World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

by Franklin Foer

THE HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR Jonathan Zittrain has spun the following hypothetical scenario. There’s a down-to-the-wire election. Mark Zuckerberg has a strong opinion about the candidate he would like to prevail. As we have seen, Facebook claims that it can boost voter turnout, carefully placing reminders of civic duty in News Feeds on Election Day, generating social pressure to head to the polls. That this experiment worked isn’t just a public relations claim, but an established finding of social science. In the Zittrain scenario, Zuckerberg launches another get-out-the-vote effort. Only this time, the reminders are placed selectively. Facebook has a pretty good sense of your political affiliation, based on all the items you’ve liked. Facebook can also discern your voting precinct. So instead of urging all citizens to perform their civic duty, Facebook calibrates its call to action to target only the voters who will pull the lever for Zuckerberg’s candidate.