In the near future, algorithms will control the emotions and desires of millions of people around the world, and entire countries will turn into information colonies. This is how futurists see the future of the Internet, but in fact, this picture is not very far from real life. The largest IT corporations can already imperceptibly influence citizens of entire states and use their personal data. Why has the world only now realized the global domination of social networks and how tech giants influence the minds of millions of people, within the framework of the large-scale project “Algorithm. Who controls you? ” Head of the Institute for Internet Research, chief analyst of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) Karen Ghazaryan told “Lente.ru”.
“This is human nature”
“Lenta.ru”: Social networks – is it good or evil?
Ghazaryan : This is a means of communication that can be used for good and for evil, it is a reflection of the real world. Another question is that the effects that came to us with social networks (dopamine needle, the development of anxiety, Internet addiction), very smart researchers of media history like Marshall McLuhan could predict in advance.
But the creators of social networks did not understand them at all. These were children who were given matches.
What did the creators of social networks not understand?
The effect that social media can have in the future. They didn’t even anticipate that. When Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to bring the world together, he thought it was a cool idea and didn't think about the consequences. The problem with social media creators is that they thought better of humanity than it really is.
What did it turn into?
On the one hand, it's great when an uneducated Indian who can't write can record voice messages on WhatsApp. But on the other hand, in the same WhatsApp, he receives messages that a witch lives in a nearby village that needs to be burned, and people are cooperating to kill a person (lynching and mass beatings of local residents due to fakes in WhatsApp were widespread in India in 2017-2018 – approx. “Lenta.ru” ).
This person does not have critical thinking, he does not distinguish a false message from a correct one, he does not see where the propaganda is wired. You gave him matches, like a child, without teaching him how to use them at all. What could you expect? Perhaps you thought better of people, but you should have thought more! We are responsible for this. It's bad that it happened. But now we have to live with this, invest resources in learning to work with a new media environment. It should be noted that Facebook is implementing many projects in this area. But Facebook is not a single person alive: this is the task of the state as well. We need to develop media literacy among different categories of citizens.
When did politicians figure out that the future lies behind the algorithms of social networks, and began to use them for their own purposes?
It is believed that it was Obama who was the first to effectively use social networks for the purposes of the election campaign. In fact, this has been done in Asia before. For example, in the mayoral elections in Tokyo in the 2000s. In Japan, political advertising on the Internet has been banned for a long time. And a rather noisy story happened there when they started talking about the need to already allow political Internet advertising. Because a generation of candidates has emerged who have begun to understand how to communicate with the electorate using new tools. But Japanese history has not influenced the rest of the world as much as the example of Obama.
In your opinion, has people's attitudes towards social media changed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when it turned out that millions of Facebook users were manipulated without their knowledge?
Not sure. I believe that any attempt to sell political advertising on social media is an attempt to sell the elixir of immortality. People believe what they want to believe. No amount of super-smart targeting will convince you to vote for someone else, which, by the way, has quite a lot of confirmed research.
Any political advertisement works for only ten percent of the undecided. Everyone else already knows what they want. But they don't really like to talk about this out loud, because this is a whole industry in which a lot of money is spinning.
It is also surprising to see how some users are outraged by the actions of Cambridge Analytica, they write that this is horror and a violation of all rights. But at the same time, they say what a cool election campaign Barack Obama had, without thinking that Obama used the same targeting tools for political influence through social networks. And now they shout: “We are being manipulated!” Really, yeah, are you serious?
Don't you believe that social media can control the political opinion of the general public?
Ten percent of undecided – definitely can. Plus, with the help of social networks, you can mobilize existing supporters. And the version that social networks can radically change a person's opinion with the help of the conditional 25th frame, in my opinion, is erroneous. We only accept what confirms our opinion.
You are talking about an information bubble. Sometimes it seems to a person that he has an established opinion about a problem, but in fact it is just a consequence of a post thrown by the algorithm in time.
