{"id":4416,"date":"2017-03-16T15:33:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T22:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=4416"},"modified":"2017-03-16T15:33:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T22:33:17","slug":"facebook-digital-sovereignty-democracy-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/16\/facebook-digital-sovereignty-democracy-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook & Digital Sovereignty (from Democracy.Earth)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not Mark Zuckerberg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the risks and opportunities of Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s plan for a global community.<\/h1>\n

November 12, 2015:<\/strong> Facebook announces a new feature by having Mark Zuckerberg post on his personal feed the first 360 Virtual Reality<\/em> video<\/a> in his social network. The feature itself allows any smartphone owner watch an immersive video where you can pan around your phone as if you were actually there. But what was really interesting about this feature announcement was the content in the video itself: it was a military parade held in North Korea 🇰🇵 right at the moment when crowds cheer as a big poster featuring Kim Jong Un entered in scene.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The land (Nation-States).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Deploying unknown technology just a few feet away from authority to capture images under the most secrecy-jealous government in the world (one that doesn\u2019t even allow tourists to take pictures without authorization), certainly feels as flipping the bird<\/em> to an autocratic dictatorial regime. How would the Great Leader<\/em> react to such a provocation?<\/p>\n

January 6, 2016 (8 weeks later):<\/strong> North Korea held its first nuclear test after three years<\/a> claiming they have initiated the testing phase for a thermonuclear weapon considered among the most dangerous known to mankind: the H-Bomb<\/a>. Specialists from China & the US argued that the measurements for the seismic event felt in North Korean territory during the test was of a magnitude of 5.1, insufficient for an H-Bomb but compatible with a 9 kiloton atomic bomb nonetheless.<\/p>\n

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The cloud (Corporations).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kim Jong Un and Mark Zuckerberg have in common more things than just the fact that they wear the same outfit for work everyday: they\u2019re both millennials amassing unprecedented power in a perfect juxtaposition of styles. While one aims to split the atom in order to instill fear, the other one multiplies the bits to anticipate behavior. The dialectical relation between force and intelligence. Their respective empires are the perfect example of the clash between matter and information: the land<\/em> and the cloud<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Politician playing hacker, hacker playing politician. Brazil\u2019s Rousseff and Facebook\u2019s Zuckerberg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s been years since most of us last thought of Facebook as a disruptive startup. The unapologetic brilliant hacker that Mark Zuckerberg once was, now tours the United States to rethink the role of Facebook in the formation of what he calls a global community<\/em> by meeting with political and industry leaders while running a corporation that has become much more than another site on the web.<\/p>\n

Recently, Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the company in a long, quite controversial manifesto. The text emerges in a special context: Facebook is accused of hosting an epidemic of fake news<\/em> due to blind algorithms<\/strong> that got played with smart use of data that targeted every demographic in America with the perfect fake article on either Clinton or Trump, benefitting the latter. A shadow strategy that certainly helped elect as president a man who seems determinate to take measures to make the world less \u201copen and connected\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whole 6,000 words manifesto<\/a> is pretty much summarized here:<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is the story of how we\u2019ve learned to come together in ever greater numbers\u200a\u2014\u200afrom tribes to cities to nations. At each step, we built social infrastructure like communities, media and governments to empower us to achieve things we couldn\u2019t on our own. Today we are close to taking our next\u00a0step.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That next step is obviously Facebook, where 1.8 billion people gather every day producing the largest group under a centralized administration in history.<\/p>\n

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Identity providers ranked by population size.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mark Zuckerberg insists in talking about his company as \u201csocial infrastructure\u201d for the global community, meaning he intends to replace many existing institutional roles\u200a\u2014\u200alike preventing crime and suicide or finding terrorists\u200a\u2014\u200awith a single platform. Beyond Zuckerberg\u2019s curious and ambiguous use of the trendy term infrastructure<\/em>, we highlight the important dimensions in which these instruments of community-shaping could endanger our freedom and personal sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Facebook as government means Facebook as the\u00a0police.<\/h4>\n

We must take into consideration that Facebook is building a global community run by a platform that among other features has, by design:<\/p>\n