PassW0rd – 10 March 2021 (TechLash)

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Speaker C: Hello, I’m Peter Warren and I’m a free I’m afraid you might find what I’m going to say next rather upsetting. This is Password on Resonance FM, exploring the ramifications of technology in our society. One of the ramifications of social media, especially in a pandemic lockdown, is that they can do harm to young children. Children like Antonella Secomero, She was 10 years old when she heard about the blackout challenge on TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app. Antonella borrowed her father’s belt and hid in the bedroom to film herself on TikTok as she tightened it around her neck. At her funeral, Archbishop Corrado Lorefici said, Antonella’s death is a warning and an appeal to us all. This pandemic has made our children more fragile, more afraid. They are in a hurry to grow up, and parents at times feel uneasy because their children no longer want to be children. They want to take flight despite their fragility, despite their fear. Meanwhile, in another part of Italy, a 9-year-old boy died in similar circumstances, making a YouTube video on his mother’s smartphone. Phone. And in Trinidad, another 9-year-old, Emmanuel Parryon, took the TikTok challenge and choked himself to death. Now, you might think that these are just individual tragedies, but at least in Italy, they have unleashed a major government crackdown with TikTok banned for 6 weeks. Guido Scorza, the Italian data protection czar, told Password The Italian data protection authority have ordered video app TikTok to block the accounts of any users whose age it cannot verify. The Italian regulator Garante invoked an emergency provision used only for the first time since the EU’s data protection rules came into force in 2018. That allowed it to deal with TikTok directly. This action by the Italians comes as big technology companies across the world are facing scrutiny and criticism, with other governments also attempting to control the activities of what they call GAFA—Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. They’re accused of propagating terrorism, extremism, stifling free speech, killing quality journalism, institutionalizing racism, sexism, and other biases, throwing people out of work, encouraging self-harm, eating disorders and suicides, invading privacy, interfering in elections, facilitating state surveillance, and making huge profits without paying fair taxes. I could go on, since there are many more criticisms. The Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament have even made a video about their concerns targeting Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker B: Our dependency on big tech is too high. Who doesn’t use Google to search, YouTube to watch videos, Facebook to share content, or WhatsApp to send messages? And we use them on a daily basis with colleagues, friends, and family. The thing is, we think these services are free, but that is just not true. Thanks to being tricked by smooth interfaces and free access to services, services, we lose more and more control over our own data. These big tech companies know our every click, every website, where we are in real time, medical data, and above all, our mood. They profit from our mood by tapping into how we are feeling. Big tech uses our data and focuses on personalized advertising. And it is really you who pays for it. A shocking 98.5% of Facebook’s profits and 83.3% of Google’s profits are made through advertising. These data hoarders know exactly when, how, and why we are most susceptible to buying something. So it’s simple. Politicians need to act now to stop personalized ads. To end Big Tech’s perverse business models. Last time Europe regulated digital services was back in 2000. Zuckerberg was still in high school, while YouTube, Twitter, and Airbnb didn’t even exist. Let’s fight to stop this control over you. Transparency requirements are important, But they’re not enough. The core of the problem is these companies make money from your mood. We have to change this, and we have to change it now.

Speaker C: Together, all of these criticisms are known as the techlash, a backlash against technology. Techlash. With the Password team, I’ve been checking out these accusations and also talking to an industry insider who defends big tech. Tech. Let’s start with Shrems. Shrems, you remember Max Shrems, the Austrian student who took Facebook to court for retaining his personal private information. He won, but Facebook didn’t change its processes. So Max went back to court. He won again. Still no change from Facebook. But in his home city of Vienna, MacShrems has founded an online privacy think tank. It’s called NOYB. That stands for None of Your Business. Password’s Jane Wyatt made it her business to talk to their lawyer, Romain Robert.

Speaker E: Even myself, working in the data protection world for 20 years, being what I could say maybe an expert, and maybe you’re never quite an expert in every field, but I think that I kind of know what it’s about. I think I’m still struggling to understand the privacy policy, to understand what is done with my data. And of course I have to use all these tools and this telephone and computers, that’s for sure. And I think that’s why NOB is also interesting. You just try, we try to collectively provide an answer to these people. The companies are usually violating the law explicitly and knowingly. And that’s what NOIB wants to fight for. It is not always up to the consumer to make a choice. It’s like asking you to choose between two toxic food in the supermarkets. You have to choose this provider or this provider if both are really bad for you. You really think you have a free choice? I think the free choice is just to have providers and companies complying with the law. And I think that’s why NOIB is here, just to make complaints to do class actions or judicial redress action just to make sure that the law is complied with. And I didn’t mention it, but NOIB is really focusing on strategic litigation, meaning that we want to go before the court and the data protection authorities to make the— not the law change, but just to have the law enforced. And that’s the problem, because if you just feel that— if the consumers feel that they are protected enough by the DPAs and the court, they are wrong. They are understaffed, they don’t have the means and the resources to protect their privacy. We need the civil society also, of course. It’s like a consumer organization when all these consumers are just gathering, they just gather to be stronger together. And organizations like NOVE and other NGOs protecting digital rights are of course more efficient if you just ask them to protect your privacy on your behalf. It’s really this idea of let’s do it together because alone in front of our computer, we can’t understand what is done, we can’t understand this privacy policy, policies. We don’t have 2 days to read the last terms and conditions of Facebook. And I think the idea is just to have experts who are just happy to do that for you and just to communicate and to give you advice. But free choice does not exist if you just— you are left with a choice with people just violating the law. It is not a free choice.

