70
4 Google as God?
competition of the best ideas for our votes. Are personal freedom and democracy
perhaps outdated?
22 (see Appendix 4.1).
Besides the use of nudging, many governments also pay special agents and deploy
computer bots to produce fake information in order to make us believe and do certain
things.
23 There are even “cybermagicians” working for secret services, who change
Web and social media contents.
24 In other words, facts are being manipulated, but
the outcomes can sometimes be quite unexpected. For example, while the United
Kingdom tried to strengthen its central government powers, there is now a trend
towards greater regional autonomy. Moreover, even though Turkey “streamlined”
the reporting in the public media to support the candidacy of the president, his
power is being questioned more than ever. The public reporting was so biased that
nobody expected the 2015 election outcome. This caused significant disruptions of
the financial markets.
25
I am deeply convinced that the digital society can only thrive, if we learn to reduce
manipulation and information pollution. The more information we must process and
assess, the more we must be able to rely on it.
26 If we don’t have trustable information
systems, almost nobody will finally be able to judge the situations we are faced with.
Consequently, we will probably make more mistakes even though we could use a
quickly growing amount of information.
27
One problem of today’s information systems is their lack of transparency. We
have usually no idea of the quality of results that search engines are delivering.
These algorithms determine the ranking of results, when we make Internet searches:
they decide what information appears on the top and what information is hidden. This
has dramatic consequences: it can ruin peoples’ lives
28 and cause the bankruptcy of
22 Note that a wrong use of Big Data implies numerous dangers for democracy, including (1) a loss
of freedom, autonomy, and diversity, (2) an undermined wisdom of crowds, (3) discrimination, (4)
self-censorship, reduced innovation and failed adaptation, (5) security issues (such as cybercrime
and cyber war).
23 See http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks.
24 RT, Western spy agencies build ‘cyber magicians’ to manipulate online discourse (February 25,
2014), https://www.rt.com/news/five-eyes-online-manipulation-deception-564/; https://theinterc
ept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulat
ing-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/, http://praag.org/?p=13752.
25 Turkey’s online censorship, see https://web.archive.org/web/20201114002447/https://takingnote.
blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/turkeys-onlinecensorship/; Market turmoil in Turkey after crushing
election, see http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/08/turkey-election-result.html.
26 This is particularly a precondition for collective intelligence and for a successful management of
the increasing complexity of our world.
27 See, for example, Lazer et al. [7].
28 Lawsuits against Google autocomplete, see http://www.techtimes.com/articles/12296/20140806/
billionaire-albert-yeung-allowed-to-sue-google-over-the-autocomplete-of-his-name.htm, Persönlichkeitsverletzende Wortkombinationen, see http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/persoenlichkeit
sverletzende-wortkombinationen-bettina-wulff-schliesst-vergleich-mit-google-1.2306708.
4 Google as God?
competition of the best ideas for our votes. Are personal freedom and democracy
perhaps outdated?
22 (see Appendix 4.1).
Besides the use of nudging, many governments also pay special agents and deploy
computer bots to produce fake information in order to make us believe and do certain
things.
23 There are even “cybermagicians” working for secret services, who change
Web and social media contents.
24 In other words, facts are being manipulated, but
the outcomes can sometimes be quite unexpected. For example, while the United
Kingdom tried to strengthen its central government powers, there is now a trend
towards greater regional autonomy. Moreover, even though Turkey “streamlined”
the reporting in the public media to support the candidacy of the president, his
power is being questioned more than ever. The public reporting was so biased that
nobody expected the 2015 election outcome. This caused significant disruptions of
the financial markets.
25
I am deeply convinced that the digital society can only thrive, if we learn to reduce
manipulation and information pollution. The more information we must process and
assess, the more we must be able to rely on it.
26 If we don’t have trustable information
systems, almost nobody will finally be able to judge the situations we are faced with.
Consequently, we will probably make more mistakes even though we could use a
quickly growing amount of information.
27
One problem of today’s information systems is their lack of transparency. We
have usually no idea of the quality of results that search engines are delivering.
These algorithms determine the ranking of results, when we make Internet searches:
they decide what information appears on the top and what information is hidden. This
has dramatic consequences: it can ruin peoples’ lives
28 and cause the bankruptcy of
22 Note that a wrong use of Big Data implies numerous dangers for democracy, including (1) a loss
of freedom, autonomy, and diversity, (2) an undermined wisdom of crowds, (3) discrimination, (4)
self-censorship, reduced innovation and failed adaptation, (5) security issues (such as cybercrime
and cyber war).
23 See http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks.
24 RT, Western spy agencies build ‘cyber magicians’ to manipulate online discourse (February 25,
2014), https://www.rt.com/news/five-eyes-online-manipulation-deception-564/; https://theinterc
ept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulat
ing-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/, http://praag.org/?p=13752.
25 Turkey’s online censorship, see https://web.archive.org/web/20201114002447/https://takingnote.
blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/turkeys-onlinecensorship/; Market turmoil in Turkey after crushing
election, see http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/08/turkey-election-result.html.
26 This is particularly a precondition for collective intelligence and for a successful management of
the increasing complexity of our world.
27 See, for example, Lazer et al. [7].
28 Lawsuits against Google autocomplete, see http://www.techtimes.com/articles/12296/20140806/
billionaire-albert-yeung-allowed-to-sue-google-over-the-autocomplete-of-his-name.htm, Persönlichkeitsverletzende Wortkombinationen, see http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/persoenlichkeit
sverletzende-wortkombinationen-bettina-wulff-schliesst-vergleich-mit-google-1.2306708.