Facebook primarily collects all this information in order to tailor ads to sell us stuff we want – and then sells them to advertisers, simply because the company can make a lot of money doing so. But the influence of data-driven architectures of choice extends beyond our individual and market behaviour. It may even affect our deeper emotional states.
In 2012, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 people to see if the emotions prompted by the content affected the emotion they then displayed through their own posts.63 To run the week-long experiment, some Facebook users were exposed to less positive emotional content on their news feed than usual. Others saw less negative emotional content. Facebook then tracked users’ posts after they were exposed to the manipulated news feeds. Although legal (when you sign up for Facebook, you authorise it to use your data for analysis and research), many people found the experiment unethical, because they were unaware of it.
For those of you who still believe that the posts you see on your Facebook feed (or in the results of your Google search) are listed in chronological order, this story might come as a genuine surprise. You’re in good company: the majority of users continue to believe that Facebook, Google and other major platforms are neutral go-betweens. They’re not. Think for a moment of Google’s autocomplete searches (when you type Alberto Alemanno, Google automatically suggests ‘actor’ so as to frame that search – needless to say, that’s not me!), Netflix recommendations, Twitter Trends or OKCupid matches.
What these platforms offer is the product of an accurately engineered algorithm. This is a mathematically-powered application that optimises the outcomes chosen by its programmers. After processing a bunch of data, an algorithm identifies patterns among the various data points it owns about you and then determines the probability that, for instance, you will pay back your mortgage, become an excellent employee or are interested in buying that car, song or book. In the case of Facebook – specifically its Newsfeed – the goal is to maximise the amount of engagement you have with the site, and hence with advertisers. You are therefore selectively exposed to the posts you have the greatest propensity to ‘like’. Every click generates revenue. This is the pay-per-click internet advertising model that defines your internet ‘user experience’. You can find it on all the major platforms, including Google.
Algorithms need data just as cars need fuel. There are thousands of bodies that collect and sell personal information from website cookies, loyalty card programmes, pharmacy records and some of the 10 million public data and registries sets available. While each individual data point carries little meaning and value by itself, taken together they may enable the brokers to draw some powerful conclusions about you, and to create a profile which they sell to businesses who want to target their product or political advertisements. Facebook, for instance, acts both as a data buyer and data broker.
Algorithms are anything but objective. Being the products of human imagination, they embed a series of assumptions about how the world works and how it ought to work. They approximate the world in a way that suits the purposes of their architect. Thus, for instance, they typically rely on your credit score as a proxy to determine whether you will be a good employee. Similarly, a programmer may decide that people who read the Guardian are feminine and people who read tech blogs are masculine. These algorithms are unscientific, based on assumptions, but they increasingly shape your life.
As such, algorithms do not just encode biases, but perpetuate them. By relying on historical data, such as the fact that women and people from ethnic minorities earn less, they reflect and magnify those biases in society. For example, in Washington DC, wait times for Uber cabs are, in general, shorter in the centre of the District and longer in the periphery where more non-whites live.64 This is due to Uber’s surge-pricing algorithm which influences car availability by dynamically adjusting prices. When surge is in effect, and prices are higher, the idea is that the supply of drivers is increased while at the same time demand is decreased. Rather than increase the absolute supply of drivers by getting more cars on the road, existing driver supply is instead redistributed geographically to places with more demand. If drivers are relocating to areas with surge-pricing, those areas will experience reduced wait times for cars (better service), whereas the areas the drivers are moving away from will experience longer wait times (poorer service). So who gains, and who loses? Which neighbourhoods get consistently better or worse service? As a result of the algorithm, people living in predominantly non-white areas of the US have to wait longer for Uber cabs.65
Given how pervasive these mechanisms have become in our lives, and their potential to turn our lives upside down, you might expect to be able to appeal their decisions. But there is no way to challenge their results or even question their operation. Unfortunately, algorithms are black boxes, with their workings invisible to almost everyone except their programmers.66 This opacity is made possible by a complex web of proprietary rights; for instance, Google algorithms are a secret as closely-guarded as the Coca-Cola recipe. We don’t know the data that goes into them, how that data is processed through the algorithm, or the outcome – the value that emerges, be it a score, price or prediction. In short, algorithms remain largely untested, unquestioned and unregulated, which, troublingly, prevents users from contesting the quality of their underlying data, how it is obtained and the results.
Algorithms render us powerless by design. Every one of our actions (or omissions) is characterised by an asymmetry of information between us (constantly monitored) and the Silicon Valley titan of the moment (which monitors us).
What’s more, machine learning is spreading rapidly. This technique enables computers to independently ‘learn to learn’ by guzzling massive amounts of rough data, including data we generate in digital environments.
