and OkCupid Their parent company, Match Group, is a data provider On the surface, use your data to help you find suitable objects Privately sell your personal assets to a third party to make money So you may only meet people who the system thinks are suitable for you on the dating software It also precludes the possibility of getting to know other people So is this really a good internet experience? Or just let users live in the stratosphere for warmth? The other bigger problem is When the online platform is completely monopolized by a few capital companies They also monopolize the world that the public can see Companies that pay for advertising can make their website appear on the first page of search results So what you found is not a neutral result These surveillance companies are sometimes for the market Even make a political censorship mechanism Like 2014 is the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square LinkedIn censored content related to Tiananmen Square If your resume mentions studying the Tiananmen incident in Chinese history Your page will be banned directly A LinkedIn spokesperson came out and said: "In order to create value for members in China and around the world, we must implement content control." Or in 2017 The U.S. government and the Israeli government join forces Orders Facebook to delete accounts of Palestinian leaders' political parties tracked by millions So that they can't call on the crowd to organize action After the Palestinian sources were "disappeared" The “mainstream media” on Facebook began to promote news of Palestinians firing on Israel So that users all over the world can only see unilateral messages So in the past few years, many Facebook opinion leaders have been saying that they will step out of the “Facebook Stratosphere” But in fact, the essence of Facebook is to create a stratosphere Because Facebook’s revenue comes from ad viewing Only let users soak in the stratosphere and spend more time on it Social media can earn more advertising profits So not so much that Google Facebook is a social media platform It's better to say that they are essentially advertising companies 84% of Google's revenue in 2018 came from advertising 98% of Facebook's 2019 revenue comes from advertising These social media have actually contributed to the simplification of sources of political radicalization So the researchers think In fact, the digital network has not improved in the past five years, but has gotten worse Because information becomes less circulated and more closed On the contrary, when the Internet first appeared and was not invaded by surveillance capitalism Information is more circulated For example, American law professor Wu Xiuming put forward the concept of "net neutrality" The online platform is not a space where everyone can spend money to buy a page It should be neutral Only in order to guarantee the free flow of information can there be fair competition. Just like in democratic politics we will insist that one person, one vote is equal Won't make the rich people's votes more valuable same We should create "digital citizenship" in cyberspace Let every citizen have an equal right to participate Instead of giving companies that have the money to advertise to have a greater say The author thinks that we can further ask: What is our imagination of cyberspace? If cyberspace is like a city And a city is occupied by capital enterprises without neutral public space People in that city are totally ruled by some power In the 1960s, New York City had to do urban renewal Want to demolish Washington Square Park and rebuild a highway Those who supported Dugeng at the time said the same as those who supported surveillance capitalism today.
Saying that there are highways can make car driving more convenient! But in fact this will only make it more convenient for people who have money to buy a car So at the time, American social activist Jane Jacobs came out to write a letter Letter to the Mayor of New York against demolition of the park Jane Jacob thinks A city must be successful and prosperous It is necessary to create a public space to accommodate people of different social backgrounds Parks can allow different people to interact Inject diversity and surprise into the city Jane Jacob fought for ten years and finally kept Washington Square Park in New York Let the new generation of New Yorkers have a public space for open communication The same principle applies to today’s digital networks Our generation’s imagination of cyberspace It is the monitoring that allows capital companies to do whatever they want Still insist that cyberspace should be neutral and free to communicate Will determine what kind of cyberspace the next generation of people will live in In addition to corporate monitoring State surveillance has been much discussed in recent years The Chinese government has developed a public security big data system "Policing Cloud" in the past few years. Can be used to monitor "dissidents" and "government tracers" There is also a social credit scoring system to help people calculate scores in an attempt to create a "harmonious society" At the same time, the U.S. government is actually doing the same thing The government cooperates with data providers to develop "predictive police technology" to identify criminal suspects Like Palantir Technologies, the most profitable data company in Silicon Valley Is called "the sweet darling of American law enforcement agencies" So the U.S. and China seem to have different political systems on the surface But it’s very similar in monitoring the people Some people will say: Government surveillance can maintain social order and national security. But we can further ask: Does national surveillance really make life safer? For example, in the incident that occurred in 2017, the "want to cry worm attack" in which Windows users worldwide were victimized It’s the hackers exploiting the NSA’s vulnerabilities.
