36C3 Wikipaka WG: Reading politics of the supposedly neutral

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Herald Angel: Please welcome our next
speaker, Adam. Adam will be talking about

the politics of a supposedly neutral and
how you can read them Adam calls himself a

survivor of the American capitalism so
please give it up to Adam and enjoy

applause

Adam: inaudible can you move the mic in
Yes, thank you. hi so originally this

talk was supposed to be about algorithms
and then I realized that I was falling

prey to exactly the thing I was trying to
critique so I expanded the title a bit

in the talk between the entire system and

an algorithm that is the kind of the
piece that is hard to discuss so I wanted

to just start with mathematical
formalisms this is a variable it doesn't

seem to have any political implications
on its own other than it can be used for a

lot of things it can it can stand for
anything here's a variable squared this

might have implications this could be used
to calculate the area of property that

you own this may be fewer may be something
electrical triangles could be used in

some kind of projection of Cartesian
coordinates over indigenous landscapes

this goes boom now we start getting into
actual applications so yeah most of this

might seem obvious or it might seem
completely foreign so just help fidget or

something to give me cues yeah
mathematical formalism are sometimes

considered objective but obviously they
only exist in a context so Howard Zinn has

a book about his life called you can't be
neutral on a moving train there is that

any mathematics exists in social
context that were constructed for a

reason and then omission is almost equally
important if depending on what's

happening it could be more important
omission would just be the things that

are not included in your formula and your
algorithm silence is the voice of

complicity I'm sort of misusing that but
no algorithms are the same as anything

else you should follow the money if you
want to understand what's happening it's

just a materialist and pretty effective
way of understanding things think about

who created the algorithm what is it used
for what types of effects might it

have and what would the alternatives be if
this wasn't the way that the subject

matter was being treated. Unfortunately
algorithms are almost never part of

public debate they're hidden there
they're the private property of

corporations of governments who don't
think that we need to know what the

details are they're hidden intentionally
or not behind the language of

mathematics so in order to critique this
at this level of mathematical formula

you need to be literate in both
mathematics and politics or sociology just

they don't necessarily go together that
that immediately narrows down the number

of people who might be talking about the
content of a formula so all I'm doing

here is I'm just giving a few examples and
showing how something that might be

neutral is absolutely not I'm starting
with human population, population

obviously has been a hot subject for
centuries and the projections are wildly

different and hypothetical and obviously
it matters a lot we're at a turning point

in our planets ecology at least and so
when you see a graph like this you need to

think what is this ? Why does it have
such a wide range ? There's this blue line

that goes straight up but then there's
this other line that looks like some type

of collapse or rebound back down to a
sustainable level and then you have the

if you look at who's putting this out
there they're not interested in the

political aspects at this top level they
actually want to take those out of their

predictions although you see something
like the red dashed lines and those are

80 % prediction certainty and the dotted
lines are 95 % prediction certainty

I would say that's all pretty unlikely
because they haven't factored in some

important parts about the world such as
the Earth's carrying capacity most

estimates say that this red line or sorry
the estimates are very different but one

plausible estimate is that we passed the
Earth's carrying capacity in 1992 in

which case most of these curves are bogus
and something entirely different is going

to happen to not include that in your
population projections is, I would say,

irresponsible. Here's another publication
by the same well-meaning organization but

this you can see there's, well, I'll let
you think about what that means for a

second yourself this is the population
change in each country given in as

a heat map so you see some populations
are growing more slowly than others some

are growing quickly and you see these
little buttons at the bottom let you look

at the more developed and least developed
regions which is another obstacle to

participation, it's a pretty World Bank
sort of perspective the global

development view and then you see that the
population of African countries is

growing more quickly which throws a racial
element into it too and unfortunately

that's how this type of map is used I
can't read this because it's too awful but

but this is sort of the state of rhetoric
around population and the public

discussion and this, the same author 1968
pretty mainstream is saying this is one

way to take care of population growth.
laugh So you can see it gets bad

quickly and we need to be involved in
actually re-conceptualizing these models

We can't let there just be a graph like
this, that doesn't include this. We can't

let there be a map like this that doesn't
talk about the power dynamics between

countries and the history of racialized
politics. Yeah, here, just a few

consequences of how population models
actually affect the world and then of

course there are there follow-on effects
of population anxieties causing other

political effects. Here's an alternative
model and this one is a bit more

interesting I just wanted to paint the
status quo so that I could I could show

you what the alternative might be. This is
a model that was actually the first. It

was only put out a few years ago and it
was the first to combine the idea of

ecological cycles with the
Earth's carrying capacity ecological

resource consumption with class conflict.
In this case the humans are eating

the planet, the planet slowly regenerates,
and the rich are eating the poor.

