April 13, 2018--Post-Privacy

More than usual people are concerned about privacy. This the result of the news that Facebook did not prevent the sharing of very personal information about 87 million of us. In fact, they sold it to Cambridge Analytica, which, in turn may or may not have used that data in shady ways to support Donald Trump's run for the presidency.

What did people addicted to Facebook (me included) think they were doing with all the data about our intimate selves we so casually handed over to them? 

Facebook makes billions every month but doesn't charge users to use their "platform." What was Facebook's business model that yielded so much money? If we had paused for a minute to think about how Instagram's and Google's and Snapchat's and YouTube's and Twitter's business models make a fortune but do not charge users we would have realized they made their money by selling us out to marketers and political consultants. 

So all the outrage directed toward Facebook sounds a little self-serving and inauthentic. My bet is that hardly anyone will as a result stop using Facebook or the others.

And, it seems to me, that very few people care profoundly about this. I want my Facebook; I don't want to pay to use it; and I don't care very much, perhaps not at all, about losing my privacy.

After all, don't the social network platforms depend upon us eagerly wanting to surrender our privacy? Aren't they ultimately narcissistic-enabling vehicles for us to let it all, or much of it, hang out for "friends" and friends of friends and friends of friends' friends? Isn't the dream of much of this to have one's postings widely shared, go viral? How else can that happen unless we put it all out there to be passed around?

Years ago I had early glimpses of how people were moving to sacrifice privacy for the sake of convenience and expediency. Though at the time I really didn't get it.

About two decades ago I was online at Citibank (not on-line) waiting to deposit a check. This in the day before there were ATMs. Ahead of me were two women who were talking at full volume. One was worried about her daughter, "I'm afraid she's becoming addicted to cocaine," she said loud enough for everyone on line to hear. "I don't know what to do with her. I can't afford to pay for a recovery program. I suppose I just have to hope for the best."  

Her friend put an arm around her and, changing the subject, began to talk, equally audibly, about her boyfriend, "He punched me the other day. We were having an argument and he got violent. Slapped my face hard enough that I think he loosened a couple of my molars." She opened her mouth wide and showed her friend the two teeth. Her friend leaned closer to examine her teeth.

Thankfully, they soon got to the head of the line and were summoned by one of the tellers. The memory is still vivid for me.

A few years later, walking home on Broadway, there was a young woman who appeared to be talking to herself in a very loud voice. Another crazy person, I thought. So young to be talking to herself, I thought. But as I moved quickly to pass her, I realized she was speaking to someone on her cell phone, talking into the wire attached to the phone on which there was a small microphone. Again, without needing to strain to pay attention I could hear every word she said. They were talking about meeting that evening at a local restaurant. All very benign, but evidence that the culture was shifting. I realized we would soon have no need for the phone booths with accordion doors that were still common on urban streets.

Some time after that I was in Washington for a meeting with Alaska Senator Ted ("Uncle Ted") Stevens. He was the chair of the all-powerful Appropriations Committee and I was, I confess, seeking his support for a $20.0 million earmark for a promising public school reform project that, to lubricate the process of seeking his help, we were more than willing to bring to his state.

He was about to be term-limited out of the chairmanship so the timing was urgent. 

We spoke about the project (which he later arranged to be funded) and then he told me that as a consolation for losing the Appropriations chair, he was to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. He wasn't, to tell the truth, happy about this. It was a much less powerful position.

"One thing I'm concerned about," he said, "is the responsibility for protecting internet security. Really, privacy. And to be honest with you, I'm 82 years old, and don't know anything about the internet or, for the matter, computers."

"So, what are you going to do?" I asked.

"I'll tell you what I already did," he said, smiling, "I asked my youngest staffers to do a little looking around and see what they could learn about me on the internet. You know, when and where I was born, where I live, who I'm married to. Things of that sort. I told them to get back to me in a week or so and they said no problem."

"I think I know where this is going," I said.

"Well, later in the day, the same day, they appeared in my doorway holding stacks and stakes of paper. 'What's all that?' I asked them. They told me it was what they had already come up with on the internet. You wouldn't believe what they found in just a few hours."

