An Aggregations of PJ's Blog Posts

Panel Discussion: Is Facebook Use a Form of Labor?

• May 1st, 2012
• Posted in Cyborgology

The Organizations, Occupations, and Work blog (associated with the American Sociological Association) organized an interesting panel discussion between Chris Prener, Christopher Land, Steffen Böehm and myself. I'll summarize/critique the positions here and provide links for further reading.

Chris Prener initiated the conversation by asking "Is Facebook “Using” Its Members?" Prener claims that, though the company gives users "access to networks of friends and other individuals as well as social organizations and associations," Facebook—with it's advertising revenue "somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.2 billion"—" benefits far more in this somewhat symbiotic relationship." He concludes that Facebook, and social media more broadly, represent "a [new] space where even unpaid, voluntary leisure activities can be exploited for the commercial gain of the entities within which those activities occur."

My critique of Prener's piece is that he assert that Facebook benefits more from the online social networking than its 845 million users; this is an empirical question—one that requires further evidence an calculation. If we assume Prener's $3.2 billion figure is correct, Facebook is making only $3.79 in ad revenue per user. I would guess that many, if not most, users believe Facebook provides them with benefits that exceed that sum. In any case, exploitation still exists regardless of who benefits most.

Christopher Land and Steffen Böehm echo Prener in their piece: "They are exploiting us! Why we all work for Facebook for free."  They too see Facebook's profit model as dependent on exploitation. But they approach the issue from a slightly different theoretical bent. Drawing on Herman and Chomsky's famous work on mass media, Land and Böehm argue that users (not content) are the primary product that social media creates, since it is users that are being sold to advertisers. They also observe, sardonically, that Facebook users experience a double-freedom insofar as users efforts are non-coerced but also unpaid. But just as Marx noted that capitalism achieved a monopoly over the means of survival (that is to say, people have to sell their labor to survive because that are otherwise denied access to the mean of production), Land and Böehm argue that Facebook (and capitalism, more broadly) have achieved a monopoly over the means of online social networking.

Land and Böehm might have improved their analogy by spelling out that social interaction fulfills a natural human need and that participation on Facebook is coercive because so many invitations, conversations, memes, etc. are accessible only through the platform, thus non-participation leads to non-inclusion and social isolation. A more important issue I see with their argument, however, is the apples-to-apples comparison between broadcast media consumers and social media prosumers. Herman and Chomsky were focused on the broadcast media's production of passive subjects; social media, on the other hand, is significant in that it produces active subjects (or, rather, subjects produce themselves for social media [see: Gilles Deleuze, "Post-script on the Society of Control" and Nathan Jurgeson, "Experiencing Life Through the Logic of Facebook"]). Herman and Chomsky were less concerned with exploitation than with political acquiescence. If Herman and Chomsky are correct in assuming that passivity in the realm of broadcast media consumption passes over into the realm of politics, then activity in the realm of social media prosumption might equally be expected to translate into politics (though Chomsky himself remains skeptical). In any case, while broadcast media consumers are subject to manipulation, it is unclear that they are subject to exploitation.

In my piece, "Facebook is Not a Factory (But Still Exploits its Users)," I argue that Facebook use benefits both users and owners, but, while Facebook gains monetarily, users receive immaterial benefits. This qualitative/quantitative difference in the forms of capital derived from Facebook makes it difficult to compare the relative degree of exploitation between Facebook use and traditional labor. However, we can infer that Facebook is probably not more exploitative than conventional labor and is certainly less alienating.

The critique I have of my own piece (pointed out by Alexis Madrigal via Nathan Jurgenson) is that I use Facebook's total market valuation in estimating the rate of exploitation for each user. This valuation is, of course, highly speculative and also includes so-called "constant capital." It is more appropriate to do as Prener has done and use ad revenue as the basis for calculating the rate of exploitation.

Clearly, the consensus among this group of authors is the exploitation is an integral part of Facebook's operation; however, questions remain as to its scope and significance.

Follow PJ Rey on Twiter: @pjrey [ READ MORE ]

Facebook is Not a Factory (But Still Exploits its Users)

• May 1st, 2012
• Posted in Cyborgology

This piece is posted in cooperation with the Organization, Occupations, and Work Blog.

