Will social media end society as we know it?

 or humans to exist as a society there must be harmony among people even when they disagree on most topics. At the very least there must be laws to ensure peaceful co-existence and enforcement of those laws including appropriate punishments for violators.

Next in order of priorities come trade, infrastructure, education, employment opportunities, healthcare, etc. The key to achieving this harmony is for every member of society to behave in a civilized way and that means being diplomatic and careful in what one says. We human beings are continually thinking of something every moment, both good and bad. It can be driven by our senses such as thoughts of food, music, physical pleasure, etc. or spiritual thoughts. It can be driven by envy, joy, sadness and worry for loved ones.

However, we cannot express every one of those thoughts to others because such sharing can not only reveal who we really are but can also lead to unpleasant situations or unnecessary distractions. Our society is almost like a circus where we perform like trained animals and control our natural instincts. We are trained to be polite, inoffensive, in control of our emotions, wellgroomed and clean in public appearance, soft-spoken in our conversations and to think before we open our mouths.

Any kind of physical altercation is forbidden even when the other person is saying something that is insulting or provocative. If one does not like circus animals and really wants to see how animals behave one must go to the jungle where they roam free following their instincts.

They fiercely protect their territories, hunt other animals for food, kill other animals if threatened and the air is full of their roars and growling. There are no forces to control them. Human beings might become just like those animals if they do not follow the protocol of society. In fact, primitive human species were just like animals before they gradually became “social”. With the advances in technology, especially telecommunications, came social media.

The technology itself is mind-boggling. A small hand-held device, called a smartphone, provides the entire universe at one’s fingertip. It is not just a phone, but a device to store a telephone directory, to transmit video and photos, to communicate in writing (texting), to provide a portal for the internet and also a camera, an alarm clock with timer, an electronic key, a gaming machine, a calculator, a weather gauge, a GPS navigator; it can probably do a host of other functions I do not even know.

Among numerous conveniences a smartphone offers is the possibility of interacting with a group of people one knows – either large or small – individually or in a simultaneous group communication; furthermore, such communications can be done almost instantaneously. There is no need to log on to a computer, look for email addresses or phone numbers or wait for some other tasks. Finally, one can use an alias and remain anonymous to protect one’s privacy. Facebook was my first experience in social media. Initially, it was exciting to find long-lost friends and relatives and re-establish connections with them, including exchanging photos after years if not decades.

There was also a temptation to see how large a group of friends I could establish and how many would respond favourably to my posts. Perhaps I had a hidden desire to be popular. After a while I realized that there were not a whole lot of commonalities in my life with the lives of my Facebook friends and not much to talk about because lives have progressed along different paths and people also change with time. While I temporarily enjoyed the nostalgia, I inadvertently disclosed lots of information about my personal life to not just my friends but also to Mark Zuckerberg and the company. I got out of Facebook. I never developed any interest in Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat, Tik Tok and all other such means of social interaction.

I gradually became aware of the detrimental effects of social media on people, especially young kids. The main problem is that one can write one’s deepest thoughts about any given subject. One does not need to think about it too much. It is addictive and hence disruptive because it takes one away from useful tasks. While it can be used to organize a team for a good cause, it can also be used for organizing destructive activities such as protests, riots, bullying and criminal activities. An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.

It can be dangerous to young kids both emotionally and physically. One can be exposed to the dark side. They can try daring acts for the sake of publicity and popularity which can lead to injury and death. Addiction to social media can lead to isolation and social awkwardness because kids may find interaction through social media more enjoyable than personal communications. Secondly, social media allows people to express their intimate thoughts on any topic instantaneously to everyone in the world without much thought about the consequences. The results could be destructive. Some people can get offended and angry; the resulting animosity can destroy long-term friendships.

Family secrets might be revealed resulting in embarrassment if nothing else. Gossip, conspiracy theories and misinformation can spread and become “viral”, affecting a large portion of the population. Postings filled with hatred about race, sexual preference or political affiliation can lead to bad feelings if not violent behavior. The reason so many people came to hate Donald Trump was his tendency to tweet his raw innermost emotions almost on a daily basis without taking time to think about how his comments would impact all people and not just his base.

Social media can also be used directly for anti-social purposes; for example, a recent trend is to post antimarriage messages and memes advocating all the benefits of single life. Unlike other means of communication in the past, there is a sense of empowerment among users of social media because they believe that they can hide behind aliases. As a result, nothing is sacred or off-limit. Social media also encourages an easy path to popularity and fame and has led to the concept of “influencers” who can also earn big money depending on their activities and how many followers they have. Unlike verbal comments over the phone, any message on social media is permanently recorded; they can be deleted but leave an electronic track behind.

Furthermore, one has no control over messages once they have been communicated and the receptors can relay them to any number of people all over the world. Not only personal financial and health information but politically sensitive information or even national security secrets can inadvertently leak out, providing hackers with a gold mine. Dominance of social media will make society less friendly and more confrontational; more preoccupied with conspiracy theories and misinformation. This might be the beginning of the end of human society as we know it. However, I do not think that humans will go back to being animals.

The grand finale would be for AI to take over because every communication would be documented and electronically traceable, which AI can process in milliseconds. AI will know how everyone thinks and feels. We will just pretend to live in a make-believe society which will no longer be in our control.

