The parasitic model

My post yesterday, about how the profit motive in (and corporate control of) media has annihilated any hope of getting accurate representation of the news, was almost immediately followed up by my running into a story about how the same forces in creative media are working to strangle creativity at its source.

The article was from Publishers Weekly, and was about an interview with HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray.  It centered largely on the company's whole-hearted endorsement of AI as part of its business model.  He describes using AI to take the place both of human narrators for audiobooks and of translators for increasing their sales in non-English-speaking countries, which is troubling enough; but by far his most worrisome comment describes using AI, basically, to be a stand-in for the authors themselves.  Lest you think I'm exaggerating, or making this up entirely, here's a direct quote from the article:

The fast-evolving AI sector could deliver new types of formats for books, Murray said, adding that HC is experimenting with a number of potential products.  One idea is a “talking book,” where a book sits atop a large language model, allowing readers to converse with an AI facsimile of its author.  Speculating on other possible offerings, Murray said that it is now possible for AI to help HC build an entire cooking-focused website using only content from its backlist, but the question of how to monetize such a site remains.

Later in the article, almost offhand, was a comment that while HarperCollins saw their sales go up last year by only six percent, their profits went up by sixty percent.  The reason was a "restructuring" of the company -- which, of course, included plenty of layoffs.

How much of that windfall went to the authors themselves is left as an exercise for the reader. 

I can vouch first-hand that in the current economic climate, it is damn near impossible to make a living as a writer, musician, or artist.  The people who are actually the wellspring of creativity powering the whole enterprise of creative media get next to nothing; the profits are funneled directly into the hands of a small number of people -- the CEOs of large publishing houses, distributors, marketing and publicity firms, and social media companies.

I can use myself as an example.  I have twenty-four books in print, through two small traditional publishers and some that are self-published.  I have never netted more than five hundred dollars in a calendar year; most years, it's more like a hundred.  I didn't go into this expecting to get rich, but I'd sure like to be able to take my wife out to a nice restaurant once a month from my royalties.

As it is, we might be able to split the lunch special at Denny's.

Okay, I can hear some of you say; maybe it's not the system, maybe it's you.  Maybe your books just aren't any good, and you're blaming it on corporate greed.  All right, fair enough, we can admit that as a possibility.  But I have dozens of extraordinarily talented and hard-working writer friends, and they all say pretty much the same thing.  Are you gonna stand there and tell us we're all so bad we don't deserve to make a living?

And now the CEO of HarperCollins is going to take the authors out of the loop even of speaking for ourselves, and just create an AI so readers can talk to a simulation of us without our getting any compensation for it?

Ooh, maybe he could ratchet those profits up into the eighty or ninety percent range if he eliminated the authors altogether, and had AI write the books themselves.

Besides the greed, it's the out-of-touchness that bothers me the most.  Lately I've been seeing the following screenshot going around -- a conversation between Long Island University Economics Department Chair Panos Mourdoukoutas and an ordinary reader named Gwen:

The cockiness is absolutely staggering; that somehow it's better to put even more money in Jeff Bezos's pockets than it is to support public libraries.  They've already got the entire market locked up tight, so what more do the corporate CEOs want?  It's flat-out impossible as an author to avoid selling through Amazon; they've got an inescapable stranglehold on book sales.  And, as I found out the hard way, they also have no problem with reducing the prices set by me or my publisher without permission, further cutting into any profit I get -- but, like HarperCollins, you can bet they make sure it doesn't hurt their bottom line by a single cent.

And don't even get me started about the Mark Zuckerberg model of social media.  When Facebook first really got rolling, authors and other creators could post links to their work, and it was actually not a bad way to (at the very least) get some name recognition.  Now?  Anything with an external link gets deliberately drowned by the algorithm.  Oh, sure, you can post stuff, but no one sees it.  The idea is to force authors to purchase advertising from Facebook instead.

Basically, if it doesn't make Zuckerberg money, you can forget about it.

If I sound bitter about all this -- well, it's because I am.  I've thrown my heart into my writing, and gotten very little in return.  We've ceded the control of the creative spirit of humanity to an inherently parasitic system, where the ones who are actually enriching the cultural milieu are reaping only a minuscule percent of the rewards.

