A long time ago, around 2007, I published an article on some technical blog about how online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and the likes can potentially manipulate the masses into revolting and rioting by propagating a skewed version of reality. Back then Twitter was still using SMS messages and Blackberry gateways, when that was still a thing, to push notifications to users. Hence the original 140 character limit of a tweet, which happens to be the SMS message length limit. Basically, these platforms were still in their infancy.
This article was received as a down right conspiracy theory, as in the time, those platforms didn’t have neither the scale nor the technology to be able to accommodate such huge user bases, as in full populations, and their AI capabilities, if any, were so limited in order to be able to sift through a firehose flow of data, as they like to call it in Silicon Valley, and extract any meaningful insights, let alone responding to those insights by changing the narrative in real time for every individual user.
This is no longer daydreaming, as with current readily available technologies it’s possible to create echo chambers where every user would experience their own individuality by expressing their own opinions online while hearing back only the messages that confirm said opinions. Which would be considered as an ultimate good by technological utopians as in being efficient.
And such manipulation of the masses is now self-evident as we have seen during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where they used machine learning algorithms, trained on “leaked” user data from Facebook, to manipulate the American presidential elections. Or as we have more recently witnessed during the Trump tweets debacle where he incited mobs to attack the capitol building in an utter disgrace to American democracy.
Enter the global financial credit crisis which was followed, conveniently, by the Arab Spring. Millions went to demonstrate on the streets, egged upon by online platforms inviting them to revolt. The platform of choice back then to distribute the message was Facebook while on field coordination was conducted over Twitter. When governments of Arabic countries decided to disconnect the internet as a last resort, tech companies such as Google blatantly middled in politics and stepped in to offer dial up international numbers to provide internet access for said revolutionaries.
When internet connections went offline, nobody exactly knows what happened and who started what for sure as till date there are several opposing narratives. But what we know today is that, in Egypt for instance, with millions already on streets where opportunists started looting and arsoning, riot police did collapse, abandoned ships and stripped off their uniforms. The no longer peaceful mobs ended up chasing them, tracking them to their homes and the rest is history.
Why am I telling you this story? Because some events recently did occur that resemble what happened in Egypt but on a small scale. During recent Dublin riots, Garda members were chased on the streets, Garda cars were set alight and several stores were looted, while this time Twitter, now rebranded as X, was the platform of choice to propagate the provocative narratives.
And what I found most intriguing was that the same messages used by fascists online were uncanny familiar, as I did hear the exact same messages before during the Arab Spring to belittle damage caused by riots. My favourite ones were the posts talking about Garda cars and stores being insured. As if insurance companies can materialise GDP from thin air.
Being a good samaritan, I reported many of the hate posts I’ve seen during Dublin riots on X platform. Later I’ve received a polite “get lost” templated mail, telling me that the xenophobic posts, commanding to kill immigrants on sight, that I’ve reported are in fact fine by the platform community standards! I wonder which community standards these were, but definitely not the Irish ones!
The fun part is when it comes to the echo chambers, if you post hate messages, you will find yourself in a bubble where Karens from the USA are posting to command the Irish people to kick the immigrants out of Ireland. People who are very likely to have never set foot on Irish lands, are egging the Irish people to do their deeds.
There is no beating those platforms in their own game. Try to speak some sense into hate speech propagators, best case scenario is you will get some hate speech back. But highly likely you will get no response at all. Why? Because the ML algorithms are tweaked to propagate only inflammatory content. If you post hate messages, you will highly likely get way more views rather than when you post sensible messages.
It doesn’t stop there, but today I found out that Elon Musk the owner of Twitter/X invited the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come and speak on his platform. If this is not down right blatant middling in politics, I wonder what is!
Since Twitter was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded to become X, many changes have been done to the code base. Some of those changes were unwittingly exposed when they open sourced some of the code base and published it online on GitHub. The published, now open source, code showed that the platform was hardwired to give priority to any posts from the new owner, this was surprising back then. But now it’s no news, that whether you follow Elon or not, his posts are going to always show at the top of your X timeline.
So basically, today Elon used the whole X platform as a mouthpiece for the highest political figurehead of an apartheid state! Elon would argue that this is free speech, but if it was, would he grant the right of reply to Gazans? Or do they need to seek another platform to support their cause?
But hey, surely X valuation has a more favourable outlook now, right?
This brings me to the message I emphasised in my previous articles, that centralised platforms such as X, Facebook, Google and Amazon will consolidate markets, extract surplus value and free labour, manipulate narratives, lock up populations into echo chambers and, if there is profit in it, they would also meddle in politics by propagandising where they would happily propagate hate speech if it gives their stock prices an uptick.
