Human rights: Food for an ominous thought ‘HR, the internet and other media’
HRR 744
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the different ways in which the internet has been coopted breaking the dream that it was going to be a liberating tool. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—It is our choice to remain ignorant that operates as a sleeping pill and makes us lose one of the most important virtues of human beings, our will, our freedom and our human rights (HR).
1. George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ prediction that we would be controlled through a screen, has changed a bit in the present era. Today, each of us carries a chip that allows whoever designed it and who now delivers the services that control us do so through ubiquitous mobile devices. Through these devices, we are classified and sorted and receive, according to algorithmic selections, satisfaction to our increasingly segmented requirements to the point that they also condition our way of thinking. The big organizations are today’s corporations; they control telecommunications, finance, foreign trade, air and maritime transport –they control everything. They are the ones who control the television networks, the record labels, art and cinema. They have decided what to offer us, because they know a priori our desires and demands. (L. Mesina)
2. If you already think that things are a certain way, you will pay lots of attention to any information and data that accords with your perspective and ignore or discount evidence that does not. So, through your fellow world-viewers, you end up finding confirmation for your thinking (two or three times over, sometimes). Be a true skeptic (are you one of them?) and be open to evidence, whether or not that evidence matches your preconceived ideas and be willing to update even relatively basic assumptions that you have if the evidence comes-in on the other side. If you are at a high-stakes poker table, there is absolutely no reason for you to trust the people around you. But if you are among a set of colleagues that you have longstanding good relationships with, there are good reasons to trust.* (Jamil Zaki)
*: Yes, we ought not believe prima-facie the information emanating from our strategic enemies since it often leads to accept the false truths they spread. But I think that, as important, is not to always believe in the information emanating from our strategic friends; they can also lead us to accept false truths. (Alberto Portugheis)
3. The lack of general interest in transcendental information has reached a global historical low. The latent problem of misinformation is one of the causes of this widespread disinterest. Among its causes is the correct perception that certain critical issues are not sufficiently, or impartially enough, covered by the media. Politics is the star territory of disinformation.** Journalists and editors, as well as academics will have to work much, much harder to gain the public’s attention on transcendental issues, HR included.*** (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)
**: The fear of the oligarchs is measured in the deceiving and totalitarian propaganda that they spread –like an avalanche of shit –using trained journalists in the private media …and there are no others with the same clout. (Louis Casado)
***: Journalists, who certainly may be biased, do have ethical rules of conduct, but the wo/man in the street have none. As for members of academia, they have rules of integrity, but more and more we see these being disregarded.
You already know this: The issue is not about the survival of a free press; there is no longer a free press (John Pilger)
4. Some analysts rightly point out that the public opinion is not the same as the media-published opinion: a) In the first case, the opinion refers to the feeling of sectors of the population on certain topics of common interest; and b) in the second case, the media express the feeling or the convenience of interest groups on certain topics (political and other). (Jorge Wozniak)
5. The great difference between the broadcast-era-politics of yesteryear and the social-media-era-politics of today is that politicians no longer speak to the broad public. They now communicate almost entirely with their base and ‘near base’. Each person today receives a personalized flow of ‘news’ that is jointly constructed by individual choices (e.g., by which websites we visit). Using networks of digital followers, algorithms of platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok,**** and with the help of hidden forces that include the intelligence agencies, government propagandists, corporations, and political operatives, politicians mobilize and motivate, not only their base, but also beyond. (Jeffrey Sachs)
****: The world according to TikTok: The rightistization of contemporary society does not come out of nowhere. There are multiple variables that shape this process, but a clear-one points to the new social media that are forcibly installing ‘a society of spectacle’. Together with Instagram and YouTube, the tiktoker culture favors and protects everything that entertains and amuses, in all areas of social life and, therefore, political campaigns and electoral contests are less-and-less a comparison of ideas and programs, and more-and-more advertising events and spectacles. Instead of persuading, candidates and parties try to seduce and excite, appealing to the lower passions or the most primitive instincts, to the irrational drives of the citizen rather than to his/her intelligence and reason. TikTok, in particular, is perfect for infinite entertainment. Its world is the here, the now and the hypervelocity. [The great paradox of this story is that TikTok, demonized in the United States for its Chinese origin and subjected to scrutiny and threats of closure by the administration of both former President Trump and President Biden, is now critical to reach voters, especially young people, before November]. Spectacle is not only the power of the media, the hegemony of social networks or the trivialization of information and elections, but a much broader concept. It refers to any situation in which the majority of people are condemned to passively contemplate others who live and decide for them in a time in which representation replaces lived reality. (Rosa M. Elizalde, La Jornada, México)
6. Tim Cook, head of Apple, has made clear his opinion that it is the media elite that decides what information our eyes, ears and our fingers–on–touch–screens receive. If a story is inconvenient, it is discredited –period. Much news today is an illusion crafted by specialists in deception. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and X, just to talk from the U.S, no longer produce anything real, but make huge profits through algorithms that track our every move and desire. (Bez’s Blog #30, Planetary Health Weekly)
Words in the super highway can indeed create things making a subjective world become an objective reality (Francine Mestrum)
–On the internet you do not look at the screen; the screen looks at you. (Politika)
7. Instead of spreading the freedom of expression, the internet has become a real danger, because there is no control or even knowledge of who is talking, from what perspective, or with what objective. We are now entering into a new society where expert and well–informed judgement is under attack by those somehow feeling they know more. But it is so important that anyone wishing to lead a discussion show willingness to understand fully and invest the time needed to really understand, and not just by surfing the internet where the deniers abound with their fantasy ideas, as is so true for the climate crisis. (David Zakus)
Bottom line
8. The internet is broken; its awesome power has been co-opted and corrupted by Big Tech corporations that harvest our personal data, exploit us for profit and exclude us from the value we create. The threat that today’s internet poses, especially its dominant social media platforms, is ominous to our democracy, our civility, our rights, our children’s mental health and our future, as well as the planet’s ecology is stripping us of our personhood and causing devastating harms. It is time to fight back. (Frank McCourt)
9. But it is not only the internet that is broken: Traditional publishers have long acted as indispensable gatekeepers, but have recently moved rapidly to embrace publishing models that result in very high user fees or book prices and require large subsidies in order to underpin online open-access facilities. Academic journals have been described as ‘lucrative scams’ operating in the interests of publishers that often make huge profits. The result is that textbooks, books, journals, and other teaching materials fall out of reach of many potential readers. (Philip Alston) So much for academic publishing on HR topics –more so if denunciatory in content.
[The AI perspective has been left out here. I will follow up in the next Reader with just a couple comments].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com