Wired State: Weepy Edge Cases Will Not Convince Google

Weepy Edge Cases Will Not Convince Google Geeks on Pseudonymity

There's a lot of weeping about the banning of fake accounts on Google -- or people's much-deserved an much-needed pseudonyms and anonymous handles, depending on how you see it. Our gang was very early on this -- and I spoke up in favour of pseudonyms too -- on principle.  The predictable Michael Anti use case was fetched up by the predictable lobbyists. A Linden (Yoz) on July 1 in that thread tried to spin Google policy, "Pseudonyms are fine as long as you're not impersonating someone else, or trying to represent a group." Not true. Thousands are being banned who fit in that category.  His Master's Voice says Google+ is going to come up with a feature for this! (He learned that kind of double talk from Linden Lab *chuckles*).  But people keep getting banned and realizing they may not benefit from the new "feature". So there's more weeping. There's this open letter from a grrl (sigh). There's a blog with an ever-growing list of people deserving and needful of anonymity.

I think we need to put an end to the weepy edge-case approach on this as it's not persuasive, won't work, and isn't fair -- it's minority politics.

Eli Pariser Wants to Make Sure the Internet Doesn't Filter Your Way But His Way

Eli Pariser, the former executive director of moveon.org, is concerned about how Google gives us customized results that may put us in "news silos" and maintain our world views. His new book The Filter Bubble takes up this concern, claiming that Google is no longer an "enormous library" (don't worry, it still is) and that social media in particular is cradling us in our particularist worldviews and keeping us in an ideological cocoon (yes, they are, but people debate much more on Facebook or Google than you ever could on moveon.org).

In an interview on amazon.com, he sums up his ideological problem with Facebook's ideological cocooning:

Mark Zuckerberg perfectly summed up the tension in personalization when he said “A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” But he refuses to engage with what that means at a societal level – especially for the people in Africa.

See the problem? While rightfully exposing the problem of the filtration of Facebook, which we can easily recognize (people chose their friends and colleagues; they tend to be in a comfort-zone of ideological compatability), Pariser intrudes with his own notion -- that "we must" somehow care for the people of Africa; these people are some sort of unified mass with some objective set of problems we "must" sympathize with -- if we care about a squirrel in our front yard and not the people dying in Congo over cell-phone metals, we must be callous white northern Ice People -- well yes, all these associations are indeed underlying a seemingly innocuous phrase like "refuses to engage with what the means at a societal level."

Everybody Does it So It Must Be OK? The Guerilla Hack of JSTOR

Sometimes it seems as if just everything in the world is getting hacked, eh?

A Harvard University fellow who was studying ethics (!) was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles, the AP reports.

This 25-year-old Bit-torrent kiddie isn't just some sort of over-achiever who likes to read lots of articles.

He's a guerilla in the war on paid content and information archicture  -- anything that uses registration or subscriptions to cover the costs of information procurement and storage.

He's from a group called "Demand Progress" that wants, um, information to be free. It's a typical moveon.org-type "progressive" cadre-run organization with a heavy ideological agenda -- three people whose names are given decide all the issues and 300,000 subscribe and click and sign petitions and "yes" and "like" -- but have no place to debate these cadres. You just mindlessly click, and you can't be sure that many other people are clicking, because you have to trust the site-owners -- there are no counters on the petitions.

But the prosecutor disagrees about the charges, fortunately:

"Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars," U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a statement. "It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away."

Why You Should Fear the Internet of Things

There was a moment during TechCrunch disrupt when I felt the "thunk" of the unevenly-distributed future arriving.

A woman was demonstrating one of the start-up contestants -- GetAround, a service that lets you rent other people's cars for periods of time, say, $5 or $10 an hour.

She walked over to a fancy electric car on display, and putting her cell phone by it, popped open the door.

This wasn't a remote control that was hers, opening a door to a car that was hers.

This was different; this was her opening a stranger's car, with some bit of information beamed into a device in the stranger's car.

I had that same sort of squeamish feeling I had in the "family photo" of everyone at SLCC1 that Philip wanted everyone to be in -- and I ran running from the room. It's funny how you get funny feelings like that...

Thunk.

