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Democracy Hacked: How Technology is Destabilising Global Politics
Technology has fractured democracy, and now there’s no going back.
All around the world, the fringes have stormed the palace of the elites and unleashed data miners, dark ads and bots on an unwitting public. After years of soundbites about connecting people, the social media giants are only just beginning to admit to the scale of the problem.
We stand on the precipice of an era where switching your mobile platform will have more impact on your life than switching your government. Where freedom and privacy are seen as incompatible with social well-being and transparency. Where your attention is sold to the highest bidder.
Our laws don’t cover what is happening and our politicians don’t understand it. But if we don’t fight to change the system now, we may not get another chance.
All around the world, the fringes have stormed the palace of the elites and unleashed data miners, dark ads and bots on an unwitting public. After years of soundbites about connecting people, the social media giants are only just beginning to admit to the scale of the problem.
We stand on the precipice of an era where switching your mobile platform will have more impact on your life than switching your government. Where freedom and privacy are seen as incompatible with social well-being and transparency. Where your attention is sold to the highest bidder.
Our laws don’t cover what is happening and our politicians don’t understand it. But if we don’t fight to change the system now, we may not get another chance.
336 pages, Paperback
Published May 12, 2020
91 people are currently reading
792 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
November 6, 2018
This is the best book I've found so far that explains how digital technologies have disrupted traditional democracies. The writing is clear, the analysis trenchant. The scope wide-ranging.
Even readers who already know a lot about Russian hackers, Cambridge Analytica, ad tech, etc. will find descriptions of how digital platforms have significantly diminished personal in places like India (w/the Aadhaar platform), Singapore and China (Social Credit System). In such countries, opposition and dissent are already highly circumcribed. The rapid investment, control and application of social media and big data algorithms by such governments make it hard to imagine a world in which digital platforms would "democratize" such countries. Quite the opposite.
We who live in so-called democracies should be just as concerned about whether we head towards a kind of "surveillance democracy" or enhanced digital democracy.
Maybe Google and Facebook didn't envision themselves as commercially-driven platforms, but now they clearly are, and the evolving expansion and "datafication of citizens" continues to be driven by commercial strategies. As such, they will inherently involve the colonization of personal information for new services (like health care - viz. Amazon), and where there is a nexus with political or other purposes, the result could be a kind of backing into a scenario like we're seeing in countries like China, if we're not careful to place restrictions (an example of the kind of restriction is the boundaries placed upon government use of information in Estonia, but if there is one weakness of the book, it's that it doesn't provide many others that we could push for).
In the U.S., the impact of digital platforms on traditional reporting has amplified the consolidation of mainstream media under deregulation and tax-incentive corporate consolidation that writers like Robert McChesney and groups like Free Press have fought for two deaces.
The digital platforms have led to the virtual extinction of local reporting, the "loss of a layer of our news ecosystem", esp. investigative reporting at the local level: "[t]he implications are profound and alarming. There is a good environmental parallel -- bees. Bees are the main pollinators of about a third of the food we eat. As they collect nectar, they inadvertently pick up and transfer pollen from the anther of one plant to the stigma of another. ... Reporters play a similar role in the news ecosystem as they spend their days buzzing from courts to councils to crime scenes and local football grounds, they witness and record the information that forms the basis on which the rest of the ecosystem relies." Where there's no reporting, gossip and rumor can spread wildly. On a national and transnational level that's where "fake news" and propaganda often take advantage (they do where there is MSM, too, as many media critics have pointed out for decades).
The book starts at a very different place -- the use of platforms by extremist groups like white supremacists. With 4chan, it's not just that they have their own place to organize, but the way its designed facilitates a venomous culture of violence, facilitated by the anonymity it provides and the encouragement of collective mayhem exploited by politicians and their agents (Trump and Bannon being obvious). Combine that with micro-targeting algorithms developed by plutocratic backers like Robert Mercer, you have a formula for propaganda and political manipulation on platforms like Facebook that fail to police themselves, indeed are designed to encourage their use in such ways because of the advertising profits they deliver to their users, no matter how extreme.
(I'll update this soon...but would strongly encourage people to read this book. If these are issues you're concerned about, then you'll get a lot out of this book that I haven't touched upon).
Even readers who already know a lot about Russian hackers, Cambridge Analytica, ad tech, etc. will find descriptions of how digital platforms have significantly diminished personal in places like India (w/the Aadhaar platform), Singapore and China (Social Credit System). In such countries, opposition and dissent are already highly circumcribed. The rapid investment, control and application of social media and big data algorithms by such governments make it hard to imagine a world in which digital platforms would "democratize" such countries. Quite the opposite.
We who live in so-called democracies should be just as concerned about whether we head towards a kind of "surveillance democracy" or enhanced digital democracy.
Maybe Google and Facebook didn't envision themselves as commercially-driven platforms, but now they clearly are, and the evolving expansion and "datafication of citizens" continues to be driven by commercial strategies. As such, they will inherently involve the colonization of personal information for new services (like health care - viz. Amazon), and where there is a nexus with political or other purposes, the result could be a kind of backing into a scenario like we're seeing in countries like China, if we're not careful to place restrictions (an example of the kind of restriction is the boundaries placed upon government use of information in Estonia, but if there is one weakness of the book, it's that it doesn't provide many others that we could push for).
In the U.S., the impact of digital platforms on traditional reporting has amplified the consolidation of mainstream media under deregulation and tax-incentive corporate consolidation that writers like Robert McChesney and groups like Free Press have fought for two deaces.
The digital platforms have led to the virtual extinction of local reporting, the "loss of a layer of our news ecosystem", esp. investigative reporting at the local level: "[t]he implications are profound and alarming. There is a good environmental parallel -- bees. Bees are the main pollinators of about a third of the food we eat. As they collect nectar, they inadvertently pick up and transfer pollen from the anther of one plant to the stigma of another. ... Reporters play a similar role in the news ecosystem as they spend their days buzzing from courts to councils to crime scenes and local football grounds, they witness and record the information that forms the basis on which the rest of the ecosystem relies." Where there's no reporting, gossip and rumor can spread wildly. On a national and transnational level that's where "fake news" and propaganda often take advantage (they do where there is MSM, too, as many media critics have pointed out for decades).
The book starts at a very different place -- the use of platforms by extremist groups like white supremacists. With 4chan, it's not just that they have their own place to organize, but the way its designed facilitates a venomous culture of violence, facilitated by the anonymity it provides and the encouragement of collective mayhem exploited by politicians and their agents (Trump and Bannon being obvious). Combine that with micro-targeting algorithms developed by plutocratic backers like Robert Mercer, you have a formula for propaganda and political manipulation on platforms like Facebook that fail to police themselves, indeed are designed to encourage their use in such ways because of the advertising profits they deliver to their users, no matter how extreme.
(I'll update this soon...but would strongly encourage people to read this book. If these are issues you're concerned about, then you'll get a lot out of this book that I haven't touched upon).
September 21, 2018
Fascinating read. While very little of the US/Europe story is new to me, the effects of platform politics in Asian countries was (really highlighting to me how little news actually crosses the language barrier in big news). Where this book excels is providing a single clear narrative of the internet's political history, which is often piecemeal and misunderstood in mainstream news; and it really excels drawing attention to the scale of the issues that platform politics introduce to society.
July 26, 2019
This is one of the most terrifying books I have ever read.
November 9, 2020
Det här är en bok som mycket handlar om hur internet och alla sociala plattformar har förändrat informationsflödet, övervakningen och mycket mer på nätet. Tyvärr så orkade jag inte läsa hela boken ordentligt, inte för att det är ett tråkigt ämne utan för att det blev för tungläst för mig. Jag läste drygt halva boken ordentligt, sedan blev det mest att jag skummade resten. Riktigt synd att jag inte riktigt orkade.
