Techonomy: How to Fix What's Wrong with Google and Facebook

Perhaps the most surprising theme at this year's Techonomy was how upset many of the speakers are with Facebook, Google, and Twitter, with criticism focused on their approach to privacy and particularly on the possible role they played in enabling Russian hacking of the 2016 election.

A wide variety of speakers pushed for various kinds of regulation of these "Internet Giants," and no one from any of the aforementioned companies was at the conference to provide an alternative point of view. This was very different from last year's conference, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the notion that fake news stories on Facebook influenced the election was "a pretty crazy idea."

Since then, as Techonomy co-founder Simone Ross noted, we've learned that "tech makes it as easy to divide us as to bring us together." Conference co-founder David Kirkpatrick (above) set the tone for the conference, saying that "technology is a force for good, but only if good is your goal" and went on to say that he believed the big technology companies need a "proactive intersection" with government, whether it is called regulation or not.

Authority in a Networked, Artificially Intelligent World

Well-known investor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, an early investor in both Facebook and Google, was perhaps the most negative of all the speakers. McNamee said these companies were "started to save the world," but that this changed when advertising became their business model. He said that the smartphone, when combined with personal information, has made it possible to "create a level of brain hacking that has never been seen before in media."

McNamee said that he believed Zuckerberg was sincere when he said that he didn't believe such hacking was possible a year ago, but said that the role that Google and Facebook now play cannot be overstated. He commented, "it must be hard to be them now and realize you have destroyed western civilization."

danah boyd, Data & Society; Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners; Marc Rotenberg, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC); Stratford Sherman, Accompli

This discussion came up in part of a panel on "Authority in a Networked, Artificially Intelligent World" that also included danah boyd, a social scientist with Data & Society and Microsoft Research; Marc Rotenberg, President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC); and moderator Stratford Sherman of Accompli. Sherman said that while Facebook and Google started out as forums for public speech they are "radically unregulated." With AI that could fundamentally impact the human race on the horizon, Sherman said he is worried about the unintended consequences of the technological development we have already seen.

Rotenberg said that while he remains worried about traditional privacy concerns over being tracked and profiled, he's equally concerned by the lack of competition, lack of innovation, and the risk to democratic institutions. He said the Internet giants have enormous power, and the data they possess creates a genuine barrier of entry, so there is no meaningful competition. Rotenberg said he has been in Washington since the Reagan administration, and for the first time, "the past year's election did not feel familiar."

In an earlier session, boyd, who wrote a book called It's Complicated, talked about the difficulty of confronting manipulation on the Internet.

She talked about an escalating process of manipulation over the past 20 years, which began with kids trolling Oprah and progressed to "rickrolls" and to things like changing the search results for the name "Santorum." More recently, with Gamergate, a larger cast of characters have become players, including state actors. boyd said the Internet companies think AI can protect them, but the groups trying to manipulate results are already experimenting with natural language processing, and most importantly, tampering with data sources. Injecting bad data into a system, for instance, is a new vulnerability, in her view. Still, boyd said the only answer will be to "build technical antibodies into our industry."

In this session, boyd said that the tech companies are reckoning with manipulation on several fronts, and noted that while everyone is looking at Russia, there are many other states pursuing similar actions. For example, Chinese companies are trying to ensure they will control AI, and she said that this presents a different challenge because it's not about industrial competition but competing with a state.

Asked by Sherman if this is a war, boyd said that she thinks it is, while McNamee said it’s classic guerilla warfare in that our enemies have used our technology against us. McNamee said the problem isn’t social networks or search, but the advertising model. He said in the battle for people's attention, substance gets buried by sensation, and quoted the old adage that "if it bleeds, it leads."

Sherman noted that fear and anger are much more magnetic, and thus much less expensive. He said that though organic messages were used to reach more than 125 million people, the goal of the effort was for ads to segment people into groups based on shared interests.

Rotenberg said he is in favor of making the algorithms transparent and the advertising regulated, but said we must respect the right of individuals to speak online. But McNamee said that "the first amendment has been weaponized," and that online spaces are fundamentally different from the public square.

boyd described what she calls the "boomerang effect," or in other words the idea that provoking the media to report on outrageous things is the point, because this reinforces the original message to the segment of the audience that mistrusts the media. As an example, boyd talked about Pizzagate. She noted that before the Internet, the media often used "strategic silence" to avoid covering things like suicides and Klan rallies to avoid publicizing them.

Rotenberg agreed that much of this tradition of diligence and oversight has been lost, and said things like Section 230 (which says that Internet companies aren't responsible for things such as posts by users) has made it more difficult for traditional news to compete.

Asked for solutions, McNamee said that Facebook is a cult and that it must stop denying the problem and deal with it, as well as begin to address "deprogramming" by reaching out to each of its users. Rotenberg promoted the idea of regulation. And boyd suggested that we need to invest money in society, to "re-network" America.

Reckoning With the New Hegemonists

Mark Mahaney, RBC Capital Markets; Dave Morgan, Simulmedia; Joyce Vance, The University of Alabama; David Kirkpatrick, Techonomy

In an early panel on "Reckoning with the New Hegemonists," almost everyone agreed with Joyce Vance of the University of Alabama, who said that technology has really outstripped law, which desperately needs to catch up. But Vance cautioned that there is also the risk of "slipshod" political answers.

Simulmedia's Dave Morgan said that "there will be regulation," though he said it’s possible the big companies may be able to avoid much of its impact.

