Imprimis - Hillsdale College
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE
Imprimis OVER 5,600,000 READER S MONTHLY
Januar y 2021 • Volume 50, Number 1
Who Is in Control? The Need to
Rein in Big Tech
Allum Bokhari
Breitbart News
ALLUM BOKHARI is the senior technology correspondent at
Breitbart News. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford and
was a 2020 Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study
of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. In 2018, he obtained and
published “The Google Tape,” a recording of Google’s top executives
reacting to the 2016 Trump election and declaring their intention to
make the American populist movement a “blip” in history. He is the
author of #Deleted: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on November 8,
2020, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on Big Tech.
In January, when every major Silicon Valley tech company permanently
banned the President of the United States from its platform, there was a backlash
around the world. One after another, government and party leaders—many of them
ideologically opposed to the policies of President Trump—raised their voices against
the power and arrogance of the American tech giants. These included the President
of Mexico, the Chancellor of Germany, the government of Poland, ministers in the
French and Australian governments, the neoliberal center-right bloc in the European
Parliament, the national populist bloc in the European Parliament, the leader of the
Russian opposition (who recently survived an assassination attempt), and the Russian
government (which may well have been behind that attempt).
Common threats create strange bedfellows. Socialists, conservatives, national-
ists, neoliberals, autocrats, and anti-autocrats may not agree on much, but they all
recognize that the tech giants have accumulated far too much power. None like theHILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERT Y SINCE 1844
idea that a pack of American hipsters in which predated Berners-Lee’s inven-
Silicon Valley can, at any moment, cut off tion. Corporations like CompuServe and
their digital lines of communication. Prodigy ran their own online networks
I published a book on this topic prior in the 1990s—networks that were sepa-
to the November election, and many who rate from the Web and had access points
called me alarmist then are not so sure of that were different from web browsers.
that now. I built the book on interviews These privately-owned networks were
with Silicon Valley insiders and five open to the public, but CompuServe and
years of reporting as a Breitbart News Prodigy owned every bit of information
tech correspondent. Breitbart created a on them and could kick people off their
dedicated tech reporting team in 2015—a networks for any reason.
time when few recognized the danger In these ways the Web was different.
that the rising tide of left-wing hostility No one owned it, owned the information
to free speech would pose to the vision of on it, or could kick anyone off. That was
the World Wide Web as a free and open the idea, at least, before the Web was cap-
platform for all viewpoints. tured by a handful of corporations.
This inversion of that early libertarian We all know their names: Google,
ideal—the movement from the freedom Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon.
of information to the control of informa- Like Prodigy and CompuServe back in
tion on the Web—has been the story of the ’90s, they own everything on their
the past five years. platforms, and they have the police
power over what can be said and who
*** can participate. But it matters a lot
more today than it did in the ’90s. Back
When the Web was created in the then, very few people used online ser-
1990s, the goal was that everyone who vices. Today everyone uses them—it is
wanted a voice could have one. All a per- practically impossible not to use them.
son had to do to access the global mar- Businesses depend on them. News pub-
ketplace of ideas was to go online and set lishers depend on them. Politicians and
up a website. Once created, the website political activists depend on them. And
belonged to that person. Especially if crucially, citizens depend on them for
the person owned his own server, no information.
one could deplatform him. That was by Today, Big Tech doesn’t just mean
design, because the Web, when it was control over online information. It
invented, was competing with other means control over news. It means con-
types of online services that were not so trol over commerce. It means control
free and open. over politics. And how are the corporate
It is important to remember that the tech giants using their control? Judging
Web, as we know it today—a network of by the three biggest moves they have
websites accessed through browsers— made since I wrote my book—the cen-
was not the first online service ever cre- soring of the New York Post in October
ated. In the 1990s, Sir Timothy Berners- when it published its blockbuster stories
Lee invented the technology that under- on Biden family corruption, the censor-
pins websites and web browsers, creating ship and eventual banning from the Web
the Web as we know it today. But there of President Trump, and the coordinated
were other online services, some of takedown of the upstart social media
−´
Imprimis (im-pri-mis), [Latin]: in the first place
EDITOR DEPUT Y EDITORS ART DIRECTOR STAFF ASSISTANTS
Douglas A. Jeffrey Matthew D. Bell Shanna Cote Kim Ellsworth
Timothy W. Caspar Markie Repp
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Samantha Strayer
Lucinda Grimm
Copyright © 2021 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College.
Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used:
“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”
2 ISSN 0277-8432JANUARY 2021 • VOLUME 50, NUMBER 1 < hillsdale.edu
site Parler—it is obvious that Big Tech’s down the Yankees, they’ll figure out if
priority today is to support the political you’re a Red Sox fan. Even if your smart
Left and the Washington establishment. phone is turned off, they’ll track your
Big Tech has become the most pow- location. They know who you work for,
erful election-influencing machine in who your friends are, when you’re walk-
American history. It is not an exag- ing your dog, whether you go to church,
geration to say that if the technologies when you’re standing in line to vote,
of Silicon Valley are allowed to develop and on and on.
to their fullest extent, without any As I already mentioned, Big Tech
oversight or checks and balances, then also monitors how our beliefs and
we will never have another free and behaviors change over time. They iden-
fair election. But the power of Big Tech tify the types of content that can change
goes beyond the manipulation of politi- our beliefs and behavior, and they put
cal behavior. As one of my Facebook that knowledge to use. They’ve done
sources told me in an interview for my this openly for a long time to manipu-
book: “We have thousands of people on late consumer behavior—to get us to
the platform who have gone from far click on certain ads or buy certain prod-
right to center in the past year, so we ucts. Anyone who has used these plat-
can build a model from those people forms for an extended period of time
and try to make everyone else on the has no doubt encountered the creepy
right follow the same path.” Let that phenomenon where you’re searching
sink in. They don’t just want to control for information about a product or a
information or even voting behav- service—say, a microwave—and then
ior—they want to manipulate people’s minutes later advertisements for micro-
worldview. waves start appearing on your screen.
Is it too much to say that Big Tech These same techniques can be used to
has prioritized this kind of manipula- manipulate political opinions.
tion? Consider that Twitter is currently I mentioned that Big Tech has
facing a lawsuit from a victim of child recently demonstrated ideological bias.
sexual abuse who says that the com- But it is equally true that these com-
pany repeatedly failed to take down a panies have huge economic interests at
video depicting his assault, and that it stake in politics. The party that holds
eventually agreed to do so only after power will determine whether they
the intervention of an agent from the are going to get government contracts,
Department of Homeland Security. So whether they’re going to get tax breaks,
Twitter will take it upon itself to ban and whether and how their industry
the President of the United States, but is will be regulated. Clearly, they have a
alleged to have taken down child por- commercial interest in political con-
nography only after being prodded by trol—and currently no one is preventing
federal law enforcement. them from exerting it.
To understand how effective Big
*** Tech’s manipulation could become,
consider the feedback loop.
How does Big Tech go about manip- As Big Tech constantly collects data
ulating our thoughts and behavior? It about us, they run tests to see what
begins with the fact that these tech com- information has an impact on us. Let’s
panies strive to know everything about say they put a negative news story about
us—our likes and dislikes, the issues someone or something in front of us,
we’re interested in, the websites we visit, and we don’t click on it or read it. They
the videos we watch, who we voted for, keep at it until they find content that
and our party affiliation. If you search has the desired effect. The feedback loop
for a Hannukah recipe, they’ll know constantly improves, and it does so in a
you’re likely Jewish. If you’re running way that’s undetectable.
3HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERT Y SINCE 1844
What determines what appears at But even more troubling, I think,
the top of a person’s Facebook feed, are the invisible things these companies
Twitter feed, or Google search results? do. Consider “quality ratings.” Every
Does it appear there because it’s popu- Big Tech platform has some version of
lar or because it’s gone viral? Is it there this, though some of them use differ-
because it’s what you’re interested in? Or ent names. The quality rating is what
is there another reason Big Tech wants it determines what appears at the top of
to be there? Is it there because Big Tech your search results, or your Twitter
has gathered data that suggests it’s likely or Facebook feed, etc. It’s a numerical
to nudge your thinking or your behav- value based on what Big Tech’s algo-
ior in a certain direction? How can we rithms determine in terms of “quality.”
know? In the past, this score was determined
by criteria that were
somewhat objective:
If Big Tech’s capabilities are allowed to devel- if a website or post
op unchecked and unregulated, these compa- contained viruses,
nies will eventually have the power not only to malware, spam, or
suppress existing political movements, but to copyrighted mate-
anticipate and prevent the emergence of new rial, that would
ones. This would mean the end of democracy negatively impact
as we know it and place us under the thumb its quality score. If
a video or post was
of an unaccountable oligarchy.
gaining in popular-
ity, the quality score
What we do know is that Big Tech would increase. Fair enough.
