New book: Tech-giants datamining challenges human rights
Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – Most likely, you are using at least one of these platforms. By doing that, you might have been exposed to one or several infringements of your rights by the platform. You might just not be aware of it.
'Human Rights in the Age of Platforms' is the title of a new book that digs into the tale of a digitalized era where human rights are under pressure. The book is published by MIT Press, and the editor is Rikke Frank Jørgensen, senior researcher at the Danish Institute of Human Rights. Rikke highlights the challenges of today’s digital society, where private companies are the ones to handle and take care of our rights.
“A huge part of our public and private life take place on these digital platforms governed by private companies. This creates a blurry mix of commercial and public interests. On the digital platforms, your rights are defined and enforced based on commercial criteria,” Rikke Frank Jørgensen says.
SOUND: Listen to some of the authors of the book from the book launch event Feb 4th 2020 (in English). Recorded by Anders Kjærulff.
Surveillance capitalism puts human rights under pressure
When you are using a social media platform, you are subject to constant data mining. Both data that you submit yourself and data that can be inferred from your online profile and behavior. For example, data about your preferences, your purchases, your interests and your network. This information is used to draw a picture of who you are and how to influence you. The information can be used to nudge you to buy certain products or move you politically. The data is traded in a marketplace that is based on being able to predict and influence future behavior.
The different services know a lot about us and we know nothing about them and their practices. There is a fundamental asymmetry in knowledge. And knowledge is power"
The new economy is described by Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, as "surveillance capitalism". She has written the book's first chapter entitled "We make them dance": Surveillance Capitalism, the Rise of Instrumental Power, and the Threat to Human Rights.
“Surveillance capitalism takes private human experiences and draws them into a new marketplace. The experience is a kind of free raw data, but when it is transformed into data used to predict our behavior, it suddenly becomes worth a lot of money. There has proven to be a big market in predicting our behavior,” says Shoshana Zuboff.
Over the past 20 years surveillance capitalism has placed tech giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon at the top amongst the world's richest companies. Because these big platforms control an essential part of the infrastructure of our social lives, they have gained immense power. Essentially, they control what we see and do not see, what we can say and cannot say, and they control the extensive datamining that drives the new markets.
“In our digital lives, the arm of the market extends far into the private sphere and into our most personal domains. Companies know a lot about where we are, who we are, what our interests are, and they can therefore influence our thoughts and actions, without our consent or knowledge,” Rikke Frank Jørgensen says.
Asymmetry in level of information between citizens and platforms
In practice, the decisions of the platforms set the limits for how we can exercise our rights. They control the arenas in which we speak, debate, receive news, seek information, gather together and are politically active. And they control huge amounts of data about us.
Despite the great power to influence our private, social, cultural and political lives, the companies are not subject to democratic control nor oversight. They operate in a commercial domain where their algorithms and decision-making processes are protected and black-boxed as business secrets. This is a cross-cutting theme through the book 'Human Rights in the Age of Platforms'.
“The different services know a lot about us and we know nothing about them and their practices. There is a fundamental asymmetry in knowledge. And knowledge is power,” Rikke Frank Jørgensen says.
Thirteen international scholars contributed to the book's 11 chapters.
The first part of the book focuses on datafication and data economics. These are two concepts that cover the private data of citizens today, both commercially and politically, and that data constitute a new and rapidly growing economy. The second part of the book zooms in on the platform's practices and how they enforce human rights boundaries, based on their business terms(ToS). At the same time, the price and terms are intransparent to the individual. The last part of the book focuses on how the protection of human rights can be strengthened in the digital space.
Contributing to the book is, among others, Shoshana Zuboff, author of the very popular book 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism'. She visited Denmark in September presenting her book on surveillance capitalism in a public conversation organised by CBS, Information Publishing and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
A way forward for human rights protection
Private companies are not bound by human rights law, as states are, but operate in a grey zone between corporate responsibility, data ethics and human rights.
“There are essentially two approaches to solving the problem. The first approach is for companies to voluntarily ensure the protection of rights through self-regulation, codes of conduct, cooperation agreements and the like. The second solution requires that the state regulates the practices of the platforms and secure human rights through legislation. Whereas many has relied on the first model for a long time, there is now increasing pressure on government regulation,” Rikke Frank Jørgensen says.
Agnès Callamard, special UN rapporteur and former director of Article 19, examines both regulatory models in her chapter 'The Human Rights Obligations of Nonstate Actors' and presents both the pros and cons of what she calls 'meaningful' self-regulation on the one hand and international regulation on the other hand.
Molly Land, professor of human rights has written the book's closing chapter 'Regulating Private Harms Online: Content Regulation under Human Rights Law'. Here she proposes how businesses can secure that their practices are based on human rights standards. Land suggest, among other things, a set of guidelines that the UN human rights institutions can adopt to strengthen the protection of citizens' rights.
A global challenge
The book's 11 chapters are written by internationally renowned researchers who contribute with diverse academic backgrounds. Law, human science and social science are brought together in a tale of a common global challenge.
“The book's interdisciplinarity is a strength not least because the topic is so complex. It´s not only about technology, new social practices, business models or regulation, but all of them combined. The contributions highlight issues of a privatized public sphere, a new data economy and the undermining of human rights. There are several things at stake, and it is important to be aware of them all when we think of solutions,” Rikke Frank Jørgensen says.
SOUND: Listen to interview with editor of the book and Senior Researcher, Rikke Frank Jørgensen (in Danish). Recorded by Anders Kjærulff.