Research outline and progress

Life got in the way of giving my (m)eager audience updates on the progress of my research. I’ve come to realize that I need to explain better what exactly it is that I’m doing when I claim to be researching how Tech-Titans/Surveillance Capitalism is undermining Democracy (when I say this part out loud I always feel like there should be a sudden lightning-strike sound-effect playing in the background to emphasize doomsday predictions).

Because technological corporations are gaining so much power and money while operating under selfish priorities of profits over people I often find myself feeling hopeless and defeated, powerless against these unfathomable giants that have taken over our lives and thoughts. There is irrefutable proof all around us that technology has changed our societies, changed our behavior and changed our minds.

Shortening attention spans and rampant screen addiction are a good example of how tech-titans have changed our minds and influenced our behavior. Shopping sites like TEMU use the same behavioral manipulation tactics on their shoppers as casino sites do on their gamblers to get them hooked. Social media does the same, although we do see changes amongst the largest players like Facebook, especially following the EU Digital Services Act, which forces them to clean up their act.

But even worse is how Tech-titans lead a massive but mostly silent development to move digital disputes out of our regular public justice systems and into privatized arbitration courts that rule significantly more in favor of capital power than people. Arbitration courts guard the interests of corporations, not people. But if you agree to a Terms of Service (ToS) contract you have bound yourself to arbitration instead of public dispute settlement which also forces justice out of the public arena and into a box of secrecy and, in many cases, silenced injustice. As part of arbitration proceedings people are bound to secrecy about the outcome of their case through Non-Disclosure clauses that forbid people from speaking about the outcome of their case. This is not to protect people, this is purely to protect corporate interest.

A HUGE part of public justice is that IT IS PUBLIC, because people need to see that justice has been done. The old saying “justice delayed is justice denied” is very comparable to the notion that justice in secret is justice denied. If someone is publicly harmed why shouldn’t they be able to seek public justice? It is an oxymoron that someone could be publicly harmed and then denied the right to speak about the resolution of justice. On top of denying people’s fundamental right to freedom of speech, such silencing serves only the conglomerate that set the rules in the first place. There was no negotiation of contract when you agreed to their ToS, they set the rules and you can either accept or walk away. Privatized arbitration removes a critical function of our democratic and due-process systems at an alarming rate. BEWARE!

In short it is a 3×7 table that first defines three main pillars of Democracy as an institution.

These are the kind of issues that I’m dealing with as part of my research. But they need to be systematically examined and that’s what I use Warren’s FRAMEWORK OF DEMOCRATIC FUNCTIONS for. It is the only democratic theory I’ve come across that visually explains what goes on in a system for it to be called democratic.

Empowered inclusion: citizens have participation rights in matters concerning themselves and society as a whole. In relation to Cyberspace this raises questions of who gets to go online, who makes decisions about Internet Law and on what level, who gets to be on platforms and how is Cyberspace made accessible to everyone, for example by user friendly interfaces for disabled people or simplified wording and translations to free information and services from language silos. Most importantly, empowered inclusion addresses where and how the public is represented and how (connecting to #3) democracy is operationalized in relation to Cyberspace.

Deliberation, how we make legitimate peaceful decisions that bind societies or systems to decisions that then are put into action. Online discourse and the manipulation of online discourse is a gargantuan issue that has a massive impact on our societies and people’s behavior. Online propaganda and tactics that influence people’s behavior are a growing field in Social- and Tech Sciences but we’re still behind in tackling the issue. Democratic discourse is all about how we make peaceful decisions on behalf of society and how they are legitimized.

Execution of legitimate decisions. How decisions are legalized and executed i.e. institutions and law. In relation to Cyberspace I examine enforcement of law and what penalties are there when corporations like META (Facebook & Instagram) break the law. What kind of justice is on the table? How can we deal with international environments when there are different laws in different countries? But most importantly – connecting back to the first pillar – how do we execute Internet Governance so it is democratic and inclusive? Beyond legal order, how is Internet Governance and Cyberspace Democratic?

Across these 3 main pillars of democracy Warren places 7 main functions which creates a neat table where different functions of our digital society fit. These 7 functions are: recognizing (inclusivity), resisting (right to opposing views), deliberate (formalizing how decisions are made through discourse), representing (elected candidates), voting (legitimate democratic decisions), joining (the right to gather and establish organizations) and exiting (the right to not be included, opting out).

Warren does not claim this is a complete overview of democratic functions but his matrix is the best method I’ve seen to encompass democracy visually and conceptualize what is happening when we run democratic societies.

On top of those 7 main functions I’ve added to my version of the model two more functions of modern Democracies; economy (collection of taxes, economic control, facilitating business and distribution of wealth for social good) and secondly defense (the duty of government to protect the country and the system from internal and external threats).

So let’s view this as a matrix of Democratic Functions with some examples added:

SOME EXAMPLES	Empowered Citizens	Making decisions	Execution
Inclusion	Accessibility	Getting a voice	Guarding rights
Resisting	Opposition needed for better decisions	Ideas competing on fair grounds	Protection of opposition
Deliberate	Empowering voices	“marketplace of ideas”	Guarding the Arena
Representing	Emergence of reps	Representatives & legitimate decisions	Executing majority/representative will
Voting	Voting rights	Informed decisions	Delegation of power
Joining	Founding clubs	Promoting and speaking	Organizing & legitimizing
Exiting	Extent of opting out	Right to be forgotten	Protecting ppl from surveillance society
Accounting	Paying to the system	Monetization of speech	Economic controls
Defending	Excluding hostile players	Guarding against misinformation	Setting the legal framework

Note that a lot of activities fit more than one box and are influenced by other functions and these are just examples. It is not a clear-cut model but a method to organize what is fundamentally going on when we make democratic decisions and run democratic systems or societies. Each box typically has a lot of functions attached to it.

Lately I’ve been working on this model, gathering data and fitting it into the matrix, examining the evidence and coming to conclusions about where we have problems posed by Tech-titans/Surveillance Capitalism pertaining to the future health of democracy.

That’s work that I’ll get into later but right now I think privatization of public functions is one of the largest issues we’re facing in Cyberspace. Private corporations have taken over the role of deciding who gets to be a part of the online society, they control who gets to say what and what information we see on our screens (based on their information about us) and they’re increasingly controlling what kind of justice we can seek when things go badly in Cyberspace. On top of that they often break the law and the fines posed on them for breaking the law are laughable.

Countries now have digital ambassadors to Silicone Valley to guard their interests because the power of Tech-Titans has become so gargantuan. Lobbyists have long targeted elected representatives and governments, as they still do (the tech-lobby is the single largest donor to US representatives and political parties) but their power has grown so greatly that governments now need to lobby the leaders of corporations in order to get them to consider the public interest.

The more my research progresses the more the situation looks FUBAR. The sky is not falling, but global tech-corporations are royally messing with our democracies and ‘something’ needs to be done about it.

I’m doing my little part of that ‘something’ through my research and by writing about it. Hoping it counts for something. Still I feel most people are not interested at all, so if you, dear reader made it to the end of this ramble I sincerely thank you for your time and hope you’ll have a discussion with someone in your life about these developments. Raising awareness is the first step to getting something done.