BASAB DASGUPTA

Source: The statesman, 24/09/23

Metaverse has potential to revolutionize e-commerce

 E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of products and services or the transfer of data and funds over the internet. These are business transactions that occur in ways such as business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), consumer to consumer (C2C) or consumer to business (C2B).

Since the option to purchase goods over the internet was first introduced via technology, there has been a fixed divide between the real and digital worlds. This was the case until the introduction of the metaverse, a combination of multiple technologies, built to work together.

This includes a series of technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and even games. The metaverse enables multi-modal interactions with digital items, virtual environments, and real people, thus providing an immersive multi-user experience for anyone accessing it around the globe.

The metaverse is all about ‘customer experience’, which covers practices like ‘stronger engagement’ and ‘better understanding of customers’.

According to a survey conducted by Shopkick, 70% of customers believe the ability to try, touch and see products are the main aspects of an in-store experience.

This is going to be solved and fulfilled in the metaverse, as AR and VR allow the same to happen, all from the comfort of your home. Companies would benefit hugely from the metaverse, as it not only widens their consumer base but also has the potential to get reviews on new products, thus pointing them in the right direction for the future.

The metaverse can also bridge the gap between the physical and virtual world, hence merging online and offline commerce into one. This means that users will be able to experience the physical world via the metaverse, digitally, making online shopping more special.

Regardless of the user’s location, the metaverse will allow users to buy, sell and trade products + services, along with providing creators and companies additional income. In other words, the metaverse will change the way we learn, how we earn money, and how we communicate with each other, similar to what the introduction of 2D did in 1995.

Many e-commerce giants have already begun to incorporate the metaverse into their platforms.

For instance, Amazon has introduced an AR room tool, called ‘room decorator’, which enables the user to see how furniture and/or other decorative items would look in your house.

Similarly, Flipkart, on April 28th 2022 announced the launch of ‘Flipkart Labs’, designed to “develop blockchain and metaverse use cases", including stores. Furthermore, retail chains like Warby Parker have created virtual fitting apps, allowing the user to try every pair of glasses in its catalogue before its purchase.

Even clothing brands such as Adidas and Gucci are exploring metaverse stores. This makes online shopping feel personalized and more special, something that has never existed before the metaverse.

E-commerce in the metaverse is guaranteed to accelerate + expand over the next few years. As new technology begins to get discovered, new features also usher in allowing online commerce and offline commerce to merge.

The recent surge of interest in AR and VR ensures the quality and fit of a product prior to purchasing. Normally, e-commerce platforms work in a “browse, choose, click to buy" process.

However, the metaverse will change this to “browse, experience to buy". This means the customers experiencing the metaverse will be able to walk around a store, view product displays, and later make purchases, all from the comfort of their own homes.

The metaverse has the ability to improve and revolutionize current e-Commerce practices and provide a unique experience for the users. The first benefit of metaverse-powered e-commerce will be ‘personalized experiences', which are often limited to product recommendations + discounts today.

In the metaverse, however, brands will be able to offer hyper-personalized ‘browse and buy’ experiences to their customers, eliminating the boundaries present in the physical world.

The second benefit can be ‘reduced return rates’, since the metaverse-powered e-commerce will help customers try out products before ordering/purchasing them, and the enhanced product visualization will ensure users make informed choices.

The third benefit will be ‘increased conversion rates and higher upsell’ for traffic/visitor landing on an e-Commerce platform, due to the personalized experience the metaverse would provide.

Recent studies show how people are ready to overpay by almost 40% for a product that can be tested in 3D. All these accrued benefits will finally result in ‘increased profitability' for brands, thus revolutionizing the way they operate.

In conclusion, the metaverse can completely revolutionize the operating model, customer experience, sales, and profitability of ecommerce companies. The key will be how brands embrace and adopt these technologies for creating ‘wow’ experiences for their customers in the future.

Agam Chaudhary is a serial entrepreneur and investor in Web3

Source: Mintepaper, 25,07,22

Social media has a serious disinformation problem. But it can be fixed

 Social media platforms have effectively supplanted traditional information networks in India. The dialectical relationship between online content, traditional media and political networks means that the messages propagated online effectively touch even those who are not yet online.

This ubiquity could have been a golden moment for India — democratising access to information, fostering community, increasing citizen participation and reducing the distance between ordinary people and decision-makers. However, social media platforms have adopted design choices that have led to a proliferation and mainstreaming of misinformation while allowing themselves to be weaponised by powerful vested interests for political and commercial benefit. The consequent free flow of disinformation, hate and targeted intimidation has led to real-world harm and degradation of democracy in India: Mainstreamed anti-minority hate, polarised communities and sowed confusion have made it difficult to establish a shared foundation of truth.

Organised misinformation (disinformation) has a political and/or commercial agenda. However, even though there is growing recognition of the political motivations and impact of disinformation, the discourse in India has remained apolitical and episodic — focused on individual pieces of content and events, and generalised outrage against big tech instead of locating it in the larger political context or structural design issues. The evolution of the global discourse on misinformation too has allowed itself to get mired in the details of content standards, enforcement, fact checking, takedowns, deplatforming, etc — a framework which lends itself to bitter partisan contest over individual pieces of content while allowing platforms to disingenuously conflate the discourse on moderating misinformation with safeguards for freedom of expression. However, these issues are adjunct to the real issue of disinformation and our upcoming report establishes that the current system of content moderation is more a public relations exercise for platforms than being geared to stop the spread of disinformation.

