Slashdot Mirror
'An Apology for the Internet -- from the People Who Built It' (nymag.com)
"Those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created," argues a new article in New York Magazine titled "The Internet Apologizes".
Today, the most dire warnings are coming from the heart of Silicon Valley itself. The man who oversaw the creation of the original iPhone believes the device he helped build is too addictive. The inventor of the World Wide Web fears his creation is being "weaponized." Even Sean Parker, Facebook's first president, has blasted social media as a dangerous form of psychological manipulation. "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains," he lamented recently...
The internet's original sin, as these programmers and investors and CEOs make clear, was its business model. To keep the internet free -- while becoming richer, faster, than anyone in history -- the technological elite needed something to attract billions of users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was outrage. As Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in virtual reality, points out, anger is the emotion most effective at driving "engagement" -- which also makes it, in a market for attention, the most profitable one. By creating a self-perpetuating loop of shock and recrimination, social media further polarized what had already seemed, during the Obama years, an impossibly and irredeemably polarized country... What we're left with are increasingly divided populations of resentful users, now joined in their collective outrage by Silicon Valley visionaries no longer in control of the platforms they built.
Lanier adds that "despite all the warnings, we just walked right into it and created mass behavior-modification regimes out of our digital networks." Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, is even quoted as saying that a social-validation feedback loop is "exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators -- it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people -- understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
The article includes quotes from Richard Stallman, arguing that data privacy isn't the problem. "The problem is that these companies are collecting data about you, period. We shouldn't let them do that. The data that is collected will be abused..." He later adds that "We need a law that requires every system to be designed in a way that achieves its basic goal with the least possible collection of data... No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state."
The article proposes hypothetical solutions. "Could a subscription model reorient the internet's incentives, valuing user experience over ad-driven outrage? Could smart regulations provide greater data security? Or should we break up these new monopolies entirely in the hope that fostering more competition would give consumers more options?" Some argue that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields internet companies from all consequences for bad actors -- de-incentivizing the need to address them -- and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, thinks the solution is new legislation. "The government is going to have to be involved. You do it exactly the same way you regulated the cigarette industry. Technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and product designers are working to make those products more addictive. We need to rein that back."
The internet's original sin, as these programmers and investors and CEOs make clear, was its business model. To keep the internet free -- while becoming richer, faster, than anyone in history -- the technological elite needed something to attract billions of users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was outrage. As Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in virtual reality, points out, anger is the emotion most effective at driving "engagement" -- which also makes it, in a market for attention, the most profitable one. By creating a self-perpetuating loop of shock and recrimination, social media further polarized what had already seemed, during the Obama years, an impossibly and irredeemably polarized country... What we're left with are increasingly divided populations of resentful users, now joined in their collective outrage by Silicon Valley visionaries no longer in control of the platforms they built.
Lanier adds that "despite all the warnings, we just walked right into it and created mass behavior-modification regimes out of our digital networks." Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, is even quoted as saying that a social-validation feedback loop is "exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators -- it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people -- understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
The article includes quotes from Richard Stallman, arguing that data privacy isn't the problem. "The problem is that these companies are collecting data about you, period. We shouldn't let them do that. The data that is collected will be abused..." He later adds that "We need a law that requires every system to be designed in a way that achieves its basic goal with the least possible collection of data... No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state."
The article proposes hypothetical solutions. "Could a subscription model reorient the internet's incentives, valuing user experience over ad-driven outrage? Could smart regulations provide greater data security? Or should we break up these new monopolies entirely in the hope that fostering more competition would give consumers more options?" Some argue that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields internet companies from all consequences for bad actors -- de-incentivizing the need to address them -- and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, thinks the solution is new legislation. "The government is going to have to be involved. You do it exactly the same way you regulated the cigarette industry. Technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and product designers are working to make those products more addictive. We need to rein that back."
They don't invent shit, they didn't even contribute anything to the development of the internet after it was created beyond invasive advertising, spyware, and a host of idiotic JavaScript frameworks/anti-patterns.
This is the reason why trolls and SJWs exist. It's why nobody can say anything, no matter how innocuous or how much it's made clear that it's just an opinion, without someone picking it apart.