October 10, 2018
[cross posting because there are different versions that haven't reconciled and my copy had this subtitle, not the other, which was the one that matched the ISBN first]
I saw a question on a forum last week asking for "scary or Halloween" book recommendations. There were plenty of responses, and this was mine - the lone non-fiction. I haven't been scared by a fiction book since I read one of ghost stories when I was 8 years old. Stephen King made me laugh 35 years ago; Koontz - no; Rice - emphatically no; well...you get the picture. No, for me, the real scary books are of this type - what the fiction authors try to impart: powerlessness against larger, malicious forces. Note: I received an uncorrected advance review copy of this from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Moore takes on a challenging task and did quite a bit of research - there are 35 pages of citations to sift if you're game. He breaks the book into three parts: Hackers, Systems Failure, and Alternative Futures, each with three chapters. Americans interested in this might myopically think it pertains to a certain election, but Moore shows it is much bigger than that. This is a global problem.
In Part 1: Hackers, Moore describes the efforts of so-called Freextremists, Plutocrats, and State driven hacks.
The Individuals, the Freextremists, reside in a global network of places like 4chan, 8chan, and a bunch of chans (resisting the urge to poorly pun here) and they are truly frightening. Blitzing the net with ...I detest the word use, but he uses it - memes, the primary drive of the chan-denizens is "lulz" ... just for kicks, per se. But they got very interested in 2016 when they realized how much of a disruptive effort they had on the American and French elections, and the British Brexit debacle. And it really is semi-individually driven, normally resistant to requests. One 4chan board called "invasions" told people back in 2008 "We are not your personal army, we will not raid your ex or some random person without a lulzy motivation." But, they jumped in big time in 2016. One study found more than 8 million posts generated in 4chan...in only the first half of 2016! And in November 2016, one 4channer posted "We actually elected a meme as president," with another adding "I don't think it's possible for an image to convey the level of smug I feel right now." With critical thinking non-existent, the anti-social media eats this stuff up. I have relatives who repost so much of that crap I have to avoid interacting as much as possible.
The plutocrats many be relatively few, but they have tremendous resources - meaning money, of course. Moore calls the mercurial Robert Mercer an "angry libertarian anarchist." The Koch brothers have a more public profile than Mercer, but are no less a threat to democracy, all buying whichever politicians they can to further their aims. And Russia? Seems they've had a long game in mind that the Americans for sure are woefully ill-equipped to play. And not just here in the US. Of course, having the 2017 president as an ally advances the anti-NATO efforts faster than planned, so they're happy.
In Part 2: Systems Failure, Moore looks at Facebook, Google, and the humorously named Twitter. All have massive data on people. Facebook focuses on likes and dislikes, motivations, interactions, connections. Facebook, with two billion users, is particularly susceptible to hack efforts. Moore cites a 1926 University of Chicago doctoral thesis of Harold Laswell in which Laswell looked at the British, French, and German propaganda efforts in the First World War, and the manipulation of the mass media in order to justify actions. Laswell thought the British were "particularly clever propagandists" and that "the American public was particularly vulnerable to manipulation." Spoiler alert...it still is. Google, as THE search engine, knows more about our curiosities than even we can know, for they track all the minutae. And when they caved to the business-necessary model of ad-driven revenue, they focused their incredible resources on the individual. The Madison Avenue (and other similar world Meccas) model of advertising en masse hoping for a fraction of a hit was discarded like an old hat (they are my paraphrased takeaways) because now, the marketing giants, and of course, Google as the gateway, could target explicitly the individual. And this made it far easier for hackers to manipulate an audience. (There are a plethora of sub-threads in all of the chapters that I can't begin to touch on - for example, when a user opens a page from Google, in the fraction of a second it takes to load, Google has fed the user's data to the ad machine so that the ads...which you may or may not notice load a little later than the text...target the specific page opener.)
Moore titled his third chapter in Part 2 "The Unbearable Lightness of Twitter". My marks changed it to "The Unbearableness of Twitter" (red squiggle line...coined another word?) In 2006, a lot of people though Twitter "frivolous and superficial". At least one of me still does, though I cannot doubt its impact. The Twit is ubiquitous, feeds a puerile element even more than Facebook or other anti-social platforms, and despite the Kinf Twit-terer violating the Twit standards multiple times daily, they still let him (note: my editorial, not Moore's.) Twitter influences much in the world, and it is nearly as unchecked as the 4chan individuals.
In Moore's final Part 3, Alternate Futures, he looks at Platform Democracy, Surveillance Democracy, and Democray Rehacked. In Platform Democracy, he examines Google, Amazon, and Apple's attempts to get footholds in healthcare (it's a lucrative industry, after all), attempting to increase the levels of service to the individuals (and the state.) Education can benefit from a platform push, as well as transit. Democratic aims driven by profit motives can only end in good, right? Yeah...right.
Surveillance democracy might have lofty aims...the welfare of all...but has failed in literature and is nearly as frightening as 4chan subversives. Indoa's issuing of "unique identifiers" with associated biometrics, to ensure citizens have a verifiable identity that can be used for finance, healthcare, governmental services regardless of literacy might seem a utopian goal, but the inherent limits of technology should be obvious. If you're not in the system, due to some kind of input error or other problem, you can't exist. Think Sandra Bi\ullock's "The Net" writ large...any system, no matter the purported security, would likely be easy to hack and delete/change data, and too easily perverted to screen the outputs. The US problems are not specific to its population...six years after the launch of the identification program, the first person to be given a digital identity was interviewed and asked if it helped her: "I am finding it difficult to survive. I feel all governments use the poor for politics and actually work for the rich." See? Global.
In Moore's final chapter, "Democracy Rehacked", he looks at grandiose schemes, and also successful uses of technology. He rightly observes that "finding a successful politician who wanted root and branch reform was as rare as finding a truffle in the desert." He cites Edward Luce, who argued that rather than expand participative democracy, those in power made conscious efforts to manage and control masses. (Side note: see John Taylor Gatto's take on the American education system deliberately manipulated to control the masses in his admittedly near-conspiracy theory but with solid elements books "The Underground History of American Education" and "Weapons of Mass Instruction".) and the trend has been ignored until too late: "It took Brexit and Trump, and subsequent electoral shocks, to provoke much wider reflection and reassessment of whether democracy was functioning as it should."
There are pockets of success in democratic use of technology - participative budgeting, Arab Spring, and others...but they are sparse. He notes "[i]f we are going to create a new digital democracy we should start by coming to terms with the scale of the task." True, and my margin note says we have the additional obstacle of undoing the damage already done while building new. The problem I see with this, and Moore doesn't address, is that the problems outlined in the previous 270 pages are not static - a virus mutates, and while time is spent trying to wrap heads around the scope of a problem, let alone finding a solution, billions of blathering destructive twits are loosed, millions of memes, and millions/billions of hacks launched. The hackers of all types described above are not stopping.
Don't look for answers here...there aren't any of substance. The last sentence is more suited to a bodice-ripper pulp novel than a critical analysis: "Democracy can be rehacked, but only if there is the will to do it."
Bottom line: be afraid.
I saw a question on a forum last week asking for "scary or Halloween" book recommendations. There were plenty of responses, and this was mine - the lone non-fiction. I haven't been scared by a fiction book since I read one of ghost stories when I was 8 years old. Stephen King made me laugh 35 years ago; Koontz - no; Rice - emphatically no; well...you get the picture. No, for me, the real scary books are of this type - what the fiction authors try to impart: powerlessness against larger, malicious forces. Note: I received an uncorrected advance review copy of this from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Moore takes on a challenging task and did quite a bit of research - there are 35 pages of citations to sift if you're game. He breaks the book into three parts: Hackers, Systems Failure, and Alternative Futures, each with three chapters. Americans interested in this might myopically think it pertains to a certain election, but Moore shows it is much bigger than that. This is a global problem.