And we like the information bubble. We create it ourselves. The person has a distortion of perception, and we always like what confirms our point of view. We can have inside ourselves some kind of view of the state of affairs in the world, and as soon as we read the same thing on the social network, we are like: “Cool, I thought so, I knew, I believed.” Man is flattered. This is how social media work. The algorithm adjusts more and more to your preferences, and you find yourself in this beautiful cozy information bubble.
Did the old media work the same way?
Absolutely. People read the newspapers that best fit what they like. People watched the TV channels that best suited their position. Some watched NTV, and some watched Channel One. Someone read “Kommersant”, and someone – the newspaper “Pravda”. In this case, social networks simply reproduced the same model, without expecting it.
But before, there was always a chance to get out of the bubble just by going outside and faced with the opposite point of view. Now literally everything is online, which means that there is very little chance of finding out that you are wrong.
There are curious American studies that show what life events can affect our worldview. First of all, college influences, it is there that a person first encounters people from radically different circles – people of a different ethnic group, a different social status, and other ideas.
And then – maybe something in the office will affect you, or maybe not – depending on where the person goes. But not social media. They are able to broaden their horizons in the early stages of personality formation, but then, unfortunately, people begin to strive for a closed world. This is human nature.
“Capitalism as it is”
In public space, foreign social networks are often accused of profiting from us and at the same time applying censorship to us. How do platforms make money on us?
This is an interesting point. Officially, Facebook does not sell advertising in Russia. Advertising is bought by individuals, or purchased by international advertising agencies for large brands, which simultaneously launch campaigns in dozens of countries. This includes launching a Russian-language campaign on Instagram or Facebook.
The second option is advertising through influencers. But often this is a rather gray income, it is very difficult to calculate how much Facebook gets from this ad. That is, we cannot objectively understand how much the Russian budget is receiving less.
Are the incomes of foreign IT giants in Russia comparable to those of Russian Internet holdings?
If we take the volume of advertising (of a foreign platform, for example, Facebook) that is officially running and bought in Russia – even by individuals, it turns out that this is a really large advertising platform. But I doubt that it will even enter the top ten in Russia. These revenues cannot be compared with the revenues of large Russian media holdings. There are different estimates. According to my personal estimates, a large site earns in the region of $ 15-20 million, nothing more. For a huge corporation, the amount is not the largest, but still decent money.
The Russian authorities have fought for years to get IT giants to open representative offices in the country. This was motivated by the inadmissibility of censorship of foreign social networks in relation to our citizens. And why is it really necessary: for political or economic reasons?
It sounds strange now, but it seems to me that everything depends on which one of the representatives of the authorities you ask. In my opinion, there is no clearly expressed target position of the Russian state as such in this matter. On the one hand, there is an international process of combating the erosion of the tax base (BEPS), in which Russia is involved. And Russia is preparing rules for the taxation of multinational companies, including technology companies. [Prime Minister Mikhail] Mishustin knows this well, when he was the head of the Federal Tax Service, he participated in this, and now his successor, Daniil Yegorov, is involved.
On the other hand, we are looking at Turkey and other countries where tech giants are opening offices. And we also want to, relatively speaking, someone to call if necessary. As one official told me in a conversation: “Let us have a person to whom you can always turn.”
What is the main complaint against foreign social networks from Russia?
The main complaint concerns moderation – they cannot cope with the volume of destructive content that needs to be removed. As for YouTube, although the authorities accuse the site of biased moderation, in fact, the reasons for the claims against them are more economic. In the case of YouTube, the government may be more interested in its revenues. That being said, YouTube's moderation policy is the talk of the town. She's really disgusting, she's really opaque. If you are blocked, it can be very difficult to get the truth out, especially if you are not a very famous person.
This is not the only problem with YouTube. Content filters for copyright work haphazardly, and there are also a large number of outright scammers who file complaints about content, claiming copyright – all the problems are countless. But, to be honest, I have no idea how to make the moderation policy on YouTube more transparent with the help of the laws of the Russian Federation.
Opening representative offices in Russia will put pressure on corporations in terms of moderation?
And Google (the company owns YouTube – approx. “Lenta.ru” ) has a representative office in Russia, which means that YouTube too. But somehow I did not notice a serious difference from companies that do not have representative offices in the country. I think that something else decides here, namely the market. Large foreign players should have local competitors.
