The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/people-owned-web-tech-giants-facebook-cambridge-analytica

by okket • 8 years ago

88 70 8 years ago

rib3ye• 8 years ago

FTA...

  Thanks to social media, the internet had apparently 
  decentralised power. In the old days, information was 
  passed down from the mountain top – by a government, say, 
  or a news organisation – to the crowd below. Now the crowd 
  could speak to each other and to the world. At least one 
  aspect of the techno-utopians’ early hopes seemed to have 
  materialised.

  And it’s that hope that Cambridge Analytica has shattered. 
  For what we now understand is that those at the top, the 
  political parties or governments that could afford it, have 
  been engaged in a radical act of recentralising power. They 
  saw the way social media was working, empowering 
  individuals and networks of individuals, and they decided 
  to grab those same weapons for themselves.

I find it hard to swallow this piece since the data was collected before "any of the early hopes seemed to have materialised". If social media is responsible for negatively impacting a US foreign policy adversary, that's no fluke. The only difference between pre-CA and now is Trump.

racer-v4• 8 years ago

And it’s that hope that Cambridge Analytica has shattered.

Seems more accurate to say, that hope was shattered when people gave up on decentralized infrastructure like RSS and email in favor of Facebook's walled garden. Now there's an opportunity to go back (to the future!) and do it right.

mikekchar2• 8 years ago

I know this seems completely naive (and it probably is), but the internet was awesome before the endless summer. What's the main difference between then and now? It seems to me that we've spent a lot of time making the internet accessible to the masses and now we're complaining that the masses are controlling the shape of the internet.

It might go beyond the ethos of HN, but I honestly wonder how much we should consider arguments like, "Normal people won't be able to use it" and "You won't be able to build a business on that because only a tiny fraction of people would want to use it". I often think about PGP/GPG (and especially web of trust) that way. I know it's useful to me and I know that the people I want to use it with are more than capable. But they decline.

RSS is an even better example. Why are we not building RSS tools? Why are we not building a brand around blog posts, FAQs, etc that contain RSS? Why is it not the "secret password" that opens the gate to the "good content that's not being gamed for the masses"?

adventured• 8 years ago

Yeah, the Web was so much better before Google made search and email radically better. Just loved that Excite search and Hotmail in 2001 where I could store dozens of photos in my couple of megabytes.

It was better before Wikipedia (a legitimate giant) existed and Google sent them vast traffic to help them build out their service.

It was better before Yahoo gave me access to free, rapidly updated stock quotes.

It was better before Netflix carved up the old TV content monopolies. Those awesome days when old media held me entirely hostage.

It was better when classified ads were spread across the entire country in localized newspapers and you couldn't easily access them in a centralized giant service like Craigslist.

It was better when real estate pricing and information was a black book.

It was better before Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Amazon, YouTube gave me easy, low cost access to all the music I could ever possibly consume.

It was better before Amazon made shopping online easy, with a vast selection, relatively inexpensive for shipping, and very consumer friendly customer service.

It was better before I could easily and inexpensively send money to other people using PayPal or Venmo or 37 other solutions.

It was better before I could take ten minutes, plug in a few things, and accept payments via Stripe or Square.

It was better when I had to use a janky static Mapquest, or spend money on cumbersome physical maps just so I could navigate a new city. Back in those amazing days when hunting for stores or locations was so much fun.

It was better when I had to go through hell to operate my own hosted infrastructure. This whole insta-infrastructure AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, stuff must stop. And who the hell wants a free CDN, down with Cloudflare!

Those old glorious days.

lend000• 8 years ago

If you're in the business of collecting HN upvotes, you had best subscribe to the hive-mind.

The very existence of this article and its prominence on a news aggregator site refutes it.

hugh4life• 8 years ago

I largely agree with you but I think there needs to be some balance here. The fact remains that twitter, facebook, and google make many subtle decisions to store up content in silos and to get people to click on their ads.

