Is it possible to influence the vote of networks?

If anything you have to recognize the documentary Nothing is private (The big hack), even above its formal virtues, is to have achieved what no other means has achieved: showcase, on a platform of mbad consumption like Netflix, the inalienable value of personal data. Do not badume that we can live a disconnected life forever (we could not), but at least be aware that everything we do on Facebook (lovecomments, posts) reveals a lot more about ourselves than we suppose.

Should we be rebadured to know that the social network does not listen to everything we say to the microphone? More or less. Facebook does not do this because, with all the information we give it otherwise and voluntarily, it can predict us with equal or better accuracy.

The political dimension of what it is proposed to reveal Nothing is private This is however the most disturbing. Because it suggests that the will to vote in an election can be manipulated with false news to obtain this personal data, as if you had to press certain buttons.

Javier Pallero, a human rights activist and privacy advocate on the Internet, acknowledges that the great benefit of the documentary is to highlight the unauthorized use of data by Cambridge Analytica, all of which Facebook Ways had knowledge. In other words, the responsibility that the end use is not the same as the one that created them also comes from the social network.

"What I do not think is the jump to the consequence. There is no clear scientific evidence that such practices (from Cambridge Analytica or psychometrics via Facebook ads) have been effective in generating a change in election results. That is, they are less effective than what they say, "he says.

In fact, Lazarfeld and Merton's studies in the 1940s in behavioral psychology and the most recent political science, they show the real degree of influence of these attempts. The hypodermic power that obscure strategists such as Alexander Nix and Steve Bannon seem to boast would be more of a selling point than a real potential for the use of innovative and up-to-date techniques of marketing policy

The title itself, which refers to a hack, or trick, suggests that there were indeed manipulated elections for Donald Trump to have arrived at the White House. "It's not that I'm biased, but some information is omitted. For example, this Hillary Clinton campaign also used Big Data and social networks (we know that she did not win), just like Barack Obama's reelection. What 's wrong is always what' s wrong, "says Pallero, who points the finger in the opposite direction.

"There is no clear scientific evidence that such technologies can influence voting. Democracy has many challenges and dangers even more serious than opinion bubbles and hate speech. I believe that the growing inequality in the world, the big problems that are driving some border countries, the failure of some postulates of progressive governments (eg in Latin America), have disappointed citizens because their governments do not the epic, among many other factors, contributes to changing political ideas. "

Beatriz Busaniche, from the Vía Libre Foundation, partially accepts and adds the role of the media. "A series of false news they do not change an election, but the combined systematic work of the media, the intelligence services, the justice and the power sectors (in service, without distinction, I do not speak of parties) can be oriented towards a reorientation of the # 39; electorate. I do not believe that the responsibility for all the ills of our society rests on social networks because, for example, as a society, we have a serious problem in developing critical thinking. This is what the power exploits and deepens. "

With regard to the emergence of neo-fascist rights, the proliferation of hate speech, the the trolls Discursive intolerance on Twitter, too much focusing on technology and social networks seems to be a direct way to lose sight of the context that does not appear directly in these digital spaces.

"The Bolsonaro campaign in Brazil is a case," Pallero said. Most of them were intended for WhatsApp, which does not work like Facebook: it has no opinion bubbles (no algorithm displays the information it considers most related to a user). We do not privilege one over the other, so it can not be artificially viralized like on Facebook, where there is Micro-targeting to a specific audience. In Brazil, most of the messages in search of votes were sent by WhatsApp. "

The detail is that, being an end-to-end encrypted service, the use of WhatsApp with this lens works almost like the old one spam e-mail: A telephone number base is used to determine more or less who to send political messages to, in a "hand-made" way, because there is a transmission limit per message.

It is true that you may have unauthentic or "unorganized" behavior in WhatsApp, but the idea that you can specifically tell a subject to send such or such message – suggested by another part of the documentary – does not enter into account. What can be done in the messaging service that, to add to the confusion, is Facebook.

False regular dilemma

The problem of asking for more control is to come into conflict with one of the fundamental rights: freedom of expression.

"Many politicians from different governments (not necessarily authoritarian, even those based on constitutional democracies, like the Western ones) are trying to use this excuse to save democracy, regulate lies and hatred on the Internet, to reinforce a censorship program – note Pallero-. In the bills in Argentina, including those presented by Miguel Ángel Pichetto, there was an idea that could be described as "noble", such as the prohibition of false accounts considered as politicians and the application of the law. criminal. The problem is that at the same time he bore all the criticisms that there could be in a false, in an imitation or a satire, which implies a freedom of expression harmful.

Busaniche adds that we have not yet found a platform for balancing the protection of these discourses against these network proposals such as Twitter to "clean up" the public conversation. "For me, the idea of" disinfection "generates more negative reactions, precisely because freedom of expression consists in listening to and defending the right to speak about those who bother us, not those who caress your ears. "