When Pandora was asked by Zeus to bring a box he had given to the people, Pandora succumbed to her curiosity and opened the box before she could reach her destination. Misery, war and death escaped from the vessel. When the box was quickly closed again, hope was the only one trapped inside. But Pandora opened the box again and released hope, which from then on brought comfort and confidence into a better future. And everything was good.

Some claim that hope is mankind’s worst evil. But that’s what they also say about the Internet.

On the Internet, social networks in their original states resembled the time before the notorious box was opened. If you met another chatter in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), you could quickly notice if it was a human being or a software. The participants in the first Usenet discussions seemed and were authentic, had character, visions and a life. Everyone was unique. Everything was good. At some point, the social web became mainstream.

Suddenly it wasn’t just about opinions. It was not just a place where cat photos were exchanged and weekends were planned via social networks, digital majorities on all kinds of topics emerged. One web user = one voice. And one realised that majorities could be profitable strategically, economically, ideologically and politically. With the backing of digital majorities, it was much easier to implement an agenda.

The first articles that reported the opening of the Pandora’s box in 2011 wrote about an ominous US Air Force job ad. They advertised the position of an „Online Persona Management Service Operator„:

„The Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user’s situational awareness by displaying realtime local information.“

Since these „persona management“ systems became known, the disaster is out of the box:

Human actors use highly complex software programs to fake the existence of entire armies of real existing individuals across all common social networks to the common web user. These artificial personalities became known as „Sock Puppets“. Every single digital doll is so perfectly constructed that an average web user cannot distinguish it from a real person of flesh and blood. Whether you may have chatted with a „Sock Puppet“ yourself or, God forbid, had intimate email relations, you probably won’t find that out so quickly.

No one should be surprised that the military took the first step here, given the origin of the Internet. And today, a few years later, the military is certainly not the only organization using Sock Puppets. What seems useful for propaganda purposes of the US Air Force could perhaps force an unpleasant competitor to their knees, bring their own agenda forward or ensure that a company sells more lemonade next month. Because armies of Sock Puppets could flood entire forums with their own agendas, control comment areas of well-known newspapers, conjure up „shitstorms“ and make competitors look bad by bombarding them with negative reviews. Whoever has sovereignty of opinion over hundreds or even thousands of Sock Puppets can not only influence sensitivities but also directly command opinions via social networks in the mainstream medium Internet. Minority opinions either perish or simply get lost in the „spiral of silence„. Conformity starts solidifying all the way up to thought-/self control. These are two of the modern evils of a digital Pandora’s box.

So where’s hope?

Let’s just keep playing the scenario of a possible future:

To strengthen their own position, economic, political and military actors are using their digital Sock Puppets more and more often and aggressively. Soon the number of Sock Puppets could exceed that of the real users of social networks. Who will be left talking to whom, then? Let us also assume that the development of intelligent algorithms will also make a quantum leap in the field of social interaction in the coming years. In order to save costs, AI and Sock Puppets are combined. Artificial actors would then communicate more frequently with other artificial actors than with real people. A cacophony of lifelike artificiality, a round dance of mutually driving AI, an arms race of opinion making in which we humans are ultimately placed on the audience ranks.

What will be left?

We open Pandora’s box one last time and release hope. A hope for the renaissance of the authentic. A departure from simulacrum. A return to the desert of reality.

Some say that this is the worst evil. Then again, maybe it’s the only way.