The most asked questions on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy in last month’s international hearing by Canada Standing Committee

Why we cannot enforce independent regulators to oversee user rights data privacy

Damion Collins to McNamee:  “In your book you said as far as I can tell Zack has always believed that users value privacy more than they should. On that basis, do you think we will have to establish in law the standards we want to see enforced in terms of users rights data privacy with independent regulators to oversee them? because the companies will never do that effectively themselves because they just don't share the concerns we have about how the systems are being abused”

Roger McNamee: “I believe that it's not only correct in terms of their philosophy, as Professor Zuboff points out, but it is also baked into their business model--this notion--that any data that exists in the world, claimed or otherwise, they will claim for their own economic use and framing. How you do that privacy, I think is extremely difficult and in my opinion, would be best done by simply banning the behaviors that are used to gather the data.”

Zuckerberg is more afraid of privacy regulation

Jo Stevens, Member of Parliament for Cardiff Central, asked McNamee,  “What you think Mark Zuckerberg is more frightened about privacy regulation or antitrust action?”

McNamee replied saying that Zuckerberg is more afraid of privacy.  He further adds, “to Lucas I would just say the hardest part of this is setting the standard of what the harm is these guys have hidden behind the fact that's very hard to quantify many of these things.”

In the future can our homes be without digital tech?

Michel Picard, Member of the Canadian House of Commons asked Zuboff, “your question at the beginning is, can the digital future be our home? My reaction to that was, in fact, the question should be in the future home be without digital.”

Zubov replied, “that's such an important distinction because I don't think there's a single one of us in this room that is against the digital per se. It's this is not about being anti-technology, it's about technology being hijacked by a rogue economic logic that has turned it to its own purposes. We talked about the idea that conflating the digital with surveillance capitalism is a dangerous category error. What we need is to be able to free the potential of the digital to get back to those values of Democritus democratization of knowledge and individual emancipation and empowerment that it was meant to serve and that it still can serve.”

Picard further asks, “compared to the Industrial Revolution where somewhere although we were scared of the new technology, this technology was addressed to people for them to be beneficiaries of that progress, now, it's we're not beneficiary at all. The second step of this revolution, it is a situation where people become a producer of the raw material and as you mentioned as you write “Google's invention reveals new capabilities to infer and deduce the thoughts feelings intention interests of individual and groups with an automated architecture that operates as a one-way mirror irrespective of a person's awareness. So like people connected to the machine and matrix.”

Zuboff replies, “From the very beginning the data scientists at Google, who are inventing surveillance capitalism, celebrated in their written patterns and in their research, published research, the fact that they could hunt and capture behavioral surplus without users ever being aware of these backstage operations. Surveillance was baked into the DNA of this economic logic essential to its strange form of value creation. So it's with that kind of sobriety and gravitas that it is called surveillance capitalism because without the surveillance piece it cannot exist.”

Can Big data be simply pulled out of jurisdictions in the absence of harmonized regulation across democracies?

Peter Kent, Member of Parliament Thornhill, asked Balsillie, “with regards to what we've seen that Google has said in response to the new federal elections, the education on advertising will simply withdraw from accepting advertising. Is it possible that big data could simply pull out of jurisdictions where regulations, in the absence of harmonized regulation, across the democracies are present?”

To this, Balsillie replies, “ well that's the best news possible because as everyone's attested here. The purpose of surveillance capitalism is to undermine personal autonomy and yet elections democracy are centered on the sovereign self exercised their sovereign will. Now, why in the world would you want to undermine the core bedrock of election in a non-transparent fashion to the highest bidder at the very time your whole citizenry is on the line and in fact, the revenue for is immaterial to these companies. So one of my recommendations is, just banning personalized online ads during elections. We have a lot of things you're not allowed to do for six or eight weeks just put that into the package it's simple and straightforward.”

McNamee further adds his point on the question by saying, “point that I think is being overlooked here which is really important is, if these companies disappeared tomorrow, the services they offer would not disappear from the marketplace. In a matter of weeks, you could replicate Facebook, which would be the harder one. There are substitutes for everything that Google does that are done without surveillance capitalism. Do not in your mind allow any kind of connection between the services you like and the business model of surveillance capitalism. There is no inherent link, none at all this is something that has been created by these people because it's wildly more profitable.”

