NetPoliticsBlog | Christian Fuchs

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“The world will be better if you share more“: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and Economic Surveillance

The August 2010 issue of Wired Magazine features a story about privacy on Facebook.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is quoted saying: “The concept that the world will be better if you share more is something that’s pretty foreign to a lot of people – and it runs into all these privacy concerns”. He acknowledges that some people have “the vision of a surveillance world”. But he associates Google, not Facebook with surveillance. He says that Google’s strategy of data collection “is a little scary” and thinks that Facebook in contrast gives users control over their data. “Given that the world is moving towards more sharing of information, making sure that it happens in a bottom-up way, with people inputting the information themselves and having control over how their information interacts with the system, as opposed to a centralized way, through it being tracked in some surveillance system”.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that he does not care about profit, but wants to help people with Facebook’s tools and wants to create an open society. Kevin Colleran, Facebook advertising sale executive, says in the Wired story that “Mark is not motivated by money”. In a story by the Times (October 20, 2008, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article4974197.ece), Zuckerberg said: “The goal of the company is to help people to share more in order to make the world more open and to help promote understanding between people. The long-term belief is that if we can succeed in this mission then we also be able to build a pretty good business and everyone can be financially rewarded. […] The Times: Does money motivate you. Zuckerberg: No”.

Zuckerberg thinks that the only problem about Facebook surveillance is that other individuals get access to images or information of users that is not meant for being available to them. He also thinks that privacy control options will solve this problem. Facebook has tended to make ever more information available to all users as its standard setting. One cannot assume that all users are highly skilful in setting their privacy options. Zuckerberg ignores the skills divide in social networking site usage.

But the more crucial problem is that Zuckerberg fully ignores the economic power structures of the modern economy, into which Facebook is embedded. If Zuckerberg really does not care about profit, why is Facebook then not a non-commercial platform and why does it use targeted advertising? The problems of targeted advertising are that it aims at controlling and manipulating human needs, that users are normally not asked if they agree to the use of advertising on the Internet, but have to agree to advertising if they want to use commercial platforms (lack of democracy), that advertising can increase market concentration, that it is intransparent for most users what kind of information about them is used for advertising purposes, and that users are not paid for the value creation they engage in when using commercial web 2.0 platforms and uploading data. Surveillance on Facebook is not only an interpersonal process, where users view data about other individuals that might benefit or harm the latter, it is primarily economic surveillance, i.e. the collection, storage, assessment, and commodification of personal data, usage behaviour, and user-generated data for economic purposes. Facebook and other web 2.0 platforms are large advertising-based capital accumulation machines that achieve their economic aims by economic surveillance.

Facebook collects information about user behaviour on other sites for economic purposes: “We may ask advertisers to tell us how our users responded to the ads we showed them (and for comparison purposes, how other users who didn’t see the ads acted on their site). This data sharing, commonly known as ‘conversion tracking,’ helps us measure our advertising effectiveness and improve the quality of the advertisements you see. We may receive information about whether or not you’ve seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads“ (Privacy Policy, April 22, 2010).

Facebook targets advertisement to individual users by surveilling their usage behaviour and interests: “We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are. […] We occasionally pair advertisements we serve with relevant information we have about you and your friends to make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. For example, if you connect with your favorite band’s page, we may display your name and profile photo next to an advertisement for that page that is displayed to your friends. We only share the personally identifiable information visible in the social ad with the friend who can see the ad. You can opt out of having your information used in social ads on this help page” (Privacy Policy, April 22, 2010).

Zuckerberg and Facebook ignore concerns about advertising settings. Facebook’s privacy policy is the living proof that Facebook is primarily about profit-generation by advertising. “The world will be better if you share more“? For whom, Mark Zuckerberg? “Sharing” on Facebook in economic terms means primarily that Facebook “shares” information with advertising clients. And “sharing” is only the euphemism for selling and commodifying data. Facebook commodifies and trades user data and user behaviour data. Facebook does not make the world a better place, it makes the world a more commercialized place, a big shopping mall without exit. It makes the world only a better place for companies interested in advertising, not for users.

Mr. Zuckerberg, if you are a man who stands by his word, and Facebook for you is really not about profit, then please abolish targeted advertising and any kind of advertising on Facebook tomorrow and transform Facebook into a non-commercial, non-profit Internet platform. Yours truly, Christian Fuchs.

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christian fuchs, July 20th 2010

Tags: capitalism, economic surveillance, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, personalized advertising, privacy, social networking sites, surveillance, targeted advertising, web 2.0
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Reflections on the ICTs and Society-Conference at IN3

Reflections on the ICTs and Society-Conference at IN3

I attended the ICTs and Society-conference at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) near Barcelona (June 30-July 2, 2010). The first day was a PhD conference track. Two years ago I organized a similar PhD event in Salzburg. My main observation was that other than two years ago, there was this time a focus of many of the students on critical studies of the Internet, ICTs and the role of information in society. And by “critical“, I do not mean asking questions, which all scholars do, but the questioning of structures and practices of domination, which is only possible based on a realistic epistemology (see my critique of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism and Glasersfeld’s somewhat awkward response, which shows that he has no clue what I mean when I say that radical constructivism is a form of normative relativism that relativizes the danger of forms of domination such as fascism). It is my general observation, not only at this conference, that there is a opening up of information society studies/Internet research/cyberculture studies/social informatics (or whatever terms one wants to use to describe this field) towards critical studies that is becoming more and more important within the field. My own experience is that there is also a strong “demand” for critical scholarship by students who work in the just mentioned field. Courses like “Reading Marx’s Capital in the 21^st Century Information Age“, “Critical Theory of the Internet/Critical Internet Research”, or “Critical Information Society Studies” that I have taught have proven quite popular. I found many contributions and discussions at the PhD day very good. This is an indication that there is an upcoming generation of talented critical scholars within the field. My only two points of criticism are that each student should have got five more minutes of presentation and that each student should have been required to present besides a framework also some results or theoretical contribution, even if s/he is in the very early stage of her/his research.

The second day started with a keynote talk by William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute. He maintained that “Internet studies” is a multidisciplinary, young, fragmented, comparatively small field with a huge scope and potential. I think that the term multidisciplinarity is not self-explaining, and Dutton did not engage with its meaning. One should at least distinguish between inter-, multi- and transdisciplinarity and it is the latter term that can be most fruitfully applied to Internet studies/information society studies. But doing this requires engagement with philosophy of science. Personally I find in this context the work of Basarab Nicolescu very useful and applicable. “Internet studies” is in my opinion a far too narrow term because it excludes ICTs that are not connected to the Internet (such as mobile phone usage without Internet access) and excludes more subjective phenomena of the information age, such as knowledge work and the knowledge economy in general (where not only the Internet plays a role). The term also implies more a technology-centred focus that neglects subjective phenomena of the information age that are not Internet-mediated. A more broader and inclusive term is for example “information society studies”, as suggested by Alistair Duff in his book with the same title. It is in my view necessary to distinguish different forms of information society studies and this should include theoretical, normative, ethical, philosophical, and critical aspects. Internet studies is only one part of a larger whole, not the whole itself.

