Mediacracy¹
Totalitarian mass media and anti-social networks
Media — Etymology
“The word media is a plural form of the Latin word ‘medium’ meaning ‘middle ground or intermediate’.”
In some languages such as Spanish (el medios de comunicación), Russian (средства массовой информации) and Hebrew (כלי תקשורת) the literal translation of media is “means/facilities for communication”. Until recently our image of the media was that of a large, transparent pipeline through which we can get useful useful information, news and entertainment. Perhaps the slogan that best represents the important role of the media in serving the people was coined in 1897 by Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”. It was intended to be a declaration of the newspaper’s intention to report the news impartially.
Today a new slogan seems more fitting: All the News That Benefits ME! — the publisher, media organization or corporation.
News or Fake News?
“The usage of the word media to describe newspapers, radio and other sources of information likely derives from the term ‘mass media’ which was a technical term used in the advertising industry from the 1920s on.”
- Today’s media is a fixed game. It is a business that provides service to those who own or pay it, representing and endorsing their views and either blocking opposing views or representing them in a negative and often distorted manner.
- Most if not all media channels openly identify with a particular political party or ideology, in particular left or right wing.
- There is no news vs. fake news. It is all advertising.
- Even data driven information such as public opinion polls and surveys can be slanted and misleading. As a data scientist this does surprise me. “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (usually attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli)
- The consumers — all of us — have gotten used to this state of affairs, and we simply follow those media channels that cater to and reinforce our existing opinions and beliefs. Sadly, this media herding terribly reduces our ability to be exposed to, let alone consider, a plurality of opinions.
- Disclosure: I also have an agenda.
Anti-Social Networks
“The major difference between mass media and social media is that mass media puts the audience in a passive position. Social media puts the audience at the center. People are both the audience and the content creator, it provides a unique experience of social collaboration and social interaction.”
Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
A few years ago I was fortunate to take part in the Chaos Communication Congress, an annual event organized by the CCC, the Computer Chaos Club. The CCC “is Europe’s largest association of hackers. For more than thirty years we are providing information about technical and societal issues, such as surveillance, privacy, freedom of information, hacktivism, data security and many other interesting things around technology and hacking issues”.
The Chaos Communication Congress takes place in Germany during December 27 to 30 each year, and attracts over 15,000 people. The décor, all of which is setup by volunteers who organize and take part in this non-for-profit event without any commercial or government involvement, seems like a colorful crossbreeding of a technical conference and a star wars spaceship. I hope the photo below will give you some feel for the atmosphere, and if you get a chance I strongly encourage you to attend one of these events.
But what really impressed was not the location but rather the people. The best description that comes to my mind is idealistic nerds. I mean these men and women really cared about making the world a better place for all of us. They attended talks about global warming and the China social credit system, watched Edward Snowden speak live from his hiding place in Moscow about how the people who helped him escape were persecuted in Hong Kong, held heated debates about security, encryption, and how can we can protect the privacy of citizens with legislation and protocols such as GDPR, and also had a lot of fun! And then I came across this sign hanging in one of the corridors.
How did the big internet and social network companies become symbols of the Big Brother?
The Social Dilemma
“The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. It explores the rise of social media and the damage it has caused to society, focusing on its exploitation and manipulation of its users for financial gain through surveillance capitalism and data mining.” (Wikipedia). Interview after interview, The Social Dilemma details how using technologies such as big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as sophisticated psychological manipulations, the media giants maximize not our ability to connect with each other and our individual and collective well-being but rather their own profits, often at our expense.
The massive and totalitarian influence that the media and social networks exert on what we think, feel and do (including how we vote), which the socially sensitive folks at the CCC suspected, is now a glaring reality. A recent example is Twitter permanently deleting the account of US president Donald Trump and banning him for life following the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Facebook (and Instagram which it owns) and Snap soon followed. It is worthwhile reading the Twitter justification. If the statement “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th” is an incitement to violence, one wonders what isn’t.
