Privacy is Power: Manipulating Democracy
Ultimately, data is a means of social control because it enables control of information flows. Losing control of where your data is transmitted is a serious concern. Yet so too is the problem of people not have access to enough reliable data to make informed decisions - for example, to form an opinion on and vote on political issues - because their algorithmic news feeds present them a biased view of the world and actively feed them disinformation. In this video, technology experts from the documentary The Social Dilemma explain how social media platforms have been abused to spread disinformation and manipulate elections through microtargeting. This microtargeting is only possible due to the enormous amount of personal data collected by these platforms.
The Social Dilemma – Bonus Clip: The Democracy Dilemma by Exposure Labs (2021). Video hosted by YouTube.
The election they refer to is the 2016 United States presidential election (Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton). The video below from The Guardian discusses how the company Cambridge Analytica obtained vast quantities of Facebook data - including private messages - to build their profiles to influence voters' decisions.
What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal? by The Guardian (2018). Video hosted by YouTube.
Democratic societies rest on the idea that the truth is knowable and that citizens can discern and use it to govern themselves. Because disinformation feeds skepticism that there is such a thing as objective truth, it undermines the very foundation of self-government.
A frequent tactic of foreign information manipulation campaigns is to amplify the most extreme views within a target society in order to weaken it from within...
In one internal document dated August 2019, one Meta employee wrote: "We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook... are affecting societies around the world. We also have compelling evidence that our core product mechanics, such as virality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement, are a significant part of why these types of speech flourish on the platform."
Further Reading
- Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy - Book by Cathy O'Neil (2017)
- Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy - Book by James Williams (2018) (free to read online)
- Channel 4's 2018 undercover investigation into Cambridge Analytica's campaign operations for Donald Trump
- The Guardian's 2018 coverage of Cambridge Analytica's election influence operations before Britain's referendum on leaving the EU (Brexit).