[governance] Facebook is researching you to use you

[parminder]

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/tech/2014/06/30/facebook-under-fire-over--creepy--secret.html?cid=BP_RSS_TECHNOLOGY_1_Facebookunderfireovercreepysecret_300614

“Facebook has secretly manipulated the feelings of 700,000 users to understand 'emotional contagion' in a study that has prompted anger and forced the social network giant on the defensive. “

“For one week in 2012, Facebook tampered with the algorithm used to place posts into users' news feeds to study how this affected their mood, all without their explicit consent or knowledge.”


(quote ends)

These are very ominous revelations. They show the kind of pervasive 
social control that some Internet mega-corporates have begun to have on 
our lives - personal and social... Just to present a scenario to 
illustrate the point - lets say that Facebook is able to establish that 
being shown more happy news rather than sad ones, people, in a 
particular area, tend to get more inclined to one strand of political 
thought rather than other. Now Facebook also knows the swing voters in 
that area - by far the most important group politically close to 
elections, just by having profiled people on their political 
preferences. And then Facebook feeds either more happy news or more sad 
news just prior to election and causes a certain vote swing that 
directly and deeply interferes with the democratic rights and expression 
of the people... (This is about human rights as well, not just FoE and 
privacy)

Do not consider it far fetched; US government was found recently to have 
used US companies toseed special social networks 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/world/us-ran-social-media-programs-in-afghanistan-and-pakistan.html?_r=3> 
in not only Cuba but also Kenya, Pakistan and some other countries with 
the clear purpose of politically influencing local people. Why would 
they then not think of using Facebook some day, that is, if they are not 
already doing so... Additional information - Facebook as a company is 
still largely the private property of one individual. Further, that one 
individual, and also some other facebook founders, are known to be 
somewhat strongly of one particular political bend of mind.....

We can reject all this as a desperate doomsday prediction. Or be alive 
to our social and political responsibilities to do something about them, 
as having some vantage and privileged position in the IG related global 
public sphere. . IMHO, there is no other option than to build global 
norms, and if possible policy frameworks, to reign in such behaviours of 
global Internet mega-corporations. Country level polities, expect that 
of the US, do not have muscle and reach to do much about them. While the 
US is so much more interested in the global economic exploitation that 
its mega corporations assist it in doing that it will mostly overlook 
such problematic behaviour. A perfect catch 22 situation, which can only 
be broken by an much improved global governance of the Internet.

In this regard it has been painful to note that a civil society 
organisation active in civil society debates and global IG forums, 
Access Now, has actually opposed the proposal of the Human Rights 
Council to begin work towards negotiating a treaty to reign in global 
mega corporations with regard to their human rights abuses - over which 
national polities have increasingly limited control. Maybe Access Now 
reps here will like to explain to us why they take such a stand, at the 
same time when, very rightly so, they are currently one of the most 
active participants in and push-ers for human rights council's outcomes 
that relate to governmental behaviour.

Please see 
https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2014/06/26/access-voices-concern-about-resolution-on-business-and-human-rights-treaty 


Can they honestly say that they would have taken the same stand if a HRC 
working group would have been set up to begin negotiating a treaty to 
specifically address governmental interference with freedom of 
expression, including over the Internet (a process that I would support).

parminder


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