A meaningful framework to combat disinformation at scale must be built on the understanding that it is a political problem: The issue is as much about bad actors as individual pieces of content. Content distribution and moderation are interventions in the political process. There is thus a need for a comprehensive transparency law to enforce relevant disclosures by social media platforms. Moreover, content moderation and allied functions such as standard setting, fact-checking and de-platforming must be embedded in the sovereign bipartisan political process if they are to have democratic legitimacy. If this is not to degrade into legal sanction for government censorship, any regulatory body must be grounded in democratic principles — its own and of platforms.

Given the political polarisation in our country (and most others), the constitution of such a regulator and its operational legitimacy is difficult. However, the failure of a polarised political ecosystem to come to a consensus is not a free pass for the platforms. Platforms are responsible for the speed and spread of distribution of disinformation and the design choices, which have made disinformation ubiquitous and indistinguishable from vetted information. It is thus the responsibility of the platforms to tamp down on the distribution of disinformation and their weaponisation. We argue that platforms are sentient about the users and content they are hosting and bear responsibility for their distribution choices. Moreover, just as any action against content is seen as an intervention in the political process, the artificial increase in distribution of content (amplification) too has political and commercial value.

We recommend three approaches to distribution that can be adopted by platforms: Constrain distribution to organic reach (chronological feed); take editorial responsibility for amplified content; or amplify only credible sources (irrespective of ideological affiliation). The current approach to misinformation that relies on fact-checking a small subset of content in a vast ocean of unreviewed content is inadequate for the task and needs to be supplemented by a review of content creators itself.

Finally, as the country with the largest youth population in the world, it is important that we actively think of how we want our youth to engage in our democratic processes and the role of social media platforms in it. There are three notable effects of social media on our politics, which require  deliberation.

First, social media has led to a dislocation of politics with people weighing in on abstractions online while being disengaged from their immediate surroundings. Second, social media has led to a degradation of our political discourse where serious engagement has been supplanted by “hot takes” and memes. Third, it has obscured the providence of consequential interventions in our

political discourse because of opacity in technology.

Meaningful politics, especially in democracies, is rooted in local organisation, discussion and negotiation. However, the structure of social media has facilitated a perception of engagement without organisation, action without consequence. This wasn’t and isn’t inevitable — there are more thoughtful ways to structure platforms, which would help connect and root people in their own communities instead of isolating them locally while “connecting” them virtually.

Instead of moving towards more grounded communities, there is an acceleration towards greater virtuality through “metaverse”. Social media cannot be wished away. But its structure and manner of use are choices we must make as a polity after deliberation instead of accepting as them fait accompli or simply being overtaken by developments along the way.

Written by Ruchi Gupta

Source: Indian Express, 11/04/22

The saviour complex of Facebook’s critics

 

Bhaskar Chakravorti writes: Whistleblowers and the Western media have exposed how the social media platform allows dangerous social media manipulation in developing countries. But why have they locked those very countries out of this conversation?

Back in February 2019, a Facebook (yes, that is what it used to be called then) employee ran a test to understand what a new user in India would see if all they did was follow pages and groups recommended by Facebook’s algorithms. What the test revealed was horrifying: “A near constant barrage of polarising nationalist content, misinformation, and violence and gore,” according to the tester. This included Islamophobia, a man holding a severed head wrapped in a Pakistani flag, unverified images of Indian retaliatory strikes in Pakistan and battered bodies. India joins Brazil and the US in an exclusive club, “Tier zero,” for hate speech and disinformation on Facebook. The company had set up pre-election “war rooms” and dashboards to alert officials to emerging problems. Yet, despite this elite status, India has been left out in the cold not just by Facebook but by its critics as well.

Thanks to the revelations tumbling out with the Facebook Papers, we now learn that despite the elevated risk status of countries such as India and Brazil or Indonesia and Iran that bagged spots in the next tier of priority for monitoring, 87 per cent of Facebook’s global budget was dedicated to identifying misinformation solely in the US, leaving a measly 13 per cent for all others. Notably, 52.5 per cent of Facebook’s revenues from the first quarter of 2021 came from outside the US and Canada. To make things worse, thanks to the lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers, much of the problematic content out of India never got flagged. This is a head-scratcher, as much of Facebook’s content moderation is outsourced to —drumroll, please — cheap labour from India.

Now, none of this is looking at all cool for Facebook. And, justifiably, there’s been an outpouring of outrage. We should be thankful to Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee and now whistleblower, who made this trove available, after copying hundreds and thousands of pages of internal documents and communications while she was with the company. Haugen says she was moved to act because she was troubled by the impact of Facebook on the developing world. “I did what I thought was necessary to save the lives of people, especially in the global south, who I think are being endangered by Facebook’s prioritisation of profits over people,” she said.

But here is what’s puzzling. The sharing of Haugen’s hoard was tightly orchestrated. First, The Wall Street Journal got to take a bite and then 18 news organisations were allowed in to feed at the trough. How many media organisations that publish in Hindi or Bengali or Amharic or any of these other developing world languages — or, for goodness sake, any journalists from anywhere in the global south or publications, such as, um, The Indian Express — were part of this exclusive Facebook Papers consortium? Exactly zero.

