(Online) manipulation: sometimes hidden, always careless

Abstract

Ever-increasing numbers of human interactions with intelligent software agents, online and offline, and their increasing ability to influence humans have prompted a surge in attention toward the concept of (online) manipulation. Several scholars have argued that manipulative influence is always hidden. But manipulation is sometimes overt, and when this is acknowledged the distinction between manipulation and other forms of social influence becomes problematic. Therefore, we need a better conceptualisation of manipulation that allows it to be overt and yet clearly distinct from related concepts of social influence. I argue that manipulation is careless influence, show how this account helps to alleviate the shortcomings of the hidden influence view of manipulation, and derive implications for digital ethics.

Manipulation, injustice, and technology

“…This paper aims to contribute to this new research angle and strengthen the critical perspective on algorithmic transparency that Wang (2022Wang ( , 2023 championed. To do so, I show that the risk concerning algorithmic transparency's manipulative potential can be understood with the indifference view of manipulation (Klenk 2020(Klenk , 2021b. The indifference view explains better why algorithmic transparency has manipulative potential.…”

“…Next to several counterexamples that challenge the covertness criterion (see especially Barnhill 2014), there are also fundamental moral and conceptual reasons against that criterion. For instance, Klenk (2021b) suggested that the criterion may imply that responsibility for manipulation is shifted toward the victim in problematic ways. After all, an influence counts as manipulation, according to the vulnerability view, only insofar as it remains hidden.…”

How to Do Things with Information Online. A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Social Networking Platforms as Epistemic Environments

“…There is agency on both sides, the users and the platforms, and there is an intertwining of how users affect platforms and vice-versa. The users can affect each other's beliefs; they can hijack the platforms and turn these into places of political activism and resistance (Cammaerts, 2015) for their own purposes while at the same succumbing to nudging and manipulation exerted by the SN platforms (Klenk, 2022). The user's epistemic agency is constrained and shaped by the environments in which they find themselves.…”

Manipulation, Injustice, and Technology

“…Nonetheless, there is a bridge between accounts of manipulative behaviour and manipulated behaviour. On my preferred analysis of manipulative behaviour, manipulation is a kind of negligence in revealing reasons to others (Klenk 2021a(Klenk , 2021b. A manipulator is negligent in the sense that they ultimately choose their means of infuence because it is efective in getting the manipulatee to believe, feel, or desire in a certain way and not because it reveals reasons to the manipulatee.…”