Committee lends a helping hand as an ‘act of Solidarity’ to press freedom

Charlie Angus, a member of the Canada House of Commons, “Facebook and YouTube transformed the power of indigenous communities to speak to each other, to start to change the dynamic of how white society spoke about them. So I understand its incredible power for the good. I see more and more thought in my region which has self-radicalized people like the flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers and I've seen its effect in our elections through the manipulation of anti-immigrant anti-muslim materials. People are dying in Asia for the main implication of these platforms. I want to ask you is there some in an act of solidarity with our Parliament with our legislators if there are statements that should be made public through our Parliament to give you support so that we can maintain a link with you as an important ally on the front line.”

Ressa replied, “Canada has been at the forefront of holding fast to the values of human rights of press freedom. I think the more we speak about this then the more the values are reiterated especially since someone like president Trump truly likes president detective and vice versa it's very personal. But sir, when you talked about  where people are dying you've seen this all over Asia there's Myanmar there is the drug war here in the Philippines, India and Pakistan just instances when this tool for empowerment just like in your district it is something that we do not want to go away not shut down and despite the great threats that we face that I face and my company faces Facebook the social media platforms still give us the ability to organize to create communities of action that had not been there before.”

Do fear, outrage, hate speech, conspiracy theories sell more than truths?

Edwin Tong, a member of the Singapore parliament asked McNamee, on the point McNamee made during his presentation that “the business model of these platforms really is focussed on algorithms that drive content to people who think they want to see this content. And you also mentioned that fear outraged hate speech conspiracy theories is what sells more and I assume what you mean to say by that is it sells more than truths, would that be right?”

McNamee replied, “So there was a study done at MIT in Cambridge Massachusetts that suggested, disinformation spreads 70% further and six times faster than fact and there are actually good human explanations for why hate speech and conspiracy theories move so rapidly it's just it's about treating the flight-or-fight reflex.”

Tong further highlighted what Ressa said about how this information is spread through the use of BOTS. “I think she said 26 fake accounts is translating the 3 million different accounts which spread the information. I think we are facing a situation where disinformation if not properly checked gets exponentially viral. People get to see it all the time and overtime unchecked this leads to a serious erosion of trust serious undermining of institutions we can't trust elections and fundamentally democracy becomes marginalized and eventually demolished.”  

To this, McNamee said, “I agree with that statement completely to me the challenge is in how you manage it so if you think about this censorship and moderation were never designed to handle things at the scale that these Internet platforms operate at. So in my view, the better strategy is to do the interdiction upstream to either ask the fundamental question of what is the role of platforms like this in society right and then secondly what's the business model associated with them. So to me, what you really want to do my partner Renee de resto who's a researcher in this area it talks about the issue of freedom of speech versus freedom of reach. The latter being the amplification mechanism and so what's really going on on these platforms is the fact that the algorithms find what people engage with and amplify that more and sadly hate speech disinformation conspiracy theories are, as I said the catnip that's what really gets the algorithms humming and gets people to react and so in that context eliminating that amplification is essential and the question is how you're gonna go about doing that and how are you gonna how are you going to essentially verify that it's been done and in my mind the simplest way to do that's to prevent the data from getting in there in the first place.”

Tong further said, “I think you must go upstream to deal with it fundamentally in terms of infrastructure and I think some witnesses also mentioned that we need to look at education which I totally agree with but when it does happen and when you have that proliferation of false information there must be a downstream or an end result kind of reach and that's where I think your example of Sri Lanka is very pertinent because it shows and demonstrates that left uncheck the platforms to do nothing about they're about the false information is wrong and what we do need is to have regulators and governments be clothed with powers and levers to intervene, intervene swiftly, and to disrupt the viral spread of online falsehoods very quickly would you agree as a generalization.”

McNamee said, “I would not be in favor of the level of government intervention I have recommended here I simply don't see alternatives at the moment that in order to do what Shoshanna's talked about in order to do what Jim is talking about you have to have some leverage and the only leverage governments have today is their ability to shut these things down well nothing else works quickly enough.”