Are Fox Business and Le Monde better situated to understand the plight of the Muslims in India or of those caught in the war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front? It is lovely to note that The Wall Street Journal cares enough to cover issues that go beyond those uppermost on American minds and covers stories affecting people in distant lands. Facebook has been – rightly — castigated for not investing enough on content moderators who understand the numerous developing world languages and dialects to catch problematic posts. I would like to know how many Amharic and Oromo speakers do The Wall Street Journal or Le Monde have on their staff that give them the privilege of representing the depths of this scandal to the rest of us?

The cluelessness piles on as we dive deeper into how the media covered its own coverage of the Haugen hoard. Marina Walker Guevara, executive editor of the highly respected Pulitzer Center, said that the present era’s stories – the Facebook saga being a prime example – have become “so complex and so multilayered and global” that it would be impossible to report them without a large, global network. So, let me make sure I have got this right: 18 news organisations from the West, with only two non-English speaking, one from France and the other from Germany, constitute a “large global network?” Really?

This “large global network” devoted more space to covering how this was a breakthrough for Western journalism (their Slack group was called “Apparently We’re a Consortium Now”), congratulating itself (The Washington Post senior managing editor Cameron Barr called it “exciting”), and pondering the pressures of a consortium of competing news organisations on the verge of breaking the embargo.

Wouldn’t the hard-working journalists who work for and spend time on the ground in the global south have some insight into the local “dangers” and provide context and analysis in ways that might add to our understanding of this complicated phenomenon? Did Frances Haugen, her PR team, the consortium of media elite not wonder about the audacity of covering the wretchedness of social media manipulation in the global south while locking the global south out of the room? Are we now re-inventing the white (wo)man’s burden for the digital age?

It is hard to escape the sad lessons of this story. Not only does Facebook not care enough to allocate even the basic modicum of resources to ensure safety in the developing world, but even those who take on the task of bringing Facebook to task — US lawmakers and regulators, the whistleblowers, and the media with privileged access — don’t seem to care much for them either or at least trust them enough to include them.

Facebook had already proven itself to be a post-colonial colonial power. At least the officers and foot soldiers of the East India Company braved malaria and dysentery and spent time in the conquered lands and even made attempts to butcher Hindi or Bengali or all the other conquered languages to converse with the natives. Mark Zuckerberg and his crew have been quarantined in Silicon Valley from the very start and have created or acquired addictive social media products that captured the attention of billions in the global south from a safe distance. They spent precious little in time or resources to truly understand the complexities and local contexts they were in the process of altering with their products. But we knew all this already. What is new with the latest turn of this sad saga is that Facebook’s critics seem just as clueless with their own post-colonial colonial saviour mindsets.

In looking for the right word to describe this, I would use one very different from the obvious one that springs to mind: Irony. Having post-colonial colonials try to take on the gigantic post-colonial colonialist to task for its colonialism is just so, um, “meta”.

Mark Zuckerberg had it right all along. We are already in the metaverse.

Source: Indian Express, 10/11/21

How social media has changed the way we see ourselves

 There is a connection between social media and body image issues. While, on the one hand, social media has opened up many avenues for networking, it has brought with it, the desperate need for validation from the online community.As social media becomes all-pervasive, it has had a significant impact on society. Almost everybody is on social media today.

As more people join Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and other networking sites, there is far greater sharing of information, content, thoughts and ideas than ever before. Social media helps build online communities, connect audiences, and generate revenue.

However, the downside to these activities is the desire to stay in the spotlight. This can consequently lead to low self-esteem and create a negative perception of one’s “body image”.

Body image is how people think about their appearance and how they perceive themselves. A negative body image harms individuals who are affected by the impractical, often absurd, manner in which they view themselves.

The assumption that a person must always look good on social media has become a disorder in itself.

There is a strong connection between social media and body image issues. While, on the one hand, social media has opened up many avenues for networking, it has brought with it, the pressure to look good, get thousands of likes and positive comments on various platforms. This can affect the mental health of many young people. Validation from the online community has become something of an addiction.

Everyone likes to be complimented on their looks. But when this happens on social media, its effect is often amplified. People often seek approval and appreciation from strangers who they meet online. But if, despite their best efforts, the comments they receive are negative, it can lead to sadness and depression.

A majority of those who have body image issues are people who compare their pictures with those posted by others. If they perceive that they fall short, they feel dejected. Low self-esteem has become something of a norm among social media users and can be detrimental to their mental well-being.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, low self-esteem affects people of all ages, not just the young. They get affected by things such as weight issues, which then can be a catalyst that forces them into depression and alcohol or substance abuse. Similar findings were revealed in a poll of 4,505 adults by YouGov in the United Kingdom. The study revealed that 57% of people aged 18 to 24 years admitted to having anxiety over their body image, compared with 30% in the age group of 45 to 54 years, and 20% for those over the age of 55.

Global statistics show that at least 91% of women are not happy with how they look and end up following trendy diets to achieve an “ideal body”. These statistics apply across race, marital status, gender and age. Almost half of the population that uses social media has admitted to having had low self-esteem.

Negative body image and low self-esteem can lead to anxiety, nervousness, depression, jealousy, eating disorders, alcohol abuse, and living in a make-believe world where social media perfection has a disproportionate influence on people.