Speaker B: But hang on a minute. I’m going to be a devil’s advocate here and say You mentioned we don’t have 2 days to read all the terms and conditions, but they are there. And you know, if we’re choosing between food items in the supermarket, it’s up to us to read the label.

Speaker G: Surely the consumers also have a responsibility to know what they’re doing, to know where they’re leaving their personal traces, their information, their photographs, and so on. Shouldn’t the consumer also take responsibility?

Speaker E: Of course, and I didn’t say that the consumer did not have to take responsibility, but I’m not an expert in the pharma industry, the drug industry, or the food industry, but I would bet a million that the regulations in the food industry and in the pharma industry are way better enforced than in the privacy industry. And why is that? We were told that this is a fundamental right and we don’t see anything done to enforce it and just to respect it. But if you go to the supermarket as a consumer, of course you will read the label, but you have this expectation of protection by your government, like approving the food supply, having health and security checks and verification of the production of your food. You have all this regulation and they are usually enforced, and I’m sure they are not totally enforced as well. But why should it be different for privacy? Why should the consumer not be relying and trusting their authorities when it comes to using products that are just using their data. I think it’s the same. There is a parallel in other products and services, but I don’t see these efforts in protecting privacy as I see it in other services and products. Safety of the train, safety of the planes, you have a lot of regulation. You have one good regulation for data protection, but you don’t see it enforced. And I would say to go a little bit further, we have also quite concrete risks like the Cambridge Analytica data breach that you heard about, I guess, 5 years ago when there was this manipulation from this company of the data to influence and nudge people to vote a different direction. And that’s very concerning, of course. And that’s because of the power of this company to abuse the data, to manipulate the data. And that’s what I would like to reach. And it’s very difficult to explain, but the more you give data to these big companies, the more you just feed the giants. The more power to give them, the more power you give them, the more power they will have, and the more power they will use. And that’s also something we know in competition: you abuse your dominance if you have dominance, you abuse your power. And that’s the risk. Collectively, we will be subject to a huge power that we cannot control. The government, you can vote for who you vote for, and there is a real risk, of course. We’ve been, especially in EU history, we know that the information you give to the government may be really risky to you. But we don’t have the control that we have on the government when it comes to these big companies. We cannot vote for who is the CEO of Amazon or Facebook, so you don’t know what they do with data. So, and this notion of choice and risk is at the core of privacy, of course.

Speaker C: The right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression are often in conflict with each other. And with other overriding imperatives. Keeping society safe from extremists, armed insurrectionists, and terrorists is one of them. Analyst James Bath from Sibylline has been tracking the transatlantic networks in the encrypted Telegram app.

Speaker F: The research that we did looked at growing transatlantic ties between US extremist groups and UK extremist groups. And what we did is we looked specifically at Telegram, and the channels that we looked at in the UK were the Tommy Robinson Telegram channel and the Britain First Telegram channel. And what we saw is that in January there were massive spikes in both the membership and the content or the reach of these channels. And digging a little deeper, there’s a website called TGStat which we use to assess the analytics of these channels, and Tommy Robinson went from 37,700 followers roughly on the 9th of January to 57,000 just 3 days later, and then all the way up to 78,000 by the end of January. And this we tied directly back to a shout-out from the Proud Boys Uncensored channel in the US, which is now called the Western Chauvinist Channel. And likewise with Britain First, they had a massive spike at the exact same period with a shout-out from the Proud Boys channel. And then later in the month, we actually saw an increase from 19,000 all the way up to 24,000 within a matter of 2 days, purely because of a shout-out from another US-based channel called The Trumpist. And that— what’s interesting is that Trumpist tweet— or not tweet, sorry, Telegram post— was taken down within 24 hours, either by the channel moderators themselves or by Telegram. However, it was seen by tens of thousands of people, which we could see from, from the saved version on TGsat, and as a result we saw a 5,000 increase in the membership of Britain First directly related to this shoutout. So we’re seeing growing transnational ties between the US and UK, which is leading to a growth in, in the membership and reach of the UK-based channels.