Facial recognition software has even developed ways of reading our moods through our expressions and body language.67 Tesco has already deployed technology capable of advertising different products to different customers, depending on how cameras capture their moods.68 People walking past billboards can now see and hear real-time, personalised marketing which ‘fits’ their age and gender. As I learnt while teaching at Tokyo University, facial recognition is also used in the classroom to identify whether a student is bored or attentive.69
It gets worse. What happens when algorithms factor in our mental shortcuts so as to target a particular subset of the population? Take the phenomenon of fake news, which began as a consequence of the pay-for-clicks model. There is mounting evidence that these fabricated stories, which are designed to fool readers into sharing them so they go viral, are typically served to ‘low-information voters’.70 These are people who either know little about politics or lack what psychologists call a ‘need for cognition’. In other words, they tend to make decisions based on mental shortcuts, such as ‘experts’ or other opinion leaders, rather than by thinking through an issue methodically. Companies like Cambridge Analytica build accurate psychological profiles of each of us, then create a political message tailored to our personalities.71 In order to do this, the company doesn’t need to interact directly with each of us; instead, it acquires information from data brokers (demographics, social media and consumer and lifestyle data) and runs models calibrated against other individuals who have completed psychological tests (Facebook runs these constantly). In so doing, Cambridge Analytica combines our online personas with our offline selves, a process that has now become so commonplace as to have acquired the name ‘onboarding.’
That’s a snapshot of the engine behind the opaque business of online micro-targeted propaganda. Even in long-established democracies like Italy, Germany and Spain, fake news reports and hate speech on social media have been used to feed grassroots populist movements.
These examples of the ubiquitous targeting to which we are now subjected nurture our feeling of powerlessness. When citizens feel battered by forces over which they have no control, they find it harder to achieve c
ontentment in their lives. Increasingly little is left to chance in our surroundings – whether we are walking around a supermarket, or online. And this kind of surveillance is not confined to the marketplace. Governments use it too, as the Snowden leaks showed.
This is even more problematic for the weaker members of our societies. As lucidly shown by Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan in Scarcity, those who struggle for insufficient resources – time, money, food, companionship – are typically the citizens worst affected by the exploitation of our cognitive limitations, and are therefore the major victims of targeting techniques.72 Their mental capacity – Shafir and Mullainathan call it ‘bandwidth’ – is shrunk, taxed and left unable to cope with the onslaught. Being poor, they show, reduces your cognitive ability more than going a full night without sleep.
Injustices have always existed. But the ability to control individuals through the use of technology risks deepening our unprecedented social inequalities. Based on a combination of preferences, habits, postcodes and status updates, predatory algorithms enable marketers to target people in great need in order to identify where they suffer the most – what is called the ‘pain point’ – and to sell them false or overpriced promises. For years, online retailers like Amazon and travel companies like Expedia have priced items according to who they think we are, where we live, our incomes and our previous purchases. Often, paradoxically, the rich pay less. Yet there are signs that the rich as well as the poor are being targeted – because the low-information voters targeted by fake news, for example, exist at the top as well as the bottom of the income scale.
If you felt powerless when you picked up this book, I suspect you are now feeling even more adrift. While this may sound discouraging, this first part of the book is intended to make you react, to jolt you out of complacency. In the next sections we will show you how much power you have (Part II) and how unbelievably easy it is to exercise that power (Part III).
PART II
THE SOLUTION
The Power of Citizen Lobbying
‘I act on the conviction that everyone is making a difference. Just by living our lives, consuming space and resources, we are making a difference. Our choice is what kind of difference to make.’
Fran Peavey1
Now that we know why we increasingly feel so helpless and powerless, it is time to look at what we can do about it. How can we – as individuals and a society – stop being spectators in our private and public lives? How can we secure a place at the table, and more importantly ensure that everyone gets a place?
In order to find a solution, we need to explore the following questions: How do we make government work for us? How can we save us from ourselves?
We face a dramatic gap between the problem-solving ability of our political system and our needs as a society. While this gap explains much of our social disengagement and disillusionment with traditional politics, it opens up a promising space for new, unconventional forms of active citizenship and civic engagement, as well as individual and collective empowerment.
This is the space we want and can occupy, as citizens. And it is set to grow as people abandon mainstream politics. That’s the space I want to you show you in the second part of this book.
Given the inability of the current political system to represent you properly, the only option left is to speak out. To borrow Albert Hirschman’s expression,2 this is a time to ‘voice’, not to exit.
There has never been a better time and we have never been in a better place to speak out. We are more educated, well connected, purposeful and less deferential to authority than ever before. Regardless of where you come from and what you do in life, each of us has talents, expertise and experience that can be harnessed to the benefit of society.
And millennials care about social impact more than any previous generation3. The conventional political narrative – voting or running for office – has exhausted its authority. We need to come up with an innovative form of participation that enables someone like you and me – a student, a jobseeker, a professional or a pensioner – to speak out and channel her preferences into the existing policy process. And she needs to be able to do this part-time.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but if you want this kind of influence, you must turn yourself into a lobbyist. A citizen lobbyist. So what is lobbying about? How does it work? Can it really address our need to speak up for ourselves? And, finally, why would it work?