William Dutton presented some results from the World Internet Project (WIP) and maintained that the WIP is a typical Internet studies project. My own impression is that the main challenge for the field is not only to develop it and to overcome its strong fragmentation, but to overcome the lack of theoretical grounding and the frequent neglect of the framing of topics within their overall societal context (fetishistic particularism of topics). I do absolutely not argue against empirical research as such, only against a certain form of empirical research. Projects like WIP are important and absolutely needed for generating a good data basis. I am myself at the moment directing an empirically-oriented research project about surveillance on social networking sites. The problem that I see is that many scholars in the field of Internet studies conduct theoretically guided empirical research or theoretically ungrounded empirical research and that they tend to understand theory as discussing some single definitions from single sources in order to ground hypotheses. They however neglect to give grounds for why certain definitions of concepts are used and not others and how these categories fit into larger theoretical wholes. What they are doing is in no way connected to theory. And by theory I do not mean the kind of work Manuel Castells is doing, who himself wrote that his work is not theory, but that theory is only a tool for him. My argument is that what is needed is not more theoretically-guided empirical research, but more critical, empirically-grounded theoretical work, which is to say that there is a lack of critical and theoretical work. Theorizing the Internet and the information society requires sociological theory, classifications and typologies of different definitions of concepts, comparative discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of definitions, etc. It is for example no wonder that many contemporary Internet scholars use notions such as participation in a shallow way because they neglect engaging with participatory democracy theory. Other approaches are more interested in theory, but are rather eclectic – they take single concepts from single theories that are applied to examples. Frequently it is forgotten to give grounds for why a certain interpretation of a theoretical concept is used and not another one. Theorizing the Internet and the information society requires philosophy and concepts of society, information, modern society, capitalism, democracy, etc. Building these theoretical foundations, and building them in a critical manner, and engaging in empirical studies that interact with theory and – importantly – take the macro context of the economic, political and cultural development of society into account, has too long been neglected. But, as already mentioned, I am quite confident that this is about to change.

So my feeling is that different forms and ways of doing information society studies need to be distinguished and that one also needs to take a look a the power structures of the field. What are dominant paradigms? What are alternative paradigms? Is there a struggle of paradigms? Which kinds of work tend to be funded to a large extent, which ones to a small extent? In order to establish a good information society, we need discussions of possible meanings of concepts like sustainable information society, participatory Internet, informational capitalism, digital democracy, etc, empirical research that tests to which extent and in which ways such concepts exist in reality, ideology critique that questions information society myths, discussions of the normative and political implications of research, interfacing with the political level, etc.

László Karvalics, founder of ITTK, presented hypotheses about Frank Webster’s works on the information society, which in his opinion are fundamentally flawed. I agree with László on many other issues related to the information society discourse, but not on his view of Webster’s work. He misses one fundamental point, namely that it is a crucial hypothesis of Webster that “informational developments” are “being heavily influenced by familiar constraints and priorities” (The information society revisited, p. 31). Webster reminds us to be cautious about claims that we have entered a new society that can be found in works of information society thinkers like Daniel Bell, Alvin Toffler, Peter Drucker, Nico Stehr, or Manuel Castells and that one should not forget about class and power structures in information society analysis. Nicholas Garnham has expressed the same critique in the following words: “the shift from energy to brainpower does not necessarily change the subordination of labour to capital“. For me, there are two interfaced levels of analysis, what Marx termed the productive forces and the relations of production. At the level of the relations of production, contemporary society is still a class society, although the exact subtypes and composition of classes change (also partly due to informatization, as Erik Olin Wright has shown). At the level of the productive forces, we can observe and measure the rise and effects of digital technologies, knowledge work, etc. The informational productive force thereby become a means of class domination, but, as Marx knew, also advance the antagonism between the productive forces and the relations of production, which expresses itself for example on the Internet as antagonism between free sharing and capitalist appropriation of information. So the effect of IT on the class structure is antagonistic, but has not resulted in the dissolution of the class structure, but its differentiation.

An interesting session organized by critical scholars from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah Roberts, and Miriam Sweeney from the School of Library and Information Science, focused on the role of the “critical” in ICTs and society-studies. In my opinion it is absolutely essential to discuss what “critical studies” actually means, in which ways critical studies of the Internet, ICTs and the information society can be best conducted, given grounds for, institutionalized, diffused, networked, etc. Of course there are no easy answers, but the important aspect of this session is that it is an indication that quite some people have started thinking about these questions.

William Dutton tweeted that an alternative to critical thinking is analytical skepticism understood as the questioning of taken-for-granted assumptions. Well, scholarship is always a form of analytical scepticism, questioning is a core process of any science, any research, any theory, etc. Analytical skepticism is therefore not an alternative to critical studies, but part of all studies. To purely focus on analytical skepticism clearly is not a good option because not all forms of questioning society are automatically good forms of questioning. For example questioning the taken-for-granted assumption of the existence of gas chambers under German fascism (the so-called Auschwitzlüge) or questioning the legitimacy of anti-racism or anti-fascism (which automatically means arguing for racism respectively fascism) are problematic.

Karl Popper argued that science is/should be neutral and value-free. In contrast, I agree with Juliet Webster, who in her keynote talk on the third day maintained that academia and therefore also ICT research is always political and should contribute to the advancement of participatory democracy and socialism.

In the German positivism debate between Adorno and Popper, Popper did not speak of “analytical scepticism”, but of critical rationalism as a form of questioning at the epistemological level, whereas Adorno in contrast spoke of critical studies of society. This shows that this is a discussion, where one can draw on already existing debates. In my forthcoming book “Foundations of Critical Media and information Studies” (Routledge, late 2010), there will be two long chapters discussing the meaning of the critical in general and particularly for media/communication studies and information society studies (Chapter 2: Critical Theory Today, Chapter 3: Critical Media and Information Studies). In the rest of the book, example studies try to show how critical studies of the information age can be conducted. In chapter 2 and 3, I maintain that we should have an Adorno- and not a Popper-understanding of the “critical” and I review classical and contemporary debates about the status of the critical (for example: Horkheimer’s notions of traditional and critical theory, the Nancy Fraser/Axel Honneth debate, the debate about public sociology, different ways of defining “critical theory”) and elaborate a typology of different kinds of critical media and information studies.

On the second conference day, I found many sessions too dense (6 presenters, each with a presentation time of ten minutes). Also in some sessions I got the impression that the topics were arbitrarily grouped. It might be better to have less papers and more presentation and discussion time. Also I am again and again surprised that many senior scholars tend to waste most of their presentation time by making long, unnecessary introductions. Once they really start, their presentation time is over and they are surprised and want to continue talking. Professors and senior scholars teach presentation methods, rhetorical and didactical methods to their students, but surprisingly many of them do not apply these techniques themselves, but have rather boring linguistic styles and presentation methods. The cardinal mistake that one can make in my opinion is to read a paper and to thereby set one’s audience asleep. But this fortunately occurred only a few single times a this conference. My impression is that many students tend to be better in presenting than senior scholars.

The second day also showed how much the room setting influences discussion culture. To organize a discussion in a lecture hall that is comprised of an elevated podium/stage for the speakers and theatre tiers does not foster an open atmosphere of discussion. Personally I hate giving lectures myself in lecture halls that have an elevated podium, but I also do not like that many participants in lectures, seminars, conferences, tend to take seats in the back of the room, not in the front. All of this creates a spatial distance between all participants that harms the possibility for discussions. The best way to overcome this atmosphere of non-communication is to use alternative room and panel settings.

In the morning of day 3, electricity in the larger lecture hall failed due to a malfunctioning laptop. The person who caused this (person known), should be given a conference award because the fact that we had to move to a smaller conference room really proved beneficial for the discussions. Especially the first session in the seminar room on day 3 was alive, dynamic, and full of interesting contributions and discussions. The session was very well structured and chaired. Especially the presentations “Illegal Workers in Virtual Worlds: Unfree Labor, Incivility, and the New Orientalism” by Lisa Nakamura and “Internet in China: Myths and Realities” by Robert Bichler fostered interesting discussions about class, gender, race, censorship, the Internet in Asia, cultural and societal differences, etc. Lisa Nakamura’s presentation discussed good examples (goldfarming, Tila Tequila) for forms of online labour that are shaped by structural racism. It raised interesting questions for me: What is the class status of Tila Tequila? What is the class trajectory of Tila Tequila and how is that trajectory shaped by race and gender? How do race, class, and gender relate on the Internet and create different structurings and stratifications? How can the triple oppression-approach best be applied to the Internet? Lisa Nakamura’s presentation in my opinion very well showed that there is not a single “virtual class”, but that information workers are stratified by different patterns, that there are winners and losers online and different forms of race-, class-, and gender-mobilities.