Facebook’s IPO announcement has stirred much debate over the question of whether Facebook is exploiting/using/taking advantage of its users. The main problem with the recent discussion of this subject is that no one really seems to have taken the time to actually define what exploitation is. Let me start by reviewing this concept before proceeding to examine its relevance to Facebook.

Defining exploitation. The concept of exploitation came to prominence about a century and a half ago through the writings of Karl Marx, and he gave it a specific, objectively calculable definition—though, I’ll spare you the mathematical expressions. Marx starts from the assumption that value is created though labor (most people today acknowledge that value is contingent on other factors as well, but we need merely to accept that labor is one source of value for Marx’s argument to work). According to Marx, humans have an important natural relationship to the fruits of our labor, and our work is a definitive part of who we are. Modern capitalist society is unique from other periods in history because workers sell their labor time in exchange for wages (as opposed to, say, creating objects and bartering them for other objects). Capitalists accumulate money by skimming off some of the value created by worker’s labor and, so that the wages a worker receives is only a fraction of the total value he or she has created. The portion of the value created by a worker that is not returned back to that worker (after operating costs are covered) is called the rate of exploitation.

So, for example, imagine that, during one day of work, a factory worker takes $10 worth of wood and assembles a chair that retails for $60; if the worker is paid $20 in wages for that day, then rate of exploitation would equal $30/day. That is to say, the capitalist is made $30 richer each day at the expense of the worker.  The real degree of exploitation, however, is best represented in relative terms. If we calculate the $30 of surplus value expropriated by the capitalist as a percentage the total value created ($60 - $10 = $50), then we find that the real degree of exploitation is 60% (= $30/$50*100) of the value created by the worker.

The important point here is that exploitation is an objective calculation—one that is separable from the subsequent moral debates we often have about ensuring fairness versus rewarding risk/innovation. So, if we want have a debate about the (im)morality of Facebooks’ business model—as many recent commentators are, in fact, endeavoring to do—we must first establish that exploitation objectively exists on Facebook. However, this is not as easy as it might seem. The organization of Facebook hardly resembles the “cattle-like existence” in the factories that Marx originally set out to describe. While Facebook’s users flock to the site willingly, even happily, Marx summarized the factory as a place where the worker:

does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. . . . His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.

Given this apparent disconnect between the experience of factory work and social media use, we should be reluctant about merely attempting to superficially shoehorn this new phenomenon into the classic conceptual frame of exploitation. Instead, we should ask ourselves if these apparent differences have any bearing on the assumptions underlying our calculation of the rate of exploitation. Indeed, a closer examination reveals significant differences between the way exploitation is carried out in the factory and on social media.

Why do people use social media voluntarily, but avoid factory-style work whenever possible?  There are two important reasons: 1.) Factory work is alienating, separating workers’ from their creative faculties to shape the nature of the objects they are laboring to produce. Social media encourages a much greater degree of self-directed creativity. 2.) Social media users are not only producers of social media but also consumers. As such, there are direct and obvious benefits to social media use, unlike the discomfort of factory work which is only partially and indirectly remediated by wages. These benefits of social media use are largely immaterial: e.g., making and preserving social connections, cultivating and demonstrating taste, and telegraphing that you are “with it,” part of the in-crowd. (Sociologists call these benefits cultural, social, and symbolic capital).

Though we all can recognize that these immaterial benefits have real value, it is extremely difficult to fix a price to them. How many dollars is a friendship worth? How much culturally literacy can you purchase for $100? Moreover, because usage patterns vary so widely, different social media users are bound to derive different sorts of value from their use. That is to say, the value of these immaterial benefits is relative to the unique circumstances of each user. Because users are “compensated” through these immaterial benefits (rather than receiving conventional wages), it is extremely difficult to come up with a concrete figure for the real degree of exploitation (note: this is not really even “compensation” because this value is created directly by and shared between users). We know that Facebook receives all the material benefits from our use. Most readers have probably already seen it calculated that with 850 million users and a speculative valuation of $100 billion, Facebook has netted $117.65 from each user. In this sense, we might say that the rate of exploitation is $117.65 per user for the eight years that Facebook has been in existence. However, without a concrete figure for the total value produced by each user, we are not really able to derive the real degree of exploitation. The best we can do is a sort of thought experiment: Would I pay $117.65 for what I have gotten out of Facebook in the past several years? If the answer is yes (personally speaking, I know I pay that much annually to host a website that I use far less than my profile), then we can loosely infer that the real degree of exploitation is less than 50%.

