S05E17 of Connection Problem: Privacy not dead anymore / understanding China

It’s interesting for me to see how this newsletter has really been taking the spot that used to be filled by my blog, especially the monthnotes + reflections. (Monthnotes are still ongoing, but more more bullet-pointy.) And it hasn’t been a short blip, either. After all, it’s been 66 issues across five “seasons” so far. Thanks for coming along on this ride, I really appreciate it.

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Personal-ish news

(1) Deadlines met. A few weeks of pretty productive if somewhat exhausting heads-down time have paid off, I hit 5 submission deadlines in time. It’s been great to work closely with these various teams, and if things go well than most of these projects will keep going with those exact teams. Something I really look forward to. As someone who is self-employed (in that truly bizarre way that’s possible in Germany where I literally own the company that employs myself as its sole employee, and I actually have to sign a great number of documents wearing the owner or the employee hat, and often both) I don’t have a fixed set of colleagues or staff. So teams come and go, and I treasure working with the truly great ones. Right now, I’m blessed in that way by having the opportunity to work with several at the same time. So, 5 submission deadlines down: onward!

(2) Revolutions not had. In Germany, May 1st is a public holiday. But in Berlin, and Kreuzberg specifically, May 1st has an additional, slightly different connotation. Since May 1st, 1987, Kreuzberg has been ground zero for the “revolutionary May 1st”, otherwise known as Kreuzberg’s Mayday riots. (For a quick historic background, Wikipedia has an English language article on this particular strand of global Mayday activities in Kreuzberg. Most of this has literally played in a 500m radius of various places I’ve been living since the early 2000s.)

While the location of Kreuzberg’s Mayday has mostly stayed the same, the format has been changing constantly, as has its context. From street fights to a political street party it has gone, and the complex interplay of the left, the organizers, the local communities and neighborhood, of politicians and police, and of course the global context all are constantly in flux, and so is this local event.

This year, it was planned to be smaller, more political, more local. From my glances from the sidelines (we spent the day out of town and only passed by in the morning and the late afternoon each) it looked decidedly less political than ever before: The scenes I saw were that of a pure street party, from the guy DJ’ing techno out of his window to a dancing crowd below to the group of tourists drinking in our staircase, away from the masses outside. I’m not sure what to think of this, but having see this thing morph over the last near 20 years I’ve lived in Berlin, and right in or around the core Mayday zone, it’s certainly an interesting transition. And slightly absurdly, it feels like it’s going the way of gentrification more than anything: Getting more and better organized, more cleaned up, replacing what’s left of the old school type protests and demos to other parts of town. Again, not sure what to think of the whole thing just yet. But like every May 2nd in those last near 20 years I really, really hope it’s going to rain today to wash away some of the residual smell, because some of us, y’know, live hear. Ok, enough with the get off my lawn stuff; it’s an event I like, I hope it doesn’t just turn into a generic party primarily for party tourists is all I’m saying.

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Some hopeful signals

A weird, eclectic collection of hopeful signals that crossed my radar almost at the same point in time and hence clicked together nicely (note that these are hopeful only in a “oh is there a light at the end of the tunnel after all” sense):

• UK government declares climate emergency. It’s not clearly defined what that even means but it’s so refreshing to see some #realtalk
• The Guardian has turned profitable, and hence sustainable, with strong growth in readership and in financial reader support. (We have a Guardian digital subscription at home, too.) I particularly love that they opted for reader support but no paywall. To me, this has always been the best of both worlds. (It’s no coincidence that I use the same model in the membership model for this very newsletter, although I daresay at a slightly smaller scale.)
• Also in the Guardian, an interesting op-ed declaring that we must simply declare capitalism dead in order to survive. The author also claims that there are by now emerging building blocks for what might come next, but really I mostly found this interesting in that this type of argument now pops up across even the most establishment media. There’s such a strong undercurrent of change that it seems almost frivolous to still refer to these blips as signals: They’re too strong, too ubiquitous. Something’s changing, and it’s picking up steam fast, event though to me it’s entirely unclear where things are really headed. Which is always interesting: Times of transition are where things happen quickly, can be influenced disproportionately for the better.

