Monday 29 January 2018

Soros Might Actually Be Right For Once

So far as many of us are concerned, George Soros has limited bona fides.  But he's onto something here
"... social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections ... The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it." ... Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies ... paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines. “This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said. The companies, which he described as “ever more powerful monopolies” are unlikely to change their behaviour without regulation ... “Their days are numbered.” (Guardian)
It may be though odd that a blogger who's enjoyed a decade of freedom to spout anything that comes into his mind, would contemplate reining it all back.  And of course plenty would argue the dead-tree press and the Beeb et al have long enjoyed mind-warping powers in the hands of an unelected few.  But a glance at what goes on in FB and Twitter - not to mention following the Grauniad's link to this appalling story, makes it all too easy to imagine what's coming down the line for us all.

I refer, of course, to the next general election.  Momentum wiped the floor with the Tory party on social media last year; and right from the start, that organisation nurtured a tech group with exactly this in mind.  Recall how, way back in 1997 when John Major enjoyed a couple of good days on the campaign trail and Labour was having a quite needless attack of nerves, Blair solemnly wheeled out his Big Lie (that the Tories were going to scrap the state pension).  In 2022 or whenever, Momentum is primed to deluge the young and the gullible with endlessly re-tweeted (and disavowable) fake news on a scale we can hardly comprehend.  We can easily predict that ordinary Tories will be driven off the streets, in the sense that no humble campaign volunteer will feel able to knock on doors or put posters in their windows in any but the safest rural constituencies.  Again, this is exactly the effect malicious leftists are planning. 

Free speech is precious beyond compare, and I restate the self-interested blogger's point I made above.  But free speech is nowhere an unqualified right: it is well understood that it is trumped by considerations of potential irreparable harm.  On top of proscriptions against slander and crying 'fire' in crowded theatres, there is the altogether more subtle issue of how, in a courtroom, the judge tightly polices what may and may not be said, utterance by utterance.  Somewhere between the ultra-close supervision of the courtroom and the absolute malign anarchy being hatched for the next GE, lies a balance desperately difficult to draw, but seriously in need of being drawn - and soon.

We said we'd be posting again on issues arising from the Chinese mass-surveillance scheme - and here's another on that broad and vital theme.  What do we think?

ND

21 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

Seems to me that Soros is complaining that social media companies can do what he has failed to despite, despite his billions of dollars.

Hmmm. Not sure that works for me. Slithery old man.

Swiss Bob said...

Social media suits snappy content like photos, music videos, jokes or kitten GIFs. It's fine entertainment but you should not use it for advice on more complicated things such as how to change the oil on your car, treat an injury let alone vote for a government.

If you campaign via memes and tweets then you'll get the government you deserve.

hovis said...

Soros is correct on this and his utterane thoughtful. But he remains remains a malicious bastard who's own use of the internet to push his agenda via platforms such his Avaaaz petition site (highly shared on facebook) suggest this is disingenuous.

Steven_L said...

But is he actually saying mass surveillance is a bad thing? Looks to me like he is saying it is inevitable, and then calling for regulation of facebook ande google - i.e he thinks it's time to begin the mass surveillance.

They'll probably start with the low hanging fruit. First they came for the paedos ...

Anonymous said...

@ low hanging fruit ... paedos ...

You allowed to say that??

hovis said...

@Anonymous - you're getting into the swing of things before there is full mass surveillance deciding what is and isnt allowable before you are even instructed.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Seems to me Soros is thinking of using regulation to crush those opposed to his agenda. After all, he seems already to exert considerable control over other media through his foundation.

Can't have the Carbon Units thinking for themselves now!

Sackerson said...

The quality of thought and discussion on FB is worrying. As for Twitter, I occasionally link a blogpost to it, or put in a cheeky tweet, but I don't read there.

Democracy depends on a thinking and informed electorate. It's open to subversion, as Blair gleefully discovered; I'm reminded of Peter Cook's "The Rise And Rise of Michael Rimmer" (1970).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Rise_of_Michael_Rimmer

Dick the Prick said...

I think the chilling aspect of this is it's already happening and will certainly continue.

andrew said...

Looking at things on the longer term, free speech has not really been a thing until the last 100-200 years or so
( whatever did the USA do for us...).

So all this freedom of thought / speech thing may just be a brief flowering.

---

On the other hand we may be in a process of learning how to behave and what to trust in an age where the man in the pub (twitter) has as much impact as a times editorial (the establishment) - for better or worse.

Charlie said...

Sackerson: "The quality of thought and discussion on FB is worrying".

The quality of thought you see on FB broadly reflects the quality of thought of the wider public; FB just means that you can see the cogs turning. Half of us are of below average intelligence, after all.

Raedwald said...

Social media above all has a polarising effect. Folk read and comment on blogs / facebook pages ' tweets that have authors and commenters with whom they're in general agreement; debates are constrained within general parameters of like-mindedness.

Twitter has its set-piece skirmishes that generally involve heated invective in response to a tweet by a big hitter - Katie Hopkins, Owen Jones, Guy Verhofstadt et al. But most of all it has memes. One just scrolls down all the verbiage at high speed and pauses only when an engaging meme appears, is digested in a fraction of a second and passed by. Genuine measured peer to peer debate is as rare as hens teeth.

I've never come across a single case of social media posts having changed anybody's mind or voting intention. It's an echo chamber, reinforcing what folk already believe. I think Soros is therefore being disingenuous in thinking that elections will be decided on Facebook.

No, his concerns are over other issues around internet access, equality and freedoms that threaten the world government model to which he is so committed. Don't forget he's no champion of popular freedom but an advocate of a traditional top-down command and control model that can shape the world around an elite ideology. If he's worried, good. It means something useful is happening.

Graeme said...

Debate does not exist on twitter. Grayling posts and 1000 people post in support. No matter what idiocy he spouts. Vice versa Twitter has no influence

Anonymous said...

“Charlie said...
Half of us are of below average intelligence, after all.”

Statistically almost certainly not true. The majority are exactly mean and mode average intelligence.

Y Ddraig Goch said...

RE: Anonymous @ 10:31 pm

"The majority are exactly mean and mode average intelligence."

Nope. Not even close. That's why they call it a bell curve.

Ravenscar. said...

Rest assured or probably not.

If, if soros is vexed about soshul media, then the old poisonous toad feels threatened by something - his NWO must be crumbling with luck it will all fall down just before he croaks.

Petepet said...

The moguls of media have always used their medium for propagating their views on the masses. Just another change in method of false information propaganda. Fortunately the web is vast and you can choose the proponents of news that you wish to view. And you can then make up your own view on it’s provenance.

Electro-Kevin said...

Bullying in universities. Anything like a Conservative opinion and you're dead meat.

I've advised my lad to stay off social media - political anyway. The 'doctor' is a socialist, the chemist is true blue (his real talent is for history and philosophy but he chose to read Chemistry.)

Electro-Kevin said...

Chemistry is apolitical.

A wise decision on his part.

James Higham said...

“Free speech is precious beyond compare, and I restate the self-interested blogger's point I made above. ”

And restate it and restate it and restate it.

Charlie said...

E-K: "Anything like a Conservative opinion and you're dead meat."

'twas ever thus when I was at university, although a less hostile place than the Yorkshire coalmining village I grew up in during the 80s. I remember travelling to London as a child to watch my team, Castleford, lose the Challenge Cup Final, which was back in 1992. Plenty of banners in the crowd saying, "Goulding (or some other player) voted Tory".

I don't think social media has altered the bullying tendencies of the left at all. It's just that most of that bullying now takes place online, where it is more accepted and therefore more common.