In Part 1: Hackers, Moore describes the efforts of so-called Freextremists, Plutocrats, and State driven hacks.
The Individuals, the Freextremists, reside in a global network of places like 4chan, 8chan, and a bunch of chans (resisting the urge to poorly pun here) and they are truly frightening. Blitzing the net with ...I detest the word use, but he uses it - memes, the primary drive of the chan-denizens is "lulz" ... just for kicks, per se. But they got very interested in 2016 when they realized how much of a disruptive effort they had on the American and French elections, and the British Brexit debacle. And it really is semi-individually driven, normally resistant to requests. One 4chan board called "invasions" told people back in 2008 "We are not your personal army, we will not raid your ex or some random person without a lulzy motivation." But, they jumped in big time in 2016. One study found more than 8 million posts generated in 4chan...in only the first half of 2016! And in November 2016, one 4channer posted "We actually elected a meme as president," with another adding "I don't think it's possible for an image to convey the level of smug I feel right now." With critical thinking non-existent, the anti-social media eats this stuff up. I have relatives who repost so much of that crap I have to avoid interacting as much as possible.
The plutocrats many be relatively few, but they have tremendous resources - meaning money, of course. Moore calls the mercurial Robert Mercer an "angry libertarian anarchist." The Koch brothers have a more public profile than Mercer, but are no less a threat to democracy, all buying whichever politicians they can to further their aims. And Russia? Seems they've had a long game in mind that the Americans for sure are woefully ill-equipped to play. And not just here in the US. Of course, having the 2017 president as an ally advances the anti-NATO efforts faster than planned, so they're happy.
In Part 2: Systems Failure, Moore looks at Facebook, Google, and the humorously named Twitter. All have massive data on people. Facebook focuses on likes and dislikes, motivations, interactions, connections. Facebook, with two billion users, is particularly susceptible to hack efforts. Moore cites a 1926 University of Chicago doctoral thesis of Harold Laswell in which Laswell looked at the British, French, and German propaganda efforts in the First World War, and the manipulation of the mass media in order to justify actions. Laswell thought the British were "particularly clever propagandists" and that "the American public was particularly vulnerable to manipulation." Spoiler alert...it still is. Google, as THE search engine, knows more about our curiosities than even we can know, for they track all the minutae. And when they caved to the business-necessary model of ad-driven revenue, they focused their incredible resources on the individual. The Madison Avenue (and other similar world Meccas) model of advertising en masse hoping for a fraction of a hit was discarded like an old hat (they are my paraphrased takeaways) because now, the marketing giants, and of course, Google as the gateway, could target explicitly the individual. And this made it far easier for hackers to manipulate an audience. (There are a plethora of sub-threads in all of the chapters that I can't begin to touch on - for example, when a user opens a page from Google, in the fraction of a second it takes to load, Google has fed the user's data to the ad machine so that the ads...which you may or may not notice load a little later than the text...target the specific page opener.)
Moore titled his third chapter in Part 2 "The Unbearable Lightness of Twitter". My marks changed it to "The Unbearableness of Twitter" (red squiggle line...coined another word?) In 2006, a lot of people though Twitter "frivolous and superficial". At least one of me still does, though I cannot doubt its impact. The Twit is ubiquitous, feeds a puerile element even more than Facebook or other anti-social platforms, and despite the Kinf Twit-terer violating the Twit standards multiple times daily, they still let him (note: my editorial, not Moore's.) Twitter influences much in the world, and it is nearly as unchecked as the 4chan individuals.
In Moore's final Part 3, Alternate Futures, he looks at Platform Democracy, Surveillance Democracy, and Democray Rehacked. In Platform Democracy, he examines Google, Amazon, and Apple's attempts to get footholds in healthcare (it's a lucrative industry, after all), attempting to increase the levels of service to the individuals (and the state.) Education can benefit from a platform push, as well as transit. Democratic aims driven by profit motives can only end in good, right? Yeah...right.
Surveillance democracy might have lofty aims...the welfare of all...but has failed in literature and is nearly as frightening as 4chan subversives. Indoa's issuing of "unique identifiers" with associated biometrics, to ensure citizens have a verifiable identity that can be used for finance, healthcare, governmental services regardless of literacy might seem a utopian goal, but the inherent limits of technology should be obvious. If you're not in the system, due to some kind of input error or other problem, you can't exist. Think Sandra Bi\ullock's "The Net" writ large...any system, no matter the purported security, would likely be easy to hack and delete/change data, and too easily perverted to screen the outputs. The US problems are not specific to its population...six years after the launch of the identification program, the first person to be given a digital identity was interviewed and asked if it helped her: "I am finding it difficult to survive. I feel all governments use the poor for politics and actually work for the rich." See? Global.
In Moore's final chapter, "Democracy Rehacked", he looks at grandiose schemes, and also successful uses of technology. He rightly observes that "finding a successful politician who wanted root and branch reform was as rare as finding a truffle in the desert." He cites Edward Luce, who argued that rather than expand participative democracy, those in power made conscious efforts to manage and control masses. (Side note: see John Taylor Gatto's take on the American education system deliberately manipulated to control the masses in his admittedly near-conspiracy theory but with solid elements books "The Underground History of American Education" and "Weapons of Mass Instruction".) and the trend has been ignored until too late: "It took Brexit and Trump, and subsequent electoral shocks, to provoke much wider reflection and reassessment of whether democracy was functioning as it should."
There are pockets of success in democratic use of technology - participative budgeting, Arab Spring, and others...but they are sparse. He notes "[i]f we are going to create a new digital democracy we should start by coming to terms with the scale of the task." True, and my margin note says we have the additional obstacle of undoing the damage already done while building new. The problem I see with this, and Moore doesn't address, is that the problems outlined in the previous 270 pages are not static - a virus mutates, and while time is spent trying to wrap heads around the scope of a problem, let alone finding a solution, billions of blathering destructive twits are loosed, millions of memes, and millions/billions of hacks launched. The hackers of all types described above are not stopping.
Don't look for answers here...there aren't any of substance. The last sentence is more suited to a bodice-ripper pulp novel than a critical analysis: "Democracy can be rehacked, but only if there is the will to do it."
Bottom line: be afraid.
May 14, 2022
A very well written and marvellously edited book apparently after a lot of research.
Presents with numerous examples and citations about the rise of digital political propaganda by individuals, corporations and states. Depicts the rise of tech giants and how it came at the cost of individual privacy. Talks about the advent of these tech platforms into governance structure. Shows how data surveillance by governments is on the rise whether democratic or otherwise.
Illustrates with examples from countries around the world.
Even a word-to-word picturisation would make a great Netflix documentary series
Presents with numerous examples and citations about the rise of digital political propaganda by individuals, corporations and states. Depicts the rise of tech giants and how it came at the cost of individual privacy. Talks about the advent of these tech platforms into governance structure. Shows how data surveillance by governments is on the rise whether democratic or otherwise.
Illustrates with examples from countries around the world.
Even a word-to-word picturisation would make a great Netflix documentary series
July 31, 2019
10h muretsemist ja siis viis minti enne lõppu möödaminnes ka üks positiivne näide: Eesti!
September 25, 2019
Martin Moore believes there is no way back after, now, how democracies are manipulated by third parties through online direction of voters. What *is* undecided, is which direction we will take; platform democracy, surveillance democracy, or digital democracy.
