In regard to the Facebook data issue, Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post argues Does Cambridge Analytica have my data? I have no idea. That’s the problem. Piling on to the avalanche of dumping on social media since the 2016 presidential election, Applebaum argues that new mediums like Facebook give new power to anyone seeking to custom-target people for political advertising, which is done by gathering or “mining” data on individuals. This makes possible new forms of propagandizing or smear campaigns, she says.
Targeting has always existed, Applebaum acknowledges. Facebook's business model allows customers to pay nothing for the service because the company makes money selling advertising space. That’s nothing new. That’s how TV worked before the cable era. But while advertisers used surveys to target audiences, modern advertisers can tailor their targeting individually. Political smearing and propaganda have always existed as well, Applebaum acknowledges. So we don’t have a new problem. Thanks to social media, it’s just a more serious problem, according to her. (Notice how she sneaks in the premise that targeting is in fact a problem. It is why television was free before cable, and Facebook is free now.)
Applebaum starts her article with a direct quote from Cambridge Analytica’s managing director, Mark Turnbull.
Applebaum believes that Cambridge Analytica used Facebook both legally (“Facebook . . . allows . . . all marketers . . . to ‘target’ their advertising”) and “possibly illegally” (“fake research project” and “breach of Facebook’s platform policies”).
If fraud, deception, or breach of contract took place, both would be legitimate legal problems. That is not her main concern, though. The problem, she argues, is that the customers have less chance of knowing they're being targeted [?].
My emphasis. “The larger issue” leads to what Applebaum says is “the problem”; that people don’t know, but have a right to know, who is doing the targeting—with particular focus on political targeting.
Notice Applebaum’s subtle focus only on targeting that favored Trump. More on that later.
As to the actual targeting, I say, Well, so what? Does knowing who is sending these political ads to your Facebook page relieve you of the responsibility, as a voter, of investigating the veracity of the opinions, or to confirm that it is not “fake news”, or to consider opposing opinions? What difference does it make whether you know or not?
Now, again, if fraud or breach of contract or violation of the user agreement is involved, that’s wrong. But that’s a different matter, and doesn't particularly concern Applebaum. This “Covert political advertising makes a mockery of election laws in every country that has them,” she claims without explanation or support. How is the spread of political dialogue, whether overt or covert, propaganda or objective, smears or respectful, subversive? It may skirt election laws. But if it does, then it’s those election laws that should be scrutinized, on free speech grounds.
What is her solution to this non-problem?
My emphasis. Applebaum wants us to focus on the issue of “right to know.” Is it the right to know who is expressing a particular opinion? Is it a narrower right to know who is targeting us for political advertisements? I argue that people have the fundamental free speech/press right to express opinions or disseminate information anonymously. We, as consumers, can ask “Who’s put that out?” But we have no inherent “right to know” as long as our rights aren’t violated—as, for example, in the case of fraud or breach of contract. A voter is free to consider the merits of the political message, or discard it.
The “right-to-know” issue is debatable, of course. But I think Applebaum is using the “right-to-know” issue as a smoke screen to smuggle in, to borrow her phrase, “a larger issue”—and one fraught with danger to freedom of speech. Note my emphasis on the last sentence, “If the Internet platforms won’t conform to that minimal standard on their own, it’s time to regulate them.”
This is a major bait-and-switch. If she truly believes in the “right to know,” then why not advocate for specific, objective, narrowly tailored “full disclosure” laws? Why jump to regulation?
The fundamental difference between objective laws and regulation is that a simple law is strictly delimited. For example, a full disclosure law says simply that the originator must identify himself. Regulation is essentially an open-ended power. Clearly articulated laws won’t give the government that kind of arbitrary power. A regulatory agency would. Today’s manifestation of regulation involves a government committee with law-making, i.e. legislative, powers—that is, arbitrary powers. Regulators may start by saying “identify yourself”, and end up deciding what constitutes the propaganda, fake news, or targeted advertising, and using its prosecutorial power accordingly.