In the afternoon of the third day, it was again sleeping time with a panel on PhD programmes that only featured the voices of the great professorial masters of PhD programmes, but neglected the voices and experiences of the students studying in these programmes. Also there was more focus on marketing PhD programmes (or research centres, as was the case in another session) than on the failures and problems, as promised by the session title.

Overall, I had great days in Barcelona, had many good new insights, learned about interesting works that I did not-yet know, and very much enjoyed meeting many people. A conference of this kind enables many different organizational modes for panels. For the future, I think that more workshop-style sessions and spontaneous group discussions that interface with plenary discussions should be added.

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christian fuchs, July 3rd 2010

Tags: Barcelona, ICTs and Society conference, IN3, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute
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The Google Street View Surveillance Machine

It is a fact that Google has while taking panorama photographs of streets in cities all over the world (in 34 countries) for its Street View application also collected information about wireless networks and data from open wireless networks that are not password-secured. Google may have stored smaller or larger pieces of emails, images, documents, notes, data about accessed websites, etc in this process. Google admitted this circumstance in a public note: “we discovered that a statement made in a blog post on April 27 was incorrect. In that blog post, and in a technical note sent to data protection authorities the same day, we said that while Google did collect publicly broadcast SSID information (the WiFi network name) and MAC addresses (the unique number given to a device like a WiFi router) using Street View cars, we did not collect payload data (information sent over the network). But it’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products” (Official Google Blog, May 14^th, 2010). The validity of Google’s claim that it never used the collected data in its products can never be checked because once data has been collected, stored, and diffused, it is impossible to reconstruct how exactly it has been used and how often it has been copied. Google’s claim is simply worthless because already the unauthorized collection of data constitutes a major problem.

Google does not give a viable explanation why it collected data from WiFi networks. The company wrote on its blog: “So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software – although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data” (Official Google Blog, May 14^th, 2010). Is it reasonable to assume that a software code that collects private data is accidently installed and nobody knows about it? Can this statement be trusted if it comes from a company that naturally has an economic interest in turning data into profit?

The collected data enables Google to link certain images, videos, some details about private lives, work and business, and personal documents to addresses. No matter if Google uses these data for economic purposes, statistical analysis, or does not use them, the question is if citizens can feel save when a corporation that by its own nature has capital accumulation as its highest priority (which does in reality frequently conflict with citizens’ interests), collects and controls such data without the knowledge and agreement of users. Google says that it has or will delete all collected data. But if this is indeed true, cannot be controlled. Even if public prosecution authorities and data protection agencies gain access to Google hard disks that contain these data, it cannot be guaranteed that data copies have not been made. Once data is collected and controlled by one actor, it can be easily, cheaply and very quickly copied. This means that one cannot trust Google’s assertions that it has or will delete the data because there can never be certainty about the deletion of digital data. Damage has already been irreversibly caused at the moment the data were collected because of the very nature of digitalization that allows the creation of an endless number of exact data doubles.

“The engineering team at Google works hard to earn your trust – and we are acutely aware that we failed badly here. We are profoundly sorry for this error and are determined to learn all the lessons we can from our mistake” (Official Google Blog, May 14^th, 2010). Google’s naïve apology is not worth a tinker’s cuss because the affected users can never be sure what exactly has happened or will happen to their data and if this will have negative consequences for them.

The incident shows that Google has an interest in obtaining as much data about users as possible and that it does not shy away from collecting data without the knowledge and consent of users and even from private networks.

“This incident highlights just how publicly accessible open, non-password-protected WiFi networks are today” (Official Google Blog, May 14^th, 2010). Because a network is open does not mean that companies should be allowed to download data from the network and that users welcome them to do so. Some observers argue that if someone leaves a wireless network open/unprotected, it is his/her own fault if others extract data from it. They also say that leaving a wireless network open is like writing a postcard or not sealing a letter, which invites others to read. Why is this analogy inappropriate? Open wireless networks advance free access and the sharing of data, which in turn fosters human communication, which is a basic human need that should not cost money. Therefore open networks as such are desirable. If all providers close their wireless networks off from the public, costless public access to information and communication over the Internet is disabled and industry interests in charging users for Internet access is advanced. Therefore there are good reasons for providing open access to wireless networks. Other reasons for not protecting wireless networks are that people want to share data with people in their flat, their house, or their block, which does not mean that they want to share it with Google. Also some users might not know or not be sure which data on their computers and networks is available to others. If you do not lock your door because you want your friends who live next door to be able to enter any time, then this does not mean that you welcome strangers to come in and take pictures of you sleeping, having sex, sitting on the toilet, lying in the bathtub, or conducting other activities.

I am sure that most Internet users have found it useful to browse streets on Google Street View before going to a place they have never been to in order to easier orient themselves and gain an idea of how the place they are going to looks like. This shows the power of contemporary Internet technologies to serve basic human needs such as communication, co-ordination, and orientation. But at the same times these technologies under the control of profit-oriented firms serve economic interests that conflict with basic human interests. Google has a contradictory nature: it advances human sociability and communication and at the same time threatens data protection due to its profit-oriented character. There is an antagonism between the productive power of Internet technologies and the capitalist relations that shape the production and usage of these technologies.

The German consumer protection minister Ilse Aigner has enforced that Google must garble private houses and gardens on Google Street View if citizens formally object. This debate is itself contradictory: if all houses are gabled on Google Street View, then users will get no impression of how a certain ward they want to go to looks like; if all houses are visible, certain people might feel that criminal acts and acts of terrorism are easier to plan.

In Germany, the Hamburg public prosecution authority started investigations against Google because of the suspicion that the company intercepted data. In Austria, the Data Protection Commission banned further data collection by Google Street View at the end of May 2010. Josef Ostermayer, who is Austrian State Secretary for the Media, wants to criminalize illegal data collection (Der Standard, May 28, 2010). Currently, unauthorized data collection is only illegal if the data are purposefully collected and valorized for economic purposes. Ostermayer wants to criminalize unauthorized data collection so that not only the use of such data for profit-purposes is illegal, but already the gathering process itself. He also suggests that there should not only be a national law, but that the EU Data Protection Directive is amended (Der Standard, May 28, 2010).

The best reaction to surveillance by private companies, as in the case of Google, is to let them feel the full violence of democratic law enforcement. Therefore the current developments in Austrian and Germany of taking legal measures against Google are more than appropriate. Corporations may not be very willing to voluntarily respect the consumer interest in data protection, but they may become more responsive if corporate data misuse is criminalized, severely punished, and causes painful financial losses for them. The Google Street View incident shows that companies do not automatically see privacy violation as a mistake and that legal measures that make companies like Google and Facebook learn privacy lessons are very much needed. Maybe it is time to stop talking about corporate social responsibility and to start focusing on the analysis, exposure, and investigation of corporate social irresponsibility.

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christian fuchs, May 29th 2010

Tags: Google, Google Street View, Google surveillance, Internet privacy violation, Internet surveillance, political economy of Internet surveillance, political economy of web 2.0 surveillance, surveillance, surveillance society, the internet & surveillance, web 2.0
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There is nothing really new about Facebook’s “new privacy model”

Facebook has changed its privacy settings on May 27th, 2010. One change is that users can now set with one click in the privacy options if their data is available to everyone, friends of friends, friends only, or if they want to use the standard settings. The standard settings are those that are automatically activated if a user registers a new profile. The standard settings of what is visible to everyone has not much changed: information such as status, photos, postings, bio, favourite quotes, family, relationship status, friends-list, schools, universities, work place, interests, relationship interest are automatically visible to everyone. In contrast to the old settings, also the personal website, city, and hometown are now visible to everyone as standard setting. The friends-list is still automatically visible to everyone, but Facebook now allows users to change this setting so that it is visible only to friends or friends of friends.

