This is the Bad Place

This is the Bad Place. Paul Rissen (@r4isstatic) Taxonomy Boot Camp, 16th October 2018 London, UK It’s 2018. Welcome to the World Wide Web. Welcome…

https://twitter.com/JoshKurp/status/914941907234586624 …to the Bad Place. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Web, but I can’t deny that after twenty-five years or so, the honeymoon period is definitely over -

when an argument over how many episodes are going to be in a TV show can go south..

https://twitter.com/foomandoonian/status/914838619143188480 …Like this. Godwin’s law. For all that the Web removes barriers of technology, to allow the sharing of information, its core philosophy could be summed up, thusly:

“…everything you say, or think, or do… is AWESOME!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/toomuchdew/11914685765/ Now whilst the increasing availability of information, and the lowering of barriers to access that information, is a positive, the Web also leaves society open to malicious exploits.

What we’ve seen in the past few years is the growing use of what a report from the American think tank RAND called ‘the firehose of falsehood’ model of propaganda.

“The Russian propaganda model is highvolume and multichannel, and it disseminates messages without regard for the truth. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.” https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html It laughs in the face of targeting, machine learning, knowing all about you. It doesn’t care. Its’ mission is to distract, drown and discourage.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37527185@N05/23052841830 It’s also an exploit on the cultural values that many of us have grown up with. How many of us were told, as kids, to always ask questions - to ‘trust no one’ - to always have an inquiring, questioning outlook on things? How many of us have learnt in adulthood that there is no single truth, that reality is more complex than we thought? It’s an exploit that latches on to the positive force of curiosity and insistence of objective evidence, and turns that into uncertainty, cynicism, self-doubt and apathy. Furthermore, the strategies that we’ve turned to so far, to combat the firehose of falsehood, are proving ineffective. as the report goes on to say:

“…the very factors that make the firehose of falsehood effective also make it difficult to counter. Traditional counter-propaganda approaches will likely be inadequate in this context.” https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html Fact-checking ends up being a tactic of distraction. Ultimately, whether it’s true or false isn’t the issue - what matters is the influence, the idea it puts in someone’s mind. What we need to do, therefore, is refresh, update, change our mental models of how we deal with information environments, particularly in the context of journalism, public discussion and debate - and then use those models to design better environments online. Today, I want to attempt to establish some ground rules for those new information environments - some principles, guidelines which should help set the scene for future development.

13 rules for designing better* information environments * for an inherently subjective and incomplete definition of ‘better’

1. ‘Two sides to every story’ doesn’t work. @r4isstatic ‘Two sides to every story’ is bullshirt, as Eleanor Shellstrop might say. The intent behind this phrase is certainly good - that just taking someone’s word for something isn’t necessarily going to get you to the truth - history is written by the victors, bullies spin false tales to justify their actions, and so on, but…

“Journalism predicated on avoiding perception of bias is often journalism that avoids facts” Eric Umansky https://twitter.com/ericuman/status/922267896654565376 but the maxim has devolved into an artificial format where every issue must have two (and only two) sides, who must always be in opposition, and must receive equal airtime, no matter how ridiculous or harmful their claims. We need to take back the good intent, here, and explicitly reject the way it has been twisted.

“[Twitter’s error was that they] thought making everyone’s voice carry equal weight was the same as giving everyone an equal voice.” Evan Hensleigh https://twitter.com/futuraprime/status/919679075123433473 The Web is neutral to messages - but we’ve gotten smug, too easily. Equal weight doesn’t necessarily mean equal voice.

“Because speech can be used to suppress other speech, the speech maximum is not the zero-regulation point.” Yonatan Zungler https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/914609721696559109 https://extranewsfeed.com/why-calls-for-free-speech-arent-the-same-b19732511351 Free speech, and staying silent/neutral inherently benefits those in power. We have to acknowledge that those without power (or indeed with less power) face much higher barriers to being heard, and even when they are heard, those in power can use their ‘free speech’ to drown out or target powerless individuals. Free speech isn’t free.

2. Tolerance is a choice, not a paradox. @r4isstatic It’s important to be able to identify and point at a hateful set of beliefs, so that people know they exist and can fight against them - better than denying that humanity is incapable of evil and has never done anything wrong, but we need to admit that founding an economy on attention has not worked.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiloponus/status/898428274010767360 “So much for the tolerant left.” etc. Fight back against that nonsense!

