When the internet first burst onto the scene, critics thought it would make us isolated. People, enthralled by their computer, would turn away from each other. Now, as social media infiltrates every aspect of our social and professional lives, it turns out it’s those who don’t jump on the bandwagon who become isolated. And given that social media companies almost by definition take on an outsized share of the market, they also take on an outsized role in our lives…

Read Netopia editor Per Strömbäck’s opinion in POLITICO

http://www.politico.eu/pro/opinion-the-social-media-trap/

Netopia has argued against the notion of “permission-less innovation” before. The idea that innovation is so great that it trumps everything else, including the law. Permission-less supposedly means that you don’t have to ask for permission to innovate, which is a given, but also that if the innovator breaks a few laws and rules in the process, that should be disregarded. The law (and rules in general) can be thought of as a synthesis of lessons learned, a way to avoid repeating mistakes. The permission-less innovation trump card actually says “I’m an innovator and that makes me so much smarter than anyone who has lived and their learnings have no relevance for me”. Preposterous would be to say the least. Also, of course permission-less innovation has limits, also for its most devoted proponents. If your innovation kills people, the will be consequences. It turns out permission-less innovation is more a smoke-screen to hide the principle of monetizing the work of others, which has been such a success strategy for many internet companies.

A new book by Jonathan Taplin – Move Fast and Break Things (Macmillan 2017) – adds to this by looking at the core ideology and roots of some of today’s dominant internet players. Here is an excerpt.

If the name Jonathan Taplin sounds familiar, it may be because this blog has often linked to his talk Sleeping Through a Revolution. It is worth watching again.

On Friday, Swedish prosecutors halted the investigation of rape charge against Wikileaks-founder Julian Assange. It was too difficult to proceed with the investigation as the prosecutors were not allowed to interview Assange, who took refuge to the Ecuadorian embassy in London five years ago. The incidents leading to four criminal investigations – three of lesser sexual crimes have been dropped as prosecution deadlines expired – happened during a visit by Assange to Sweden in August 2010. It was during the euphoria of Wikileaks, before the site became a funnel for Russian fake news. Julian Assange was a superstar of free speech, full of confidence and even looked like a rock star. The leak of a video of US Army helicopters firing at civilians in Baghdad made headlines and the media loved Julian Assange. In the aftermath, many have confused the man with the deed. Of course the same person can be both a voice for free speech and a rapist. Now, in the words of the alleged rape victim’s attorney Claes Borgström, Assange will not get a chance to clear his name, like a trial would have provided. Assange always said he wanted guarantees against extradition from Sweden to the US.

Since 2010, the idea of radical information freedom has been questioned. Both by the military, which has tried to silence the leaks and by the general public, which has learned the hard way about hate speech and surveillance. Assange’s problems with the law also did not help, but again: that would be confusing the individual with the cause.

Wikileaks most important source, the person who leaked the Iraq video and who may have paid a much higher price than Assange, is Chelsea Manning. She was released on Thursday, the day before Assange, having spent almost seven years in prison and in the end pardoned by former US-president Barack Obama as one of his last decisions before leaving office.

What can we learn from this story? First, things change fast. The spell of Assange’s charisma went away almost instantly with the rape charges. Second, it’s difficult to keep a secret, more than ever. That is true for all involved: Assange, Manning and the US Army. And third, maybe that justice comes in all shapes and sizes: yes, the punishment of Manning was too harsh, but the pardon made it less harsh. And while Assange will not see court over the rape charge, he has spent five years in a prison of sorts. It’s a peculiar coincidence that both Assange and Manning were cleared right after one another.

In the dominant narrative on internet regulation, any policy intervention is a threat to the openness of the internet, which of course is the principle that trumps all. Exceptions are permissible for child pornography and harmful code; barring those, every justified motive would jeopardise the freedom that made the internet great. Or something. Any initiative protecting creators of content or, God forbid, copyright is especially toxic and must be condemned in the strongest possible language.