IMO, the internet was in many ways better around 2006-2010. I liked the web better when there was google reader, a google blogsearch, and google forum/discussion search and not everything was completely centered on twitter and facebook.

racer-v4• 8 years ago

This comment is pretty wide of the mark. The article points out that consumers made a mistake in trusting Facebook and rejecting a decentralized Internet. It's valid to make that criticism without inferring that all software of the past 15 years has been a mistake.

scrollaway• 8 years ago

The comment seems to reply to the headline.

Is it surprising that when authors use clickbait, people ignore the substance and reply to the most egregious part? Especially if an awful title gives no desire to read the content.

interfixus• 8 years ago

Yeah, all hail to the removal of every tiny bit of friction on your way. Nice shortlist of crap that consumers have elevated into holy gospel.

Yes, I just called Google crap. And Apple, and Amazon, and Clouflare, and Netflix, and Spotify. Yahoo!, Hotmail, do I need to mention Facebook? Centralised, monopolising, giant corporate crap. I avoid them whenever I can.

The web most definitely was better before they got their grasping claws on every aspect of it.

Roritharr• 8 years ago

We had Geocities!

We had IRC/ICQ/AIM/MSN Messenger!

We had Newsgroups & Mailinglists!

We had millions of PHPbb Forums for any thinkable niche, running on 50$/Month Shared Hosting!

We had Websites lovingly created with Frontpage!

We had Gameserver Browsers that ran as Desktop Software, without Ad placements!

We had "underground filesharing" websites that took 700MB Games and split them in 300 parts and uploaded them to 20 different "free hosting" providers so you could be as much of a pirate as you wanted!

We had Toplists of Websites (and Toplists) where communities and content providers fought over the highest rank which more often than not were completely arbitrarily awarded!

We had Online Shopping where we could send a wire transfer before the items were sent!

We had a world where the general public didn't want or need the Internet!

exodust• 8 years ago

Your laborious sarcasm completely misses the point of the article. Nobody is wishing for "old technology" or yesterday's methods. That is not the subject.

I don't find the guardian article very interesting, it has it's own problems with a click-baity title. But your response simply loops over an irrelevant shopping list of "my favourite things about the internet".

judah• 8 years ago

What a bunch of populist clap trap. The people owned the web, but tech giants stole it? Please. Tech giants gave people what they wanted. Google, Facebook, Amazon: they gave people what they wanted and are compensated richly for that.

darawk• 8 years ago

Couldn't agree more. Not to mention the fact that you're still perfectly able to do all the things that you've always been able to do. Anyone can still put up a website whenever they want. Now they just feel entitled to all the views and ad revenue that the big platforms will drive to them.

gregknicholson2• 8 years ago

You know how in the 1980s everything was corporate suits and shiny expensive PDAs and that was fashionable, and then in the 1990s grunge happened?

Well, maybe the 2020s will look like Neocities.

cma• 8 years ago

They disproportionately capture people's network effect value and sell it back to them.

loggedinmyphone11• 8 years ago

A better headline might be, the thing everyone thought they wanted is now an obviously terrible idea.

SlowRobotAhead2• 8 years ago

the thing everyone thought they wanted

I’m a really firm believer in this. The Henry Ford quote is the most succinct way to describe it I’ve ever seen, but the topic of “miswanting” is dear to me.

lupinglade• 8 years ago

The problem is that a lot of people are relying too much on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/etc and not contributing to the web in other more direct ways.

marcus_holmes3• 8 years ago

I missed the bit about how we take it back... ?

koonsolo3• 8 years ago

With standards and open source.

Email is great because there is no vendor lock in. Open source is great because large groups of people can decide to fork it (or even inividuals).

The blockchain tech now opened a lot of applications that could rival these current tech giants.

Just 1 example: OpenBazaar received 3 million dollar investment. I'm curious what these kind of web 3.0 techs will change.

marcus_holmes3• 8 years ago

Nothing. They will change nothing.