In the first, digital platforms are the gateways to public services. In the second, the state will amass stronger powers, curtailing citizen freedom. What happens in the third is yet to be defined (and Moore does not define it).
Moore starts with the backstory to where we got where we are.
The mid-1980s saw the rise of hacker conferences, the WELL, the counter culture paradigm that ‘information should be free’, and that cyberspace should be governed by those that inhibit it.
Fast forward to 4chan, as the perfect source of collaboratively created highly successful memes, through a self conscious, offensive, taboo-breaking and transgressive culture.
The first major public success of 4chan came with Project Chanology, which saw Anonymous attack Scientology in 2008, which ultimately flowed into support for Wikileaks and Occupy.
This was followed by 4chan diehards despising the subsequent rise in users of their platform, and the attitude towards outsiders hardening.
Steve Bannon, with Breitbart, managed to recruit plenty of this vitriolic a-democratic, extreme, community in the context of Gamergate, harnessing ‘freedom’ and ‘sovereignty’, in opposition to positioning the left as representatives of ‘political correctness’ and ‘pro-immigration, pro-minorities and pro-gender policies’, portraying this conflict between right and left as a war with the left and a war with the mainstream.
In this war, it was not about using democratic tools, but using anything that would further the cause of disruption.
Moore stops short of stating that the Chans and Reddit’s users at the the_donald forum influenced the 2016 presidential election, though he admits that the impact was far-reaching.
Exporting these methods to other countries met with mixed success. Failing completely against Macron, and Kurz in Austria, but gaining traction for the AfD in Germany, and in the 2017 UK elections.
So, using the justification of being ‘at war’, the proponents of extreme free speech justify any behavior, including violence, to obtain their goals and secure a win.
Moore continuous with the billionaire Robert Mercer, providing funding for Breitbart’s plans to fight ‘cultural marxism’ and to try and take over the media for the far right.
With mixed success at first, the move in 2014 to pushing much more controversial ‘news’ of ‘folk devils and moral panics’ saw them reach the influence they desired.
Mercer then invested 5 million in Cambridge Analytica (CA), in large part for CA’s data centric approach to influencing behaviour (as opposed to influencing opinion), which dovetailed with what Mercer had pioneered at IBM for machine translation, which later became the basis for Google translate.
The framework for defining human personality, created at the end of the 20th century, called ‘Big Five’, defining personality on five scales of people’s traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), provides the context to classify people and defines what actions can be taken to nudge particular individuals into particular behavioural directions.
With the ability to use big data, and the above model for describing human personality, it was now, roughly from 2013 onwards, possible to target political messages based on personality type.
It's debatable whether CA succeeded in influencing the 2016 American elections, but it's beyond a doubt that future elections are likely all to be influenced like this.
In the end, Mercer, Bannon, the Kochs, and Arron Banks in the UK, see their power stemming from not so much creating another narrative framework within the democratic landscape, but from subverting the perception of the veracity of all media, bringing down the concept of a free press.
Then, Moore looks at Russia’s alleged role in influencing political discourse in a host of locations, using Cold War tactics that are well suited for the digital age, where disinformation does not need to be sourced and can spread virally.
Putin was shaped in his KGB years by Andropov’s mentality of disrupting foreign politics and social cohesion in any subversive way, not unlike a guerrilla warfare, as long as the source of the disruption could not be traced back to the Soviet Union.
Then, in the 1990s, with Yeltsin’s election, it became known that American advisors actually did help Yeltsin win the presidential elections.
When, around the time of the Arab spring, protests also started to erupt in Russia, using Facebook as their means to organise, Putin saw, again, an American hand at work, specifically Hillary Clinton’s.
As a consequence, social marketing campaigns that had been indirectly directed by the Kremlin from the mid-2000s, were professionalized, creating content and social media farms with the aim of furthering the Kremlin’s plans in support of Putin and for disruption of foreign political processes. A kind of 'guerrilla geopolics'.
(Interestingly, for the Podesta emails, no original source from Podesta was ever provided (as compared to the hacked Macron emails), meaning that if that hack also originated in Russia and it being likely that, then, some were altered or left out, it would have been presumably easy to debunk the subsequent pizzagate madness.)
Moore then paints a picture of the world of politics from roughly 2008 onwards, when more extremist candidates the world over recognised Facebook and other social media as the perfect platform to engage with, and mobilise, supporters directly, extending these politicians' reach far beyond that of their competitors. This resulted in surprise landslide elections, including those of Obama, Duterte, Beppe Grillo, eventually Trump, and many others.
Their campaigns used the Facebook feature at the core of how individuals are influenced; not by mass media, but by influencers within users' social circles.
But, Moore is not exactly vilifying Facebook, regularly pointing out that Facebook was guided by increasing their reach, the interconnectedness of their users, and their understanding of their users, all to increase interactions and, via that, commercial success.
Moore continuous by diving into a description of how add tech, that is, how Facebook and Google’s ad systems, works, recognising that the produced knowledge is asymmetrical. That is, they know all about you, while you know nothing.
Google’s add tech lead to creating click bait, which lead to the Macedonian fake news machine during the 2016 presidential campaign. And, not surprisingly, though violence and porn were banned from Google’s ad-network, extremism of any kind was not, meaning, advertisers were funding extremist websites which were showing their ads.
Then, with Google and Facebook knowing you, online, it didn’t matter anymore whether you were visiting this particular article on the website of, say, the New York Times, where advertising rates were high. They could catch you on, say, your sister’s blog, where advertising rates are low. So, as a result, the money made by the big publishers dropped.
Facebook followed suit with tracking their users, and, less inhibited than Google, and with troves of data not just on you but also on your popularity, saw Google playing catch-up, which responded by tracking you even more.
Instead of adding friction to the add platforms in order to police them better, both Google and Facebook see the only solution to controlling adverse results as more tracking, more data on their users.
Next is a discussion on how Twitter and Facebook have replaced local news as a source for what’s happening around us, while failing to inform us what's happening outside of our circle of friends and family.
Typically “We gain the feeling of being well informed, regardless of actual knowledge acquisition”.
Twitter. Initially a boon for local reporters, a godsend during the downturn in journalism, with the letting go of vast number of journalists, those that kept their job were still able to do local reporting without leaving their offices.
But, with Twitter’s growth, and the dialogue turning exclusionary and aggressive, Twitter remained useful for covering freak events, but not for regular day-to-day reporting.
The result was that local news reporting died out, particularly in poorer and more remote areas.
Some public authorities hired more PR staff, essentially generating propaganda, while particularly younger users started to rely on opinion leaders, with the most popular ones those that are the loudest and most prominent, which dovetails with more controversial and more aggressive.
And, with that, we expect the news to come to us, not that we have to seek out what is important.
The end result is that we all just listen to the big stories. The local stories, important but dull stories, complex or obscure stories, they no longer show up in our feed and can’t show up, because there is no capacity anymore to create them.
Then, which direction will we go?
For 'platform democracy', Moore uses the example of how the big tech players, Google, Amazon and Apple all have moved into healthcare as a service, hoping to 'disrupt'.
Moore also brings up education as an example, particularly, but not only, the Summit School program, sponsored by Zuckerberg and his wife, and later also Bill Gates, investing in personalised learning.
Not just limited to healthcare and transportation, 'platform democracy' has started to move into the fields of transportation, energy, and policing, culminating in the concept of the 'smart city'.
The problem is that these platforms are undemocratic by design and gain more and more power, with their political partners only ever more becoming reliant on them, as it's the platforms that collect the data.
Meanwhile, big tech might strive to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, but serving the needy, the poor, the vulnerable, is not a priority, or even desirable. If you ever received a letter from Amazon stating they don't want your business anymore, you understand what this means.