Comments

[Ann Otoole InSL]

All this real identity stuff from Google (NSA Proxy, the lines between Google and the feds is very weak now if you research them, Google airport is fed, Google is building their new corporate housing on fed land, etc.) is not about what people want or any of the Goebbelsesque horse shit Google execs are spewing. It is about knowing who is saying what about whom. To wit: https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2011/07/29

Add to that H.R. 1981 (who would dare object to a bill named like that one. Never mind it has little to do with the name and everything to do with 24*7 surveillance on everyone on the internet. You (everyone in the USA) are suspected of being a perv so you must be kept under surveillance)

Once H.R. 1981 is enacted and Google/Facebook has wiped out anonymity then the Google/FB data can be linked up with the massive database of all activity on the internet and the government will have their much desired Orwellian master database and can silence opposition instantly with a kicked in door at 3am. Exactly how the Gestapo/Stasi worked things.

We are not in America anymore. Not the one I grew up in anyway. I do not understand why people are allowing this to stand.

[Prokofy Neva]

1. That EFF link points to an amicus brief against any law that would prevent criticism of public figures. And that is against past Supreme Court rulings, i.e. Times v. Sullivan.

But would you apply the same standards to a stalker intentionally inflicting cruelty? Well, that's going to be an awfully hard case to adjudicate -- what is cruelty? What is intention? I'd err on the side of First Amendment standards for such speech, but if you can show it is incitement to imminent violence then that would be an exception provided under Supreme Court rulings.

Note that the 21-year-old Uzbek guy who threatened to kill Obama got watched by the government, but not arrested for his spoutings that were not likely reaching the level of "imminent violence" yet. So a sting operation was mounted to sell him a gun, then he got arrested for possessing a weapon. Do you think anyone in Washington or Tashkent is complaining about this? Do you think Human Rights Watch will take up this guy's case, or the ACLU? Would it be better to arrest the guy for his Internet spouting or do the sting operation?

See, you have to think of real cases, and what really happens and not just rage and vent about the Man.

2. I don't get as agitated at the idea that the government knows everything and is tracking everything as much as I get agitated that Google or Apple knows everything and tracks everything for the simple fact that I still think we can influence government through elections and lobbying and media, but we can barely influence these large IT platforms.

2. If the government's monitoring program helped stop a horror like the Norwegian terrorist, would you be for it? So if there was proof of imminent incitement to violence, would you accept some monitoring? How much? None? How can governments track terrorists then? Only after the fact?

[Darien Caldwell]

" If the government's monitoring program helped stop a horror like the Norwegian terrorist, would you be for it?"

No.

So if there was proof of imminent incitement to violence, would you accept some monitoring? How much? None? Yes, None.

"How can governments track terrorists then?"

Who says they have to?

It's funny that 50+ years ago, "Terrorists" didn't exist. The fact is teh concept of a Terrorist is a recent social construct or label that governments and people now use to justify actions they could not otherwise get away with against people they don't like, or people who believe differently than they do.

So why was this new construt developed? For simply one reason, to allow the actions of war to be engaged without declaring actual war. Label a person or a group 'terrorist' and all of the usual constitutional protections and rules go out the window.

But going back to your main question:

" If the government's monitoring program helped stop a horror like the Norwegian terrorist, would you be for it?"

The reason I say no is, a world where misdeed of thought or action is impossible is not a world I would want to be a part of. It's akin to removal of free will.

You may want to live in a world that is 100% safe, 100% devoid of any adverse risk, but also 100% devoid of free choice, but most do not.

The better thing would be to address the societal conditions which are causing the actions of the guy from Norway, not working to limit freedom so that it's impossible to happen.

But addressing those problems is hard. Taking away freedom is incredibly easy.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

I believe in freedom. At any cost. Period.

[cube inada]

50 years ago "terrorists" certainly existed..the idea and term is as ancient as us.
what didnt exist was the "mass" as in " mass destruction" that may be done via the addition of modern technology to their arsenals....

of course "mass" death is over 50 years old...and it still takes place daily between the tweets....

its the idea of "very massive, very fast" that is the mantra of technology today...and of course the same mantra sucked up by today's terrorists--- let's not forget, most actual terrorist actors are under 40... must be all those gamez and vidz and tunez and circlez....;) i dont see many old settled farts shooting up summer camps and high schools or wearing shoe bombs....good thing they cant figure out all that tech shit....;) for now.

one has to really ask what the future looks like when "bio tech" is truly the next "silly valley" money dump fuled by vcs looking for quick google world dominance using "bio" vs. "bits"....

note how may zombie stories flood todays "horror" meme... they replace the "robot/machine/computer" apocalype themes of the last 30 years that got us the GoogleIA.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

"Carlos" never used the internet. The internet did not exist. You can tell history is no longer taught in the left wing controlled schools or people would see through this horse shit.