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Understanding China?

We don’t understand China well in the West. It’s mind blowing to me: Here we have one of the biggest players on the global political and economic stage, and it seems poorly understood by the rest of the world. Surely this can’t just be a language issue? There are experts, there’s research, there’s a ton of formal and informal exchange between China and the rest of the world, and we literally all trade with one another every single day. Within an arms reach I could probably reach out and 80% of the things I touch were made in China. So how can we not understand this country as well as, say, Australia or Argentina or France or Kenya or Finland?

It’s mind blowing, and no matter how many times I read that language is tricky and the government isn’t transparent and all of that, I know for a fact that a system of government this large is always leaky; far more than a billion people speak the language; and I can confirm first hand that it’s neither hard to get to have friends in China nor is it hard to travel there. So what gives?

Nowhere does this lack of understanding become more obvious than the debate around China’s Social Credit Score (SCS). There are wild claims and speculations, and many probably erroneous portrayals of the SCS. Despite trying my best, I’m probably guilty of this myself!

So I was very happy to see Logic Magazine having an upcoming issue dedicated to China. (I just pre-ordered.) You don’t have to wait for the overall issue to come out to read this piece on the Social Credit Score, though, and it’s well worth reading.

The piece aims to clear up some of the potential misunderstandings - clear out the fog, really - surrounding China's social credit system. It's well worth reading as it disposes of some of the wilder claims in Western media, and some of the cliches, and in providing great descriptions about what actually happens. That said, while I recognize I'm not as familiar with the situation on the ground as the author (nowhere near that, really), I do recognize someone buying into a framing when I read their texts. This one buys into the trust narrative, or at least its intention. And of course the government’s aim is to increase trust but also it's true in that specific way that it carefully shifts the focus away from the more meaningful things in the making, the consequences (intended or unintended) that are taking place at the edge of our vision, easy to miss.

What I'm taking away from this is: The Social Credit System does not just aim at surveillance and social control but also fights legit fraud issues that create too much societal friction. (This is the part that aims to increase trust between companies and the government as a facilitator of trade; and between consumers and companies as trustworthy participants in transactions.) It's not as centralized and streamlined a system as it's made out to be in the West (which is consistent with common Western thinking about China in all areas).

It also trigged this thought for me: Maybe, just maybe, but bear with me for this thought experiment, the better analogy for China is Amazon: Quite autonomous teams working along roughly aligned axes and goals but also fiercely competing for resources and power. All working very agile, touch and go, appearing much more centrally coordinated than they really are: Following a compass, not a map.

If this analogy proves useful, then this makes it hard to predict what’ll happen next, because literally nobody knows; that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t predict or watch closely, though. We’ll just need to think through various scenarios. And I’d say the total surveillance state is one of the scenarios that needs to be included in this prediction game.

Also, a fantastic collection of articles on the SCS.

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FB: Privacy isn’t dead, it’s the future

So. Zuck declared privacy is the future. That is, privacy is the future today. Roughly a decade ago, he declared privacy essentially dead, a social norm that had changed. But now, the wind blows a different direction and so does FB's messaging on the issue, but y'know, just so that we don't really have to change anything real about our business models. Gotta put food on the table after all, amiright.

Some thoughts on this, in no particular order:

In his on stage announcement (the first link above) he’s actually joking onstage that FB doesn’t have a strong reputation on privacy (there’s no audible laugh from the audience). But this time, this time for realz, believe you me it’s different, this time we really mean it. I know I’m possibly preaching to the choir here, or maybe I’ve turned fully tin foil hatter. But how, and why, this company get chance after chance after chance when clearly they’ve screwed up at so many junctions by willfully making choices that turned out to be bad — and were predicted by experts to be bad before they happened — is just beyond me. A bad player is a bad player. Big market share shouldn’t change that, a stock price shouldn’t change that. Sigh. I mean, really, come on. Either you reflect social norms, First Directive style, without interfering: In that case, fine, you get your get out of jail free card. Or you push the norms, you push for change in societal norms. In that case, you got to own the consequences of your actions and pay the price for it. Clearly, FB is in the latter camp.

