The Internet and the Pandemic 

First an update to my previous column, “Monopoly just a Game?”. I used the early http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/12901railroad industry  as an example of a monopoly but neglected to mention a more current example: 

Microsoft was  prosecuted as a monopoly in the late nineties. The accusation was that they deliberately exercised control of the computer market which was unfair to their competitors as well as causing consumers to pay more for their product. They had combined their operating system with their browser, “Internet Explorer” in such a way that it was nearly impossible for users to deploy other existing browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Firefox.  Microsoft countered that all they were doing was throwing in a free browser with their operating system. 

“The ruling on April 3, 2000, called for Microsoft to divide the company in half, creating two companies that were to be called "baby bills." The operating system would make up one half of the company and the software arm would make up the other.

Before this could be achieved, however, the fangs were removed from the ruling during the appeals process. However, rather than being broken by the antitrust ruling, Microsoft saw its once invincible market share erode due to the old-fashioned competition. As a result, many now wonder if bringing antitrust cases against non-coercive monopolies is merely a costly redundancy of work the free market can do at no charge.” 

The reader should keep in mind that this is an opinion from a website devoted to investors. (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/microsoft-antitrust.asp)

During those times,  Bill Gates was viewed, (primarily by academics) as a bad guy because their social agenda was slanted more towards sharing (e.g. Information should be Free) than profiteering.

Nowadays, as most everyone knows, Gates is viewed as an enlightened philanthropist guiding the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which is fighting hunger and poverty in less-developed countries. Is this an example of maturation or guilt? 

Now, back to the issue raised by the title of this piece. It’s pretty clear to me that, yes, the Internet like other modes of communication such as Newspaper, TV and Radio, by overwhelming us with information may have done more harm than good. (I’m undecided on that one)          

 One cannot help but notice the similarities between the Internet and the virus spreading like a meme or a tweet where they proliferate very, very quickly. Without knowing whom to trust, they can cause a very large commotion before it dies down.

So, is it possible to quarantine a website that is clearly infected with false information? Right now that is an issue that social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google are currently struggling with. Given the estimated number of 

Internet users (there are about 4 billion active social media users (statista.com) it is close to impossible to address this problem in the same way a newspaper  can vet letters to the editor. A proposed solution to this problem is to harness AI to do the job for us. Clearly there will be those who object to an “artificially” intelligent agent making what are essentially human decisions for.us. It is hard not to develop a , “How dare you!?!?” attitude.

However, the other side of the argument is similar to that used by advocates of self-driving cars: Look, it’s not going to be perfect but neither will human decisions be perfect plus the AI doesn’t sleep, go for coffee breaks or have a bad day. And perhaps most importantly, the AI learns from experience --- something in short supply these days. Finding and removing trolls ( people who want to provoke and upset others online for their own amusement (howtogeek.com)). is more complicated as it is easy to create a fake username making it difficult to trace. One approach is to let the AI do the quarantining subject allowing  the offender to defend/challenge their submission similar to the your antivirus program quarantines potentially dangerous websites or downloads.Then you, the user, can decide later whether or not to lift the quarantine.

With regard to people, a quarantine is effective in that it contains the virus to a circumscribed area and even though the people inside that area are unlucky ,it stops the spread of the virus to the general population. Being only human, people become contentious when in quarantine while the programs your antivirus captives are quite docile.  

                                                                                         

Although I use this World Wide Web for most of the research I do for this column,

 I am beginning to think that the Internet, and social media in particular, may be, or certainly have the capacity to create more problems than it solves. If nothing else, the current pandemic has reminded us that we are indeed, all connected.