This is the final entry in a series of four posts about corporate takedowns. The first post was about American Apparel. The second post was about Theranos. Last week’s post was about the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal. Today’s post will discuss Gawker.
Gawker was a blog website focused on New York City celebrity and media news and gossip. It was launched in 2002 and was a popular source of often controversial content about famous people and prominent organizations. Gawker faced first public scrutiny and later legal battles about posting videos, e-mails, and other private information that was suspected to have been improperly obtained or in violation of confidentiality or copyright interests. In 2016, the end of a protracted legal battle over one such posting led to a $140 million legal judgment against Gawker and the company’s resulting bankruptcy.
This is the third in a series of four posts about corporate takedowns. The first post was about American Apparel. Last week’s post was about Theranos. Today’s post is about Facebook, focused on the recent Cambridge Analytica data sharing revelations. The fourth and final post, on April 24, will discuss Gawker.
For an in-depth discussion of general compliance issues with Facebook as an online platform, check out this post.
In March 2018, The New York Times and The Guardian published a series of investigative articles exposing a data breach between the social media platform Facebook and the UK political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. This has incited a firestorm of controversy around data sharing, privacy expectations, online community moderation practices, and ethical standards for consumer protections by companies holding their data.
Check out these TED and TEDx talks on privacy expectations and technological innovations. As advancing technology makes a more complex impact on society than ever, individuals’ needs to cultivate their sharing practices and define their privacy expectations are increasing in importance.
This is the fifth in a series of six posts on compliance issues with various online platforms. The first post was about YouTube. The second post was about Facebook. The fourth post discussed Instagram. Last week’s post was about Twitter. Today’s post will cover Snapchat. The sixth and final post in the series, on April 12, will be about Reddit.
Snapchat is an app-based photo and video messaging service. Upon its initial release in 2011, Snapchat grew quickly in popularity due to its novel feature which allowed users to share messages that then disappeared. This concept evolved from a person-to-person design to then include a chronological timeline of stories and content sponsored by brands, media groups, and influencers.
Check out these TED and TEDx talks on the ethics of innovation in technology. This includes compliance risks and ethical considerations in knowledge acquisition, engineering, and design.
In an increasingly inter-connected and digital society, challenges to privacy and reputation are frequent. Even before social media put everyone at constant pressure to “overshare,” when people’s very personal details were not always a quick Google search away, privacy was still under threat. A person’s visibility and public representations are often judged and demanded for credibility and honesty evaluations performed by employers, potential partners, members of the community, and even complete strangers. Giving up privacy in favor of radical openness may be the way some reality stars have attained their celebrity, but for many people this feels invasive and like a violation of security.
In a broader sense, people’s individual privacy settings in terms of what they wish to share or disclose, how, and to whom, have a direct bearing on reputation. Cultural practices around privacy and information sharing can give rise to serious reputational risk that impacts individuals and communities and frays the social fabric in which transparency is desirable or even possible. These norms and ethical expectations are intensified in the digital age, where an individual’s personal information can never truly be deleted or taken back once it is made public.
GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation – is intended to establish a stronger, unified system of protection of personal data for individuals and businesses within the European Union. GDPR was adopted directly by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission on April 27, 2016. Following a two-year transition period, GDPR will become directly binding and enforceable as of May 25, 2018.
GDPR is an improvement upon the 1995 Data Protection Directive, intended to enhance control by individuals over their own personal data and accountability for organizations in how they collect, handle, and maintain it. The Data Protection Directive was implemented by individual law in each of the EU nations and therefore created a patchwork of standards and practices varying between the member states. GDPR therefore is intended to simplify and integrate requirements in a more cohesive and competent supervisory model.
Groundhog Day is a classic comedy film from 1993. The movie centers around Bill Murray’s character Phil Connors, who is a weatherman on-location in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania covering the annual Groundhog Day event there. The town’s festivities around the ritual of the groundhog coming out of his hole to check whether or not he sees his shadow are a huge media event and popular celebration which Connors, who is generally obnoxious and condescending, finds ridiculous. On February 2, Connors has an unpleasant and miserable day in which he is annoyed by everyone around him, acts out, and totally fails to charm his producer Rita Hanson, played by Andie McDowell, with whom he is in unrequited love. The next day he wakes up and is alarmed and confused to find that it is not a new day and February 3, but rather it is February 2 again and the prior day is repeating exactly as it happened before.
Connors winds up trapped in a time loop in which only he is lucid of it. He experiences February 2 over and over, with his memory and knowledge retained but otherwise no evidence in the world or other people that the day has happened before and will happen again. Connors goes through a complicated process of reckoning with this reality and ultimately makes an ambition of getting Hanson, who hates him, to fall in love with him.
As previously discussed on this blog, the universe of the science fiction show Black Mirror is very interesting from a compliance and ethics perspective. As discussed in this post about the first three series of the show and this post about the fourth series, the show often focuses on connections between humanity and technology. The show frequently contemplates the negative impact of excessive or dangerous reliance on technology and warns of the disruptions to people and communities that could result from overly integrating advanced technology into life.
While the most common themes of Black Mirror indeed pertain to traditional risks of overuse of technology, such as data privacy, consent, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, there’s an additional layer of commentary on the show which focuses on broader social issues, such as power, community, and justice. Indeed, the question of how a technologically-advanced society might define and handle justice uniquely is compelling. Portrayals of justice throughout all four series of Black Mirror include the treatment of issues such as punishment, reparations, confessions, investigations, judgment, and surveillance.
