Under the Influence

The Problems

• How much have foreign governments influenced past campaigns via social media?
• Which demographics are these influences affecting more?
• How many people are aware that not only foreign influence is happening, but that it could be—and probably is—1st happening to them?

The Issue

With the growing reality that foreign governments utilized social media to influence the outcome of the 2016 United States Presidential Election, it is clear that we have a real problem here…a few problems actually.

The video below is an unconventional, yet surprisingly informational video regarding fake accounts and how they can be used to influence users.

 

The Ethical Dilemma

A quote from the New York Times, regarding a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban of donations from foreign nationals to local, state or federal elections in the United States, states:

“Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections.”

The law on this matter is pretty clear. However, it then comes to another question: Where exactly do borders lie when it comes to the World Wide Web?

Let’s say I have a family member who live in Russia, and they buy an ad on Facebook promoting something political in regards to our election; now there very well could be a way for their ads to be seen only by or including all of their friends—which would include me.

Should Facebook be able to regulate and hide my family member’s ad from me, just because it is political? Should the Unites States government be able to compel Facebook to hide my family members ads from me, just because it is political?

I know I’m stretching right now with this examples and this is in no way how foreign governments handled this in the past, however I’m merely making a point that there is significant gray space and margin for error when it comes to handling cases like this.

Without proper guidelines or parameters when it comes to the reality of the internets and daily use, how can we properly regaulate any aspect of online social media when it comes to laws of the physical world?

Regulation

When thinking of the basic issue, which is how this happened or how a company like Facebook didn’t notice these transactions. We must look towards Facebook itself and their policies in order to understand what they’re doing, or could be doing better in order to prevent this from happening in the future.

I should mention however, The FEC (Federal Elections Commission), hasn’t updated its policy regarding online communications in elections since 2006, which as we know in the tech world is ancient. So Facebook isn’t entirely to blame when it comes to these issues.

However, Facebook is at least partly to blame. Although there is some gray area due to the rise of social media and the internet’s involvement with campaigning, as stated in the previous section the general law is pretty straightforward.

Was Facebook more aware of these issues than they led us to believe? Did Facebook executives allow this to happen in order to get more revenue?

Looking Ahead

I think what’s most important is having everyone at the same table, to hold the conversations about issues such as this one.

If we have a bunch of old school politicians running the FEC who know little to nothing about the inner workings of the internet and/or social media, how can we expect that government agency to be in line with the ever advancing status quo of the tech industry?

Further lets get diligent compliance officers at companies such as Facebook, Twitter or Google and make sure all of these companies are following the rules, even the broad ones, to their best extent.

Also I think its important that there be solid lines of communications on all fronts, and heightened transparency when it comes to foreign and governmental relations. Facebook, Twitter and Google alike have positioned themselves as front runners of the information technology age; with that position comes great responsibility. We must hold accountable all parties involved when it comes to the standards we have as American citizens and our duty to uphold the democratic process.

 

With the 2018 primaries coming up, which could very well be a pivotal moment for democrats; it is important that we focus on these issues and reach some sort of progress by the time elections come around.

Do you have any ways you think Facebook or other companies should be regulating? Do you think it should fall on them or organizations like the FEC? Further, do you think the user is just a much responsible as the content creator when it comes to verifying sources and determining validity?

Don’t Look, Just Leap

The Overview

When it comes to diversity in the tech world, or any workplace for that matter, I feel people need to stop waiting to be invited and just crash the party.

With a systemic diversity problem across the board in out nation, and most parts of the world for that matter, I don’t think people are listening anymore. We are in a place where people can go on and on for days about the issue of diversity and no change will come of it, because of how used to it people are. We have all heard that men make X amount of money to the dollar a female makes, we have all heard that Caucasian males dominate almost every workforce—frankly, it’s getting redundant.

Again, I want to make it clear that I don’t believe it to be redundant because there is no problem; I just believe that we need more action versus more talking. I believe action is how change is created, and through action others are inspired to further that change.

The video below resonated with me in its “diversity within diversity”, if you will. There wasn’t focus on any one or two specific minorities, there was just a general message of inclusion which I felt refreshing. In it are certain people who at first glance you wouldn’t think of as a minority or someone who isn’t privileged, but after actual dialogue discovered they were. This is another problem that we face as a society, we have such a stigma towards straight-white-men, that anyone who fits that description to us is automatically privileged or automatically unrelatable to the underdog.

 

 

Tech

As Dr. Royal pointed out, the days of catfishing are long gone (to most, some people defy logic and still play into a trolls game). Due to the increased visuality of the web, the issues of the physical and online worlds are integrated moreso now than ever.  As I stated in the previous section there is a widespread case of uniformity within almost every field, especially the STEM universe. Because of that I feel like we need to first tackle the physical world, after which that change will translate into the online world.

Make It Happen

Circling back to my earlier point, and the meaning of my the title of this article; as uncomfortable, hurt, unwelcome, or discriminated we may be—we must progress. As a gay half Italian half Puerto Rican male who is writing this, I have chosen to not only to move forward, but even to disclose the part[s] of myself which may be discriminated against. Each and every one of you minorities have chosen to move forward, despite all the pushback along the way, and do I know there was pushback. Why? Because regardless of anyone else’s personal feelings; we will accomplish any goal we set forth, we will become the Governor of Texas, Editor in Chief of Condé Nast, or VP of Amazon (at their new Austin Headquarters, fingers crossed). The purpose of all of this is that in a world where we aren’t accepted, we must push through and announce ourselves as Here, and our presence will begin to normalize the culture and society around us, and then one day the barrier in which we permeated to get here—will no longer stand.

 

Digital [not new] Media

“New”, is definitely a relative term; especially when talking about media and technology. If we choose to use the term “new media”, we will have to continuously update the parameters of that subject field to include what is or isn’t “new”. At one point radio was considered new, then television. Does anyone remember when plasma televisions were the newest best thing to watch? Our field moves far too quickly to call anything new. This is why I believe digital media is the way to go when encompassing all forms of media outside of the standard which we grew accustomed to in the 20th century.

Even though television isn’t necessarily a new form of media, there are still ever changing and new ideas and practices coming up each day,. Digital media would account for all of these new innovations and classify them together as they should be. Digital cameras would be classifies under the term “digital media”, but cameras that use film would not. This way, we can separate the various forms of technologies and better understand where we are technologically as a society, and how to move forward.

 

Both Bush and Engelbart discuss media innovation and its relation to the past. Meaning that we are just constantly changing the current, to improve and perfect. They also write about the seemingly lack of need for an invention until it has become a thing, and then awe when we are in the presence of such innovation.

Early on Bush questions man’s lasting benefit of technology, and  lists requirements for them to actually be useful to us as a society. This somewhat mirrored the following excerpt from Engelbart’s article:

Anything that might have so general an effect upon our mental actions as is implied here, is certainly a candidate for ultimate consideration in the continuing development of our intellectual effectiveness.

I was very intrigued and moved by this statement; its truthfulness decades later. Taking a step away to look at the calculator; before its widespread use in classrooms most student’s were forced to complete their calculations by hand or in their head. Looking in a classroom today, although children may know more complex formulas—they probably wouldn’t be as quick as someone from 100 years ago when multiplying in their head, or doing long division on paper.

We as humans need to take a step back and really think about every invention we have or new idea that we come up with and think about the implications they will have on who we are as a species. Do we really need glasses with cameras in them or refrigerators that send us grocery lists? At what point does technology and innovation move from social advancement to social destruction?