So, like this (sorry, couldn't resist):

So, to his announcements:

• The six principles FB takes on their road towards what Zuck calls “privacy” (private interactions, encryption, reduced permanence, safety, interoperability, secure data storage) aren’t bad, but taken together they don’t add up to privacy. Unless encryption is used in ways that shout FB itself out of what’s going on, including most meta data, which I’m 99% sure he’s not talking about.
• Zuck states that FB is going to take a proactive role in “making sure our tools are used for good”, and here’s an unfulfillable promise if ever I’ve seen one. (Also, who defines “good” in this case, what does it mean?)
• Messenger apps (FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram): End-to-end encryption in Messenger. Good. But also, interoperability meaning you can call across the three apps. And here’s the first big mistake: I use Whatsapp because, well, it’s the messenger I use and I don’t have an alternative channel with many others. I quit FB a long time ago, and even before I avoided Messenger like the plague. Making these talk to each other (but only within the Facebook Cinematic Universe) shows the first big misunderstanding in how privacy and boundaries work.
• Whatsapp: Tools for businesses. Payments.
• (The rest is generic FB release stuff, not core “privacy” focused.)

In other words, it’s all still just as focused on engagement and business/analytics as ever before. This isn’t privacy. It’s some encryption and basic security clean-up, as well as a few boundaries taken away that shouldn’t be taken away. I’m not saying it’s necessarily worse than before, but at first glance it certainly isn’t much better either.

And then there’s this: FB Dating, including a feature to signal “secret crushes”, a one-sided signaling of crushes that only are surfaced if both sides signal it simultaneously. This isn’t what should happen on FB; it’s the basis for creating really awkward scenes as much as it is for dating. Why aren’t you Secret Crush-ing me back?!? I dare you to write 5 "worst case" type headlines right now and put them where you can easily retrieve them a year from now when all 5 will have come to pass. 'cause that's the M.O. of Facebook.

Also, Zuck warns of authoritarian data localization. Can’t trust anyone with centralized data unless it’s me. Yeah right.

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Two upcoming ThingsCon events:

Next week, Republica is going to be in town, one of Germany’s biggest tech conferences. For all they’ve grown, I really think of them as the good folks in this space, even though I haven’t bought a ticket this year and didn’t submit a presentation either. And one of the things I really like is that the event tends to bring a bunch of interesting folks to town.

But if you’re in town for it, we’ll host a ThingsCon Salon on Monday (6 May) focusing on ethics in IoT as well as the circular economy aspects of connected devices with some brilliant and interesting speakers: Ester Fritsch, Dr. Isabel Ordonez & Chris Adams. Personally I can’t wait.

Then later in the month, on 24 May, a ThingsCon Unconf, about which you can learn more here.

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Miscellanea

Automating NYC: (en)coding inequality? explores how automatic decision making (aka AI aka machine learning aka machine decision making) impacts lives, and highlights the incredible lack of transparency and accountability in that space. It looks fantastic. And what’s best, this is a masters thesis project by four graduates of the Harvard Kennedy School (Aki Younge, Deepra Yusuf, Elyse Voegeli, Jon Truong) which I’m naming here, because it seems these four are ones to watch. They might just go on to do great things.

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Currently reading: Infinite Detail (Tim Maughan), How to Do Nothing in the Attention Economy (Jenny Odell)

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If you'd like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability, so let's have a chat!

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Just joined the club? Say hi! 👏

Yours truly,
Peter

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies — like Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research, strategy & foresight firm. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for IoT and beyond. In 2018-19, Peter was a Mozilla Fellow. He tweets at @peterbihr. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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Pictures. Top: Unsplash, mattj. Middle: my own.