Facebook Surveillance capitalism, and feedback control.pdf

• Monitoring technologies, data analytics, ubiqiuity of social media, profile linking etc.
  → features of “surveillance capitalism” (Shoshana Zuboff)
  → feedback control, HiTL = “Human in the Loop” feedback control
• feedback control in the 50s and 60s/ Usa, Soviet Union: autopilot systems in rockets and sattelites…
• contemporary example: Automobile cruise control: sensors (speedometer), controllers (computer), actuators (gas    
  injection)
• Web/internet: sensors (search engines, smartwatches, phones), controllers (data analytics engines, machine 
  learning platforms, actuators (web browsers, social media sites that modify our view)

• newer ways of application of HiTL feedback control:
    ◦ actuators: “new contractual forms” as e. g. automatic policy enforcement as in the case with insurance 
      companies / sensors that report speeding, “Corporate fitness” (smart devices as sensors). BOTH EXAMPLES   
      RATED AS ”POSITIVE EXAMPLES OF ACTUATORS” BY THE AUTHOR
    ◦ controllers: Data analytics engines:
        ▪ Data analytics used e. g. for “personalisation and cutomisation” [of services] → if you websearch 
          something your results depend on who the engine (Google) thinks you are: if you're white, male and rich 
          you may receive results for the car brand, if not results for the animal
        ▪ In contrast to other forms of “redaction”, filtering etc. algorithmic filtering is portrayed as 
          objective
    ◦ sensors: “data extracting and analysis”, “ubiquitous sensing”, “pervasive monitoring” not only by cameras 
      and search engines, but also by online stores, sleep trackers, soon refrigerators and other IoT devices 
      (smart home/city), wearable computing/ gadgets


• possible positive uses: medical emergencies, health (?), energy saving
• “For example, Google’s Hal Varian lauds the tech company’s ability to carry out
“continuous experiments.” Google, he says, runs about 10,000 experiments each day.
“There are about 1,000 running at any one time,” he continues, “and when you access
Google you are in dozens of experiments.” We already know that researchers using
Facebook carried out similar types of experiments to verify that they could manipulate
the moods of social network users by influencing the appearance of posts in the users’
news feeds. Exciting as this can be to academic minds, internet users ought to know
whether they are the subjects of “continuous experiments.”
• “In sum, feedback control provides useful techniques to study “black box” systems”