[ICTs-and-Society] Plenary 7: “The Internet and Critical Theory Today” (Mark Andrejevic, Andrew Feenberg)

[ben klass]

Dear All,I too have been taken to task several times by my more orthodox Marxist peers for espousing the view that Google exploits its users' labour. I have encountered three main bones of contention: 1.) That Google's "product" is its algorithm, and its labour comes solely from its paid employees; 2.) That users do not labour when they create data that is expropriated (and are reciprocally targeted by advertising) since the necessary conditions for the reproduction of labour capacity are not met ("A worker who starves to death cannot work, for long!" one colleague brusquely interjected); and 3.) That Google (and advertising in general) is a faux frais of production and not rightly seen as surplus-value generating itself.To the first, I would respond that Google's paid workers are employed in the maintenance of the fixed-capital algorithm/server - machine used by Google, and are not directly engaged in value production as such. (Although the multifarious activities of Google employees engaged in "playbour" type pursuits is another story altogether.) Christian suggested that I conduct a "thought experiment" in which the users of Google's services viz. data collection are removed from the equation; in such a circumstance, Google's profit generation collapses. Does this imply that users represent the labour input of Google's accumulation cycle? It was put to me that there are other means of capturing value, and that Google was perhaps collecting rent or acting as a merchant, in which case the input of users could not be seen as productive per se.There are circumstance under which Google collects rent. Think about Google maps' business API: businesses wishing to use advanced features of Google maps such as targeted advertising are required to pay fees of $10,000+. Already businesses are forced to swear fealty to Google, so to speak, but in the future we can imagine this practice becoming more pervasive, as Google's self driving car and "Project Glass" eyewear move out of development stages and into the commercial sphere. Businesses wishing to be included in the widening purview of Google's commercial services will be increasingly forced to accede to these rent collecting measures or risk being obscured from the range of choice available to consumers. Following James Losey's "shopping mall" analogy, I agree that businesses making use of Google's services are subject to rent but I am not so inclined to put consumers into the same category.Further Google is experimenting with actual physical network ownership as well, which can be seen as a further attempt to capture and centralize rent paid for access by individuals (in their capacity both as users of the infrastructure and producers of content which travels through said infrastructure)But as Google engages in discrete rent-collecting activities, so too does it exploit its users' labour. As far as the second objection goes, I would argue, following Smythe, that labour power, (the capacity to labour) is precisely what is produced and reproduced through advertising. This is often what is forgotten when considering Google's business model. Like advertisers in the mass communications era, Google contributes to the appropriation and exploitation of what in a bygone era was considered "free time" in which workers produced their own labor power to be sold as commodity input to capitalist production. Smythe points to Bill Livant's statement that "What often escapes attention is that just because the labourer sells it (his or her labour power) does not mean that he or she produces it." In effect, Google contributes to the alienation of use value previously attributed to the self-reproduction of labour power, which in turn is productive in the sense that such alienated use values are then expropriated by producers seeking to extract surplus value in the production of commodities necessary for the reproduction of said labour power.Christian's categorization of Google as "the Good Evil" adds further questions. Unlike the audience of mass advertising, which received little more than subversive messages conditioning them to alienate the reproduction of their own labour power, Google simultaneously provides some of the conditions of this reproduction (to some extent) and engages in alienating practices. In the first instance I'm thinking mainly of providing email services, Google voice, the open-source Android operating system, free-to-user map services, search, etc. Of course these activities do at the same time contribute to consumer profiling and targeted ads convincing us that we should buy a new pair of socks rather than darn our existing ones. The balance is obviously tipped in favor of the latter, but when compared to previous iterations of advertising models this seems to me to be an unequivocal improvement. I personally would much rather receive unlimited "free" phone and email service in exchange for alienating my labour power than a half hour of "I Love Lucy".As usual, puzzling over these issues leaves me with more questions than answers. My relative bewilderment is particularly acute when confronting the question of whether Google is a faux frais of production. Professor Makoto Itoh comments: "Unlike pure circulation costs such as bookkeeping and advertising costs which are faux frais specific only to a commodity economy, some portions of the costs of storage and transport belong substantially to production processes that are continued in the circulation sphere, and therefore add to the substance of value and surplus-value just as production costs. I think Prof. Itoh is wrong to exclude advertising from the productive sphere for reasons mentioned above. But I do think it is correct to point out that only some portions contribute to production, if we accept that advertising is included in this latter category. Is Google exploitative to the extent that it acts as a sort of Nielsen Ratings Agency 2.0? Is this role separable from its simultaneous engagement in ad placement based on data collection? I lean toward the view that these are not discrete spheres of action, and that viewed in totality Google's business model is exploitative, although certain aspects of that model may not be directly exploitative when viewed in isolation. I do not think that it is a contradiction to say that Google acts in totality both as faux frais and as exploiter of labour.Anyway, those are some of my ongoing thoughts on the matter. I hope if you see something you don't like or disagree with that we can keep the conversation going! I am certainly enjoying the opportunity to learn from these discussions. Looking forward to seeing you all at the conference,Ben
From: jameswlosey at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:27:41 -0400
To: rigij at ceu.hu
CC: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
Subject: Re: [ICTs-and-Society]	Plenary 7: “The Internet and Critical Theory Today” (Mark Andrejevic, Andrew Feenberg)

I wouldn't go as far to suggest that Facebook is a commons anymore than a shopping mall is one but I think conceptually the Internet is a commons because of the potential for users to create or interact with various spaces. I think we're in agreement on the rent seeking that take place but I am suggesting that it could be valuable to assess a greater portion of the stack. 


