In 2017, data overtook oil to become the world's most valuable commodity, but it remains hard to define. At its most basic level, data is said to be humans in digital form: how we look; the languages we speak; our viewing preferences, medical records, voices, learning habits, and music preferences.
Meanwhile, tech platforms' support for developing countries like Pakistan, still on the other side of digital divide, has turned into a double-edged sword, as data extraction by these very platforms undermines such nations' abilities to develop indigenous digital economies that can enhance their own capabilities. As such data 'colonialism' is at times conflated with humanitarian efforts-after all, who can object to expanding digital access, which nearly all agree is crucial for economic growth?
Moreover, it relegates developing nations like Pakistan to forever being consumers of foreign tech innovations that are developed using their own data and then sold back to them. This is akin to traditional colonialist practices that seized raw materials from the Asian and African continent, refined and manufactured them into goods in the West, and sold these goods back to the same nations from which the relevant data were extracted without due permission-leaving them unable to develop their own manufacturing capabilities. They became eternal consumers with underdeveloped economies as a result.
Data 'colonialism' hinders developing nations' abilities to develop their own technological innovations based on their indigenous datasets. Tech platforms, by contrast, can access, it is believed, more granular information about their users-from political views, relationship status, friendship network, and travel preferences, to mental and physical health characteristics. Consequently, while telecommunication companies can use their data to inform basic research and development efforts, tech platforms' data not only informs what types of products to develop, but also how to market those products directly to consumers.
Tech platforms Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, already powerful before the COVID-19 pandemic, have become even more so during it, as so much of everyday life moves online. As convenient as their technology is, the emergence of such dominant corporations should ring alarm bells because they wield so much control over global economy. These behemoths now dominate the dissemination of information and the coordination of political mobilization.
According to Francis Fukyyama, Barak Richman and Ashish Goel (How to save democracy from technology- published in Foreign Affairs Jan/Feb. 2021 edition) once a company such as Amazon or Google has amassed data on hundreds of millions of users, it can move into completely new markets and beat established firms that lack similar knowledge.
"For another thing, such companies benefit greatly from so-called network effects. The larger the network gets, the more useful it becomes to its users, which creates a positive feedback loop that leads a single company to dominate the market. Unlike traditional firms, companies in the digital space do not compete for market share; they compete for the market itself. First movers can entrench themselves and make further competition impossible. They can swallow up potential rivals, as Facebook did by purchasing Instagram and WhatsApp.
Since 2016, these platforms have allowed hoaxers to peddle fake news and extremists to push conspiracy theories. They have created "filter bubbles," an environment in which, because of how their algorithms work, users are exposed only to information that confirms their preexisting beliefs."
Consider also that the platforms-Amazon, Facebook, and Google, in particular-possess information about individuals' lives that prior monopolists never had. They know who people's friends and family are, about people's incomes and possessions, and many of the most intimate details of their lives. What if the executive of a platform with corrupt intentions were to exploit embarrassing information to force the hand of a public official? Alternatively, imagine a misuse of private information in conjunction with the powers of the government-say, Facebook teaming up with a politicized Judiciary.
Digital platforms' concentrated economic and political power is like a loaded weapon sitting on a table. At the moment, the people sitting on the other side of the table likely won't pick up the gun and pull the trigger. But is it safe to leave the gun there, where another person with worse intentions could come along and pick it up?
One of the most promising solutions to avert such a disaster is said to be middleware. Middleware is generally defined as software that rides on top of an existing platform and can modify the presentation of underlying data. Added to current technology platforms' services, middleware could allow users to choose how information is curated and filtered for them. Users would select middleware services that would determine the importance and veracity of content, and the platforms would use those determinations to curate what those users saw. In other words, a competitive layer of new companies with transparent algorithms would step in and take over the editorial gateway functions currently filled by dominant technology platforms whose algorithms are opaque.
By mediating the relationship between users and the platforms, middleware could cater to individual consumers' preferences while providing significant resistance to dominant players' unilateral actions.
According to Laleh Ispahani (Facebook's monopoly power threatens democracy itself-published in Open Society Foundations on Nov.5, 2019) through acquisitions and market consolidation, a handful of companies have become behemoths too big to be effectively regulated-online giants that function as de facto state monopolies, blinded by their successes to the impact of their actions.
"As Cory Doctorow, the famed blogger, author, and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation describes it, what could have been a technological democracy has become more of a constitutional monarchy".
But perhaps the most pressing problem that has arisen as these platforms have amassed such market power is the epistemological crisis they have spawned: people have no way of knowing whether something they are reading is true.
Facebook's policies alleged to have enabled grave human rights abuses, including the Myanmar military's use of the platform to incite genocide against Rohingya Muslims. An internet blackout imposed in Illegally India Occupied Jammu & Kashmir by the government of India cut people off from the outside world, dividing families, interrupting medical care, and causing deaths.
According to The Economist Weekly (The Fight back against big tech's feudal lords has begun-published on October 24th 2020) around the world, sensors on everything from cars to kitchens are expected to churn out exponentially more personal information as the "Internet of Things" expands.
"Their relentless appetite for data is a mounting concern for policymakers. The platforms' business models depend on network effects and scale to keep users engaged and to sell more advertising. The result is a culture of virality that, while entertaining, poisons public discourse and disquiets governments. The bigger the tech firms are, the harder it is for potential rivals to overcome their data advantage, which suppresses innovation. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of Oxford University notes that access to capital is no longer the biggest problem for startups. It is access to data."
A group representing nearly one million Facebook users in England and Wales who were affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal launched legal action against the social media giant. The claim is being led by data privacy advocate Alvin Carpio through a group called 'Facebook You Owe Us,' which says that consumers in the UK are entitled to compensation over the "persistent mass misuse of personal data by the world's largest companies."
According to Eli Moskowitz (UK Group files lawsuit over Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal-published in a OCCRP newsletter dated Oct. 29, 2020) the social media giant, which reported global revenue of US$70 billion in 2019, was fined half a million pounds ($647,480) by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in November of 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which the group says was far too small a sum and did not compensate the affected Facebook users.
Cambridge Analytica is accused of misappropriating data from Facebook to build profiles of around 87 million users. The firm filed for insolvency in May of 2018, after it was said to have aided US President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, along with a UK campaign to leave the European Union.
However, according to Emma Briant (Governments have failed to learn from Cambridge Analytica scandal published in a OCCRP newsletter dated Oct. 12, 2020) companies spun off from Cambridge Analytica's parent firm continue to offer similar services with little oversight.
"A week before the parent company of Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy, one of its employees opened a UK firm that has since been providing similar 'behavioral modification' training to clients including the Canadian and Dutch militaries.
"Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) Group, Cambridge's parent company, drew on psychological and social science research to distill techniques aimed at manipulating group behaviour.
"For almost two decades, SCL sold its services to clients around the world. They included political parties trying to sway voters in scores of countries, and the British and American militaries attempting to influence populations and insurgents in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan."
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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