A propaganda tool, social media part of the real fake news phenomenon
HOW FITTING WOULD IT be if Donald Trump – the Tweeter in Chief – helped fuel the long overdue decline of social media?
Already a dubious phenomenon, the ironically named social media sites – led by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and a thousand variants of Instagram and Pinterest – had descended into little more than partisan flame wars, blatant marketing and outright propaganda before the rise of Trump. They’ve only got worse since then.
Coupled with the undermining of privacy – embraced by governments not the least bit eager to protect their citizens – the sorry state of affairs should leave no one upset if they all suddenly went away tomorrow. Such would be a reason to rejoice, in fact.
There’s very little social about such sites, at least in the conventional human sense of the word. The occasional use is one thing – though the sites, along with the ubiquitous Google, are mining data, joined by the likes of the NSA – but there are many people, many of them young, who spend too much time and think too little of the consequences.
More than just too much information, poor judgment and bullying, such time spent online has societal implications. In the case of the Trump, the Russians and electioneering, the dangers go well beyond the vestiges of Cold War sentiments.
Hacking, fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, online bots and a host of other technologies are increasingly part of an arsenal to sway public opinion on a massive scale, all based on psychological research being done by the same people investing in technology companies and the likes of right-wing websites such as Breitbart, with all its now-well-known connections to the Trump campaign.
Such companies are developing increasingly sophisticated tools for gathering up large swathes of online data – the things you post and like on Facebook, for instance – in order to both predict your behaviour and to sway it. This goes beyond targeted advertising, which is itself somewhat problematic.
Perhaps you were one of the six million people who filled out a Facebook personality quiz. Not just a fun time-waster, the quiz incorporates a psychological tool developed by scientists at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre. The data it provided, coupled with all the information on a typical profile, allowed computer programs to predict people’s personalities better than close friends and family ... or even themselves. Such is the power of computers that are able to correlate hundreds or thousands of seemingly trivial, unrelated actions we take online.
Beyond selling us stuff and feeding us more click bait, the real dangers lie in using the data as part of a propaganda effort.
“The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous,” says the Psychometric Centre’s director, Prof. Jonathan Rust, in a recent interview in The Guardian.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.”
Psychological tools, social media and the power of peer pressure were all at play in the U.S. elections last fall. Particularly prevalent was the use of bots to generate what we’d call real fake news and opinions – as opposed to what’s at play in the battle of Trump. Hundreds and thousands of fake social media accounts – Twitter and Facebook among them – and website manipulation tools were used to present a false narrative, inflate trends and sway public opinion.
The Oxford Internet Institute’s Unit for Computational Propaganda tracks ways social media was used in the run-up to the 2016 election, showing The Guardian how hundreds of websites were set up to blast out just a few links, articles that were all proTrump.
“This is being done by people who understand information structure, who are bulk buying domain names and then using automation to blast out a certain message. To make Trump look like he’s a consensus,” says Phil Howard, the institute’s director.
“That requires organisation and money. And if you use enough of them, of bots and people, and cleverly link them together, you are what’s legitimate. You are creating truth.”
When it comes to money, The Trump campaign – and the Brexit vote, for that matter – can be linked to libertarian billionaire Robert Mercer and to organizations such as the Media Research Center and Cambridge Analytica, along with ultra-conservative, rightwing organizations.
And, when it comes to hacking and Internet manipulation free of regulation, Russia is a wild west frontier.
Speaking of hacking and the perils of the Internet age, USA network’s Mr. Robot provides both a warning and some captivating television. Hacker-for-good Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) battles the forces of evil (literally in the case of the big, overarching company known as Evil Corp.) and his own demons. He hates Facebook for many of the same reasons.
The show’s creator, Sam Esmail, shares that disdain.
“I do hate Facebook, though I have a Facebook account. I’m sure Facebook can be used for good things, and they do philanthropy and that’s worthy of respect – but I think when a corporation decides to have a focus where you make money off
human relationships, that’s incredibly dangerous. It crosses the line. People think Google is evil, but I’m a fan of them because that’s great for me if I’m searching and they want to advertise about what I’m looking for – that makes sense to me. But Facebook has a business model of ‘you are learning about me and taking me and my relationships apart to monetize that.’ It’s a trojan horse for something sinister,” he says in a recent interview.
Facebook has said we want your emotional and social attachments in one place and we will control it for you. They are openly asking you to give that power to them and it seems like a dangerous combination. I’m not saying it’s a conscious thing that Facebook is doing, but it’s a slippery slope. It’s a power that I don’t want to give somebody like that.”
Evil is as evil does.