Explain clearly where the direct relationship is. Why have they been talking in Russia for many years about the need to create their own YouTube, but this has not yet come true?
Very simple. There is one objective problem, why YouTube has no competitors in the world (with the exception of Chinese platforms, which have been gaining immense popularity recently). Countries around the world have adopted a ton of laws that force platforms to basically delete something at risk of being fined or blocked.
For example, the European Union recently approved a new anti-terrorism law: now prohibited content must be removed in an hour. Well, what company can completely remove something in an hour? Only the one that has the resources for this. A giant company like YouTube. They can throw a lot of money into it.
This is a strange paradox: on the one hand, we want certain laws to be observed on the Internet, on the other, we essentially shift the role of law enforcement to the platforms.
If internet giants are so omnipotent, why can't they handle moderation anyway? The giant Facebook with a multibillion-dollar audience has only a few tens of thousands of moderators, and all of them are taken out of the company's staff.
This is really not enough for such a volume of content. In addition, a moderator is a very low-paid job that causes irreparable harm to psychological health. Technological giants really do not register moderators on the staff – but these are features of labor law in the United States. Facebook is a California-based company, and California has extremely high health and safety requirements than the United States as a whole. Therefore, it is of course more profitable for them to hire contractors located outside the United States, who pay employees much lower salaries and who are not subject to various social security requirements.
Capitalism as it is. Moreover, there are still many Indian citizens living in the world who are happy to do this kind of work.
Why do owners of popular apps prefer to exploit people rather than create a perfect algorithm that will cope with moderation?
There is such a view from Silicon Valley, the view of a technocrat: sooner or later we will make perfect algorithms, and we will need fewer and fewer people. Only for some reason this future still does not come. It turns out that algorithms do not learn well either. People prepare a certain block of basic solutions for artificial intelligence. But they do it too badly. It's such a vicious circle; not the fact that it will be possible to break it, based on the current model of social networks.
How do you make the algorithms work better?
Some time ago, the head of Twitter Jack Dorsey announced that they are exploring the possibility of opening the social network for interaction with external developers, with external software. That is, in fact, he proposes to move from the current centralized model to a decentralized content distribution model.
Dorsey seems to be saying: let's give users and developers the tools to cope with the problems of the social network themselves. Because there are many developers in the world – let them invent. For example, they can come up with filters that will shape your customized feed. That is, in essence, you yourself will be able to filter content on social networks using your favorite recommendation algorithm. At the same time, the network will not be under the control of either the company itself or other organizations.
In other words, we honestly tell people, for example, that’s it, the company doesn’t handle unwanted content and will never do it, instead we leave everything at the mercy of the developers.
Is this a viable technology?
I think such a model is more viable, but it requires such a fundamental rethinking of the business! It's harder to manage, plus you open up your platform to a ton of other developers. This may have its advantages. But there may be disadvantages – for example, how to explain the feasibility of a fundamentally new model to shareholders?
This is still a project, and of an academic nature. Principles and tools that can scale to hundreds of millions of users have not yet been created.
“If you prohibit – explain why”
The year began with the fact that social networks showed how easily they can take and confine a person in isolation, even if it is a US president with a multimillion-dollar army of subscribers. How should you take what happened to Donald Trump in January?
It seems to me that we have seen a clash of the American principles of free speech, the first amendment to the constitution, with the principles of about the rest of the world. From the American point of view, the rights, including blocking someone on their platform, is a natural continuation of the first amendment.
You are not only free to say something on your site, you can also prohibit something there. In the rest of the world, this is treated differently – if you prohibit something, you have to explain why. In the rest of the world, the Internet is treated as a public space, not a private space. So they think in Europe, and in our country.
The Trump case is far from the last clash of ideals. Because, unbeknownst to most Americans, internal social media rules actually gravitate towards a European approach. This is a consequence of a clash within social networks themselves, between people who make decisions. They understand perfectly well that in order to work on the territory of the rest of the world, you need to play by the rules of this world.
