Tag Archives: Jimmy Wales

Mystery solved? Famous newspapers that ignored the Social Media Strike of 2019 have agreed to accept regular payments of millions of dollars from Facebook

. 4th Estate moves, Big Tech, Social media, Business models for publishing, Culture after Gutenberg, Keiretsu-cooperative, Re-arranging publishing for the 5th Estate, Regulation of Big Tech, Social media and networking . , , , , , , , ,

 

peony, darkening of the light -- postgutenberg@gmail.com

The picture is darkening for those like the world wide web’s inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, who ‘remain committed to making sure the web is a free, open, creative space — for everyone.’

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[ Significant sections of this post-Gutenberg.com entry were edited for clarity on 2 November 2019 ]

The question of why so many famous newspapers railing against Big Tech failed to alert their readers to the Social Media Strike of 2019 — or report on it — has been answered partially, since the last post on this site.  That answer could hardly be more depressing for anyone to whom free speech and objective, independent, media matter.  Worse, it brings us closer to a real life equivalent of a dictator or other centralised authoritarian power running amok — that is, to the fictional world of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

On Friday 25 October, Facebook announced that it will be paying millions of dollars to selected U.S. newspapers — the likes of The New York Times and Washington Post among them — for posting their stories (content) on its site.

According to an early August report in The Guardian that came up in search results for the query, ‘Facebook paying newspapers’ — following the accidental discovery of this news on the Wired site  — the company started hawking its offer of million-dollar-plus subsidies experimentally, in April. Could publishing organisations trying to decide whether they should accept one have failed to cover the Social Media Strike set for  4-5 July for that reason?

It certainly looks like a strong possibility, even if different considerations were at work for each publication. The Guardian, for instance, might not have been approached by Facebook, even though it has a U.S. website. The explanation for its dissing of the strike could have been that the call to action was led by Larry Sanger, one of the Wikipedia’s two long-estranged co-founders. The other, Jimmy Wales, has been a member of the newspaper’s parent company, Guardian Media Group, since at least 2018.

Wired has already demonstrated that taking Facebook’s cash does not necessarily — or immediately — deprive a publication of the ability to balance its reporting about that platform. Its article on the subject quoted an activist working on behalf of traditional newspapers who described the Facebook move as ‘a “conveniently timed announcement that’s clearly meant to distract from Zuckerberg getting eviscerated on the Hill this week”’ — a reference to the founder-CEO’s grilling by members of the U.S. House of Representatives financial services committee in Washington DC.

Yet, because the magazine did not spurn Facebook, Wired’s overall characterisation of the corporation’s new sugar daddy role in the lives of newspapers must be interpreted as favourable — in keeping with one quotation in its report, about the cash infusions ‘having the potential to shift parts of the news industry from “pessimism to optimism”’. [ pG’s emphasis ]

Facebook is only giving some newspapers money, in a scheme it is still unfurling, effectively playing king-maker. Is it naïve to expect that in the future, the newspapers that have until now been exposing the social media colossus’s worst business practices — and demanding that it be made accountable to the public for those actions — will start competing to win favour from it? 

How can these papers possibly cover it objectively when they are vying for larger cash handouts from it? It is hard not to imagine past leaders of newspapers proud of a tradition of reporting ‘without fear or favour’ turning in their graves.

In the U.K. and U.S., newspaper campaigns against Facebook’s data-stealing and privacy violations, among other offences, have been vital prods for MPs and legislators now investigating the need for closer government oversight, if not regulation, of Big Tech. 

If traditional media’s interests become less and less distinguishable from the social media giant’s and they can no longer act as a check on its actions and powers, what happens next? Who in the traditional Establishment could we count on to oppose a deadly merging of government and commerce — by, say, a government trying to invoke emergency powers to requisition Big Tech’s vast and ever-expanding stores of data about us? Invoke those powers illegitimately? And how could that fail to turn some of George Orwell’s nightmare visions into everyday reality? 

The progressive centralisation of media financing and power, and of data collection about ordinary citizens, raises the risk of an authoritarian central force seizing control. It could make that a cakewalk. (The newly created Big Brother would not necessarily be domestic: it could easily be a hostile foreign government.)

Newspapers that have consented to taking Facebook’s coin should reverse their decision immediately — but are unlikely to do anything of the kind. By far the most thoughtful and intelligent reaction to the novel scheme came from a writer or writers on the Techdirt website in Redwood City, in the northern half of Silicon Valley. Crisply written, and with a critical historical perspective missing from every other commentary on that subject, Techdirt‘s take on the topic is essential reading. Its conclusion is in perfect harmony with pG’s (see ‘Wanted: a brave newspaper, for an experiment in which readers become stakeholders ( updated )’:

If we want to “fix” journalism, it will require a new path forward (i.e., innovative business models).

Accepting Facebook’s Trojan horse handouts would not be the right sort of innovation or improvement on the defective business model most widely used today. Here is (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, lamenting the effects of that model on his brainchild’s evolution, after its open and liberating early years:

The web that many connected to years ago is not what new users will find today. What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared.