For ‘surveillance democracy’ Moore echos Shoshana Zuboff, using India’s Aadhaar systeem as the main example, which turns out to already have grown into a Medusa comparable to China‘s social credit system.
Singapore’s E3A, which measures every aspect of everyone’s lives, though the country’s president laments he's playing catch-up to China, sees state and big business thoroughly intertwined to monitor the citizen.
In the end, these systems give the state extreme control, undoing the separation of powers and making it impossible for the citizen to dissent, entrenching discrimination based on past behaviour or perception based on crowd sourced data.
What's the alternative?
Though trials have been run with forms of direct participation in many contexts, results tend to be of mixed, or even little, success. Moore points to three causes; direct votes can lead to frivolous results, like Boats mcBoatface; politicians do not like to vote themselves irrelevant; it’s hard to get people to participate.
But also, the general public are not specialists in most issues that need to be decided on a high level; everyone wants better schools but also lower taxes.
So, neither the internet nor social media are inherently democratizing.
In fact, if the likes of Facebook and Google would take more steps to control the use of their tools in the service of a perceived set of proper policies, the more likely result is that we end up living in a platform democracy, uncontrolled by the state or the democratic processes available to us.
Moore finishes with two examples of successful 'digital democracy'. First Taiwan, where he fawns over Audrey Tang as a source of positive change, and Estonia, with its e-citizen initiatives. Though neither examples are easily reusable in different contexts (and both vary wildly from eachother).
In the end, this book is an excellent overview of how we ended up where we are, as far as the decline of conventional democracy is concerned, at the hands of the information revolution.
But, it's also a book with a bit of a disappointing end.
In the first, digital platforms are the gateways to public services. In the second, the state will amass stronger powers, curtailing citizen freedom. What happens in the third is yet to be defined (and Moore does not define it).
Moore starts with the backstory to where we got where we are.
The mid-1980s saw the rise of hacker conferences, the WELL, the counter culture paradigm that ‘information should be free’, and that cyberspace should be governed by those that inhibit it.
Fast forward to 4chan, as the perfect source of collaboratively created highly successful memes, through a self conscious, offensive, taboo-breaking and transgressive culture.
The first major public success of 4chan came with Project Chanology, which saw Anonymous attack Scientology in 2008, which ultimately flowed into support for Wikileaks and Occupy.
This was followed by 4chan diehards despising the subsequent rise in users of their platform, and the attitude towards outsiders hardening.
Steve Bannon, with Breitbart, managed to recruit plenty of this vitriolic a-democratic, extreme, community in the context of Gamergate, harnessing ‘freedom’ and ‘sovereignty’, in opposition to positioning the left as representatives of ‘political correctness’ and ‘pro-immigration, pro-minorities and pro-gender policies’, portraying this conflict between right and left as a war with the left and a war with the mainstream.
In this war, it was not about using democratic tools, but using anything that would further the cause of disruption.
Moore stops short of stating that the Chans and Reddit’s users at the the_donald forum influenced the 2016 presidential election, though he admits that the impact was far-reaching.
Exporting these methods to other countries met with mixed success. Failing completely against Macron, and Kurz in Austria, but gaining traction for the AfD in Germany, and in the 2017 UK elections.
So, using the justification of being ‘at war’, the proponents of extreme free speech justify any behavior, including violence, to obtain their goals and secure a win.
Moore continuous with the billionaire Robert Mercer, providing funding for Breitbart’s plans to fight ‘cultural marxism’ and to try and take over the media for the far right.
With mixed success at first, the move in 2014 to pushing much more controversial ‘news’ of ‘folk devils and moral panics’ saw them reach the influence they desired.
Mercer then invested 5 million in Cambridge Analytica (CA), in large part for CA’s data centric approach to influencing behaviour (as opposed to influencing opinion), which dovetailed with what Mercer had pioneered at IBM for machine translation, which later became the basis for Google translate.
The framework for defining human personality, created at the end of the 20th century, called ‘Big Five’, defining personality on five scales of people’s traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), provides the context to classify people and defines what actions can be taken to nudge particular individuals into particular behavioural directions.
With the ability to use big data, and the above model for describing human personality, it was now, roughly from 2013 onwards, possible to target political messages based on personality type.
It's debatable whether CA succeeded in influencing the 2016 American elections, but it's beyond a doubt that future elections are likely all to be influenced like this.
In the end, Mercer, Bannon, the Kochs, and Arron Banks in the UK, see their power stemming from not so much creating another narrative framework within the democratic landscape, but from subverting the perception of the veracity of all media, bringing down the concept of a free press.
Then, Moore looks at Russia’s alleged role in influencing political discourse in a host of locations, using Cold War tactics that are well suited for the digital age, where disinformation does not need to be sourced and can spread virally.
Putin was shaped in his KGB years by Andropov’s mentality of disrupting foreign politics and social cohesion in any subversive way, not unlike a guerrilla warfare, as long as the source of the disruption could not be traced back to the Soviet Union.
Then, in the 1990s, with Yeltsin’s election, it became known that American advisors actually did help Yeltsin win the presidential elections.
When, around the time of the Arab spring, protests also started to erupt in Russia, using Facebook as their means to organise, Putin saw, again, an American hand at work, specifically Hillary Clinton’s.
As a consequence, social marketing campaigns that had been indirectly directed by the Kremlin from the mid-2000s, were professionalized, creating content and social media farms with the aim of furthering the Kremlin’s plans in support of Putin and for disruption of foreign political processes. A kind of 'guerrilla geopolics'.
(Interestingly, for the Podesta emails, no original source from Podesta was ever provided (as compared to the hacked Macron emails), meaning that if that hack also originated in Russia and it being likely that, then, some were altered or left out, it would have been presumably easy to debunk the subsequent pizzagate madness.)
Moore then paints a picture of the world of politics from roughly 2008 onwards, when more extremist candidates the world over recognised Facebook and other social media as the perfect platform to engage with, and mobilise, supporters directly, extending these politicians' reach far beyond that of their competitors. This resulted in surprise landslide elections, including those of Obama, Duterte, Beppe Grillo, eventually Trump, and many others.
Their campaigns used the Facebook feature at the core of how individuals are influenced; not by mass media, but by influencers within users' social circles.
But, Moore is not exactly vilifying Facebook, regularly pointing out that Facebook was guided by increasing their reach, the interconnectedness of their users, and their understanding of their users, all to increase interactions and, via that, commercial success.
Moore continuous by diving into a description of how add tech, that is, how Facebook and Google’s ad systems, works, recognising that the produced knowledge is asymmetrical. That is, they know all about you, while you know nothing.
Google’s add tech lead to creating click bait, which lead to the Macedonian fake news machine during the 2016 presidential campaign. And, not surprisingly, though violence and porn were banned from Google’s ad-network, extremism of any kind was not, meaning, advertisers were funding extremist websites which were showing their ads.
Then, with Google and Facebook knowing you, online, it didn’t matter anymore whether you were visiting this particular article on the website of, say, the New York Times, where advertising rates were high. They could catch you on, say, your sister’s blog, where advertising rates are low. So, as a result, the money made by the big publishers dropped.
Facebook followed suit with tracking their users, and, less inhibited than Google, and with troves of data not just on you but also on your popularity, saw Google playing catch-up, which responded by tracking you even more.
Instead of adding friction to the add platforms in order to police them better, both Google and Facebook see the only solution to controlling adverse results as more tracking, more data on their users.
Next is a discussion on how Twitter and Facebook have replaced local news as a source for what’s happening around us, while failing to inform us what's happening outside of our circle of friends and family.
Typically “We gain the feeling of being well informed, regardless of actual knowledge acquisition”.
