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The fallacy of displaced control

In each of the cases described above, we see Internet intermediaries flagged for responsibility for the actions of their users, sometimes in an extreme, discriminatory way. Someone uses the Internet's communication capability for something unexpected. Authorities who do not like what happened demand the ability to track and monitor, block access to, or regulate the capability that was used. They operate under the assumption that if they had had that capability beforehand, they would have been able to prevent the bad things that happened. Or they demand that the intermediary who supplied the platform used take responsibility for eliminating the behavior.

6. Conclusion

The power of the Internet has contributed to the idea that we can control society and preempt or prevent anything – from riots to copyright violations – through surveillance and manipulation of communications intermediaries. In the past we spoke of the Internet as a free place. It seems that now, the Internet is the first place we look to control behavior. Why? There are many causes, but this paper focuses on one: the extreme transparency fostered by social media. Internet applications make social and technical processes hyper-transparent. Human activities, in all their glory, gore and squalor, take place in open, publicly visible mass-interaction platforms provided by commercial third parties. These platforms generate storable, searchable records and their users leave attributable, recordable tracks everywhere. The objectification of social interaction in the cyber environment, and the ease with which we can rummage through the objectified remains, makes it a magnet for social control efforts. It often lends itself to a displacement of social control efforts by inadvertently supporting the idea that human activity itself can be engineered and controlled by meddling with communication processes. When we see problems displayed in the online environment, or online tools are used to facilitate real-world crimes, we tend to link the two, and jump to the conclusion that what we see online can be programmed and controlled through online means. What often happens, however, is the fallacy of displaced control. Instead of controlling the behavior, we strive to control the intermediary that was used by the bad actor. Instead of eliminating the crime, we propose to eliminate internet access to the crime. It is as if we assume that life is a screen and if we remove unwanted things from our screens by controlling internet intermediaries, we have made life better and solved life's problems.