Harvard Professor Sandel Political Philospher Speaks of the Dark Side
I was very inspired by Michael Sandel. I’ve watched his ‘ethics series’ a few years ago and wondered why we don’t teach this at schools and universities. One of the major issues of our times is ethics. People are acting on the basis of greed or need rather than best interest. There are real concerns with cyber intrusion, cyber stalking and taking people’s profiles, data and then using it to profit others. I believe it is a infringement of privacy and human beings have a right to say yes or no, in my view, as to how their information is collected and used. Moreover, tick boxes that say you agree with terms and conditions without any option to saying no and not losing rights, I believe is training in compliance. It is a real concern in respect of democratic rights of choice.
Michael Sandel creates realistic scenarios, and similar to Geoffrey Robertson QC, he poses hypothetical ethical dilemmas for people to reflect upon. Is life black or white or do we have implications to decisions that are primarily self serving without any consideration for those who are impacted? Learning to reflect is the core tenant of a philosopher. It is to think deeply about what we say and do and the results. These days we still live in models of power over rather than power within where people believe they have the right to take away a persons choices, or they have zero tolerance for their wellbeing.
Sandel talked about refugee issues. This for me is one of the most ethical issues we are faced with in Australia. We treat people like prisoners locked up in detention. I’ve been to a detention centre, I clowned with the inmates, and indeed they were. They were in a maximum security prison. These are people fleeing persecution in most cases. Yet we punish them to make an example rather than creative/laterally thinking about how can we help them? How can we de-escalate refugees fleeing their countries given they prefer to live in their own country? What is nationalism? What are human rights? What if it is was you fleeing a holocaust in Australia would you want to be helped? When you feel empathy there is no dilemma you will know what to do, is my view. Values provide insights into who we are and they unite us in our common humanity. That is my experience.
Q&A: Harvard professor Michael Sandel says ‘dark side’ of social media threatens privacy
Updated
Facebook has a dark side and a debate needs to be had about how to regulate social media and data companies, a Harvard University professor has told Q&A.
Michael Sandel, a leading political philosophy professor from Harvard University, spoke about the issue on Monday night following allegations Cambridge Analytica used data mined from Facebook to help Donald Trump win the 2016 US election and target people with political advertising.
Professor Sandel said private information was under threat, as social media had managed to avoid regulation by saying they were creating a community and bringing people together.
“But it has a darker side to it,” he said.
“Not only is our privacy being violated, but essentially the business model is to give us a service for free — it seems free — in exchange to sell information about us to advertisers so they can sell us stuff. That’s the business model.
“The reason these companies are so valuable is they are selling to advertisers all of our personal information.
“I think it is having an impact, too, on the way news is propagated.”
“I think technology can be both friend and foe of democracy, and right now we are seeing the dark side,” he said.
“I think we need to rein in the conduct, the behaviour, of these companies.
“Suppose they didn’t give us the service for free, but had to sell us a subscription, or suppose we were paid every time they made our data available to an advertiser?
“I think we are in for a long overdue debate about how to rein in the unaccountable power of these companies.”
Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has asked Facebook if data of any Australians was acquired and used without authorisation to build profiles that political parties could use to target voters.
Allegations against Cambridge Analytica followed a Channel 4 documentary aired in the UK.
The documentary used hidden cameras to film Cambridge Analytica executives describing techniques to influence elections, ranging from using big data and perception manipulation to capturing compromising video of opposing candidates.
Cambridge Analytica has since suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was captured bragging about manipulating elections.
“We’ll have a wealthy developer come in, somebody posing as a wealthy developer,” Mr Nix said in the footage.
“They will offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance.
“We’ll have the whole thing recorded on camera, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and then post it on the internet.
“Send some girls around to the candidate’s house. We have lots of history of things … we could bring some Ukrainians in … they are very beautiful, I find that works well.”
The hidden cameras also revealed executives talked about targeting Australia.
“We’ve done it in Mexico, we’ve done it in Malaysia, we’re now moving into Brazil, Australia, China,” Cambridge Analytica’s managing director of political operations Mark Turnbull said in the video.
The firm has rejected allegations made in the Channel 4 report, saying it was “edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business.”
It also said in a tweet that no Facebook data was used by the data science team in the 2016 presidential campaign.