The Autocrat’s New Tool Kit
The next generation of repressive technology will make past efforts to spread propaganda and quash dissent look primitive.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-autocrats-new-tool-kit-11552662637
Chinese authorities are now using the tools of big data to detect departures from “normal” behavior among Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang region—and then to identify each supposed deviant for further state attention. The Egyptian government plans to relocate from Cairo later this year to a still-unnamed new capital that will have, as the project’s spokesman put it, “cameras and sensors everywhere,” with “a command center to control the entire city.” Moscow already has some 5,000 cameras installed with facial-recognition technology, and it can match faces of interest to the Russian state to photos from passport databases, police files and even VK, the country’s most popular social media platform.
...Many of these advances will give autocrats new ways to spread propaganda, both internally and externally. One key technology is automated microtargeting. Today’s microtargeting relies on personality assessments to tailor content to segments of a population, based on their psychological, demographic or behavioral characteristics.
...In a widely viewed TED Talk in 2017, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci described a world where “people in power [use] these algorithms to quietly watch us, to judge us and to nudge us, to predict and identify the troublemakers and the rebels.”
...For years, the Chinese government has employed what’s known as the “50 Cent Army”—thousands of fake, paid commenters—to post online messages favorable to Beijing and to distract online critics. In the future, bots will do the work of the current legions of regime-paid desk workers.
...Facebook now uses similar techniques to examine linguistic nuances in posts that might flag users who are contemplating suicide. Smaller companies are working to score individual social-media posts based on attitude, emotion and intent.
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