Speaker C: What does it mean for us? Why should we be worried?

Speaker F: What’s interesting about Telegram is that these forwarded channels, a huge amount of extremist content on Telegram comes from forwarded content from other channels. And I think the way to view this is in a kind of similar way to Facebook’s algorithm and recommending pages or YouTube’s algorithm, these recommended videos. And in the same way that those sorts of things are well documented to lead people down this rabbit hole into an echo chamber, these Telegram channels are creating kind of a hyper echo chamber because it’s no longer a random algorithm that kind of ends up leading the majority of people to the majority of posts being extremists, but it’s 100% because we’re taking one extremist channel and they will forward content from X number of channels who are— it’s their choosing. So you start with one channel and you end up with hundreds, which is off the basis of that one. So you create these really hyper echo chambers. I think another way to think about this really though is the internationalization of certain narratives within the far-right industry. One thing that the pandemic has done is to allow for kind of transnational narratives within the right-wing extremism community. Prior to the pandemic, there were some obvious differences in the way that communities in the US and the UK viewed, for example, their relationship to governments or their relationship to migrants. We saw in the US, I mean, there’s a huge history of anti-governmentalism within the right-wing community, in a similar kind of fashion in Germany.. But in the UK, that is not really here. Instead, what we see in the UK is a history of anti-migration within the right-wing community. But the pandemic provides kind of this overarching narrative through which all of these separate, different right-wing extremist narratives are being funnelled into one. So, it is really amplifying kind of views and this transnational aspect of these narratives here.

Speaker C: James Barth’s research shows how even in closed groups on Telegram, a few words can trigger a growing violent white supremacist movement. Words like those got former United States President Donald Trump banned for life from Facebook and Twitter. Equally, the echo chambers effect also reinforces campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. And the internet’s ability to make content go viral creates unlikely superstars out of people like Hanforth Parish Council’s Jackie Weaver, and Rod Ponton, that US attorney who appeared as a cat on a conference call with a judge. But in the case of white supremacy, some people argue that its racist attitudes are already built into the architecture of the social media. On International Women’s Day, the United Nations Education and Science branch, UNESCO, hosted a global debate. I was part of it. And so I asked the panel what they thought of the tech clash. Here’s Meredith Broussard, associate professor of data journalism at New York University and author of Artificial Unintelligence, and Wanda Munoz, a human rights and AI disarmament expert for the Mexican government.

Speaker A: So I would say that we’re not heading toward any kind of rejection of technology anytime soon, nor should we, because technology is great. You know, technology is the reason that we can send baby pictures around the globe. Technology is the reason that we have clean drinking water in so many places around the globe. Technology is really important. The progress of technology is important. But what we should be thinking is how can we make our technology more inclusive, more ethical? And there is a techlash going on since about 2017, 2018. We’ve been talking more about the problems embedded in our technology, especially in our social media technologies. And this is a really important conversation to have because we should not assume that technology is without flaws. We should not assume that because we’re using more technology, it’s going to make everything better, faster, and cheaper. We should put people first. In the center of our decision-making and make decisions that are going to lead us toward a better world as opposed to just replicating and magnifying the existing problems in the world today. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you, Natasha. From my side, I agree that I don’t think that there’s going to be a rejection of technology per se, but I think that there’s a lot of work that we need to do just to make everything that’s going on in AI more accessible. And I agree with Meredith that AI is difficult, but I think it’s— we have— you can say that a lot of things are difficult, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the obligation to make sure that everyone who’s going to be affected or who could benefit should have access to that information.

Speaker C: Thank you, Wanda. So is it the fault of search engines, e-commerce websites, and social networks if their algorithms are trained on datasets that are biased against certain groups in society? Society? It’s debatable. Tech fans argue that their online services are just means of transmission, and they should no more be held accountable for what’s posted on them than a sewer pipe is responsible for the filth that flows through it. Yet when Facebook removed the profiles of Australia’s mainstream news providers, it provoked a strong reaction. Professor Derek Wilding of Sydney University of Technology.

