DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg is among the digital prophets warning us how Google, the Goliath he’s been challenging for 10 years with his Paoli-based non-tracking search engine, and other giants of information are squeezing personal privacy and independent content: “If people are consuming all the Inquirer’s stuff for free on Facebook or Google, it’s a losing proposition for you.”
Check out what’s happened to FunnyOrDie.com, he said, which “just announced layoffs for half the staff. Facebook has taken their content and, with it, their audience, forcing them to pay to place their own new videos. And they keep increasing the price; it’s prohibitively expensive. Your content goes viral, and you don’t make any money.”
But isn’t complaining that the internet is a device to enrich tech moguls at public expense like objecting to progress? Aren’t the internet algorithms that tell us what YouTube videos to watch, which old classmates to friend on Facebook, and what celebrities wear cooler clothes on Instragram, based on math, demographics and logic?
It’s worse than “garbage in, garbage out,” Weinberg says. He tells how some of his heroes — investigative reporters, working for old and new-style news organizations — have found “significant bias in the algorithms.”
Government isn’t ready to shield us, Weinberg says: Congress allowed the old prohibition against your internet service provider selling your browser history to expire last year. So Verizon, Comcast and other “ISPs can now collect and sell your data, on where you visit. A lot of it turns out to have been unencrypted. Hulu shows have been unencrypted.” Your preferences are easier to track, list and sell.
So it’s extra worrisome how even government agencies are putting personal data to work, no matter the accuracy and privacy concerns.
Here’s how it works: IT contractors/consultants come in to government agencies “and say, ‘Your old system is not good. We’ll make a better one for you,” Weinberg says. “The algorithms are often not complicated. But they can still be inherently biased. And every time there are unintended consequences.”
Aren’t government applications of personal data public? No: “Because they get the algorithm from a company, it’s ‘proprietary.’ But there is an argument they should be made available to the public, under transparency laws. So news organizations and pro bono lawyers are suing to get the algorithms,” Weinberg told me.
Or the agency will justify a costly new personal-data processing application, saying, “ ‘This is Artificial Intelligence’.” As if that alone is a reason to use the new tool. But it’s a tool someone put together using limited information, probably in secret, with unintended but significant consequences, putting some people at a disadvantage, and biasing results. This should be public.
Or consider the political impact of YouTube: “Its goal is to get users to keep watching ‘related’ videos. These tend to be extreme, and outrageous and to push viewers toward extreme-outrageous positions. Even if that is not intended.” As Wired notes here. See also the recent Guardian article featuring ex-Google engineer Guillame Cashlot’s observations on “how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth.”
How do we unwind social media to find what the old futurist Vance Packard called “hidden persuaders” and Columbia Law prof Tim Wu calls the Attention Merchants? “Julia Angwin pioneered this area of journalism,” starting at the Wall Street Journal and moving on to ProPublica, Weinberg says.
See Angwin’s work for the Wall Street Journal, aided by Weinberg, who has given grants for reporters to hire programming assistance. “We found a lot of ‘tailoring’ happening in Incognito searches, around topics including gun control, abortion, climate change. There were ‘magic keywords’ that would add additional news articles Google said you ‘previously searched for.’
It’s The Filter Bubble, as leftish Web-watcher Eli Pariser called the phenomenon in his 2011 book. “It’s not balanced,” says Weinberg. “You can apply this to Netflix, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, in terms of the individualized filter bubble and what they are generally promoting. Examine search results. Compare users in different locations and circumstances. Ask: Do the search results fall, not fairly, across political and racial lines?”
Weinberg is looking to sponsor more professional reporting, including Philly-centric work. “I’m interested in anyone calling these things to task. I’m interested in this area, I live here. I’m interested in any reporting around deep analysis of what tech companies are doing. Related to what we are doing (at DuckDuckGo) or not. I think it’s pernicious for everyone.”
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