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I mean the irony here is that Google is doing the *exact same thing*, no? fchollet/976569949157179392Permalink On twitter.com
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I mean Google News is still a major factor and search engine pages are doing the exact same thing with political views and algorithmic suggestions. The only difference is that it is Google instead of Facebook that's blind to its own role here.Permalink On twitter.com
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And that's not even counting Google's ad technology and exchanges all of which operate on fundamentally the same types of user data and under the same principles.Permalink On twitter.com
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At the end of the day the problem is that everyone in Silicon Valley is fundamentally blind to their own part in building a massive technological environment that operates on user data for the purpose of convincing people to do things.Permalink On twitter.com
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Personally, I don't think there's an undo button here. We can restrict user data collection and use legally, and we should. See: Chronotope/976093665004269568 ...Permalink On twitter.com
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But we're not going to escape a future where machines attempt to convince us of things based on data about where we are on the internet. That would be like trying to un-invent the gun, or the nuclear ICBM. We're past a fundamental shift.Permalink On twitter.com
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Instead of trying to sink persuasive technology--now impossible--we should be thinking about how we can build tools that leverage that technology to educate actively and effectively. This isn't a disarmament situation, this is our generation's space race.Permalink On twitter.com
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The 'war against fake news' is essentially facing the same strategic obstacles as a war against drugs or a war against homelessness. This isn't something you can declare war against, fight effectively, or win. You have to address the underlying problems constructively.Permalink On twitter.com
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And the underlying problems are people, a lack of media literacy, a lack of education, a lack of legal reinforcement, and an issue of incentives. None of those are engineering problems (though some of them might have technical solutions).Permalink On twitter.com
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As fchollet notes - these are problems of our DNA, our brain. But I disagree with the idea that they can't be 'patched'. Because I disagree with the Silicon Valley view point that all problems are engineering problems...Permalink On twitter.com
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The human mind *isn't* a static system. Solutions exist but they come through education. You have to change human minds, and that means radical alterations to how we understand and prioritize education, digital and physical-space.Permalink On twitter.com
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It also means changing the assumptions of the people who build these systems to include viewpoints outside of tech, men, whiteness, and America, where the systems are heavily biased towards a particular viewpoint b/c their creators are.Permalink On twitter.com
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These systems are dangerous because they magnify the human assumptions of their creators. As a result we will *never* find a solution working within those assumptions. Chronotope/975720452042772482Permalink On twitter.com
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The type of person who looks at the current situation and sees only danger and not possibility and promise to build out a new type of human education sees only nails and owns only hammers. The problem is inside the Silicon Valley house. Solutions are outside.Permalink On twitter.com
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When we acknowledge that the tools are unavoidable we take on a different responsibility. We must discover how to deform them. To use them for good. To use them in fundamentally different ways. And to empower others to do so.Permalink On twitter.com
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Specifically to empower others who are *unlike us* to do so.Permalink On twitter.com
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(Either that or we destroy their incentive structure. I'm down to eliminate global capitalism as a system of societal organization if you've got a good idea on how to do so, but I'm at a loss there. And SV seems obsessed with making it worse, so no leads from that area.)Permalink On twitter.com
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Feel free to be angry at the people who built these things irresponsibly. But honestly Facebook was a follower here, not innovative but improving on existing technological and economic structures. The problem started with Ad Tech and arguably Google's Ad Words...On twitter.com
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Google Ad Words, which launched on October 23, 2000, has far more to do with the origins of our current predicament. Facebook's targeted advertising system launched in 2007.Permalink On twitter.com
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This doesn't free either organization from fault. My point is this is a much larger issue than just Facebook. One ingrained in the thinking of Big Tech and inability or lack of interest in thinking out the negative consequences...Permalink On twitter.com
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But also, forces of bad intent will always attempt to take over tools of good intent. In some ways this may have been both 100% predictable and not at all predictable.Permalink On twitter.com
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For example: doctorow imagined a society freed by social reputation currency. Others followed. In the present day China is using a version of that idea for oppression. gizmodo.com/chinese-citizens-with-bad-social-credit-to-be-blocked-f-1823845648Permalink On twitter.com
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Information wants to be free. It's a basic precept of the Internet and I still believe it. But that means bad information too. Our fixes can't be subtractive, they must be additive.Permalink On twitter.com
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.samplereality wrote about building a deformed humanities, this is the type of path we need to seek. Our next stage of addressing the problems of persuasive technologies must be one that "tears apart existing structures and uses the scraps." samplereality.com/2012/05/02/notes-towards-a-deformed-humanities/Permalink On twitter.com
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You want to fix Facebook? (Or any of these systems?) The solution won't come from standing back and asking them to fix it. The solution comes from attacking them. Deform them by not following the rules. By not using them as intended. Use them as tools of education. Post madly.Permalink On twitter.com
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The only way to save us from persuasive technology is to educate with it and turn it into a playground in which *everyone*--especially the minority voices silenced in Big Tech--can persuade.Permalink On twitter.com
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(Some additional important detail for my reference to social reputation attached to this tweet. A better analogy might be how American tech culture imagine meritocracy vs how China implemented meritocracy) doctorow/976853314418638848Permalink On twitter.com
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