Serious terrorists are not using the internet because it is so easily tracked. This crap is a smoke screen to put in place a fascist system to suppress opposition. It is right out of the Gestapo/Stasi playbook.

Dumbass Americans deserve to be crushed and enslaved for being stupid as a god damn dog turd.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

"if we care about a squirrel in our front yard and not the people dying in Congo over cell-phone metals, we must be callous white northern Ice People"

What an extraordinary statement.

Well, um, yes, Prok. Sorry, but you ARE an insensitive and callous person if you don't care about this. And if you are *knowingly* using the cheaply available cell phones constructed from materials purchased at such a high human cost, and *still* don't care, you are worse than insensitive: you are a source of the problem.

Eli Pariser is right on, but you seem to prefer being tucked into a nice comfy guilt-free cocoon spun from your own ignorance and indifference.

Congratulations on having successfully Epsiloned yourself.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

BTW, love the recursive link to "The Filter Bubble" in your article, that leads back to ... your article.

It's beautifully symbolic of the masturbatory ostrich logic you employ here. Ultimately, it IS all about "you," isn't it?

[Prokofy Neva]

Scylla, you're such a predictable bore.

Most people care more about the squirrel dying in their front yard than the people dying in the Congo. And guess what: the people in the Congo are no different -- they care about an animal in their front yard more than people on the otherside of the planet. And that's ok; that's the truth, and there is nothing wrong with it.

As it happens, I'm one of those people who *has* actually cared about the mass murder and rape in the DRC and have raised it many times at the UN. But that doesn't mean anything -- it's ok not to care about people dying overseas. It's human nature, and I won't lie about it. It would be great if more people cared, we should work toward them caring, but this idea that we can force everyone to adopt "internationalist consciousness" belongs right out of the Soviet playbook. We can't. And to do so shifts accountability from those on the scene who bear direct responsibility for atrocities, not that wicked West filled with people consumed with their squirrels.

In fact, to suggest that the deaths in the Congo are only caused by people in the West not caring is absurd. If people in the Congo cared more about the deaths of their own people -- and if hey, some of them didn't actively *cause* many of them themselves! -- it would be a better place.

The idea that "conflict metals" and cell phone ingredients "cause" the atrocities in the Congo is one of those fictions of the guilty Western liberal that he uses to try to acquire company in his Western guilt from other liberals. The conflicts existed long before there were ever cell phones, and even a perfectly human-rights compliant mining operation of metals for cell phones, if that were possible, would not likely stem violence for other reasons.

It's a gross oversimplification of the reasons for conflict, and you might just as well do another thing, start a campaign against bloodthirsty warlords there and say, "Don't be greedy and murderous." That would be more relevant, if not politically correct.

There isn't any "recursive link," dear, it's just a mistake with some link copied twice instead of leading to the Filter Bubble.

The Filter Bubble idea is fake as anyone who performs a cursory search on Google and finds Wikipedia comes up most always for everything. Whatever skewings and regional and political differences surface don't prevent people from reading the opposite of their viewpoints *of their own free will if they wish* -- and if the system suggests things of interest to them, it is merely being useful.

To suggest that somehow Google should deliberately force on everybody some perspective that they find to be politically correct would be anaethema to freedom of speech and association and the free market and would only close society more.

Marxist ideals such as those you always spout at the end of the day always require coercion to put into place, and that's why they're patently wrong.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Of course such indifference is "part of human nature." So is wanting to punch someone who is too slow in the checkout line. Being "human nature" doesn't make it morally valid: there are many things that are "human nature" that we, as humans, work daily to overcome in ourselves.

I didn't suggest that people in the DRC were any different than us. Heck, they may even be worse. So what?

I also didn't say that "the deaths in the Congo are only caused by people in the West not caring" -- I suggested that "not caring" made one a contributor to, not necessarily a cause of, that tragedy. The issues at work in the DRC and elsewhere in Africa are far too complicated to be reduced to a simple issue of economic cause and effect. But there is also no denying that the demand for such resources from the West IS a major contributor.

Pariser isn't arguing that filtering is a deliberate strategy of propagandization for Google or Facebook: he's arguing that it deliberately reinforces our amoral and ultimately destructive desire to be "sheltered" from alternate perspectives, or views that make us feel "uncomfortable." He is also not arguing, despite the title of your piece, that we instead use filtering to privilege "his" perspectives: he's arguing that information should be free and unfiltered.

