WORKS > Statement on Social Media

\\ STATEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA \\

I'm boycotting all commercial social media platforms for violating global democracies via invasive surveillance capitalist* trends.

Silicon Valley corporations institute Surveillance Capitalism by:
1. Illegitimately mining user's personal data in order to create "behavioral predictions" to be sold in new futures markets* without our knowledge or consent.
2. tracking users’ locations and allowing law enforcement to maintain a state of constant surveillance.
3. creating behavioral modifications to condition users to produce free behavioral data to sell to an ever-growing list of third parties.
4. cultivating a massive-scale emotional contagion through online social networks, giving rise to a mediocre monoculture devoid of self-determination.
5. supplanting the press through the institution of Live Feeds that prioritize commercial interactions.
6. eroding each internet user's privacy while mishandling their private information.
7. disrupting democratic elections via misinformation campaigns without direct accountability.
8. claiming the right to maintain the conditions that allow tech corporations to continue harvesting user data, sustaining their dominance in global "behavioral futures markets" * while maintaining their ability to self-regulate.
9. boosting the scope of misinformation.
10. Warping our attention away from an autonomous shared reality and towards a virtual, commercially dependent, attention-seeking, augmented reality.
11. Leaving no other alternative but to interact with "supply chains for behavioral data" to continue feeding Artificial Intelligence the algorithmic predictions necessary for accumulating massive revenues at the expense of your privacy*.
12. Establishing a secondary chilling effect, gentrifying all human behavior, and ushering in a new era of racial inequality due to an imbalance of knowledge, therefore power, mirroring the inequalities experienced during the Jim Crow Era. *

Silicon Valley corporations further institute unethical practices via Racial Capitalism by:
1. Exploiting non whiteness to the status of tokens or "trophies" for generating social and economic capital.
2. Misappropriating people of color in the pursuit of diversifying their corporate identities in advertisements.
3. Developing and supplying beta test technology to Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to track and apprehend immigrants of color.
4. Enabling hate speech and extremist groups to sow radicalized fear on social media, leading to extremist acts of violence against minority groups.


I am withdrawing use of these commercial platforms until the U.S. Federal Government follows suite with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to hold Silicon Valley corporations to higher ethical standards.

Write to your representatives in Congress to encourage them to:
— reform Section 702 of FISA
- reform Section 230 of Communications Decency Act of 1996
— and enforce federal regulations on Silicon Valley's surveillance operations.


Resources:

Surveillance Self-Defense Tips and Tools for Safer Online Communication via the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Center for Democracy & Technology

The Algorithmic Justice League

Data 4 Black Lives

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

*Read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff

*Read "Race After Technology" by Ruha Benjamin

Dr. Ruha Benjamin's Resources

How Smartphone Tracking Works

New York Times' The Privacy Project


last update: 6/4/MMXXI

Statement on Social Media

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Take 3 steps to Protect your Phone from surveillance capitalism, via the NY Times.