Blocking Microsoft users’ computers to threaten ransom In fact, the U.S. National Security Agency discovered this bug five years ago. But it did not notify Microsoft of the amendment This is why Edward Snowden, who escaped the United States, would say The exchange of "privacy" for "security" is actually a false opposition Because the premise of information security is that the information must have sufficient privacy Like in reality We will ask the police to have a search ticket from the court Before we can come into our house and search But in the digital space We allow the country to use our data at will Isn’t it weird that you don’t need to have a search ticket? So we must reflect on: Why in the real world we pay attention to the right of privacy not to be infringed by the state But in the online world, we allow countries to violate the right to privacy? After talking about digital monitoring The author further pointed out The concept of privacy is actually not enough to understand our current digital life Because we are not just being monitored and watched But to be secretly controlled our behavior on the Internet We are forced to watch the ads that companies want us to see It is also said that this is the most suitable product for us using data analysis It’s like when Algeria was a French colony in the 20th century Negro in Algeria You can only know yourself through black advertisements created by white oppressors But know yourself through the people who oppress you Itself is a very alien experience The black people at the time were portrayed as the laughing stock of entertainment by the white people in the advertisements. The same as our current digital life I can only know myself through the advertisements produced by the company The diversity of human life is reduced to one type: Is the consumer who buys the goods But this does not mean that we have to deny digital technology Because the ruled can also use the tools created by the ruler in turn For example, when France colonized Algeria White colonists introduced broadcasting technology to manage local blacks But after the anti-colonial war of independence broke out The philosopher Fanon at the time discovered When the blacks occupied the radio station Radio has become a better communication channel than newspapers Can send messages to illiterate people So the author believes that a major challenge in the 21st century Is to transform the cyberspace of digital surveillance into a decentralized free space Because the Internet was originally decentralized when it first appeared It was not invaded by surveillance companies until the emergence of the data mining industry at the end of the 20th century So only privacy is not enough We must also obtain "digital autonomy" In other words, the digital space can get rid of the secret manipulation of advertising data providers Getting rid of surveillance capitalism sounds very far away But in fact, there are more and more decentralized platforms Like the social media platform Diaspora Network platform Solid Server system Freedom Box Or open street map OpenStreetMap Open Street Map allows users to work together to edit the map Unlike the private company Google Map, which can decide what to display on the map So it’s actually more helpful to those organizations that want to go to the disaster area for relief on the other hand Jack Balkin, a jurist at Yale University in the United States, also pointed out We should put the technology companies that control our assets When it’s like a lawyer and physician who masters our personal resources The lawyer owns the client's confidential information The doctor owns the patient’s medical records The law will not allow lawyers or physicians to use this information to make money Even if the patient agrees to the doctor to sell medical information, it is still illegal These regulations should also apply to technology companies Otherwise we can't explain Why do we not accept lawyers and physicians to use our information to make money But can we accept that technology companies use our data to make money? In 2015, Google's photo app was released Automatically recognize the face of a black man as a chimpanzee Let Google take the initiative to immediately correct the facial recognition algorithm If you enter the name of a black man on Google The webpage will also have a higher chance of showing off advertisements related to crime This makes people wonder if the algorithm is neutral? Or will the algorithm replicate the prejudice and inequality in the real world? A 2016 research survey pointed out None of the top ten tech companies in Silicon Valley employs black women Three companies have no blacks at all, six companies have no female executives at all And the executives are all white men So the algorithms and products designed by Google It actually reflects the values of white American men For example, the technological anxiety that “artificial intelligence may generate consciousness and rule humans” It actually reflects the anxiety of the top white men Because only they are faced with high-tech products that monitor data with algorithms every day The general public is worried about the rent and living expenses for next month I don’t have time to worry about whether the robot will have consciousness If the people who design algorithm technology products are all wealthy white men Of course the things they design cannot be diverse The opposite of If the programmer is black or female We may get different search results when we use Google So in 2018 Tens of thousands of Google employees launched a global strike Protest Google's gender inequality and workplace sexual harassment Many engineers began to reflect: Who is the algorithm for? Because sometimes the algorithms designed by white men It turned out to be aimed at plundering the bottom people Like the admissions unit of American universities Will use algorithms to find the disadvantaged class of low-income households to place admissions advertisements Because these people at the bottom are most eager to flip up the class and move up. So seeing the admissions advertisement is most likely to get the bait As a result, many poor people go to university on school loans According to statistics, more than half of the students drop out after 4 months Not only didn’t get a degree, but also took a loan Simply put The rich design algorithms to abduct the poor to apply for unaffordable student loans In recent years, there have also been more and more incidents of engineers opposing the inequality algorithm For example, in 2018, the U.S. Immigration Service wanted to outsource the project to Microsoft. But the U.S. did not allow child refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the U.S. So hundreds of Microsoft engineers protested Wrote an open letter to Microsoft Ask Microsoft to cancel its contract with the USCIS In the same year, 4,000 employees of Google also jointly signed Rejection of the commission of the U.S. military