Morgan noted that the history of the media industry provides parallels to what we see now, as newspapers would have seen themselves as printing companies, and early broadcast companies saw themselves as tech companies. All of these enable the provision of consumer contact, which is clearly what Google and Facebook do. Lots of antitrust cases came about as a result of such concentrated media power, and the government was able to reign them in. One big difference today is that the other technologies required a geographic nexus, which the Internet companies don't need.

Vance noted that the Senate is now considering a bill which would require these companies to preserve their advertising history, as well as make it clear who is paying for political ads. But Morgan pointed out that these are now global companies with a broader reach. Asked about the European GDPR privacy regulations, Vance said the US may well have ceded leadership to the EU in this area. She said she doesn’t think US companies will be able to do compliance differently in different geographic areas, so by default companies will comply with European regulations.

Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets said the companies are already being regulated, particularly in the European Union, with Google in particular under scrutiny for bundling or promoting its services along with its search results or with Android. Kirkpatrick said he thought the antitrust settlement actually helped Microsoft, but Mahaney countered that it wasn't the regulators who stopped Microsoft, but competition.

Can Tech and Government Save Democracy?

Tim Hwang, FiscalNote; Minnie Ingersoll, Code For America; Marc Rotenberg, Electronic Privacy Information Center; Molly Turner, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business; Jon Fine, Inc Magazine; Lawrence Norden, NYU School of Law

A similar subject came up at a breakfast roundtable, titled "Can Tech and Government Save Democracy?," in which moderator Jon Fine of Inc Magazine asked for solutions. The roundtable didn't really come up with any, however.

Hwang said the problem isn't the tech platforms, but rather the anger people feel as a result of being disconnected from the economy.

Lawrence Norden, of the Brennan Center at the NYU School of Law, said laws requiring more disclosure on political ads are an easy answer, but that unfortunately the big problem are "dark posts," or posts of unknown origin. In that respect, he said, the Internet is more like a town square.

But Rotenberg said it’s the opposite, and that the Internet is more like a company town, where the platforms set the rules and decide what you see. Minnie Ingersoll of Code For America asked whether the problem is foreign interference, or Google controlling what we say. Regulators need to better understand the issues, she said.

Molly Turner of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business said the Internet has become the greatest vehicle for expression, but worried that it’s undermining civil discourse. On the other hand, she worries about requirements for platforms to remove certain kinds of information (if the Communications Decency Act was weakened, for example, or because of other kinds of regulation), because suddenly in that case the platform becomes the "arbiter of speech."

Rotenberg responded that while the car companies once fought safety regulations, in the end these helped make cars safer and led to more innovation. A stable regulatory environment might actually help the platforms, he suggested. Rotenberg observed that the tech companies have pushed "net neutrality" for telecommunications companies, but not for themselves, and called for a level playing field.

The Internet Under Attack

Mark Anderson, Strategic News Service; Peder Jungck, BAE Systems Intelligence & Security; Rebecca MacKinnon, New America; David Kirkpatrick, Techonomy

A final panel called "The Internet Under Attack" continued this discussion.

Rebecca MacKinnon, who runs the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America, said there was once an assumption that because of the Internet, authoritarian regimes would eventually become more like democracies. She is now more afraid authoritarian regimes and democracies will "meet in the middle."

MacKinnon said authoritarian regimes are adapting the Internet to their purposes, while democracies face populism, manipulation, and "surveillance capitalism." But, she said, democracies should be careful about a regulatory response—while she agrees that there is a need for more transparency when it comes to algorithms and privacy, she is concerned that a censorship system would make it easier to crack down on the parts of society government disdains.

Peder Jungck, who heads intelligence and security for BAE Systems, agreed that governments would like to use such systems to find dissidents, and said that an idea is a product, and like any product it can be pushed. Asked if ad systems are weaponized, he said, "Pandora's Box has been opened and we can't go back."

Mark Anderson, of Strategic News Service, said that we've seen a straight line from the days of ARPANET, when there were no bad guys, to today, when we see more and more malicious behavior by the day.

Anderson was particularly clear when describing how China is stealing intellectual property and using it to drive companies out of business. And he suggested that the Equifax hack had all the markings of a governmental attack. Summing up, Anderson said he "doesn't see a solution."

Jungck said we should presume bad guys are in our systems, and work on solutions. For instance, he said a social security number is no longer securable, so we may instead need a blockchain solution.

In the Ranking Digital Rights project, MacKinnon evaluated 22 global companies on 35 questions about things like freedom of expression, privacy, and security. She said two companies got "Ds" and everyone else failed. She wants to know what companies are doing with your data; who they are sharing it with; whether they are doing due diligence, security assessments, and governance for risk; and whether they are protecting privacy and security, content, and expression. Transparency is not sufficient, she said, but a necessary first step.

Anderson said that transparency is a good thing, but not a solution, and noted that someone who wants to manipulate a system doesn't have to pay for ads, but can use 100,000 botnets. Kirkpatrick then suggested that companies could enforce identity, and thus reduce the use of botnets.

But MacKinnon countered that it’s human rights activists who are the most vulnerable to the use of such systems, because if you enforce identity, then no one who opposes an authoritarian government would be on the social networks.

Jungck wondered why we need to enforce an identity when the sites already know who you are and what you're going to buy. "There is no anonymity on the internet, it is long since gone," he said. The only difference is how long it takes to figure out who you are.

In conclusion, MacKinnon said she is optimistic in the very long term, but for the next 100 years, "not so much."

Listening to all of this, it’s easy to be pessimistic, or at least fatalistic about the amount of regulation needed and the impact it will have. But I still tend to be an optimist, and while I think some amount of additional regulation is both likely and necessary, I believe it's just as likely that today's Internet giants—or some future players—will come up with better answers.