Get Digitally Woke
By H. Christian Breede, Deputy Director, CIDP
Originally Published: 17 April 2019
We are being hacked.
Setting aside the cacophony of voices surrounding the Mueller Report and what it does or does not say, that the 2016 election in the United States was manipulated is now well established. More to the point, that Canada’s upcoming 2019 general election is equally vulnerable is just as certain. In a recent report released by Canada’s Communication Security Establishment (CSE), not only is interference in our democratic process expected, it already happened. The report highlights that as early as 2015, Canada was subject to election meddling through digital media. While of low sophistication, meaning these efforts were uncoordinated, poorly planned, and rather crude in execution, they flagged a vulnerability that will continue to be exploited. Moreover, it will likely be exploited in a more coordinated fashion and with greater sophistication. The misinformation or ‘fake news’ that inundated the United States during the 2016 Presidential election are closer to the mark of what we can expect in Canada come the Fall of 2019. Canada’s own Minister for Democratic Institutions warned as much this past month in Ottawa. Indeed, it appears the government is taking notice and taking action. However, an exclusive top-down approach is not enough. We all have a role to play as well in dealing with these vulnerabilities.
Put bluntly, part of the vulnerability is you. It is me. It is any of us who spend any time on an internet enabled device. To be clear, that is most Canadians. While the details vary, several online data tracking tools, such as Statista, peg Canada’s internet penetration at over 80 per cent. This means over 30 million Canadians have access to online devices. Moreover, according to comScore (a media tracking company), Canadians spend on average over 36 hours each month online and BNN Bloomberg reported that almost 50 per cent of Canadians rely on social media for their news.
We are plugged in.
So how are we being hacked? In order to make sense of this charge, we need to understand how major social media firms make their money. As Roger McNamee, Azeem Azhar, and Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking have all argued elsewhere, internet websites make their money through advertising. Websites — most notably social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat — need to demonstrate to potential advertisers that they 1) can keep you on their site longer than others (known at Time on Site or ToS) and 2) can provide information to advertisers on what their users are doing on the websites (through the provision of records of what you have clicked, watched, or ‘liked’).
So far so good. Most of us likely knew this when we did not read the various user agreements and just clicked on the accept box. What we likely were not quite so aware of was that not only were we handing over our data to these companies (in exchange for using their service for free or a small fee), but also opening ourselves up to manipulation.
We opened the door.
Since websites want you to stay so they can boast of higher ToS than others, they want to ensure they offer content that you are interested in. This bespoke curation is a great way to discover new things. Think of Netflix’s eerily good recommendations after you just binged on the latest season of Stranger Things. This works through rather simple machine learning algorithms that thanks to the continuous improvement in computing power and ever-increasing amount of data we feed them through our use of these devices and digital platforms, we stay longer and then binge on The OA next. And then again on the next thing, and the next. Indeed, my Netflix recommendation list is unique to me, based on my previous viewing habits. Yours will be different, as will my partner’s or that of my children.
This bespoke curation however has — like many things — a downside. If an algorithm is taking your viewing habits and nudging you to the next thing, it is influencing what content you consume. Taken over the long term, this same algorithm is not only shaping what you read, watch or listen to, but it is in fact shaping what you think. It is shaping your perceptions, attitudes, and maybe even your values. More to the point, it is doing so for every one of us in a relentless, agnostic manner that simply magnifies this impact. Where in the past such efforts at manipulation would be carried out by small armies of propagandists targeting a few, we are now all being targeted by lines of code and our own curiosities. More problematically, this targeting expands beyond what movies we might like next or shoes we may want to buy tomorrow; it now extends towards which political parties we should vote for or which issues we should care about in the next election. Just like the Netflix recommendation engine will not suggest the latest season of The Office after binge watching The OA, social media platforms will not suggest a post or article supporting the opposite political views to that which I have been previously reading. When you tailor content curation to each individual, perceptions and indeed ideas harden, and polarization soon follows.
We need to wake up
I am not saying we need to defenestrate our tablets, smartphones, and laptops. I am not saying we need to unplug. Quite the contrary, we need to plug in to what is going on and how it all works. We need to wake up to the idea that we are all being nudged in certain directions; sometimes unwittingly, sometimes on purpose, but always at a scale that is unprecedented in human experience. We need to be mindful of what we read and how it makes us feel. As I tell my students each year, when you read something that enrages you, rather than click share and send it to your hundreds of contacts or thousands of followers (or cite it on a term paper), dig a bit deeper. Find out where it came from, who wrote it and be mindful of how (and why) it appeared on your feed. Be a critical digital consumer. Our new digital social contract needs to be one in which we are ensured free and equal access to each other through information communications technologies on the understanding that we will also exercise a healthy dose of skepticism towards what we read, listen to, and watch. Our democracy — frankly — depends on it.
