Post No.: 0980
Fluffystealthkitten says:
‘Platform capitalism’ in a platform economy is about businesses that provide a hardware and/or software platform where other actors can conduct their own business. Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, eBay, Valve, PayPal, Uber, Deliveroo, Etsy, Spotify, Airbnb and more have arguably become too powerful because they can dictate what the sellers, artists, content creators, hosts, drivers, etc. who use their platforms can and can’t do (which is like their own ‘laws’ but they decide these themselves), and at what rate of return (which is like their own ‘tax’ but this just goes to the company, not the country). Some end up effectively monopolising the means of production in their particular industries. Many businesses together matter but you, on your own, mean nothing to them unless you’ve got millions of followers/customers.
Also, part of their business plans is to dominate market share by attracting as many users as possible, even if this means losing billions in dollars over the first few years, until they’ve amassed as much user data as possible, which they can then monetise.
More data than we might realise is harvested about our every digital move, from every click, scroll, purchase and more. This data is used to make detailed profiles about us for the purpose of anticipating our behaviours and targeting marketing to us. It’s behavioural surveillance and ‘surveillance capitalism’. The price of a ‘free’ and open web is currently our privacy. They’ll naturally say it’s all for our benefit – we want relevant adverts and promotions we’re interested in – but it’s really for their benefit, like a gambling company claiming that this data is for fraud prevention, not to extract as much money from every player as possible. And our wants and needs aren’t the same, especially if fulfilling our wants pushes us into debt.
What we’re interested in (well what most grabs our attention) mightn’t be in our own best or edifying interests. And when they constantly recommend the same kinds of content to us, it can gradually reinforce a rabbit hole towards forming more extreme attitudes or beliefs (e.g. sexism, partisan political positions). We’re not meanwhile being exposed to a fuller and diverse, balanced or fair, cross-section of content out there. At best our time gets wasted because we cannot stop clicking on another tempting video. At worst we form extreme worldviews that we then ourselves share and spread to others.
If you show just a bit of interest in a type of content – perhaps initially out of curiosity for falling for some clickbait or FOMO – their algorithm will feed you some more of the same stuff, which means you’ll likely click on and view more of that kind of stuff, and so on. This could lead to habits like ‘doomscrolling’ or spending too much time reading negative news. It takes plenty of conscious self-discipline to fight the slide down a fuzzy rabbit hole. And it’s pernicious because there’s always an opportunity cost – the stuff you’re not being recommended, which could be useful, because of the stuff you are.
Apart from for premium services, the biggest social media platforms are monetarily free for you to use but that’s because the advertisers are the real customers – and you are essentially the product. You are the commodity. You basically trade your data for the use of their service, and then they use this data of yours as a product to be exploited by advertisers, or sold onto third parties. Their business model is primarily advertising hence they want your constant attention i.e. your time i.e. your life because no matter how rich you are, you’ve only got 24 hours/day to spend. These advertisers in turn want to change your behaviours, beliefs and/or what you buy.
Although this has been fading due to rising competition, Alphabet and Meta held a duopoly in the online advertising markets of many western countries.
Most office software packages, for instance, aren’t monetised through advertising so their developers don’t care if you’re not on them constantly once you’ve paid your licence or subscription to use them. They don’t care to get you addicted to being on them to pay attention to the adverts displayed on them. But the design choices on social media apps are deliberate in order to get as many users hooked on behaviourally addictive activities. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord use design tricks such as notifications that say ‘you’ve been tagged in a photo’ (and you must actually get on the app to check the photo out), the animated ellipsis (…) to keep you hanging on instead of leaving the app until someone’s message is finished and sent, and more.
These are supposed to be services that promote being social – but ‘phubbing’ (paying attention to one’s phone instead of the people we’re physically around and supposedly conversing with) demonstrates that they’re primarily about getting us hooked on them, not being truly social!
If you feel compelled to repost something or follow the monthly fashion trend cycle (which used to be spring/summer and autumn/winter, then every season, but now it’s relentless fast fashion) then realise that you’ve been manipulated to feel this way. Marketing and PR companies are often employed. Brand ambassadors and popular influencers can collude together to get posts trending on the various social media platforms – which is somewhat like a publisher buying its own books to get these books high in the sales rankings. And since what’s popular tends to become even more popular (because people follow the herd), this kind of manipulation can get something which otherwise would’ve been buried in obscurity into the limelight.
Companies frequently pay celebrities to wear what they want them to wear. Celebrities get given lots of stuff gratis even though they can most afford to pay full price for things. The prices charged to ordinary customers meanwhile not only covers the costs of the physical goods sold but the costs of paying those very celebrities princely sums and giving them freebies to be a part of their marketing campaigns!
