In the past few weeks, the recent Facebook Data scandal is a hot topic of infinite prevalence. Engaging a plethora of journalists, politicians, socialists, human enthusiasts, scholars, technologists, etc. in a common dialogue, arguing and discussing the moral implications of this incident at length.
“From the early days of Silicon Valley’s Internet-era revolution, as engineers, designers, and financiers began to recognize the potential of their inventions, sanctimony was a distinct feature of the revolutionists. The young innovators of Silicon Valley were not like the largely amoral barons of industry and finance. They were visionaries of virtue. Google adopted the slogan “Don’t Be Evil” (which morphed into “Do the Right Thing”). These young innovators were creating a seamlessly “connected” world; they were empowering the dispossessed with their tools and platforms. If you expressed any doubts about the inherent goodness of technology, you didn’t “get it.” And to fail to get it was to be gloomy, a Luddite, and three-quarters dead.” (David Remnick , The New Yorker)
In the opinion of critic and novelist John Lanchester, Facebook is “the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind”. Incriminating the “barons of Silicon Valley”(NewYorker), for breach of user-integrity in the name of a “Cultural War” (NewYorker) pertaining to political agendas, the biggest question coming to mind is –
“Are the social media networks we use with an innate assurance rather antisocial at the core?”
Mark Zuckerberg, the fourth richest man on earth, denying the charges pertaining to breach of social security of its users, clearly raises the issue of questionable accountability. Compromising user security of millions for the benefit of certain political entities supportive of the phenomenon of Donald Trump, “sanctimony is not foremost among his sins” (NewYorker), infamous for his lack of social welfare.
Reducing the voter down to a human data point on the basis of psycho-graphic data analysis using algorithms, to target users deemed as “persuadable”, paving way to “data-obsessed political marketing” (NewYorker). Life in an age of ubiquitous monitoring, as discussed and imagined in many works of science-fiction over the years, is our truth indeed.
Though the big data collected on our personal lives is too large to be contained any more, many claim that employment of the block-chain technology in social media i.e., decentralize authority pertaining to control of this social big-data like bitcoin (create a universal currency), can help mitigate the forthcoming human-security catastrophe.
What are your views about this?
Resources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/cambridge-analytica-and-a-moral-reckoning-in-silicon-valley
https://www.fxempire.com/education/article/how-blockchain-will-change-our-life-economy-and-the-world-449304
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/cambridge-analytica-and-our-lives-inside-the-surveillance-machine
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cambridge-analytica-facebook-and-the-revelations-of-open-secrets
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/31/big-data-lie-exposed-simply-blaming-facebook-wont-fix-reclaim-private-information
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