[Plura-list] Podcast: How Big Tech distorts our discourse; EFF statement on Black Lives Matter; Why quarantine is getting harder; Writing while Black
Cory Doctorow
doctorow at craphound.com
Mon Jun 1 15:56:30 EDT 2020
Today's links
* Podcast: How Big Tech distorts our discourse: No mind-control required.
* EFF statement on Black Lives Matter: Black lives matter on the Internet.
* Why quarantine is getting harder: Sustained vigilance is impossible
without perceptible feedback.
* Writing while Black: Tochi Onyebuchi unpacks the impossible
contradictions of being a Black writer in this moment (and all the
moments like this).
* This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015
* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading
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🙆🏿♂️ Podcast: How Big Tech distorts our discourse
This week on my podcast, I read my EFF Deeplinks essay, "How Big Tech
Monopolies Distort Our Public Discourse." We hear a lot of exotic
explanations for "polarization" and other modern ills.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/how-big-tech-monopolies-distort-our-public-discourse
The commonest one is that Big Tech isn't lying when they tell the
marketers they hope to woo as customers that they can use machine
learning and surveillance data to change peoples' minds.
But evil political operators have hijacked a mind-control machine
designed to sell us fidget spinners and used it to sell us conspiracism,
white nationalism and fascism.
I think this is an extraordinary claim with poor evidence, not least
because everyone who's ever claimed to have perfected mind-control -
from the CIA to pick-up artists to stage mesmerists - turned out to be a
fraud and/or self-deluded.
But that doesn't mean that our discourse isn't in a sorry state, nor
does it mean Big Tech doesn't deserve the blame. I just think we can
find less incredible explanations that don't require us to attribute
superhuman feats of genius to the mediocrities that run Big Tech.
Like monopoly.
If you operate the only place people search for answers, you can give
people the wrong answers, and if they don't know enough about the
subject to spot it, you can change their minds. That's just lying, not
mind control.
And the answer isn't to insist that operating a search engine comes with
an obligation to never be wrong (something no search engine could
attain, and the attempt of which will bankrupt everyone *except* Google).
It's to ban the monopolistic practices that left us with one dominant
search-engine: acquisition of nascent rivals, merger with large
competitors, the creation of vertical monopolies. It's to reverse the
damage those practices have done.
A monopoly on answers is just one of the ways that digital
monopolization distorts our discourse; many others are enumerated in the
piece.
The thing is, we can either (try to) fix Big Tech or we can fix the
internet.
That is, either we deputize Big Tech to be an arm of the state and make
it perform the duties we'd expect of a government, or we make Big Tech
smaller and make its mistakes less salient to people.
But we can't do both. When the US government turned AT&T; into a
regulated monopoly - rather than breaking it up - they created powerful
government stakeholders that intervened to fight any future actions to
weaken AT&T.;
For example, in 1956, the *Pentagon* intervened to keep the DoJ from
breaking up AT&T;, saying that without an intact, monopolistic Bell
System, they couldn't fight the war in Korea. AT&T; remained intact for
nearly 30 more years.
If we want parts of the internet run by the government, that's one thing
- at least something like municipal broadband holds out the potential
for democratic control. But regulated monopolies are the worst of both
worlds.
They become an arm of the state without the accountability of a state
(whatever that accountability might be). They sidestep the strictures on
corporations (competition, consumer protection) and the strictures on
states (transparency, the rule of law).
Here's the podcast episode page:
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/06/01/how-big-tech-monopolies-distort-our-public-discourse/
Here's a direct link to the MP3 (thanks, as always, to the Internet
Archive for hosting):
https://ia801503.us.archive.org/1/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_344/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_344_-_How_Big_Tech_Monopolies_Distort_Our_Public_Discourse.mp3
And here's my podcast feed:
https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
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🙆🏿♂️ EFF statement on Black Lives Matter
A statement from EFF begins: "Black lives matter on the streets. Black
lives matter on the Internet.
