Friends, Elon sees Twitter as the “common digital town square,”but this “town" is not Our Town. It is Muskville. A public square isn't owned by billionaire megalomaniacs. It belongs to the people, ruled by democracy. Instead we obsess over a man we never elected to govern. [1/6]
Today Elon says Twitter will not be a “Hellscape.” But tomorrow he may awaken craving Hell. Society is at his mercy. This is vast unaccountable power that leaves us bystanders to our own future. [2/6]
Sound familiar? We’ve begged Mr. Zuckerberg to end the social wreckage, honor privacy, stop disinformation and hate. It all just gets worse. Now Free Press reports on Facebook’s abysmal failure to act, continuing to put elections at risk. tinyurl.com/5hdfhz3j [3/6]
What's going on here? This is #SurveillanceCapitalism, where corrupt information is more profitable than truth. Without new rights and laws to guarantee democratic principles in this digital century, our pleas for pro-social corporate behavior are hopeless.[4/6]
Welcome to democracy's abdication of our information and communication spaces to private ownership and #SurveillanceCapitalism where the emperors have all the clothes and we run naked. Paradoxically, no democracy can survive these conditions [5/6]
Please! Let's take the energy directed toward Elon and redirect it toward those we elected to govern. Link arms and insist on a democratic digital future where we are protected from unaccountable power wielded by billionaires, despots, corporations, or governments. [6/6]
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Friends, Californians, CA Legislators, we head into a history-making week with the vote on #CAKidsCode and its best-in-world protections from predatory #SurveillanceCapitalism for the children of the Golden State. CA lawmakers, please lead our nation! (1) californiaaadc.com
The California Age-Appropriate Design Code introduced by @BuffyWicks & @Cunning_Jordan ensures that sites kids typically visit will be safe for them. No risks for kids = no risks for businesses. (2)
The crucial protections of the California Bill #AB227 are already in effect in the UK and other countries where companies adapt and thrive. CA kids deserve the same protections granted to other kids. (3)
Friends, Musk/Twitter headlines are all variants of ‘what will Elon do?’ It’s a signal of how lost we are. We obsess over one man and his whims because we don’t yet have the democratic rule of law needed to govern our information spaces. Without law power is dangerous.🧵[1/8]
The result: people, society, & democracy are at the mercy of the individuals who exercise ownership and/or executive control over information. We beg Mr. Zuckerberg to stop the social wreckage, honor our privacy, protect us from disinformation, but he refuses.@mariaressa [2/8]
We've learned FB is big business in which corrupt information is positively correlated with revenue. FB's profit-maximizing imperative ignores us. Privacy is destroyed. Corrupt information triumphs. Society fractures. Profit wins. Only law can change this. @carolecadwalla [3/8]
Friends, I’m so glad to share this new piece. A glimpse into my new work as we roll up our sleeves for #TheThirdDecade. It’s OUR TURN to shape the rights, laws, institutions, that allow democracy to flourish in our digital century.
"The intolerable truth is that we have ceded the ownership and operation of the digital to the political economics of private surveillance capital, which vies with democracy over the fundamental rights and principles that define our social order.”
The four stages of #SurveillanceCapitalism’s epistemic coup: 1) loss of epistemic rights, 2) sharp rise in epistemic inequality, 3) spread of #EpistemicChaos, 4) epistemic dominance.
Friends, FB’s role in takedown of @FBoversight website looks like authoritarian censorship and testimony to Mr. Zuckerberg’s tyranny. It showcases the problems we joined up to fight: power, economic self-dealing, political corruption. @carolecadwalla , @tribelaw , @Moonalice 1/4
But even if it were ‘just business' triggered by domain name, consider the atrocity: FB allows Trump lies, trolls, calls to violence, fraudulent election claims, misinformation, voter suppression, fake videos, but acts quickly and decisively in favor of its domain protection? 2/4
Either way we are sucked into the moral vacuum at the heart of this societal threat, while corporate policy is delivered in crude dismissive tweets at an American moment heavy with danger. 3/4
1/5 Friends, thanks for so many beautiful notes inspired by seeing my original concept of #SurveillanceCapitalism featured in the film #TheSocialDilemma. As surveillance capitalism disfigures our lives and politics, let’s bring this urgent discussion to our families & communities
2/5 Remember that our social dilemma isn’t caused by a single company like Facebook or one CEO like Zuckerberg. Our social dilemma is that #SurveillanceCapitalism has captured our economy, our technology, and the digital future.
3/5 #SurveillanceCapitalism is a profit-driven economic logic based on STEALING our lives for data, behavioral predictions, and sales. Targeting, tech addiction, manipulation, violent content, fake news, and more are only effects of this greater cause.