The illusion that "no-one is in control" of blockchain applications is going to meet the brick wall of regulatory reality pretty hard.

wonton25• 8 years ago

Thech giants never stole the web. Governments have just failed to regulate them or failed to see the power they get with their currently vast scale. They need laws and a set of ethical rules people will leave them for breaking.

loggedinmyphone11• 8 years ago

What did Facebook do that should be illegal?

patkai• 8 years ago

Already four years ago they ran experiments [1] on how to program your mood. They built an API to your emotions, and they started selling it, without you knowing it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...

wonton25• 8 years ago

I think it should be illegal to require people to accept an agreement that enables facebook to sell their information to anyone. Not saying it is easy to do though. I guess that is part of what GDPR attempts to do in Europe. Intentions can be argued, but it is something.

extra884• 8 years ago

When a User uses a Facebook app and the app developer gets not only a bunch of data about the User but also about everyone in the User's social graph, that should be illegal; the User's friends did not give consent.

nickpp• 8 years ago

Big companies are the biggest fans of regulation. It raises the bar for entry and keeps those scrappy, pesky startups away.

wonton25• 8 years ago

Regulations dont have to be so heavy that you require consultants or a legal department. Regulation that protect the broad population from being exploited is neccessary everywhere. Just look at the crypto market compared to the more mature financial market. Issues with corporations manipulating the law makers is a separate problem.

bcoughlan• 8 years ago

Can anyone explain to me what part of the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook thing is news?

We've known for years that tech companies have made their money off collecting data, profiling users and selling access to the users and their profiles. The general public never cared before. They signed in with Facebook around the web, knowingly gave the app permissions to read their personal data, and agreed to give third party apps access to that information.

People are not stupid. They traded privacy for convenience. Why act dumbfounded now? Why blame Facebook instead of ourselves?

avoidit• 8 years ago

Maybe we are agreeing, but we humans don't have sufficient cognitive resources to extrapolate every little action we take into the future and predict new things technology can enable. Our brains are always looking for shortcuts ("do what the crowd does, because there must be at least some wisdom in it"). We also have the reasonable expectation that the companies will not turn our own cognitive limitations against us (such as Nir Eyal's "Hooked" encourages), nor do we know all the tools at their disposal if they so wish, and we probably never expected that these tools could be automated.

In other words, a person who is taking all the necessary steps and doing everything right in terms of the privacy of their digital footprint, is either off the grid, or is likely considered a tin foil conspiracy theorist by peers. Human survival instinct usually overrides such thoughtfulness.

Angostura• 8 years ago

Every time stories of this kind come up, you can’t pretty much know that the top comment will be from a privacy-savvy commenter asking ‘why is it news?’

Why is it news to you that a large proportion of the population aren’t privacy savvy?

The same people who are worried about Facebook are still fine giving WhatsApp unfettered access to all the contacts on their phone, so it knows who their bank, dentist, and employer is. Go figure.

JBlue42• 8 years ago

Or have to be told that even though '123' as a password is 'easier' for them, that no, it's really not a good idea.

As to FB, if you were there in the beginning, you can definitely watch the scope creep:

Some of us hopped on Facebook in college when it expanded from Harvard to other schools (02? 03?) and it was a completely different beast. You could add friends or people from your classes, send messages, connect with that cute girl in your class (because you could search by classes), personalize it with quotes and photos, etc. It was basically a cleaner MySpace. As it expanded, I used it as a personal address book to keep track of folks I met while abroad and could see what they're up to. Over time though, it really changed, was less useful, and I honestly had no reason to go on it except for once a year when people would chime in with a happy birthday and I would catch up with them.