Government regulation by its nature involves political manipulation, as political pressure groups lobby regulators to orient the regulations according to their political agendas. Elections require the free, unfettered flow of political speech while leaving the responsibility for sorting it all out with the individual voter. Applebaum worries about election laws being made a “mockery” of by “Covert political advertising”—and then proposes to put government officials rather than voters in charge of sorting out the nature and meaning of the political advertising that voters are allowed to see.
If fraud or breach of contract is involved, the government may properly step in to remedy, through objective laws, the wrongdoing. There is no “wider issue” of “right to know,” as Applebaum asserts. There is, however, a wider issue of freedom of speech and the proper role of government to protect and not infringe on that right. Applebaum’s proposed solution--to regulate Facebook or other social media companies--is worse than any “problem” of knowing who or how personal data is being used. Social media companies, whatever problems they may cause, have opened the door wide for the free flow, sharing, and debating of knowledge, information, and ideas while opening the field to average folks the world over to contribute to and decipher it all. This has greatly reduced the power of politicians and powerful political factions to control the political narratives. That’s a good thing; good for intellectual freedom and good for the democratic process.
Not, apparently, according to many on the Left.
Interestingly, Cambridge Analytica, Applebaum observes, is “the election consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump; the Brexit campaign and dozens of other clients; political parties in Kenya, Mexico and beyond.” This is a clue. Why single out Trump and Brexit out of the dozens? Could it be because Trump and Brexit represent election results not to the liking of the Left?
Since Trump and Brexit, statists mostly of the Leftist variety have been drumbeating for internet regulation, mainly in form of “fighting fake news” or the “addictiveness” of social media. I believe and have said that this call for regulation of social media companies to fight “fake news” is really an attempt to get government into the game of deciding what is or is not legitimate news, a major power of censorship [See also links below]. The Facebook data fiasco, which in fact is merely a breach of contract issue, looks like another wedge issue for the Left to attack free speech.
The Left is so enraged by recent election results that go against their agenda that they are willing to destroy freedom of speech in order to get results more to its liking. Hence, they’re not so much concerned by fake news or right to know or targeted political advertising as they are of being the “gatekeepers” who decide, via the mechanism of government controls, what propaganda, what fake news, or whose targeted political advertising to allow and whose to ban.
Prominent statists like George Soros wants to “break” what he calls “Facebook and Google’s dominance”: “These companies,” Soros asserts, “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This interferes with the functioning of democracy and the integrity of elections.”
In other words, Soros doesn’t approve of U.S. election results. After all, what do we mean by ‘the functioning of democracy” if not to all participants to do precisely that—influence, though persuasion, how people think and behave and thus vote? Not according to Soros, who makes this bizarre assertion:
Voting for Trump or Brexit is no freedom of mind. Voting for Hillary or against Brexit? What Soros really hates is freedom of average people’s minds. So now that elections are not to his liking, he wants to bring the power of the government’s guns down upon the private companies whose successful open platforms empowers average people to share ideas and make up their own minds: “It is only a matter of time,” Soros frighteningly threatens, “before the global dominance of the US internet companies is broken. Regulation and taxation, spearheaded by [EU commissioner for competition Margrethe] Vestager, will be their undoing”—to the advantage of government dominance over our intellectual lives. Under the guise of “freedom of mind,” Soros proposes to control the companies whose platforms greatly expanded the flow of intellectual discourse for “the masses.” Who, in fact, is looking to “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it?” And do it coercively? Who is really attacking our freedom of mind? Leave to to a European statist to attack American companies for promoting food for thought for free minds.
Freedom of mind without freedom of speech is a joke. Never mind “the global dominance of the US internet companies.” That dominance was earned by attracting consumers. Consumers granted them that dominance, and can withdraw it if they like, by refusing to use their platforms. Private companies, even alleged “monopolies,” can not legally harm you. Governments can. If Soros doesn’t like their dominance, he can start (or finance) his own competing company, and run it as he likes if he can draw the consumers. But Soros is a statist thug. His means of dealing with the internet companies’ economic power—the power to satisfy consumers—is to “undo” the Facebooks and Googles with political power—the power of the gun. [for an deep examination of economic vs. political power, see The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger.]