On the Facebook blog, Mark Zuckerberg celebrates these changes: “We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications. [...] Finally and perhaps most importantly, I am pleased to say that with these changes the overhaul of Facebook’s privacy model is complete. If you find these changes helpful, then we plan to keep this privacy framework for a long time. That means you won’t need to worry about changes. (Believe me, we’re probably happier about this than you are.)“.

There are no changes to targeted advertising, which shows that Facebook thinks that this form of advertising does not pose privacy threats. The privacy policy for example still allows Facebook to make use of data on users’ behaviour on other sites: “We may receive information about whether or not you’ve seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads“ (Facebook Privacy Policy, April 22, 2010).

Targeted advertising is automatically enabled and cannot be disabled, there is neither an opt-in- nor an opt-out-option: “We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are. You can see the criteria advertisers may select by visiting our advertising page. Even though we do not share your information with advertisers without your consent, when you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement there is a possibility that the advertiser may place a cookie in your browser and note that it meets the criteria they selected“ (Facebook Privacy Policy, April 22, 2010)..

Hidden inside of the privacy terms is a link to a page, where users can opt-out of the placement of cookies by 48 advertising companies. This link is hard to find and is not part of the general Facebook settings. “Advertisements. Sometimes the advertisers who present ads on Facebook use technological methods to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. You may opt-out of the placement of cookies by many of these advertisers here. You may also use your browser cookie settings to limit or prevent the placement of cookies by advertising network“.

Targeted Internet advertising is problematic due to several reasons:
* Users are not allowed to decide if they want to have advertising/targeted advertising on Internet platforms. This shows a democratic deficit – platform owners decide, users have to agree if they want to use the sites.
* Targeted advertising advances the total commodification and commercialization of the Internet.
* Targeted advertising tries to manipulate tastes, needs, and consumption behaviour.
* Targeted advertising just like all forms of advertising supports market concentration because the largest corporations are able to purchase much more ads than smaller ones and non-commercial and non-profit organizations.
* On commercial web 2.0 platforms, Internet prosumers are sold as commodity to advertising firms and are thereby economically exploited.
* It is not transparent to the user, which firms are allowed to present targeted advertising.
* Targeted advertising is legitimated by long and complex terms that are cumbersome to read and contain hidden options that are not shown in the general settings in order to enforce capital accumulation by making it more unlikely that users opt-out of certain advertising options (example: opt-out from the setting of cookies by advertising firms on Facebook).

Concerning economic surveillance and the privacy threats posed by it, nothing has changed on Facebook. So there are no reasons to celebrate Facebook’s ”new privacy model“. If, as Zuckerberg says, Facebook’s “privacy model is” now “complete” and should now be kept “for a long time”, then this means that the commodification and exploitation of Facebook users, the total commodification and commercialization of Facebook, economic surveillance, and the lack of democratic control of advertising by users (i.e. the existence of a Facebook advertising dictatorship) are here to stay.

The only viable alternatives to the Facebook privacy and surveillance threat are the creation of non-commercial social networking sites and legal frameworks that require commercial web 2.0 operators to implement opt-in advertising/targeted advertising solutions.

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christian fuchs, May 27th 2010

Tags: changes of privacy settings, economic surveillance, Facebook, Facebook privacy model, Internet prosumer commodity, Mark Zuckerberg, privacy changes, privacy model, targeted advertising
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The role of Internet and ICT policies in the UK after the 2010 election: does it make a difference for the role of the Internet in British society if there will be a Labour-Lib Dem or a Conservative-Lib Dem government?

Will there be changes in Internet and ICT politics and policies after the 2010 elections for the Westminster parliament? Willit in this context make a difference if there will be a Tory-LibDem government or a Labour-LibDem government? The election manifestos of the three parties give us an idea of what to expect in the near future for UK Internet politics.

Liberal Democrats: No agenda is also an agenda

The Liberal Democrats do not have an agenda for the role they want to assign to ICTs and the Internet in Britain. In their “Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010”, the prospects for the economy are fully focused on establishing a Green economy. There is no discussion of the role of ICTs and the Internet in the economy. One finds a few passages in the 109 pages of the document, where ICTs or the Internet are mentioned: The LibDems seem to consider social networking sites and web 2.0 primarily as problem, where users become victims of individual crimes. Therefore they want to tackle ”online bullying by backing quick-report buttons on social networking sites, enabling offensive postings to be speedily removed“ (p. 17). They do not discuss the problem of online commodification of users and the circumstance that the Internet is dominated by a commercial, advertising-oriented culture that results in data surveillance for economic purposes. Discussions about the online bullying report button ignore the positive aspects that web 2.0 has for the socialization and growing-up process of adolescents. The LibDems want to advance “better government IT procurement, investigating the potential of different approaches such as cloud computing and open-source software“ (p. 17) and “support public investment in the roll-out of superfast broadband, targeted ﬁrst at those areas which are least likely to be provided for by the market“ (p. 26). They do not argue what kind of broadband Internet they want to provide, if it should be freely available to all citizens or if it fit should be a manifestation of an intensified commodification of the Internet so that users have to pay private companies for getting access to a broadband Internet that is dominated by commercial culture. The message that the Liberal Democrat’s manifesto gives is that they have no clue about what role the Internet and ICTs should play in society. Having no ICT and Internet agenda is also an agenda, although not a particularly good one. So what about the Conservatives and the Labour Party? Can they make a difference in ICT and Internet politics?

Conservative Party and Labour Party

Other than the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party in their 120-page Conservative Manifesto 2010 and the Labour Party in their 78-page Labour Party Manifesto 2010 give significant attention to the role of ICTs and the Internet in British society. The Tories have even published a 9 page “Conservative Technology Manifesto” for the 2010 elections. But an analysis of these manifestos shows that large quantity does not necessarily mean good quality.

Both the Conservatives and Labour want to advance the rollout of a super-fast Internet broadband infrastructure. They want to invest public money in building this infrastructure and leave no doubt that private companies should control it. “We want Britain to become a European hub for hi-tech, digital and creative industries – but this can only happen if we have the right infrastructure in place. Establishing a super-fast broadband network throughout the UK could generate 600,000 additional jobs and add £18 billion to Britain’s GDP“ (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 24). “Our plans will give Britain the fastest high speed broadband network in Europe, helping to create 600,000 additional jobs. We will make the British government the most technology-friendly in the world, and meet our ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks are British companies“ (Conservative Technology Manifesto, p. 2). “We will be the ﬁrst country in Europe to extend superfast 100 mbps broadband across most of the population. This is up to 50 times faster than Labour’s planned broadband network – and will open up new opportunities for the next generation of British high tech companies, and put Britain at an advantage when it comes to developing innovative online platforms and services. We will unleash private sector investment to build this superfast broadband network by opening up network infrastructure, easing planning rules and boosting competition“ (p. 6).

The Labour Party also wants to advance a high-speed Internet broadband infrastructure. It speaks of “Broadband Britain“: “Britain must be a world leader in the development of broadband. We are investing in the most ambitious plan of any industrialised country to ensure a digital Britain for all, extending access to every home and business. We will reach the long-term vision of superfast broadband for all through a public-private partnership in three stages: ﬁrst, giving virtually every household in the country a broadband service of at least two megabits per second by 2012; second, making possible superfast broadband for the vast majority of Britain in partnership with private operators, with Government investing over £1 billion in the next seven years; and lastly reaching the ﬁnal ten per cent using satellites and mobile broadband. Because we are determined that every family and business, not just some, should beneﬁt, we will raise revenue to pay for this from a modest levy on ﬁxed telephone lines. And we will continue to work with business, the BBC and other broadcasting providers to increase take-up of broadband and to ensure Britain becomes a leading digital economy” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, pp. 1:7f).

Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party leave no doubt that they want to invest taxpayer’s money for creating a high-speed broadband infrastructure that is controlled by private companies and that can be accessed by people in the UK by paying fees to Internet service provider companies. This means that public investment is used not for creating a public infrastructure that is universally accessible, which means accessible for all without payment, but for privatizing the infrastructure so that is in the hands of companies and thereby de-facto becomes commodified and private property. If access to knowledge, knowledge production, and communication are universal conditions of human and societal flourishing, then Internet access – a central infrastructure for contemporary information, communication, and co-operation – should be treated as being part of the commons of society and should be made available without payment to all citizens. A commodified Internet infrastructure privileges high-income classes, stratifies Internet access, as a tendency excludes lower-income groups, and commodifies the access to knowledge and communication.

The Conservatives do not think about Internet access solutions beyond the market, whereas the Labour Party suggests to “build on our network of UK Online centres and public libraries to spread free internet access points within the community, and develop new incentives for users to switch to online services“ (Labour Party Manifesto, p. 9:5). Free Internet access within libraries is a strange idea, it is like not being able to take home a book from the library, but having to read the full book in the library. The Internet is a highly flexible and mobile technology, containing access to certain places, such as libraries, is therefore an odd and backward-oriented policy suggestion. The only viable solution is to create freely available, non-commercial wireless Internet access points all over the country.

What kind of Internet content and platform providers do the Tories and Labour favour? Both parties claim that they will advance economic growth by fostering entrepreneurship in the ICT industry and providing tax cuts and start-up subsidies for ICT and Internet companies. “A Conservative government will build a new model of economic growth, based on high tech and high value industries. This means harnessing and catalysing the next generation of technologies, and helping businesses to create highly paid new jobs in every part of the country. We will build a high tech 21st century infrastructure that is ﬁt for purpose, and we will lay the foundation for a British technology revolution” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 6). “As recommended by the Dyson Review, we will keep R&D tax credits but will simplify and refocus them on high tech companies, small businesses and new start-ups in order to stimulate a new wave of technology” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 7).

Similar policies are envisioned by Labour: “Labour believes we should rebuild our economy in new ways: with more high-tech business, fairer rewards and responsibility from all, including at the top” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 0:4). “Within this, the Growth Capital Fund will focus on SMEs which need capital injections of between £2 and £10 million, while the Innovation Investment Fund will focus on the needs of high-tech ﬁrms” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 1:6). “At the heart of our approach to building a strong and fair Britain is a commitment to support enterprise” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 1:7).

Both the Tories and Labour cling to the 1990s Californian ideology (throwing public money at ICT companies and thereby hoping for economic prosperity and a new job wonder). The result of the Californian ideology was not long-time economic growth, stability, and a new job wonder, but the bursting of the Internet economy bubble in 2000 and as a result the new economy crisis. It is therefore surprising that the two largest British parties show continued faith in ICT and Internet corporatism and do not look for possibilities for public investment in alternative Internet and ICT models that try to go beyond crisis capitalism, finance capital, and try to see the Internet and ICTs as part of society’s commons. The Internet that both parties imagine is one that is dominated by monopoly capital, and in a nationalistic tone it is envisioned that Internet monopolies will be British in the future. So the Tories speak of the “ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks are British companies“ (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 2). There is not the slightest awareness in these documents of the many problems associated with Internet and ICT monopolies and the domination of the Internet by capitalist logic.

Both the Tories and Labour consider ICTs and the Internet important for public administration and democracy. However, the ideas of both parties on digital democracy are conventional and do not go beyond eGovernment. The Tories want to increase the transparency of public administration with the help of the Internet: ”We will open up Whitehall recruitment by publishing central government job vacancies online, saving costs and increasing transparency. [...] We will: require public bodies to publish online the job titles of every member of staff and the salaries and expenses of senior officials paid more than the lowest salary permissible in Pay band 1 of the Senior Civil Service pay scale, and organograms that include all positions in those bodies “ (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 69). We will “require senior civil servants to publish online details of expense claims and meetings with lobbyists; examine the case for giving Select Committees the power to prevent increases“ (p. 70).

Similar announcements can be found in Labour’s election programme: “Public services in the digital age: Citizens expect their public services to be transparent, interactive and easily accessible. We will open up government, embedding access to information and data into the very fabric of public services. Citizens should be able to compare local services, demand improvements, choose between providers, and hold government to account. We have led the world with the creation of data.gov.uk, putting over 3,000 government datasets online. Entrepreneurs and developers have used these datasets to unleash social innovation, creating applications and websites for citizens from local crime maps to new guides to help ﬁnd good care homes or GPs. We will now publish a Domesday Book of all non-personal datasets held by government and its agencies, with a default assumption that these will be made public. We will explore how to give citizens direct access to the data held on them by public agencies, so that people can use and control their own personal data in their interaction with service providers and the wider community“ (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 9:5).

The Tories present themselves as the harbingers of direct democracy: ”Give citizens more power: People have been shut out of Westminster politics for too long. Having a single vote every four or five years is not good enough – we need to give people real control over how they are governed. So, with a Conservative government, any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament. and we will introduce a new Public reading Stage for bills to give the public an opportunity to comment on proposed legislation online” (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 66). ”We will throw open the doors of Parliament by introducing a technology enabled Public Reading Stage that will involve the public in the legislative process, and harness the wisdom of crowds to improve bills and spot potential problems before legislation is implemented” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 3). The idea of the Conservatives is to let citizens suggest proposals that are discussed in parliament and to make use of the Internet to let citizens express their opinion on proposed legislation. This means that they want to foster political talking and interaction, but do not want to give citizens real power to influence and decide on legislation outside of general elections. The suggested reforms are not an expression of grassroots democracy and grassroots digital democracy, but rather of populist digital plebiscitarianism or what Carole Pateman in the 1970s called pseudo-participation: citizens are summoned to “participate” by communicating and voicing opinions in order to silence them and discourage real participatory politics, in which they can directly influence decisions and have a say in politics.

Also Labour wants to strengthen democracy with the help of ICTs and the Internet, although their ideas remain more abstract: “Opening up government – central and local – in this way offers huge potential for Britain. We can use new technologies to give people a say on policy-making; enable citizens to carry out more of their dealings with government online; and save money for taxpayers as we switch services over to digital-only delivery” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 9:5). It remains unclear what exactly it means to “use new technologies to give people a say on policy-making”. Such a vague abstractness is a shame for an election programme.

Both the Tories and Labour understand digital democracy to mean that government provides more information to citizens with the help of ICTs and that citizens can communicate opinions to politicians, the government, and parliament with the help of the Internet. This understanding of digital democracy is narrow because it fully leaves out the importance of civil society and citizen-to-citizen political communication for a flourishing and dynamic democracy. The notion of democracy is confined to politics, there is no talk about economic democracy, work place democracy, and democracy in other spheres of society and the role that ICTs and the Internet could play for advancing participatory democracy in all realms of society. The understandings of digital democracy that can be found in the election manifestos of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are one-dimensional, government-focused, and do not realize the actual potentials that the Internet can pose for democratic reforms that enable participatory democracy.

The Tories speak about the threats of a “database state” (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 79). “We will strengthen the powers of the Information Commissioner to penalise any public body found guilty of mismanaging data. We will take further steps to protect people from unwarranted intrusion by the state” (p. 79). It is no surprise that the Conservatives do see privacy threats, problems of surveillance and data misuse only in relation to public administration and not also in the context of private companies that gather, store, assess, and sell personal data for economic ends because the Tories have a neoliberal ICT agenda in mind that only considers ICT and Internet companies as harbingers of economic growth, but not as potential threats to consumer and user interests. Economic surveillance is not an issue for the Conservatives, but neither is it one for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.