Require technology companies to no longer serve military units The American Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) even published ethical principles in 2018 Ask the engineer to identify the job the boss wants him to do Is it possible to cause potential harm or abuse Hope to use ethical values to transform the industrial culture of information technology So the author pointed out: The subjects found by the algorithm during the testing phase It should be sufficiently representative to reflect different genders, classes and races Technology companies must also provide enough channels for users to report negative experiences It’s like we don’t let a new car that hasn’t been crash tested directly on the road same We also shouldn’t let the algorithm go online without a multiplicity-tested algorithm In 1953, IBM built the world's first computer that could be mass-produced The software was free when the computer was first sold Software is included when you buy hardware And users can also modify the software after use to provide feedback The most famous case at the time was the early MIT computer laboratory A hacker culture popular among MIT students Like to solve problems by writing programs and does not require financial returns The earliest computer game "Space War" in history was written in cooperation with MIT at that time So when the computer industry first appeared It’s a hardware manufacturer that develops software together with the user community But with the increasing sales of personal computers When the hardware becomes cheaper and easier to obtain IBM began to sell hardware and software separately in 1969 Independently sold "proprietary software" began to appear Open source code that could be accessed by users Has been changed to a trade secret that users don’t know The advent of proprietary software completely changed the entire programming circle Programming is no longer based on user interests And become serving the interests of the enterprise Since the 1970s Open source software has become less and less Bill Gates, a strong proponent of proprietary software in 1976 I wrote an open letter to the engineer community saying: The hardware has to be paid but the software has to be shared Who cares if software engineers get paid? Who would be willing to spend three years writing programs to catch errors and share the results for free? This behavior is simply stealing! And this year is also the time when the United States began to implement the new copyright law Finally in 1979 The mainstream operating system Unix takes the last shot Change the content of the authorization agreement: prohibit users from reading and changing the original code The idea of software copyright has become mainstream in the industry But soon there was controversy in the engineer community American engineer Richard Stallman (Richard Stallman) designed the program with a friend As a result, my friend sold the jointly developed software to a private company As a result, the programs he wrote were restricted by copyright law and he could no longer rewrite the programs he created I can’t use the products that I have created and restrict me in turn This kind of experience is what Marx calls "alienated labor" The hacker culture of the original online world It promotes the development of science and technology through collective cooperation to write programs But capitalism is for corporate profits It even used the law to prohibit engineers from obtaining source code to prohibit them from designing better programs Richard Stallman launched the "Free Software Movement" out of anger Freedom means to make the software better so that every engineer has the freedom to rewrite the software Because collective research and development can create more efficient and better software for users Instead of letting the software be owned by a private company So Stallman himself created a new system: GNU Find a lawyer to set up a set of free software laws called "General Public License Terms" (GPL) All users can freely share and change the version of the program But if you want to take the code written in GNU You must comply with this clause and open the source code of the program you wrote to the public So the source code is like a kind of "digital shared wealth" The copyright of the capital enterprise will write "All rights reserved" But the copyright of free software is copyleft: "reverse all rights" In the past, economics believed that human nature was self-interested For example, the civics class in high schools often mentions the "tragic song of shared wealth" I think if the grass is public, everyone will bring cows to eat the grass Only taking care of one's own interests caused overgrazing, and finally there was no grassland. The best solution is to privatize the land Everyone will take care of the land for their own benefit So private property rights can improve economic efficiency This is the view that Bill Gates supports But Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel laureate in economics, discovered In fact, the human community will come up with innovative ways to collectively manage shared resources. Capital companies believe that if the source code is open, everyone can get it Then no one would want to pay Everyone will just sit back and enjoy their achievements and there will be a "tragic song of shared wealth" But in fact, the result of the development of the "free software movement" is completely opposite. Because every user encounters different problems So when the source code is open Everyone can report the problem and the inadequate modification It will make the program more perfect Many people in the industry also admit that Linux system performance is better than Windows The engineer community even discovered a rule: The more people read the source code, the faster the problem will be found out and the faster it will be solved. This is called "Linus' Law" (Linus' Law) In other words, the best way to debug is to be transparent and open By contrast Closed source "proprietary software" is expensive and inefficient It is often necessary to hire experts to catch bugs and check whether program vulnerabilities will be hacked More dangerous is Closed source code can allow companies to evade legal liability Doing things that hurt society hasn't been discovered yet For example, Volkswagen was caught in 2015 Use cheating software when testing car emissions So you can evade environmental regulations These cheating software are trade secrets protected by copyright So no one knows what the code content is Capitalism originally claimed to be the most efficient economic system But the history of software development has shown us Capital companies compete for profit Prefer to use closed source code that is less efficient and may even harm society It prevents programmers from solving software problems in a more creative and collaborative way Also hinders the prosperity of the information age In this video we introduce five key issues in the digital age Internet monopoly of technology companies, state surveillance, surveillance capitalism Unequal algorithmic software copyright disputes The author also put forward various possible solutions to these problems Digital citizenship, digital autonomy and digital common wealth There are many lawyers, engineers and hackers in today’s technology community who are practicing these concepts. If you want to know more about hot topics in digital technology I highly recommend you to read this "Human Rights Speculation in the Digital Age" Think together How to transform digital technology that serves a few people into a force that promotes social prosperity
2021-12-13