However, with some effort, society can overcome body image issues. There should be a culture of inclusivity and the promotion of a positive body image. Parents should be more careful and look for signs of negative body image among children and seek timely help. Parents can help their children by promoting a positive body image, making their children understand the implications of unnecessary social media use. They can seek help from trained counsellors and psychiatrists.Social media is both a blessing and a curse. It is up to us how we use it.

Sasha Raikhy Sain is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and director and founder, Possitive Vibes.

Source: Hindustan Times, 9/02/21

The menace of social media monopolies

 

Facebook’s global monopoly profits helped propel WhatsApp’s domination of India, with great social costs

The United States (US) federal government and over 40 state governments in the US are seeking to break up social media giant, Facebook and its subsidiaries, WhatsApp and Instagram. The governments allege that Facebook abused its monopoly powers in stifling competition and distorting the social media industry. Of all the 187 countries that Facebook and its subsidiaries do business in, arguably, India has the most at stake resting on the outcome of this case.

However, India’s problems with Facebook and its monopoly subsidiaries are not as much about the economics of free market capitalism but about a more profound issue of social order and harmony.

There is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to lynchings and deaths in India caused by rumours spread on the WhatsApp communication platform. It lists 12 cases of lynchings since 2017 in which 36 Indians have been injured or killed in social violence incited by fake messages spread through WhatsApp.

It is an astonishingly dubious distinction for a seemingly innocuous technology platform to be hailed as the perpetrator of violent deaths in a society. Widely-circulated rumours and false news on WhatsApp have caused severe upheavals in Indian society over the past few years. Just as gun violence is an acknowledged abomination in the US, WhatsApp violence in India is now an acknowledged disgrace. Despite all its acclaimed benefits, WhatsApp has turned into an enormous social menace in India.

In a meeting with Facebook’s global leadership team in the US in July 2018, I raised my concerns over the misuse of Facebook’s technology platforms in India and urged them to take this issue up seriously. They showed no signs of recognition of the gravity of the situation. Subsequently, in another meeting in October 2018 with the then global CEO of WhatsApp and their India leadership team, I once again raised alarm over WhatsApp’s unwitting complicity in perpetrating social unrest in India and asked them how the company proposes to address it. Facebook’s India team dismissed this concern nonchalantly and waxed eloquent about the immense benefits to Indian society from WhatsApp.

The notion that no civilised society should tolerate a single death, even if it means denying benefits to thousands seemed lost on them. The enormous market power and clout that Facebook and its subsidiaries enjoy has lured the company into a false sense of self-righteousness and made them callous about the unintended deep social harm inflicted by their products.

WhatsApp is a big social menace primarily because of its ubiquity. Nearly one out of every two adult Indians uses WhatsApp. WhatsApp has become hugely popular in India largely because it was free for the Indian consumer. Indians send as many free WhatsApp messages in one day as the number of text messages they send in a whole month. If WhatsApp charged a fee for every message or revealed the identity of the original sender of a widely circulated message, then perhaps WhatsApp would not be the menace that it is now. But, as the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma reminded us — “if the product is free, then you become the product”.

WhatsApp is able to provide its encrypted services to billions of users for free because all its costs are borne entirely by its parent, Facebook. Facebook can pay for the enormous costs of keeping WhatsApp free because it generates a profit of the equivalent of ₹20 crore ($2.7mn) every hour from its sheer dominance and monopoly of the social media industry. So, the fountainhead of “deaths by WhatsApp” in India is Facebook’s monopolistic profits.

WhatsApp is a big social menace primarily because of its ubiquity. Nearly one out of every two adult Indians uses WhatsApp. WhatsApp has become hugely popular in India largely because it was free for the Indian consumer. Indians send as many free WhatsApp messages in one day as the number of text messages they send in a whole month. If WhatsApp charged a fee for every message or revealed the identity of the original sender of a widely circulated message, then perhaps WhatsApp would not be the menace that it is now. But, as the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma reminded us — “if the product is free, then you become the product”.

WhatsApp is able to provide its encrypted services to billions of users for free because all its costs are borne entirely by its parent, Facebook. Facebook can pay for the enormous costs of keeping WhatsApp free because it generates a profit of the equivalent of ₹20 crore ($2.7mn) every hour from its sheer dominance and monopoly of the social media industry. So, the fountainhead of “deaths by WhatsApp” in India is Facebook’s monopolistic profits.

By this argument, a free WhatsApp should be deified as a blessing for consumers. But we know that a free WhatsApp causes deaths in India. The economic method of measuring consumer benefit or harm through the exclusive prism of prices is shallow. It is irrefutable that WhatsApp has caused tremendous social harm to Indian consumers.

Facebook’s enduring stream of global monopoly profits helped propel WhatsApp’s domination of the Indian market. If WhatsApp is split from Facebook, it will either be forced to charge for its product or look for alternative revenue streams or raise billions of dollars from new investors. None of these are easy solutions and can disrupt WhatsApp’s status quo. This could potentially break WhatsApp’s dominance in the Indian market, spurring competition for safer platforms and ending its monopoly. Which, in turn, could bode well to reduce social unrest through widely-circulated rumours on one dominant monopolistic platform.