I am very much looking forward to Mark's examination of how social networks are in a position to monetize the activities of their users. I was responding to the framing of sharecropping and suggesting that it could be more fruitful to explore a framing that has applicability beyond the relationship between Google and a user but also an example such as an ISP and Google. After all, the power an ISPs has over the system could foreclose on a social network that attempts to create a commons such as the concept proposed by Diaspora. 


Best,J

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Jakob Rigi <rigij at ceu.hu> wrote:


I Think, from the point of users both Google and Face book are commons, there is no enclosure there, every one can use them. But from the point of view Owners, they are virtual spaces, through which the owners extract rent from wage labor outsides these virtual spaces.


best
Jakob

>>> James Losey 04/11/12 5:23 PM >>>
I think there is some validity in describing the relationship as sharecropping but it might be more useful to find the similarities between the private influence over online spaces and the enclosure movement of the 15th and 16th centuries in England. The challenge of a  "digital sharecropping" frame is that it suggests that different spaces are independent fields rather than reflecting the interdependence of the wide range of stakeholders that create what we know as the Internet. On the one hand we have the potential for an Internet commons - one where a user is able to define their experience, build innovations, or even the freedom be a craftsman. However, on the other hand, we have a hierarchical stack of largely private players from ISPs to protocol developers (or protocol licensing bodies) that attempt to exert the power the have over their respective layers to enclose others. This includes Facebook mining data of users but this only observes the interaction between a service and a user, not the types of control a spectrum license holder or the push for a private video standard creates rent seeking mechanisms or other controls across the stack. Rather than sharecropping perhaps we could examine a more complex system of digital feudalism where a wide variety of stakeholders are attempting to enclose the Internet commons. 



Best,
James







On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 10:33 AM, Jan Nolin <Jan.Nolin at hb.se> wrote:



Mark,
This is a very important discussion. For some of the reasons you mentioned, I find "exploitation" to be a bit misleading for these phenomena. I think we need to develop new and more specific concepts for the things that we analyze. One concept that has some promise is "digital sharecropping", suggested by Nicholas Carr. This creates a parallel to the traditional forms of sharecropping where the farmers worked the land while the land owners reaped the profits.


 
/Jan


 

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>>> Mark Andrejevic <markbandrejevic at gmail.com> 2012-04-11 03:11 >>>
Thanks Christian,


I'm looking forward to the conference -- and have greatly appreciated the pre-conference discussions. I'm very interested to see that there are at least a couple of talks that focus on the question of exploitation. The term has become an important one for me because I'm trying to come up with a formulation other than privacy to explore areas of concern about the collection and use of personal information in the digital era. Recent events in Europe and the US related to Google and Facebook's handling of personal information demonstrate how powerful the privacy "frame" is for talking about the wholesale capture of personal data for commercial purposes is -- and yet, in many cases we are talking about processes of information capture that do not violate conventional expectations of privacy (such as looking at aggregate patterns without attempting to drill down and identify individuals) and in other cases we are talking about forms of privatization (the capture and proprietary use of particular types of data) that rely on conventional understandings of the relationship between privacy and property. 




The notion of exploitation looks like a useful one to me because it points to the underlying patterns of commercial ownership and control of communication infrastructures that are coming to colonize an increasing range of social interactions and behavior. The seemingly "free" and ubiquitous character of services provided by Google and Facebook has led to our treating them as if they are public utilities, when of course they are private, for-profit, commercially driven companies whose decisions play an important role in shaping the information environment upon which we are becoming increasingly reliant. When I started studying the mass media -- then considered to be primarily TV, newspapers (magazines), and radio (with some cinema and sound recording thrown in) -- there was a strong critical emphasis on "media monopoly" and the political economy of those industries that shape our information environment. The advent of the World Wide Web and attendant forms of techno-enthusiasm seems to have had the perhaps temporary effect of sidelining such questions as core elements of media studies, and one of the reasons I am looking forward to this conference is that it brings together people who have been challenging this tendency from the start.