Many European leaders, most of whom are not suspected to be Trump’s friends, sharply criticized Twitter and Facebook. German Chancellor Angela has accused Twitter of launching an attack on free speech, pointing out this was a clear violation of Trump’s rights and arguing that governments, not private companies, should be in charge of regulating Big Tech. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lambasted the social media ban saying, “I don’t like anybody being censored or taking [sic] away from the right to post a message on Twitter or Facebook. I don’t agree with that, I don’t accept that.” Poland went even further. According to Zero Hedge, “Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced a legal initiative which enables individuals to file complaints against social media companies who remove or censor their posts if they don’t break Polish law.”
But the mass media and social network companies are businesses. What’s wrong with them making business decisions, including those that may make them more attractive to certain audiences or help them build more favorable relationships with governments or authorities?
Thought Experiment
You wake up one day and find out the local utility company has cut off the electricity, water or gas supply to your house. A note on your door explain this was done since some of your views or behaviors do not match that of the company executives (maybe they don’t like Muslims, vegetarians or smokers). In today’s society, isn’t the ability to connect to other people as vital as our basic utilities?
Well, utility companies are monopolies and customers have no alternatives. It makes sense that such companies are regulated by law. But with the media and social networks it’s a free market. Right?
Wrong. The major media organizations are owned by a small number of wealthy individuals or corporates. In the US the list includes:
- Alphabet. Owns the search engine Google, video sharing site YouTube, proprietary rights to the open-source Android operating system, blog hosting site Blogger, Gmail e-mail service, and numerous other online media and software outlets.
- Apple Inc. Owns proprietary rights to the iPhone and iPod digital devices, the iOS and Mac OS operating systems, and digital platforms iTunes and Apple TV.
- Jeff Bezos. Owns The Washington Post, holds a minority stake in Alphabet, and presides over multimedia and e-commerce megalith Amazon as well as its cloud computing and Web infrastructure system Amazon Web Services.
- Microsoft. Owns MSN, the search engine Bing, a minority stake in Facebook Inc., Xbox gaming consoles, Office productivity suite, Outlook.com e-mail service, and Windows operating system. See: List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft.
- Netflix. Owns the biggest subscription over-the-top video service in the United States; it also owns many of the films and television series released on the service. Netflix also owns dvd.com, a mail-order video rental service.
- Facebook, Inc. (controlling stake held by Mark Zuckerberg). Owns Facebook (the largest U.S. social network), Instagram, messaging services Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and virtual reality platform Oculus VR.
Following Trump’s banning many of his supporters joined the two years old social media platform Parler. However this alternative was soon eliminated. Google and Apple immediately removed Parler from their app stores, and Amazon puled the plug on their business by refusing to continue hosting Parler’s services on their cloud. The media conglomerates that killed Parler (a competitor) didn’t follow a court order or provide detailed evidence of violations of any law. They don’t have to. For these companies the legislative, judicial, and executive authorities are conveniently theirs to play with.
Towards a Truly Social Media
As the credits roll at the end of The Social Dilemma, the interviewees recommend taking certain countermeasures in order for one to protect oneself and one’s family from social media “poison”. Unfortunately these recommendations have an “Amish” feel, especially when it relates to children: Do not give devices to children; no screen time, do not allow social media use until children reach high school etc.
Hiding won’t help. While the media can be blamed for its bad influence on us, it is also an important mirror of our society, our values, and ultimately who we are. It is better to acknowledge the reality we are living in with open eyes, learn from it, and work on transforming this reality, rather than trying to improve its reflection in the mirror. In the words of Dr. Michael Laitman, “In a nutshell, social media in its current form fails to meaningfully connect us. It does, however, reveal to us the consequences of our egoistic relations. We can thus learn from the problems in the current situation and start motioning toward a positive change. Such an awakening of the public is one of the steps toward a real transformation. We can start this massive transformation by looking into the future and taking measures ahead of time to ward off deeper social media brainwash, and by investing efforts in a profound global “heartwash.”
When we realize the necessity, and also the unlimited potential, in transforming our society, really our life, so that all human beings living on this small planet become one community, connected above all colors, languages, religions, cultures, above all the differences between us, then we will also know how to build truly social media, means of communication that unite us instead of separating us, that serve us instead of exploiting us.
- Mediacracy, literally the rule of the media, is a situation where the media has undue control over the (voting) public.
