Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited?
Here’s an interesting question for social media junkies like myself: is social media fun, or exploitation of free labour?
As part of the book I’m writing on social media marketing, I was going through critiques of social media. Of course, and as expected, there was a lot of criticism in relation to privacy concerns. However, there is also an intriguing stream of research that has been published around the idea that social media represents essentially exploitation of free labour. The argument is, that social media relies on people contributing content, which they usually do for free. For example, I’m writing this blog for free. I have a Facebook profile, where I post pictures, write updates for free etc. At the same time, Facebook (or other media platform) relies on this voluntarily and free contribution to make money. The question therefore is, is maintaining besides basically exploitation? This is particularly interesting, as clearly, many people enjoy “being exploited” in this way.
From a traditional “economic” perspective, where consumer and producer are strictly separated, I can see the point of this critique. However, I am also gaining something in return, which seems to be unattributed for, at least in the articles that I have come across. For example, while it’s true that I contribute free labour to Facebook in the form of maintaining my profile, Facebook also returns valuable services to me. For example, staying in touch with my friends. Of course, staying in touch with my friends has no immediate monetary “value”, but is still something very valuable to me. I’m not trying to dismiss the critique in articles such as this or this, but I’m slightly surprised that the argument here seems to be largely around monetary value, rather than taking a more holistic view off what value might mean to the individual. For example, the monetary value of something that friend gave me on a special occasion, may be very little or nothing when I try to sell it. But this is something might be very valuable to me.
However, I’m quite intrigued by the argument being put forward. How do you feel? Do you think that social media is inherently exploitative? Are we even potentially moving to a new form off capitalist exportation this article claims? Let me know what you think!
The thing is that you do not need FB to be in touch with your friends. You had and were in touch with your friends long before FB existed (were you more in touch with them then?).
FB has replaced other technologies and whilst it does that it is taking away something from you and giving nothing more than previous technologies did. This something it monetizes.
Further FB locks you into its framework, for instance to place a comment on some sites I need to sign it with Facebook, but I am not on FB, so my voice can’t be heard unless I join (this is not a privacy issue, i could create a fake profile), but the creation of a monopoly on communication.
What you may come to value is a dependence to a particular system that create closed links between people in a network. You do not value the link but the possibility of the link. And nowadays, it is all about the “possible”, not the tangible, but the possible, a world made of never ending possibilities… But how many become reality?
I think that you can put a value on that: economists call it Cost of Opportunity. It’s how much you would have to invest / pay in other methods to have the same feeling of ‘being informed’ – e.g., travelling to your home town for school reunion, writing e-mails (and, before that, postcards), or the round-robin letter.
The concept of value is often narrowly conceptualised as financial. marketers know that value is more complex than that and you can see that by how we are persuaded to purchase, engage and consume
[…] Stephan Dahl: Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited? – Stephan Dahl […]
Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited? http://t.co/5bILrPTMfK via @stephx
Thanks Rog, Ana, Dianne & Darryn! Interesting thoughts … I agree the value is a tricky question in this context … The “locked in” point was actually not raised by the authors I looked at… thanks for adding it Rog!
Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited? http://t.co/TjsAuNGq2O
Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited? – Stephan Dahl http://t.co/a8VovzG384