The worst part is that, like the situation I described yesterday regarding the news media, I see no way out of this, not for myself nor for any other creative person.  Oh, we'll continue doing what we do; writing is as much a part of my life as breathing.  But isn't it tragic that the writers, artists, and musicians whose creative spirits nurture all of us have to struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds even to be seen?

All because of the insatiable greed, arrogance, and short-sightedness of a handful of individuals who have somehow ended up in charge of damn near everything that makes life bearable.  People who want more and more and more, and after that, more again.  Millions don't satisfy; they need billions.

As psychologist Erich Fromm put it, "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever actually reaching satisfaction."

****************************************

Chutzpah

As always, Yiddish has a word for it, and the word is chutzpah.

Chutzpah means extreme self-confidence and audacity, but there's more to it than that.  There's a cheekiness to it, an in-your face, scornful sense of "I dare you even to try to do something about this."  As writer Leo Rosten put it, "Chutzpah is the guy who killed both of his parents and then appealed to the judge for mercy because he's an orphan."

The reason this comes up is, unsurprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg, who raises chutzpah to the level of performance art.  This time it's because of his interview last week with The Verge, which looked at his company Meta's embrace of AI -- and his sneering attitude toward the creative people whose work is being stolen to train it, and without which the entire enterprise wouldn't even get off the ground.  When asked about whether this was fair or ethical, Zuckerberg basically said that the question was irrelevant, because if someone objected, their work was of little worth anyhow.

"I think individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand scheme of this," Zuckerberg said.  "My guess is that there are going to be certain partnerships that get made when content is really important and valuable.  But if creators are concerned or object, when push comes to shove, if they demanded that we don’t use their content, then we just wouldn’t use their content.  It’s not like that’s going to change the outcome of this stuff that much...  I think that in any new medium in technology, there are the concepts around fair use and where the boundary is between what you have control over.  When you put something out in the world, to what degree do you still get to control it and own it and license it?"

In other words: if you ask Meta not to use your intellectual property, they'll comply.  But not because it's the right thing to do.  It's because there are tens of thousands of other artists, photographers, and writers out there to fuck over.  Anything accessible on the internet is fair game -- once again, not because it's legal or ethical, but because (1) most of the time the creator doesn't know their material is being used for free, and (2) even if they find out, few creative people have the resources to sue Mark Zuckerberg.

He can just shrug his shoulders and say "fine, then," because there's a ton of other people out there to exploit.

Chutzpah.

Add to this an article that also appeared last week, this time over at CNN, and which adds insult to injury.  This one is about how Zuckerberg is now the fourth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of around two hundred billion dollars.

Let me put that in perspective for you.  Assuming no further increase in his net worth, if Mark Zuckerberg gave away a million dollars every single day, he would finally run out in 548 years.

Because of all this, it's only with deep reluctance that I still participate in Meta-owned social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.  Removing myself from them would cut me off completely, not only from opportunities to market my work, but from friends I seldom get a chance to see in person.  What are my other options?  The Elon Musk-owned far-right-wing cesspool formerly known as Twitter?  TikTok, which stands a fair chance of being shut down in the United States because of allegations of data mining by China?  I'm on Bluesky, but I'm damned if I can figure out how to get any traction there -- most of my posts get ignored completely.

You gotta give Zuckerberg one thing; he knows how to back people into a corner.

I know some of my bitterness over all this is how hard I've worked as a writer, and how little recompense I've ever gotten.  I've written Skeptophilia for twelve years, have over five and a half million lifetime hits on the site, and other than some kind donations (for which I will always be grateful) haven't made a damn thing from it.  I have twenty-odd novels in print, through two different traditional publishers and a handful that are self-published, and have never netted more than five hundred dollars a year from them.  I'll own some of this; I absolutely suck at marketing and self-promotion, largely because it was hammered into me as a child that being proud of, or even talking about, my accomplishments was "conceit," an attitude I've never really recovered from.  And fine, I'm willing even to accept that maybe I have an over-inflated sense of my own skill as a writer and how much I should expect to make.

