DigitalPolitik (№ 2)
DigitalPolitik is a twice-monthly newsletter on states, markets, and their digital intersection. We started calling the phenomenon #digitalpolitik (dig-E-tahl-pol-E-tique), as a shorthand for the global politics of digitization. We use digitalpolitik similar to realpolitik, and use it to refer to the increasingly adversarial convergence of geopolitics, markets, memes, misinformation, machinations, and movements.
Learn more about us in our first newsletter. Subscribe to our Tinyletter or follow our Medium.
Highlights
- Frameworks and declarations for a new internet
- Facebook: The Donald Trump of the tech news cycle
- Digital colonialism and our digital superpowers
- AI and the authoritarian state
Synthesis and Analysis
I am Internet, Hear Me ROAM(x). UNESCO’s International Program for Development of Communication has approved the Internet Universality Indicators, a framework for assessing internet development in global contexts. It uses the slightly awkward acronym ROAM, referring to principles for an internet that is based on human Rights, Open, Accessible to all and nurtured by multi-stakeholder participation. A fifth principle, X, stands in for Cross-Cutting principles around gender, children and laws and ethics. I took part in one of the early consultations at the Stockholm Internet Forum in 2017 and appreciated UNESCO’s thoughtful, multi-stakeholder approach to collecting feedback. The plan is to update it every five years, but I suspect we’ll need a faster rate for this index to meaningful: already, the indicators feel behind, with nary a mention of IOT, artificial intelligence and other pressing issues in technology that are coming to the fore.
— AXM
A new era of digital colonialism? “Information communication technologies (ICT), artificial intelligence innovation and the ability to deploy systems and infrastructure rapidly in emerging markets, are concentrated in just a few countries, which are now engaged in a race to be the number one,” writes human rights and technology lawyer Renata Avila, in the International Journal on Human Rights. She points out that a minority of state and private actors in the US and China — which we consider digital superpowers — have three elements that give them an edge over developing nations and even the European Union: (1) intellectual and technical capacity, (2) domestic and international legal architecture that disfavors domestic production, and (3) access to capital. It’s helpful to read Avila’s essay alongside Adrian Shahbaz’s report for Freedom House on “Fake news, data collection, and the challenge to democracy,” which posits a rise in digital authoritarianism and China’s increasing investment in shaping countries’ internets. The digital colonialism framework that Avila is contributing to is a helpful one: squeezed between two digital superpowers, much of the world stands to lose digital sovereignty, only furthering existing inequalities as private companies and states consolidate their power in a race to define the new global internet.
— AXM (h/t Nanjira)
#superpower #colonialism
Well, we declare. In the absence of clear authority, a growing range of actors — including governments, companies, and civil society groups are turning to open appeals, declarations, and joint statements to establish digital norms and standards. The clearest example, was the joint 9-country parliamentary declaration issued at the end of the Facebook misinformation hearing, promising to regulate the Internet. The Council of Europe issued the “first” European Ethical Charter on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems. More than 30 civil society organizations are protesting the European Commission’s proposed terrorism-focused content moderation regulation. A similarly sized group of civil society organizations wrote a similar letter, advocating for ePrivacy reform. It’s unclear when declarations create enough pressure to build standards, but it’s clear that they’re political at every stage of the process. It’s hard to tell how many are motivated by some sense of “first-mover” advantage to frame the debate, as opposed to coalition-building for whatever comes next.
— SMM
#influencer #constructive superpower
I need a Facebreak. Facebook continues to be the Donald Trump of the tech economy, producing so much devastating news that it’s nearly impossible to meaningfully engage. Not unlike its service, really.
In the last two weeks, Facebook was the subject of a damning, in-depth investigation into their management. Per usual, those involved denied the validity of the article, continued a 40% stock dip, deflected, and then, during a holiday break in the United States, issued a statement admitting the article’s core points. Among them, that they hired a PR firm to target George Soros, among many others, which their outgoing head of communications took responsibility for, on his way out the door. For a company trying to earn the trust of the world after an expose called “Delay, Deny, and Deflect,” they… have more work to do.
