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SAP Founder Hasso Plattner Fears the Scourge of Social Media (afr.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
In a wide-ranging interview, Hasso Plattner, the 74-year-old co-founder and chairman of global business software powerhouse SAP, talked about his apprehension of the social media. From the story: He saves his greatest condemnation for the scourge of fake news and societal manipulation on large social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Despite the founders of the social giants pledging to do more to ensure public debate is not artificially skewed, Plattner believes the solution will have to come from law enforcement and criminal penalties. He says humans are genetically wired to thrive on rumours, dating back to ancient times when rumours about what was going on in the next village would be on everyone's mind. He fears social platforms have simply become rumour distribution machines of unbelievable power.

"I was very optimistic that social networks would improve access to information and democracy in general, but I am very disappointed that the opposite is happening," he says. "Professional information producers undermine the social networks, undermine states and elections. It is unbelievable what is happening and we have a huge problem." Plattner draws a parallel with insider trading, which he says is as easy to commit as social media manipulation, but is not so common because people know they will be slugged with criminal convictions. "This is all before we look at the exploitation of personal data, where we are naked in front of the social networks, because we undress ourselves, and not only literally," he says. "I think this will continue until we have the legal systems properly looking at it, and have strong laws that people have to obey."
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SAP Founder Hasso Plattner Fears the Scourge of Social Media More

SAP Founder Hasso Plattner Fears the Scourge of Social Media

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  • It's not manipulation when we do it! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Calls for censorship, corporations deciding what's truth and what's not, or who gets to speak and who not, mainstream media colluding to push a narrative, using law enforcement to enforce political bias, etc.

    And you want to lecture others about manipulation? The whole basis of these discussions is manipulation, i.e. bolstering one political leaning while suppressing others.

    • happening in Brazil as well. While the country is being systematically dismantled and enslaved, the "old" media sells a "wonderful world" for the masses, in the Internet a troop of fake accounts fills the social media with rumors, lies and misinformation to criminalize all the leaders of the country who can do something against the country's dismantling.

  • He's got reason to fear. (Score:4, Informative)

    by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @03:21AM (#57245084)

    But not social media. He should fear the wrath of anyone who's ever had to use or support his software.

    • Re:He's got reason to fear. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @05:20AM (#57245334) Journal
      Besides being the father of the much reviled scourge upon humanity that is SAP, what are Plattner's qualifications in this matter? Why should we listen to him instead of any random punter on the social media that he fears so much?

      • Re:He's got reason to fear. (Score:5, Informative)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @09:10AM (#57245906)

        Whetever his qualifications are, he's right about one thing. The human capacity for conspiracy theories is ancient,

        Back in the early days of Anthropology, anthropologists and the general public where fairly convinced canibalism was *everywhere* in the "primative" world. But as it turned out, whenever they'd actually try and find canibals, well they where no where to be found. In fact with a couple of notable exceptions, canibalism is more or less a myth. What was ACTUALLY going on, was many tribes where convinced the neighboring enemy tribe was in fact canibalism, and that made THEM the bad guys. Everytime someone went missing on a hunt, well , canibals. Got mauled by an animal? Canibals. And if it wasn't canibals, it was evil sorcerers. But the key here is, every village they'd ask would say they where not canibals, the OTHER guys where the canibals.

        I kinf of think conspiracy theories work the same way. Its a way of reasoning about mysterious or unexplainable shit, by positing that everything bad that happens, was some guys evil plot. Nothing bad happens by chance, theres always SOMEONE to blame. Its a convenient way to hold onto viewpoints unsupported by the evidence. Don't like climate change? Well just blame a vast spooky c,onspiracy of scientists lying about physics. Any evidence presented to the contrary is just the man lying to you. Confused about why there seems to be lots more people with autism? MUST BE VACCINES. Sure the docs will tell you "theres more diagnoses of autism because the definition changed" , but thats just what THEY want you to believe. Its a perfectly sealed mode of thinking, all evidence your wrong just proves how vast the conspiracy is.Theres no escape from it.

        And yeaah, the internets making that shit a lot worse. In the olden days, oral folk-myths travelled about as far as the edge of town. Nowdays, its global. You can chose from *all sorts* of crazy now.

        • Blind gullability and livestock-like herd behavior. Which leads to the worst type of conspiracy theorist there is: The anticonspiracy theorist.
          Somebody who, ignoring all facts and all of reality if he has to, believes there can never ever be any conspiracy of any kind whatsoever, and everyone is just either nice and happy-clappy or merely dumb and incompetent.

          It's the exact same thing as a conspiracy theorist: Somebody who can't handle reality, and has to cling to a delusion that makes everything make sense

          • [quote]Blind gullability and livestock-like herd behavior. Which leads to the worst type of conspiracy theorist there is: The anticonspiracy theorist.[/quote]

            Yeah but thats a bit of a strawman dude. Nobody really believes that *no* conspiracies exist. I mean maybe one or two folks genuinely believe that spy agencies dont.... uh.... spy or whatever.