3. Attention != Value @r4isstatic Google’s success was built on their hypothesis that links are the currency of the Web - the more inbound links to an addressable resource, the more valuable that thing must be. But this was also the fatal flaw. More inbound links is not necessarily a sign of value - it’s one of popularity, of attention - these are aspects of value, but cannot encapsulate it entirely. Journalism constantly needs to find something to fill airtime or pages, be that physical or virtual, because those pages also contain the advertising that keeps them in business. Subscription models help slightly, but they also are socially restrictive. The point being, though, that in a constant search for something to shine the light of news on, the more dramatic and controversial subjects draw journalistic attention, which then itself implies tolerance of hateful viewpoints.

https://twitter.com/lindseywiebe/status/914849541983227909 This tweet was posted in Oct 2017. Sadly, it’s still relevant. We have broken the news, broken even the simplistic chronological streams, but equating popularity with value, to tragic effect. We trained people to think chronologically, then abruptly switched to a ‘top of the pops’ model, without changing UX.

4. Life is more complex than can be summed up in a Tweet. @r4isstatic Reality is more complex than can be summed up in a tweet, a chain of tweets, hell, even a post on medium. Indeed, any individual piece of content in a linear medium can only ever hope to trace a path through a more complex web of connections.

https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/914570166599606273 This has served us well, so far - there’s a reason why the WWW took off, whilst Ted Nelson’s Xanadu struggled. Simple technology is great for spreading fast. But simple ! = simplistic. Just because the technology is simple, doesn’t mean we should restrict ourselves to simplistic explanations of the world. We need to learn to grow beyond linear media, get to grips with, and acknowledge complexity. That’s a challenge for us all.

5. Machine learning will not save us. @r4isstatic Let’s get things straight. Computers are counting machines. Number crunchers. They are dumb, they do not understand. Yet. And even when they do, like children learning from parents, they will adopt our biases and morals. Just like parents, we need to be responsible, and handle with care.

“We need more poetry than data. This obsession with data and quantities has made us blind to our real problems. We meticulously count trees, their every leave and every vein, while the whole forest is on fire.” Hossein Derakhshan https://twitter.com/h0d3r/status/966418319472451585 ML can help, sure, but it, by itself, will not be the answer.

“For some people, small, beautiful events is what life is all about!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/8392723271 In the 1960s, a new wave swept through academia, and specifically the field of history. The use of computers, statistics etc would help us understand history! But this robs us of our humanity.

6. Find a way to balance agility and responsibility. @r4isstatic But we’re the rebels, aren’t we? We’re the goodies, sticking it to the man, breaking free of those old fuddy-duddy rules that held us back, you know, those music industry dinosaurs who made their fortunes off the back of huge demand and limited supply? Doing the ol’ switch-a-roo on those uptight city planners with our lack-of-basicsecurity-or-health checks on our AirBnB lodgings, our Uber taxis..

https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/910559187884580864 Two mantras sum up the current moment. “Move fast and break things”, and “Don’t be evil”. Well, my friends, we broke things. And, although we may have the best intentions, we can be evil, often in ways we don’t expect. Yes, we broke free of rules and limitations that didn’t make sense any more. But we also broke other things. Security. Identity. Rights. People.

“Hans…Are we the baddies?” The technology industry, the culture around us, rewards us for making things fast and not questioning the norms, not taking into account the needs of diverse user groups. This is all a very naive, infantile, perhaps teenager-ish way of looking at the world. And it doesn’t tend to make things better in the long run - it solidifies traditional bases of power. Yes. Rebellion. Burn it all down and start again, damn the consequences. The world isn’t just goodies versus baddies. It’s time we grew up. [PAUSE] I’m not advocating that we throw out our iterative development approaches - perfection is still the enemy of good, after all. Getting something out into the world so that you can see what really happens, as opposed to guessing about what might happen - this is a good approach.

https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/930437794463281152 But. It’s also not an excuse for not accepting or thinking about the consequences of your actions. Yes, you can’t plan for every eventuality (though you should at least do some thinking beforehand and consider that there may be groups of people who are not like you out there) - but more importantly, you have to hold your hands up when things go wrong and say ‘yes, we didn’t think of that, we’re sorry’ - offer sincere apologies, make recompense, and then make what you’ve built better, ideally with input from those that you’d hurt.

7. Remember that science is about understanding, not truth. @r4isstatic We’ve got distracted, we’ve adopted science as a religion. Some (Popper) say it’s about doubt. But we know how doubt can be weaponised. Really, it’s about understanding.

“Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus - ‘we do not know’. It assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge.” Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014) falsifiability - i.e. it must be possible to check whether a hypothesis is true or false - it’s not a valid (or indeed useful) hypothesis if it’s something that would require knowledge beyond the bounds of what is currently possible (or indeed, perfect knowledge), otherwise you could just make anything up, and we’d have to accept it.

8. Recognise the various forms of falsehood. @r4isstatic ‘Fake news’ is misleading. We can be more specific.

Dis-information Information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country. Mis-information Information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm. Mal-information Information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization or country. https://shorensteincenter.org/information-disorder-framework-for-research-and-policymaking This is a brilliant report. We can design environments around this.

https://shorensteincenter.org/information-disorder-framework-for-research-and-policymaking/ Check the sources, not (just) the claims. “Increasingly, when assessing the credibility of a piece of information, the source who originally created the content or first shared it, can provide the strongest evidence about whether something is accurate. “…People relying on social media for information, need to be investigating the source, almost before they look at the content itself. “[We] need more powerful tools to be able to visually map online networks and connections to understand how dis-information is being created, spread and amplified.”

