The wonderful thing about the internet is that it has no bounds nor limits. The awful thing about the internet is that it has no bounds nor limits.

When it was set up (Sir Johnny Internet, 1988) it was just a way for people to connect to each other. Write someone a letter. Send them a photo. Put an article ‘out there’ and someone will pick it up. Or not. I put stuff on my computer and you can access it on yours, should you choose. Simple, easy, neat.

This is very difficult, conceptually, for those of us who didn’t grow up with such things as Intrawebs. In our world, due purely to ‘the way things work and have always worked’, the internet was a big shop, or office, with The Internet!! written boldly across the top. And inside sat some people. About 27 at first, growing later to 4.32 million of them. And every time someone posted or advertised or put something publicly available on their computers, Mabel would have a look at it, read it, check the spelling, and examine it for ‘content’. So anything pornographic would be censored, everything nasty would be removed, everything financially dubious and she’d call Charlie, in the dubious finance department to check it out. “What’cha reckon, Chaz? Seems a bit dodgy, don’it?” And that would be cut, after they’d talked about over a nice cuppa tea.

But that model doesn’t apply. Similarly, YouTube, as a company, don’t get to choose what people put on their platform. And it is a platform. Just a place to put things. Anythings. Facebook too is just a virtual-land that connects people and content, and data, lots of data. It’s not ‘their’ data and content, its yours, you just use Facebook to display it. By choice.

So when MPs urge big business to ‘boycott Facebook and Google’ because of terror issues, which are unquestionably true and valid, its almost a return to the old model attitude, expecting someone to just go on and delete offending items like you delete your spam emails every day. Just wipe ‘em away.

But the world is now run by algorithms. Which analyse numbers, not words or pictures. And if that algorithm calculates that the demographic of people watching a ‘how to behead a kaffir with a Stanley knife’ video is the same as those buying sparkling kitchen cleaners, they will be linked for advertising. Which was why Unilever abandoned their Facebook advertising. Even though, when you think about it, as every bomb seems to use bleach, peroxide, cleaning soda, Jihadis probably represent a pretty good market for the manufacturing giant.

Which is a case in point. Unilever make stuff to clean with, nasty people choose to abuse those products and make bombs with them. Is that Unilever’s fault? Are they responsible?? Are Ford Motors at fault because one of their vans was used to attack innocent pedestrians?

Politicians love to find someone to blame. And I don’t think YouTube and Facebook and the others act sufficiently to remove horrible and dangerous content. But its people. We do the posting, we put it out there. They have algorithms to try and locate and remove, but it can’t be easy.

Computers now run the world. And they’re fed by us. The good bits and the bad bits. Just like the world’s always been run.

Happy Black Friday

A xxxx