Sun Xueling, another member from the Parliament of Singapore asked McNamee, “I like to make reference to the Christchurch shooting on the 15th of March 2019 after which the New York Times had published an article by Kevin Roos.” She quoted what Roos mentioned in his article, “We do know that the design of Internet platforms can create and reinforce extremist beliefs. Their recommendation algorithms often steer users towards a jeer content, a loop that results in more time spent on the app, and more advertising revenue for the company.”

McNamee said, “not only do I agree with that I would like to make a really important point which is that the design of the Internet itself is part of the problem that I'm of the generation as Jim is as well that were around when the internet was originally conceived in design and the notion in those days was that people could be trusted with anonymity and that was a mistake because bad actors use anonymity to do bad things and the Internet is essentially enabled disaffected people to find each other in a way they could never find each other in the road and to organize in ways they could not in the real world so when we're looking at Christchurch we have to recognize that the first step this was this was a symphonic work this man went in and organized at least a thousand co-conspirators prior to the act using the anonymous functions of the internet to gather them and prepare for this act. It was then and only then after all that groundwork had been laid that the amplification processes of the system went to work but keep in mind those same people kept reposting the film; it is still up there today.”

How can one eliminate the tax deductibility of specific categories of online ads?

Jens Zimmermann, from the Republic of Germany asked Jim Basse to explain a bit more deeply “ the question of taxation”, which he mentioned in one of his six recommendations.

To this Balsillie said, “I'm talking about those that are buying the ads. The core problem here is when your ad driven you've heard extremely expert testimony that they'll do whatever it takes to get more eyeballs and the subscription-based model is a much safer place to be because it's not attention driven and one of the purposes of taxes to manage externalities if you don't like the externalities that we're grappling with that are illuminated here then disadvantage those and many of these platforms are moving more towards subscription-based models anyway. So just use tax as a vehicle to do that and the good benefit is it gives you revenue this the second thing it could do is also begin to shift towards more domestic services. I think it attacks has not been a lever that's been used and it's right there for you all right.”

Thinking beyond behavioral manipulation, data surveillance-driven business models

Keit Pentus, the representative from Estonia asked McNamee, “If you were sitting in my chair today, what would be the three steps you would recommend or you would do if we leave those shutting down the platforms aside for a second.”

McNamee said, “In the United States or in North America roughly 70% of all the artificial intelligence professionals are working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon and to a first approximation they're all working on behavioral manipulation. There are at least a million great applications of artificial intelligence and behavioral manipulation is not on them. I would argue that it's like creating time-release anthrax or cloning human babies. It's just a completely inappropriate and morally repugnant idea and yet that is what these people are doing. I would simply observe that it is the threat of shutting them down and the willingness to do it for brief periods of time that creates the leverage to do what I really want to do which is, to eliminate the business model of behavioral manipulation and data surveillance.”

“I don't think this is about putting the toothpaste back into tubes, this is about formulating toothpaste that doesn't poison people. I believe this is directly analogous to what happened with the chemical industry in the 50s. The chemical industry used to pour its waste products, mercury, chromium, and things like that direct into freshwater, which left mine tailings on the side of hills. State petrol stations would pour spent oil into sewers and there were no consequences. So the chemical industry grew like crazy, had incredibly high marches. It was the internet platform industry of its era. And then one day society woke up and realized that those companies should be responsible for the externalities that they were creating. So, this is not about stopping progress this is my world this is what I do.”

“I just think we should stop hurting people we should stop killing people in Myanmar, we should stop killing people in the Philippines, and we should stop destroying democracy everywhere else. We can do way better than that and it's all about the business model, and I don't want to pretend I have all the solutions what I know is the people in this room are part of the solution and our job is to help you get there. So don't view anything I say as a fixed point of view.”

“This is something that we're gonna work on together and you know the three of us are happy to take bullets for all of you okay because we recognize it's not easy to be a public servant with these issues out there. But do not forget you're not gonna be asking your constituents to give up the stuff they love. The stuff they love existed before this business model and it'll exist again after this business pop.”

To know more and listen to other questions asked by some other representatives, you can listen to the full hearing video titled, “Meeting No. 152 ETHI - Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics” on ParlVU.

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