Wittingly or not, and in a more covert way, Applebaum is leaning in the same direction as Soros—and just as wong. As Andrew McKie, Acting Deputy Editor of CapX, observes, There is no grand conspiracy or dark manipulation or brainwashing or threat to democracy being engineered by “Big Technology”.
We should fight against regulation—or political extortion; the threat of regulation if a company doesn’t do what politicians demand—of Facebook or any other social media company as the grave threat to intellectual freedom that regulation is.
Related Reading:
Why Are Anti-Capitalists so Obsessed with Mandatory Campaign Finance "Disclosure"?
Making Private Donations Anonymously is a Right
Stossel: China's Freedom-Crushing 'Social Credit Score'—John Stossel & Maxim Lott
Macron Is Using the "Fake News" Excuse to Attack Press Freedom: Only on the free market of ideas can information be checked and double-checked.--Bill Wirtz
'Fake News' Is Not an Excuse to Regulate the Internet—Zach Weissmueller for Reason.com
Cambridge Analytica's Marketers Weren't Mind-Readers or Brain-Washers—Andrew McKie for CapX
Targeting has always existed, Applebaum acknowledges. Facebook's business model allows customers to pay nothing for the service because the company makes money selling advertising space. That’s nothing new. That’s how TV worked before the cable era. But while advertisers used surveys to target audiences, modern advertisers can tailor their targeting individually. Political smearing and propaganda have always existed as well, Applebaum acknowledges. So we don’t have a new problem. Thanks to social media, it’s just a more serious problem, according to her. (Notice how she sneaks in the premise that targeting is in fact a problem. It is why television was free before cable, and Facebook is free now.)
Applebaum starts her article with a direct quote from Cambridge Analytica’s managing director, Mark Turnbull.
“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then … give it a little push every now and again … like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda,’ because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda,’ the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’”
Applebaum believes that Cambridge Analytica used Facebook both legally (“Facebook . . . allows . . . all marketers . . . to ‘target’ their advertising”) and “possibly illegally” (“fake research project” and “breach of Facebook’s platform policies”).
If fraud, deception, or breach of contract took place, both would be legitimate legal problems. That is not her main concern, though. The problem, she argues, is that the customers have less chance of knowing they're being targeted [?].
But the scandal that has erupted over this reported breach of contract disguises the larger issue: Even when operating legally, the company’s advertising would have been opaque to the people who received it.
My emphasis. “The larger issue” leads to what Applebaum says is “the problem”; that people don’t know, but have a right to know, who is doing the targeting—with particular focus on political targeting.
Political persuasion that used to take place in the open, in Congress or on the hustings. Now it is covert. The average person opening his Facebook feed on a smartphone does not know he has been “targeted” . . . He may not know that his data inclines to the right, which is why he saw a lot of articles in 2016 about the terrible threat of immigrant crime – or that his date shows sympathies with the left, which is why he kept reading stories denouncing Hillary Clinton as a sellout not worth voting for.
Notice Applebaum’s subtle focus only on targeting that favored Trump. More on that later.
As to the actual targeting, I say, Well, so what? Does knowing who is sending these political ads to your Facebook page relieve you of the responsibility, as a voter, of investigating the veracity of the opinions, or to confirm that it is not “fake news”, or to consider opposing opinions? What difference does it make whether you know or not?
Now, again, if fraud or breach of contract or violation of the user agreement is involved, that’s wrong. But that’s a different matter, and doesn't particularly concern Applebaum. This “Covert political advertising makes a mockery of election laws in every country that has them,” she claims without explanation or support. How is the spread of political dialogue, whether overt or covert, propaganda or objective, smears or respectful, subversive? It may skirt election laws. But if it does, then it’s those election laws that should be scrutinized, on free speech grounds.
What is her solution to this non-problem?