Twitter. Initially a boon for local reporters, a godsend during the downturn in journalism, with the letting go of vast number of journalists, those that kept their job were still able to do local reporting without leaving their offices.
But, with Twitter’s growth, and the dialogue turning exclusionary and aggressive, Twitter remained useful for covering freak events, but not for regular day-to-day reporting.
The result was that local news reporting died out, particularly in poorer and more remote areas.
Some public authorities hired more PR staff, essentially generating propaganda, while particularly younger users started to rely on opinion leaders, with the most popular ones those that are the loudest and most prominent, which dovetails with more controversial and more aggressive.
And, with that, we expect the news to come to us, not that we have to seek out what is important.
The end result is that we all just listen to the big stories. The local stories, important but dull stories, complex or obscure stories, they no longer show up in our feed and can’t show up, because there is no capacity anymore to create them.
Then, which direction will we go?
For 'platform democracy', Moore uses the example of how the big tech players, Google, Amazon and Apple all have moved into healthcare as a service, hoping to 'disrupt'.
Moore also brings up education as an example, particularly, but not only, the Summit School program, sponsored by Zuckerberg and his wife, and later also Bill Gates, investing in personalised learning.
Not just limited to healthcare and transportation, 'platform democracy' has started to move into the fields of transportation, energy, and policing, culminating in the concept of the 'smart city'.
The problem is that these platforms are undemocratic by design and gain more and more power, with their political partners only ever more becoming reliant on them, as it's the platforms that collect the data.
Meanwhile, big tech might strive to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, but serving the needy, the poor, the vulnerable, is not a priority, or even desirable. If you ever received a letter from Amazon stating they don't want your business anymore, you understand what this means.
For ‘surveillance democracy’ Moore echos Shoshana Zuboff, using India’s Aadhaar systeem as the main example, which turns out to already have grown into a Medusa comparable to China‘s social credit system.
Singapore’s E3A, which measures every aspect of everyone’s lives, though the country’s president laments he's playing catch-up to China, sees state and big business thoroughly intertwined to monitor the citizen.
In the end, these systems give the state extreme control, undoing the separation of powers and making it impossible for the citizen to dissent, entrenching discrimination based on past behaviour or perception based on crowd sourced data.
What's the alternative?
Though trials have been run with forms of direct participation in many contexts, results tend to be of mixed, or even little, success. Moore points to three causes; direct votes can lead to frivolous results, like Boats mcBoatface; politicians do not like to vote themselves irrelevant; it’s hard to get people to participate.
But also, the general public are not specialists in most issues that need to be decided on a high level; everyone wants better schools but also lower taxes.
So, neither the internet nor social media are inherently democratizing.
In fact, if the likes of Facebook and Google would take more steps to control the use of their tools in the service of a perceived set of proper policies, the more likely result is that we end up living in a platform democracy, uncontrolled by the state or the democratic processes available to us.
Moore finishes with two examples of successful 'digital democracy'. First Taiwan, where he fawns over Audrey Tang as a source of positive change, and Estonia, with its e-citizen initiatives. Though neither examples are easily reusable in different contexts (and both vary wildly from eachother).
In the end, this book is an excellent overview of how we ended up where we are, as far as the decline of conventional democracy is concerned, at the hands of the information revolution.
But, it's also a book with a bit of a disappointing end.
October 2, 2018
Great review of the new practices of International Information warfare and a decent primer on all things Alt-Right and on the chan community.
November 23, 2021
Eye-opening and accessible.
October 22, 2018
Summary: An inquiry into the ways individuals and states have influenced democratic governments, how web-based platforms have made it possible, and some of the alternatives for the future.
Much has been made of various ways the 2016 presidential election in the United States was "hacked" or manipulated exploiting various tools and platforms on the internet. In this book, Martin Moore pulls back the curtain on how it was done, the vulnerabilities of our social media platforms, and both the potential for more influence along these lines in the future, and the alternative, which is not becoming societies of Luddites.
He begins with the different individuals and groups that in some way were connected with efforts to manipulate the internet. He begins by exploring those who are the "freextremists." These are the denizens of image boards like 4chan that generate memes, whose survival on the board depends on how provocative, indeed how offensive, it is as measured by how often it is reposted. Many of the digital natives on these sites were alt-right or neo-Nazi types. Eventually a number became allied with organizations like Breitbart, and became a key asset in the media campaigns of the Trump elections with alliances with Trump operatives. In turn, Moore profiles plutocrats like Robert Mercer, who provided the capital that turned Breitbart into a web powerhouse. Finally, he details the various ways from hacked email accounts of Clinton staff, to various fake news and meme postings through fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, that influence was brought to bear by Russian entities on US citizens to influence the election. The author remains agnostic on whether these played a decisive influence, although he makes it clear that the Republican candidate used these methodologies or benefited from them to a much greater extent than the Democrat candidate.
The second part of the book looks at the social media platforms used to sway potential voters. The Facebook story is insidious, not only because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but also because Facebook uses an ad and promotional post targeting system utilizing the incredible amounts of information it aggregates on each profile through likes, posts, and clicks on posts. Psychological profiling enables precise targeting of contents to base voters, those who might desert a candidate, and undecided voters. Google's pursuit of ad revenue also makes it vulnerable for similar reasons. Twitter is different in the ability of this platform to disseminate information, exploited heavily by bots and fake accounts (not to mention then candidate and now President, Donald Trump's Twitter presence). A common thread is advertising and the use of personal information to increase ad revenues, making these ideal platforms for political exploitation.
The third part of the book explores directions democracy could go. We could move to a platform democracy where platforms deliver everything from places to stay (AirBnB) to transportation (Uber) to healthcare (something Amazon is experimenting with) and schools. There is a possibility of these platforms pervading every aspect of life, to the exclusion of the local, including local news media. More insidious is what Moore calls "surveillance democracy" where a digital identity is mandated by government and becomes necessary for voting, passports and travel, purchasing a home, or even shopping for groceries. He describes the system already in place in India, and how such systems are already being used for social control in China.
The alternative for Moore is not to "unplug" but rather to use technology to serve rather than manipulate democratic processes, including following Estonia's model of creating policy around the individual and the privacy of their data, rather than large interests. He calls this "democracy re-hacked."
What Moore seems to be doing is relying on regulation to create and implement policies to protect democracy. What bothers me is that it seems easy to circumvent many such measures, and only those without the resources or the savvy to circumvent such regulation will be shut down. It seems that until there are better limits on the data that can be collected about us (or greater transparency about that collection), targeting ads and promoted stories tailored to our interests will likely continue to find their way into our search results, timelines and Twitter feeds. Perhaps privacy and freedom from manipulative advertising (or even algorithms) might be worth paying for--perhaps a subscription fee to platforms like Facebook or Twitter. In exchange for not harvesting and using our data, we would pay an annual subscription (for example, I pay a certain amount for my identity to not be linked publicly to my URL, and to keep my blog site ad-free). There may be many users who would prefer this option, if private really means private, rather than government imposed regulation.
Whether you think democracy can be "re-hacked" or not, it seems important that a populace educate itself how to avoid becoming unwitting victims of political manipulation through the internet, just as we have to learn to be savvy about viruses, spyware, and other ways hackers attempt to compromise the integrity of our computers and our data. Moore at very least helps us understand both that it is being done, and how, and in doing so already provides us a vital tool in taking back our democracy--personal agency.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Program in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Much has been made of various ways the 2016 presidential election in the United States was "hacked" or manipulated exploiting various tools and platforms on the internet. In this book, Martin Moore pulls back the curtain on how it was done, the vulnerabilities of our social media platforms, and both the potential for more influence along these lines in the future, and the alternative, which is not becoming societies of Luddites.
