Full thread from Flavia Dzodan - Writer; feminist; Latina; sudaca; immigrant; I don't rant, I write manifestos. www.patreon.com/flaviadzodan
Verified account @redlightvoices
Good morning everyone and welcome to another instance of the political game known as “look at what you made me do!” only with data and algorithms instead of scheming Russians with the power to make random people racist by bot.
Now, I have said this before in regards to “blaming the Russians” for Trump, Farage, Brexit, Le Pen etc: no amount of foreign intervention makes people white supremacist bigots. The best they can do is exploit an existing belief system.
The same thing can be said about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data exploits and I am kinda perplexed how this whole thing is currently portrayed in European (and more specifically British) media in regards to Brexit meddling.
A woman politician was murdered by a white supremacist on the eve of the Brexit vote and that didn’t happen because an algorithm sent subliminal instructions to the murderer. It happened because the foundations of Empire have always been misogynist and racist violence. (My bold)
We are vulnerable to propaganda (every one of us is) but ultimately propaganda can only go so far if you are not already predisposed to the ideology they are selling or you somewhat “buy” the notion that you’ll benefit from what they are selling.
I spent a good chunk of my life in dictatorships and dictatorship adjacent regimes (the ones of 80s Latin America) and ppl didn’t just “believe” unless they were already comfortable with authoritarianism or they felt they had something to gain from it.
Now, rather than examine why Cambridge Analytica made such poignant use of intimate data (ie to exploit the intimate details of the racist belief system that informs our dominant culture across Europe and North America), we hear how they “made people do things”
Nah... you told the algorithm that you liked racist things and the algorithm “learned” how to show you what you like. we (collective, culture wide “we”) trained the algorithm through our own preferences, likes and dislikes. It didn’t become a sentient thing voting on our behalf
I teach a course called "The coloniality of the algorithm" that traces the history of the belief system we actually program into the machines, the taxonomies and epistemes that actually make our technology. They are not sentient beings that make us do things.
and the ideologues using the data are not cartoon villains from an authoritarian regime. they are the "captains of industry" (to use an outdated definition) that make the cover of Wired for "disrupting" this or that. They are your white cisgender cousin with "an idea"
it's important to me to stress the fact that there is profit to be made from exploiting this belief system in every step of the way: from creating the platforms that spread this ideology, selling the data to political operatives to eventually get someone elected
BUT it's equally important to be reminded that these people make $$ and eventually get to power because there is a culture willing to buy what they are selling. Your "cousin with an idea" is merely exploiting an already existing feature in the system
and if it isn't clear from everything I've written throughout the years: it is important to dismantle these micro structures of power along the way but unless we examine and dismantle the macro structures in place, a new Cambridge Analytica will take the spot of the old one
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End of conversation