The only realm, where the Conservatives see problems of a corporate Internet, is in relation to children. They argue that children should be protected from online advertising. “Children should be allowed to grow up at their own pace, without excessive pressure placed on them by businesses. We will take a series of measures to help reverse the commercialisation of childhood. We prefer to gain voluntary consent to these actions but we are prepared to legislate if necessary. We will: * prevent any marketing or advertising company found to be in serious breach of rules governing marketing to children from bidding for government advertising contracts for three years; * ban companies from using new peer-to-peer marketing techniques targeted at children, and tackle marketing on corporate websites targeted at children; * establish a new online system that gives parents greater powers to take action against irresponsible commercial activities targeted at children; and, * empower head teachers and governors to ban advertising and vending machines in schools“ (Conservative Manifesto 2010, p. 43). One wonders why only children need protection from online advertising? Also adolescents and adults have to fear negative consequences from the activities of online advertisers and Internet corporations that gather and commodify personal data for economic ends as well as from employers and managers who look for private information about job applicants and employees on web 2.0.

The Labour Party mentions eLearning in one paragraph, whereas both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats do not tackle this topic at all. “Because the learning environment itself matters, we will take forward our Building Schools for the Future programme to rebuild or refurbish secondary schools, giving our children ﬁrst-rate facilities that support inspirational teaching and access to ICT, sports and the arts” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 3:5). The view underlying this passage is that more ICTs are always good for learning, there is no sense for what kind of ICTs and that a blended approach is needed that combines participatory educational institutions with participatory learning technologies.

66% of British Internet users aged 15-24 say that it is morally acceptable to download music for free and 70% say they do not feel guilty for downloading music for free (Youth and Media survey 2009, N=1026, Office of Communications: Communication Market Report 2009, 278). Refusing and opposing the interests of young people and other citizens, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party intend to continue the criminalization of file sharers in order to guarantee profit interests for the culture industry. No matter which party will be in power, a tightening of intellectual property right protection and of the repression against file sharers and thereby the interest of the majority of young people can be expected. The Labour Party has announced: “We will update the intellectual property framework that is crucial to the creative industries – and take further action to tackle online piracy” (Labour Party Manifesto 2010, p. 7:6). Similarly the Tories have said: “We will ensure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual framework in the world for innovators and high tech businesses. We recognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible for people to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. However it is vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business models rather than holding innovation back” (Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, p. 7).

Both parties miss an understanding of the question if free access to digital knowledge is a form of cultural democracy that strengthens capabilities, communication, the public sphere, and cultural dynamics. They put the corporate interests of the culture industry first and above the interests of cultural prosumers. Also alternative policy measures, such as the culture flat rate, are not discussed. The actual or potential criminalization of a large share of Internet users is simply accepted, not questioned. Also the problem of how cultural production can be remunerated in an age of file sharing without enhancing the dependency of these producers on large media companies and without criminalizing users is not discussed.

Conclusion

No matter if the solution to the situation of a hung parliament in Great Britain will be a Conservative or a Labour government supported by the Liberal Democrats, one thing is for sure: there will not be any significant positive changes in the realm of Internet and ICT politics and policies. The Liberal Democrats have simply ignored this topic in their 2010 election manifesto, which shows that they consider the Internet and ICTs as unimportant. In contrast, the Labour Party and the Conservatives compete for which of the two parties can create a more neoliberal ICT policy framework. Both Labour and the Tories stand for the advancement of the commodification of the Internet and ICTs, the weakening and economization of the cultural commons of society, the criminalization of Internet users, opposition to the cultural interests of young Internet users, ignorance towards ICT-enhanced participatory democracy, civil society, and citizen-to-citizen political communication; and the focus on conventional and unoriginal eGovernment measures. In the UK, government will in the coming years pursue Internet politics with a backwards-oriented neo-neoliberal agenda. We can expect an extension and intensification of neoliberal Internet policies. The answer to the question asked in the title of this contribution is: No!

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christian fuchs, May 8th 2010

Tags: Cameron, Conservative Party, Conservative Party Manifesto 2010, Conservative Technology Manifesto 2010, Conservatives, David Cameron, England, Gordon Brown, Great Britain, Internet, Internet policies, Internet politics, labour, Labour Party, Labour Party Manifesto 2010, Lib Dem, Lib Dems, LibDems, Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010, Liberal Democrats, LidDem, new media, Nick Clegg, social networking sites, Tories, Tory, UK election, UK elections, United Kingdom, web 2.0
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New Paper: Christian Fuchs: Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet

Fuchs, Christian. 2010. Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 26 (3): 179-196.
Link
This article argues that in informational capitalism, the notion of class should not be confined to capital as one class and wagelabor as the other class. The notion of class needs to be expanded to include everybody who creates and recreates spaces of common experience, such as user-generated content on the Internet, through
their practices. These spaces and experiences are appropriated and thereby expropriated and exploited by capital to accumulate capital. The rise of informational capitalism requires us to rethink the notion of class and to relate the class concept to knowledge labor.
The article explains foundations of critical political economy, especially the cycle of capital accumulation, and argues that this approach is suited for explaining and analyzing the contemporary information economy, knowledge labor, and the Internet economy. The notions of class and surplus value are applied to knowledge labour and Internet usage.
Based on Dallas Smythe’s notion of the audience commodity, the concept of the Internet produsage/prosumer commodity is worked out. It is argued that on the corporate Internet, and especially on “web 2.0″, information consumption becomes productive, creative, and an active process of surplus value production. Users, their personal data, and their usage behavior become object of permanent economic surveillance and commodification so that profit can be accumulated by selling the users, their data, and their usage behavior as commodity to advertising clients. It is argued that the exploitation of labor on the Internet is infinite. The notions of Internet labor, Internet exploitation, and the Internet produsage/prosumer commodity are connected to critical political economy and the works of Dallas Smythe, Antoni Negri and Michael Hardt, Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia von Werlhof, Slavoj Zizek, and Edward P. Thompson. Some political conclusions about Internet class politics are drawn.

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christian fuchs, May 2nd 2010

Tags: Antonio Negri, audience commodity, class, Claudia von Werlhof, commons, critical political economy, critique of the political economy of the Internet, Dallas Smythe, Edward P. Thompson, information economy, informational capitalism, Internet, Internet produsage commodity, Internet prosumer commodity, labor, labour, Maria Mies, Michael Hardt, political economy, Slavoj Žižek, surplus value, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen
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Google vs. China = economic censorship vs. state-censorship of the Internet

On March 22, 2010, Google stopped censoring searches on Google China and redirected google.cn to goole.hk because it can operate without censorship in Hong Kong. Within minutes, the Chinese government made use of the ”Great Firewall of China“ to block Chinese users’ access to Google China from within mainland China. So although Google’s idea was that if Chinese users type “Tiananmen Square” into Google, they will be able to see images of people killed in the 1989 events, persons within China will not be able to do so. It is most likely that these events will bring the end of Google in China.

Many Western media celebrated Google’s end of censorship in China is a courageous political move for the defence and establishment of human rights and free speech. If a society wants to be superior to Western societies, then censoring information and thereby blocking the access of citizens to certain news or type of news does never make sense, because a really superior system convinces people by the superior living conditions it creates for its citizens and therefore is not in need of state censorship of the Internet. Google’s retreat from China can be explained as being a PR action that aims at restoring the company’s public image of “doing no evil” after it has recently come under heavy attack as threatening Internet user’s privacy, engaging in and enabling surveillance (e.g. Google Buzz, Goggles), and having created an economic monopoly in the search engine market. Google’s activities in China do not amount to more than 2 percent of its total revenue. Baidu controls 60% of the Chinese search engine market, Google only controlled 30%. Therefore this public image campaign is relatively cheap for Google and it is likely that its image gains will, translated into money profit, offset the losses Google is suffering by its retreat from the Chinese market.

I oppose state-censorship of the Internet, but I do not think that the Internet is uncensored in Western countries and that the state of the Internet in the West is anything that can be celebrated or upheld as role model. Google’s search engine is the best example of how the Internet is being economically censored by large Internet corporations. In most Western countries, other than in China, you are free to say most things you want to say, to publish them on a blog, a discussion forum, or other spaces on the Internet. But nonetheless this political freedom of Internet speech is a form of economic unfreedom. Why? Although you can easily express your opinion on the Internet, it is unlikely that the normal citizen’s view will be heard by millions on the Internet and that it will have large effects in society and the political system because big players control online attention.

