[ICTs-and-Society] Blogpost about Google¹s ³New³ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: Old Exploitation and User Commodification in a New Ideological Skin

[Unwin, Tim]

Thanks to everyone for these thoughtful comments.  I particularly agree with much of what Kristina says – I have too often felt rather a lone voice arguing somewhat similarly!

In case any on the list are participating in ICTD2012 in Atlanta on 12th-16th March, we are hosting a debate on social media and democracy – on the morning of 15th.  It would be great to have you involved in some way.  For those not able to participate in person, we hope to webcast this, and are encouraging live tweets – although we are not yet sure that the technology in the conference centre will let us do all we would like!

Thanks again for the interesting ideas

Best wishes
Tim


On 01/03/2012 10:50, "Christian Fuchs" <christian.fuchs at uti.at> wrote:

Dear James,

Thank you for the thoughtfull discussion about Google.

I agree that the question is what the limit of the use of personal
information for advertising should be. I think I have a somewhat
different answer than you have.

For me the question is what the role and effects of advertising culture
are in society.

I am not at all arguing for opt-out advertising, but rather for a
worldwide legal provision that makes opt-in advertising mandatory and
outlaws opt-out. I agree with Oscar Gandy that personalised ads are a
form of panoptic sorting and of social discrimination.

The problem is not data processing as such, the problem are the class
relations into which Google services (and other corporate Internet
services) are embedded.

Google's unification of terms simplifies and joins up the economic
surveillance of users, as you say. From Google's business interests,
this is a logical step because it promises more profits. At the same
time, Google wants to ideologically sell this step as bringing about
more user privacy, control etc, which it does not.

I do think that advertising culture, the existence of advertising, is
problematic and that it is the outgrowth of the commodification and
commercialization of the world. We were better off with a world without
advertising. I think for Critical Internet Studies, we also need (among
a lot of things) Critical Advertising and Consumer Culture Studies.

In the case of advertising-based audience commodification (as with
Google), advertising is not only a privacy-violation, but - and this is
my crucial point - it is the exploitation of user labour.

I have problems with self-regulatory data protection, where companies
choose whatever they want to do with user data and one tells users: oh,
here are some great ways of how you can reduce the amount of data we use
about you (opt-outs, privacy settings where the standard option is
always the high use of user data for advertising, privacy-enhancing
technologies, etc). THe thing is that for consumer privacy protection,
it should not be required for the user/consumer to take action for not
having ones data processed for advertising purposes, companies should in
the first place not use data for such purposes and should be obliged to
in the first place use no advertising. If a user wants his/her data to
be used for advertising, then s/he should have the possibility to enable
it, but the standard should be "no advertising". These are questions of
choice, power, action, negative and positive freedom.

I would not argue for keeping the user data of different Google services
separate and not joining them up for advertising. I think this is too
short-sighted. It is like not working in one factory and being exploited
there for 8 hours and monitored by workplace CCTV, but working in 4
different factories 2 hours a day, being monitored by workplace CCTV,
but not allowing the factories to compare the recorded data. I am in
favour of not letting them exchange the data, but much more I think that
the problem is that the workers is forced/has to work in these factories
in order to survive. So what I am questioning is factory life as
exploited life as such and that we should limit the commodification of
everything, which requires legally limiting targeted advertising
possibilities.

And the Internet is a factory of surplus-value generation, Google being
one of the primary Internet factories, in which we all work and create
economic value. And in this factory, advertising culture has become a
productive space, depends on a high-level of total instantenous
real-time economic surveilallance of online activities and the
transformation of all (or a lot of) online time into labour time. But
being productive in the corporate Internet factory means being exploited.

There is a difference between work and labour, the latter is
value-generating and exploited. We work on Wikipedia and Diaspora, we
labour on Google and Facebook. What I am questioning is the existence of
the Internet factory, the labour it requires and the total
commodification of online activities. Advertising is at the heart of the
problem.

Best, Christian



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________________________________
Tim Unwin

UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and
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tim.unwin at rhul.ac.uk <http://tim.unwin@rhul.ac.uk>

Also, CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
t.unwin at cto.int   http://www.cto.int

And Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
tim.unwin at cscuk.org.uk  http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk

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