"I would," I whispered. He was on a roll and I didn't want to interrupt him.

"You know I have six kids. Well, not only did they find out everything about Cathy-Ann and me but also about them. Where they were born, how old they are, where they went to school, what they studied, and what they did after college. Also, where they live, and if they owned a house how much they paid for it. They even knew about their student loans and any mortgages on their properties."

He shrugged his shoulders, "And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's enough to say that everything's out there to be found by anyone who knows how to do that. And my staffers told me how easy that is. From what they explained to me I understood why it only took a couple of hours to gather all that information."

"This is terrible," I said, "And so as the about-to-be chair of the Commerce Committee what are you thinking about doing?"

He stared off into space, "Probably nothing."

"Nothing?" I was incredulous. Remember, it was years ago. For most of us knowing about the power of the internet was rather new.

"It's too late," he said, "No one in Congress cares anything about this. They think it's good for business. No one gives a rat's ass about privacy. As I said, it's all over."

This was 2005 and from an 82-year-old senator from Alaska who never turned on a computer. He was still able to see the future.

"It's over. It's all over," he said as I thanked him and turned to leave.

Senater (Uncle Ted) Stevens

April 10, 2018--Up Next, Google

Though Google is more diversified than Facebook (they have a significant cloud business, are deeply involved in self-driving vehicles, smartphones, YouTube, and Blogger, which I use), by far most of their income derives from their original and still core business--as an Internet search engine.

For the latter, users have access to it for "free." Not unlike Facebook.

I put free in quotation marks because as with Facebook there is a hidden cost associated with using Google's search software. 

In exchange for information (I just used Google to search for the other ventures in which they are invested) they charge no fees but get paid by the reams of personal data we so willingly and unthinkably give them access to. 

They in turn sell that data, that big data, to advertisers and others who in turn design and pass along to us unsolicited, tightly personalized, targeted ads.

In this way, for this enormous, global, lucrative segment of their business Google is not so different than Facebook. 

And thus it would be no surprise to find them before long in the same humiliating circumstance as Facebook. Snared or hoisted with  their own petard. 

(Google, as I just did, to find where Shakespeare makes reference to being hoisted with one's own petard.)

Expect that Trump (as his people did with Cambridge Analytica), or, who knows, Hillary or Bernie, had one of their marketing intermediaries purchase demographic and psychographic data from Google that was for good or ill useful in their campaigns.

Most of us haven't been paying attention to what else was going on with our favorite social media or e-commerce sites as we searched and shopped. But now the genie is out of the bottle, Mark Zuckerberg is about to appear before Congress, and most of us would be reluctant to stop using Facebook or Google or Amazon.  

I do not see myself giving up these any time soon much less back shopping in the mall or looking up anything in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm addicted. 

March 29, 2018--The 42%

There is a recent CNN poll that has Donald Trump with a 42% approval rating. Up a few percentage points from four weeks ago.

This after what would appear to have been Trump's stormiest month ever.

It was the month during which Stormy Daniels and other women surfaced who claimed to have had intimate relations with our randy president.

It was a month in which Trump disposed of his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, among various others.

It was a month in which he launched a trade war with some of our closest allies and then a couple of weeks later basically backed off from his threats.

It was a month that saw the stock market drop up to 10% in value.

It was another month in which more evidence accumulated that the Russians and his own operatives meddled (successfully) in the 2016 election, with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica providing the ammunition.

And of course the seemingly and continuingly popular Robert Mueller (with a 72% approval rating) and his investigators tightened the noose around Trump and his inner circle.

And yet Trump's approval rating went up nearly five points.

Forget Teflon Ronald Reagan.

When I mentioned this to Rona, she said, he is more popular because he provided Americans with a mega-dose of political entertainment.

"Love him, hate him (and you know where I stand) don't you wake up in the morning eager to see what he tweeted overnight and don't you turn on the TV every afternoon to find out who he fired or if anther woman has stepped forward waving an NDA, a non disparagement agreement? And don't you every night, before trying to get some sleep, one more time check your favorite news sites to see who else Mueller has flipped?

"I'm embarrassed to admit it, but, yes, I do, I do" I said, "I have grown accustomed to receiving my daily Donald Trump fixes."