Sure, there are exceptions, where everyday Internet users become known throughout the world. But this is not because they are voicing brilliant or especially critical political ideas, but because they are doing spectacular or unconventional things, such as parents claiming that their son has floated away in a balloon, performing an especially funny dance, baby Charly biting his brother’s finger, etc. But overall, big economic and political actors control attention on the Internet. If you are a representative of a large corporation or a powerful party, then it is likely that your power is not only economic and/or political in character, but also cultural, i.e. that you have a reputation that allows you to reach many people when you communicate information on the Internet. It is communication with effects, whereas many Internet communications by normal citizens remain without effects. The capitalist attention economy, which is dominated by corporate and political actors, censors citizens’ voices. No violence and no coercive laws are needed for doing this. You can say everything you want on the Western Internet, but in most cases what you say will remain marginal. The violence of the censorship exerted by the Internet attention economy is that it censors without having to cut off communication channels, without using firewalls, and without imprisoning citizens, but by making use of the tendency of monopolization that is inherent in all markets and therefore also affects the online information and attention markets. The tolerance of “saying everything you want on the Internet”, is a dubious, repressive form of tolerance – repressive Internet tolerance. Saying something without being able to be heard is not a complete process of communication, it is a censored form of communication.

If you look for simple search words such as “news” or “politics” on Google, then you will see sites such as Newsweek, MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, or ABC News as the top results – i.e. the sites of big media players. This displays exactly how repressive Internet tolerance works and how it is supported and enabled by Google’s anonymous page rank algorithm.

Neither China nor Google are the ambassadors of freedom of speech, they are just representatives of two different models of Internet censorship: Internet censorship by state coercion and economic Internet censorship by repressive tolerance and economic monopolies. Although China and Google are now going separate ways, they have more in common than they think…

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christian fuchs, April 3rd 2010

Tags: censorship, China, economic censorship of the Internet, end of censorship, Google, Google ends self-censorship in China, Google retreat from China, Google search engine, Great Firewall of China, Hong Kong, repressive Internet tolerance, repressive tolerance, state censorship of the Internet
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What the US health care reform bill tells us about Internet politics

At a first sight, it may seem that health care and the Internet have, except for eHealth applications, not much in common. But I will argue in this contribution that there is an important link.

On March 23rd, 2010, Barack Obama signed the health reform bill. Some of the most important aspects that will be realized in the coming ten years are:
* Low wage earners will become eligible for the Medicaid programme. Other uninsured persons, who earn less than four times the poverty threshold, will receive state subsidies for buying health insurance on the private health market.
* Children, adolescents, and young adults can be insured by their parents’ health plan up to an age of 26.
* It will be banned that insurance companies drop health coverage for a person who becomes ill or to deny coverage for people with pre-existing illnesses or to deny coverage in general. Health insurance companies will face restrictions in making coverage prices dependent on individuals’ health status.
* Patients who fall into the doughnut hole coverage gap (prescription drug costs are not covered in the spending range of $US2700-$6154), will receive a $US250 discount. People in the Medicare programme, will receive a 50% rebate for the doughnut hole.
* For the financing of Medicare, also individual incomes above $US200 000 and family incomes above $US250 000 will be taxed.
* Companies that have more than 50 workers, have to provide health care plans for their employees. Otherwise they are fined.
* Companies that have 25 or less workers, can receive tax credits for providing health plans to their employees.
* It is expected than 30 million US people, who are uninsured now, will be covered by health care in the future.

Approximately 50 million people in the United States do not have access to health insurance today. This is more than 15% of the population. If the plan of getting 30 million more people insured is successful, this will definitely be a huge progress for US standards, but even then 20 million people, more than 5% of the current US population, will remain uninsured. Therefore there will be no universal health care coverage in the United States in the coming years, the number of people who will die from curable diseases because they cannot afford treatment, will definitely drop by a significant number, but the phenomenon will not vanish, which is in my view a shame for a country that is making the claim to be one of the leading industrial nations. The United States is definitely not a leading country in health care and welfare and also will not become one in the coming years, although important progress will be achieved.

Universal health care with 100% coverage can only be achieved if there is a government-run compulsory health care and social security system, in which all individuals have to be insured and health insurance institutions are owned, controlled, and operated by the state. Compulsory universal health care systems are the standard in many European countries, including for example Nordic countries such as Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The US health care reform brings more state regulation of health care and will thereby eliminate the most severe illnesses of the health care system. It will unfortunately not, however, fully cure the American health care system so that it becomes a system with universal coverage. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called the Democratic health care reform socialist after Obama signed the bill. The implication of Steele’s claim is that Europe is dominated by health care socialism. If health care in European countries is socialist, then what are the effects of it in comparison to the US health system?

The following statistics allow such a comparison for the United States, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland:

life expectancy at birth: US 78.1, Sweden 81.0, Norway 80.6, Iceland 81.2
physicians per 1000 population: US 2.4, Sweden 3.6, Norway 3.9, Iceland 3.7
(OECD Health Statistics, latest available data, accessed on April 3, 2010)
hospital beds per 10 000 population: US 32, Sweden N/A, Norway 41, Iceland 75
age-standardized mortality rate for cardiovascular diseases per 100 000 population: US 188, Sweden 176, Norway 181, Iceland 164
maternal mortality ratio per 100 000 live births: US 11, Sweden 3, Norway 7, Iceland 4
under-5 mortality rate: US 8, Sweden 4, Norway 4, Iceland 3
share of male adults who are obese: US 31.1%, Sweden 10.4%, Norway 6.4%, Iceland 12.4%
share of female adults who are obese: US 33.2%, Sweden 9.5%, Norway 5.9%, Iceland 12.3%
(WHO Statistics, latest available data, accessed on April 3, 2010)

If this is what health care socialism looks like, then goodbye Mr. Healthcare Capitalism and welcome Healthcare Socialism!

How is the US health care reform connected to the Internet? Just like US health care was for a long time almost purely dominated by market forces and large corporations, also corporate interests and large corporate players dominate the Internet. You can easily produce information and make it public, but it is much harder for this information to be recognized by millions, if your name is not New York Times or CNN. Economic surveillance for the purpose of accumulating capital with the help of targeted advertising is prevalent on the Internet. But it is unknown to most of us, which personal data and usage behaviour data is exactly stored about us by which Internet platform operators, with whom exactly these data are directly or indirectly shared, and for which economic purposes these data are exactly used. These are just two of the shadow sides of an Internet that is dominated by corporations. The US health care reform shows that it is possible to move from a strong market-based system more towards a public, common, and universal system, in which market forces and its negative effects are curbed by political regulation. In analogy, for the Internet this could mean that it is desirable that public subsidies are given to non-profit Internet projects in order to establish advertising-free platforms that do not use user data for economic ends and to pluralize the number of voices that are heard in the online public sphere. I am convinced that an alternative Internet is needed, that the commodification of everything on the Internet should be driven back, and that for advancing this task public subsidies and regulation that limits the power of Internet corporations is needed.

Health and communication are two basic needs of all humans. They are part of the commons of sociey. Nobody should be denied access to basic needs because otherwise the quality of their lives will be severely impaired. Therefore the access to health care and communication capacities should be free and universal. The more the access and the availability of the commons are commodified, the more likely it is that high inequality characterizes a society. Establishing a great information society requires to guarantee basic human needs for all. Health and communication are two important aspects of basic needs, therefore the commodification of these realms should be rethought.