So fair enough: I should admit the possibility that I haven't succeeded as a writer because I'm not good enough to deserve success.

And I could leave it there, except for the fact that I'm not alone.  As part of the writing community, I can name without even trying hard two dozen exceptionally talented, hard-working writers who struggle to sell enough books to make it worth their time.  They keep going only because they love storytelling and are really good at it.  Just about all of them have day jobs so they can pay the mortgage and buy food.

Maybe I can't be unbiased about my own writing, but I'll be damned if I'll accept that all of us are creating work that isn't "important or valuable."

So the fact is, AI will continue to steal the work of people like me, who can ill afford to lose the income, and assholes like Mark Zuckerberg will continue to accrue wealth at levels somewhere way beyond astronomical, all the while thumbing their noses at us simply because they can.  The only solution is one I've proposed before; stop using AI.  Completely.  Yes, there are undoubtedly ways it could be used ethically, but at the moment, it's not, and it won't be until the techbros see enough people opting out that the message will get hammered home.

But until then, my personal message to Mark Zuckerberg is a resounding "fuck you, you obnoxious, arrogant putz."  The last word of which, by the way, is also Yiddish.  If you don't know it, I'll leave it to you to research its meaning.

****************************************

The outrage machine

As of this morning, I have now seen the following post five times:

It seems like it should be obvious this can't be true, because if there was a rule banning the posting the Lord's Prayer on Facebook, this post and the hundreds of others like it would have been deleted, which they weren't.  Apparently, that line of reasoning doesn't seem to occur to people, because instead, the whole thing elicited a chorus of "Amens" and lots of middle fingers raised by the members of the Religious Outrage Machine toward everyone they think is oppressing them, which is pretty much... everyone.

It's so widespread it made it to Snopes, which (of course) found there's no truth to it at all.  There is no prohibition against posting religious material on Facebook, as long as it doesn't involve hate speech.

So let's get something straight, okay?  You Christians in the United States are not a persecuted minority.  Estimates from polls in 2021 show that about 63% of Americans identify as Christian.  There is no basis whatever for the claims made in sites like TruthOnlyBible, which stated that there's a push toward conservative Christians being "[excluded] from basic services, such as air travel, hotel, cell phone, banking, internet shopping, and even insurance."

Seriously, considering how loud the conservative Christians are about airing their grievances at every possible opportunity, how long do you think an airline would last if they said "I'm sorry, you can't purchase a flight to Cancun with us because you're a Christian"?

The most bizarre thing about this claim is that in a lot of the United States, the opposite trend is true.  Despite the "no religious test" clause in the Constitution, in many parts of America it'd be flat-out impossible to get elected if you're not a Christian (and in some of those places, you have to be a particular sort of Christian).

Hell, the second in line for the presidency is an ultra-conservative, anti-LGBTQ, fundamentalist young-earth creationist.

Remind me again how embattled y'all are?

The fact is, no one is trying to stop people from praying, posting Christian stuff online, wishing people Merry Christmas, or going to church.  No one.  You're just as free to be religious as you ever were.  Maybe more people these days are willing to say, "You can't force your religion on me," but that does not equate to "And I'd like to force my lack of religion on you."

But people aren't galvanized by messages like "we're all just trying to get along, here."  Despite my frequent bafflement at why people seem to enjoy feeling indignant, I have to admit that feeding the outrage machine works.  It's why the imaginary "War on Christmas" absolutely refuses to die.  You'd think that twenty years would be enough to convince everyone that no one, not even an Evil Atheist like myself, is trying to kill Christmas, but another thing that comes along with this mindset appears to be a complete resistance to facts and logic.

If you convince people they have something to be scared and mad about, they act.  Which is why fear-mongering is all over the news.  It's why politicians are experts in stoking anger.

"Vote for me, I'll fix what I just made you afraid of" is a mighty powerful message.

But as far as Facebook and prayers -- as I've said more than once here at Skeptophilia, if you're trying to persuade someone of something, blatantly lying about it does not make your case stronger.  And while it might be easy to take advantage of people who can't be bothered even to do a thirty-second Google fact-check search, ultimately what it does is blow your own credibility to smithereens.