As Turnbull put it so eloquently, the new practitioners of propaganda don’t want their old-fashioned smear campaigns to look like “propaganda,” because if it did, you might ask, “Who’s put that out?” But “Who’s put that out?” is exactly what voters have the right to know. If the Internet platforms won’t conform to that minimal standard on their own, it’s time to regulate them.
My emphasis. Applebaum wants us to focus on the issue of “right to know.” Is it the right to know who is expressing a particular opinion? Is it a narrower right to know who is targeting us for political advertisements? I argue that people have the fundamental free speech/press right to express opinions or disseminate information anonymously. We, as consumers, can ask “Who’s put that out?” But we have no inherent “right to know” as long as our rights aren’t violated—as, for example, in the case of fraud or breach of contract. A voter is free to consider the merits of the political message, or discard it.
The “right-to-know” issue is debatable, of course. But I think Applebaum is using the “right-to-know” issue as a smoke screen to smuggle in, to borrow her phrase, “a larger issue”—and one fraught with danger to freedom of speech. Note my emphasis on the last sentence, “If the Internet platforms won’t conform to that minimal standard on their own, it’s time to regulate them.”
This is a major bait-and-switch. If she truly believes in the “right to know,” then why not advocate for specific, objective, narrowly tailored “full disclosure” laws? Why jump to regulation?
The fundamental difference between objective laws and regulation is that a simple law is strictly delimited. For example, a full disclosure law says simply that the originator must identify himself. Regulation is essentially an open-ended power. Clearly articulated laws won’t give the government that kind of arbitrary power. A regulatory agency would. Today’s manifestation of regulation involves a government committee with law-making, i.e. legislative, powers—that is, arbitrary powers. Regulators may start by saying “identify yourself”, and end up deciding what constitutes the propaganda, fake news, or targeted advertising, and using its prosecutorial power accordingly.
Government regulation by its nature involves political manipulation, as political pressure groups lobby regulators to orient the regulations according to their political agendas. Elections require the free, unfettered flow of political speech while leaving the responsibility for sorting it all out with the individual voter. Applebaum worries about election laws being made a “mockery” of by “Covert political advertising”—and then proposes to put government officials rather than voters in charge of sorting out the nature and meaning of the political advertising that voters are allowed to see.
If fraud or breach of contract is involved, the government may properly step in to remedy, through objective laws, the wrongdoing. There is no “wider issue” of “right to know,” as Applebaum asserts. There is, however, a wider issue of freedom of speech and the proper role of government to protect and not infringe on that right. Applebaum’s proposed solution--to regulate Facebook or other social media companies--is worse than any “problem” of knowing who or how personal data is being used. Social media companies, whatever problems they may cause, have opened the door wide for the free flow, sharing, and debating of knowledge, information, and ideas while opening the field to average folks the world over to contribute to and decipher it all. This has greatly reduced the power of politicians and powerful political factions to control the political narratives. That’s a good thing; good for intellectual freedom and good for the democratic process.
Not, apparently, according to many on the Left.
Interestingly, Cambridge Analytica, Applebaum observes, is “the election consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump; the Brexit campaign and dozens of other clients; political parties in Kenya, Mexico and beyond.” This is a clue. Why single out Trump and Brexit out of the dozens? Could it be because Trump and Brexit represent election results not to the liking of the Left?
Since Trump and Brexit, statists mostly of the Leftist variety have been drumbeating for internet regulation, mainly in form of “fighting fake news” or the “addictiveness” of social media. I believe and have said that this call for regulation of social media companies to fight “fake news” is really an attempt to get government into the game of deciding what is or is not legitimate news, a major power of censorship [See also links below]. The Facebook data fiasco, which in fact is merely a breach of contract issue, looks like another wedge issue for the Left to attack free speech.
The Left is so enraged by recent election results that go against their agenda that they are willing to destroy freedom of speech in order to get results more to its liking. Hence, they’re not so much concerned by fake news or right to know or targeted political advertising as they are of being the “gatekeepers” who decide, via the mechanism of government controls, what propaganda, what fake news, or whose targeted political advertising to allow and whose to ban.
