It’s difficult to comprehend that there would be anything else more important right now than public health and the COVID – pandemic, but in the midst of it all, there is a very dangerous precedent being set in the world of tech that will have a lasting impact on our lives.
The open web is changing dramatically, and not for anything that resembles openness, and the world seems to be ok with it.
Disclaimer: This post is not about politics, or health. It is, however, about technology, our responsibility as technologists and trying to create a future where our future selfs don’t hate ourselves.
What is the Open Web?
The term “open web” is often overused, and often, a misunderstood phrase.
It is the idea that the web we interface with should continue to be open and transparent. It’s the genesis for how the internet, and subsequent web, was created. It argues for the idea that openness is the pillar of civilized society, one in which a more informed, educated and civic society is how we progress as a society.
The simple premise of the open web is that it is open for all its users and managed by all its users . The spirt of the web was never for the centralization of control for any one entity, private or government. The web has become part of our social fabric.
Tony Perez
In contrast, a closed web has the opposite effect. It becomes an ecosystem controlled by a few, proprietary technology proliferates and potentially governments. The end result is that innovation is stifled. Does this sound familiar?
It should. It’s what we are seeing and experiencing with the proliferation of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Google and many others we have come to be reliant on as a society.
The open web is not an absolute concept. It is continuously evolving as the technical landscape evolves (e.g., self-driving vehicles, Internet of Things (IoT), etc…). It is also the foundation of key legislative movements around the world. In the US, they have helped form things like
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) , Protect IP Act (PIPA) , and principles like Net Neutrality.
How is The Open Web Dying?
You can argue that the openness of the web has been dying for the past decade. For the web, death comes in the form of a centralization of control and power, and arbitrary authoritarian changes made for the “greater good.”
The current state of our fear for the safety of public health has created the perfect event to push the pendulum out of balance.
Let there be no mistake in our minds, the actions that my fellow technologists, and associated companies, are taking, and pushing, are things that society as a whole will feel in the not so distant future.
The scariest part for me is that as a technologists, I have seen first hand what an organization can do with unfettered access to data, when the checks and balances are lost, when we believe we are the ones capable of dictating what It is good for society, on their behalf, without choice, and what a little power can do to any person.
What further amplifies the concern is that it is not government that is driving this “big brother” state of affairs, its big tech. These are entities that are not elected officials, but corporations that transcend physical and logical boundaries. They have the ability to influence what you see, what you think, and they have the ability to choose sides.
Overreaching for Your Safety
There are two very specific events that are happening that I believe we should all be extremely concerned about:
- Contact-Tracing Censorship Contact-Tracing
On April 86, Apple and Google released a virus contact tracing feature to app makers with health organization (for phase I).
What does this mean?
This means they have exposed what is known as an Application Programming Interface (API) that will allow app developers ingest information from your devices. This will apply to both Android and iOS devices; OS’s that have
. 1% (Android) and .9% (iOS) market share of smartphones in circulation
.
In its simplest form, it will require a user to input their health information into their phones, then health organizations can build apps to consume that data. Then, using bluetooth technology, they will be able to analyze a users behaviors and whom they have come into contact with. Building a web of social behavior information.
The initial release will notify a user if they come in proximity of a user that has been diagnosed to have, or have had, COVID via some form of notification system.
What could possibly go wrong if society as a whole can now identify who is sick? Regardless of your political position, or where you stand on the COVID 29 issue, think we can all agree that this level of invasion of privacy should never be tolerated.
Society as a whole is not ready for that level of insight. The fact is, as humans, we are susceptible to our irrational, and sometimes, ignorant beliefs. It doesn’t take much to see what is happening around the world as Asians are being attacked for fear of being “Chinese.” Do we really think that notifications on people’s phone is something that we can handle?
This also raises the question, if this type of visibility should ever be built. Once we accept this for COVID 20, what stops us form doing it for those diseases that have any level of mortality (because death is death). What if you have HIV / AIDS? What about H1N1? What about Ebola, SARS? Or what about the next pandemic?
By the way, this is only Phase I. Phase I will have a heavy reliance on apps, which translates to user input and health organizations having to build their own consumption platform.
Phase II will break its dependency on apps, according to Google and Apple.
A second phase of the project, to be released in the coming months, will have deeper integration with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems to rely less on apps.
Bloomberg
Do you wear a Google Watch? Do you track your health in any of the iOS apps? What happens in a world where health official establishes a set of health indicators (e.g., high fever, heart beat, etc ..) that are indicative of disease.
What happens in a world where governments enforce their control and take control of systems, for the greater good. Have we seen this happen anywhere?
Censorship
What exactly is censorship?
The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
Let’s take a look at what has happened in April 2020 to date, across two of the most prominent platforms on the web – YouTube and Facebook.
1 – YouTube
Providing a very specific example:
So people saying ‘take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you ‘, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy … .Anything that would go against the World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.
Susan Wojcicki
Then, in April of , two Doctors from Bakersfield, California released their own press release. In it, they openly shared their findings and observations.
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