So please, please stop reposting bullshit like this.  Can I get an amen to that?

****************************************

Truth, lies, and Facebook

There's been a whole lot of buzz lately on the subject of free speech and social media.

The maelstrom has centered around the controversial figure of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, whose rather lax policies about truth in political advertisements is said by many to have contributed to Donald Trump's nomination and eventual electoral win.  As we enter another presidential election season (lord help us all), the whole issue has come up again -- with Zuckerberg defending his position on allowing ads even if they contain factual inaccuracy.

I.e., "Fake News."  Oh, how I've come to loathe that phrase, which gets lobbed every time someone hears a piece of news unfavorable to their preferred politician.  Call it "Fake News," and you can forthwith stop thinking about it.

It's been a remarkably efficient strategy -- and is largely to blame for the current political mess we're in.

In any case, Zuckerberg isn't backing down.  He said:

While I certainly worry about the erosion of truth, I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true...  We’re seeing people across the spectrum try to define more speech as dangerous because it may lead to political outcomes they see as unacceptable.  Some hold the view that since the stakes are now so high, they can no longer trust their fellow citizens with the power to communicate and decide what to believe for themselves.  I personally believe that this is more dangerous for democracy over the long term than almost any speech.

Which, to me, misses the point entirely.

Free speech covers opinions like, "I think Donald Trump has been a great president."  I have no right to censor that, whether or not I agree with it.  However, saying "Donald Trump eats live babies for breakfast" is not covered under free speech, because it's a false statement intended to discredit.

Which the law refers to as "libel."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ibrahim.ID, Socialmedia-pm, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So allowing political ads is one thing.  You can craft a political ad that steers clear of libel even if it's highly critical of the candidate you're running against.   But when you post factual inaccuracies (better known as "lies") about someone, with the intent to cause harm to their reputation or electability, that's no longer a matter of free speech.

And as such, yes, Mark, you have an obligation to block such advertisements.

Elizabeth Warren responded to Zuckerberg's stance by putting together an ad claiming that Zuckerberg is a Trump supporter (which he claims is untrue).  But the salvo evidently didn't really strike the target.  Zuckerberg is still unapologetic for his position:

Do we ban ads about health care or immigration or women’s empowerment?  And if you’re not going to ban those, does it really make sense to give everyone a voice in the political debates except for the candidates themselves?  I believe when it’s not absolutely clear what to do, we should err on the side of greater expression.

Well, actually, you have banned ads about health care.  Earlier this year, Facebook (rightly) decided to block ads promoting the talking points of the anti-vaxxers.  Why?  Because what they were saying was false and harmful.  That's the acid test, you know?  (1) Is it false? and (2) is it harmful or damaging to the person or persons targeted?

If the answer to those two questions is "yes," then social media has an obligation to say no to the advertisement.

Hard to see how anything about "women's empowerment" would fall under those guidelines.

So what Zuckerberg is engaging in is a false equivalency -- and I believe he's perfectly well aware of it.  Those ads bring in millions of dollars of revenue, so he has a vested interest in turning a blind eye, regardless of the political or societal outcome.  As usual, it's all about the bottom line.

At present, I still have a Facebook.  For one thing, it's my primary way of keeping in touch with people who live far away and whom I rarely see.  For another, it's the main social media platform used by my publishing company, so I'd be cutting myself off from them pretty thoroughly if I deleted my profile.

So I'm sticking -- for the time being.  I'd love to see enough pressure put on Zuckerberg that he changes his stance, and at least pledges to stop advertisements that engage in spreading demonstrably false statements.  That's all we're asking, really -- not to take sides, but to stop all sides from lying for their own gain.

It's not a difficult concept.  And hard to see how you'd craft an argument that increasing the amount of truth in all kinds of media is a bad thing.

*****************************

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is from an author who has been a polarizing figure for quite some time; the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins has long been an unapologetic critic of religion, and in fact some years ago wrote a book called The God Delusion that caused thermonuclear-level rage amongst the Religious Right.

