I was recently invited to participate as a regular contributor to two podcasts last week. I recorded for the ICT-Pulse Podcast (English) and Innovation, AgilitĆ© & Excellence (French). Iāll post the links as soon as theyāre published.
One topic that came up, admittedly from me, is an idea and reflexion Iāve been having about digital platforms, more specifically social media digital platforms, lately.
The other topic that was the focus of discussion on the ICT Pulse podcast was about digital agency over digital sovereignty. Itās a fairly new idea and one that isnāt well-formed. Iām not quite sure how I stand either, but I felt it was a discussion worth having to help clarify, if not resolve some thoughts about Internet governance and the future of the internet.
I know some of the topics Iāve been writing about here have been pretty dark recently, Iām sorry. But I felt I needed to get them down on something, if not for you, but for me to at least state my position on the shenanigans.
At the time of writing this introduction, I think this one should be a bit more pedestrian. Weāll see. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and please feel free to reach out.
Digital agency
To get the discussion started, I think it is necessary to have a quick rundown about digital sovereignty. It is something that governments around the world have been discussing and even pursuing for a while now. Some longer than others. What it boils down to is essentially regulating and controlling the Internet to ensure that the country remains in control of what happens on it in the confines of its own state. It often manifests itself in ways that are imperceptible to many, or totally draconian like we see in states like Russia, North Korea and China, generally in the name of autonomy and self-reliance.
Digital agency, however, is thought to be more of an idea closer to the ideals of the Internetās beginnings, an open universe for the use of all equally. But we have observed that those ideals have come up against cold hard realities of political difference, power brokering and all sorts of levers being placed on countries, businesses, institutions, and people. The internet today is not an open universe, and it is certainly not free for use equitably for all. Just the numbers of people without meaningful access to the Internet show that it is still very much a privileged few that benefit the most from the Internet.
Agency, in psychology, is having the ability to use strategies and actions that bring us what we want. Without it, we are powerless to decide our destiny.
The ideals put forward by digital agency try to address this by attempting to wrestle control back through three principles: multi-stakeholderism, realising the potential of technology and promoting collaboration. Of the three principles, I can only see one, possibly two, that are realistic and achievable. TLDR; the first one. (Iāve briefly discussed here before, so I wonāt go over old ground here).
Where I think that these ideals will fall down is with the other two. Although, if Iām honest, I do think that at some point we might be able to better realise the potential of technology. However, it is not in its current guise, or under the stewardship of the goons that are currently in power over tech and our tech lives.
The third, collaboration, for me is the achilles heel of the entire endeavour. History has shown time and time again, and it will keep repeating itself ad infinitum, that we are incapable of collaborating on a global scale. It will start off with good intentions, but at som point, politics, power struggles, egos, and all the things that make us human will enter the room and suck out any opportunity for meaningful collaboration on projects like this.
I think it is a reality that we just have to get used to, and it is an inevitable consequence of technology becoming horizontally embedded in every aspect of life. Tech is essentially political now, and it will take an enormous shift for it not to be.
Iām sure Iāll be developing this topic in the future. For now, Iām keeping up on the discussion and developments.
This is a thought that came to me a while back that I didnāt really expand upon, despite subtly touching upon, in over the last few months. Iām drawing a parallel between the mechanisms and organisational systems, not the people involved, past or present. Bear that in mind while youāre reading this.
This is a story about digital platforms and how they extract everything out of them for themselves, without regard to anyone or anything. And you should never forget that todayās digital platforms exist solely to sit in-between the supplier and the demander and extract, extract, extract. Their only service is arbitration of supply and demand and to skim off a profit, harming everything else.
The big question for me is whether mediation is necessary in the first place? In many instances, it is absolutely not necessary and only hinders the exchange, resulting in worse outcomes for both the supplier and demander. This is often represented in the way many artists eventually go solo and start selling their goods directly to their customers, at both a lower cost to demanders and better profits for suppliers.