Only against this backdrop can the pushback on the proposed “publisher’s right” be understood. Some call it “link tax,” except it’s not a tax on links. Some call it “ancillary copyright,” which makes it sound like they’re in the know, but it really only means neighbouring right: the kind of copyright that, for example, covers music recordings (the copyright for the song belongs to the composer, but if a label licenses the right to record the song, the rights to those recordings belong to the label—pretty straightforward, no?). This is what internet freedom folks talk about when they say things like “today’s copyright only benefits the intermediaries.”.

Now, as most have noted, the established news media is under pressure. Not only do internet companies take the ad revenue that used to pay for journalism (I was about to say quality journalism, but in all honesty it wasn’t always quality journalism), they also take the content. That’s right: when Google shows “snippets” of news stories in its search results or Google News, it takes content from those news outlets. Some or most users are happy with the snippet and don’t click on the link, which would have brought them to the news outlet’s own website, giving it an opportunity to get some revenue from ads or subscriptions or whatever. Of course no one in their right mind would accept this; it’s totally unfair, plus the fourth estate is important to democracy and things like that. But no news organisation is powerful enough to take on Google on its own. Enter government. Spain and Germany took sides with the news media and demanded Google share revenue when it uses snippets. The response? Google stopped showing those search results altogether, effectively cutting off traffic to the news organisations. This boycott worked; the news media said something like, “Sorry, we did not mean to offend you, big information oligarch; please put us back online; we won’t ask you for money again.”.

So if it didn’t work the first time, why is the Commission trying it again? Because Europe is bigger than the member states, at least that’s what the architect of this policy—ex-Commissioner Günther Öttinger—told us before he left. The logic is: if Spain or Germany couldn’t bring Google to its knees, perhaps the whole of the EU can. If it works or not remains to be seen. Google will likely pull the same trick again, but will the European media consumers accept it? Perhaps the value of Google’s service will deteriorate and users will go elsewhere. Or Google can simply accept the situation and start sharing revenue with those who paid for the content in the first place (raise your hand if you think that is likely!).

There is no shortage of pundits who say this “link tax” will kill the internet and won’t bring any revenue to the news media anyway. Also, it will kill startups, supposedly. But that argument misses an important point: you can still use snippets, except you have to pay. Just like so many other things in life, content comes with a price tag. If your startup relies on free content, too bad. But hey, you can always pivot! You didn’t expect free office space, electricity, laptops, or server space for your startup; you budgeted for all that stuff (or maybe you got all that from some incubator against a stake in your company). You didn’t expect staff to work for free; instead, you gave them shares or stock options. Content is no different. The good news is that a smart news business will give startups a better deal than the incumbent search behemoth.

The publisher’s right is not perfect. But if not this, how else to pay for news? How else to compel internet platforms to share some revenue with those who paid for the content they monetise? How about that for a new narrative?

“So I woke up this morning and it was the year 2025. All of the DSM policies had been implemented. (Don’t ask about the US president!)

I thought back on last night’s…

Today, Euractiv posts a guest blog by yours truly. I give my nightmare and daydream visions what the future of Europe’s digital single market could look like in a not too distant future depending on what choices the European policy-makers make today. Enjoy!

When movie piracy shifted from torrent downloads to illegal streaming, it brought a legal debate whether it was actually illegal to watch illegal streaming. We already knew from a 2104 ruling by the CJEU that downloading pirate copies is illegal. But what about streaming? Surely, the operator of the illegal streaming services break the law but perhaps there was a loophole for the viewers. Wishful thinking on the part of pirate consumers: in what must be the most obvious decision this week, month or even year, the Court of Justice of the European Union announced on Wednesday… wait for it… illegal streaming is illegal! Also for the recipient of the stream, that is.

The case in point concerned piracy configured media players – the hardware devices that can access illegal content and bring it straight to the television. The fact that anyone ever believed something like that could be legal says more about the delusions around technology than the law. If you can make a great device like that, you can also make it play by the rules.

Kudos to the CJEU, both for the ruling and the timing: it was delivered on World Intellectual Property Day. Some say technology moves faster than law. But the law catches up.

Police car in Stockholm covered with flowers during manifestation (Photo: Karin Lindgren Strömbäck)

On Friday afternoon, my hometown Stockholm suffered a terror attack. The terrorist drove a stolen beer truck down several blocks in the most popular pedestrian street in the city centre, killing four and injuring fifteen. Predictably, shock and confusion followed, but the authorities responded efficiently and the police apprehended the terrorist within hours. Further investigation is on-going, but more suspects are being interrogated about potential involvement.

