Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism

Evidence

Since then, fears of a new “corporate governance of everyday life” have been growing. But other fears have started to overtake them, including the “fake news” scandals that have gripped politics since late 2016 in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere. There are also fears that, because of polarizing forces online, “social media is ripping society apart”; fears from other commentators of a social dystopia driven by platforms’ search for advertising income; and, finally, the fear that the targeting of news via social media platforms represents “the most lethal political weapon ever invented.” Calls for the regulation of social media platforms and other information technology giants are becoming familiar. But none of these highly charged debates answers the underlying question on which this book will focus: should human beings in the twenty-first century accept a world in which their lives are unceasingly appropriated through data for capitalism? — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 40

Categorization

• XREF: Positions the data-colonialism frame against the fake-news/polarization and attention-economy schools the reader is already mapping. — connects to: Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 131; Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17; Resistance to data colonialism must confront global capitalism, not just platforms — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 650 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized #corroborates (0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 131
• Critique of data platforms must target power relations, not ethics lapses #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 443
• Fixating on specific firms obscures the underlying patterns of surveillance capitalism #corroborates (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 757
• Resistance to data colonialism must confront global capitalism, not just platforms #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 650
• The key platform struggle is denaturalizing data abstraction, not securing payment for data #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 781
• Platform data extraction continues historical colonialism’s logic of appropriation #expands (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 398
• Surveillance-capitalism theory understates what digital platforms actually do #corroborates (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 905
• Capitalism abstracts in order to extract and distances harm to dodge accountability #expands (0.80) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 111
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #qualifies (0.75) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17
• The digital economy functions as legitimating hegemonic ideology for capitalism #expands (0.75) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 16