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Defending Freedom in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism By: Franck Stéphane Ndzomga, IÉSEG School of Management, Master in Business Analysis and Consulting Candidate Defending Freedom in the Era of pants died from syphilis and related Surveillance Capitalism complications after enduring symptoms as skin ulcers, bone deterioration, liver inflation and In 1932, the southeastern Alabama county of even dementia before death. 40 spouses were Macon became the spectator of a study diagnosed with syphilis and it was passed to 19 officially known as the “Tuskegee Study of children during the study. It was only in 1972, Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”. Started after news articles condemning the study were before the existence of any known treatment of published that its advisory panel recognized the syphilis, the study, conducted by the Public Tuskegee study as “ethically unjustified” Health Service with the support of the Tuskegee because the knowledge gained was not Institute, intended to record the natural history worth the risks the study imposed to its of syphilis to justify the necessity of treatment subjects. This led to the end of the study the programs for blacks. Initially, 600 black men subsequent month. In 1974, study participants were recruited (399 with Syphilis and 201 free of and their families received a $10 million out of the disease). To lure them into accepting to court settlement and lifetime medical benefits participate in the study, researchers told these after winning a class-action lawsuit. men they were being treated for “bad blood”, a catchall expression used at the time for a The Tuskegee study, as well as other infamous variety of ailments including syphilis, anemia experiments, teach us that conducting experi- and fatigue. In truth, they only received mental studies on human subjects always lead placebos and the study was never intended to to ethical dilemmas involving the dignity of the provide proper treatment to cure their illnesses. subjects and their freedom. By voluntarily In 1947, even though penicillin became the misleading the human subjects of the study, recommended drug for effective syphilis Tuskegee researchers denied them the treatment, researchers of the Tuskegee study possibility to give informed consent. decided not to administer the proper treatment, Therefore, the human dignity and individual choosing the pursuit of knowledge at the freedom of these syphilitic black men were expense of patient’s lives. 128 study partici- simply rebuffed. Researchers decided the fate 1 of their subjects without informing them or knowledge gained through personal data asking for their opinion, as if they were mere harvesting on the internet is not worth the risks slaves or objects. This happened less than a it poses to freedom and democracy. century ago and as the 21st century enters its Freedom is traditionally viewed as the capacity second decade, human dignity and freedom to be independent to the arbitrary will of others are once again under attack. or to impetuous personal passions. In that In March 2018, The New York Times, The sense, slaves cannot be considered free Guardian and The Observer simultaneously because they are acting according to the will of revealed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica their masters. Drug addicts cannot be data scandal. In short, Cambridge Analytica, a considered free too, since they are not able to British political data analytics firm, illegally stop consuming their drugs even if they deeply harvested up to 87 million Facebook profiles want it. As free creatures, humans must have through the third-party app “Thisisyourdigitallife”. the ability to exercise their free will (make their These data were then used to build “psycho- own decisions, choose their own path). The graphic” profiles of people in order to better concept of free will can be traced back to target them with ads and manipulate them into ancient philosophers like Plato or Aristotle. It supporting some policies and some candi- was used by ancient catholic theologians to dates. To use the words of Christopher Wylie, demonstrate human responsibility. In fact, their the whistleblower behind the explosive reasoning was that if humans do not possess revelations, Facebook user’s personal data free will, they could not be judged and punished were utilized to build “models to exploit what by God because ultimately, they would not be we knew about them and target their inner responsible of their actions. As social sciences demons. That was the basis the entire significantly evolved in the 20th century, a lot of company was built on.” The Facebook- thinkers now doubt the validity of “free will”. In a Cambridge Analytical scandal is just the top of recent article in the Guardian, Yuval Hariri, the iceberg in an increasingly digitalized world. argues that belief in the idea of “free will” has It reminds us of the threat to freedom caused by become dangerous since corporations will the exponential evolution of the internet. soon know individuals better than they know themselves. He goes on to say that “Humans Huge amounts of personal data are now certainly have a will but it isn’t free. Humans collected all over the world by governments, make choices – but they are never companies, social networks, apps and even independent choices. Every choice depends devices thanks to the Internet of Things. Due to on a lot of biological, social and personal fantastic progress in machine learning and conditions that you cannot determine for artificial intelligence, these data are yourself.” Moreover, with the rapid evolution of increasingly valued and used to learn about technology, we must recognize, he argues, that people’s behaviors, conduct studies and target humans can be hacked as in the case of them with specific commercial or political ads. Cambridge Analytica or other daily cases of In that respect, social networks are becoming fake news and targeted ads. the greatest tools available to manufacture consent through targeted ads and fake news as Yuval Hariri is right when saying that witnessed in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica governments and corporations will soon know scandal. This poses a fundamental threat to individuals better than they know themselves. individual freedoms because peoples’ choices The 21st century is defined by the emergence of will not be an expression of their volition (will) but digital technologies, leading to what professor the result of manipulation thanks to targeting. Shoshana Zuboff calls “Surveillance Capitalism”. Now more than ever, freedom needs to be In the digital era, life has become similar to what defended. As in the Tuskegee case, the may be experienced inside a panopticon. 2 Invented by Jeremy Bentham in the mid-1700s, technological progress is not synonymous with the panopticon is prison designed with the loss of individual freedom. Yes, humans are specific purpose of monitoring the maximum hackable, but they still have room for choice if number of prisoners with the minimum number we protect them from special interests, of guards. This is done through a central tower governments and corporations that would at the middle of a circular prison. Guards can rather prefer manipulating them. And for that, see what happens in every cell, but prisoners we must reevaluate the ethical basis associated cannot know if guards are looking at their cell. to the business model of the digital economy. This knowledge asymmetry creates a sociologi- cal effect: prisoners are aware of the presence Recommendation 1: Online advertising of authority every time and they come to must target groups but not individuals internalize its omniscience. Such knowledge specifically asymmetry can be also found in today’s digital The business model of most internet world. companies is the same. Their priority is to generate data, because data is the new oil. In Governments and corporations, especially order to acquire those data, they propose free internet giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter services to people: for Facebook, it is the ability and others have enormous data on each of us. to connect with friends and family; for Google, it They know when we were born, in which school is the access to a huge amount of information we went, our political affiliations, our interests, thanks to their search engine. When those our friends and family. They use that knowledge companies have an important user base, they to design ads that target our core interests. use all the personal data accumulated to sell They know how to convince and manipulate us. ads. In 2019, revenue generated by ads as share They even know more about us than we know of total revenue was 98% for Facebook, 85% about them or ourselves. And this is dangerous. for Alphabet (Google’ parent company) and In a recent article in the New York Times, 86% for Twitter. But the problem of those ads is professor Zuboff wrote that “unequal that they are designed to specifically target knowledge about us produces unequal power some individuals based on the huge amount of over us, and so epistemic inequality widens to personal data collected on them. It opens the include the distance between what we can do door to manipulation. Therefore, ads should not and what can be done to us”. All that was made target specific individuals based on their possible by the emergence of surveillance personal data. capitalism which is the commodification of personal information. We must act now to Instead they should be broadcasted with reclaim individual freedom and protect everyone having the equal probability of either democracies. Freedom is not a myth or a viewing them or not. Online ads should also be concept that needs to be recalibrated to broadcasted to group of individuals, based in accommodate the struggles of our times. their group characteristics but not the personal Freedom must be conquered and defended as data of the members of those groups.

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