Facebook, then, skipped a 9-country Parliamentary inquiry representing 447m people, to sub-optimal effect. Their spokesman, in testimony, was accused (starting 1:10) of lying on the stand — which is contempt. The hearing also revealed Facebook knew about Russian bulk data breach reports as early as 2014. At the close of the hearing, the jilted nations signed a statement, saying “it is incumbent on us to create a system of global internet governance… and govern the international tech platforms.”
Facebook also proposed a “Supreme Court” for content, launched a controversial local news digest for 400 US cities, shut down a performative election ‘war room’, was accused of having a “black people problem,” hired a US Department of Justice antitrust lawyer, experienced large outages during the largest US online shopping days of the year, and fended off investor (and other) concerns about Mark and Sheryl’s ongoing roles at the company.
Long story long, it’s really clear that the world isn’t happy with Facebook, and we can’t stop talking about it. It’s remarkably less clear what we’re willing, or able, to do about it.
— SMM
#superpower #consolidator
Currently in currency. Cryptocurrencies, across the board, have plunged between 85–90% in value, raising existential questions about the ecosystem. Capitalists, like Fred Wilson and Jeff Sprecher, think this is the bear market phase before crypto-assets mature. Optimists, like the US state of Ohio, made an ill-timed announcement that they’ll accept cryptocurrencies as tax payment. Two large African mobile network operators — MTN and Orange — are teaming up to try and capture the mobile money market. On the sovereign stage, cryptocurrency manipulation tactics have made it to Iran’s rial, via the mobile messaging app, Telegram. Similarly, the government of Sierra Leone, the United Nations, and Kiva, are launching “the credit bureau of the future.”
Currency markets are increasingly manipulable by a range of non-state actors, which asks whether the growth in financial crime is a feature, or a bug, of asset digitization. Digitization is challenging some of the foundational characteristics underpinning currency, value, and the values we attached to how they’re used and manipulated.
— SMM
#influencer #consolidator
CRSPR oversight. Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he successfully edited the genes of two twin girls to treat a condition that is… not genetic. His justification for his unprecedented, functionally clandestine human experimentation without any oversight was: “someone was going to do it, it might as well have been me.” Despite any arguable scientific advance, the largest reactions have been to the absolute failure of the ethical safeguards in his education and institutional context. While biomedical ethics is a comparatively developed field, digitization creates new issues and harms. Perhaps ironically, just three days prior He published “Draft Ethical Principles for Therapeutic Assisted Reproductive Technologies.” After a global outcry, He has been ‘detained’ by Chinese authorities. He’s use of CRISPR is one of the clearest examples of how technology enables individual actors to make hugely determinative and invasive decisions on others’ behalf, with decreasing amounts of oversight or consequence. The adoption and development of new technologies is an emergent form of human experimentation, in the CRISPR example, literally. The way that government innovation agendas enable, or punish, ethical experimentation processes shapes how they interact with companies and markets — and this is an exceptionally high profile opportunity for China to articulate the acceptable collateral costs of progress.
— SMM (h/t @alixtrot)
#superpower #consolidator
AI-thoritarianism and the techno-limitations of democracy. In Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Wright argues that “By allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more closely than ever before, AI will offer authoritarian countries a plausible alternative to liberal democracy.” He points out that liberal democracies may, in this context, feel more compelled to offer an alternative vision — data policy by itself is “boring,” but with increased geopolitical stakes, democratic governments and private companies in democracies will need to differentiate from the digital authoritarian model. But just in case we’re left with too much optimism, Jacob Silverman at Baffler has argued that many Silicon Valley tech elites are seeing China’s model and envying the country’s advantages. It’s also worth considering just how much US technology is already utilized by China’s surveillance state: “there are American companies enabling or complicit in major human rights abuses,” argues technology and national security expert Elsa Kania in Axios.