I used to really enjoy having discussions with people on BBSes. When I first had internet access back in the late 80s, I really enjoyed having discussion there too. As time went on, the internet gradually became a more hostile place where civilised discussion mostly ceased and people only try to insult, one up or vilify other people. It's at the point where I very rarely bother starting or joining conversations because I know it's going to become an endless chain of negativity and I don't feel like I have the energy or enthusiasm to deal with it any more.
I'll call it. This very post is going to kick off that kind of chain.
We saw many of the people who worked on the Manhattan project lament the uses of what they invented. It is not the tool we should regret but the choice of application. Cookies were designed with a valid and good application in mind, the fact that they have been severely perverted to serve the dark side is not the fault of the creator. Samuel Colt is not responsible when some nut job today shoots people, nor are the inventors of the car at fault when some drunk asshole runs someone over.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Really?
Last I looked, lawmaking is at least as habit-forming, if not more so, than "social validation" or any of the other alleged sins of the net.
Lawmaking also has the same issue with "unintended" consequences that technology does.
Hyperlinking is one part of what makes the WWW possible. TCP/IP, HTTP, etc. are all critical components. Despite those earlier examples of hyperlinking, they did not lead to anything remotely resembling a global inter-network of linked servers.
Things were fine back before normal people invaded our utopia...
and you're just a designer. As for 'Weaponized' internet, when I was a lad they called it propaganda. It hasn't changed. It hasn't even gotten easier.
Meanwhile the internet is doing one truly great thing: eliminating the concept of mysteries. Yeah, the baby boomer's don't get it, and even a lot of my gen, but my kid does. My kid knows that there is literally nothing in this world that is magic. Nothing that isn't a google search away from at least an _attempt_ at a scientific explanation. And at this point anything anyone who isn't a Steven Hawkins grade physicist can''t understand is pretty well explained. Tide goes in, tide goes out. It's a google search away.
More than anything else the end of superstition and ignorance is going to fix humanity. The only risk is that somebody who benefits from ignorance will put a stop to it all. But as long as that doesn't happen then folks are just plain going to get less and less dumb until they stop allowing the kind of dark age crap that's been going on since the Romans fell.
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The only solution is to start businesses that consult and train consumers to implement tools and procedures to stop the collection in its tracks. Not for selling to businesses that collect but to the consumer gaining support services to dead-end collection at their internal network.
That's not particularly likely; if nothing else, I'd expect those businesses to eventually get suborned by those making money off of collecting personal data. I'd suggest legally treating personal data as a form of personal property--and have it be one which you need explicit, specific consent to collect & use, and possibly flat-out ban sales to third parties without at least an actual money payment to the person(s) to whom the data belongs. Require the payment be a non-negligible percent cut of the sale.
Have these rules apply to both civil and criminal aspects--after all, if you're stealing somebody's property...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can't apologize for other people misusing your product. Should Papa John apologize for fat people? Should Ben and Jerry's? Should Winchester apologize for the Winchester rifle? Should Budweiser apologize for drunk drivers? Should Einstein apologize for the nuclear bomb? The internet can be used for good and bad, just like anything else.
If I use the internet to instigate a riot that burns down hundreds of homes because a cop shot a drug dealer that is not the internet's fault, it's my fault.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I finished up the book I was reading earlier today. So a couple of hours ago I sat on my hotel room toilet halfway around the world from my home and used my tiny wireless computer (which also can be used as a phone) and in 5 minutes reserved the next two books in the series from my local library so they're waiting for me when I return next week. Then I checked out an e-book by the same author from the same library and had Amazon deliver it in a couple of seconds to the device in my hand and started reading it.
That's the sort of thing the real internet makes possible, which was out of the bounds of even people's dreams a few decades ago.
In contrast, this social media crap is just minor amusement in the form of noise which keeps a few people occupied when they have nothing else useful they are willing to do. Much ado about nothing.
(Posting anon as I already moderated in this story)
is that people act on them, even when they're wrong (and yes, opinions can be wrong. It was the opinion of our founding fathers that Slavery was either good or at least tolerable).
In the last 20 years we've seen a lot of pretty opinions previously thought too barbaric to make a comeback gaining traction. We have a national judicial nominee who refused to go on record that Brown vs Board of education was right. Our last president supported torture and our current one thinks it's OK to murder civilians. In light of all this I think a reasonable person would start getting nervous at things that are 'only an opinion'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/