It has been another week of tension on the island despite an accord being signed by several actors in the discussions. It wasnāt unanimous, meaning the conflict is not over. This will not be resolved until a much deeper discussion is had and a long-term plan is implemented. Iāll let you know how it goes.
There have been no Internet shutdowns so far, and I donāt expect that to happen in the current climate.
This week, I wanted to return to one of the subjects that really ticks me off on the Internet: advertising.
Again, for the record, I am not against advertising. I am against the advertising we have today on the Internet. It crossed a line several years ago and hasnāt been rained in yet. Is that about to change?
I hate online advertising. Or, if Iām being more accurate, I hate what online advertising has become.
It used to be useful. It used to let you know about new products and services without being egregious or overwhelming.
Then came that fateful first banner ad in October 1994 from none other than what became Wired Magazine. It was called HotWired then, back when the Internet was an accessory to a news or entertainment product that was still being printed on dead trees and shipped worldwide.
I was an avid Wired Magazine reader, finally finding a magazine that took the Internet seriously and provided some of the most thoughtful journalism around the Internet and tech-related events. I bought imports of the magazine from the US, as we had nothing comparable to that in the UK, where I lived at the time. Wired UK eventually came to our shores, but it was a pale imitation of the real thing, and, surprisingly for me, it didnāt share that many articles across publications.
Wired set up a digital offshoot of the magazine that ended up having more employees than the magazine proper. It was racking in 20 million dollars in revenue (peanuts compared to todayās standards, but enormous back then for an online business), and even started an online search engine called HotBot.
But the lure of advertising was too great to ignore, and it set in motion a race to the bottom that we havenāt finished yet. New regulations, particularly in the EU, might mean we donāt actually get to rock bottom, but we are pretty much there regardless.
As a side note, Wired magazine was also the online space where I first learnt about cookies and how they would transform the web into something useful. Iām still waiting. Push technology was another one, but thatās another discussion for another time.
It was inevitable that online advertising would become more and more invasive as the years rolled on, with new ad tech being developed at a frightening pace. Developments typically ran three times around the globe before regulation could get its shoes on. There is nothing sacred from advertisers these days: cookies, tracking pixels, cross-site cookies, third-party tracking cookies, GPS tracking, purchase history, browser history, and illicit screen captures of what youāre working on.
The problem is that together, this technology is not neutral, innocent, or safe for many people.
Weāve all heard the anecdote of the āgrandfather to beā being informed by a big chain storeās pharmacy before his daughter had the time to announce the news. The ending was happy in this instance, but imagine for a moment a much more sinister outcome, and there are plenty of examples of them, particularly suicide by vulnerable people being subjected to a barrage of unwanted algorithmically generated timelines.
I was reading an article about having a new, clean YouTube account that, within seven days of the users viewing a slightly right-wing video, the algorithm pushed the account deeper and deeper into the world of Neo-nazis, holocaust deniers, and the like. SEVEN. DAYS. Let that sink in.
But why is it this bad now?
It is all about incentives. Two organisations in the Internet space have shown that this makes a lot of money. A LOT OF MONEY. And clearly, money trumps everything else, even 43,000 lives in a genocide that took place in Myanmar, where Facebook are complicit in the promotion and propagation of hate speech and organisation discussions related to the operations carried out by the military.
The chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar stated that Facebook played a “determining role” in the Rohingya genocide. Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of Islamophobic content which targets the Rohingya people. The United Nations Human Rights Council has called the platform “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate”.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Criticism_and_controversies
Of the approximately one million civilians displaced and still stuck in abject conditions in Bangladesh, a few tens of thousands of children were hoping to get $1M to fund some limited and basic schooling āas asked for by aid agenciesā and Zuckerberg told them to what amounts to āFuck offā. They still havenāt fully acknowledged their part or made any reparations. Very much like colonialism, nāest pas? (Digital Colonialism is another subject I briefly discussed, and I would like to get into specifics and more details sometime).
It makes the old journalistic adage, āIf it bleeds, it leadsā, positively pedestrian in comparison.
Deep in this is an argument about platform neutrality, enshrined in US law and popularly known as Section 230. Section 230 essentially states that platforms cannot be held responsible for the content flowing through their dumb pipes. After all, it didnāt āproduceā the content. It is a law that made sense when our timelines were something more akin to what I see when using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to check up on news articles, blogs and other media (even YouTube). But this is being called into question now, as it should be, because timelines are no longer chronological āwithout manipulation. They are all algorithmically generated now as āFor Youā tabs and are even starting to āgenerateā their own content using Generative AI. That last bit is important, as it, in my mind, unequivocally removes the protection from Section 230. I would argue that forcing unwanted and unasked-for content on a timeline does the same, i.e. if the timeline isnāt chronological (untouched), then it is curated, i.e. content. But that argument hasnāt been won as yet, despite several court cases currently being discussed.
Iāve seen arguments about IRL advertising, suggesting you canāt not see it or ask for it. Two things: 1) They donāt track your every move online or offline. 2)
Legislation has been enacted for many years in the EU, and it was recently strengthened with the Digital Services Act. Unlike the E-Commerce Directive, this act is a regulation and mandates states to implement it, thus harmonising regulation for its members.
Intermediaries (Facebook, ISPs, for example) and other intermediary services can be legally required to remove content should it be deemed more than just cached or conduit data (i.e. unaltered). Providers are exempt from liability:
the DSA establishes a broad liability exemption as long the providers are āin no way involved with the information transmitted.ā
Source: https://digitalplanet.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DD-Report_2-Christoph-Busch-11.30.22.pdf
In my view, these regulations donāt go far enough and only allow companies like Facebook et al. to continue their surveillance capitalism and profit on the attention economy to the loss of many, mostly those least able to afford such losses. At worst, they allow them to continue feeling genocides and driving the humanity out of the Internet.
In this world, truth is worthless, and lies are valuable.
I have discussed two separate topics: advertising and engagement content. The link, of course, is that the former is entirely responsible for the latter.
We can and should do something about it. I hinted about what to do a little earlier. š
Iāll save that for another time.
Reading
An article that popped up only today (Monday 21st October 2024) as I write this goes a long way to describing this feeling that I and many others are having.
More on the same subject from The Walrus.
One more for the road.
I have written this in a decidedly unalgorithmically-generated style from the deepest depths of my meatware. Have a great week.
