The sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cover many sectors, including online businesses. Either on order from the authorities or from their own initiative, many have ceased or decreased operations in Russia (and Belarus to some extent). Twitter has “shadow-banned” Russian propaganda accounts.

In response, the Russian government has banned Facebook and Twitter, now “moves to ban” Instagram and Whatsapp. It says Western “IT Giants” not only provide the environment for disinformation but are actively involved.

Not limited to social media, the information battles are fought in parallel with the actual combat: memes, videos, maps, infographics and so on. Denial of service-cyber attacks on websites, such as Ukranian embassies and government functions.

European internet service providers have stopped access to six Russian media sites following an EU ban, which also applies to social media and search.

The Kremlin has directed Russian businesses use the .ru-domain rather than .com or other foreign top domains and to move to domestic servers and service-providers. While the domain-changes may be symbolic, some experts say the Russian regime performed a “dress rehearsal” of disconnecting from the global internet in 2019.

The domain name servers that direct internet traffic to the intended pages are overseen ICANN, which now warns that Russia might cut ties with the global internet. Either by exiting the ICANN domain-system and setting up it’s own. The domain name servers are often described as the “internet’s phonebook”. Without them, internet resources can still be accessed directly to the IP-address (a sequence of numbers that look like 195.0.0.1). The second option would be more brutal, to actually pull the cables connecting Russia from the rest of the world. This is highly unlikely according to experts, as it would create all sorts of problems: logging into office software, all sorts of background functions and antivirus updates or data stored on cloud services. Many Russian users would not be able to log onto accounts they use every day.

However, there is nothing in the technology that prevents Russia from setting up a national network using the internet protocols and software, much like a corporate intranet except on the scale of a nation. The same hardware and software already in place could be used, it is simply a question of directing the data traffic. This would create a national internet, similar to North Korea’s, with little or no interaction with the outside world.

There was a time when the Internet was expected to bring democracy and freedom of information. Then it turned it could just as well be a tool for repression and control. Now it may be that we can’t talk about the internet as some unified entity. Maybe it never was, but there is a realistic scenario that Putin’s war will split the internet.

War in Europe, Russia invades peaceful neighbor Ukraine. Or rather, steps up its on-going invasion, eight years on. Many old truths have been reversed, such as: EU sending fighter jets. Germany increasing military spending. Sweden sends anti-armor weapons.

Some old truths come back strong: truth is the first casualty of war. As in the casus belli is full of lies: genocide, Nazism, history. Newspeak: “military-technical measures”, “peace-keeping” or “de-militarisation” rather than invasion.

“War is a mere continuation of politics by other means”, wrote Prussian major-general Carl von Clausewitz in On War (1832). Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin proves the point by claiming historic rights to Ukraine, saying it’s not a proper country. (Historian Yuval Noah Harari points out Ukraine has 1000 years of history as a nation.)

Except in this case, truth died long before the war. The fake news, the farce of Russian politics, the troll factories. Perhaps truth is not the first casualty of war, but rather war is the consequence of an absence of truth? If so, the war on truth has been going on for decades. Yes, there has always been propaganda and misinformation, but the digital public sphere struggles to tell truth from lies.

Other public spheres have measures in place to maximize truthfulness – checks and balances. Classic media has press ethics, publishes corrections, is run by educated editors, has a system for scrutiny of publishing decisions and more. It tries to learn and do better. In science, there is the peer-review system for publishing papers in academic journals, contributions to conferences and awarding degrees. In representative democracies, the political opposition keeps its thumb firmly in the eye of the rulers, there are auditors, elections, free press and NGOs scrutinizing decisions and holding the people making them to account. Publicly traded companies must publish quarterly reports, big and small investors continuously evaluate their business, auditors check the numbers, the exchange holds up rules, the finance analysts and business media do their best to find correct information, there are authorities overseeing trade and so on. This is not to say these systems work perfectly, rather they are full of flaws. But there is an ambition to truth, and an ambition to do better.

This is in stark contrast to the online public sphere. Internet platforms shy from any sort of editorial responsibilities. In fact, sometimes algorithms amplify fake news and profit from hate, a result of the business model. Maybe the nihilist attitude to truth is a consequence of digital technology basics: all ones and zeros are equal. All data has the same value. Every impulse to distinguish true from false or to install a dimension of quality must be added on, rather than integrated to the data-traffic.

My social media is full of people who – as far as I can tell – volunteer in spreading Putin’s war propaganda. They say Ukraine prolong the war by fighting back. They have all kinds of videos and infographics to support their case. Except each of them falls apart upon closer inspection. On a personal level, this is throwback to all other fights I’ve had with trolls over the years: pirates, anti-vaxxers, racists, sexists, Qanon… even the NFT-crowd. Different topics, sometimes the same people, the modus operandi is the same. The bait is ambiguous statements that can be interpreted as something horrible but just as easily denied. When challenged, they pedal back from the horrible interpretation, then offer all kinds of arguments to support it. The false statements, videos, infographics and comment come in quicker than I can double-check them. It is very effective. I try not to take the bait, but I often fail – thinking somebody has to bring a different view. They share the view that institutions cannot be trusted. “Do your own research” is the call-to-arms. This article describes the psychological process, except only to fall into its own trap of thinking there is a bigger force behind it all, pulling the strings.