For the people in Stockholm, practical problems followed. In the initial hours, everyone in central Stockholm was advised to remain indoors. The metro and commuter trains stood still. Traffic was jammed. The city centre was in lock-down as police looked for suspects and secured evidence. Rumours of shots fired in different locations spread, but turned out to be false. Telecommunications worked relatively well which made it possible to check on family members and friends, though many could not get out of their workplaces or were stuck on public transport.

Stockholm’s city layout is such that all rail traffic runs through the main artery around the Old Town and Central Station. As this was blocked, no rail traffic moved. Anyone in the south part of the city who needed to go to the northern part, and vice versa, had difficulties. Within hours, a hashtag – #openstockholm – was started to offer rides, but also food and lodging to those who could not make it home. People opened their cars and homes to strangers. Stockholm came together in this dark moment and social media was one of the tools.

There is also a dark side to social media around the terror attack. Racists spread doctored images as acts of disinformation. A popular theme was editing images of happy or indifferent muslims into the photos from the street where the terror attack happened (as in London two weeks prior). One showed a hijab-wearing woman walking happily beside the bodies of the victims. Another a young boy grinning at the camera and doing a thumbs-up.

Depending which filter bubble you belong to, social media would give very different images of the reactions to the terror attack. One of support and unity, another of hate and racism. The terror attack in Stockholm brought out the best and the worst in social media. In real life, love conquered hate and violence; on Sunday afternoon ten thousand gathered in central Stockholm in a manifestation of love.

As I write this, news of another terror attack come from Egypt, where blasts in two Coptic churches killed dozens and injured many more during Palm Sunday celebrations. My heart weeps for the victims in Stockholm and Egypt.

This is Netopia's newsletter April 10 2017

Is technology culture? The answer depends on what you mean by “technology.” And “culture.” Starting with culture, there are three main meanings of the word: culture as art, culture as human effort, and culture as shared values and rituals. If culture means art, the thing we take pleasure from and express ourselves with, then No. Technology is not culture. However, in this case technology can be a product of art, for example when film-maker James Cameron invents a new type of 3d-film camera to be able to shoot Avatar. Technology can support culture, for example when the printing press made mass publication of books possible or when the vinyl record player provided a mass distribution format for music.

Second, if culture means human effort, then Yes technology is indeed culture. Culture as opposed to nature. Just like the original meaning of the word culture – from cultivate, related to agriculture – technology is the outcome of human effort. It reflects human choices, values and ideology. If you build a house, it will reflect your values: maybe you want big windows to let the light in. Or you want small windows to avoid outsiders peeking in. A house is technology. Digital technology is no different. Some like to think of technology as a form of higher power. They might say “you can’t stop new technology.” But they are wrong; technology is not nature. Technology is culture.

Lastly, if culture means shared values and rituals, then maybe technology is culture. Think of a ritual like a Christmas celebration. Ingredients like candles, stockings, and tree decorations are all products of technology (the tree itself is from nature, but you need technology—a saw—to cut it). The values we like to associate with Christmas—spending time with family, sharing food, and giving gifts—are eternal and independent of technology. Let’s say technology can help give form to some of the shared values and rituals that are culture. Different cultures obviously celebrate different holidays in very different ways.

And of course the answer depends on what you mean by technology. There are two main ways to think of technology: one looks at function—at does a tool do? A saw cuts a tree. The other looks at how technology governs relationships between people: The saw cuts trees so you can build a house in which to put a Christmas tree that your family can gather around. Without technology, humans would be without protection, vulnerable, and helpless. Technology sets us apart from animals. We survive by making technology.

Why do I ask if technology is culture? Stupid question, you may think. But some say Tech Is Culture to make a certain point: that technology supports culture and therefore cannot hurt culture and thus must not be regulated or restricted in the name of culture. This is speaking from self-interest: the companies that provide this technology will make more money if they are not made to share revenue with those who make the content they monetize. I would put this in the culture-as-art and technology-as-tool brackets, respectively. As I’ve described above, in this respect technology is not culture. The point fails.