India is WhatsApp’s largest market with four times more users than its second-largest market. There is a lot riding for Indian society on the case to break up Facebook and WhatsApp. While the US is seeking to save its cherished free market capitalism, India will be looking to save lives and preserving social harmony. Breaking up Facebook could help prevent the breaking of some Indians’ faces.

Praveen Chakravarty is a political economist and a senior office-bearer of the Congress

Source: Hindustan Times, 15/12/20

Social media helps the independent woman find and forge new solidarities

 

Social media tribes can never be substitutes for family or childhood pals. But then, they are not meant to be. They are a different kind of tribe — an additional tribe.

A lot has been said about the screen-addiction of our generation, and how social media is isolating us, “ripping apart” our communities and “tribes”, making us all lonelier. As a feminist, I am inclined to disagree slightly. However true and grave the dangers of social media may be, there is also another side to it.

Loneliness isn’t merely a function of being physically alone, being bodily distanced from people. Loneliness is more often a function of not being able to find people who understand you, people who “speak your language”.

For quite some time now, globalisation and the resulting rush of ideas across the world has meant that we are no longer connected only to our physical tribes. In fact, our generation has seen such great transitions at supersonic speeds that we do not feel connected to our families and communities in the way that the previous generations were.This disconnect is far more pronounced in women than in men—because men are more inclined to follow the traditional line of thought, especially since that school of thought heavily privileges them.

Independent women who have a voice and demand to be heard, who refuse to bow down to the old world order and refuse to fit in with cultural norms of what a woman “ought” to be like — we were even lonelier in our traditional communities, our “tribes”. We have always been “freaks” and “outliers”, never really belonged.

That’s not to say we don’t love or need our families. We still cherish the network of family and community and neighbourhood. But we also need to be understood. And that’s where our traditional communities fall short. Their worldview is so different from ours that we have spent much of our lives in isolation — an emotional isolation.

The isolation of the modern world that is lamented so much has not been brought on by technology alone, but by the churning of ideas, by the distance between the ideas of the present generation and the previous one. A distance that is created by the present generation rebelling against the injustices of the previous ones.

Particularly for individuals who didn’t conform to normative ideas of social acceptance, traditional communities did not provide much support or emotional nourishment.

There is no replacement for the feeling of being heard and understood that one gets in the presence of people who can empathise, and offer advice that enables you to live a life that you want — not necessarily that which society wants.

Through social media, we are able to connect with people who understand us. Yes, social media is also full of predators and fakes — but then, isn’t the real world full of them too?

Social media becomes a hindrance and an isolator only when you begin to use it as a replacement for real-life family and friends, ignoring their physical presence — when you are glued to your device even in the presence of people around you. Social media is not a substitute for physical networks. It is a supplement. At least, that is how it ought to be. So how do we navigate social media in a way that makes us feel less isolated, instead of more? By seeking genuine and meaningful engagements.

Instead of constantly being in battle mode over politics or religion or the newest debate, we need to attempt to genuinely connect with people at a personal level, at the level of ideas and emotions and empathy. Perhaps, some of those online friendships could translate into offline friendships too. There are various support groups cropping up on social media now, for this purpose. To help people find their tribes, who would understand them and help them overcome the perpetual loneliness that is the bane of people whose ideas are vastly different from the physical communities they are a part of.

Social media tribes can never be substitutes for family or childhood pals. But then, they are not meant to be. They are a different kind of tribe — an additional tribe.

In a world that is increasingly becoming a mix of cultures, a mix of identities and a mix of selfhoods, we need a mix of multiple tribes to get through life.

For better or for worse, whether we like it or not, the world has changed. The notion of tribes and communities needs to evolve as well.

Zehra Naqvi 

This article first appeared in the print edition on November 12, 2020 under the title ‘A Digital Sisterhood’. Naqvi is a Delhi-based writer

Source: Indian Express, 12/11/20

Social media: The new theatre of India’s culture wars

 

Big technology firms are mediating content, impinging on democracy. Hold them accountable.

The phenomenal rise of social media (SM) platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others is proving to be a double-edged sword in the functioning of democracies. On the one hand, it has democratised access to information. On the other hand, it has concentrated power over that information with a handful of private companies, their billionaire owners, and certain ideologically committed activist groups.

Billions of netizens around the world now feel empowered to bypass traditional curators of information, such as journalists and editors, in searching for their choice of content. They have also become creators and disseminators of content, not just consumers of it. This is further accentuated by tech platforms directing more content at people similar to what they have already seen, thus creating echo chambers of like-minded groups.

This is already known. What is happening now, however, is the next stage of that transformation in how information is generated, disseminated, and consumed, and it is directly impacting how democracies function. There is a global war underway, involving the role of SM and freedom of expression, which is an extension of the culture wars between the Left and Right.

India is seeing the early skirmishes of the online version of this war, which has already progressed to a much higher intensity elsewhere, most notably the United States (US). In America’s bitterly polarised polity, the frontline of this war is a battle between Twitter and President Donald Trump. The former’s flagging of a presidential tweet as fake news, and the latter’s executive order altering the liability of SM platforms who edit content, is worth understanding better.

One of the most stark aspects of the West’s culture wars has been its erosion of the right to freedom of expression, which had been a hallmark of its modern democracies. Especially since the early 20th century, US Supreme Court rulings by the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, interpreting its Constitution’s first amendment, had established what many considered a gold standard of free speech.