            But lets be honest. 99% of conspiracy theories are blatent bullshit.

            There was never a pizza sex dungeon run by Hillary from her lizard spacecraft.
            Q is a 4 chan tr

        • You can chose from *all sorts* of crazy now.

          Yeah - "crazy" as a noun. InfoWars produces news/crap with an extra large helping of crazy. It is scary how many people buy into it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Posting as AC for a reason.

      With the way things are, I wonder if his end goal is to hide all news about bad implementations of SAP. Granted not all SAP's fault, but I believe SAP is one of the causes of companies having large financial issues due to installing an over priced monolith

  • Most people fear SAP for what this piece of shit software is...
    the reason why a bunch of good companies folded with unwiedly SAP deployments from hell !

  • utterly irresponsible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @04:07AM (#57245196)

    [Hasso Plattner] saves his greatest condemnation for the scourge of fake news and societal manipulation on large social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Despite the founders of the social giants pledging to do more to ensure public debate is not artificially skewed, Plattner believes the solution will have to come from law enforcement and criminal penalties.

    The fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi regime shows how futile and counterproductive such approaches are. The Weimar Republic had strong laws regulating speech and the press. Far from shutting down the Nazis, the Nazis made a fight against "fake news" part of their own platform ("We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press." [wikipedia.org]). Given Germany's history, for a German to propose criminalizing speech is a sign of profound historical ignorance and irresponsibility.

    And let's not kid ourselves why billionaires and political elites in Europe and the US bristle at social networks and blogs: since Edward Bernays, they have used control over the press to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it" (his words). In case you don't know, Bernays [wikipedia.org] is responsible for overcoming the resistance of Americans to enter WWI and for addicting American women to tobacco.

    • Re:utterly irresponsible (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @05:51AM (#57245400)

      Given Germany's history, for a German to propose criminalizing speech is a sign of profound historical ignorance and irresponsibility.

      You're obviously not up to date on German history. Hate speech has been criminalized in Germany for a long time, precisely because of the 2nd world war. It's one of the few countries where you can get fined or imprisoned for denying the holocaust, or wearing any nazi insignia in public etc. And the Americans should not take the moral high ground here, because this behavior has its roots in post-war Allied control of West Germany. The occupational forces exercised censorship [wikipedia.org] to control what could and couldn't be said about them:

      During the post World War II period, the West German media was subject to censorship by the Allied occupational forces. Criticism of the occupational forces and of the emerging government were not tolerated. Publications which were expected to have a negative effect on the general public were not printed. A list of over 30,000 titles, including works by such authors as Carl von Clausewitz, was drawn up. All the millions of copies of these books were to be confiscated and destroyed. The representative of the Military Directorate admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program. [4]

      When the official government, the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) took over, these limits were relaxed. The new German constitution guaranteed freedom of press, speech, and opinion. Since Germany kept the West German constitution after East Germany joined its jurisdiction, the same protections and restrictions in West Germany apply to contemporary Germany. However, continued globalization and the advent of Internet marketing present a new host of complications to German censorship and information laws.

      Publications violating laws (e.g., such promoting Volksverhetzung or slander and libel) can be censored in today's Germany, with authors and publishers probable subjects to penalties. Strafgesetzbuch section 86a rather strictly prohibits the public display of "symbols of unconstitutional organizations" such as the NSDAP and affiliates. Materials written or printed by organizations ruled to be anti-constitutional, like the NSDAP or the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), have also been placed on the index. Public Holocaust denial is also prohibited and may be severely punished with up to five years in prison.[5] A decision of a court that assumes that a publication is violating another person's personal rights may also lead to censoring (a newspaper for example can be forced not to publish private pictures).

      'Volksverhetzung' is the German hate speech law prohibiting targeting of racial and ethnic groups. Quoting the translation from the wiki: [wikipedia.org]

      Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:

      1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or

      2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population,

      shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.

      Similar (though usually less strict) laws exist in other European countries, including my own (Finland), the UK, Ireland and Sw

      • It's one of the few countries where you can get fined or imprisoned for denying the holocaust, or wearing any nazi insignia in public etc. And the Americans should not take the moral high ground here, because this behavior has its roots in post-war Allied control of West Germany. The occupational forces exercised censorship to control what could and couldn't be said about them ... laws that have roots stretching back to the Allied occupation

        It was moral, justifiable, and reasonable for Americans to crimin

        • It was moral, justifiable, and reasonable for Americans to criminalize speech in Germany after WWII as part of the occupation of Germany.

          Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

          It was not moral because it is never moral.

          It was not justifiable because all you ever do with laws criminalizing free speech is drive the offenders underground. You make it illegal to plan a hate crime, and you use the free speech to tell you who to surveil*.