This is actually, surprisingly, a
controversial thing to say.

That predicts a completely different sort
of population trajectory than the United

Nations drafted. The green line here is
the earth's resources, the red line is the

commoners population and the blue line
are the elites. In this case there they're

like a unchecked predator and as soon as
they're introduced they eat all the poor

people, if you play with this model I have
an interactive version online you can

sorry, this is not my model but I made an
interactive visualization for it that

lets you change the parameters and see
what happens if you drag the inequality

control back and forth then you see that
you can get a completely different

behavior here you get the population
skyrocketing and then stabilizing and

that's sort of just the natural thing
that you would do if there's a single

predator-prey cycle and and you're you
know you're just rabbits eating grass for

example I don't think there's time for a
tour right now unfortunately but it might

be fun for you. The point I wanted to
make though that with this second

predator-prey cycle between rich and
poor people, you're actually introducing

Marxism into the formula. This has
been used to explain capitalism's

periodic crises which capitalism still
won't admit exist, interestingly enough,

capitalism says there's always some
external driver behind the crises but yeah

so if you take this assumption in the
formula and you say capitalism does cause

periodic crises and rich people are
acting like predators what do you do ?

You need class struggle, you need
to create more equality. So this is

just another example of how we
should try to be involved in the

construction of these models and their use
in our world. Labor supply is also very

important but maybe not as interesting.
Don't worry about this ! I tried to not

include math because part of the point
here is to make these ideas accessible

with or without math but I did want this
picture up here just to show that in the

dominant form, in the dominant
neoclassical economic perspective if you

pay people too much they stop working and
if so you want to pay them just little

enough that they work as much as they
possibly can and there are all types of a

crazy assumptions built into these
formulas like humans are able to make

rational choices rather than just taking
the next job in desperation I've never

lived in this world I've only lived in
maybe this world where I want to fight

back against this formula as much as I can
sorry I'll let you read this if you want

but yeah this formula is missing all of
the things that relate to my working world

like my motivation for working is not
just consumption of things. There's

essential survival and then there's
wanting to be motivated by contributing to

the world somehow there's organized labor
which i think about pretty often and most

jobs that would be another way out of
this formula and you can see the effects

of this type of policy are that the
richest 5% keep getting richer and

everyone else stays the same. More effects
of the neoclassical labor supply and then

this is sort of more active I don't
think there are a ton of people working on

this but I'd like to just go through the
question anyway. Wikipedia has never had

paid advertisements and it's valuable
because people visit it extremely often

and trust it, based on its reputation.
So if you put advertisements on here

people this is sort of, like this would be
the holy grail for most advertisers! It

would be that you would have your product
advertised on top of something that people

already believed so their skepticism
would be much lower there was actually a

discussion about putting paid
advertisements on Wikipedia in 2001

little-known fact Wikipedia was started
as part of a porn company Bomis and the

the chief of this porn company Jamie
Wales said that there would be paid

advertising on Wikipedia caused a huge
fight a Spanish Wikipedia split off and

formed the Encyclopedia Libre Universal I
think it's called and pretty much because

of this fork Wikipedia was then forced
into not having paid advertisements and

split off from Bomis when we do have
advertising on Wikipedia which brings in

money it's basically just two relentless
stream of money and we have to

turn it off to not raise too much and
So here's the extremely materialistic

view of what could be done with Wikipedia
we have 244 billion page views per year

We could put in for advertising slots
this is a industry standard number

in fact I think it's four per page so as
you scroll there would be more and more

ads and then at this price we could bring
in almost three billion dollars a year

which is a huge profit margin at the low
operating cost of 100 million. If you

create this type of formula then you
have Wikipedia suddenly becomes and

something that you can buy and sell, it
becomes something that corporations would

want to take over and control the content
of it's obviously soulless. Here's another

view of advertising on Wikipedia. Who
creates the value in Wikipedia? The

editors do. Who's allowed to run the
fundraising campaigns only three

organizations actually my employer
Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia

Switzerland and the Wikimedia Foundation,
which interestingly enough is the one

organization in the group of Wikipedia
chapters, it's the one organization which

is not democratically controlled. It's a
self-perpetuating board and this

charismatic porn leader, Jimmy Wales (I
hope this is recorded) he's still the some

kind of honorary chair of the board he
has a renewable membership for life and

the board members appoint themselves yeah
so why are they allowed to be the only

ones raising money through Wikipedia
because they own the trademarks so it's a

pretty typical arrangement when it comes
down to it and there's some kind of power

sharing deal that although I know about it
and I was close to people who do

understand it I never learned what's in
there so I can't tell you much about it.

So if you follow this train of logic then
you can come up with another set of

formulas which is actually the flow of
value around Wikipedia and its content and

if we did that we might be able to say
hey there's there's an excellent argument

for having democratic control of the
resources and then more along those lines

if you take the same problem domain and
you and you come up with different

formulas inside of it you can you can do
things like say what would editors like

from this system that exists to post
advertisements which does exist by the way

if they're just not paid advertisements
editors might want a better way of sharing

the resources among themselves. They
obviously would fight tooth and nail to

prevent paid advertising from ever being
on there but they do want each other they

want each other's campaigns to be more
effective so that we're not constantly

showing banners with no return I also
wanted to point to this paper which is

the one that caused me the anxiety at the
beginning of the talk protective

optimization technologies and I would
love for you all to click it because it's

it's another it's it's like a formal
perspective of looking beyond the

algorithm at the entire system that the
algorithm is embedded in the slides are

attached to the talk link if you want
that's all I have does anybody feel like

asking questions? Extremely brave people
want to ask questions?

Question: Hi so I was five minutes late
but perhaps do you have more examples on

how you see some kind of a political not
twist but like background when you see

graphs or statistics? Do you have any more
examples when you see that happened how

do you detect this when you're a beginner
and you look at this statistical graph

how can you analyze it and find out what
the political background or like missing

preconceptions are?
Adam: Thanks I wish I'd prepared a few

more and I'm just doing this from
an armchair also I my day job is just in

programming and so the only reason I
think about this stuff is because I'm I

have spent a long time working for evil
companies unfortunately, and so I'm

always trying to second-guess what the
company is actually doing and, but

to do that there's no real trick that I
can think of it's really just the Chomsky

approach would be: follow the money!
Where does the money come from? Where does

it go ? Why do people want this to
exist ? And so you have some formula,

some system if you have one in mind,
please suggest it! And then, yeah,

there's the thing that you could do like
literature review where you you just look

at similar attempts to look at that same
problem domain and find what people have

left out of the one that you're looking
at but but I don't think there's the

concrete system to do it because that that
would like allow you to invent everything

in the world so it's kind of case-by-case
as far as I can tell sorry.

Question: And if you were Jimmy Wales back
in the day and you would be setup like a

benevolent dictator for life, how would
you have faced yourself out? How would be

your take on? What should be the
correct way or correct way of Wikipedia

raising for example funds if in the end
the people who create value are editors?

Adam: When Wikipedia was first started it
was officially a membership organization

and so everybody who is editing or
uploading files or changing the source

code was considered a member in Germany
it's a Verein I think and so everybody was

supposed to have one vote for the board
of trustees and that pretty much takes

care of the problem right there if you
don't in Wikimedia foundation was

illegally changed to be a non membership
organization a few years in and actually

it was illegal because they didn't
announce it to the people who were

technically members so I suppose editors
would should feel free to sue the

Wikimedia Foundation for control for
example there's no statute of limitations

on this particular thing that happened
but in general I would say from my

tiny bit of experience doing grassroots
organizing an organization is something

like a child it's you don't want to have
it live in your house its whole life and

you don't want to be telling it to get up
and brush its teeth in the morning

the measure of success should be
something more like it takes a life of its

own it might be direction you didn't
consider and so to do that you have to

devolve the power from yourself. Does that
answer the question? Okay all right well

thank you so much for coming
I hope it was useful.

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