Speaker H: It was interesting that here there was certainly a backlash to the decision by Facebook to remove news, partly because— temporarily, I mean— partly because in the process they took down a whole range of non-news organizations, from, say, a local hospital through to, you know, all kinds of community organizations that that don’t employ journalists, but this overreach in responding to the government action I think really focused a lot of people, including consumers, on one of the very issues that has been underlying this attempt over the last few years to look at the impact of digital platforms. And that is that they have, not just in the competition sense, achieved a large market share, but they’ve established a very prominent, almost dominant role in provision of information, and that their actions can actually have quite, you know, quite serious impacts, or can affect people’s lives in ways that they hadn’t expected. So one dimension of that is the collection of data on consumers, and we’ve seen that in the Cambridge Analytica incident in the UK and elsewhere a couple of years ago, and there’s been increasing attention to the use of data since that time, I think. But also this kind of response from Facebook to removing news suddenly had a lot of people that hadn’t thought about the issue step back and say, oh, Facebook can do that. And that has actually underpinned another aspect of this piece of legislation, which is mostly we talk about the remuneration aspect, but there’s another element of this act that says that Google and Facebook, to the extent that they are actually regulated by the act, must give news businesses 14 days’ notice of changes to their algorithms that have a significant effect on essentially on referral traffic from digital platforms to news sites. And that would, that so separately from the remuneration aspect, that’s a recognition that in the past the platforms have made decisions which have really significant effects on businesses that have, that now use them as a key source of distribution. And while we might say, okay, well, that’s an aspect of everyday business for a whole range of service providers. When it comes to news, because of that public function, there’s a need to actually exercise more care over decisions that would have a significant impact on the provision of news. So parallel to the remuneration aspect, there’s this other one that’s been trying to address the power of digital platforms to affect users, or in this case, news businesses.

Speaker C: Is this an arms wrestle? Is this an arms wrestle by national politicians? We’re seeing this beginning to happen in Poland. We’ve been seeing it beginning to happen in Hungary. Is this— some people are calling it the splinternet, but perhaps that’s unfair. Is this organization saying what goes on in our country is our business and what goes on in terms of news in our country is our business? And the data collection that goes on in our country should be controlled by us and it should relate to our laws.

Speaker H: Is it that? There’s absolutely an element of that, of asserting national sovereignty. In fact, when Facebook withdrew news and other sites temporarily, it reached, it really reached a peak in terms of the expression of the actions of corporations over national governments. That the rhetoric there turned down again when Facebook restored those services. And it hasn’t— it’s always been an element, I think, of this debate, but I think there’s a recognition that you do need to balance the need for cross— for multinational businesses to observe local community standards, for example, and the need for some kind of recognition that these are services that consumers do, certainly do value, and people want to have Google search, they want Facebook, and to a certain extent you’ve got to accept that they need to operate within an international environment. So if there’s too much national regulation, those services become unviable. So there’s different regulatory tools that we can use, and we’ve started to, to adopt those and to regulate digital platforms in a number of different ways. And part of that is about this, this aspect of seeking to find the point at which it’s appropriate to bring those international businesses within national regulatory frameworks and apply local community standards to them.

Speaker C: Professor Derek Wilding, another Australian. Business coach Peter Sewell is currently in a quarantine hotel in Sydney, so he’s taking care of his business online in a new app called Clubhouse. Clubhouse is touted as a high-class professional network entirely based in audio.

Speaker G: For Peter Sewell, it works. It can be up to 1,000 I’ve seen in one one go. So in those groups, they have like maybe like 10 moderators, and the general kind of understanding that I have is that because I haven’t actually moderated a group yet, I’m interested in it, but those moderators will be going through the room clicking on people’s profiles, and anyone that they think might be interesting to the, the room, they will invite those people to the platform. So you’ll get amazing content in some of these rooms. You, you would usually pay maybe hundreds of dollars for the kind of stuff that you’re hearing, and Also, some of the rooms have like question and answers, so you’re basically listening in on live consultations with some of these people. And yeah, they’re giving really good quality answers as well. So that’s the bigger rooms. Then you have some smaller rooms, like it might be just 12 people when when you’re just opening up the app and you’ll just click on that room and jump in. And they might invite you straight to the platform too and just say, hey Peter, I just saw you pop into the room. Would you like to just share something about yourself and who you are and why you’re on Clubhouse? I get the, the feeling that it’s a big learning experience at the moment for everyone. So there’s a lot of those general questions like, how are you finding Clubhouse? What opportunities do you think there could be in the future? These kinds of questions are kind of shaping up the discussions as well.

Speaker B: Peter, it sounds very exciting, but how is it going to make anybody any money?

Speaker G: The business model is really try before you buy. So you’re just popping in, you’re getting exposed to these people in a real personal way. So rather than just clicking on an Instagram profile and just— you’re just sort of scrolling through, through a few photos, it’s more like a YouTube experience where you’re actually connecting with the personality of of the person in a better way. And in audio, you can actually, it’s very interactive. The person, their style, the quality of their, kind of like their credibility, like when you’re hearing them speak, you’re kind of instantly either feeling a rapport with them or maybe curious to know more. And maybe over a period of time, that’s going to— you’ll be connecting on with them on, on Instagram. At this stage, Clubhouse is mostly connected to Instagram and Twitter, so that’s kind of the communications options once you’ve heard the person, seen their profile, and then you can connect with them. And I’ve already reached out to people via Instagram and invited them on a podcast that I’m putting together at the moment.

