Technology is disrupting our lives at an unprecedented pace and we’re all struggling to catch up, afraid of becoming irrelevant or left behind. We’re reeling from the expose of how Facebook data played a role in manipulating the elections in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Yet, would any one of us seriously consider deleting our Facebook profiles? How else could we stay connected to myriad acquaintances we can’t or won’t call or meet face to face?
Social media is already integral to many of us today. We remember a time without it as one of deprivation and can’t quite imagine how we might manage without it today.
It feels comfortable to expect technology companies, government regulators and activists to sort this out for us while we wait in a sort of limbo, some of us shunning and some of us embracing social media, with most of us somewhere in the middle.
When Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, he candidly admitted that he couldn’t have imagined when he set out to create Facebook that one day he would be held accountable for possible election fraud. Just as none of us can imagine that one of our profound insights or frivolous musings, joyful sharing or pretentious posing on Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp could be held against us in a job interview or even a legal court. Yet, this is happening and we must be aware of the danger even when we don’t quite understand it.
I’m not a fan of the gun lobby in America but they made a critical point about intent when they embraced the slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” It doesn’t work so well in their context – people do kill significantly less people if they don’t have access to guns. But this insight in the context of technology has a much greater impact – Technology doesn’t manipulate people. People manipulate people. And this is something that will hold true even if technology is removed from the equation.
Self-interest is a reality for all of us. We all sometimes have feelings and opinions we feel pressured to hide from the disapproval of the society we inhabit. Why should we expect other people to be any different? Everybody lies. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves because we believe them.
Does election fraud and voter manipulation not happen in technologically disadvantaged countries? If anything, it happens more. The myth we believed was that it didn’t in so-called developed countries – that Americans and Europeans had evolved to a level of integrity the rest of the world must aspire to. This scandal and the role played by social media has served to unmask the subtlety and sophistication with which manipulation is engineered. Gossip and rumour mongering have always been around, only the tools they use to spread have evolved.
In a desperate attempt for survival, traditional media is being styled as the hero in the war against fake news on social media. Yet, the fact remains that they are not above faking news either. Remember propaganda? History has shown how often and how effectively many governments used control over the news media of their times to spread misinformation and influence outcomes in their favour.
We know how strictly the government of China regulates the Internet in their territory. Do we believe they leave traditional media alone to speak the unfavourable truth? If anything, traditional media must have been easier to regulate when we saw them as trustworthy news sources. Just as social media makes it more easy to spread fake news, it also makes it much easier to spot fake news because now the seeds of doubt have been planted and we already feel wary.
Technology companies, governments and activists probably will and must hold themselves accountable for this breakdown in trust. But we as individuals must also ensure that we do not complacently put the blinders of trust back on.