I have been taken to task on occasion for enlisting a term traditionally associated with critical approaches to the analysis of human suffering and immiseration in the realm of production to critique apparently voluntary forms of behavior that take place outside the realm of production "proper" -- intriguingly such challenges have, on occasion, come from people who have otherwise worked to destabilize these oppositions (by highlighting the convergence of consumption and production, etc.). I am sensitive to the observation that providing data for Facebook is qualitatively different from laboring under sweatshop conditions, and yet, I continue to think that the notion of exploitation usefully points to the structured relations of power that allow for the capture and use of personal information -- often as a tool that can be turned back upon those who generate it. I also think that it is important to note the ways in which the online economy is not isolated from the broader economy that continues to rely on more brutal conditions of exploitation, shored up by the very same relations of ownership and control. 




As part of the lead up to the conference I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts about the potential and limitations of the critique of exploitation as a way of thinking about the forms of value production that take place in the context of social media. 




As a side note, Facebook's reframing of its privacy policy as a "data use policy" is perhaps a suggestive one -- privacy advocates I know saw it as a move by Facebook to attempt to distance itself from privacy concerns. To me, this looked to like an opportunity to focus on the question of data use and perhaps sidestep the way in which the commercial sector has been working to exploit the ambivalence of the notion of privacy. 




I'd be interested in people's thoughts. 
best,
Mark





On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at> wrote:

Friday, May 4th, 2012
* Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0


* Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
Chair: Christian Fuchs

Mark's and Andrew's talks will bring up questions like the following ones: How do corporations use social networking sites? What is exploitation 2.0 and how does the exploitation of labour work on social media? How is online life commercialized, branded, and monetized? What is the role of surveillance in online exploitation? How can critical theory adequately reflect and criticize these developments?


How relevant is Herbert Marcuse's thinking and critical theory today? What is an adequate strategy for transforming the Internet? Does it require a "Great Refusal" (Marcuse) or a "Long March through the Institutions" (Dutschke, Marcuse)? Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation of the Internet? Does Critical Theory need a long march strategy that assesses the Internet's reality against its potentials? What is the essence of the Internet? What is the existence of the Internet? Is there a difference between essence and existence of the Internet? What is a true Internet? What a false Internet?



Pre-conference discussions on these and related questions are welcome over the mailing list.

***

MARK ANDREJEVIC
University of Queensland, Australia

Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0



ABSTRACT: This presentation explores the ways in which social networking technologies are being taken up by the commercial sector as ways for integrating social and work life. Thanks to the popularity and ubiquity of social network technologies in some sectors of the population, companies are finding ways to exploit the social connections of their employees, customers, and clients, leading to start-up companies that seek to monetize social network data by linking it with consumer relations databases and other technologies for target marketing. When important aspects of people’s social lives migrate onto commercial platforms these become subject to marketing imperatives, self-branding becomes a new (or updated) form of employee asset. The goal of the presentation is to develop a theoretical approach to the commercialization and monetization of online social life. To what extent might the critique of exploitation be updated and brought to bear upon the productivity of social networks? What aspects of this critique help illuminate the wholesale commodification of social relationships, and what are the implications of relying upon a privately owned commercial infrastructure for their development? The critique of exploitation directs us back to these questions. It urges us to consider the ways in which the commercialization of the platform turns our own activity back upon ourselves in the service of priorities that are not our own, and it reminds us of the double duty done by the privately controlled interactive infrastructure. This infrastructure might serve as a platform for new forms of creativity, deliberation, communication, interaction, and consumption. At the same time, though, it works to assemble the most comprehensive system for mass monitoring in human history. The accusation associated with the critique of exploitation reminds us of the ways in which new forms of marketing driven surveillance help turn our own productive activity back upon ourselves in the service of ends that are not our own.



SPEAKER INFO: Mark Andrejevic is a media scholar at The University of Queensland, Australia. He writes about surveillance, new media, and popular culture. In broad terms, he is interested in the ways in which forms of surveillance and monitoring enabled by the development of new media technologies impact the realms of economics, politics, and culture.



***

ANDREW FEENBERG
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet

ABSTRACT: Herbert Marcuse suggested two different strategies at different points in his career. The Great Refusal implied a strategy of non-cooptable demands. This notion stemmed from a dystopian sense of the total systematization of society and was in harmony with the uncompromising opposition of the early New Left. But in the later period of what Marcuse called the “preventive counter-revolution”, he adopted Rudi Dutschke’s slogan of “the long march through the institutions”. The choice at this time was between withdrawal, terrorism and participating critically. Marcuse advocated the latter.


I want to think about our critical stance toward the Internet in terms of these two strategies. Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation of the Internet? This seems to be the conclusion drawn by many observers. Hypothetically, this could lead one to a Great Refusal of the Internet and all its works, withdrawal to an Internet-free zone of some sort. I will argue that we need a long march strategy based on a much more nuanced critique. We need to measure the Internet against its real potentials and defend it against real dangers rather than condemning it unqualifiedly.



SPEAKER INFO: Andrew Feenberg holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. His main areas of research are Critical Theory and philosophy of technology.



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