Happy? Thanksgiving?
Yes, it’s still a beautiful world in many respects. So as we head into the holidays with visions of impeachments dancing in our heads, let us rejoice that: we are not in a nuclear war; Donald Trump has not assumed dictatorial powers; William Barr is about to resign in disgrace;* Adam Schiff has not been assassinated (as of this writing); Russia has not annexed the whole of Ukraine; New York City is still above sea level; more than a dozen elephants remain in the wild; Ruth Bader Ginsburg lives on; and Artificial Intelligence has still not determined that it’s worth taking over this messy, irrational, bigotry-infested world.
You have much to be thankful for. You can be thankful that, despite much Fox News/National Enquirer-generated fake news, we do not have on our southern border hordes of raping, thieving, murderous people itching to invade the U.S. and take away our jobs; Ukraine is not hacking our elections although Russia has and is; a non-negligible number of Americans actually understand the value of the rule of law; wind turbines do not cause cancer; the mainstream media are not Enemies of the People; vaccines do not cause autism; Hillary Clinton is not running a child sex ring; a majority of Americans actually do believe that guns kill people; George Soros has no plan to undermine the American political system.
Yet fears remain
WE enlightened souls, bless us, know that the fake fears about hordes of murderous immigrants spilling over our borders, the government confiscating our guns, epidemics of autism due to vaccinations, wind turbines causing cancer (Donald Trump: “they say that windmills cause cancer, you know that?”—”they” in Trump world being the ultimate arbiters of truth), Adam Schiff plotting a coup, the zeal of climate scientists to destroy our economy—WE know that these are fake fears stoked by Trump toadies to energize The Base.
But there are legit fears, such as Trump remaining in office, winning reelection and hacking down to bloody stumps the EPA, the State Department, HUD, NOAA, the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the ATF. And while at it also dismantling those elements of the Justice Department and intelligence services suspected of being snakepits of Deep State agents in the thrall of George Soros—and inviting in their place agents who are, if not exactly Russian plants, then Russian sympathizers. (It’s not that Trump would knowingly initiate this scheme on his own, but Putin would blackmail and hoodwink him into doing so.) There are plastics choking our oceans, antibiotic resistance building toward a new worldwide plague, ivory poachers slaughtering elephants and rhinos by the thousands, forests being laid waste to graze more cattle, many of the world’s fisheries in danger of collapse, and oh yeah, the world-wrenching phenomenon known as Climate Change.
These are fears based on what we can see and hear. But we are now learning to fear the less visible, or rather visible things that are not what they appear to be, such as . . .
Deepfakes
Deepfakes are videos (audio messages as well) appearing to portray reality, but are manipulated either to slightly alter the truth (making Nancy Pelosi sound like a drunk slurring her words) or to lie outright (making it look like politicians are participating in pornographic films). Deepfakes can look very real: tech savant Annalee Newitz says in New Scientist (16 November 2019) that “some deepfakes are so well done that it is impossible to distinguish them from legitimate footage.” California has outlawed the use of deepfakes in the 2020 elections—although if a fake is clever enough, the faker can post it to escape detection temporarily then take it down before getting caught, erasing their digital tracks as they flee down the endless mazes of the Internet.
Deepfakes are bad, says Analee Newitz, but so far the “expected avalanche of deepfake political propaganda” has not yet come thundering down. They are not yet being deployed at scale.
But there’s worse, Analee says, happening right now, hidden in plain sight on the pages of, what else—
Facebook and its innumerable faces
Newitz quotes Mark Zuckerberg:** “I just think that in a democracy people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.” Fine words, Mr. Free Speech warrior, but what is happening is that Facebook algorithms are feeding customers slices of information that happen to match the customers’ individual appetites. “Seeing for yourself” is a con if you see just the part of the picture Facebook wants you to see, in order to get clicks. It’s like the parable about three blind men trying to establish the shape of the elephant and coming up with a snake, a wall, and a tree—except with Facebook you don’t get to compare notes with the other blind folks. You are two-thirds ignorant and stay that way. And your confirmation bias continues to harden.
What’s most pernicious about this slicing and dicing of information is the ability for Facebook’s “micro-targeting” tools to fine-grain the slices down to the level of small groups and even individuals. This is primarily for ads to sell product, but it works in politics too, with broader categories. Newitz says: “a politician can craft one set of lies for rural voters and a totally different one for urban voters. . . . Or they can spew anti-immigrant propaganda to white Facebook without fear that watchdog groups will catch it.”
“White Facebook.” It’s a thing. Presumably are Second Amendment Facebook, No Quid Pro Quo Facebook, Disaffected Teens Facebook, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Fans Facebook, and Ivy League Dropout Facebook, to name a few.
What to do? Is autonomy dying?
If you are feeling as powerless as I am to treat the diseases bred by the marriage of amoral technology with the amoral free market, you might take heart in the existence of pushback from some smart people such as:
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- Former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, calling for an end to Facebook’s microtargeting ads.
- UVA media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the book Anti-Social Media, who argues that Facebook’s business model is undermining our democracies.“
Still feeling powerless? Me too. I’m suffering from Technology Deficit Disorder. I think I have more of a right to feel powerless than most people because I’m old enough to have hardening of the mental arteries. My younger, more tech-savvy readers need to pause in streaming Game of Thrones and address real-world problems. Otherwise, believe me—this is one advantage of old age, to have lived through enough history to have felt the arc of it—we are losing our autonomy.
Autonomy may be overrated. Social insects get on fine without it. When’s the last time you heard an ant complain about Facebook micro-targeting? China is now conducting a billion-subject experiment in autonomy suppression with an AI-enabled surveillance state, and the jury will remain out on its benefits or damages for decades to come.
What we have most to be thankful for: absurdity
Whether it’s Donald Trump declaring how his is the most transparent administration in all of American history; Exxon claiming they didn’t know about the Greenhouse Effect fifty years ago; Kim Jong Un saying North Korea has suspended its nuclear weapons program; Mark Zuckerberg boasting of his love of open discourse; Brexit; or Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes claiming there WAS NO QUID PRO QUO, you can be thankful that these twisted contradictions of logic give you plenty to laugh at and keep laughing as we descend into darkness.
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*Gotcha going with that one, right? Because you want to believe it, just as climate change deniers want to believe that global warming is a hoax concocted by the socialist-globalist-scientist-Deep-State-elitist cabal to undermine Russo-American values. I’m not saying it isn’t true that William Barr will be found to be up to his ears in debt to Russian oligarchs—he certainly might be—but don’t let this flaming liberal get you branded with confirmation bias. I have no proof. Just a wish list, and William Barr isn’t even at the top of the list.
** Do you ever get the feeling that Mark Zuckerberg is a Terminator-like robot sent from the future to keep us from escaping the grip of capitalism? Sent with the mission of assassinating some as-yet unsung superhacker who would take down Amazon, Facebook, and Google in one electronic blow? Certainly Zuckerberg’s wooden affect and vacant stare might lead you to think so.