1. After the 2016 US presidential election, social media came under scrutiny like never before and what's since come to light hasn't been pretty : widespread consensus that foreign government-backed groups used platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to spread discord and division among the American public. In their new book, PW Singer and Emerson T Brooking make the argument that what we witnessed was a new form of global conflict in which there are no bystanders.
2. The weaponisation of Social Media is a look at the role social media plays in modern conflict. Singer has written extensively about the future of warfare, looking at robotics, cyber security, private military companies and even speculative fiction. Now he turns his attention to what warfare looks like when information can spread around the world instantly. Singer and Brooking look at how groups like ISIS have used platforms like YouTube and Twitter to spread their message around the world, taunting their opponents and enticing new recruits, while bad actors like Russian-backed groups found ways to game Facebook's design to spread misinformation and lies.
3. The telegraph and then the telephone allowed us to connect personally from a distance at a speed not previously possible. Radio and TV allowed one to broadcast out to many. What social media has done is combine the two, allowing simultaneous personal connection as never before but also the ability to reach out to the entire world. The challenge is that this connection has been both liberating and disruptive. It has freed communication but it has also been co-opted to aid the vile parts of it as well. The speed and scale have allowed these vile parts to escape many of the firebreaks that society had built up to protect itself. Indeed, I often think about a quote in the book of a retired US Army officer, who described how every village once had an idiot. And now, the internet has brought all together and made them more powerful than ever before.
4. In the historic blink of an eye, the founders of Facebook and Twitter have become some of the most powerful players in war and politics when they never set out for this role. Mark Zuckerberg writes software in his Harvard dorm room to allow fellow students to rate who is hot or not. Twitter is literally named after the term for short bursts of "inconsequential" information. And suddenly, they are setting the rules of everything from whether Russian disinformation campaigns should be allowed to whether Myanmar generals have the right to free speech so that they can spur mass killings.
5. Social media rewards not morality or veracity but virality. But part of the problem is not just their understandable unpreparedness for such a role and less understandable early turning of a blind eye to the abuses on their networks but also the very design of them. The networks are for profit businesses that create an attention economy. Their design is a perfect engine for the fast and wide spread of information, which makes them so wonderful. But there is a catch : unlike the truth, lies can be engineered to take advantage of that design and move faster and wider.
6. Much like any other viral outbreak, we will have to draw up on everything from the equivalent of hygiene education, in this space digital literacy, to the targeting of super spreaders, the smaller subset of people who are at the core of viral outbreak.
7. Just as in public health, these education programs must not be only at our schools, but be joined by a broader, whole-of-society effort to inoculate vulnerable citizens against harmful misinformation. A number of nations have created everything from public awareness campaigns to an emergency alert system, akin to warnings of dangerous storms or disease outbreaks, that intended to slow the spread of such falsehoods before they can do too much damage. We also need the companies to pitch in more, aiding in creating firebreaks to misinformation spreads and deplatforming those who deliberately and knowingly spread lies that are intended to harm society. You have a right to free speech. You do not have a right to spread falsehood after falsehood that harms society on a private company's network.
8. Artificial Intelligence will aid in a lot of areas, such as by supplementing the role of people in content moderation, which will never be enough to match the scale of the problem. Indeed in the book, we cover how the early efforts at AOL couldn't keep up with the size of the internet policing problem then, so it's folly to think Facebook or Twitter could hire their way around this problem with how much it has grown since.
9. But AI will still not be the silver bullet that too many believe. The first reason is that this is a conflict. The sides are each shifting tactics. So much of the misinformation problem is about people gaming the system, which machines particularly fall prey to. But the problem is also political. A machine won't solve for you all the challenges of politics and law or issues of bias. It just introduces new wrinkles to them.
10. So, what should we do?
* Stepped up investment in content moderation.
* De-platforming proven super spreaders of harassment and foreign influence operations.
* War gaming their products before they are deployed into the world, not just for cyber security
vulnerabilities, but LikeWar misuse by attackers.
* Labeling bots to allow humans to know they are interacting with a machine(aka "The Blade
Runner" rule).
* Implementing measures to foil the next generation of AI used as sophisticated chatbots and faked
imagery.
But we have to recognise that none of this will end. That's the very nature of politics and war.
There will always be action and reaction.
Bad actors always work to gain legitimacy with press coverage. More than half the people don't
read anything more than the headlines.
11. Conclusion.
Things have gone awry because of a mix of our own arrogance and ignorance. Hopefully, we can temper the arrogance by experience and tackle the ignorance by learning the new rules of the game.
* Adapted from The Verge.
Tailpiece.
Got up a trifle after the alarm had gone off. We'd hit the sack comparatively late last night and since it was a Sunday, we did have the liberty to sleep for a while but the force of habit prevented us from doing so! I, still, lazed on the bed as Lekha was having her shower but joined up soon after.
We were ready on time.
In the evening, while we were at our courtyard watering the plants with the Municipality water - it was muddy, all through - the gentleman, Suresh who's building his house in our immediate neighbourhood befriended us and this was what we gleaned from his conversation:-
(a) He'd retired last year as the GM, Urban bank near here.
(b) His mother's house is a few meters ahead on the main road. His own house is at the Mammiyoor
junction.
(c) He has a son and a daughter. The son works in the Urban bank while his daughter, is married
has two children and her family is at Qatar where her husband works.