Taking a closer look at some of the claims made:

“Online driving cultural diversity”—more ”content is being produced and consumed than before. True, if you look at quantity, it’s easy to say that there is more. Online has made some types of culture accessible to new audiences: niches like speed runs in video games or foreign cooking classes (the list is endless, of course). But factor in quality, and a different pattern appears. In most sectors, hits get bigger and niches more niche, but the middle loses out. The hourglassis the shape of digital consumption. But it is in the middle we often find what we think of as quality; the books that get the best reviews are most often not the bestsellers, but also not completely obscure. The television drama that wins awards: same. When the middle is squeezed, we get more of the most popular and more of the most specialized, but something is lost. That’s something we think of as quality. Those that inspired the next great works. The works that live forever. Casablanca, L’Étrangère, Mrs. Robinson.

“Online driving jobs and growth in the creative sectors”—this ”is a strange claim, as creative sector organizations keep asking for help against online phenomena such as dominant players and unauthorized distribution. But there is a fair point that a lot of new jobs are in digital content. The good news is that it’s not one or the other; there is nothing to say we can’t have both support for independents against abusive business practices and promote functioning digital markets at the same time. Digital content jobs, creative jobs, real creators… the only loser would be those intermediaries that harvest most of the value without sharing the revenue with those who made the content (looking at you, GAFA and ISPs!).

“Online driving the fight against piracy” Legal streaming services killed music piracy is half true. The whole answer is that legal services help consumers go legal, and action against pirate services makes illegal less attractive. A study on site-blocking in the UK showed a 75% decrease in illegal consumption and a 12% increase in legal consumption. Legal services is half the answer, so online drives half the fight against piracy. The same piracy that it made happen in the first place.

“Online driving innovation in the creative sectors” Yes, the creative sectors were among the first to go digital. The first to embrace the opportunity. Think of visual effects in movies. Think of video games. Think of digital music recording. The creative sectors were also first to see some of the downsides: cybercrime, monocultures, dominant players, filter bubbles, fake news, and hate speech. The creative sectors understand digital and innovation. They also understand there is a need for remedies against the dark sides.

“Online driving more consumption of European cultural content” True, but it can do even better. The audience is local, and creative content can be particularly sensitive to local flavor. It is no coincidence that some of the most famous digital content companies focus on local content. Let the creators and their business partners tailor the offerings to the audience. That works best for everybody.

Is technology culture? Yes, no, and maybe. Technology cannot trump culture. Legislators should not be tempted by the promise that technology is culture. Some technology supports some culture some of the time but can also hurt culture and thus must be regulated or restricted in the name of culture. The way forward is to make sure technology supports culture. That way, we can have both.

Consumer power may be an illusion online, but advertiser power is real. In theory, users can “vote with their feet” and leave a service they don’t like. This is often hailed as “competition is only one click away”. Except that does not take into account how network effects influence life online. Metcalfe’s law explains how the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes in the network (or users), which is why online services are so focused on scale. The flipside is that the penalty for being outside increases with the value of the network. Try to quit Facebook and see how that hurts your real world social life: invites, points of reference, jokes, even dates vetting you – all lost. (Here’s one story of how hard it can be.) The consequence: Consumer power decreases exponentially with the size of the network.

Advertiser power, on the other hand, is real. Google found out the hard way last week when a host of advertisers pulled their adverts from YouTube after having found that their ads appear next to hate speech from sources such as “American white-nationalists, anti-gay preachers and radical Islamic groups”. As Google (which owns YouTube) relies almost completely on advertising for its revenue, it acted fast. Tougher community guidelines and hiring more people to police content were some of the promises made as Google apologized to its advertisers. Not only will hate speech videos lose ad revenue but may be taken down altogether.

Not a day too early, the idea of radical freedom of speech online came to an end many years ago, as shown by another famous internet law: Godwin’s law that explains that every discussion online that goes on long enough will lead to one person comparing another to Hitler. This was in 1990, years before Google was founded or YouTube invented. In fact, every freedom of speech act anywhere has restrictions to such things as hate speech and death threats. The question is how anyone came to believe the internet would be any different.

