DISM20S07 - HackMD

<h1 style="font-size:4em; color:white;font-family:arial">Digital Identities and Social Media (S07) // Theme Week 2020</h1> <span style="color:white"> Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me]</span> --- ## Plan for the day: * (data-based) surveillance * Economy: surveillance Capitalism (SC) surplus * Social: surveillance as everyday practice * Preemptive: surveillance for consumption and policing --- ## Many surveillances * Sur-veillance: watching-over * Disciplinary society (Foucault 1975) * Panoptic surveillance (Elmer 2003) * few observing many ("**unequal** gaze") * **internalized** regulatory gaze * Sousveillance (**inverted** surveillance)  * Panspectric veillance (De Landa 1991) * enabled by **sensors and signals**, instead of human senses === * Digital Surveillance: * **Bigger** scope of data: CCTV, RFID, biometics... * "Liquid surveillance" (Lyon & Bauman 2013) * fluid, uncontained, **pervasive** monitoring * *Dataveillance* (van Dijck 2014) * continous tracking of (meta)data for **unstated** purposes --- ## 1. Economy: Surveillance Capitalism (SC) surplus ---- * SC not a technology, but a *logic* * "Machine intelligence" -> analysis, Machine Learning, prediction, recognition, modeling... <span class="censor">Every action a user performs is considered a signal to ne analyzed and fed back into the system (Hal Varian)</span> Google's reinvesment cycle turns from "improving the product" towards "prediction of user behavour"  * Instead of 'fordist' production, Google UPI (user profile information) extraction and analysis tailored to advertisment (*ends*) * Unique mix (*means*): behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms ("machine intelligence") ---- ### Example A: profiling from exhaust 'surplus' 1. Go to Panopticlick: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ 2. Click on "Show full results for fingerprinting" after the test is done 3. Is your browser fingerprint unique? What does this mean? <span class="censor">Behavioural knowledge, manipulation, and prediction: microtargeting as a combination of politics and consumer marketing, and the capacity of manipulation of affective states (O'Neil 2017)</span> ---- ### Example B: profiling from 'learned' models <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/JacquesTD/status/1308777336574291971" target="_BLANK"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/J7IT3Zo.png" width="50%"></a> [Other recent (and familiar) cases where profiling is being implemented](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/09/1009992/live-facial-recognition-is-tracking-kids-suspected-of-crime) ----  <h2 class="censor fragment">[Surplus (value): earnings minus costs of materials and labor]</h2> <h2 class="censor fragment">[Alienation: from products, but also of our own determination]</h2> --- ## 2. Social: surveillance as everyday practice ---- * self-tracking (Lupton 2014) * *participatory*: watching each other, being viral * surveillance **logic** *by design* >Social surveillance is the ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip, and inquiry that consitutes information gathering by people about their peers, made salient by the social digitalization normalized by social media ---- Particular approach of social surveillance (Marwick 2012): * **power**: intrinsic (micro-politics) to every social relationship * **hierarchy**: between individuals, not organisational entities and individuals  * **reciprocal**: broadcasting and observing, using social media to *systematically* learn information about others >the nature of "surveillance" dynamically changes based on the social role played by observer and observant  ---- ### Short activity: *lightbeam* Install *Thunderbeam-Lightbeam* for chrome [here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lightbeamchrome/hjkajeglckopdkbggdiajobpilgccgnj?hl=en-GB) 0. (remember to deactivate your blockers) 1. Navigate for a few minutes as you'll usually do. Try some google searches, news websites, or social media 2. How does your network look? Compare with others: are there trackers that repeat continually? (you may want to pay attention to the *bridges* and/or central nodes for this) Try doing the same with your adblockers on. Is there a substantial difference? You can try different adblockers. --- ## 3. Preemptive: consumption and policing ----  <span style="color:black;font-size:2em">Recommendation systems</span> <span>[The Napoleon Dynamite problem](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?pagewanted=all)</span> ----  <span style="color:white;font-size:2em">Persistent Surveillance Systems</span> <span style="color:white">Radiolab: Eye in the sky</span> ---- * (digital) surveillance about the actors (state, corporation, individuals) and more about the *logic*, *means*, and *ends* * In which sense are our social selves alienated by SC? * Same logic, different actors, different goals? ---- ## Discussion activity (4-5 people) 1. How is the logic of surveillance, and surveillance capitalism performed by you or through you in social media? What kind of surveillance is taking place there? 2. Can you identify other common practices where surveillance happens in our everyday digital life? 3. In this instances, are you *subject* or *subjected to*? Do you participate consciously/freely? You can use today's lectures, your own data and reflections on self-tracking (BB2/BB3), and/or some of the tools (panopticlick, lightbeam) to explore this question  <style> .reveal{ font-family:mono; font-size: 25px; } .reveal .censor{ background:black; color:white; } </style>