Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism

by Jillian C. York

Overview

The battle for online rights and for the future of democracy

Who decides what is permissible on the internet: Politicians? Mark Zuckerberg? Users? Who determines when political debate becomes hate speech? How does this impact our identity or our ability to create communities and to protest? Silicon Values reports on the war for digital rights and how major corporations—Facebook, Twitter, Google and Tiktok—threaten democracy as they harvest our personal data in the pursuit of profit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788738811
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	03/15/2022
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jillian C. York is International Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF. She is also a founding member of the feminist collective, Deep Lab. She has been covering questions of surveillance and freedom since the 2000s. She was named by Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 intellectuals on social media. She has written for the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy. She is based in Berlin.

Table of Contents

Prologue vii

Introduction 1

1 The New Gatekeepers 6

2 Offline Repression Is Replicated Online 25

3 Social Media Revolutionaries 47

4 Profit over People 73

5 Extremism Calls for Extreme Measures 100

6 Twenty-First-Century Victorians 124

7 The War on Sex 145

8 From Humans to Machines 164

9 The Virality of Hate 183

10 The Future Is Ours to Write 213

Postscript to the Paperback Edition 232

Acknowledgments 239

Notes 244

Index 274

Editorial Reviews

The Internet has never been the utopia of free and equal expression its ideologues would have us believe it is. Jillian York’s vivid reportage shows us that the power to determine who gets to use it to speak, and under what circumstances, is now more concentrated—and less accountable—than ever before.”
—Adam Greenfield, author of Radical Technologies

“For years, Jillian York has been at the forefront of defending freedom of expression online. Her new book unpacks how Silicon Valley corporations have gained more control over speech than the most ambitious of governments and how ill-prepared they often are to use that power in ways that are just and fair. Entertaining, deeply informative and often very personal, Jillian’s journey into the world of online speech reflects on deep questions about how we should treat one another and who makes rules for societies in our digital world.”
—Ethan Zuckerman, Associate Professor, UMass Amherst and co-founder Global Voices

“Jillian C. York gives us a personal, relevant, and accessible reflection on how our world has become governed by Silicon Valley. She takes us on an enjoyable journey from San Francisco to Tunis to Cairo to Berlin to trace the change from the early belief in maximizing free speech shared by the big tech platforms and we, the people, alike to the increasing policies of surveillance and control exercised by the platforms (and encouraged by most governments) that makes the struggle for free expression a much more demanding battle. Her conclusions offer hope and guidance as to what we need to do, not just for the sake of free speech but for the freedom to shape our very identity and agency.”
—Rasha Abdulla, Professor of Mass Communication at The American University in Cairo, and author of The Internet in the Arab World

“An incisive and compelling read that places Silicon Valley’s platforms and policies in a global context. York knows this terrain intimately,and she takes us to the key battlegrounds that have shaped content moderation,internet governance, and the political economies of online expression.”
—Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI

“[Silicon Values] casts a wide-enough net over relevant topics and examples to be richly informative, while still managing to be straightforward in its style. York offers a solid entry point for those who have been following ongoing issues relating to the intersection of politics and technology.”
—Jesse A. Lambertson, Library Journal

“Silicon Values traces the haphazard and chaotic creation of the speech principles that now govern the platforms billions of us use to communicate every day … York’s book drags us back to the early, heady days of social media’s inception.”
—Laurie Clarke, New Statesman

“Personal, hands-on expertise makes for some gripping tales, penetrating insight and persuasive advocacy … an important study of free speech under these pervasive social media platforms … full of energy and needed insight.”
—Karlin Lillington, Irish Times

“Simple, but not simplistic. In this book, the result of more than ten years of work in the field, York travels the world to pick out the most significant cases that show how the decisions made in the tiny Silicon Valley area of California play out on the ground”
—Wendy M Grossman, ZDNet

“Silicon Values is a trenchant critique of how platform censorship is enabled by surveillance capitalism … In an area that doesn’t lend itself to simple solutions, York’s insights lay an important foundation for ongoing intelligent discussion of the topic.”
—Prostasia Foundation

“Timely and trenchant … York, who for many years has been international activism director at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, certainly knows her stuff. Her proposals for change, however, are clear and democratic, arguing for independent content moderation, social inclusion, and a user-powered movement against the handful of American men who currently run the show from Silicon Valley.”
—New International

“Timely and trenchant … [York’s] proposals for change … are clear and democratic.”
—Vanessa Baird, New Internationalist

From the Publisher