Why is important to know that the real degree of exploitation is less than 50%? Many critics of social media downplay the immaterial benefits of social media and argue that, because workers do not receive wages, they are experiencing “over-exploitation” (i.e., a condition where the real degree of exploitation approaches 100%). Our little thought experiment enables us to conclude that, while Facebook is exploitative (like all capitalist enterprise), it does not appear to be substantially more exploitative than conventional “brick and mortar” businesses. While all the alarm about hyper-capitalism and the precarious state of social media users is probably overstated, the fundamentally exploitative nature of Facebook’s business model gives users ample cause to be skeptical of the benevolent image of Facebook that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted in his recent IPO letter, saying “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.” This statement exemplifies the fact that the fuzziness surrounding these economic relationships may make it easier than ever to induce and perpetuate this sort of “false consciousness.”

Author’s note: A related  peer-reviewed article on the topic of “Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media” is forthcoming in next edition of American Behavioral Scientist.

Follow PJ Rey on Twitter: @pjrey.[ READ MORE ]

Incidental Productivity: Value and Social Media

• November 17th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

For nearly two centuries, the term “production” has conjured an image of a worker physically laboring in the factory. Arguably, this image has been supplanted, in recent decades, by office worker typing away on a keyboard; however, both images share certain commonalities. Office work and factory work are both conspicuous—i.e., the worker sees what she is making, be it a physical object or a document. Office work and factory work are also active—i.e., they require the workers’ energy and attention and come at the expense of other possible activities.

The nature of production has undergone a radical change in a ballooning sector of the economy. The paradigmatic images of active workers producing conspicuous objects in the factory and the office have been replaced by the image of Facebook users, leisurely interacting with one another. But before we delve into this new form of productivity we must take a moment to define production itself. .

Following Marx, we can say that any activity that results in the creation of value is production of one sort or another. Labor is a form of production specific to humans because human are capable of imagination and intentionality. He explains in the Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844 that

Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species-being. Or it is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity.

Labor is production that is imagination-driven. However, production need not be intentional. Marx acknowledges this fact in Capital saying:

We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.

Now, we are in a position to observe that production in the factory and in office are united by a third characteristic: value is produced via labor (specifically, alienated labor).

What is most remarkable about the much of the value produced on social media is that it comes from activities that can hardly be described as labor. The best example is, probably, the self-improving Google algorithm, which tracks individual usage patterns then aggregates the data to make itself more intelligent. Each individual is user is merely a passive consumer seeks a specific pieces of information; however, they also, simultaneously, generate valuable information for Google. The users are not active in the process. They do not imagine the end product in their minds before creating as Marx described. In fact, this product is completely invisible to them, buried deep in the infrastructure of the site. Similarly, Facebook silently derives value from the mundane interaction of its users.

We might compare this process to a waterwheel. The following is the one-sentence definition of a water wheel from Wikipedia:

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, the development of hydropower.

Value is produced from everyday activities much like a waterwheel harnesses the power of flowing water. This fact has profound implications, potentially requiring us to rethink traditional critiques of capitalism. However, before diving into these implications it would be useful to develop a vocabulary describe these new conditions in which production can occur without active laboring.

We might start by considering some previous attempts to discuss immaterial production. In a presentation at the VII Annual Social Theory Forum on Critical Social Theory, Nathan Jurgenson and I used the term "ambient production" to describe an environment in which production simply occurs as result of one's mere presence. We discussed how various modes/mechanisms of production on the Web might be placed on a visibility-invisibility continuum. However, this notion is complicated by the fact that as certain things are concealed (e.g., Facebook's use of person data in targeted marketing) other things are more likely to be revealed (e.g., Facebook's users are likely to share more data when they are not focused on how that data might be used to manipulated them).

More recently, we described the social media as populated with "digital paparazzi" (i.e., invisible data collection mechanisms that track and surveil users). However, we also demonstrated that there is a tendency for users to be made aware of the ubiquitous documentation in their environment and to alter their behaviors accordingly. Jurgenson labels as "documentary vision" this tendency to view one's actions in the present through the lens of the future documents they will produce. Though the mechanisms themselves are concealed, one might aptly argue that Facebook users are reacting to this environment of omnipresent documentation with the expectation that they are always being recorded. As such, users begin posing all the time and actively use these mechanisms to produce (or “prosume”) their own identities. Certainly, this kind of identity work is an active labor for many users and has visible consequences.