As for coercion -- that's precisely what filtering is. But as it is invisible, we barely notice the way in which computer algorithms are deciding FOR us what we "should" or "shouldn't" like.

[Prokofy Neva]

Scylla,

You don't get it. Because it's not about indifference. It's about people having capacity, bandwidth, if you will, to do so much, and so they care about the squirrel.

If a raped or dying Congolese woman was on their front lawn, they'd likely do what they could.

That isn't what the fake internationalist progressives really want, however. They want to impose *a certain way of caring about the world* in the "Better World" ideology which usually has a heavy economic/political/ideological component. So it's off to bash capitalism and mining companies because it really was about that all the time for the Marxist-style agendists -- it's not really about caring about people. Or it's off to find some facile way of yet again beating on the North or the West as "not doing enough" and reviving the sins of colonialism -- because it's really about undermining the West as a concept, and fetishizing revolutionary third-world movements.

If we were to say, oh, we care about Congo, and our church is there and we help our church -- oh, that wouldn't be good enough. Churches aren't cool and progressive, especially if they aren't Unitarian. Or if we said, we had a company that located there and provided jobs, oh, that wouldn't be cool, because that would be capitalism and evil imperialism and would be propping up a dictatorship blah blah.

So it's not REALLY about caring. It's about fake caring in a certain way, in which the not-caring is merely used as an emotional blackmailing goad to get people to join the anti-capitalist band wagon.

I have *absolutely no use* for these people.

Not caring most certainly does not make you a contributor. This idea that there is a fly-wheel of Western wealth and Northern rich lifestyle that is driving third-world poverty is again, a Marxist concoction. The idea that there is a conveyor belt that moves from "caring" to "affect" is a fiction. I can care about a lot of things, but my caring has little effect, and even raising issues directly with those in power has marginal result. I have never seen a country that was ever fixed from outside -- and I've seen LOTS of countries and bad situations. People inside them have to fix them, and when they do, you can try solidarizing and helping specific people.

I don't care in the abstract about the DRC in the facile way that the "progressives" like Eli Pariser would insist (and they hardly do anything on foreign policy so it's really silly that we're even having this conversation as if they are the great callers to conscience). I will care about a specific NGO, journalist, women's rights lawyer, specific renewal of a UN mission that needs XYZ components bolstered, etc. So I just dismiss blowhards that try to emotionally guilt-trip

It's like the feminist Betty Friedan, coming to a UN meeting once that I attended, and exhorting in generalties in all the tired tropes of her book to "empower women" or "demand equality" or blah blah blah. But the real task of the meeting was to secure one gender advisor in one mission where it was absent; to secure one memo about rape in one country to be folded into one secretary general's report -- etc. The real mechanisms that don't seem like much until you see it literally save people's lives sometimes as it's the cover under which some real thing is done on the ground.

Indeed Pariser is arguing it's a deliberate strategy and if you read his stream and interviews you will see it. There isn't anything "amoral" about me signing up for Foreign Policy, the Nation, and the Tea Party in my email box, but foregoing the shrill and content-free Democracy Now from Amy Goodman. The Nation will say the same thing better. And there is nothing wrong with my uncle signing up only for The National Review or my aunt signing up only for Shine on Yahoo. That's life in the big city, you can't force people to read content and "care" -- then it's not caring, and it is political manipulation.

People like Eli are drunk with power believing they have mass tools to move the masses. He was all thrilled in his early days that he could use the Internet and get 100,000 people to sign something. So what?! My God, have some humility.

All you have to ask if whether you'd like to have Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman served into your email or reader every day so you could broaden your tiny Marxist mind to see how absurd it is. Of course you would not want it. And the people who enjoy reading those figures don't want to read your pablum, either.

Filtering isn't coercion; filtering offers you a suggestion to enhance your search, and remembers your last preferences. Coercion would be forcing everyone to read the same thing designed by politically-correct committee by you and your Marxist friends. That should be clear.

And as I keep pointing out and leftists like you keep deliberately ignoring, we already get the same thing served up; we already get Wikipedia.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Google doesn't care about politics. They just serve the NSA. You can stop arguing about it. Weepy edge cases are of no consequence to google because they are a data vacuum for the NSA now. Period. You block all their spyware domains in your hosts file or you are subject to their surveillance.

Period.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, wait, Ann. Is it the NSA or the CIA? This says the CIA:

http://www.dailytech.com/Former+Agent+Says+Google+and+CIA+in+Partnership/article4774.htm

[petergarcia]

There is nothing we can do about it ,they are in control like it or not..........