While those struggles for free speech had pushed for more freedom, even to say and write very unpleasant things, the intensification of the West’s culture wars in this century has seen a reversal of that trend. Curbs on hate speech became widely accepted and implemented. But, thereafter, there has been a relentless push by so-called woke activists for ever more curbs on speech, often implemented forcefully and without consensus, based solely on political correctness.

A key aspect of this has been the shift from earlier activism against governments clamping down on speech to a focus instead on pushing media, and especially SM, to impose curbs on politically incorrect speech.

The irony in this new activism for speech curbs is that it is being championed by those who call themselves liberals. Of course, this does not represent classical liberal philosophy, and is instead a reflection of the far-Left takeover of present-day liberalism. This is visible around the world, whether in the forced withdrawal of a US academic’s paper contradicting the zeitgeist about race relations, or in the unsavoury departures of senior staff at the once venerable New York Times, after they had dared to publish op-eds reflecting Centre-Right views. In India, this bullying has manifested itself in the ganging up by self-avowed “liberal” authors to stop the publication of a book contradicting their narrative on this year’s Delhi riots.

Such far-Left canons have now invaded the realm of big tech firms. That should hardly be a surprise, considering Silicon Valley’s preference for recruiting “liberal” and “woke” employees. Books and articles by conservative authors such as Douglas Murray and business journalists such as George Anders have documented explicit hiring policies, practices and statistics to confirm Left-wing dominance among SM employees. It was, therefore, inevitable that employee activism would push these platforms into adopting leftist, illiberal policies.

The inconsistencies in those policies show up when SM platforms apply selective standards, such as when Twitter was accused of hypocrisy for not flagging or proscribing the aggressive, warlike tweet of a West Asian leader.

President Trump’s executive order directly impacts this. In US law, SM had been protected against the kind of liabilities — such as defamation — that traditional news media are subject to, on the grounds that SM are simply platforms for others’ opinions and did not edit or otherwise shape that information. But now that they are, by flagging, shadow banning, or deleting posts and accounts, the Trump order echoes many voices that had been asking for SM to be treated on par with media outlets.

A similar battle is raging about SM giants’ abuse of their massive power by sourcing news from media companies without paying for it, and then disseminating and profiting from it. Despite a bitter legal struggle, Australia is likely to become the first nation to require Google to pay for such content.

These battles are relevant to India, which is both the largest democracy as well as one of the largest user bases for SM platforms. Some of these battles have already begun here, such as the recent Indian version of the West’s leftist pressure on Facebook to put curbs on Right-wing posts. It is time to broaden the dialogue here about how India ought to respond.

Source: Hindustan Times, 31/08/2020

What is the right way of regulating social media?

Policy discussions involving the public, and not tech solutions alone, would help fight fake news.

The Supreme Court recently stressed the need to find a balance between the right to online privacy and the right of the state to detect people who use the web to spread panic and commit crimes. Are current regulations and the nature of Internet platforms tuned to find this balance? In a conversation moderated by Srinivasan Ramani, Arun Mohan Sukumar, Head of  Cyber Security and Internet Governance Initiative  at the Observer Research Foundation, and Raman Chima, Asia Policy Director and Senior International Counsel at 'Access Now', take stock of the issues involved and offer some suggestions. Excerpts:

Arun, in the last few years there has been an explosion in the use of messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Concomitantly, there has been an increase in fake news and rumour-mongering leading to lynchings. Are the steps taken by WhatsApp to combat this enough or should it do more?

Arun Mohan Sukumar: When you ask us what are the steps, we should also ask whether these are the steps that we should take in the first place. I think many would agree that some of these problems have nothing to do with the platforms themselves and cannot be resolved by technological solutions.

Fake news is not something that has been catalysed in the digital age alone; it has been a long-standing problem. We have had very little success in trying to persuade people not to believe certain stuff. And I’m not entirely sure whether the solution to this problem necessarily lies in technology.

WhatsApp, to its credit, tried to limit forwards to five people and the norm has been tested. It has been piloted in other parts of the world as well. WhatsApp is looking at India not just as a booming market but also as a place where it can pilot some of these solutions and test them out in other emerging markets as well.

If you take uncomfortable situations developing in another part of the world, Facebook and Twitter were fairly quick to acknowledge the disinformation operations that were backed by the Chinese government in Hong Kong. This came out in a simultaneous way, documenting instances where state-sponsored elements were perpetrating fake news and sophisticated disinformation campaigns against protesters in Hong Kong. That happened because, one, the extent of the commercial engagement of both these platforms in China is fairly limited. Two, there is an element of geopolitics in this which we can’t ignore. The fact is that both of these are American platforms. The orchestrated disclosure, I believe, could have had the blessings of the American government. That is the extent to which these platforms are prepared to take cognisance of fake news. In other economies, it’s quite selective.

While WhatsApp has been trying to resist this idea of message traceability, it is also trying to maintain the integrity of the platform. Many regulators in India believe that technological fixes are solutions even if they weaken end-to-end encryption. I’m not sure that is the right way to go.

Raman, while technology per se is not the problem, virality of texts makes fake news spread very fast. Would you agree with some of the solutions that have been propounded — for example, Professor V. Kamakoti’s idea of tracing origin of WhatsApp messages?

Raman Chima: Firstly, on virality, communication virality has been there right from the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. Mass circulation has always resulted in tension between people in power with others.