He begins with the different individuals and groups that in some way were connected with efforts to manipulate the internet. He begins by exploring those who are the "freextremists." These are the denizens of image boards like 4chan that generate memes, whose survival on the board depends on how provocative, indeed how offensive, it is as measured by how often it is reposted. Many of the digital natives on these sites were alt-right or neo-Nazi types. Eventually a number became allied with organizations like Breitbart, and became a key asset in the media campaigns of the Trump elections with alliances with Trump operatives. In turn, Moore profiles plutocrats like Robert Mercer, who provided the capital that turned Breitbart into a web powerhouse. Finally, he details the various ways from hacked email accounts of Clinton staff, to various fake news and meme postings through fake Facebook and Twitter accounts, that influence was brought to bear by Russian entities on US citizens to influence the election. The author remains agnostic on whether these played a decisive influence, although he makes it clear that the Republican candidate used these methodologies or benefited from them to a much greater extent than the Democrat candidate.
The second part of the book looks at the social media platforms used to sway potential voters. The Facebook story is insidious, not only because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but also because Facebook uses an ad and promotional post targeting system utilizing the incredible amounts of information it aggregates on each profile through likes, posts, and clicks on posts. Psychological profiling enables precise targeting of contents to base voters, those who might desert a candidate, and undecided voters. Google's pursuit of ad revenue also makes it vulnerable for similar reasons. Twitter is different in the ability of this platform to disseminate information, exploited heavily by bots and fake accounts (not to mention then candidate and now President, Donald Trump's Twitter presence). A common thread is advertising and the use of personal information to increase ad revenues, making these ideal platforms for political exploitation.
The third part of the book explores directions democracy could go. We could move to a platform democracy where platforms deliver everything from places to stay (AirBnB) to transportation (Uber) to healthcare (something Amazon is experimenting with) and schools. There is a possibility of these platforms pervading every aspect of life, to the exclusion of the local, including local news media. More insidious is what Moore calls "surveillance democracy" where a digital identity is mandated by government and becomes necessary for voting, passports and travel, purchasing a home, or even shopping for groceries. He describes the system already in place in India, and how such systems are already being used for social control in China.
The alternative for Moore is not to "unplug" but rather to use technology to serve rather than manipulate democratic processes, including following Estonia's model of creating policy around the individual and the privacy of their data, rather than large interests. He calls this "democracy re-hacked."
What Moore seems to be doing is relying on regulation to create and implement policies to protect democracy. What bothers me is that it seems easy to circumvent many such measures, and only those without the resources or the savvy to circumvent such regulation will be shut down. It seems that until there are better limits on the data that can be collected about us (or greater transparency about that collection), targeting ads and promoted stories tailored to our interests will likely continue to find their way into our search results, timelines and Twitter feeds. Perhaps privacy and freedom from manipulative advertising (or even algorithms) might be worth paying for--perhaps a subscription fee to platforms like Facebook or Twitter. In exchange for not harvesting and using our data, we would pay an annual subscription (for example, I pay a certain amount for my identity to not be linked publicly to my URL, and to keep my blog site ad-free). There may be many users who would prefer this option, if private really means private, rather than government imposed regulation.
Whether you think democracy can be "re-hacked" or not, it seems important that a populace educate itself how to avoid becoming unwitting victims of political manipulation through the internet, just as we have to learn to be savvy about viruses, spyware, and other ways hackers attempt to compromise the integrity of our computers and our data. Moore at very least helps us understand both that it is being done, and how, and in doing so already provides us a vital tool in taking back our democracy--personal agency.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Program in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
February 4, 2025
Martin Moore is a director and researcher at King’s College London who specialises in the role of technology in communications and political discourse. His most timely and prescient book, Democracy Hacked, is a comprehensive look at modern affairs, charting the impact of big tech on our societies and institutions.
Initially, the author analyses the rise of the social media platforms and their pivot towards harvesting user data. This combined with the advertising industry to create a near endless stream of profits. Entering the mid-2010s, the onset of manipulative tactics began. Opportunists like Steve Bannon used the GamerGate scandal in 2014 to indoctrinate gamers into the far-right, Russia used bots to influence public opinion and other populists like Rodrigo Duterte used Facebook’s vast reach to sway voters to his side. This is the book’s strongest element as it explores the complexities of technology and how it connects to shocking political outcomes. Every network of agitators from 4Chan trolls to Macedonian conspiracy theorists is included here as Moore examines their attitudes towards the internet and how to use it for their own ends.
There is a constant emphasis that liberal democracies have been irreversibly changed by the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter; with enormous reach and a gigantic user base, both voters and politicians alike are unable to escape the oncoming effects. The final part of the book considers the possible futures of data-driven politics. Comparisons are drawn between the oppressive nature of China and the more efficient approach of Estonia. While Democracy Hacked was released in 2018, this area of the book offers further intrigue in retrospect. Social media companies still command great influence over the masses, especially when they are owned by billionaire investors.
Recommended?
YES: Democracy Hacked is a damning but deeply fascinating look at modern nations and how the political process has been manipulated. Every major incident from the early 2010s through to the shocks of 2016 is richly detailed, explaining how our societies became so polarised. When you consider the political earthquakes in the years following 2018, the book still offers an important history lesson on why citizens are divided. It’s a must-read for anyone who follows politics or global events.
Initially, the author analyses the rise of the social media platforms and their pivot towards harvesting user data. This combined with the advertising industry to create a near endless stream of profits. Entering the mid-2010s, the onset of manipulative tactics began. Opportunists like Steve Bannon used the GamerGate scandal in 2014 to indoctrinate gamers into the far-right, Russia used bots to influence public opinion and other populists like Rodrigo Duterte used Facebook’s vast reach to sway voters to his side. This is the book’s strongest element as it explores the complexities of technology and how it connects to shocking political outcomes. Every network of agitators from 4Chan trolls to Macedonian conspiracy theorists is included here as Moore examines their attitudes towards the internet and how to use it for their own ends.
There is a constant emphasis that liberal democracies have been irreversibly changed by the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter; with enormous reach and a gigantic user base, both voters and politicians alike are unable to escape the oncoming effects. The final part of the book considers the possible futures of data-driven politics. Comparisons are drawn between the oppressive nature of China and the more efficient approach of Estonia. While Democracy Hacked was released in 2018, this area of the book offers further intrigue in retrospect. Social media companies still command great influence over the masses, especially when they are owned by billionaire investors.
Recommended?
YES: Democracy Hacked is a damning but deeply fascinating look at modern nations and how the political process has been manipulated. Every major incident from the early 2010s through to the shocks of 2016 is richly detailed, explaining how our societies became so polarised. When you consider the political earthquakes in the years following 2018, the book still offers an important history lesson on why citizens are divided. It’s a must-read for anyone who follows politics or global events.
February 17, 2019
This highly derivative overview offers many thoughts to ponder. Names prominent in the news float through the text: Bannon, Trump, Brin, Mercer, Page, Zuckerberg, Bezos. (Oh, I take that back. Mercer tries to keep himself anonymous as Breitbart and Bannon's financial backer.) Concepts: meme, twitter, sabotage, undermine, F8, Aadhaar, data, bots. (Some of these are new to me; I need to read more about them.) Institutions: Cambridge Analytica, 4shan, Reddit, Google, Facebook. There's a chapter on how the domain of advertising has changed with arrival of the internet; how the field of journalism has become more skittish with the arrival of Twitter. The "folk theory of democracy" (give people the facts, good and bad, let them weigh up and decide what is best) has never really worked. "Tyranny of the majority" distorts idyllic models. Sometimes laziness on the part of the electorate overrules judgment of professionals with horrific results. After citing many instances where digital democracy has been hacked for the worse, Moore concludes that a REhack for the better is needed. The scale of the task, though, is large.
