The Functional Sovereignty of Facebook

March 20, 2020 11:12 AM

“ The internet, and the constellation of digital technologies that we call “tech” more broadly, intensifies the fundamental contradiction in capitalism between wealth being collectively produced and privately owned. It takes the Manchester model and elevates it to the nth degree. It makes the creation of wealth more collective than ever before, piling up vast new fortunes in the process — fortunes that, as they did in Engels’ day, accrue to a small handful of owners. ” From Manchester to Barcelona: Changing the story we tell ourselves about the internet. (Logic Mag)
posted by The Whelk (4 comments total)

something is wrong on the internet — and something is wrong with the way we have thought about the internet — but there is not yet a widely accepted set of answers to the all-important questions of why these things are wrong, or how to make them right.
posted by Mrs Potato at 1:01 PM on March 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Well, damn, its an interesting thing realizing you've unwittingly provided labor or value to an authoritarian techno-police state on the otherside of the planet just by grabbing coffee every now and then on your breaks from working in a nearby drug rehab for the poor. I'll admit my head is spinning on that one... Interestingly, I too was able to extract value from Brainwash Cafe's internet-connected cams. I would use it to check in on residents who said they were going to grab a quick coffee. Being addicted and struggling with hand to mouth survival, they were largely unaware you could view the cafe's interior live over the internet. . . My own personal surveillance state enabled by an unwitting cafe owner and enacted on unaware folks on the other side of the "digital divide." A little microcosom of the article, I think. What a bizarre reality we live in!
posted by flamk at 4:49 PM on March 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Not to distract from the post too much, but would it be much different than walking a few feet across the street and looking in the cafe's window? The point wasn't to catch people to penalize, the point was safety. But I hear you - one of billion reasons I left within a year.
posted by flamk at 7:37 PM on March 20, 2020

Facebook is the slow motion, global scale, online equivalent of the Fyre Festival.
posted by Freen at 6:22 AM on March 23, 2020