"EFF stands with the communities mourning the victims of police
homicide. We stand with the protesters who are plowed down by patrol
cars. We stand with the journalists placed in handcuffs or fired upon
while reporting these atrocities. And we stand with all those using
their cameras, phones and digital tools to make sure we cannot turn away
from the truth."
Internally we sometimes talk about EFF being the plumbers of freedom -
dedicated to protecting the rights of activists and marginalized
communities to communicate in private, and to communicate to the world.
The mission keeps getting more urgent, from life in lockdown to
defending Black lives in the streets.
"The pandemic management technology being pushed by companies and
governments over the last few months is primed to be deployed as a
surveillance and control apparatus."
"Protest movements often bring out the worst in constitutional abuse.
We’ve seen police surveillance tools grow and metastasize, with law
enforcement officials specifically targeting the Black-led movement to
end racist police violence."
EFF has a version of its surveillance self-defense guide specifically
for protesters, explaining how to keep your devices, data,
communications, and social relations safe from official incursions on
your right to seek redress:
https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/attending-protest
And EFF will be keeping that up to date as new tactics emerge. It's
ready to serve as plumbers for the rest of the movement: "To our racial
justice, economic justice, and environmental justice allies, EFF is here
to help when you need hands who understand tech and the law."
"And to everyone, we pledge to redouble our efforts to beat back police
surveillance and abuse, and to build and protect the tools that allow
you to organize, assemble, and speak securely and without censorship."
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🙆🏿♂️ Why quarantine is getting harder
Writing in The Conversation, CMU scholars Gretchen Chapman (psych) and
George Loewenstein (econ) discuss the hard problem of maintaining
pandemic vigilance (handwashing, distancing, masks, etc) as time wears on.
https://theconversation.com/why-americans-are-tiring-of-social-distancing-and-hand-washing-2-behavioral-scientists-explain-139625
Fundamentally, it's just hard to maintain attuned to things that aren't
changing. That's why you notice the refrigerator hum when it starts
(even finding it unbearable) but cease to notice it until it stops,
leaving behind ringing silence.
This is why I was sympathetic to, but skeptical of, the insistence after
the 2016 election that we couldn't "normalize Trump." People in prisons,
in abusive relationships, in concentration camps, all report on how it
just becomes normal eventually.
And speaking as someone with debilitating chronic pain, I'm here to tell
you that it's perfectly possible to lose track of how much pain bad
posture is inflicting on you until you finally move and start to notice.
Given all that, how could we NOT normalize Trump?
Back to public health. Handwashing, distancing, etc, are all important
and evidence-based, but their effects are invisible. You can't tell if
you are contaminated with virus particles, and you can't tell if you've
washed them away.
You bear an upfront cost for your vigilance, but any benefits you
realize are speculative and in the future (not getting coronavirus at
some unspecified future date).
So getting lax on handwashing after you've gone a few months without
getting sick is related to the phenomenon where people who finally get
an effective antidepression drug dose dialed in stop taking their meds
because they feel better.
I started smoking when I was 14, and I quit when I was 32, with the help
of a hypnotherapist with a background as a psychologist an emergency
medicine MD (he was amazing).
He told me that the hardest part of staying quit would be denying myself
the immediate benefit of a cigarette by focusing on a future benefit of
not getting cancer in 30 years. He told me that if I was going to stay
off cigarettes, I'd need a more immediate reason.
I realized that I was spending two laptops/year on cigs, and the money
was going straight to companies whose mission was to murder me for
profit, and moreover, that those companies had invented and perfected
the science-denial playbook now used by every evil industry.
I quit and stayed quit, and I buy myself a new laptop every year (and
I'm still one laptop/year ahead of the game).
The behavioral scientists from CMU suggest that the way to get better at
pandemic mitigation is to keep it up long enough that handwashing,
distancing and masks become unconscious habits. That is, to keep it up
until they disappear into the background.
And the challenge for attaining that is that the point at which
mitigation becomes a habit may come long after the perception of risk
fades into the background - turns into an inaudible refrigerator hum.