Speaker C: But even as Peter was talking to us, tweets and blog posts were appearing condemning Clubhouse because it records and retains all the interactions. Bad for our right to a private life. And it’s exclusive, just like a club. You have to be invited. So that’s not going to please the UNESCO people who want diversity and inclusivity. Well, what’s the alternative? Twitter has an audio-only app called Spaces, and the tech clash against the big companies has seen rival social networks being established by national governments in Poland and Hungary. China has Weibo, Russia VKontakte, the Indians are working on Atmanabihar, and I apologize if I’ve mispronounced that, a new secure iteration of the internet. Could the effect of the tech clash be to break up the global monopolies, resulting in a so-called splinternet of nation-state-based online networks? Techlash. You’re listening to Password with me, Peter Warren, on Resonance FM, where the next show coming up is A World in London hosted by DJ Ritu. Now, how should governments respond to the techlash? At Westminster, a special committee of the House of Lords has been inquiring. What new laws or regulatory powers are needed? Giving evidence: a member of the Facebook Oversight Board, the independent body that decides what bad content, fake news, or hate speech should be taken down and which users should be banned. As well as being a member of the Facebook Oversight Board, he’s also the former editor of the Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger.

Speaker A: He appeared before the noble lords and ladies with Kate Cronick of the American College of Law. We hear so much about Donald Trump and we hear so much about like high-profile, high-profile actors that are censored by Facebook, but there are thousands and millions of people that are censored and their speech is taken down at really crucial moments right now, and the board is their last source of any type of way to get their account back. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, obviously, and I think that one of the things that strikes me as really, really meaningful is how much we’ve all come to rely on these platforms to meet, to see each other, to conduct business and government, and that when you decide to take down someone’s entire account or to ban their speech, you really deprive them very very, very truly of their right to association and their right to, their right to kind of live their lives. So I think that, I think that those small, those are not small questions. And so I really think that those need to be the focus. It has plenty, the board has plenty to do in that category before it gets into the business of kind of taking down or attacking the certain products that Facebook puts out that there hasn’t been yet any type of evidence presented about where the harms are necessarily. Thank you, Kate.

Speaker I: And Alan, do you want to comment? Yeah, I mean, in general, I was very struck by all the people working on new technology who are fascinated by Gutenberg. My colleague Geoff Jarvis wrote a book about Gutenberg, which, you know, say that’s 1450. It feels to me we’re about 1457 at the moment. So, you know, there are centuries of turmoil and forces that are going to be unleashed on society, and we’re really in the foothills. So none of this is going to be solved quickly. I agree with Kate that I think the Board will want to expand. I think we will, in its scope. I think we’re already a bit frustrated by just saying take it down or leave it up, you know. What happens if you want to, as we say, make something less viral? What happens if you would want to put an interstitial? What happens if, without commenting on any profile, high-profile current cases, you didn’t want to ban somebody for life but you wanted to have a sin bin? So that if they misbehaved, you could chuck them back off again, a sort of yellow card. So I think all these things are things that the board may ask Facebook for in time, but we have to get our feet under the table first and prove that we can do what we want. At some point, we’re going to ask to see the algorithm, I feel sure, you know, whatever that means.

Speaker A: And, you know, whether we can understand it when we see it is a different matter, but—

Speaker I: Understand it indeed, yes. You know, these are all things that are down the road. Great, thank you very much.

Speaker C: Thank you, Baroness Reebok.

Speaker I: Okay, well, let’s stick with the oversight board and the challenges that you face. Lord Griffiths.

Speaker C: Thank you both for being here, and I must commend Kate for the extraordinary New Yorker piece that she’s written, which was thriller-minute stuff and also helped me to understand things in a very pithy sort of way. And I think that Alan has just mentioned— well, you both mentioned— that the slow speed at which we start, and even harking back to centuries ago, Gutenberg and so on. But I mean, the fact is now that things are expanding so exponentially quickly that we don’t have centuries, and the rules are being made by the platforms, which governments are trying to catch up with subsequently. But it is really cultural difference that I’m interested in here. How on earth do you deal with it? We’ve got such little evidence to go on at the moment, so forgive me for just pointing to things that may be atypical. But two of the cases that are highlighted for us to look at, one, Muslims dealing with the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China compared with the killings in response to cartoon depictions of the prophet in France, and so on, that one. And the other one about Armenians and Azerbaijanis. I mean, if ever you had two cases where there were such fierce oppositional forces in play, and where any judgment that comes out would be perceived by some to be at the expense of the other. It’s how you hold all those things in tension and how you come to a decision. I noticed that one of them has been overturned and one that’s been upheld, and I don’t want you to go into the particulars of these cases, but it’s just illustrative of the complexities that you are in fact dealing with as you move forward.