Prominent statists like George Soros wants to “break” what he calls “Facebook and Google’s dominance”: “These companies,” Soros asserts, “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This interferes with the functioning of democracy and the integrity of elections.”
In other words, Soros doesn’t approve of U.S. election results. After all, what do we mean by ‘the functioning of democracy” if not to all participants to do precisely that—influence, though persuasion, how people think and behave and thus vote? Not according to Soros, who makes this bizarre assertion:
This would have far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the future; it played an important role in the 2016 US presidential election.
Voting for Trump or Brexit is no freedom of mind. Voting for Hillary or against Brexit? What Soros really hates is freedom of average people’s minds. So now that elections are not to his liking, he wants to bring the power of the government’s guns down upon the private companies whose successful open platforms empowers average people to share ideas and make up their own minds: “It is only a matter of time,” Soros frighteningly threatens, “before the global dominance of the US internet companies is broken. Regulation and taxation, spearheaded by [EU commissioner for competition Margrethe] Vestager, will be their undoing”—to the advantage of government dominance over our intellectual lives. Under the guise of “freedom of mind,” Soros proposes to control the companies whose platforms greatly expanded the flow of intellectual discourse for “the masses.” Who, in fact, is looking to “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it?” And do it coercively? Who is really attacking our freedom of mind? Leave to to a European statist to attack American companies for promoting food for thought for free minds.
Freedom of mind without freedom of speech is a joke. Never mind “the global dominance of the US internet companies.” That dominance was earned by attracting consumers. Consumers granted them that dominance, and can withdraw it if they like, by refusing to use their platforms. Private companies, even alleged “monopolies,” can not legally harm you. Governments can. If Soros doesn’t like their dominance, he can start (or finance) his own competing company, and run it as he likes if he can draw the consumers. But Soros is a statist thug. His means of dealing with the internet companies’ economic power—the power to satisfy consumers—is to “undo” the Facebooks and Googles with political power—the power of the gun. [for an deep examination of economic vs. political power, see The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger.]
Wittingly or not, and in a more covert way, Applebaum is leaning in the same direction as Soros—and just as wong. As Andrew McKie, Acting Deputy Editor of CapX, observes, There is no grand conspiracy or dark manipulation or brainwashing or threat to democracy being engineered by “Big Technology”.
[N]o one has ever maintained . . . that an advert for beans, or toothpaste, or shampoo, exerts some mystical hypnotic power over individuals sufficient to destroy their free will, render them powerless to resist, and absolve them from any responsibility for their own actions.
If the same is not true, or even more true, of people’s ability to assess the qualities of candidates for election, then we’ve got more serious problems than digital firms to contend with. Whether or not Cambridge Analytics turns out to have done anything dodgy or illegal is irrelevant to that overwhelming truth. The central fact remains that it’s absurd to claim, just because you may not happen to like the outcome, that the responsibility for Trump’s election or the Brexit result lies with anyone other than the voters, or that data collection, advertising or election campaigning amount to some kind of Manchurian-candidate style brainwashing.
We should fight against regulation—or political extortion; the threat of regulation if a company doesn’t do what politicians demand—of Facebook or any other social media company as the grave threat to intellectual freedom that regulation is.
Related Reading:
Why Are Anti-Capitalists so Obsessed with Mandatory Campaign Finance "Disclosure"?
Making Private Donations Anonymously is a Right
Stossel: China's Freedom-Crushing 'Social Credit Score'—John Stossel & Maxim Lott
Macron Is Using the "Fake News" Excuse to Attack Press Freedom: Only on the free market of ideas can information be checked and double-checked.--Bill Wirtz
'Fake News' Is Not an Excuse to Regulate the Internet—Zach Weissmueller for Reason.com
Both Democrats and Republicans are missing the mark when they call for the government to control the flow of information on the internet.Roger McNamee’s Attack on Intellectual Freedom
Cambridge Analytica's Marketers Weren't Mind-Readers or Brain-Washers—Andrew McKie for CapX
It’s absurd to claim that the responsibility for Trump’s election or the Brexit result lies with anyone other than the voters.
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