Googlezon and the future of dissent

Last week’s extension of government restrictions on church worship lit a fuse, and we’re hearing loud and clear from people who want to know if Archbishop Miller is going to stand up to the government. (Some are even offering to help with the lawsuit.)

We’re also hearing from many who are very sympathetic to the government and to the archbishop’s efforts to balance competing issues of religious liberty and public health.

As with everything COVID, no two people find themselves in total agreement, whether it’s about closing churches, limiting attendance, drive-thru Communion, or parking lot Masses. The pandemic has a way of fomenting disparate views on everything from lockdowns to vaccines to facemasks.

I have a feeling most people’s perspectives are formed more by personality than by facts. For every rebel who’s keen to defy health orders and risk the consequences there’s a conformist willing to wait until the government sounds the all-clear to reopen churches.

(Personally if it were up to me the government would have been taken to court on Day 1 over its arbitrary clampdown on houses of worship. But fools rush in, which is why I’m not the archbishop.)

So I was pleased to see the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms jump into the fray with a court challenge based on Protestant churches who defied the restrictions and were fined.

For the record, I know the archbishop is very disturbed by the restrictions, but he’s trying to delicately balance competing issues of religious liberty and public health. He also believes strongly in the role of the lay faithful and would love to see more people taking this issue to the government directly.

Unfortunately the divergent and emotional viewpoints about COVID issues are an echo of the polarization in almost every aspect of our lives. Which is why Pope Francis issued his encyclical Fratelli Tutti last year, urging people of good will to promote fraternity through dialogue and renewing society by putting love for others ahead of personal interests.

This need for open but respectful debate came to mind last weekend when I heard the troubling news about Google, Apple, and Amazon co-ordinating to quash a fledgling communications platform, the upstart Parler, which positioned itself as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook.

Big Tech accused Parler of hosting violent content, which is a bit like accusing a book of having pages since if it weren’t for noxious content there’d hardly be any content on some social media platforms. More likely it was Parler’s popularity with conservative users that threatened Google and Amazon. 

With the demise of Parler I was reminded of “Googlezon,” a fusion of Google and Amazon that appeared in a speculative film titled EPIC 2014. When I first saw the film, made in 2004, I was mesmerized by the future it posited where Google joins forces with Amazon and other burgeoning technologies to form Googlezon – a communications, marketing, and tech colossus that dominates information dissemination by using AI technology to tailor unique “news” for every individual user.

Last weekend, Googlezon became less fiction and more reality.

The film imagines Amazon using its massive commercial infrastructure to supply social recommendations to help Google produce “detailed knowledge of every user’s social network, demographics, consumption habits and interests to provide total customization of content – and advertising.”

Googlezon then blends news with unverifiable information from social media and blogs to cobble together stories that are as different as each user. 

Everyone is delivered a unique composite of news, opinion, conjecture, and advertising compiled by the AI lens of Googlezon. The world shrinks further into alternate realities of truth, which becomes non-existent.

The decision by Google and Amazon to team up and crush Parler precipitated a social media purge of dissenting viewpoints on other platforms. Millions of people have now been effectively silenced because of their political viewpoints, which should be alarming but is in fact being cheered by more people than you’d imagine.

Where this goes next depends on how hopeful or naïve you are. Perhaps the marketplace of ideas will provide alternatives to Google, Amazon, Twitter and all the other Silicon Valleys companies trying to suppress uncomfortable viewpoints. 

Unfortunately these companies dominate global communication. If nothing happens to rein them in, and probably break them up, we’re likely going to keep moving toward the reality depicted in EPIC 2014.

We will see a growing worldwide rejection of opinions that make us uncomfortable. Reasoned discussion of issues based on points and counterpoints will continue to be supplanted by wokeness, vitriol, cancel culture, and suppression, the very opposite of the Pope’s call for brotherhood and respectful communications.

If I thought it might do something, I might suggest the Pope himself wade in and offer to convene a forum on dialogue, truth, tied in with the Holy See’s new interest in AI. Unfortunately I doubt many from Silicon Valley would attend.

The days of civitas and veritas appear to be waning, and I don’t think we’ll realize what we’ve lost until we are forced to live with the new unpleasant reality for some time.

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@paulschratz