(d) He's building this house for his daughter, for use, whenever she returns!
(e) The construction will be over within six months.
Had asked him to undertake repairs to our road when wear and tear happens.
2. The weaponisation of Social Media is a look at the role social media plays in modern conflict. Singer has written extensively about the future of warfare, looking at robotics, cyber security, private military companies and even speculative fiction. Now he turns his attention to what warfare looks like when information can spread around the world instantly. Singer and Brooking look at how groups like ISIS have used platforms like YouTube and Twitter to spread their message around the world, taunting their opponents and enticing new recruits, while bad actors like Russian-backed groups found ways to game Facebook's design to spread misinformation and lies.
3. The telegraph and then the telephone allowed us to connect personally from a distance at a speed not previously possible. Radio and TV allowed one to broadcast out to many. What social media has done is combine the two, allowing simultaneous personal connection as never before but also the ability to reach out to the entire world. The challenge is that this connection has been both liberating and disruptive. It has freed communication but it has also been co-opted to aid the vile parts of it as well. The speed and scale have allowed these vile parts to escape many of the firebreaks that society had built up to protect itself. Indeed, I often think about a quote in the book of a retired US Army officer, who described how every village once had an idiot. And now, the internet has brought all together and made them more powerful than ever before.
4. In the historic blink of an eye, the founders of Facebook and Twitter have become some of the most powerful players in war and politics when they never set out for this role. Mark Zuckerberg writes software in his Harvard dorm room to allow fellow students to rate who is hot or not. Twitter is literally named after the term for short bursts of "inconsequential" information. And suddenly, they are setting the rules of everything from whether Russian disinformation campaigns should be allowed to whether Myanmar generals have the right to free speech so that they can spur mass killings.
5. Social media rewards not morality or veracity but virality. But part of the problem is not just their understandable unpreparedness for such a role and less understandable early turning of a blind eye to the abuses on their networks but also the very design of them. The networks are for profit businesses that create an attention economy. Their design is a perfect engine for the fast and wide spread of information, which makes them so wonderful. But there is a catch : unlike the truth, lies can be engineered to take advantage of that design and move faster and wider.
6. Much like any other viral outbreak, we will have to draw up on everything from the equivalent of hygiene education, in this space digital literacy, to the targeting of super spreaders, the smaller subset of people who are at the core of viral outbreak.
7. Just as in public health, these education programs must not be only at our schools, but be joined by a broader, whole-of-society effort to inoculate vulnerable citizens against harmful misinformation. A number of nations have created everything from public awareness campaigns to an emergency alert system, akin to warnings of dangerous storms or disease outbreaks, that intended to slow the spread of such falsehoods before they can do too much damage. We also need the companies to pitch in more, aiding in creating firebreaks to misinformation spreads and deplatforming those who deliberately and knowingly spread lies that are intended to harm society. You have a right to free speech. You do not have a right to spread falsehood after falsehood that harms society on a private company's network.
8. Artificial Intelligence will aid in a lot of areas, such as by supplementing the role of people in content moderation, which will never be enough to match the scale of the problem. Indeed in the book, we cover how the early efforts at AOL couldn't keep up with the size of the internet policing problem then, so it's folly to think Facebook or Twitter could hire their way around this problem with how much it has grown since.
9. But AI will still not be the silver bullet that too many believe. The first reason is that this is a conflict. The sides are each shifting tactics. So much of the misinformation problem is about people gaming the system, which machines particularly fall prey to. But the problem is also political. A machine won't solve for you all the challenges of politics and law or issues of bias. It just introduces new wrinkles to them.
10. So, what should we do?
* Stepped up investment in content moderation.
* De-platforming proven super spreaders of harassment and foreign influence operations.
* War gaming their products before they are deployed into the world, not just for cyber security
vulnerabilities, but LikeWar misuse by attackers.
* Labeling bots to allow humans to know they are interacting with a machine(aka "The Blade
Runner" rule).
* Implementing measures to foil the next generation of AI used as sophisticated chatbots and faked
imagery.
But we have to recognise that none of this will end. That's the very nature of politics and war.
There will always be action and reaction.
Bad actors always work to gain legitimacy with press coverage. More than half the people don't
read anything more than the headlines.
11. Conclusion.
Things have gone awry because of a mix of our own arrogance and ignorance. Hopefully, we can temper the arrogance by experience and tackle the ignorance by learning the new rules of the game.
* Adapted from The Verge.
Tailpiece.
Got up a trifle after the alarm had gone off. We'd hit the sack comparatively late last night and since it was a Sunday, we did have the liberty to sleep for a while but the force of habit prevented us from doing so! I, still, lazed on the bed as Lekha was having her shower but joined up soon after.
We were ready on time.
In the evening, while we were at our courtyard watering the plants with the Municipality water - it was muddy, all through - the gentleman, Suresh who's building his house in our immediate neighbourhood befriended us and this was what we gleaned from his conversation:-
(a) He'd retired last year as the GM, Urban bank near here.
(b) His mother's house is a few meters ahead on the main road. His own house is at the Mammiyoor
junction.
(c) He has a son and a daughter. The son works in the Urban bank while his daughter, is married
has two children and her family is at Qatar where her husband works.
(d) He's building this house for his daughter, for use, whenever she returns!
(e) The construction will be over within six months.
Had asked him to undertake repairs to our road when wear and tear happens.
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