Of course, Putin’s apologists and everyone else have a right to their own opinion. But do they have a right to their own facts?

To their credit, Big Tech has taken some action – too little to late but welcome all the same. The basic problem remains, there are no press ethics, no system, no real ambition to separate truth from lies. This is not an unsolvable problem, in fact it has been solved many times – as demonstrated by the examples mentioned above. Ironically, it is a Belarusian expat who explains this best: in his 2011 book The Net Delusion (Public Affairs), Evgeny Morozov makes the point that Big Tech’s loyalty will be to their share-holders rather than liberal ideology, if or when it comes to taking sides.

Internet platforms are in no way to be held accountable for Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. The responsibility lies solely with the Russian regime. Putin himself is the one who can stop the war. There are many things in the balance, social media plays an important part for keeping in touch while in shelters or seeking refuge, much of the news from the war zones come via digital channels. It is fair to say that the Ukrainian leadership has been able to use social media to get support for their fight. All those things and more are good. At the same time, internet platforms are channels for propaganda and fake news.

The European Union has taken steps to counteract Russian misinformation or “psy-ops” as the military calls it, including restricting access to some Russian sources, thus walking the tightrope of freedom of speech versus information wars. I have people in my social media calling this censorship and not trusting the European citizens to see through Russian propaganda. On the other hand, I some of those European citizens in my social media amplifying the Russian propaganda. Again, this dilemma might have been avoided if platforms had transparency and editorial policies.

How can we have more of the good and less of the bad? How can we bring back truth? This may be the key to avoiding conflict in the future.

This time, the free world stands united. Let’s do what we can to keep it that way.

Big Tech has often responded to various charges by saying things like “competition is just one click away” or pointing to how the once-great Myspace faded away in the face of more modern competitors. In fact, they said it so much, I gave it a chapter in 21 Digital Myths. Except now I’m not so sure anymore that it’s a myth.

Last week, 26% of Faceboo… sorry: Meta’s market value was wiped out in a day, the share price dropping from 323 USD to 238. Analysts say it’s the market’s reaction to decrease in number of users and ad revenue. Facebook may be turning into boomer-book when younger users prefer Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Twitch and other fonkier services.

The drop in ad revenue is linked to Apple’s change in privacy policy, making it more difficult to track users. It’s easy to feel Zuckerberg’s pain, the fate of his company so much in the hands of the competition. According to one Meta insider this writer spoke with, this may be part of the reason for the focus on VR and “metaverse” – building an independent eco-system. Including cool Ray-Ban shades.

So far, its metaverse prototype hardly lives up to the hype (in the words of gamer site Kotaku “it sucks”). Surely more to come, but it is odd to think that if Facebook was built on connecting people who know each other in real-life and focusing on social activities, can the same recipe be applied to meeting strangers and… going to work?

We’ll see, but perhaps this was not Facebook’s Myspace-moment, but its Second Life-moment.

Ten years on, Google has voluntarily implemented one of the then-controversial anti-piracy measures that were brought forward in the infamous SOPA/PIPA bills in the US (SOPA “Stop Online Piracy Act” was in the House of Representatives, PIPA Protect Intellectual Property Act was its equivalent in Senate). Remember those times? Google pushed back hard, using many avenues including its own front page “doodle” (throwing out objectivity and neutrality in the same breath). SOPA/PIPA were supposed to “break the internet”. Google co-Founder Sergey Brin compared it to censorship in China and Iran. Chairman Schmidt said it would “criminalize the fundamental structure of the internet itself”. This message resonated with the US policy-makers and the twin bills were thrown out.

As Torrentfreak notes, Google has now voluntarily executed one of the most criticised actions from those bills; removal of search results. That’s right, no court orders or laws, but voluntary action.

It’s great that Google steps up and takes some responsibility. It would be even greater if it was transparent about those decisions and the principles behind them. Oh, and the internet seems to be doing just fine. The “fundamental infrastructure” works (if not, how would you, dear reader, be able to see this post?). And China and Iran seem to be doing their censorship regardless of what the West thinks or does, perhaps with the support of Google itself.

Yes, I’m gloating. I promise to behave better, just not today.

No Holiday Season would be complete without some kind of intellectual property infringement going on. Be it knock off designer furniture under the tree or pirate electronics in the Xmas stocking. This year however, Bad Santa may have outdone himself: fake Xmas trees! No, not the plastic version.

The trees were meant to be green – as in environmentally friendly – but it turns out the grower had abused the rules of the organic badge they used. The local celebrities that supported the campaign are outraged. What will be next? Fake snow?

