ICT4Peace and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology, sponsors of the new section Hashtag # Big data at the Zurich Film Festival, have organised on 6 October 2018 a talk by Prof. Ron Deibert, Director of The Citizen Lab (Toronto) on “NEW MEDIA, AI AND HOW IT AFFECTS OUR LIVES”.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – OCTOBER 06: Daniel Stauffacher, Serge Droz and Ronald Deibert at the ZFF Talk ‘New media, AI and how it affects our lives’ during the 14th Zurich Film Festival on October 06, 2018 in Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)
The second half of his presentation and Q&A can be seen in this video.
The ZFF talk was introduced by Daniel Stauffacher and moderated by Serge Droz, both from ICT4Peace and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology (ZHET).
We invited Ron Deibert to write down some of the main points of his presentation at the ZFF.
“Three Uncomfortable Truths about Social Media”
“Social media has been battered in recent years, and in particular over growing concerns about disinformation, fake news, and the spread of harmful speech. These growing concerns have led to calls for social media companies to be better or more strongly regulated. In my presentation, I take a step back and present a broader view of the problems surrounding social media and political authority in the form of “three uncomfortable truths about social media.” I call them “truths” because there is an emerging consensus around them, and they are “uncomfortable” because — although widely recognized — many people do not want to squarely acknowledge them as problems requiring fundamental change in politics, economics, and society. The first uncomfortable truth is that the business model upon which social media is built is a personal data surveillance economy. Regardless of how companies market themselves as putting information at our fingertips or connecting friends and families, their services and products are ultimately about spying on us, our habits, our social relationships, and our movements in order to push advertising in our direction and entice us to consume. The second uncomfortable truth is that we have consented to it, but not entirely wittingly. No one forced us to adopt social media in such a comprehensive way and social media popularity continues to rise. However, our decision to use social media is not entirely a rational choice. Social media is expressly programmed to draw upon our emotions; the services are designed as addiction machines. They increasingly shape us in ways that we do not fully or consciously appreciate, calling into question whether or not we have given witting consent. The last and most frightening uncomfortable truth is that the social media propels authoritarian practices. Authoritarian practices aim to control people, and sow confusion, ignorance, prejudice, and chaos in order to undermine public accountability and transparency. Through its algorithms designed to capture and retain peoples’ attention, social media does the same. Moreover, the very fine-grained surveillance that companies perform for economic reasons is the perfect proxy for authoritarian control. An example of this industry-government congruence can be seen in China’s so-called “social credit” system, intended to rank citizens’ and businesses’ economic and social reputation based on data points collected through social media and other technologies, and tie that ranking to restrictions on freedom of choice.”
Ron Deibert also informed about the latest report by The Citizen Lab: Hide and Seek.