Terms of Disservice - Dipayan Ghosh

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from that of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt. Berners-Lee is a scientist. The others are businesspeople. For Berners-Lee, the personal motivation to argue that the internet is a positive democratizing force comes from a place of intellectual integrity: it is the genuine sentiment of a rigorous thinker who earnestly considers the trade-offs that are inherent in such an intellectual position. For the others, there is a business interest arguing that the internet will be the world’s panacea—and that it will be their companies over others that will resolve the world’s problems. This disparity exists for the trajectory of the internet’s broader conceptualization, too. We were once excited about its unique potential to connect two people on opposite sides of the world. It was an unbiased public space that carried an international brand of openness, optimism, and hope, where anything was possible and interaction truly had the ultimate opportunity for democratization, whether one was operating an oil rig off the coast of Bahrain or sitting in a basement in Sacramento or figuring out how to conduct personal finances in Tanzania. This was the opportunity Berners-Lee and his cohort of designers of the internet espoused—and it is the societal paradigm that Zuckerberg, Schmidt, and Bezos free rode, exploiting the open image and nature of the internet by projecting that their companies constituted a democratizing force, just as the internet itself does.

      But the real consumer internet does not have such a profound or socially good purpose at its core. That is not to suggest that business leaders’ remarks are necessarily insidious or disingenuous. But in this case, aligning his company’s mission with the inspirational construct presented by Tim Berners-Lee supports Eric Schmidt’s business interests. Google thereby fed off the public perception that the internet at large was a glorious gift to humankind—and it still does.

      And now, like a stubborn weed snaking around the ankles of democracy, it has become the general view that internet companies promote society’s good no matter the protocol or platform or business incentive in question. This is the active social paradigm proliferated and perpetuated by the internet barons. We, the public, have been duped.

      Ecce Homos: The New Thomas Kuhns

      Enter the Thomas Kuhns of the internet—the new thinkers working to dispel the virulent and misleading notion that Silicon Valley executives wish only to promote the public’s interest. Since the 2016 presidential election, a series of bold ideas advanced by a cadre of emerging intellectuals has reshaped policy thinking concerning the internet.

      There is Roger McNamee, the investor and adviser to senior technology executives, who asserts that he introduced Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s CEO and COO, respectively. McNamee has put forth the idea that despite his ongoing investments in firms throughout Silicon Valley, some of the leading internet properties—particularly Facebook—have imposed serious and systemic damage to democracies around the world.1

      There is Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard academic, who has eloquently written about how the emergence of surveillance capitalism has torn at the heels of major internet companies and who has depicted the capitalistically fluid nature of the companies’ business.2

      There is Tristan Harris, the former ethicist and designer at Google, who has cultivated the compelling narrative that because of the way social feeds on modern social media systems are designed, users are forced to sustain deep psychological harms. To relieve us of them, he argues, we must encourage companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to reorient their systems to ensure that time spent on their platforms is “time well spent.”3

      There are Zeynep Tufecki and Tim Wu, both brilliant professors and contributors to the New York Times, who have raised some of the most critical questions concerning the commercial nature of internet firms and their executive decisionmaking and have proposed that new policies must be developed to better protect competition and privacy, among other policy measures.4

      And there is Barry Lynn, the competition policy expert who is head of the Open Markets Institute and formerly senior fellow at the New America Foundation, the influential Washington, D.C.–based public policy think tank that acrimoniously ousted him (and at which I have served as a fellow). Lynn, a thoughtful and pragmatic expert on market concentration and the public policy measures that can be taken to limit it, has for the past several years led a contingent of like-minded activists and intellectuals who have put forward a number of interesting ideas to diminish the monopolization of industries that the Open Markets Institute argues has plagued American consumers for so long.5

      Over time, the public policy concerns around the businesses that operate over the internet have changed completely; the tone and tenor of the way we talk about the internet in the media has become increasingly incendiary. What was once considered a positive medium for sharing and collaboration, the public domain that could connect smart new ideas and people no matter who or where they might be, is now seen as a medium that bears countless social harms. From the spread of hateful messages that have led to mass killings to the coordination of ad campaigns that have prompted systemic and automated bias against marginalized classes, we have now seen it all—and thanks to academics and advocates such as Harris, Zuboff, Lynn, and countless others, the common conception among policymakers is that something must be done to improve the situation of internet consumers.

      The ideas that have been presented by this striking band of thinkers have encouraged many others. Traditional internet and consumer advocates—hard-liners who for many years have advocated the need for progressive changes to the way we regulate the internet—have found a new ledge to stand on. Whereas in the past some might have found it difficult to argue that the internet is causing harm and that regulation is necessary, there is a newfound zeal and courage among the ranks of American advocates—particularly those that have in recent years maintained closer relations with the industry, such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Open Technology Institute. Even organizations that have purposefully been kept at more of an arm’s length from the industry—such as the Open Markets Institute, Public Knowledge, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Center for Digital Democracy—have found a new voice because of the stark resolution of anti-industry advocacy. Thanks to the Thomas Kuhns of the internet, we have entered new intellectual territory.

      This new school of thought has furthermore encouraged a palpable revolt among the individuals who actually deliver value in Silicon Valley—developers and engineers. Hardly a day passes that we do not see a new perspective offered by a former employee of Facebook or Google who is willing to speak out about how the industry is actively encouraging societal harms. Sandy Parakilas might be the best example from recent years. Featured in a 60 Minutes exposé of Facebook, Parakilas insinuated that, despite his personal outcry, the company actively encouraged privacy-invading practices by using personal data in seemingly insidious ways.6 There are many more examples now. Chamath Palihapitiya, formerly a vice president at Facebook, commented in 2017 that the “short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.… This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.… I can’t control them. I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit.”7 Palihapitiya has since moderated some of these statements, but his original sentiments are clear.8 Guillaume Chaslot, the former Google engineer who has designed a technical system that attempts to enable study of the YouTube recommendation algorithm, has noted that the system “isn’t built to help you get what you want—it’s built to get you addicted to YouTube.”9

      Beyond the many critics of the consumer internet business model are new groups of employees who feel increasingly comfortable in holding their employers accountable on fundamental social concerns. Google presents the most visible example: employee groups have led protests at the company on many counts, including the company’s potential engagement with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for securing America’s international borders. Some 600 Google employees petitioned, noting that they “refuse to be complicit. It is unconscionable that Google, or any other tech company, would support agencies engaged in caging and torturing vulnerable people.” As Cat Zakrzewski noted in the Washington Post:

      The Trump era has sparked a Catch-22 for the company as criticism

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