These dominant platforms are able to lock in their position by creating barriers for competitors.

[…]

Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative.

A year ago, Facebook acquired a key to opening doors to high government offices everywhere when it hired Nick (Sir Nicholas) Clegg — Britain’s deputy prime minister from 2010-15 —  to serve as its head of global policy and communications. As the company’s capacious pockets are used to favour some venerable, still dominant old media powers not just with gifts of cash but — presumably — special treatment on its platform, old and new media seem well on their way to creating an even more unassailable Establishment.  This could make a U-turn towards decentralising power ever more difficult and probably, impossible. 

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peony , darkening of the light, square -- postgutenberg@gmail.com

 

‘Mass surveillance’: a top spook is allowed an intelligent and revealing say, at last

. 4th Estate moves . , , , , , , , ,
With the apparent arrival of see-through spying, can transparent black ops be far behind? - 'Cluff' for Private Eye

With the apparent arrival of see-through spying, can transparent black ops be far behind?
– ‘Cluff’ for Private Eye

As this is not really a personal blog, let us say simply that, for the second December in a row, we find ourselves grieving. Two losses. Two who could not be closer to us: she, just after Christmas, last year; he, last week.

He could be morose and rage like thunder, yes. But laughter was what came to him most naturally. He would have loved this enlargement of a drawing at the bottom of an inside page of a recent Private Eye that there was no time to send him. For weeks, we’d been discussing — in wondering tones — exactly how the spies of Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA were going to do their jobs ‘transparently’ with members of the judiciary and politicians breathing hotly down their backs.

He, with an insider’s knowledge of these things – in another part of the world – would have warmly endorsed points made by a former top spy in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. David Omand is the one truly thoughtful debater who, as far as we have noticed, has been given a chance to make the case for the other side of government data-gathering about ordinary citizens to a politically liberal audience. We have not seen his reflections given any space in the newspapers**, but paid close attention to what he said at a forum organised by the Labour Campaign for Human Rights – ‘GCHQ and the fight against terrorism: did UK surveillance go too far?’ — where the speakers included the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Here was an event that made us think — at long last, balance.

Not as an endorsement, just good food for thought, an extract from live reporting of the event by a Guardian reporter — part of David Omand’s contribution to the conversation at the Houses of Parliament on 17 December:

7.14pm GMT Sir David Omand, the former head of GCHQ, speaks next.

He is speaking on his own behalf, he says.

He says these revelations would not have come as a shock if the Guardian had done more homework – “there are books written about all this stuff”. There is a lot of “synthetic shock horror”, he says.

7.17pm GMT There is increasing demand for more data about criminals from law enforcement, Omand says.

Supplying those demands is driven by the ever-improving electronic communications devices.

The ethical constraints are the third key force here, he says. It is our legitimate concern for privacy that constrains how such data is used.

We should be looking for a point of stable equilibrium between these three forces, he says.

Much of what has been reported about what Snowden stole has been misleading, he says.

A “major category error” runs through the Guardian’s reporting, he says. It is journalistic sleight of hand to confuse access to fibre-optic cables with mass surveillance. “We are not actually subject to mass surveillance in this country”, but we are “blessed” with an intelligence community that has “bulk access” – but that is different, he says.

7.23pm GMT

He has seven points to make.

He believes in human rights and the privacy of family life.

But also of protecting the weak from those who would harm them.

For a long time we have sanctioned intrusion by law, he says. The European convention on human rights states that states have the right to protect their citizens, but there has to be oversight and investigation of abuse, and redress if abuse is found.

The scale of change needed to deal with the internet by law enforcement today needs to be recognised, he says. It is the medium of choice for enemies of society because it offers multiple means of hiding your identity, Omand says. Complete anonymity is not desirable and should not be a policy goal, he says.

The security services should be able to find and access the communications of those who mean to do us harm, he says. You need powerful tools for that, and that’s where bulk access comes in, and if you don’t allow the services those tools, you won’t be able to stop the terrorists.

You should be proud that in this country we have people of the skills and dedication to be able to do this, he says.

Oversight and regulation and judicial determination that the actions are lawful are also necessary.

In this security space it would be absurdly self-defeating to inform suspects they were under surveillance or tell them how they were. So the authorities cannot be transparent – “they can however be much more open about the purposes of this activity and the nature of the work that is being done”, he says.

You don’t need to read the Guardian to find out about this – it was already out there. For some reasons government was reticent about giving a full account, he says.

So the ISC [ the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament ] will have to continue to have private sessions, he says.

7.26pm GMT

[…]

If you follow those seven steps you end up with a sensible agenda for change, Omand says.

[…]

Speaking personally, he says he didn’t devote most of his working life to fighting the cold war in order to introduce new totalitarianism, all-knowing mass surveillance.

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** A quick post-posting check shows that he was permitted to contribute an opinion piece about the Snowden leaks on the Guardian site in September — but with low reader interest guaranteed by its placing in the Comment-is-Free section with commenting turned off. Erm — well, yes.