So, good news Google finally decided to take some responsibility for the content it distributes. It is not “only a platform” that makes the distribution available to third parties, but also monetizes the content they upload and promotes it to viewers based on past preferences through its algorithms. Some call it filter bubbles, but you can also be called curation. Or editing. Of course, the same issues have occurred in traditional media since day one so what Google is finding out is much similar to what the press has spent a few centuries dealing with: how can we balance the benefits of free speech against hate and threats. The answer has always been editorial accountability. Let’s hope Google has seen the light and can become part of the solution, creating an example for other online actors. Next, let’s hope it applies the same insight to neighboring issues, like privacy rights for individual users and protection for creators whose content is distributed against their will. That would make the internet platforms very helpful, not only to their shareholders and advertisers, but to the world. Silicon Valley loves to talk about changing the world. Right here is a good opportunity.

This is Netopia’s newsletter March 27th 2017

I vowed never to complain about Brussels traffic after I visited Istanbul. The moves my cab driver made to get me to the airport in time included reversing at high speed against oncoming traffic on the kerb of a highway. Traffic and congestion is a real problem for many cities. With safety steadily improving and pollution decreasing, congestion is the next barrier for the automotive industry. Flying cars have been a popular daydream since the 1950s, but more realistically, digital technology can help use existing streets and roads more efficiently. Against that backdrop, it’s great to see businesses and governments experimenting with new approaches: self-driving cars, ride-shares, real-time traffic updates, seamless mobility systems. A forerunner in this field is, of course, Uber. Much to the frustration of regular taxi drivers, its driver service became very popular very quickly and is often considered the highest valued “start-up”. Netopia has been critical of Uber because it refuses to take responsibility as a transport company, rather thinking of itself as a technology company – the debatable logic being that if you’re “just a technology company”, you have no responsibility for what users do, let alone regulation. This has been the trump card, not only for the Googles and Facebooks of Silicon Valley but also internet access providers all over the world to avoid difficult responsibility issues. Uber may be the one that has taken this “look ma, no hands” approach the farthest.

On New Year’s Eve 2013, a six-year-old girl was hit and killed by an Uber driver in San Francisco. Uber accepted no responsibility for the accident as the driver was between fares. It’s hard to imagine a transport company getting away with something like that, whether it would be bus, taxi, limo or truck. Rather, such a company would be expected to compensate the family from its corporate insurance. Uber blamed the driver.

In December 2016, a self-driving Uber experimental vehicle ran six red lights in San Francisco. Uber’s response? Blame the driver, not the software, but the human who allegedly was operating the vehicle at the moment of one of the incidents. The California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked Uber’s permit to test self-driving cars, and the company moved the experiments to Arizona (which may or may not have fewer red lights).

2017 started with a new flavour of headache for Uber when former employee Susan Fowler articulated her experiences of sexual harassment in the Uber workplace. This inspired others to step forward and give similar testimony. Take a wild guess whether Uber acted responsibly when such problems were first brought up internally or was “simply brushed aside and swept under the carpet of collective Uber suffering”. This added to the #DeleteUber trend on social media (which started in January as a protest against a perceived attempt by Uber to profit from a protest against suggested immigration restrictions – a different [and long] story, start here) where riders took stands on social media and moved to other suppliers. Not a case of blaming the driver, but another example of failure to take proper responsibility.

If this were not enough, a video leaked last month where Uber CEO Travis Kalanick argues with an Uber driver over falling fares. Exiting the car, Kalanick says, “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!” The irony, of course, is that this is the exact method that Uber has always applied. Blame everything on somebody else.

Kalanick later pledged to get leadership help, but it may not be the leadership skills that are lacking but the whole identity of the company.

Netopia agrees with much of Uber’s analysis of the world’s transport problems. These examples show clearly that if they are to be resolved, it needs to be done with a completely different attitude.

UPDATE: On Friday, March 25th, an autonomous Uber vehicle was involved in, but not the cause of, a crash in Tempe, Arizona. Autonomous drive tests have been suspended pending investigation. The question is not that experimental vehicles crash – of course they will crash sometimes, just like new aeroplanes or computers, for that matter. The question is how the company deals with crashes. Here is a good opportunity to do right. https://twitter.com/fresconews/status/845538056031649793