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christian fuchs, April 3rd 2010

Tags: alternative Internet, Barack Obama, comparison, health care capitalism, health care reform, health care socialism, health care system, Iceland, Internet politics, Internet system, Michael Steele, Norway, Sweden, United States, universal access, universal health care, universal Internet, US health care reform bill, USA
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Book “The Internet & Society”: Video Q&A

Students in the seminar “Leadership & Change in a Networked Society“, taught by Jason Guard, at Virginia Commonwealth University have read my book ”Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age”. They produced a YouTube video, in which they asked questions about the book to me. I responded with a video.

The questions were:
1) Which institutional reforms are needed for getting marginalized voices more heard on web 2.0/3.0?
2) How can technology enable those reforms?
3) What are important aspects of learning and group learning in community-oriented Internet technologies?
4) Can the technology that supports global networked capitalism be reformed?
5) Is it desirable and possible to get fully rid of the competitive logic?

You can watch the questions and my answers in the videos below.

christian fuchs, April 3rd 2010

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The Judicial Art of Living in the German Surveillance Society: German Constitutional Court Declares Data Retention as Unconstitutional

The German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has declared the retention of telecommunication connection data by service providers and the access of law enforcement to these data as unconstitutional. It said in its judgment from March 2nd, 2010 that data retention is not proportionatley adequate and violates article 10, paragraph 1 of the German Basic Law.

Data retention was implemented in Germany (and other European countries) after the European Commission passed the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) on March 15, 2006, which requires all member states to pass laws that guarantee that information and communication service providers store source, destination, and other data on a communication for at least 6 months. The data that needs to be stored includes:
“(a) data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication (…)
(b) data necessary to identify the destination of a communication (…)
(c) data necessary to identify the date, time and duration of a communication (…)
(d) data necessary to identify the type of communication (…)
(e) data necessary to identify users’ communication equipment or what purports to be their equipment
(f) data necessary to identify the location of mobile communication equipment“ (European Data Retention Directive, Article 5).
“Member States shall ensure that the categories of data specified in Article 5 are retained for periods of not less than six months and not more than two years from the date of the communication“ (European Data Retention Directive, Article 6).

The German Federal Constitutional Court considers the following articles of German jurisdiction as unconstitutional:
* §113a (1) TKG (telecommunication act, Telekommunikationsgesetz): “Providers of publicly accessible telecommunication services are obliged according to paragraphs 2-5 to store connection data that are produced or processed in the usage of its service for six months nationally or in another member state of the European Union” („Wer öffentlich zugängliche Telekommunikationsdienste für Endnutzer erbringt, ist verpflichtet, von ihm bei der Nutzung seines Dienstes erzeugte oder verarbeitete Verkehrsdaten nach Maßgabe der Absätze 2 bis 5 sechs Monate im Inland oder in einem anderen Mitgliedstaat der Europäischen Union zu speichern“).
* §113b TKG says that telecommunication service providers are allowed to provide these connection data to law enforcement agencies, German secret services, and offices for the protection of the constitution if in the specific case an investigation is court-ordered.
* § 100g SPO (code of criminal procedure, Strafprozessordnung) says that if someone has committed a crime, tries to commit a crime, or prepares to commit a crime, especially severe crimes according to § 100a SPO, “connection data can be investigated, also without knowledge of the person concerned, insofar as this is necessary for the investigation of the statement of affairs or of the whereabouts of the defendant“ („so dürfen auch ohne Wissen des Betroffenen Verkehrsdaten (§ 96 Abs. 1, § 113a des Telekommunikationsgesetzes) erhoben werden, soweit dies für die Erforschung des Sachverhalts oder die Ermittlung des Aufenthaltsortes des Beschuldigten erforderlich ist“).

These articles in the view of the German Federal Constitutional Court violate §10 (1) of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz), which protects the privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications: “The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable“ („Das Briefgeheimnis sowie das Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis sind unverletzlich“).

This decision is in my view important in several respects:

* It shows that putting all citizens under general suspicion of being criminals or terrorists or of potentially planning to be criminals or terrorists and as a result storing data on their communicative connections may not be compatible with basic human rights.

* It shows the importance of constitutional laws and human rights in circumventing the rise of totalitarian surveillance societies.

* It puts an interesting perspective on the relationship of national and international jurisdiction: Directives of the European Commission are obligatory for all member states and therefore result in the creation or amendment of certain laws and paragraphs in all states. In this case international law shapes national law. But after the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court, it is likely that the Data Retention Directive will be reconsidered at the European level, which may result in its amendment or abolishment. This shows that important national court decisions have the power to shape international laws.

The President of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, commented in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung: “The Federal Constitutional Court has found that the prohibition of total surveillance is part of Germany’s constitution and its principle must not be negated by European legislation“ („Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat festgestellt, dass das Verbot einer Totalüberwachung zur Identität der Verfassung Deutschlands gehört und auch von der europäischen Gesetzgebung nicht im Grundsatz negiert werden darf“, Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 6+7, 2010, page 6, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/1/505205/text/).

The German Federal Constitutional Court has expressed concerns about total surveillance in its decision. It argues that data retention allows creating personal profiles (interests, weaknesses, preferences, political and other memberships). This may cause feelings of being under surveillance and under constant threat. “Even although storage does not extend to communication contents, these data allow to draw conclusions that reach into the private sphere. Addressees, dates, time, and place of telephone conversations allow, if they are observed for a longer duration, in their combination detailed information about societal or political affiliations as well as personal preferences, affinities, and weaknesses. Depending on the usage of telecommunications, such a storage can enable the creation of significant personal profiles or profiles of movements of practically every citizen. Also the risk increases that citizens are put under further investigations without giving reasons for this themselves. Furthermore potential abuses connected with such data collections aggravate their mental stress effects. Particularly as storage and data use is not noticed, the storage of telecommunication connection data for no reason is suited to cause a diffusely threatening feeling of being under observation that can diminish an unprejudiced perception of one’s basic rights in many areas“ („Auch wenn sich die Speicherung nicht auf die Kommunikationsinhalte erstreckt, lassen sich aus diesen Daten bis in die Intimsphäre hineinreichende inhaltliche Rückschlüsse ziehen. Adressaten, Daten, Uhrzeit und Ort von Telefongesprächen erlauben, wenn sie über einen längeren Zeitraum beobachtet werden, in ihrer Kombination detaillierte Aussagen zu gesellschaftlichen oder politischen Zugehörigkeiten sowie persönlichen Vorlieben, Neigungen und Schwächen. Je nach Nutzung der Telekommunikation kann eine solche Speicherung die Erstellung aussagekräftiger Persönlichkeits und Bewegungsprofile praktisch jeden Bürgers ermöglichen. Auch steigt das Risiko von Bürgern, weiteren Ermittlungen ausgesetzt zu werden, ohne selbst hierzu Anlass gegeben zu haben. Darüber hinaus verschärfen die Missbrauchsmöglichkeiten, die mit einer solchen Datensammlung verbunden sind, deren belastende Wirkung. Zumal die Speicherung und Datenverwendung nicht bemerkt werden, ist die anlasslose Speicherung von Telekommunikationsverkehrsdaten geeignet, ein diffus bedrohliches Gefühl des Beobachtetseins hervorzurufen, das eine unbefangene Wahrnehmung der
Grundrechte in vielen Bereichen beeinträchtigen kann“, decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court, March 2, 2010, http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg10-011).

The German Federal Constitutional Court’s decision gives hope that the emergence of a total European surveillance society can be circumvented.

See also connected to this topic:
Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. A Critical Case Study of the Usage of studiVZ, Facebook, and MySpace by Students in Salzburg in the Context of Electronic Surveillance. Salzburg/Vienna: Research Group UTI. ISBN 978-3-200-01428-2.
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christian fuchs, March 7th 2010

Tags: Bundesverfassungsgericht, Bundesverfassungsgerichtshof, data retention, European Union, German Federal Constitutional Court, Germany, Living in Surveillance Societies, privacy, surveillance, surveillance society, Vorratsdatenspeicherung
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The Judicial Art of Living in the German Surveillance Society: German Constitutional Court Declares Data Retention as Unconstitutional

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