openly manipulates the content people Over the past several years, how-
see. We know, for example, that Google ever—and one can trace the begin-
reduced the visibility of Breitbart News ning of the change to Donald Trump’s
links in search results by 99 percent in victory in 2016—Big Tech has intro-
2020 compared to the same period in duced all sorts of new criteria into the
2016. We know that after Google intro- mix that determines quality scores.
duced an update last summer, clicks Today, the algorithms on Google
on Breitbart News stories from Google and Facebook have been trained to
searches for “Joe Biden” went to zero detect “hate speech,” “misinforma-
and stayed at zero through the elec- tion,” and “authoritative” (as opposed
tion. This didn’t happen gradually, but to “non-authoritative”) sources.
in one fell swoop—as if Google flipped Algorithms analyze a user’s network,
a switch. And this was discoverable so that whatever users follow on social
through the use of Google’s own traf- media—e.g., “non-authoritative” news
fic analysis tools, so it isn’t as if Google outlets—affects the user’s quality
cared that we knew about it. score. Algorithms also detect the use of
Speaking of flipping switches, I have language frowned on by Big Tech—e.g.,
noted that President Trump was col- “illegal immigrant” (bad) in place of
lectively banned by Twitter, Facebook, “undocumented immigrant” (good)—
Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and adjust quality scores accordingly.
and every other social media platform And so on.
you can think of. But even before that, This is not to say that you are
there was manipulation going on. informed of this or that you can look up
Twitter, for instance, reduced engage- your quality score. All of this happens
ment on the President’s tweets by over invisibly. It is Silicon Valley’s version
eighty percent. Facebook deleted posts of the social credit system overseen
by the President for spreading so-called by the Chinese Communist Party. As
disinformation. in China, if you defy the values of the
4JANUARY 2021 • VOLUME 50, NUMBER 1 < hillsdale.edu
ruling elite or challenge narratives that The most important demand we can
the elite labels “authoritative,” your make of lawmakers and regulators is
score will be reduced and your voice that Big Tech be forbidden from activat-
suppressed. And it will happen silently, ing these filters without our knowledge
without your knowledge. and consent. They should be prohibited
This technology is even scarier from doing this—and even from nudg-
when combined with Big Tech’s ability ing us to turn on a filter—under penalty
to detect and monitor entire networks of losing their Section 230 immunity as
of people. A field of computer science publishers of third party content. This
called “network analysis” is dedicated policy should be strictly enforced, and
to identifying groups of people with it should extend even to seemingly non-
shared interests, who read similar web- political filters like relevance and popu-
sites, who talk about similar things, who larity. Anything less opens the door to
have similar habits, who follow similar manipulation.
people on social media, and who share Our ultimate goal should be a mar-
similar political viewpoints. Big Tech ketplace in which third party companies
companies are able to detect when par- would be free to design filters that could
ticular information is flowing through be plugged into services like Twitter,
a particular network—if there’s a news Facebook, Google, and YouTube. In
story or a post or a video, for instance, other words, we would have two sepa-
that’s going viral among conservatives rate categories of companies: those that
or among voters as a whole. This gives host content and those that create filters
them the ability to shut down a story to sort through that content. In a mar-
they don’t like before it gets out of hand. ketplace like that, users would have the
And these systems are growing more maximum level of choice in determining
sophisticated all the time. their online experiences. At the same
time, Big Tech would lose its power to
*** manipulate our thoughts and behavior
and to ban legal content—which is just
If Big Tech’s capabilities are allowed a more extreme form of filtering—from
to develop unchecked and unregulated, the Web.
these companies will eventually have This should be the standard we
the power not only to suppress existing demand, and it should be industry-
political movements, but to anticipate wide. The alternative is a kind of digital
and prevent the emergence of new ones. serfdom. We don’t allow old-fashioned
This would mean the end of democracy serfdom anymore—individuals and
as we know it, because it would place businesses have due process and can’t be
us forever under the thumb of an unac- evicted because their landlord doesn’t
countable oligarchy. like their politics. Why shouldn’t we
The good news is, there is a way to also have these rights if our business or
rein in the tyrannical tech giants. And livelihood depends on a Facebook page
the way is simple: take away their power or a Twitter or YouTube account?
to filter information and filter data on This is an issue that goes beyond
our behalf. partisanship. What the tech giants are
All of Big Tech’s power comes from doing is so transparently unjust that all
their content filters—the filters on “hate Americans should start caring about
speech,” the filters on “misinformation,” it—because under the current arrange-
the filters that distinguish “authorita- ment, we are all at their mercy. The
tive” from “non-authoritative” sources, World Wide Web was meant to liber-
etc. Right now these filters are switched ate us. It is now doing the opposite. Big
on by default. We as individuals can’t Tech is increasingly in control. The
turn them off. But it doesn’t have to be most pressing question today is: how are
that way. we going to take control back? ■
5You can also read