To bridge the gap, they point to a peer-reviewed study on the impact of
small penalties (taxes on plastic bags) on changing ingrained behaviors,
implying that similar penalties might yield comparable results.
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20150261
It'd be interesting to see what that looks like in practice - maybe when
you go to a store without a mask, they offer to sell you a disposable
mask for $0.25 or a "mask for life" for $5?
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🙆🏿♂️ Writing while Black
In "Riot Baby," Tochi Onyebuchi tells a riveting, moving, complicated
Afrofuturist story about American structural racism and Black
resilience. The story's starting-gun is the Rodney King uprising, and
its beats are the uprisings that came since.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/riot-baby/#Tochi-Onyebuchi
Now, in a beautiful and moving essay for Tor.com called "I Have No
Mouth, and I Must Scream: The Duty of the Black Writer During Times of
American Unrest," Onyebuchi meditates on the role of a Black writer in
one of those uprisings.
https://www.tor.com/2020/06/01/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-the-duty-of-the-black-writer-during-times-of-american-unrest/
Onyebuchi describes the tension between the need to process the fear and
anger of police executions of Black people by writing, with the
expectation that Black people have to help the rest of the world
understand their experience, with the emotional price of that expectation.
Having written a seminal book that uses a seminal uprising to create an
important and enduring work of art, Onyebuchi now has to confront art's
insufficiency in either healing wounds or creating change.
Spectacle - the scenes of Black people being executed by cops - is
powerful and incoherent. Onyebuchi compares it to the beheading videos
that Isis uploaded - a rallying point for outrage, a recruiting tool for
monsters, and, above all, a reduction of a human life to symbol.
Some people try to find sense in senseless by converting their
heartbreak to a symbol, to snatch a pebble of positive motion from an
avalanche of wickedness. Mamie Till put her mutilated son's body on
display, saying, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
Such an act of bravery and sorrow. Can we ask that of people? Can we
deny people who demand that we honor their losses?
To be alive now is to be in contradictory states, anger, sorrow, hope
and fear.
"It’s about your safety, you see. Encourage the RTs about cross-racial
solidarity. Don’t worry about whether the work is being done off-screen.
It’s advised, also, that you not point out the hypocrisy in cheering
revolution on screen while vilifying it outside your window."
To have staked a place in the discussion of injustice and its remedies
is to have put yourself out there as a source of hope: "[When] that
audience member raises their hand and is called on and asks their
question, they’re not looking for answers, they’re looking for hope."
This: "It feels irresponsible to be publicly pessimistic at a time like
this."
But this, too: "In the face of an Aggressive Menace dripping with
contempt for your humanity and wishing, when it cannot exploit you, to
punish you, to terrorize you, what use is hope?"
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🙆🏿♂️ This day in history
#15yrsago MPAA won't get Broadcast Flag in digital TV bill!
https://web.archive.org/web/20050603010816/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003619.php
#10yrsago Fish: kids' pirate adventure book is great for adults too
https://boingboing.net/2010/06/01/fish-kids-pirate-adv.html
#10yrsago India seeking other countries to oppose secret,
rich-countries-only copyright treaty negotiations
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/06/india-on-acta-oppose/
#10yrsago Digital Economy Act sets UK gov't on the path to
ever-more-punitive Internet laws
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jun/01/digital-economy-act-will-fail
#5yrsago A startup that will feed you while making airplane noises
http://www.herecomestheairplane.co/
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🙆🏿♂️ Colophon
Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).
Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Friday's progress: 529 words (21044 total).
Currently reading: Adventures of a Dwergish Girl, Daniel Pinkwater
Latest podcast: How Big Tech Monopolies Distort Our Public Discourse
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/06/01/how-big-tech-monopolies-distort-our-public-discourse/
Upcoming appearances: Discussion with Nnedi Okorafor, Torcon, June 14
https://www.torforgeblog.com/torcon-2020/
Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583
This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commerically,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the
basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla
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