Here’s a report from the archive that should help people with some of the concepts and terms I use. I’ve updated some of the terms (swarm/alignment, horde/dissent). Corporate networks are still players, but they are targets for alignment rather than players (as long as they can get rich doing it).
It also introduces the idea of the networked long night — a world that is locked into narrow orthodoxy of thought and speech by an oppressive, all-encompassing network. Note that this report predates most of the popular discussions on these topics.
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Weaponized social networks have mounted a successful challenge to an increasingly illegitimate US political system. These networks are now at war with it and each other in a chaotic struggle that may usher in a long night of networked oppression.
The Rise of Politicized Networks
Last year, as social networking technology became ubiquitous, three weaponized networks overran the US political system. Here are the highlights:
One emergent network became an insurgency that shattered the Republican party in the 2016 presidential primary and seized the White House.
Later, another emergent network shoved the Democratic party to the sidelines to become the national #resistance movement opposing the new government.
Meanwhile, the corporations running these social networks took control of the country’s information distribution system and its influence over politics.
Political Vulnerability
This runaway success was partly due to the inherent strengths of networked organizations. However, it was a witches brew of debilitating factors eating away at the US body politic that turned this challenge into an ugly rout:
Institutional Delegitimization The US system has suffered a sustained loss of legitimacy over the last few decades. Poll after poll shows that very few people anymore trust traditional sources of authority. The causes of this loss range from an unjustified, unnecessary, and pyrrhic war in Iraq to the complete abdication of responsibility for the economic devastation caused by the collapse of a fraud-riddled financial system.
An Existential Crisis This loss in legitimacy has been lethal to the traditional sources of value and meaning upon which many Americans have built their lives. The result is a growing existential crisis. In Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a similar existential crisis led to a drop in life expectancy as despondent Russians drank themselves to death. In the US, life expectancy is falling too (for two years in a row !) as Americans kill themselves with opiates (opicide).
Reflexive Conditioning This existential crisis has led to political polarization as authoritarians on the left and right supplied simplistic replacements for traditional values. We can see evidence of this authoritarian conditioning in how quickly trigger words, events and situations generate widespread outrage, condemnation, and disgust. In the traditional mass media environment, this type of authoritarian conditioning merely created a bothersome polarization and political gridlock. That changed with the sudden emergence of social networking. As we saw in November’s GG Report on “Reflexive Control,” social networking turns this conditioning into a weapon of mass disruption and control.
Weaponized Social Networks
This new weapon has fueled the rise of the socially networked organizations that burst onto the scene during the last election cycle, and how it is used by these networks provides clues on the direction we’re headed. To fully explore this, let’s look at how these networks wage war through the lens of John Boyd’s (America’s best strategist) three dimensions of warfare:
the physical,
the mental (psychological), and
the moral.
In any dimension of warfare, victory is achieved by reducing the connectivity of the opposition’s network while improving your own network’s connectivity. It’s fairly simple in concept but fiendishly difficult in practice.
Physical
In the physical dimension of warfare, the objective is to physically disconnect the opposition while increasing your own physical connectivity. The traditional way to fight in the physical dimension is through attrition -- physically damaging an opponent (killing soldiers, destroying equipment, chewing up supplies, etc.). Online attrition translates into account deletion, temporary bans, and self-editing.
The insurgency disconnects participants in the opposing network through relentless harassment and intimidation. A preferred method is doxing -- the public release of detailed information on a target, from private online accounts to where they live. Once doxed, targets are swarmed with threats by anonymous members of the insurgency on and offline. Studies show that doxing effectively reduces the target’s participation in the network and/or drives them completely offline. To defend its own physical connectivity from attrition, the insurgent network has developed alternative social networks like Gab.ai (etc.).
The #resistance uses complaint campaigns to compel social networking companies to ban targeted individuals from the network and to protect members of their own network from disconnection. The resistance also uses complaint campaigns targeted at the employers and the families of insurgents that it can identify (e.g., the Charlottesville torch march provided the resistance with pictures it could use to ID targets for attritive attacks).
