Many readers will be aware of how quick and easy it can be to ‘share’ information online. Last week’s story about the SMS blaster located in the Sukhumvit district of Bangkok has given me reason to question preconceptions about the total cost of ‘sharing’ information. Somebody has to pay a cost somewhere, and the belief that information will always be cheap or free is likely to lead us to undesirable places if followed to its ultimate conclusion.
Unlike the vast majority of people who ‘share’ stories online, I monitor the flow of information with the intention of finding niche stories that many professionals are unlikely to see unless it is published at a specialist site like Commsrisk. In fact, this week’s article was going to be dedicated to a lengthy comparison of data from the US Federal Trade Commission and Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, but that story was postponed to make room for the Klang Valley SMS blaster piece covered above. Monitoring the flow of stories means that I often see the same story dozens of different times, as published by dozens of different channels, before you have read the story on Commsrisk.
The following sequence relates to last week’s headline story. It exemplifies factors that may not be apparent to most of the public, even if they are prolific readers and avid users of social media.
- The Thai press ran the story on 19 November, immediately after attending a briefing run by the police and Thai operator AIS. Here is an example.
- Commsrisk ran the story in English on 22 November. It was actually written on 20 November but Commsrisk now only publishes one article per week, each Friday, to manage the workload in maintaining this site’s output, and to reflect the way social media algorithms work at promoting content for websites that have a niche audience.
- AI-powered spam websites began running the story in English on 23 November. Here is an example. You may ask how I know the article was written by AI. The inference is straightforward when you look at the gross output of websites like these, relative to the number of people working for them. It would not be possible for a human being to write so many articles about so many different topics on a daily basis. These articles are produced by taking words that have already been written by somebody else, then feeding them into an AI to rephrase the content to avoid any copyright claim, and then publishing the output using the equivalent of factory-line automation.
- Mainstream English-language tech news websites ran the story on 24 November. This example is from Bleeping Computer. I can draw no firm conclusions on where they obtained the story from. It could have been from the Thai press, or they might have taken the tip from Commsrisk, or they might have taken their tip from the AI sites. Most of them probably took their tip from another mainstream English-language tech news website, which is why so many published the story on the same day.
This leads me to two conclusions.
- If you think who-pays-for-news-media-and-who-separates-information-from-misinformation is a fucked-up problem that is getting worse, then you are correct. However, from my perspective on the outer rim of the newsiverse, the problem is even worse than you currently appreciate. It is not just the supply-side of specialized news economics that is in trouble, because AI is far more effective at stealing the value enshrined in somebody else’s work than at creating the accurate and original content that must be the foundation for any trustworthy news service. The problem is that even a lunatic extremist like me, who was willing to sustain an insane amount of output over an 18-year period, is questioning why I do not replace myself with regurgitative AI that adds no value whatsoever. Without people like me, nobody is going to discriminate between information and misinformation, whether the source of that misinformation is a partisan politician, a lying marketeer, or the lack of knowledge required to spot when a phrase in Thai has not been translated into an appropriate technical term in English.
- Commsrisk’s version of this story was the only one that alluded to how well AIS detects SMS blasters. And this was likely because I am the only person who wrote words about this story after speaking to the CISO of AIS about how their team detects SMS blasters.
To be clear, I am not going to write on Commsrisk about the methods used by AIS to detect SMS blasters. But knowing those things makes for better and more reliable analysis of what is happening. It helps me to distinguish between important consumer protection initiatives, like the great work being done by AIS, and bullshit marketing that was dominating the output of the English-language press whilst they all waited for somebody else to translate Thai into English. I also respect the fact that the readership of Commsrisk includes fraudsters, so I had better not be too specific when describing how AIS is doing an amazing job of fighting fraud. But if no effort is made by writers to genuinely distinguish between good work and vacuous nonsense then we end up misleading the public because crowd-pleasing fluff will be confused with the products of genuine expertise. This then leads to politicians being pressured by the public to force telcos to waste money on expensive but deeply flawed technologies that will deliver a handsome profit for suppliers but no actual protection for the rest of society.
The strategic failure to address organized crime has bedeviled the communications sector for decades. The last thing we need is policy to be even more influenced by the gimmicks that will typically get most attention on social media. But I see very little evidence of people exercising any restraint in their pursuit of the maximum number of online views, likes and reposts.
So this leaves me in a conundrum.
I could just say ‘fuck it’ and retire again, like I did earlier this year. I have enough money, and I am not motivated to make life easier for people who are lazier and stupider than me. Or I could draw your attention to the growing scale of a problem, without being clear how this will lead to a solution. Some good friends have suggested solutions, although my examination of the data leads me to conclude that none of their proposals would overcome a fundamentally adverse dynamic: ordinary people are so habituated to receiving free information online that they fail to notice they are helping to ensure all future online information will be worthless.
There has been no shortage for suggestions for how I might do things differently. Earlier this week I was asked to bring back Commsrisk TV by a fraud expert who is very experienced but whom I rarely speak with. And just before I started writing up this article, I was in a conversation with a widely-traveled revenue assurance manager who said I should put Commsrisk behind a paywall. These suggestions are gratefully received, but I remain unconvinced. Recent history demonstrates that I needed to retire to stimulate a response which prompted the Mobile Ecosystem Forum to make me an offer that justified keeping Commsrisk alive. If people genuinely want Commsrisk to continue, it would be better if they found a way to signal their need for this content before I start planning my retirement again.
