Work, Leisure, and Profit

Source

Do Facebook owners owe users monetary rewards for using the network, popularizing the network, and facilitating profits into their pockets? Is "profit" one-sided? Does using Facebook count as Marxist' notion of 'leisure'? This post will answer the questions by: re-examining Marxist's idea of 'profit' on popular social networking sites like Facebook, and re-defining 'leisure' within the context of capitalism and Facebook use.


Facebook and its Profits
It has been said that advertisers take advantage of the time and free labour users invest in interacting on Facebook to make money. From a Marxist perspective, this is unfair on the user as he or she gains nothing in return. I find this perspective when applied to digital capitalism highly problematic. I say so because the social networking site is not one-sided in its profits. Marx considers profit to solely mean 'money' or anything monetary. I think that for SNS, profit means a 'gain' and the gains of SNS works both ways - Corporates AND users. Some people gain unconscious and conscious profits from using Facebook, so it really depends on personal motivation. Besides the site as a network to find friends and maintain connections, other two non-monetary profits I want to point out that has been discussed in lectures are: Facebook as informing identity, and Facebook as facilitating news-sharing.


I don't want to go in-depth into the theoretical facet of identity, so I will just summarize in a few sentences. Facebook provides its young adolescent users with opportunities to experiment with identities and maybe settle on one. Though identity is a process of "becomings", that is, it's never stable, the site enables these young teens to portray online who they are or who they'd like to be in real-life. This informs the person they eventually construct themselves to be in real-life. The site for them is also a platform for social interaction and esteem boost. My point being, though they popularize the site which monetarily profits advertisers and Facebook developers, these users also gain something that influences their lives in the long run (whether they know it or not).


Concerning the profit of news sharing, journalism has now expanded beyond the television set and the newspapers. People are now active in the production and consumption of news, and this is facilitated on social networks where they can share news with other users. News is now a "social currency" disseminated through social spaces like Facebook. This gift economy is profitable to users as they shape who they are and examine their ideologies around the news they share, while corporates consequently earn monetary profits. To me, it's a win-win situation, only the gain/s or 'profit' differ.


Of course, if you're a stale Facebook user, you need not worry your money is being laundered as you only need to be active on the network before you can blame advertisers for money laundering. Even if we admit they’re making money out of our network use, we are not labouring for free; rather, we’re only paying for the beneficial services they’re providing. These services include: keeping in touch, facilitating social relations and identity negotiations; and sharing news. If Facebook owners decide to start subscription, that to me, is money-laundering. The subscription will be the surplus value where what we gain in return is less than what goes out of our pockets and the amount of labour we exert.


Facebook-use and Leisure
I’m however not completely on the side of Facebook or any other monetarily-profitable social networking site. This is because of the notion of ‘leisure’. I agree with the Frankfurt School theory that leisure is supposed to be a compensation of work but it benefits capitalists and not the individual. In the case of Facebook, I don’t see the site as a place of leisure. We are still using our bodies to produce surplus value. In a way, ‘leisure’ can involve consumption which according to Marx is only encouraging capitalism, as we consume to buy more. However, consumption should be outside of work. If using Facebook during ‘leisure times’ only produces more profit for the capitalists behind the network, then that is not leisure. Though we may gain the three gains I highlight above, we're not partaking in leisure. Leisure should be free of two-sided gain or profit, no matter what 'profit' entails. Using an example from a student in my tutorial, if cleaning the toilet which gives the person a feeling of fulfilment means this reward is productive, at least, there's no monetary value attached to it, thus it is an activity outside capitalistic gains.

Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? 2) Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts?

Privacy, Profile Ads, and Agency

Source

 Are money-making advertisers who import personalized ads into our "private" spaces online manipulative culprits? Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts? This post tries to answer these questions by: asserting the rights Facebook's advertising has to "invade" our profiles, and examining the active means the average user uses to respond to advertising.

Personalized ads
So you open your homepage, click to browse profiles or play a game, and to the right hand side, you notice a line of different sorts of adverts. Of course, you get this all the time, so it's only natural to ignore it instantly, but you don't. Why? Because at least two of those ads appeal to some of your personal interests. For a moment, you start to wonder how in the world Facebook could direct ads that the personal information you'd put on your profile. You remember reading somewhere that Facebook measures the quality of our interactions and relationship to determine what we see in our news feed, so you settle for this scientific justification. But the thing is, you can't stand adverts anymore especially when they invade the space you thought was private. You can't stand it, but you can't get rid of it.

I certainly feel like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't want anyone to measure up anything about me, deliver it to advertisers (who make money out of my free service), and then dish me with ads I didn't ask for in the first place. The questions to consider are: do they need permission from me? Should they pay me money if I respond to that advert? My answer shockingly is...no. I say this because just as the information we disclose to the public sphere is no longer in our control and ownership, so is what we put online in a public space like Facebook. We may own our profiles, but we don't own the site in which our profile is situated. Though privacy settings may apply to its users, it does not apply to the corporates behind it. Is it unethical for employers, educational institutions or commercial entities to access and use information we make publically available online, or is it our own responsibility to limit and control personal information? On Facebook, no matter how private we choose to set our information, the control we have is minimal because of the context the information is situated. Same thing applies to e-mails and any other site where we get random adverts in our 'private' spaces. So, I don't think we should complain about this. BUT, what about when they're making money off this, what do we get in return? How do we respond to adverts though?


Agency
As Marxists would claim, consumers and producers of cultural products have little to no agency to think and reflect on what they're doing - that is, assisting the capitalist system. These bodies of thinkers reckon the cultural industries manipulate us into using our bodies for free labour, and we get paid less than the amount of work we do. They see us as passive consumers who think we need something, when really, we only fulfil temporary desires only to keep the manipulative system of production going. Cultural theorists claim otherwise. According to them, we are active in our production and consumption. I lean towards this cultural perspective in terms of advertisements and the amount of 'control' or agency we have on them. Marx would say because these ads are specifically personalized and imported into our online private spaces, the capitalist (advertiser) gains his money, and due to our false consciousness, we go ahead and succumb to the ad. This is a bit far-fetched. Certainly, we do not always respond to ads on television, so why would we respond to online ads? We are neither passive nor are we oblivious to the profit advertisers make from this process.

So in short, privacy is limited whether we like it or not. Corporates are ultimately in control of our online spaces and the private information we put there. With adverts, it’s a choice to click. I ignore it if I have no interest in it. Facebook is its owners' property so I believe they can do what they want to do with my information, as long as it does not harm me or any other user in any way. Thus, it is no longer a matter of privacy, it is a matter of harm.

1) Advertisers make money off our information, should we get anything in return? 2) Does using Facebook count as Leisure?