9. Respect the intelligence of your users @r4isstatic There is hope. First of all, don’t treat all users as fools.

www.pewinternet.org/2017/09/11/how-people-approach-facts-and-information 51% of Americans are cautious, curious, confident, eager and willing to engage with news & information sources.

www.pewinternet.org/2017/09/11/how-people-approach-facts-and-information For balance, here’s the other 49%, but only 25% of those are actively unwilling to engage - and they’re older white men.

10. Respect and learn from others outside of your domain. @r4isstatic We are not the first to be realising/thinking about these problems. Not by a long shot.

https://twitter.com/OddLetters/ status/962426102080618497 Governments and society have been quick to fund science and technology. But humanities and social science scholars, again, much less easy to measure ‘value’, are consistently being defunded. It’s time to respect and listen to them.

https://twitter.com/livlab/status/908685556716130304 Passion is good. Knope vs Swanson.

11. Diversity matters. Reflect it. @r4isstatic It does. Not withstanding Popper, it is important to hear from others, even if it means uncomfortable truths for those of us who, and I include myself in this, unwittingly or otherwise, benefit from privileges. We need to design information environments that go beyond ‘two sides’ arguments, and fully reflect diversity of viewpoints and opinions, whilst maintaining the need for solid evidence to back up assertions, using links.

“Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy presupposes that it is possible to write from an objective perspective. We do not strive to establish a “true” account of events, explanation of practices, or definition of terms. We do not believe this exists in fandom. Our intent with Fanlore is to create a space where fans can tell their own stories from their own perspective. The plural point of view policy asks fans to recognize the point of view from which they tell the story, and invites those with other, differing points of view to tell their own stories about the same events, places, concepts and people.” Plural Point of View, Fanlore Wiki https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Plural_Point_of_View Fans will save us all.

Ethical Standards: Truthfulness Inclusiveness Harmlessness Helpfulness Content Standards: Accuracy Timeliness Coverage Authority Objectivity Ethical Standards for Community & Content, Fanlore Wiki, based on G. J. Warnock’s ‘The Object of Morality’ (1971) https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Ethical_Standards_for_Community_%26_Content

12. Design for Communities. @r4isstatic

“Community management isn’t the same as moderation…it’s about encouraging, rewarding and highlighting the good and the valuable, not just disappearing the bad.” Meg Pickard https://twitter.com/megpickard/status/912958228471975936 https://twitter.com/megpickard/status/912958503781838848 What is it?

“Community design is vastly underrated and massively overlooked…different from product design and user research though building on both. “It’s about creating spaces/experiences/tools/ rewards that shape and help users. What kind of community do you want? Design things that will support that.” Meg Pickard https://twitter.com/megpickard/status/912954040295809024 https://twitter.com/megpickard/status/912958735546503170 https://twitter.com/megpickard/status/912959238821044224 A forgotten art of design.

“The key to this is finding people who play the role of conversational catalyst within a group, to welcome newcomers, rein in old hands and set the tone of the conversation so that it can become a community.” Kevin Marks http://epeus.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/here-comes-everybody-tummlers-geishas.html Tummelling. Managing conversations. Creating a space.

13. It’s OK to change your mind. @r4isstatic politicians see changing of minds as weakness, due to influence of the press, who love drama, conflict, ‘strength’ of singlemindedness (e.g. May/Brexit, case in point).

“There’s nothing peculiar about [an opinion piece] being next to a contradictory or opposing argument on the homepage. “Life comes at you in a variety of different flavours.” Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/note-magazines-age-twitter/ https://twitter.com/leisa/status/917997599184994304 What matters is finding our humanity, and the connections between us, despite our differences.

https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/962772932404633602 Be humble!

In summary…

13 rules for designing better information environments 1. ‘Two sides to every story’ doesn’t work. 2. Tolerance is a choice, not a paradox. 3. Attention != Value. 4. Life is more complex than can be summed up in a Tweet. 5. Machine learning will not save us. 6. Find a way to balance agility and responsibility. @r4isstatic 7. Remember that science is about understanding, not truth. 8. Recognise the various forms of falsehood. 9. Respect the intelligence of your users. 10. Respect and learn from others outside of your domain. 11. Diversity matters. Reflect it. 12. Design for Communities. 13. It’s OK to change your mind.

https://twitter.com/wblau/status/ 966737239136002049

Thank you. @r4isstatic Slide templates by Alice Bartlett http://alicebartlett.co.uk/blog/how-to-do-ok-at-slides