There are, clearly, coextensive modes of production operating on social-networking sites such as Facebook: On the one hand, individuals conspicuously labor to shape their identities. On the other hand, their presence on the platform allows for the ambient production of valuable data that company can sale to marketers. In fact, these two modes of production are intertwined. Active identity work creates data for targeted market, while marketing provides new consumer objects through which identity is expressed. This environment, where social activity becomes productive activity is not dissimilar to what Mario Tronti (1966) and Antonio Negri (1989) respectively described as a “factory without walls” or a “social factory.”



Does ambient production qualify as labor?

The conspicuousness of the thing being produced becomes extremely important. If we are able to see what we are producing (as with self-presentation via Facebook's new "frictionless sharing" application), then we will likely attempt to shape the end product by actively managing our own behavior (which amounts to labor). However, if the thing we are producing is concealed from us (as with our contributions to the Google algorithm), then we are largely denied any agency with respect to the final product. Yet, unlike alienated factory workers, our attention is not occupied by this production. In fact, this sort of of inconspicuous creation of value is largely incidental to the task that is really occupying our attention (e.g., using Google to locate a particular piece of information). Our relationship to such invisible objects is necessarily passive. As such, it does not meet Marx's (and, likely, most other) criteria for labor. I will define this passive and inconspicuous creation of value as "incidental productivity." Users engaged in incidental productivity don't know or don't care about about the valuable data they are creating; it is simply byproduct of other activity.

Why does "incidental productivity" matter?

For many commentators, our rights over the data that we create is an extension of an abstract notion that these data are fruits of our labor. The economic conditions of social media users have been described as "precarious labor" or, even, "over-exploitation." Both allude to one of Marx’s major critiques of capitalism: that laborers are exploited (i.e., their wages to not amount the full value of their work because some of that value is skimmed off by the employer). Much of the identity work done on social media is active and intentional labor. And, this labor is often exploited (I discuss this in depth in an article titled "Alienation, Exploitation & Social Media" soon to be published in the American Behavioral Scientist). However, much of the value created on the Web does not even result from labor; it is incidental value. This leaves us with the question: If a productive activity is not labor, can it be exploited? This question requires considerably more examination as it was not a phenomenon observed by Marx himself. However, Marx is not certainly not irrelevant. A quintessentially Marxian question remains: Who should control the means of incidental production? Just as Marx concluded that the means of production do not work in the best interest of worker when controlled by a separate ownership class, we have reason to be skeptical that the means for harnessing incidental productivity will work in the best interest of users who exercise little control over them. Revelations, such as Apple's clandestine use of the iPhone to collect data about changes in users' geographic location or Yahoo! and Blackberry's cooperation with the intelligence agencies of various authoritarian regimes, demonstrate the the interests of users and owners are often out-of-sync[ READ MORE ]

What Do Burning Man and Facebook Have in Common…?

• October 16th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

(Co-authored with David Banks)

A discussion of Burning Man may, at first, seem out of place on a technology blog; however, as sociologist Fred Turner has previously observed, the ideology of Burner culture is profoundly co-implicated with the prevailing ideology of Web. It is more than mere coincidence that this particular festival has exploded in proximity to Silicon Valley. It is also more than coincidence that Google and other tech company virtually shut down during this event. The week-long temporary city in a desert attracts people from around the world. The community is founded upon the (seemingly paradoxical) principals of “radical self-reliance” and “communal effort.” For a week, Burners collectively construct a festive atmosphere that separates themselves from the institutions and customs of their everyday lives. There is a vibrant gift economy with a focus on the decommodification of goods and services (though, of course, like the Internet, much money changes hands behind the scenes: for infrastructure, transport, illicit ticket sales, drugs, etc.). Everyone is encouraged to participate in all aspects of the community (to “prosume” their surroundings), and in doing so, to reach a better understanding of self. This is all embodied in the Ten Principles of Burning Man.

