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SAP Founder Hasso Plattner Fears the Scourge of Social Media (afr.com)
In a wide-ranging interview, Hasso Plattner, the 74-year-old co-founder and chairman of global business software powerhouse SAP, talked about his apprehension of the social media. From the story: He saves his greatest condemnation for the scourge of fake news and societal manipulation on large social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Despite the founders of the social giants pledging to do more to ensure public debate is not artificially skewed, Plattner believes the solution will have to come from law enforcement and criminal penalties. He says humans are genetically wired to thrive on rumours, dating back to ancient times when rumours about what was going on in the next village would be on everyone's mind. He fears social platforms have simply become rumour distribution machines of unbelievable power.
"I was very optimistic that social networks would improve access to information and democracy in general, but I am very disappointed that the opposite is happening," he says. "Professional information producers undermine the social networks, undermine states and elections. It is unbelievable what is happening and we have a huge problem." Plattner draws a parallel with insider trading, which he says is as easy to commit as social media manipulation, but is not so common because people know they will be slugged with criminal convictions. "This is all before we look at the exploitation of personal data, where we are naked in front of the social networks, because we undress ourselves, and not only literally," he says. "I think this will continue until we have the legal systems properly looking at it, and have strong laws that people have to obey."
"I was very optimistic that social networks would improve access to information and democracy in general, but I am very disappointed that the opposite is happening," he says. "Professional information producers undermine the social networks, undermine states and elections. It is unbelievable what is happening and we have a huge problem." Plattner draws a parallel with insider trading, which he says is as easy to commit as social media manipulation, but is not so common because people know they will be slugged with criminal convictions. "This is all before we look at the exploitation of personal data, where we are naked in front of the social networks, because we undress ourselves, and not only literally," he says. "I think this will continue until we have the legal systems properly looking at it, and have strong laws that people have to obey."
The fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi regime shows how futile and counterproductive such approaches are. The Weimar Republic had strong laws regulating speech and the press. Far from shutting down the Nazis, the Nazis made a fight against "fake news" part of their own platform ("We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press."). Given Germany's history, for a German to propose criminalizing speech is a sign of profound historical ignorance and irresponsibility.
And let's not kid ourselves why billionaires and political elites in Europe and the US bristle at social networks and blogs: since Edward Bernays, they have used control over the press to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it" (his words). In case you don't know, Bernays is responsible for overcoming the resistance of Americans to enter WWI and for addicting American women to tobacco.
This sort of thing is music to the ears of the establishment. One more powerful voice to stand with with ruling class as they screw up the courage to criminalize those that annoy. It's been taken so far that Plattner has lost his inhibition to openly state his intentions.
Realize who you're climbing in bed with. This is the quintessential Captain of Industry; a man that has spent his life capturing regulators and leveraging IP law to propel himself to the 0.0001% bar in the wealth histogram. But hes singing the right song so you look past all that because you lost an election and if the criminal ban hammer is what it takes to make sure that never happens again well then all hail Mr. Plattner and any other Great and Good that join him.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Merkel does not have anything with this, no matter what she says. Due to Germany's Nazi past and because allied authorities like the US insisted on it, Germany has applicable hate speech laws that every company doing business in Germany has to respect. Using Nazi symbols, instigating violence by racist slurs, showing the Hitler greeting, and denying the Holocaust is illegal in Germany, and Facebook has to provide the means to comply with the law or close their business in Germany. It's as simple as that.
The US, France, and the UK insisted on these kind of mechanisms and gave Western Germany a constitution that can defend itself against inner threats, because the Weimarer Republic failed due to inner threats - by the Nazis abusing constitutional flaws and spreading hate and terror on the street and in media. For example, in Germany a Nazi party (SRP - the successor of the NSDAP) and a communist party (KPD - largely under Soviet control) were prohibited in the 50s.
If you really, really want to go to war against Germany again in 50-100 years from now and if you enjoyed the total destruction of Europe by the Nazis or the communist occupation of Eastern Europe, then please continue to insist that Germans should enjoy full freedom and speech, no matter how despicable, and to abolish constitutional safeguards against inner takeover by totalitarians.
For what it's worth, German authorities are much too tame about the current threats. They should definitely surveille the AfD and other right-wing wackos, just like they watched and infiltrated anarchist and communist groups in the past, but unfortunately they are a bit blind on the right eye (as the NSU murders and the involvement of the Verfassungsschutz in them have aptly illustrated).
Whetever his qualifications are, he's right about one thing. The human capacity for conspiracy theories is ancient,
Back in the early days of Anthropology, anthropologists and the general public where fairly convinced canibalism was *everywhere* in the "primative" world. But as it turned out, whenever they'd actually try and find canibals, well they where no where to be found. In fact with a couple of notable exceptions, canibalism is more or less a myth. What was ACTUALLY going on, was many tribes where convinced the neighboring enemy tribe was in fact canibalism, and that made THEM the bad guys. Everytime someone went missing on a hunt, well , canibals. Got mauled by an animal? Canibals. And if it wasn't canibals, it was evil sorcerers. But the key here is, every village they'd ask would say they where not canibals, the OTHER guys where the canibals.
I kinf of think conspiracy theories work the same way. Its a way of reasoning about mysterious or unexplainable shit, by positing that everything bad that happens, was some guys evil plot. Nothing bad happens by chance, theres always SOMEONE to blame. Its a convenient way to hold onto viewpoints unsupported by the evidence. Don't like climate change? Well just blame a vast spooky c,onspiracy of scientists lying about physics. Any evidence presented to the contrary is just the man lying to you. Confused about why there seems to be lots more people with autism? MUST BE VACCINES. Sure the docs will tell you "theres more diagnoses of autism because the definition changed" , but thats just what THEY want you to believe. Its a perfectly sealed mode of thinking, all evidence your wrong just proves how vast the conspiracy is.Theres no escape from it.
And yeaah, the internets making that shit a lot worse. In the olden days, oral folk-myths travelled about as far as the edge of town. Nowdays, its global. You can chose from *all sorts* of crazy now.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.