There are bigger problems than privacy

by time news

BerlinThe shutdown of Facebook on Monday revived discourses that were little discussed for a while, such as how we actually stand on the market power of the large digital corporations. Whether we want to make ourselves dependent on them and what is the overall status of our digital status quo. The media theorist and publicist Geert Lovink heads the Institute for Net Culture in Amsterdam, a university of applied sciences for applied internet research. He says we have to renegotiate our digital infrastructure as a whole. The market power of tech companies can be overcome.

Berlin newspaper: Mr. Lovink, you once said that critical internet research has always been a poor investment. One might think, however, that precisely this dispute would be a topic these days that should be understood as very decisive. Are we not faced with a predetermined breaking point in technological history, which begs the question of what influence does a few companies have on the most important infrastructure of our time?

Geert Lovink: In my impression it is still the case that these discussions are only topics of the day that are rarely translated in the long term. Let’s just look at the research on this: If we look at this in Germany in departments such as the humanities or media sciences, but also in communication sciences – then nobody seems to be responsible for what the internet and the technology behind it are . As if it were a kind of meta-medium for which nobody feels responsible.

In your opinion, who should take responsibility for this and how?

We see on the one hand that there is a lot of controversy surrounding the internet, on the other hand it is often viewed as something that happens in the background. In Germany, the technology, i.e. the networks, is often no longer talked about. It is more about topics like “the digital society” that are discussed. I think we’re getting away from what it’s actually about.

Why do you think it is important to talk about the networks first?

Because otherwise we always run away from dealing with the basics. If we deal with the digital society instead of dealing with technology, then we accept the way the Internet is laid out at its foundations. According to the motto: It is there and works, so let’s move on to the agenda. Traditionally, we still think that IT is responsible. But she also rejects the responsibility. It says: We are just technicians. Don’t look at us. It wasn’t us. I would describe that as a classic engineering mentality.

The monetization of the internet is not a detail. If everything is handled digitally and the big development on the Internet is currently digital money, then we have to see that this is a hugely important topic for future generations, how it is dealt with.

Geert Lovink

If we look back to the 1990s, when you were already active on these topics, we encounter a completely different approach to the Internet that can be described as tech optimism. The Internet as a prospect of a society that has been changed for the better by technology. Today this idea seems to be buried under a hyperreality – as you once wrote in an essay – which is more overwhelming than it is beneficial for us. At the same time, with the so-called blockchain, we have been seeing the emergence of a technology for ten years that promised hope for a renaissance of the idea that the Internet could still be organized in a decentralized manner for at least a while.

The blockchain is a good example. If we take a look at the digitization of money, and actually all economic conditions, we can say that we are making rapid progress. But the developments bypass large parts of the public and actually we mainly talk about the consequences. At our institute, however, we find that we should intervene much earlier. We would have to intervene now instead of just talking about the consequences of decisions made somewhere. We would have to pay much more attention to the topic and understand that the future of our economic situation is at stake here. The monetization of the internet is not a detail. If everything is handled digitally and the big development on the Internet is currently digital money, then we have to see that this is a hugely important topic for future generations, how it is dealt with.

uni paderborn

To person

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of “Zero Comments”, “The Halfway Social”, “Under the Spell of Platforms” and “Digital Nihilism” (all published by Transkript-Verlag Bielefeld). Since 2004 he has headed the Institute for Net Culture at the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam (networkcultures.org).

We know all kinds of ghosts about it. The now deceased and former FAZ publisher Frank Schirrmacher discussed risks from technological change at an early stage. But let’s also think of more recent works such as that of the sociologist Nick Couldry, who wrote the book “The Costs of Connection” in 2019 about the social dynamics that arise from the business with data and who thinks we are facing a renaissance of colonial conditions . The big tech companies would poach in Central and South America on the Internet like the Spanish Conquista in the 16th century.

This voluntary data submission, as we see it everywhere on social media, is based on an implicit social contract. As a user of these platforms, I use their online services free of charge and voluntarily hand over my data to their operators. As a user, I hardly notice the consequences of this daily swap for me. What an imbalance there is. Conversely, if we want to decide against this approach, that means that we have to terminate the social contract mentioned at the beginning.

How?

From my perspective, it is not enough here to talk about data protection through regulation, because it does not terminate the contract, but rather – even if it has been adapted – continues it. Regulation alone won’t make a difference. On the contrary: That will only mean that we will wait even longer for decisions that are essential: to design protocols or applications alternatively. We have to think of the Internet as an infrastructure in a much more radical way: as a common good. This tragic monopoly phase in which we are currently stuck is surmountable. Especially as Europeans, we should structure differently, we want to use the Internet. I mean, we live in a country with a large number of very talented technicians. You can’t say we don’t have this knowledge here. On the contrary: Changing the way we handle data is not difficult. But a lot depends on it. Just the future of our democracy and how we want to live and communicate together. We are faced with much bigger issues than the question of data protection alone.

At the moment, and this may have been illustrated by the shutdown of Facebook’s services last Monday, the perseverance of the users seems to be quite strong …

It’s like this: the infrastructure is there. We talked a lot about the future in the 1990s. But now the future is here. All are online. That means that we have to think above all about property relations. Compared to climate protection, this is a small undertaking. Taking action against climate change will present us with huge challenges. Making changes to how data is handled is a small task in comparison. I’m part of the generation that helped build the Internet as we know it today. Perhaps not many remember it. But not so long ago it was very easy to turn your back on Myspace and switch to Facebook. Back then it had enormous potential, whereas today we seem to be completely bogged down in the assumption that we would not be able to switch platforms.

You wrote a whole book about it: Sad by Design. In it you describe very clearly how we can no longer find our way out of addiction and how this affects our mood.

Above all, this has to do with how we are attracted by the technologies that Facebook uses. On these platforms there is practically no time to reflect, to think about a topic, because Facebook has very cleverly built assumptions about our behavior into its algorithms and thus drives us through rotating and flashing impressions like in a casino. Especially for young people it seems very difficult to get out of this constructed social world. This may even give the impression that it is the same – their social environment and what they live on social media. So if we say we want to change that, then we have to start there too. It is no longer possible to separate them. Just putting your cell phone down for a weekend hardly works anymore.

But couldn’t the Internet be discussed differently? After all, we’ve seen grassroots movements like #blacklivesmatter gain strength on social media. Couldn’t a movement against the Internet, as it is today, also emerge on the Internet?

That is the task – and, after all, we are here in Berlin in their main headquarters – the creative industry. Design plays a big role in this regard and so one has to deal with how to use it to mobilize people to switch platforms. I advocate building workshops in Berlin with the aim of designing programs in such a way that we can achieve this. We know many bad examples in Germany. But much better than criticizing that is to experiment with new approaches.

The interview was conducted by Katharina Brienne.

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