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2020-08-20 Notes on Networks and Power - Niall Ferguson

https://youtu.be/07KKYostAJ0

Rules describing network behavior

homophily - self segregation, like with like

why twitter has a left-right divide with few tweets crossing over

it's a small world because weak ties are strong

casual acquaintances across small network clusters bridge the social network

with about 6 degrees of separation between any two people

structure determines virality

a top node in a hierarchy gives a meme a big boost

cat video will go viral if spread by the right node, not otherwise

networks never sleep

they are complex with adaptive and emergent properties

in meat space, the Bolshevik revolution went from a decentralized dictatorship by the proletariat to dictatorship by the party elite in a few years

Observations

Historical analogies

Historically the present resembles introduction of the printing press more than the 1930s. The effacing of idols and purification mobs happened then too. One difference is the printing press was slow to take on and was never dominated by advertising. Luther hoped the spread of Bibles would bring on a widespread priesthood of believers, a utopian fantasy in retrospect. The ensuing wars of religion didn't subside until the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Unlike the Reformation, the Internet has very rapidly evolved into a centralized phenomena.

2016 election

Trump dominated Clinton on all the major Internet platforms in the 2016 election cycle, while Clinton dominated print and television media. The Internet platforms barely existed 8 years before. The threat of these platforms wasn't to democracy, (i.e. populism), but rather to liberalism, that is toleration and the middle ground. If not for the Internet platforms, Donald Trump could not have won.

Aside: I think Ferguson is a bit off on this one, Trump famously dominated attention on CNN and FOX.

International developments

China firewalled the Internet and built the only companies in the world to rival the Silicon Valley giants.
The EU has no platforms of their own. All they can do is tax, regulate and fine American platforms.
The caravan story of immigrants working their way to the Mexican border was driven by Facebook groups administered by foreigners.

Need for a cyber Westphalia.

Scrap Section 230 of Telecoms Act (Hold social networks accountable)
Impose 1st Amendment obligations on big tech platforms
International convention on cyber war

The habit of Russia acting as a rogue regime needs to be reigned in. And done so on the model established in Westphalia in 1648.

Aside: What model was that?

Q & A

The original sin of the Internet was allowing for profit domination. The printing press remained largely not for profit due to its roll in the Reformation. The for profit domination (i.e., the market share of Google and Amazon) of the Internet only became unavoidably apparent around 2010. Tim Berners Lee's vision was that the Internet would stay distributed.
Internet centralization happened because scale works. In "two sided" networks, the law is 90% to top company, 9% to runner up and 1% to everyone else. "two sided" is where consumers can connect with sellers. These networks look free, but are not as the sellers are paying all the costs to the network to get the attention of consumers.
Antitrust law doesn't work for Internet because the legal test is "is the consumer harmed?" But the network is free from the consumer's perspective. Example: Amazon has a natural monopoly on audio books now, and antitrust law can offer no remedy.
Private surveillance companies are likely to be nationalized just as private companies were nationalized or pressed into state service in the 20th century. The status quo in the United States is not stable. The big tech companies have too much power and cannot be trusted to behave better in future. Their business model inherently favors polarization. How to force them to behave better in a way that doesn't empower the government? Holding them liable is one way.
Technologies of the Industrial Revolution emerged from the network, not the hierarchy, but were largely hub and spoke (railroads, telegraph) and thus readily lent themselves to state control (which only needed to control the hub). For example, Stalin routinely tapped the phones of members of his Politburo.
The national security state invented the ARPANET, but then let it go as they were busy with the Vietnam War. That network quickly escaped from their control as the universities and then commercial interests joined. The Pentagon, the original node, became a very minor player very quickly.
Polarization predated the internet. The Internet set polarization free by doing an end run around the regulation that governed TV. People now hate the other party in a way the was uncommon before social media.
Recommends gold or bitcoin as 1% of portfolio for high net worth people because these commodities behave differently. Bitcoin is vulnerable to state mandated digital currency. Who controls the mining controls the blockchain (China in bitcoin's case).

Aside: The state can also make owning gold a risky proposition and has done so in the past. Jesus advised "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But rather lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where theves do no break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Liberty is dependent on decentralization as noticed by Tocqueville. Be more

like Switzerland, less like France in governance.

Future Inquisition: Are you or have you ever been a supporter of Donald Trump?
18th Century Enlightenment grew out of the Reformation, especially Calvanism. Scotland was governed by a Calvanist regime quite similar to the Taliban in its South and by warring factions in its North. When the literacy program of the Reformation took hold Scotland's unintended Enlightenment emerged. The great unintended consequence of the Reformation was if you teach people to read the Bible, they can read anything. The Enlightenment network (basically a bunch of white guys writing for each other) emerged in places where the Reformation flourished. The American Enlightenment (the Founding Father's network so to speak) designed a government (constitution) overtly to avoid tyranny (classical wisdom held that Democracy always devolves into tyranny). Alexander Hamilton in his papers and letters explicitly foresaw exactly how a demogogic figure would capture the Presidency at some point. He set as a central aim of the constitution to make sure that person cannot overthrow liberty. It worked and is still working.