When it comes to messaging services, when they were implemented in India and in other emerging economies, they were not just used for the purpose of messaging. They were, for many people, information discovery platforms. They do not often relate or refer to the World Wide Web. The kind of information consumed in messages are images and videos that may not be actually hosted on the web. The problem, therefore, is that messaging platforms haven’t been able to do a good job in ensuring that people have access to good, accurate information. For example, if you sign up to a messaging service, say WhatsApp, are you informed in your local language about how you could report in your own language disinformation content and messages that are malicious or abusive? Sadly, the reality is that there is not even a splash screen in the local language to know what you can or cannot say, during the process of signing up.

Also, fact-checking websites, fake news busters and government sources don’t get the support they need to distribute their content to local users in interior areas. Therefore, the messaging services companies could do more in fighting disinformation. I agree with Arun that they cannot be held liable and that they shouldn’t implement technological solutions as a panacea. You mentioned suggestions by Professor Kamakoti of IIT Madras to the Madras High Court. First of all, there is the argument that the Madras High Court should not be going into an area which is a legislative issue. Even if that is set aside, his proposals have been critiqued by other computer scientists. Professor Manoj Prabhakaran of IIT Bombay, for example, has argued against such models of imparting traceability.

Both of you seem to agree that the solution doesn’t lie in technology, and neither is there any need to add any extra layer of liability for social media platforms and websites. So, the Shreya Singhal judgment in 2015 was along these lines, right? Some provisions on intermediary liability on publishing were actually read down. But last year, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified new draft rules for intermediaries and called for public comments. What levels of liability would you set for social media platforms?

AMS: There has been a raft of litigious activity and, concurrently, fairly explosive growth in regulatory guidelines as well. These guidelines from the government have been trying to enhance the agency of the government over technology companies. For instance, there is a debate among government industries today about data localisation, something that will affect the working of most of these big technology companies. The fundamental tension at work is that most of the technology companies, which are into the bread-and-butter business of communication, are based abroad. The consumer base is clear with a WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter. WhatsApp has effectively made encrypted communication a mass market phenomenon here, which is great for correspondence generally. But on the other hand, the government has very little agency to make these companies do what they want to in terms of adhering to certain intermediary guidelines. Of course, the reason why these guidelines were lampooned was because the government imposed a high degree of liability, and takedown requirements in many cases were selectively followed. The fact is that if you were to take a step back and look, the government has very limited agency over these companies at the moment. On the one hand, there is a great deal of adoption by a wide user base, which is only increasing as Internet connectivity grows in India. And WhatsApp did not even have an office in India till very lately!

And the same thing goes for Internet shutdowns. Now, nobody would say that Internet shutdowns are a desirable phenomenon. But if you speak to local law enforcement agencies and district magistrates, they tell you that they have very limited avenues by which they can prevent the proliferation of malicious content on the Internet through social media platforms at a time of crisis, whether that crisis is a natural calamity or whether it is man made. So, they have resorted to these in a ham-handed fashion. Of course, you can’t justify these measures. But the fact is that at the local level or at the federal level, there seems to be very little agency that government officials have to do what they should do.

RC: On intermediary liability, it has already been identified by our judiciary that the issue of making platforms liable for the content posted by users impacts free speech. And the basic premise there is, you can put pressure on tech platforms to over censor or even perhaps harm the privacy of users by making them liable for all the content they have posted on platforms.

When Parliament legislated provisions, there were some ambiguities over what the executive branch could regulate via rules. Rules were criticised when they were released in 2012 and, ultimately, as you mentioned, they were read down in the Shreya Singhal judgment. The court basically said that if you are asking for content takedowns, that can be done only via a court order or through a legal process. The government’s proposed amendments to the rules, for example, that web platforms should deploy self-censoring/auto-filtering of content by users could definitely fly against the face of the court’s judgment.

More importantly, on some issues such as identifying the origin of messages through breaking encryption, the government seems to be using rule-making as a way to fix and patch these. Whereas it would be better off to have substantial legislative policy discussions held in a public manner over such knotty issues. Also, as Arun says, there is a lack of agency for the government to receive information from the platforms as there is no clear privacy law in place.

Government agencies lack sufficient agency and often use a ham-handed approach to enforce takedowns or shutdowns. In some cases, a total communication shutdown, as we see in Kashmir today, invoking ‘national interest’. What kind of mechanisms would you suggest instead of this approach?

AMS: We did this capacity-building workshop a couple of years ago, with law enforcement agencies from across States. Some States clearly did better, because they had, for lack of a better reason, good cops. They were interested in pursuing this sort of “finesse” measures and not merely rely on takedowns. Telangana, for instance, has a cadre of officers who dedicate themselves to preventing the propagation of fake news through channels like WhatsApp. Some of these steps require serious investment and I am not sure if all States have the capacity.

So perhaps the Prime Minister’s/the Centre’s sending a message down to folks at the district level may well produce some results. But the fact is that they resort to these ham-handed measures because they do not have any other tools.

But I also agree that India is one of the countries which often tops the number of takedown requests, but it’s not the only country or the only government that is interested in data from users. Facebook’s reports that indicate the number of requests that the government has made for a takedown show that India’s [requests for a takedown] are up there with the U.S. government or any other Western European government.

Source: The Hindu, 30/08/2019