          It was not reasonable specifically because it was neither moral nor justifiable.

          It was part of an attempt to transform a nation of fascists and totalitarian mass murderers into something even remotely resembling a democracy.

          Perhaps we should have tried not selling the Nazis fuel, and not selling the Japanese the Aluminum from which they built Zeroes, if we were trying t

          • It was not moral because it is never moral.

            US imposed speech restrictions were part of the occupation of a totalitarian, genocidal, conquered nation. Of course they were moral as part of such an occupation. And that occupation lasted 40 years, as it should, it was simply a quiet, benign occupation.

            It was not justifiable because all you ever do with laws criminalizing free speech is drive the offenders underground.

            That was the point in Germany. Actual, genuine Nazis didn't disappear from the face of the eart

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kiuas ( 1084567 )

          It failed back then and it is failing now: trying to restrict speech only energizes extreme voices. And in the day of the Internet, widespread encryption, and international connectivity, such censorship won't even reduce undesirable speech.

          As I said I'm not in favour of the laws myself because I tend to agree that the martyrdom status that it grants to those it affects is in many ways making the problem worse. However especially in Germany since the laws have been in place pretty much since the 2nd world wa

      • Hate speech has been criminalized in Germany for a long time, precisely because of the 2nd world war. It's one of the few countries where you can get fined or imprisoned for denying the holocaust, or wearing any nazi insignia in public etc. And the Americans should not take the moral high ground here, because this behavior has its roots in post-war Allied control of West Germany

        Please note that this was entirely in an attempt to control the populace. It was anti-freedom, and they knew it. People who propose anti-speech laws, without exception as far as I've found, are trying to control others.

        That's why freedom of speech is important.

    • Re:utterly irresponsible (Score:5, Insightful)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @06:34AM (#57245474)
      There's nothing wrong about opposing known lies being presented by media as truths. The only problem is that this would require shutting down Fox News, and many people would be grievously butthurt if that happened.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Gonoff ( 88518 )

        There's nothing wrong about opposing known lies being presented by media as truths. The only problem is that this would require shutting down Fox News, and many people would be grievously butthurt if that happened.

        If you could shut down the Daily Mail, Sun and the like over here while you are at it, that would be nice...

      • There's nothing wrong about opposing known lies being presented by media as truths.

        Plattner isn't proposing opposing known lies, an act of free speech, he is proposing censoring known lies.

        Opposing known lies is quite effective. Government censorship is incompatible with democracy and leads to its downfall.

  • Rich guy demands world comply (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Monday September 03, 2018 @05:58AM (#57245412)

    This sort of thing is music to the ears of the establishment. One more powerful voice to stand with with ruling class as they screw up the courage to criminalize those that annoy. It's been taken so far that Plattner has lost his inhibition to openly state his intentions.

    Realize who you're climbing in bed with. This is the quintessential Captain of Industry; a man that has spent his life capturing regulators and leveraging IP law to propel himself to the 0.0001% bar in the wealth histogram. But hes singing the right song so you look past all that because you lost an election and if the criminal ban hammer is what it takes to make sure that never happens again well then all hail Mr. Plattner and any other Great and Good that join him.

    • I doubt the establishment cares. They can use Facebook to sway the opinions of people, or they can use censorship to sway the opinions of people. Either affect is the same, because the people are too stupid to know whether it is happening either way. All the trustworthy media outlets that are going bankrupt because people find them too boring and slow to justify the expense of actually being reliable, are really the only defender of the people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tailhook ( 98486 )

        All the trustworthy media outlets that are going bankrupt because

        They're going bankrupt because they peddle the Wooden Language of the official narrative. Having not yet become the victims of actual tyranny people are free to leave establishment mouth pieces behind and seek alternatives that aren't beholden to beltway and corporate group-think.

        I doubt the establishment cares.

        Oh, they care. That's what this story is about and why it's bouncing around the progressive echo chamber today. We were just subjected to four+ days of establishment backlash in the form of Trump Derangement Syndrome on public d

  • Paywalled (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Anyone happen to have an alternative Link?

  • Just what we need: another wealthy baby boomer selling to criminalize more behavior and lock up more people. This seems to be more about class control than any real and tangible fear since the largest userbase are the poor and working classes. Passing laws like these just take freedoms away, and if you're wondering, I'm a Gen Xer and an anarchist.

  • Free Speech != guns (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When you ban free speech; then only criminals will have a voice.
    - Gordon

  • And it reflects the baseness and egocentric behavior of nearly everyone when they go online. There is a switch that flips when people feel they are anonymous or can suffer limited social consequences for their behavior and they behave like borderline sociopaths in that situation.

    This is the dawn of the information age. And a widely connected society is something very new for us. Unfortunately few have adjusted to the change well, and most people are in a social infancy. An infancy where they struggle to fin

  • You had me at "he invented SAP", and then you told me that he was 74 years old.

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