Speaker A: Kate, if you don’t mind. No, I couldn’t agree more. I think that one of the reasons that I was drawn to this project 5 years ago, of like writing about this, was seeing that these kind of incredibly, incredibly vital and essential conversations around these trade-offs, around these kind of historically oppressed groups, or around censorship in an authoritarian state, state, that these trade-offs were being made by individuals that were working as contract workers. And they were being— the policy that was underscoring what they were basically— how they were enforcing this was being created all by just a bunch of people who really like had no background in free expression necessarily. They were business people sitting in an office, sitting in offices, and some of them were quite wonderful, just purely by accident, and they were quite good at their jobs. But it was, it did feel, it just did feel like the stakes were so high that we needed to create something other than that small group of people being the one that decides these trade-offs of speech. I loved the two cases that you highlighted, particularly for their difficulty, because I don’t know how knowing a little bit more about some of those cases and how hard they were for the board to to decide. I have to say that I think that there’s no way you can make decisions like that at scale. I don’t know how you decide to make those kinds of trade-offs. I mean, those would have been cases that took 3 years for the record to develop and be heard in a US court if they had been kind of challenges to free speech. And so I just think that this, like, what I think is kind of so remarkable is that the whole world is kind of coming alive to how difficult these questions are, who is making— that these decisions have been getting made without them knowing about it, and that the people that were doing it were just like, we don’t need to like point fingers, we just need to create like an expert panel, which is I bet basically what we’ve been doing. And that that is in fact having inquiries like this about how those decisions are being made is exactly the type of process and transparency that we need This is like to get rid of the ghost in the system. And so I just think that this is, your points are excellent and I completely agree.

Speaker I: Alan. Yeah, I think the question about scale is a very interesting one and that’s why it’s not going to be done by next Tuesday. I mean, I found one of the most interesting cases that we’ve done so far was the French doctor who was very keen on hydroxychloroquine and Facebook banned that because they said that that’s the sort of crank solution and we don’t believe in misinformation. But if you looked at it, really it was addressed really to the French regulation agency and saying it was trying to influence them to be more receptive to this. And I’m very worried by banning that kind of speech because where does it then go? It’ll go underground, it’ll go into encrypted channels, and I’m afraid I’m an old John Stuart Millite, you know, I think actually the way to tackle bad speech is to produce good speech, and you’re not really solving anything by pushing it underground. So, but I, you know, I have some sympathies with Facebook because a blanket ban on COVID misinformation would be an easier thing for moderators and machines to understand.

Speaker C: These techlash doubts and problems preoccupy the House of Lords because it’s working on a new law for England and Wales, the Online Harms Bill. Lawmakers across the world are also trying to rein in Big Tech. In Italy with TikTok, at the European Commission which is imposing fines on Google, Max Schrems is at the European Court of Justice, the French Global Security Bill, and the Australians as we heard from Derek Wilding. No wonder the technology companies last year spent €19 million just to lobby the European institutions in Brussels. Their messaging is slick.

Speaker D: Just listen to this explainer. There’s what you can see on Facebook: the videos, the ads, your friends’ profiles. And then there’s what you can’t see: the large collections of data underneath it all. Some of that data is about people who don’t even use the platform.

Speaker C: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook.

Speaker H: Yes or no?

Speaker D: Congressman, in general, we collect data of people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes. The information Facebook gathers about people who don’t use Facebook has come to be known by critics as shadow profiles. Shadow profiles work like this: You and Jane are friends. She’s on Facebook, but you’re not. One day, Jane uses a feature called People You May Know to figure out if you happen to be on the platform. When she clicks the “Get Started” button, it gives her a list of friends who are already on the site. But underneath, what’s also happening is that all of her friends’ contact information is being imported into Facebook, even those who don’t have an account. So even though you’ve never signed up for it, Facebook now has data about you and stores it as a shadow profile.

Speaker B: For its algorithms to work and for its microtargeting to work, for its business model to work, it has to remain a surveillance machine.