"David Frum, liberals' favorite Republican, said that there is a 'conservative entertainment complex,' a place where members of the GOP either inadvertently or intentionally go to provide entertainment for the electorate."

"What does that have to do with Trump's approval rating?"

"The more entertaining he is the more popular he is among a wide swatch of voters. If he's at 42% that means a lot more than just his rock-solid base of fanatics is approving of him. I'd say, the more amusing he becomes there's at last 10% of the public up for political grabs. So, his base is maybe 35% and the additional seven percent in the poll you mentioned, are with him recently because he's had a very entertaining month."

"So, by your logic, Stormy Daniels rather than harming him among the electorate is actually contributing to his approval ratings?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And, how pathetic are we to have allowed ourselves to become addicted to this political circus? And by 'we' I mean that 42% and . . . you and I. How far have we fallen?"

March 21, 2018--Fakebook: Psychographics

Here's the worst part about Facebook's turning over to Cambridge Analytica intimate data about 50 million of its subscribers. 50 million of us.

It's not that by doing so they violated our privacy or that this then allowed CA to precision-market products, services, and political candidates to us. Not just, in one example, enabling them to zap ads to us about books in general but books about the history of the American presidency to someone, like me, who bought on line a shelf of presidential biographies. This is not what is most concerning.

This sort of focused marketing predates by decades the invention of the Internet. Most powerful at the time was direct marketing, where one could purchase lists of "pre-qualified" potential customers who might be interested in, say, fishing equipment because they subscribed to Field & Stream.

And what's worst is not how, with the all-powerful Internet, marketers are able to make their pitches in micro-focused and cost-effective ways.

By aggregating and analyzing big data that Amazon and Google and Facebook have about each of us, marketing firms can construct psychological profiles of us--psychographics--that help guide their sales strategies in extraordinarily targeted ways. 

But again, this is not the worst part of what is being exposed as the current Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Facebook, Fakebook's clumsy enablement, unfolds. 

Also still not the worst thing is the direct involvement of deep stater Trumpians such as the scary Mercer family of billionaires or their previously bought-and-paid-for poodle, Steve Bannon. As reprehensible as their attempts have been to undermine American democracy (we would be wise to remember this is their goal), no, what is worst is our willing complicity in this. 

Allow me to repeat that--It's about our complicity. About how if it weren't for us there would be no Cambridge Analytica, no cyber-meddling to fraudulently strengthen Trump's side in the 2016 election, and no big data to make this possible.

The reason CA and others can, for their scurrilous purposes, put their hands on intimate information about tens of millions of us is because we have willingly and eagerly shared this data about ourselves.

For example, Facebook users casually reveal how old they are, how much education they have, where they live, what they "like" when it comes to music and books and food and clothing and movies and the entertainments we download on line. 

When we click "like" on a "friend's" posting we reveal something about what is important to us, whether it be cultural, political, and even spiritual. We casually reveal what medications we use when ordering drugs on line, where we vacation, how much money we have, what kind of car we drive, how we earn a living, how we recreate, what languages we speak, our sexual orientation and preferences as well as the kinds of families we belong to and our world of friend.

I could go on for thousands of words just making this list of the kinds of information we "share" about ourselves without much persuasion or thought. 

We tell all to Facebook and other social network and e-commerce sites. And then this data, in the hands of the likes of Amazon and Cambridge Analytica become essential to fueling their metastasizing reach and power.

In our post-privacy world most of us do not think twice before revealing intimate details about ourselves. In fact, many Facebook members who are comfortable indulging their narcissism or gossipy side enjoy letting it all hang out on line and can't get enough of listening in, so the speak, to the details of their "friend's" lives, they are so casual about this that they seemingly do not care about what in the process, even unintentionally, they reveal about themselves.

It is dangerous that in addition to being indiscriminate about what we share, while oblivious to what bottom-feeding operations such as Cambridge Analytica can mash together to create a psychographic portrait of each of us that is so detailed it can be deployed not only to sell us stuff we don't need but also can be used to influence our vote. 

In large part, as a result, we have Donald Trump as our president.