On April 23, Mozilla, a non-profit organization engaged in a number of projects aimed at free access, privacy and security on the Internet, as well as developing the Firefox web browser, published about the "health" of the global network in 2019, affecting the impact of the Internet on society and on our daily lives.
The report paints a rather mixed picture. First of all, it is noted that humanity at the beginning of this year stepped over a significant barrier - "50% of the people on Earth are already on the Web." As the organization notes, while the Internet brings many positive aspects to our lives, people are increasingly worried about how the Internet and social networks affect our children, our work and democracy.
When the organization released last year's report, the world watched the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal unfold when the social network's gross use of data collected by the social network to run political campaigns was exposed, eventually leading to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg being forced to speak out. to the US Congress with an apology, and the company has significantly revised its privacy policy. After this story, millions of people have realized that the widespread and unacceptable sharing of private data, the rapid growth, centralization and globalization of the tech industry, as well as the abuse of online advertising and social networks, have led to a huge number of problems.
More and more people began to ask questions: what do we do about it? How can we steer the digital world in the right direction?
Mozilla points out that governments across Europe have recently been observing various measures to control network security and prevent possible misinformation ahead of the upcoming EU elections. We've seen big tech companies try everything from making their ad and content algorithms more transparent, to creating ethics advisories (albeit with limited effect, but critics keep saying "you need to do a lot more!"). ). And, ultimately, we have seen CEOs, politicians and activists fighting each other to decide where to go next. We have not been able to “fix” the problems that have been brewing, and even the GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) has not become a panacea, but it seems that society is entering a new era of ongoing debate about what a healthy digital society should look like.
First of all, Mozilla talks about three actual problems of the modern network:
- The necessity of optimizing the use of artificial intelligence and limiting the scope of its application is considered, questions such as: Who develops algorithms are asked? What data do they use? Who is discriminated against? It is noted that artificial intelligence is now being used in mission-critical and sensitive tasks, such as deciding whether to pay and provide health insurance to people in the United States or to find criminals with the potential to blame the innocent.
- The need to rethink the advertising economy is explained, because the current approach, where the person has become a commodity, and total surveillance has become an indispensable tool for marketing, can no longer be acceptable.
- It explores how large corporations influence our lives and how local governments in large cities can integrate technology in a way that serves the public good rather than commercial interests. An example is the story where the authorities in New York were able to put pressure on Amazon to introduce software that reads text from the screen for people with visual impairments in its Kindle e-book. On the other hand, the article shows how, under the guise of optimizing urban infrastructure, more and more technologies are being introduced that allow you to totally monitor people on the streets of cities.
Of course, the report is not limited to just three topics. It also talks about: the threat of deepfakes - a technology for replacing a person's face with a video of another person's face, which can cause damage to reputation, be used for misinformation and various fraud, the potential of user social media platforms, the porno literacy initiative, the investment in laying submarine cables, about the dangers of posting the results of your DNA analysis in the public domain, and much more.
So what is Mozilla's conclusion? How "healthy" is the Internet now? The organization finds it difficult to give a definite answer. The digital environment is a complex ecosystem, just like the planet we live on. In the past year, there have been a number of positive trends that show that the Internet and our relationship with it are moving in the right direction:
- Calls for the protection of personal data are getting louder. The past year has brought a titanic shift in public awareness of privacy and security in the digital world, thanks in large part to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This awareness continues to grow, as well as to be put into practice in the form of specific laws and projects. European regulators, with the help of civil society monitors and individual Internet users, enforce the GDPR. In recent months, Google has been fined 50 million euros for GDPR violations in France, and tens of thousands of violation complaints have been filed around the world.
- There is some movement towards a more responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). As the shortcomings of the current AI approach become more apparent, experts and activists are speaking out and looking for new solutions. Initiatives such as the Safe Face Pledge are developing facial analysis technology that would serve the common good. And experts such as Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, talk about the role of influential organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission and the EU Global Tech Group in this matter.
- Increasing attention is paid to the role and influence of large corporations. Over the past year, more and more people have drawn attention to the fact that eight companies control most of the Internet. As a result, US and European cities are becoming a counterbalance to them, ensuring that municipal technology prioritizes human rights over commercial profits. Coalition "” currently has more than two dozen participants. At the same time, Google, Amazon and Microsoft employees are demanding that their employers not use or sell their technology for questionable purposes. And ideas like co-op platforms and co-ownership are seen as alternatives to the existing corporate monopoly.
On the other hand, there are many areas where the situation has deteriorated, or where events have occurred that are of concern to the organization:
- Internet censorship is rampant. Governments around the world continue to restrict access to the Internet in a variety of ways, from outright censorship to the requirement to pay additional taxes for the use of social networks. In 2018, there were 188 internet outages worldwide. A new form of censorship has also emerged: internet slowdown. Governments and law enforcement restrict access to certain destinations so that it can take several hours for a single social media post to load. Such technology helps repressive regimes deny their responsibility.
- The abuse of biometric data continues. When large groups of the population do not have access to biometric identifiers, this is not good, as they can make life much easier in many areas. But in practice, biometric technologies often only benefit governments and private actors, not individuals. In India, more than 1 billion citizens are at risk due to a vulnerability in Aadhaar, the government's biometric identification system. And in Kenya, advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the government against the soon-to-be-mandated National Identity Management System (NIIMS) designed to collect and store information about people's DNA, their GPS location at home, and more.
- Artificial intelligence is becoming a tool for discrimination. Tech giants in the US and China are rapidly integrating AI into a variety of tasks, regardless of the potential harm and negative effects. As a result, people recognition systems used in law enforcement, banking, recruitment, and advertising often discriminate against women and people of color due to incorrect data, false assumptions, and lack of technical validation. Some companies create "ethics boards" to allay public concerns, but critics say these boards have little or no impact.
After you look at all these trends and many other data in the report, you can conclude that the Internet has the potential to both elevate us and throw us into the abyss. Over the past few years, this has become clear to a large number of people. It also became clear that we have to step forward and start doing something if we want the digital world of the future to turn out to be more positive for humanity than negative.
The good news is that more and more people are dedicating their lives to building a healthier and more humane Internet. In this year's Mozilla report, you can read about volunteers in Ethiopia, digital rights lawyers in Poland, human rights researchers from Iran and China, and more.
According to Mozilla, the main goal of the report is to become both a reflection of the current situation in the global network, and a resource for working on changing it. It aims to inspire developers and designers to create new free products, give politicians context and ideas for laws, and above all, provide citizens and activists with a picture of how others are striving to improve the Internet, in the hope that more people around the world will push forward. change with them.
Source: 3dnews.ru