Black Mirror is a very popular US-UK television science fiction series. It originally aired on Channel 4 in the UK and is now released and broadcasted by the subscription video streaming service Netflix. The series is anthology-style, with short seasons of stand-alone episodes which are like mini films. Most of the episodes of the series touch upon the dominance of and overreach into human life by technology, such as social media, AI, and other advanced, immersive systems and devices. The take offered is quite dramatic, often delving deeply into adverse psychological and sociological effects on modern society, taking a dark and even dystopian perspective.
While all the episodes of Black Mirror do depict a future reality, it is an immediate and accessible reality impacted by technology exceeding that which is currently possible but not so much as to be unthinkable. Indeed, the title of the show, Black Mirror, refers to current technology which is increasingly ubiquitous and addictive – television screens, computer monitors, and smartphone displays. The show both entices with the idea that many of these technological advancements could be convenient or novel or life-enhancing, while also warning that the obsessive and addictive aspects of technology could cause great harm and disruption if not developed and managed thoughtfully and carefully with the risks well in mind.
“The Entire History of You” (Series 1, Episode 3): In this episode, a couple struggling with mistrust and insinuations of infidelity make disastrous use of a common biometric – a “grain” implant everyone has that records everything they see, hear, and do. The recordings on the implants can be replayed via “re-dos.” This is used for surveillance purposes by security and management, as the memories can be played to an external video monitor for third parties to watch. Individuals can also watch the re-dos from their implants directly in their eyes, which allows them to repeatedly watch re-dos, often leading them to question and analyse the sincerity and credibility of people with whom they interact. People can also erase the records from their implants, altering the truthfulness of the recordings. This troubles the status of trust and honesty in society which has already in contemporary life been eroded by the influence of the internet.
“Be Right Back” (Series 2, Episode 1): In this episode, Martha is mourning her boyfriend, Ash, who died in a car accident. As she struggles to deal with his loss, her friend who has lso lost a partner recommends an online service that allows people to stay in touch with dead loved ones. The service crawls the departed person’s e-mail and social media profiles to create a virtual version of the person. After the machine learning advances enough by consuming and trying enough communications, it can also digest videos and photos by graduating from chatting via instant message to replicating the deceased’s voice and talking on the phone. At its most advanced, the service even allows a user to create an android version of the deceased that resembles him or her in every physical aspect and imitates the elements of the dead person’s personality that can be discovered by the online record. However, in all this there is no consideration given to the data privacy of the deceased person or to his or her consent to be exposed to machine learning and replicated in this manner, including even the physical android form.
“Nosedive” (Series 3, Episode 1): This is one of the most popular, critically-acclaimed episodes of the series, and one of the obvious reasons for this is that it focuses on social media and how it impacts friendships and interactions. The addictive aspects of social media in current times are already a hot topic in design ethics, driving people to question whether social media networks like Facebook or Twitter are good for the people who use them, and where to locate the line between entertainment and a fun way to connect and share, versus a platform with a potentially dark and abusive impact on users. In this episode, everyone is on social media and is subject to receiving ratings from virtually everyone they encounter. These ratings determine people’s standing both on social media and in the real world as well – controlling access to jobs, customer service, housing, and much more. Anxieties and aspirations about ratings drive everything people do and all the choices they make. “Addictive” has been met and surpassed, with social media having an absolutely pervasive impact in everyone’s lives.
“San Junipero” (Series 3, Episode 4): One of the most universally loved episodes of Black Mirror, San Junipero depicts the titular beach town which mysteriously appears to shift in time throughout the decades. Kelly and Yorkie both visit the town and have a romance. San Junipero turns out to be a simulated reality which exists only “on the cloud,” where people who are at the end of their lives or who have already died can visit to live in their prime again, forever if they so choose. In the real world, Kelly is elderly and in hospice care, while Yorkie is a comatose quadriplegic. Both eventually chose to be euthanized and uploaded to San Junipero to be together forever, after getting married first so that Kelly can give legal authorization to Yorkie to pass over. The bioethical considerations of such a reality are clear – in this society, assisted suicide is a legal normalcy, and part of patient care is planning one’s method of death and treatment path after death, which digitalization being a real option. All of the San Junipero simulations exist on huge servers, and judging by how many lights are flickering in the racks this seems to be a popular practice – but what about cybersecurity and information security of the simulations? What if the servers were hacked or damaged? This gives a new meaning to humanity and places an entirely different type of pressure on making sure that technology is used safely and the data stored on it is protected.
“Men Against Fire” (Series 3, Episode 5): This episode concerns the future of warfare in a post-apocalyptic world. Soldiers all have a biometric implant called MASS that augments reality, enhances their senses, and provides virtual reality experiences. One soldier’s implant begins to malfunction and he soon learns that the MASS is in fact altering his senses so that he will not see individuals he is told are enemy combatants as people. It turns out that the soldier is part of a eugenics program practicing worldwide genocide and the MASS is being used to deceive the solders and turn them into autonomous weapons who murder on command due to the augmentations and alterations to reality by the MASS. This storyline falls cannily close to many current concerns about the adoption of autonomous weapons that are not directed or monitored by humans, which are nearly within technological capability to be created and are the subject of international calls for appropriate supervision of and restraint in their development.
Black Mirror offers many interesting scenarios for analysis of and study by compliance and ethics professionals considering risk management related to the use of technology in organizations and society. As described above, surveillance, data privacy, consent, design ethics, autonomous weapons and other AI, bioethics, and cybersecurity are just a sampling of the issues invoked by episodes of the series.