Furrywisepuppy and I can say all this because we haven’t tried to flog anything on this blog (e.g. no paywalls, no adverts because it’s an educational blog that’s freely accessible for all). And, personally, I don’t understand using ad blockers simultaneously with following influencers who advertise products at us non-stop.
…So the major social media platforms collect and exploit dystopian amounts of data about their users’ lives. And they’re not only keeping track of as much of our lives as they can but allowing advertisers to shape our thoughts and behaviours as best as they can based on what they know about us. Businesses, politicians and foreign governments don’t need to ‘hack’ into these platforms to do this – they just need to use the tools provided to legitimate advertisers to maximise the impact of their messages across their platforms.
Your data isn’t being sold to advertisers per se but is exploited for the purpose of creating a model based on past behavioural patterns in order to predict future behaviours, with the aim of increasing engagement, growth (e.g. sharing posts and getting your friends to join) and ultimately advertising revenue. Facebook doesn’t want pseudo profiles (like a profile for your cat) because they only want real people’s data (although this would change if cats had their own money and purrses too – meow!)
These giant tech firms and their product ecosystems really desire to be in every aspect and every moment of your life. They step-by-step want to be in increasing areas of our lives, gathering data about your children when they’re born to the day they die. That’s why laws that counter the default ‘you’re surreptitiously automatically opted-in unless you actively decide to opt-out of this feature’ are so crucial for consumers. If there’s a threat of blind obedience and herd behaviours to state authorities then there’s also a threat of blind obedience and herd behaviours to brands, businesses and celebrities that we must be wary of too. You could say that corporations conduct in brainwashing to make us follow, repost and part with our cash.
Advertising impressions do generally work on viewers because familiarity breeds liking (not contempt). The more we’ve seen something with no immediate adverse effects per exposure, the more we’ll consider it safe and approachable. Those banner and pop-up adverts, and advertising in general, are about exploiting the ‘mere exposure effect’ – we tend to feel safer and more comfortable with things we’re familiar with. Also, the more something is considered popular, the more it’ll seem like it has been validated by others as trustworthy – we’re cognitively lazy so if it looks like others from our ingroups (the people we trust) trust in something, then we’ll trust in it too. ‘Famous/well-known’ is therefore inferred to mean ‘desirable’. We also mostly wish to fit in with others from our peer groups, ingroups or with groups we wish to be associated with, by liking and doing the same things as others in those groups.
If any form of advertising or particular advert becomes too annoyingly intrusive, frequent or ubiquitous however, it’ll become associated with that annoyance – like that ad you’ve been shown fifty times today! Of course the social media platform will therefore encourage you to pay a subscription to reduce those adverts, which means it works out for them either way.
Social media is so persuasive for consumers that if you’ve got a complaint about a company then ranting about it on their social media pages (cogently) could get you better and quicker service than complaining directly via the company’s usual customer service avenues because they care about their public image more than their private one between just you and them. (But be careful about publicly sharing any personal information.)
Marketing and PR, like branding and advertising, are essentially about corporate propaganda – shaping the image of a company and its offerings so that it seems more trustworthy and desirable than their mere products rationally suggest. For instance a bottle of pure water is just dihydrogen monoxide, but via careful branding and advertising, customers can become irrationally willing to pay more for one bottle of a given volume over another. It can take plenty of calculated marketing and PR to make something appear like it wasn’t calculated too (just like it can take plenty of rehearsal to make a joke from a comedian appear spontaneous). I guess it’s clever or devious depending on which side you’re on.
Even the traditional media and marketing industries have been finding ever newer and pervasive methods of advertising or getting their partisan messages across. For instance ‘newsjacking’ is about getting your own messages or angles into breaking news as early in the news cycle of a story as you can, in real-time (e.g. via a social media post or comment), in order to associate yourself with that news story and generate free media coverage for your own organisation or brand as a result. It’s about trying to jump onto and associate oneself with a topic just as it goes viral.
Global tech corporations have the power to shape global politics in multiple languages in multiple countries; and have already done so according to even many of their own (former) employees. (Content moderation is uneven across different languages too.) Post No.: 0616 broached dark adverts.
We might hold a smidgen of sympathy for these companies when they offer sufficient privacy and security setting options to put us in control of our own data (as long as they’re not buried deep in menus and complicated to comprehend) yet users don’t utilise them, or even bother to check them out, before using their services. Most users want those settings to be automatically how they want them out of the box. Many would rather campaign for regulations that make certain settings the default or expressly consented for first; although this would be their free right to campaign for.
Meow.
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