I'm much more worried about how integrated Google is into my life or the flashes of guilt when I order something from Amazon, which used to book that quirky bookseller with a poorly-designed website that had free shipping (5-10 days) but is now a behemoth that sells everything on a poorly-designed website that has different tiers of shipping which might be leading to abusive practices of its workers.

evan_• 8 years ago

the part where the CEO bragged on camera about blackmailing opposition candidates was new.

gregknicholson2• 8 years ago

We know this. Other people have just had no reason to think or care about it, despite not necessarily being stupid.

Even when the information is readily available (and obvious to those who know), if nothing prompts you to look for it, you won't see it.

sorokod2• 8 years ago

The scale of it's emotional impact. People feel personally affected.

That is new.

jochung• 8 years ago

People are made to feel personally affected because the sin has been lain on team Trump, who has become a symbol of the end of democracy and a return to fascism. Even if Trump is mostly more of the same.

Worse, the same media power that turned the election into a reality show is now aimed at tearing down its results, washing their hands in innocence and tagging it Resistance.

If they weren't upset before, then they're not upset now because it happened, they're upset the "bad" people used it to accomplish the "wrong" goals.

ProxCoques• 8 years ago

"We've known for years that tech companies have made their money off collecting data... The general public never cared before. "

I think the phrase "limited world view" applies to this quote.

nerdcity• 8 years ago

Trump derangement syndrome in full effect. Nobody cared until the link was made to the Trump campaign benefitting from analytics research. Now it's an issue.

lifeisstillgood• 8 years ago

The people own the web, in the same way we, the people, own the real world.

all cambridge analytica and every retargetting ad firm does is to try and trick that power into mistakenly choosing against the powers own interest - but that has always been true, and the old solutions, of free press, free association and education are still the solutions.

where those rights are enshrined in the real world we will triumph, where they are not we will have to fight a bit harder.

I recognise the value of articles like this in highlighting the problem, but it's not hopeless, it's actually the opposite - the web is awesome, and now we get to keep the awesome, and clean up the problems ready for next time.

whataretensors• 8 years ago

As with media today, they don't get the problem right and have terrible solutions ready.

The real way forward is decentralization. We need to remove the authoritarian's 30-50% cut from everything.

marknadal• 8 years ago

Yeah, I missed the "how we take it back" part. This is a pretty poor article that is largely the author's political complaint and rant being twisted into the slightly relevant click bait title that is trending right now.

If you actually want to take the internet back, join SSB or build a decentralized web like with https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... .

loggedinmyphone11• 8 years ago

The author's suggestions are fairly ridiculous. It's as if he can't fathom the idea people could use something other than Facebook. Quote:

It could be regulation; it could be anti-trust legislation to break up those tech giants that act as virtual monopolies. I like Derakhshan’s idea of obliging Facebook and others to open up a marketplace of algorithms: if you don’t like the current social media preference for popularity (retweets) and novelty (“latest”), you should be free to choose a different algorithm that acts on different values.

Yetanfou• 8 years ago

Nobody "stole" the web as such, what they did was lure in the sheep to the herd like what happened in "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" [1]. The web grew, both in number of users as well as in size, from Geocities (also centralised, grew annoying habits like adding advertising to users' pages) through Myspace to the current Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat/Tumblr/etc. concoction. I consider these to be growing pains, as long as there are no China-like restrictions on actual internet connections the web - or what follows after it - will find a way to grow past this stage.

The real problems will start when the censorship and leaching of data is moved to the entry points for the 'net, i.e. the internet access providers. The only way around such an obstacle would be some form of "darknet", either a "virtual" infrastructure on top of the physical one offered by the 'net or something which bypasses it altogether. We're not there yet but it doesn't take that much thought to realise that once some form of self-hosting takes off - with more and more fibre-connected users this becomes a viable proposition - those who call for censorship will not be satisfied much longer when they see the efficacy of their filters dwindle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin

aembleton• 8 years ago

He could have recommended Privacy Badger [1] so that his readers can block all of the data that The Guardian sends to Facebook and Google about which articles they are reading.

1. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back

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