Thread by @C___CS

Great Sunday read: @amnesty report by @TanyaOCarroll @JoeWestby on the human rights impact of @Google & @facebook business models.

In this thread,I present some thoughts for folks interested in the intersection of human rights advocacy and academia. (👋 @oiioxford students)1/16

I will try to weave together the report's 4 key topics:

1. #surveillancecapitalism
2. #privacy
3. #AI
4. #market #concentration

with the work of various academics working on the social justice implications of platforms. 2/16

1. Surveillance capitalism:
The report drives home its main point: "It's the economy stupid!"

or as they frame it:

"The technology behind the internet is not incompatible with our rights, but the business model Facebook and Google have chosen is."

The amnesty report already draws from @shoshanazuboff - as such I want to highlight another relevant work. This article by @undersequoias @MannyMoss @zephoria 👇👇

datasociety.net/output/owning-…
4/16

They show that efforts to institutionalize ethics in biz are likely to fail as they're orthogonal to business logics (like market fundamentalism).

This insight raises questions for the ability of companies to _ever_ get industry-led human rights efforts right. 5/16

2. Privacy

The report mentions the “sheer scale of the intrusion of Google and Facebook’s business model” on privacy. They also focus on the company’s unethical foray into Global South markets, through “free basic” models. 6/16

A thread left unpacked at this intersection, is the rights’ implications of these companies' reliance on often Global South-based content moderators for the removal of the most egregious forms of content, against minimum wages. 7/16

These two recent books by @ubiquity75 and @marylgray @ssuri provide crucial insights:

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030023…

ghostwork.info 8/16

3. Artificial intelligence:“But the recommendation engines of social media go well beyond “if it bleeds, it leads”: they can systematically privilege extreme content including conspiracy theories, misogyny, and racism to keep people on their platforms for as long as possible.”9/

The report mentions the great work of @beccalew on how @YouTube policies and algorithms are leveraged by far-right "influencers" to spread their views.

datasociety.net/output/alterna…

Also relevant here is the work of @safiyanoble on #algorithms of oppression. 10/16

She shows not just how algorithms _impact_ human rights negatively, but also how they limit the ability of communities of colour to _fight back_ against racist and sexist digital misrepresentation.

nyupress.org/9781479837243/… 11/16

4. Market Concentration:

The report argues that concentrated power exacerbates human rights harms. One argument that gets limited play is how Google and Facebook’s dominant market business model provided a blueprint for many other industries. 12/16

I.e. “We are the Google for..” is more than a start-up sale’s pitch – it is how extractive data practices become the norm for entire industries.

The social consequences of tech biz models for other social institutions must also be understood in terms of #humanrights 13/16

A good example: in her ethnography, “Uberland”, @mawnikr argues that “sharing-economy” companies, like @Uber are “rewriting the rules of work” by bringing a fundamental cultural shift in what it means to be employed, that undermines labour rights. 14/16

P.S. The Amnesty report draws heavily on academic research. As such, this thread isn't aimed to poke holes in their work by any means but rather to elaborate on the connections drawn to encourage and build future research and advocacy. 15/16

P.P.S. some of the academic references come from a special issue on AI ethics and the law I edited with @SandraWachter5 @brentmittelstad and @Floridi with articles from @mikarv @lilianedwards @PaulNemitz @VidushiMarda @RDBinns and others
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royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.10…

16/16

@SandraWachter5 @Floridi @mikarv @lilianedwards @PaulNemitz @VidushiMarda @RDBinns P.P.P.S here is a thread on a talk i recently gave about the role of human rights in the debate about ethics and AI:

https://twitter.com/C___CS/status/1194945895172911104