The corporations that own social networks are unmatched in their power to control physical connectivity. They can delete accounts, without recourse, based on vague violations of their terms of use. So far, deletion has been only minimally applied since these companies see themselves as ubiquitous utilities (think: power and water). As a result, these companies have limited themselves to soft bans (the ability to secretly reduce an account’s visibility to others on the network), account suspension, and removing privileges (i.e., blue check marks or posting).
Mental (Psychological)
Conflict in this dimension is accomplished by reducing the psychological cohesion (making it harder for them to think clearly) of an opponent while improving your own mental cohesion. Both online and offline, this is best accomplished by making rapid maneuvers (e.g., armored thrusts deep behind enemy lines in maneuver warfare or a rapid series of tweets/posts) that leverage ambiguity, deception, and novelty to disorient, disrupt, and overload an opponent.
The insurgency disorients, disrupts, and overloads opponents by developing (Reddit, 4Chan, etc.) and deploying the novel triggers (memes, etc.) needed to generate reflexive responses (outrage). To keep its opponents off-balance, the insurgency rapidly maneuvers from new outrage to new outrage, using bots and fake accounts (deception) to amplify this activity. Over time, this onslaught overloads opponents, making it impossible for them to think clearly. The insurgency is strongest within this dimension.
The #resistance uses authority and consensus to succeed in this dimension. For example, the resistance has deep connections in academia, the government, and the (traditional) media. These connections allow it to quickly amass claims of authority that it can use to defend against insurgent attacks and mount disorienting attacks of its own. Also, unlike the insurgency, the resistance is publicly visible online. This visibility allows it to quickly generate “a defacto consensus” on any issue. This consensus can be used to disorient the opposition since many opponents don’t want to be seen as too extreme.
Corporations can wage war in this dimension by manipulating the “social graph.” This manipulation allows them to increase or decrease the platform's distribution of messages and information. So far, these companies are only using this capability to increase the addictivity of the platform rather than as a means of muting opponents. This currently makes them arms suppliers to the insurgency and the #resistance rather than opponents. This status can change rapidly.
Moral
In the moral dimension of warfare, menace, uncertainty, and distrust are heightened to create alienation, fear, and anxiety within the ranks of the opposition. As we have seen in guerrilla wars of the past, success in this effort will cause the opposition to break apart into smaller, non-cooperating centers of gravity that can be easily defeated.
The insurgency wages war in the moral dimension through moral nullification -- a rejection of public morality. When facing a moral attack (a claim of immorality), the insurgency has three options: 1) to deny the claim is valid (distrust of the source), 2) to deny the claim is real (uncertainty), and 3) to cast the claim as an attack (menace). The insurgency mounts its own moral attacks through charges of hypocrisy (whataboutism).
The #resistance is strongest in the moral dimension. It casts itself as the sole protector of public morality and the arbiter of public values. To date, this positioning has provided it with the gravitational attraction it needed to grow its network and maintain good cohesion. It’s been particularly successful in exerting overwhelming moral pressure on targeted individuals. As we saw in its #metoo campaign, once the #resistance makes a moral claim against an individual, the targets are immediately removed (alienated) from society, and fear/anxiety keeps others from coming to their defense.
Corporations protect themselves from moral attacks through appeals to freedom of speech. In parallel, to enhance their moral value, these networks are actively developing nanny services to “protect” their users. For example, Facebook now has a service that can determine if someone is suicidal and alert family or friends.
The Long Night
Where are these weaponized networks taking us? Here are three possibilities to get you thinking:
The insurgency... “Strong” leader (Russian model). Ethnic nationalism (tribal identity). Nonlinear politics and everyday chaos. Kleptocracy. Meaningful opposition is swarmed with threats/doxing/violence and driven offline.
The #resistance… A sacred bureaucracy (Chinese model). A new public morality based on modern concepts (simplified morality). A public morality rating system. Opposition targets are shamed and removed from public life (jobs, social connections, etc.).
The corporations… More of the same (neoliberalism) but with public dementia that conveniently forgets -- by using its control of the social network to remove the opposition from public discourse -- any effort to change the system. Political change is top-down, made real by increasingly sophisticated social AIs.