May 11, 2020
The book focuses on perhaps the most important subject matter at hand - decay of democratic processes around the world and coming up of right-wing populist movements across the world, but from the perspective of social media and information technology.
Martin Moore's favorite number is 3. He structures his work crystal clear - uncovering political turmoil and information warfare on three levels of analysis (individual, plutocrat, state) followed by how the big three tech-giants (Facebook, Google, Twitter) has transformed political behavior of voters and ultimately imagining three scenarios where the future of democracy might be headed.
The key takeaway is that digital platforms can be used for both democratization and authoritarianism, however, by default they've ended up being the exploits of the latter. It also highlights that digital technologies must form an integral part of debates around political science and international relations more frequently. It is high time we adapt in approaching political processes and inculcate a 'digital' lens.
Martin Moore's favorite number is 3. He structures his work crystal clear - uncovering political turmoil and information warfare on three levels of analysis (individual, plutocrat, state) followed by how the big three tech-giants (Facebook, Google, Twitter) has transformed political behavior of voters and ultimately imagining three scenarios where the future of democracy might be headed.
The key takeaway is that digital platforms can be used for both democratization and authoritarianism, however, by default they've ended up being the exploits of the latter. It also highlights that digital technologies must form an integral part of debates around political science and international relations more frequently. It is high time we adapt in approaching political processes and inculcate a 'digital' lens.
January 5, 2019
Dr. Moore's account of technology's influence on politics is both illuminating and disturbing. Divided in three partes, it covers the formation of a few hackers group, how hacker culture developed and how those groups could be hijacked to political ends. It describes the developments in psychology (specifically the OCEAN model for personality) that enabled big data screening of voters and it analyses some technical aspects of marketing tools that were used for propaganda on some tech giants. Dr. Moore's then proceed to analyse how technology disrupted news and the consequences of this disruption to society, he exposes hidden dangers that originate from the surrender of data even in considerably understandable cases as health-care.
Sometimes the author seems a bit too suspicious of technology, but it never makes ad hominem arguments, everything is explained in impersonal terms and it's overall a good reading that will make you wish you were anonymous.
Sometimes the author seems a bit too suspicious of technology, but it never makes ad hominem arguments, everything is explained in impersonal terms and it's overall a good reading that will make you wish you were anonymous.
July 19, 2019
A book that Took me more than 3 months to finish and It was worth every Second. Now, why did I gave that much time, the answer is because it consists more information per square inch than any book I've read up till now. It tells you how the so called social media disrupted our very own democracy and how it is becoming more and more dangerous as the days pass by and what we can do to prevent further damage. An eye opener. I recommend everyone whether you are from tech field or no to read this atleast once. Please, Read it
It covered various important events that are occuring around the globe and how it is slowly taking our freedom away from us. The story on AADHAR is an eye opener, so for anyone around the globe I request you to go through it I can bet my money on it.
It covered various important events that are occuring around the globe and how it is slowly taking our freedom away from us. The story on AADHAR is an eye opener, so for anyone around the globe I request you to go through it I can bet my money on it.
June 14, 2019
A well written text that combines what seem to be the right pieces of technology and consequent cultural change into a woven fabric that explains why democracy is struggling today.
A few of the insights are really key:
- that an online culture of decentralist hackers has been hijacked by certain political groups
- that the diffusion of social media has led to a new space for influence that is unregulated
- that privatising of certain social infrastructure leads to damage to democratic social controls
I don’t think the book is perfect as it tends to overclaim its points but I found the ides reported as more insightful than many similar ones i have read.
A few of the insights are really key:
- that an online culture of decentralist hackers has been hijacked by certain political groups
- that the diffusion of social media has led to a new space for influence that is unregulated
- that privatising of certain social infrastructure leads to damage to democratic social controls
I don’t think the book is perfect as it tends to overclaim its points but I found the ides reported as more insightful than many similar ones i have read.
October 17, 2023
This brought up a very interesting idea. Can democracy might be broken in the modern world? And this book explains how it is indeed broken.
I had fun reading the first few chapters but after that I felt it went a little dry for me with a lot of facts that was too much for me to digest. But I wanted to try reading it so I kept it on my shelf and tried later a few times. Somehow never made it back.
It's still a great book because it brings up a great idea. How democracy has already been broken in our world.
I had fun reading the first few chapters but after that I felt it went a little dry for me with a lot of facts that was too much for me to digest. But I wanted to try reading it so I kept it on my shelf and tried later a few times. Somehow never made it back.
It's still a great book because it brings up a great idea. How democracy has already been broken in our world.
May 10, 2019
So the book isn't really about how computer intrusions affect democratic elections. Well, sure, that's a part. But the larger thesis is about how technology and technological developments have adversely affected democracies. It tries to counter the Silicon Valley libertarian idea that there is a technological fix for every social solution. Furthermore, technological integration into civil society does not necessarily lead to more democratic freedoms.
October 17, 2019
Martin Moore explains the impact of internet based media and communications platforms on modern democratic processes. While there is a slight left/liberal (for lack of a better word) bias, the book is definitely a good read and neatly explains the various forces and interests that influence how people participate in the governance of their country and how this affects them in turn in not so explicit ways.
June 27, 2019
An interesting look at how communications technology - particularly social media - impacts politics around the world, and the response to this by various governments. Definitely an important topic for contemporary politics given the prevalence of social media in so many people's lives, and the role social media has in influencing and coordinating political events.
May 14, 2019
Great neutral read on adtech
Ever wanted to understand why the tech platforms cannot control political advertising too well? Read this book to understand the present past and future
Ever wanted to understand why the tech platforms cannot control political advertising too well? Read this book to understand the present past and future
June 14, 2019
Must read if you are interested in modern global politics
Well analyzed and well argued. Though I didn't fully agree with the author on all the points he make, this book deserves a 5 star for its impeccable analysis and observations on the impact of digitalization on global politics.
Well analyzed and well argued. Though I didn't fully agree with the author on all the points he make, this book deserves a 5 star for its impeccable analysis and observations on the impact of digitalization on global politics.
July 18, 2019
A pretty good explanation on how internet and platforms influence our choices and the way we perceive the world. Only thing is that I feel it's a bias opinion very focused on showing us the issues with google and Facebook and forgetting to mention the power the individual has and what should we do.
December 2, 2020
A very complete overview of the role of the internet in politics over the last 20 years.
Poses interesting contrasts of how countries are using the internet and how it can evolve with both advantages and drawbacks.
Poses interesting contrasts of how countries are using the internet and how it can evolve with both advantages and drawbacks.
January 10, 2022
Informative on various issues regarding technology and showed various other hidden details that I did not paid much heed to or in other words was oblivious to. The book made me realise on how technology has such a greater impact on my life without me knowing it.
March 24, 2022
Tour de force. I learned a great deal and the author writes brilliantly. From the imageboards of 4chan, to the shadowy plutocratic world of Robert Mercer, it's a real no stone unturned look at the impact of technology on democracy.
March 10, 2023
The sort of book you buy because someone told you it will unlock a whole area for you, and then you find that it largely describes it. Not a bad thing in itself, but not what I bought it for.
Maybe I’m not clever enough for it...or have too low a boredom threshold.
Maybe I’m not clever enough for it...or have too low a boredom threshold.
April 10, 2019
Well, that was unnerving.
January 6, 2020
A somewhat interesting book and I would have given it a higher rating if it weren't for the all too common and, by now, tedious Russophobia. I give it 2 stars because I'm feeling generous.
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