— AXM
#superpower #consolidator #influencer
Notables and Quotables
“The question that I think comes to my mind then, that I struggle with, is are we better off giving Chinese citizens a decent search engine, a capable search engine even if it is restricted and censored in some cases, than a search engine that’s not very good?” Alphabet Chairman John Hennessy on Google’s China Strategy
“As a late 90s Internet forums kid, it’s wild watching mod wars happening again, but this time at huge scale with real money.” — @mathpunk
“Your agencies are taking scared, jailed children who are desperate to see their families, asking them to identify their relatives so that they can be reunited-and then using that data to find, arrest, and deport those families.” — Joint letter from 112 civil society organizations to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“We are in the early stages of a fourth industrial revolution that will further blur the lines between the physical, the digital and biological realms. Lawfully used, technology such as bulk data, modern analytics and machine learning is a golden opportunity for society at large, including for MI6 as an organisation. But I have also witnessed the damage new technologies can do in the hands of a skilled opponent unrestrained by any notion of law or morality, as well as the potentially existential challenge the data age poses to the traditional operating methods of a secret intelligence agency.” — MI6 Chief Alex Younger in a rare speech at St. Andrews
Et, tu? France Faces a Typical Facebook Revolution
Blame Canada Identities in the crosshairs — censoring LGBTQ internet content around the world
#DigitalPolitik Journalism Maria Ressa’s 6 six lessons and appeals for action for global journalism
People’s Republic of Training Data How Cheap Labor Drives China’s A.I. Ambitions
WhatsApp With That The 4,000 migrants have used WhatsApp text message groups to communicate along their journey, and DHS personnel have joined those groups to gather info.
GDP — er? Six months in, Europe’s privacy revolution favors Google, Facebook
Middle Management. Google employees sign letter against censored search engine for China + Amnesty International has announced a new protest campaign calling on Google to cancel its controversial plan to launch a censored search engine in China
Fight the power Thai Election Fight Turns to YouTube, Facebook after Campaign Ban
IDon’t. ECA and partners to establish Continent-wide digital identities + Mastercard and Microsoft have a frightening plan to create universal “digital identities”
httpshhhhhiiiiiitttttt Half of all phishing sites have the padlock
A Qwant-um of sovereignty France [well, its Parliament] is ditching Google to reclaim its online independence
AmsterDAMN! ‘Fearless’ Amsterdam government: digital city goes social
China’s internet is bigger than yours. Tencent’s founder on WeChat
Ad vetting in the EU Google to step up ad vetting for European Parliament elections
Economically speaking. AI thinks like a corporation — and that’s worrying
Ah, yes, but whose ethics? The Internet Doesn’t Need Civility, It Needs Ethics
FTC goes in-app on gaming. The FTC will investigate whether a multi-billion dollar business model is getting kids hooked on gambling through video games
Democracy(?) committed. How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request
The Switzerland of Law. ‘Swiss law first’ initiative given short shrift at polls
Exporting intelligence The US could regulate AI in the name of national security
From the Contributors
AXM on how “charismatic megatrolls” blind us to the bigger picture: “…they consequently draw all the attention, resources and funding away from some of the deeper systemic issues such as design, interactions, algorithms, interfaces and business models that enable MDMI [mis-, dis- and mal-information] to exist in the first place. Some of these issues are innocuous at first and then manipulated, while others are already toxic at the outset and then amplified by the megatrolls.”
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DigitalPolitik is a twice-monthly newsletter on states, markets, and their digital intersection. We started calling the phenomenon #digitalpolitik (dig-E-tahl-pol-E-tique), as a shorthand for the global politics of digitization. As far as we can tell, the term was coined by the German Government, who use it to describe their digital economic strategy. We use digitalpolitik more like realpolitik, and use it to refer to the increasingly adversarial convergence of geopolitics, markets, memes, misinformation, machinations, and movements.
Learn more about us in our first newsletter. Subscribe to our Tinyletter or follow our Medium.