Ten Principles

Radical Inclusion Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

What many people do not know, is that while Burning Man is not happening, there are many “regional burns” across the country. These smaller burns are usually in the Spring and Fall months and last for a weekend. Examples of this are Playa del Fuego in Delaware, Transformus in North Carolina, Apogaea in Colorado, and Burning Flipside in Texas. These events usually host around 2,000 people compared to the roughly 50,000 people in attendance at Burning Man.



Burners tend to refer to their lives outside of burns as their “default lives.” Used in the same way we describe the out-of-the-box setting on a consumer electronic, default implies something that was handed to you without your input. It is imposed. The default is what is not best for any individual, but is sufficient for the majority. The default is opposed to the virtual. The virtual in this case, refers to something yet to be actualized: this could be the blueprint for a building or a Utopian vision for social organization. It is in this sense that many theorists (e.g., Deleuze and Guattari) have, historically, used the term “virtual.” (It is important to note that this use of the term virtual is not identical to the (digital dualist) connotation of the term that has been popularized with the emergence of the Internet, which implies artificial, separate, and unreal). So, while, default life is constituted by whatever conditions currently prevail in society, Burns (like many other festivals [see Mikael Bakhtin’s classic Rabelais and his World]) seek to be a time outside of time. A place where the virtual is actualized, if only temporarily. Burns are made from whole cloth, positing themselves as a vision of radically different possibilities. One Burner captured this sentiment in a recent conversation with one of the authors, stating, “we are all possibilitarians.”

Unlike commercial music festivals, the activities that comprise a Burn are not top-down—with a few produces providing content for the many consumers. Instead (as sociologist Katherine Chen notes in a soon-to-be-printed article), Burns are both co-created and co-consumed. Rather than the few occupying the attention of the many, the many are on display for one another. This, of course, sounds an awful lot like the transition between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Burners give themselves new names, organize themselves into theme camps, and associate with their fellow burners casually, but in meaningful ways. There are frequent exchanges of hugs, gifts, performance, and conversation. These are momentary, but often very meaningful. The idea being that associations are freely enacted, but do not necessitate obligations by either party. In this way, the individual is allowed to be (and in many respects must be) radically self-reliant while at the same time, have a reasonable expectation of communal efforts in setting up a tent, getting some coffee in the morning, or making a human pyramid. Importantly, this is the same pattern of reciprocal, non-obligatory interaction is the foundation of online social media.

 

Though it is interesting to juxtapose Burner culture to social media (and to note the relative affluence of participants of each and the linkages between the organizers of both), it would be an overstatement to argue that there is a one-to-one correlation between the logic of Burning Man and the logic of social media. Social media use is clearly much broader than the participation in and identification with Burner culture. Moreover, there is a whole discussion to be had about how many sites, like Facebook, are monetized. However, the issue, here, is simply whether the surface ideology of Burning Man is mirrored on social media. To the extent that it is, are we all Burners[ READ MORE ]

Where’s the Money in Prosumption: Predictions for 2010

• March 10th, 2010
• Posted in Sociology Lens

(Reposted from Sociology Lens) A recent article in the New York Times, “Experts Predict 2010 the Year for Social Media ROI” summarizes a Trendspotting.com report entitled “TrendsSpotting’s 2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters.” The Trendspotting.com post identifies six trends to look out for in social media over the coming year: “Mobile, [ READ MORE ]

Cyborg Systems: Sociology’s Proper Unit of Analysis

• March 10th, 2010
• Posted in Sociology Lens

(Reposted from Sociology Lens) The increasing centrality of the Internet in our daily lives has precipitated a spate of theorizing about how we – as humans and as a society – are changing (or not) due to the constant technological mediation of our most basic interactions and activities. Let’s face it: This sort of theorizing [ READ MORE ]

Conference Summary Part I: The Internet as Playground and Factory

• March 10th, 2010
• Posted in Sociology Lens

(Reposted from Sociology Lens) The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference. The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended. [ READ MORE ]

Augmented Reality: Going the Way of the Dildo

• March 10th, 2010
• Posted in Sociology Lens

(Reposted from Sociology Lens) While the term “augmented reality” uttered in a sexual context might immediately conjure the perennial problematic of the boozed, buzzed, and befuddled (commonly referred to as “beer goggles”), more nuanced analysis may prove fruitful. Fellow Sociology Lens news editor, nathan jurgenson, recently argued in “towards theorizing an augmented reality” that we [ READ MORE ]