Speaker D: The company says it uses so-called shadow profile data to monitor people who might threaten their platform and to make ads more relevant. Like other tech companies, Facebook collects a lot of data. When you sign up for an account, You’re giving them permission to do this. But it can be hard to understand just how much of your data they’re actually collecting. There are two main ways Facebook monitors you as you browse sites on the web, whether or not you have an account. The first is through the like and share buttons. These buttons tell Facebook what you’re looking at, even if you don’t click on them. The other is practically invisible. It’s known as a tracking pixel. It’s a piece of code that creates a transparent 1×1 pixel that can record who you are and what you’re doing without you ever realizing it’s there. What most people don’t know is that the like button, the share button, and the tracking pixel— those are actually beacons, and they’re sending information back to Facebook. According to a study from Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, Facebook’s trackers are present on about 60% of the internet. Facebook says it tracks people around the web to provide a better, more personal experience for its users. It says the data is only stored temporarily and that the company is continuing to take measures to protect your privacy. But over the years, Facebook has been able to gather more information to help advertisers target you. For a time, they were also getting information from data brokers. But there are a series of companies that most Americans aren’t at all aware of that go out and buy up data about each and every one of us. What we buy, where we shop, where we live, what our families are doing. And it’s now being shared with Facebook so that Facebook can target ads back to the user. This past year, the company acknowledged it has been asking users to let it collect phone call history and text messages from some Facebook users with Android phones. And they just launched a camera phone for your home. While you can download a zip file containing some of the hidden data Facebook has collected about you, you might also want to review your privacy settings. Because currently, there are no comprehensive privacy laws in the US for the kind of data collection Facebook does. So in a way, the only thing protecting you from Facebook is Facebook.

Speaker C: Of course, self-regulation is possible. And some tech companies are trying hard to behave ethically. TikTok’s introduced new limits on what users aged under 13 can see and share. Mozilla has introduced a report regret function so that users who go to a site or click on a link that’s got dodgy content, disinformation, or exploitative images, say, can report that they regretted it and tell Mozilla what’s wrong. The company is holding its annual MozFest this month in Amsterdam and online with an emphasis on diversity. As we heard, that’s top of the agenda too for UNESCO’s Gabriella Ramos. She insists that there should be quotas of women and Black and ethnic minority workers across the board.

Speaker B: I haven’t seen any country that has at least being more equal, achieving it without some kind of targeting or affirmative action. So what I would do is that instead of having 85% of developments in artificial intelligence driven by male-only teams, I will make mandatory to have a share of the teams integrated by women. Because in that sense, what you’re doing is you’re breaking these biases by having more diverse teams. And I would not say only women, I would say also minority groups, I would say some other people from different walks of life, because that’s your best shot at not translating your own beliefs and your own way to see life into problematic outcomes. You will always have this testing because more diverse groups challenge each other more and prevent groupthink. And it’s good for the company, it’s good for diversity, and it’s good for the outcome.

Speaker C: And it’s not so difficult to regulate. Let’s put that to one side for a moment. I agree with you. However, a lot of the technology companies, a lot of those people that I’ve interviewed who are involved in the technology sector, ‘Oh look, regulation will slow us down, regulation will stop us from being competitive in the marketplace, what you lot are doing is making somebody carry a red flag in front of the car.’ Well, if I was the owner of that company, maybe I would be saying the same, but time—

Speaker B: I would say game’s up, no? Or how would you say? Yeah, game’s up. Because this was a nice argument when you have the young boys in the garage developing technologies that nobody would know what they will bring, and you really wanted to ensure that innovation was favored and that they fly with it. And I think it was a good decision to go for light-touch regulation. The youngest of this firm is almost 20 years old. I don’t think that we can say that they are going to suffer or that we are going to stifle innovation because we are going to be calling for more diverse teams. On the contrary, if we learn something from the other industries that have been mandated to have certain share of women at the top or share of women at the board, is that these companies become more profitable. And right now, I think there is a very strong cry out loud that we need to counter the downsides of these technologies, that we need to counter the discriminatory bias, that we need to counter the meddling with the democratic processes. We need to counter the misinformation, the disinformation, the hate speech, the echo chambers, the triggering of emotions that are not conducing to anything good. I’m sorry, but governments have a duty of care.. And it’s not to ask regulated enterprises if they want to be regulated. Imagine if the car manufacturing industry is going to be asked, oh, could I tell you something about safety? No, you mandate it, period. And I don’t think they will stifle anything because they’re so strong and so big that they could afford this kind of countering of the bad outcomes.

Speaker C: Gabriella Ramos. She’s especially concerned about artificial intelligence presenting itself as female with a woman’s voice in a flirtatious manner, for example in the Alexa and Siri home speaker services. That’s why UNESCO’s report has the title “I’d Blush If I Could,” which was Siri’s original response to comments like, “You sound so Taxi, Siri. You heard Gabriela Ramos there listing 4 or 5 of the Tech Clash causes. There are more. Surprisingly, the most comprehensive list has been compiled by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an independent body funded by foundations and some technology companies, where Vice President Daniel Castro is ready to debunk debunk no fewer than 22 of the techlash criticisms.

