Even anti-colonial activism via social media reinforces the corporate systems of settler colonialism

Evidence

Yet we know that the effects of colonialism continue to be felt, as indigenous people even today resist dispossession, cultural invasion, and genocide. Consider next another starting point, the Idle No More movement, a campaign by indigenous peoples in Canada to protect their ancestral resources. Like many activist movements, Idle No More has become a smart user of social media to promote its cause and enlist supporters. The telegraph pole used to link the Bororo into networks of colonial power has given way to a tool on which even the victims of colonization would now seem to depend. … Reflecting on the use of social media during the campaign’s protests, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a scholar, writer, and artist of the Nishnaabeg people, wrote that “every tweet, Facebook post, blog post, Instagram photo, YouTube video, and email we sent during Idle No More made the largest corporations in the world … more money to reinforce the system of settler colonialism… . I wonder in hindsight if maybe we didn’t build a movement, but rather we built a social media presence that privileged individuals over community, virtual validation over empathy, leadership without accountability and responsibility.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 22

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the attention/surveillance school’s critique of platform capitalism, but from the data-colonialism angle — the activist using the platform is herself captured as data. — connects to: Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 273; Platform use by anticolonial movements can inadvertently reinforce the corporate systems they resist. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 22; Online advertising economics pushed foreign correspondence toward affluent young freelancers, worsening neocolonial dynamics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 175
• SEED: Could seed an essay on ‘the capture of resistance’: how movements that adopt platform infrastructure may unknowingly feed the very systems they oppose.
• DEFINE: Illustrates the book’s core claim that colonialism’s extractive logic now operates through platform data capture even on socially progressive uses.

Broader Connections

• Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 273