Nothing to Hide

Nothing to Hide

Nothing to Hide

Social media’s primary objective was to connect people better. It turns out though that alongside, those platforms generate a staggering amount of behavioural data about their users. Companies capitalize on this data by serving users with targeted advertisements - they are based not only on the interests that we express through liked pages and followed profiles but also on how the platform thinks we think or feel at the moment. This creates the potential to not only provide convenience for the users but also to target their vulnerabilities, which is known as the weaponization of advertisements.

Throughout the 2010s, there were several scandals involving the weaponization of digital ads. Perhaps the most widely known one involved the company Cambridge Analytica, which was helping the Republican party in the United States to improve its messaging by tailoring them to inferred personality traits of the voters. The company used Facebook to both gather a great amount of data about tens of millions of people and to deploy the advertisements with micro-targeted messages. Therefore, the involvement of advertising money changed social media from tools that were meant to help humanity to a tool that can be used against its original benefactors.

“Nothing to Hide” combines the aspects of privacy and political propaganda in an experience where players can take the role of a political manipulator themselves. Their objective is to skew the presidential election result in favour of the Conservative party candidate through the use of weaponized advertisements. The players will use several strategies of weaponizing digital advertisements and exploiting the voters’ data based on a report “Weaponizing the Digital Influence Machine” by the Data & Society Institute.

The main gameplay loop consists of choosing which of the three political ads should be displayed on the social media feed of a fictional voter. The player makes the decision based on the displayed information about voters. That includes their details, their voting history and behavioural categories they fit in based on their social media usage. The player’s mission is to choose the ad that fits the voters’ data most, and therefore to manipulate the targets as effectively as possible.

The game is divided into two main tasks that outline different strategies for weaponizing digital ads. The first one is attacking the social identity of the voters, and the second one is dividing the political opposition by spreading fake or exaggerated information.

The fake advertisements used in the game are based on right-wing messaging that has gained many supporters in the Americas and Europe throughout the last decade, mainly the ads that have been used in the Trump and Brexit campaigns. The profiles of fictional voters are based on voter archetypes that I have devised through interviews and research of the political scene in multiple countries.

By showcasing how seemingly irrelevant or harmless data can be combined to form a powerful influence mechanism, Nothing to Hide teaches the player about the importance of online privacy. The player learns how digital ad systems may be providing new opportunities for disinformation campaigns, propaganda, and other forms of media manipulation, and how they are used to identify and target users' vulnerabilities to manipulate their behaviour. By witnessing the types of manipulative messaging used in the fake ads, the player is also inoculated against political propaganda and is more likely to notice it in real life.

Social media in its current form has diverted from its original purpose into an exploitative influence machine. “Nothing to Hide” highlights the severity of the issue that mass surveillance and behaviour manipulation practices have created. The game opens a dialogue about the design of platforms billions of people use daily as an integral part of our lives, which need urgent reform to treat the well-being of their users with priority.

The game is targeted at Millenials and Gen Z’ers with moderate to zero knowledge about the
topic of online privacy, and while interest in politics definitely will make the game
more interesting to an individual, it is not required. The playful visuals and humorous writing make the topic of the game more approachable and interesting for its audience. An ideal use case of the game would be as an educational resource on the topic of online privacy and political propaganda.

Social media’s primary objective was to connect people better. It turns out though that alongside, those platforms generate a staggering amount of behavioural data about their users. Companies capitalize on this data by serving users with targeted advertisements - they are based not only on the interests that we express through liked pages and followed profiles but also on how the platform thinks we think or feel at the moment. This creates the potential to not only provide convenience for the users but also to target their vulnerabilities, which is known as the weaponization of advertisements.

Throughout the 2010s, there were several scandals involving the weaponization of digital ads. Perhaps the most widely known one involved the company Cambridge Analytica, which was helping the Republican party in the United States to improve its messaging by tailoring them to inferred personality traits of the voters. The company used Facebook to both gather a great amount of data about tens of millions of people and to deploy the advertisements with micro-targeted messages. Therefore, the involvement of advertising money changed social media from tools that were meant to help humanity to a tool that can be used against its original benefactors.

“Nothing to Hide” combines the aspects of privacy and political propaganda in an experience where players can take the role of a political manipulator themselves. Their objective is to skew the presidential election result in favour of the Conservative party candidate through the use of weaponized advertisements. The players will use several strategies of weaponizing digital advertisements and exploiting the voters’ data based on a report “Weaponizing the Digital Influence Machine” by the Data & Society Institute.

The main gameplay loop consists of choosing which of the three political ads should be displayed on the social media feed of a fictional voter. The player makes the decision based on the displayed information about voters. That includes their details, their voting history and behavioural categories they fit in based on their social media usage. The player’s mission is to choose the ad that fits the voters’ data most, and therefore to manipulate the targets as effectively as possible.

The game is divided into two main tasks that outline different strategies for weaponizing digital ads. The first one is attacking the social identity of the voters, and the second one is dividing the political opposition by spreading fake or exaggerated information.

The fake advertisements used in the game are based on right-wing messaging that has gained many supporters in the Americas and Europe throughout the last decade, mainly the ads that have been used in the Trump and Brexit campaigns. The profiles of fictional voters are based on voter archetypes that I have devised through interviews and research of the political scene in multiple countries.

By showcasing how seemingly irrelevant or harmless data can be combined to form a powerful influence mechanism, Nothing to Hide teaches the player about the importance of online privacy. The player learns how digital ad systems may be providing new opportunities for disinformation campaigns, propaganda, and other forms of media manipulation, and how they are used to identify and target users' vulnerabilities to manipulate their behaviour. By witnessing the types of manipulative messaging used in the fake ads, the player is also inoculated against political propaganda and is more likely to notice it in real life.

Social media in its current form has diverted from its original purpose into an exploitative influence machine. “Nothing to Hide” highlights the severity of the issue that mass surveillance and behaviour manipulation practices have created. The game opens a dialogue about the design of platforms billions of people use daily as an integral part of our lives, which need urgent reform to treat the well-being of their users with priority.

The game is targeted at Millenials and Gen Z’ers with moderate to zero knowledge about the
topic of online privacy, and while interest in politics definitely will make the game
more interesting to an individual, it is not required. The playful visuals and humorous writing make the topic of the game more approachable and interesting for its audience. An ideal use case of the game would be as an educational resource on the topic of online privacy and political propaganda.

Created with:

HTML, CSS, Twine 2.0

Created with:

HTML, CSS, Twine 2.0

https://youtu.be/4sauYehAX3g

https://portfolio.tylke.design/

This work relates to democracy both conceptually and literally. Social media are websites that accumulate user-generated content, and therefore their existence is solely based on their users' participation. Even though that's the case, users don't have much say in how social media work, instead they are relying on the vision of the company. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that the social media companies not only don't share the ownership of the product with the users, but are also actively exploiting them by harvesting or allowing to harvest their data, and taking advantage of their vulnerabilities to increase ad revenue.

This model of a social media platform proved to not be sustainable and is in urgent need of reform. The structure of social media platforms' ownership needs to change from capitalist and hierarchical to democratic so that the users' well being is a priority. My project is the first step to such a reform, as it aims to make the issue well known and understood.

Moreover, the weaponization of digital ads poses a threat to the very literal democracy that we are privileged to live in by allowing political actors to bypass a fair election process and manipulate the voters. Social media companies are complicit in this process by allowing it to happen, "Nothing to Hide" serves as a resource with which the general public can be educated about the issue and be more resilient to it.