There used to be a time when the internet was meant to bring democracy to the oppressed. Swedish foreign aid authority SIDA co-funded anonymization technology. The Arab spring was called a “social media revolution”. Tech companies played the democracy card when facing criticism.

Much has changed since those days. Secret police figured out how to track down dissenters using digital technology. Facebook spawned a genocide in Myanmar. The spread of conspiracy theories led to the Capitol Hill riots in Washington DC.

And in the recent elections to the Russian duma, the opposition’s “Smart Voting”-app was removed by Apple and Google. The idea behind smart voting was to focus opposition votes on the non-Kremlin candidates most likely to make the five-percent threshold. Apparently Big Tech found it more important to make friends with the people in power than to support dissenters. Is this the end of the myth that internet brings democracy?

How fun to watch deep fakes of old favorite movies! Here is one with the classic 80’s action flick muscle stars Sylvester Stallone’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s faces projected on main characters Dale and Brennan in Step Brothers. It’s cute, Sly and Arnold used to be competitors in the box office back in the day, but in later years worked together in movies like The Expendables and Escape Plan. Much like John C Reilly’s and Will Ferrell’s characters in Step Brothers went from adversaries to best friends.

Deep fakes raise many questions, what can we trust in the online world? What if your face appeared in a video, saying something you would never? Who do you push back on something like that? The Step Brothers deep fake probably won’t fool anyone – the movie is familiar, the actors well-known and in any case there is something weird about the faces. Or is there?

Robot designers and video game makers struggle with a problem called the “Uncanny Valley” – it is possible to make a robot or a game character that looks perfectly realistic like a human being. But when it starts moving and talking, it feels weird. The facial expressions are off, or the timing, or something else – could be difficult to put one’s finger on it. It is possible to fool the eye but not the brain. The effect, the gap between expectation and behaviour, is unpleasant, or uncanny. The design is right on the edge of the uncanny valley. The jump to the other side, where the impression matches the visuals in harmony, is not a gradual improvement but a single big leap that no one has made (yet).

Robot designers tend to avoid the uncanny valley by making robots that look nothing like humans. Video game artists often aim for photo-realistic visuals but avoid going to close to the valley’s edge. Conceptual art, however, might seek out the effect, making a point of the uncanny (such as this video by Swedish artist Tove Kjellmark [sensitive viewers are warned!]).

Will deep fakes be able to make the leap to the other side of the uncanny valley? Is it only a question of better technology? Or is there is something more profound in us, that will always sense there is something wrong? It may be a philosophical question, or even religious. But if deep fakes (or some other technology) one day will make it to the other side… where does that leave us? A place where there is no knowing what is real and what is not. Perhaps that is the real meaning of uncanny.

Most of the headaches of the digital world seem to have one common denominator: there is someone in the middle who could do something but doesn’t. Whether it’s fake news, terrorism content, revenge porn, abuse of workers’ rights, copyright infringement, cyber-attacks… you name it: the list goes on (and ought to be familiar by now).

The answer is often to address such issues by adding more: privacy regulation via authorities, educating the users to do better, via the police and courts – but rarely by demanding action from the middleman. (That would “break the internet”.)

Does it have to be like that? That is a rhetorical question, the answer is “no, it doesn’t have to be like that”. Take my favourite example: video games. Some games may be controversial and rely on freedom of expression, but instead of saying “any restriction would break the internet”, games have age-recommendations and parental controls in answer to the concerned. This kind of self-regulation (with independent oversight boards) is common in advertising, press and many other places. I have written more about that here.

Earlier this month, Tobias Schmidt – chair of ERGA (the European audiovisual media regulators) – said to Politico that the EU’s suggested content moderation rules are “toothless” and sanctions are needed (rather than sending letters). One might add that if sanctions are fines, they may be just as toothless, as some of the platforms see fines more like the cost of doing business. So much for “we comply with local regulation”. (Really? You want a medal for not breaking the law?)

The idea that the intermediary should take action, not because it does anything wrong but because it can, is everywhere: hotels must act against trafficking, banks have strict rules on money-laundering, printshops are not allowed to make copyright infringing prints, transport companies must act on suspicion of illegal goods etc etc. Even car makers try to stop their vehicles from ending up in the hands of terrorists.

In the digital world, exemption from liability of what users do with a service is the norm. That has benefits for sure, easy access to distribution for all users. However, it appears that the European policy-makers are looking at the middlemen to help fix the internet. In the Digital Services Act, “due diligence” procedures such as an official point of contact, transparency reporting, codes of conduct, reporting criminal offences and so on (more due diligence for bigger players – with great powers…). Sounds great, but also begs a question: why not connect those due diligence obligations to the exemption from liability? That way, the EU Commission could fix the internet without breaking it. Have the cake AND eat it! Get all the juicy stuff – innovation, growth, digital champions – without the headaches and nosebleeds of fake news and revenge porn.

Surely the COMM has thought of that? If no, happy to send a link to this post. If yes, why not connect the dots?