What is Lobbying and Who Does It?
‘Eighty per cent of success is showing up.’
Woody Allen
Lobbying means persuading people who hold power to care about an issue. Specifically, lobbying – more elegantly referred to as advocacy – is the act of attempting to influence the decisions made by policymakers, at any level of government. A lobbyist can be anybody who seeks to influence policymakers in a given direction: she can work for a company, represent the interests of a given industry or speak on behalf of a non-governmental organisation (NGO). She might be an employee of a lobbying firm, a lawyer acting for a client, a policy analyst at a think-tank, a civic entrepreneur, a public affairs consultant, or even an academic. Decision-makers can be elected officials or civil servants, acting at a local, national or even international level.
Lobbying is one of the most effective yet least-explored ways to shape and influence (public) life. As such, it is likely to have existed as long as politics itself – or at least as long as the representative democracies many of us live in today. Some say it is the second-oldest job in the history of humanity, after prostitution. As soon as there are people who have the power to make decisions on behalf of the whole community, there will be somebody interested in influencing them.
Think about it. It is not enough to come up with a great idea. You also need to sell it and galvanise support for it through effective advocacy. This is as true in the business world as it is in the business of government. The fate of many good and bad ideas that have shaped the world over the last century has largely been determined by lobbying. Consider how many good ideas, such as investment in lifesaving drugs for rare diseases, never became a reality because of poor advocacy. Think of how many bad ideas, like nuclear weapons, took off because of their successful advocacy. Contrary to Victor Hugo’s famous line, ‘an idea whose time has come’ can be stopped. Depending on how it is used, lobbying can work for both good and bad.
Lobbying is something corporations excel at doing, and sometimes NGOs too. Citizens just don’t do it. This explains why only a few people properly understand what lobbyists do and why.
The time has come to demystify this phenomenon. We need to free it from the widespread misinformation surrounding it, so it can be better understood and socially accepted.
STORY – Where Does the Word Lobby Come From?
The historical roots of the term ‘lobby’ date back to 1640 and refer to the place where British citizens could go to speak to their Member of Parliament (MP), the lobby of the House of Commons.
The United States has its own mythology around the genesis of lobbying. When President Grant was in office (1869–77), he used to visit the sumptuous lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington DC to have a brandy and a cigar. Despite his best efforts to keep these trips private, individuals in the hotel lobby would approach Grant and ask him for special favours or jobs. President Grant apparently referred to these people as ‘lobbyists’.
While this story makes for an enjoyable anecdote, the origin of the word ‘lobbyist’ cannot, in fact, be traced to the lobby of the Willard Hotel. Rather, ‘lobbyist’ was part of US vocabulary well before 1850, with the name reportedly first used to refer to petitioners who would wait to speak to legislators in the lobby of the New York State Capitol in Albany. Furthermore, the word ‘lobbying’ can be found in print in the United States as far back as 1820.
Lobbying has transformed itself into a multi-billion pound industry and, as a result, we live in a lobbying-saturated (or ‘lobbygenic’) landscape.4
We call it ‘professional lobbying’ to distinguish it from other forms of lobbying, such as you pressuring your partner, friends or your elected representative. Professional lobbying consists of paid professionals trying to influence elected representatives to initiate – or block – a given action, be it the decision to drill your area to obtain gas, to secure a subsidy to support your industry or push for someone to be appointed to high office. Lobbying is an omnipresent, powerful source of influence. As the billions invested in it by multinationals suggests, lobbying has an impact on all our lives.
In the US, around $3.31 billion is spent each year on lobbying. In the EU, Transparency International’s conservative estimate puts it at around half that, or €1.5 billion.5 An Austrian Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Hans-Peter Martin, claims professional lobbyists spend as much as €10,000 per MEP per week on invitations and gifts for MEPs (there are 751 of them).6
Companies generally have their own ‘in-house’ lobbyists and also rely on lobbying advice from leading public affairs consultancies such as Burson & Marsteller, Holland & Knight and Ernst & Young.
Universities now offer courses in lobbying. I designed and have been teaching one since 2009 at my own university in Paris, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales. Since 2014, I have also been offering a course at New York University that brings together a select group of law students from both NYU Law School and HEC Paris to work directly for NGOs operating in the EU policy field. The students are supported by a range of experienced and highly respected academics and practitioners who work with them on a pro bono basis to advance the goals of a select group of NGOs. Students are given the opportunity to play an active and important role in ongoing policy processes and advocacy campaigns concerning some of the most pressing issues facing the EU, its Member States and its 500 million inhabitants. In so doing, students help NGOs give voice to the often under-represented public interest in the complex supra-national EU policy process while finding personal gratification and meaning.
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