This is a big philosophical question – who should adapt to whom: social networks should comply with the general rules of states, or, for example, they should comply with some general principles, say, the declaration of human rights. Perhaps if the platforms relied less on national laws and more on universal laws, there would be fewer such problems.
But how should an ordinary user perceive the situation? The platform deprives my companion of freedom of speech. Should I do something about it?
If there is an opportunity to vote with a wallet, then you need to use it. Of course, it's strange to talk about this in relation to free services. But among my acquaintances, for example, after the Trump incident, people began to switch to the Minds social network (a decentralized social network based on the blockchain – Lenta.ru ).
If something does not suit you, but at the same time do nothing, then everything will continue. By leaving the platform, people signal discontent.
Are user demarches able to influence social networks?
Is not a fact. But they can influence the fact that soon there will be a competitor for Twitter, who will be chosen by those who disagree with Twitter's policies.
Why have Google, Facebook and other tech giants just now become a problem not only for the whole world, but also for America itself? Antitrust proceedings are underway against these companies in the United States. Why had no one noticed before that they were enjoying a dominant position?
Well, first of all, historically, tech companies are loved by users. People can say as much as they want how bad Amazon is, that it pays workers so little, what horrible conditions they have in their warehouses. But it's so cool when you get parcels delivered free of charge in two days. And it's so easy to return them if needed. It is the same with other services. For a long time, while these services provided quality products to users, there was little negative. But over time, consumer negativity began to accumulate, it spilled over into the media, after which it became clear that, in fact, what the IT giants are doing is not healthy for the market, because they have become monopolists.
At the same time, if you look at some conditional New York Times newspaper, it wrote equally negatively about technology companies 15 years ago and now. It's just that now the emphasis has shifted, and this position is shared by a significant number of users.
The growth of Internet companies was inevitable due to the so-called network effects. They are that as a company gets bigger, costs go down rather than go up, as is the case in regular business. But discontent grew not because of monopoly per se, but when consumers began to suffer.
The US Congress was advised to split Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook to reduce their influence. Will it help?
Politicians are always tempted to do something loud, simple, and wrong. For example, to propose to split Facebook (in 2020 such a proposal was made by a subcommittee of the US Congress – approx. “Lenta.ru” ) or Google – let YouTube now be a separate company.
Will this really affect the competition and the market? Something I doubt. This is a real complex and complex problem – it lies in the plane of regulation of aggregators and in how they create markets around themselves, how they influence their suppliers and contractors. But politicians speak in slogans, hence the proposals to split the companies are taken. AT&T has split its time – let's split Facebook too. And that sounds good. As a result, it will turn out that the system will be decentralized, but the same companies and people will control the Internet market.
Why did the Americans get the whole world hooked on their apps?
I think that the spirit of adventurism and entrepreneurship that is characteristic of Americans played a role. Europe has historically specialized in engineering technology and large corporations that operate in real industry. A lot of talented European programmers primarily work for this industry. From here was born, for example, the SAP software, which is used to automate large industrial enterprises. European companies are specialists in industrial automation, they have few competitors here. This industry pulls off all those who could have started their own startup, but did not. It was more comfortable to leave to work for a European corporation. As a result, not a single Silicon Valley appeared in France or Britain. Including because of the very condescending attitude of the authorities to the Internet.
It's funny now to come across the statements of the French authorities in 1993-1994. They stated: “We have Minitel (the most popular means of telecommunication in France before the advent of the Internet – approx. Lenta.ru ). We don't need any internet! This is generally the Wild West with its own strange habits. All this is nonsense for the French nation. ” Unsurprisingly, when the first dot-com boom subsided, no companies akin to American tech giants emerged in Europe.
Now the situation is different. Now there are Berlin, London has – the largest starthaby (ecosystem, combining technological start-ups, expert support, and investors -. Comment “Lenta.ru”), in which the weight of exciting new companies appear. A kind, quite often narrow-minded, not always designed for individuals, mainly B2B (“business for business”).
Unlike Europe, we still have our own popular Internet products that can compete with Western ones.