Speaker J: One of the lessons is that we’ve learned things that we know now, 20 years in, that we didn’t know 2 decades ago, and there are opportunities to legislate. But I think the point of the techlash, or the problem with the techlash, is it says, you know, these companies are a problem, or that we, you know, we’re trying to take drastic action, you know, taking a sledgehammer as opposed to a scalpel. Principle. So, for example, you know, there’s this big debate about intermediary liability, you know, the extent to which platforms should be liable for user speech. Certainly, there are cases where we’ve seen bad actors, platforms that are bad actors, platforms that are intentionally soliciting, for example, revenge porn. You know, that’s something that should be illegal, but you can have targeted laws that address those types of problems without reversing the general principle of saying that users are responsible for their speech and platforms are responsible for their conduct.

Speaker C: One of the things that some people have been saying is that the laws as they exist are capable of dealing with issues to do with technology. Other people are saying, no, they don’t. Let’s look at social media companies as an example that they say they’re not publishers, but there seems to be this disagreement about whether they’re publishers or not. There seems to be a need to tighten up some definitions.

Speaker J: Where do you sit in that? Well, I don’t think they’re publishers in the same way that a typical newspaper or magazine might be a publisher, and the distinction that’s made is often because of the volume of third-party content. If a magazine was having to review millions of submissions in an instant, they wouldn’t be responsible either. And for example, you know, this is the same reason that telephone companies aren’t responsible for what you say on the telephone., or that even news broadcasters, when they are broadcasting the news, if somebody says something offensive in a live broadcast, they are not necessarily held responsible for that on a call-in program, for example. We have made these distinctions before, and we should continue to make them. That doesn’t mean that platforms shouldn’t be responsible for their conduct. If they are actively soliciting or engaging in illegal activity, we should do something about that, and oftentimes there are laws to handle that. I think the problem that we have right now is that there are these areas where either something isn’t illegal or where something is just legal and we’re not sure what to do about it. So again, the free speech is really where we keep running into this, where there is clearly legal but harmful speech and government can’t make it illegal. They could, and certainly we’re seeing plenty of countries that want to crack down on free speech and say, you know, what you can and cannot say online, I think most democratic countries don’t want that. And so that’s where there’s this challenge, because the companies do go beyond the legal bounds of free speech. They have very significant community guidelines. The problem is, what do you do when there’s disagreement about what those lines should be? And should the companies be the ones setting those rules, or do we need some kind of other process for that kind of feedback?

Speaker C: And I think that’s where most of the tension exists. But a lot of the people that I have interviewed have said that AI is going to lead to job losses and that, you know, you won’t— that’s when the tech lash will really start because you’ll get, you know, the Luddites coming out. In fact, I think you mentioned the Luddites in your report.

Speaker J: Where are you on that? Well, I mean, we’ve had technological innovation for, you know, all of human history and certainly recent history and consistently The takeaway, if you look at the economic history, is that innovation does not lead to net unemployment. It just doesn’t. It never does. You certainly see it impact jobs in certain industries. There’s certainly absolutely a need for, you know, social safety nets to help workers in transition. There’s no question that that’s important and should be a priority. But we’re talking about net employment, innovation has no impact on that. Innovation, you know, continues. And, you know, as you move from one type of demand to another type of demand, you create new jobs in these other sectors. We’ve seen, you know, very rarely, in fact, entire professions eliminated. Usually what happens is professions are adapted. So you see a few, you know, elevator operators, there’s not very many of those around these days. But for the most part, even travel agents, right? I mean, you still have travel agents even though that entire sector has significantly changed. You still have clerks even though the traditional secretarial pool, which were typists, has really gone away. You still see these types of jobs, they just evolved. We’re going to see the same thing with more AI and automation. Certainly, we’re going to have fewer, for example, trucker jobs as you have you know, more automation in that space, but you still need people to load and unload these trucks. You look at retail and how that shifted in COVID. You know, you have more delivery drivers, you have more people who are personal shoppers that are going into the store and bringing things out to people waiting in cars. So the nature of the job has changed, but you still have these jobs.

Speaker C: Those 22 things that policymakers should know about techlash are all couched in caveats. In case anybody should consider outlawing them. It reminds me of another list in American cult fiction, Catch-22. In Joseph Heller’s novel, it’s a kind of vicious circle. There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational Or was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Or would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t. But if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to. But if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. And here we are in a similar bind to Heller’s characters. Whatever we do to control and limit Big Tech will also control and limit our own lives. Since we are wedded to our Siris and Alexas and Cortanas, our smartphones, our watches, our fitness trackers, search engines, sat navs and cool apps. Techlash. The techlash may be real and may well number many more than 22 legitimate causes for concern. But governing it now with old-fashioned laws would be like bringing back the man with the red flag to warn walk in front of every self-driving electric vehicle on the roads. New thinking is called for, and I’ll bring you some of that in the next edition of Password. This one was produced by Blue Buffery and written by Jane Wyatt. You can find her in Clubhouse. I’m tweeting @PasswordRadio, and you can read more about all of these issues at our website, Future Intelligence.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening. Stay safe.

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