Of course, this isnāt a path available to everyone and frequently relies on the fact that said artists are already renown and can therefore āaffordā to do so. This could be construed as an argument for platforms, in that they provide a valuable service getting customers in front of sellers. And for many thatās precisely what they used to achieve, and as a service, it had value for people and the service providers were rightly paid for it. But something has changed over the last few years, and it is not to the benefit of suppliers or demanders.
Digital platforms have steadily eroded the value they provide to their customers (suppliers and demanders), extracting the last drops of any value and diverting them to their balance sheets. This has been done by their accumulation of power over the arbitration process, whereby they control both the supplier’s price and costs, and the demanders they promote to and the eventual cost to the demanders. This has been done by rigging the game to a point where they are the only winners. The tool to achieve this is two-fold; Adtech and a Plantation Economy.
Iāve discussed todayās adtech industry already, and I will no doubt expand upon that in the future. TLDR; it should all be burnt to the ground and rebuilt to be fairer, private, voluntary, and more equitable for its participants. (See Reading section: Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight)
The plantation economy is an economy built on scale and scalability. Already that should sound familiar, thinking about the previous paragraphs. It is an economy built as a platform to drive production to an absolute extreme without totally breaking it (although it frequently does), to the detriment of those subjected to it. Sounding more familiar, it should be. And it is an economy that profits one organisation or person without any regard for the welfare of those that did the actual work to valorise the products or services. It is basically theft.
Social Media is a digital plantation where you work for little or no remuneration, for a system where there is generally one owner that has total power to do whatever, whenever, however he or she feels. One major difference between the old and new plantations is that you are ostensibly free to leave at any time, but because of the network effects of these platforms, exercising that right is neither possible nor practical. The trick then is for the owners to dupe you into staying on the platform, but more importantly, spending as much time as you can and for as much of your lifetime as you can for them to monetise your participation. Monetise is Silicon Valley doublespeak for wealth extraction and theft in this context.
This is why the Internet needs to be re-wilded and corporate social media needs to decay and whither way to make way for a better model where we all benefit.
Distributed multi-stakeholder and federated services are the start of this, but they too will be subject to forces that will pollute them and entice them away from what they should be. But it is a start, and the more of us that try to built something on good foundations, the more chance we have to accomplish and Internet for the good. It wonāt be perfect, Iām not that naive, and itāll still be inhabited by criminals and scammers, liars, thieves, etc. But itāll be more like the real world and not some digital dystopia that it is fast becoming.
The one thing I know, is that humans generally follow the pattern of the Hemingway quote: slowly, then all at once. The cracks will appear and the online mobilisation will start slowly, then suddenly, without warning, the empires will be burnt to the ground.
Iām already seeing a massive wave of interest on the federated services networks in support of ditching US services, and āBig Techā as a whole. Several governments have even voted to ban the use of them and will start shortly replacing those services with European alternatives.
And this is where Agency is important and why I am still undecided with my feelings about the digital agency movement and the so-called splinternet. They cross over and are contradictory in some places and totally rational in others.
To be continuedā¦
Reading
A few things that caught my interest recently.
Last week I mentioned a book that looked like it would be an instant bestseller, not because it is worth it (it might be, I havenāt finished reading it yet), but because its subject tried to have it shut down, thus invoking the Streisand Effect. Well, it is now top oā the charts.
In a first of its kind, a U.K. woman has won a legal fight with Meta preventing the latter from using targeted advertising. Meta, characteristically, was disingenuous and specious in its response, first by lying that it couldnāt achieve the request, which it can miraculously do now, and secondly trying to use a straw man argument suggesting that the sanction meant the company had to give aways its services for free. This is a lie and they know it. The ruling is specifically and only about targeted ads. Meta is still free to place non-targeted privacy respecting ads to O’Carroll. Itās just that they canāt rip off both sides with these types of ads, so they will try everything to avoid it.
We should all follow suit, and I am actively seeking how to go about this.
That report is still offline, so I thought Iād make it available until I get a takedown notice. If you want it, it is here.
āItaly is using its Piracy Shield law to go after Google, with a court ordering the Internet giant to immediately begin poisoning its public DNS servers. This is just the latest phase of a campaign that has also targeted Italian ISPs and other international firms like Cloudflare.ā
Have a great week.