The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [94]
An authoritarian government, for example, may pay special attention to the opinions of those who are between twenty and thirty-five years old, frequently travel abroad, and have advanced degrees. One simply needs to spend some time browsing relevant Facebook groups (e.g., “Harvard class of 1998” or “I love traveling in the Middle East”) to zero in on the right characters. In a sense, the world of social networking obviates the need for focus groups; finding smart ways to cluster existing online groups and opinions could be more effective. And they don’t have to collect this data on their own. Plenty of private companies are already collecting data—mostly for marketing purposes—that governments, both authoritarian and democratic ones, would find extremely useful. Thus, while the KGB may no longer exist in 2020, its functions may still be performed by a smattering of private companies specializing in one particular aspect of information work.
Today governments can learn quite a lot about the prospects of political unrest in a particular country simply by paying particular attention to the most popular adjectives used by the digerati. Are they “happy” or “concerned”? Do they feel “threatened” or “empowered”? What if one controls for religion? Do self-professed secular bloggers feel more satisfied than the religious ones?
Just imagine how useful it might be for the Iranian government to track how often Iranians use the word “democracy” in their public online conversations and how such mentions are spread across the country. (For example, are there any regions of Iran that are more democratically inclined and unhappy with the current regime than others?)
If proper controls for statistical bias are in place, such technology is often superior to opinion polls, which take time to develop and, when done in authoritarian countries, always carry the risk of people misrepresenting their views to avoid punishment. Such aggregated information may not be fully representative of the entire population, but it helps to keep the tab on the most troublesome groups. Thus, the fact that authoritarian governments can now learn more about the public mood in real time may only add to their longevity. They are less likely to misjudge the public reaction.
What’s worse is that social media activity is not always a bad proxy for judging the relative importance of antigovernment activists. If tweets of a particular user are retweeted more often than average, it’s a good idea for the government to start watching that individual closely and learn more about his or her social network. The viral culture of social media may at least indirectly help solve the problem of information overload that has affected censorship as well. It’s the “online marketplace of ideas” that tells secret police whom to watch. From the perspective of the secret police, people who are unpopular probably don’t even deserve to be censored; left to their own devices and nearly zero readers, they will run out of blogging energy in a month or so.
The Myth of an Overprotected Activist
Despite the terrifying efficiencies in the practice of surveillance that were introduced by digital technology, not all is lost. It would be disingenuous to suggest that the digital realm has nothing in store for dissidents; it has greatly enhanced many of their activities as well. One great intellectual challenge facing any scholar of today’s Internet is being able to see the risks inherent in new technologies while not discarding the numerous security-enhancing opportunities that they offer. The only way to come up with a satisfying answer to the question of whether the Internet has eroded or strengthened the surveillance and control apparatus of authoritarian