But the fact remains that he is a passionate, lucid, and articulate exponent of the theory of evolution, independent of any of his other views.  This week's book recommendation is his wonderful The Greatest Show on Earth, which lays out the evidence for biological evolution in a methodical fashion, in terminology accessible to a layperson, in such a way that I can't conceive how you'd argue against it.  Wherever you fall on the spectrum of attitudes toward evolution (and whatever else you might think of Dawkins), you should read this book.  It's brilliant -- and there's something eye-opening on every page.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Interesting times

A few days ago, I started reading Michio Kaku's wonderful book Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.  The book is fascinating, buoyed up by Kaku's ebullient writing style and endless optimism about our future, touching on the possibilities of artificial intelligence, planet-wide information systems with unfettered access for all, medical advances that could extend (healthy) life span to perhaps twice what it is now, and the ability to harness clean energy sources that are for all intents and purposes inexhaustible.  He suggests that our species, in a time that on the grand scale is a snap of the fingers, will be heading for the stars.

At the same time, here on Earth things are looking pretty awful, as if we'd finally succumbed to the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."  Only a few hours ago, we here in the United States had yet another senseless mass shooting, this time an attack on a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California.  The attack left fourteen confirmed dead and an equal number injured; the suspects are, at the time of this writing, still at large, and their motives for attacking the center are unknown.  Just a few days ago, an ultrareligious right-winger killed three people and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.  Many have linked the attack to vitriolic rhetoric from so-called Pro-Lifers like Joshua Feuerstein, who has suggested that doctors who perform abortions deserve to be murdered.  We have one presidential candidate who has openly praised noted conspiracy theorist loon Alex Jones; another claimed yesterday that "the majority of violent criminals are Democrats."  Further afield, the UK Parliament has given the go-ahead for bombing Syria, ISIS has murdered a Russian captive in retaliation for air strikes against ISIS-held areas, our "allies" in Saudi Arabia are very likely in the next few days to behead Ali Al-Nimr, a protestor who was arrested when he was only 17, and in general the world just seems to be a fucked-up morass of misery, hatred, horror, and death.

I'm an optimistic guy, for the most part.  I have always been firmly convinced that most people, most of the time, are doing their level best to act morally and responsibly.  I've also been a strong believer in the idea that you don't have to agree with someone in order to get along with them.  I've had more than one cheerful pint of beer with a friend whose political views are (to say the least) opposite to mine.  I'm a staunch atheist, but have dear friends who are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Wiccans. (I'm not leaving out Muslims deliberately; I just don't happen to be close pals with any.)

But in the current atmosphere, when the tenor of the news seems to be paralleling the diminishment of the light as we approach the winter solstice, it's hard to keep those ideals in mind.  It becomes increasingly easy to give in to despair, to decide that humanity isn't really worth saving, that any good we do is outweighed by the tremendous evils that we visit on each other for reasons of religion, race, belief, and sometimes for no reason at all.

Still, we do some beautiful things sometimes.  Billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged 99% of his share revenues to charities connected with personalized learning, curing diseases, connecting people and community building.  The Planned Parenthood clinic that was attacked has been the focus of two separate fundraising drives, one through GoFundMe and the other through YouCaring.

But I keep coming back to the heartache of why we, here in the 21st century, are still having to face people being murdered for wanting control of their own bodies, for wanting to be able to speak freely and criticize their governments, for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It's so far from Kaku's idyllic space-age wonderland that I find myself wondering if the human race will survive long enough to meet even one of his high-flown predictions.

I think the solution lies with the like-minded sticking together, and telling each other that there are still good people in the world, that we will make it through these dark times.  That the days will lengthen, winter will warm into spring, and (perhaps even!) the news will one day be dominated by positive stories.  We have to remain optimistic; if we don't, if the good people of the world give up and succumb to despair, then the evil really will have won.

[image courtesy of NASA]

I will leave you with a poem that I first discovered when I was 13 years old.  I still can't read it without choking up; not too long ago I tried to read it out loud to my son when he was going through a rough patch, and we both ended up bawling.  I think it's more relevant now than when it was written by Max Ehrmann, almost a hundred years ago.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings;
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.