Facebook’s growth practices aimed at annexing life to capital under connection’s ideology.

Evidence

First, there is the ideology of connection itself, which presents as natural the connection of persons, things, and processes via a computer-based infrastructure (the internet) that enables life to be annexed to capital. Connection is, of course, a basic human value, but the requirement to connect here and now—connect to this particular deeply unequal infrastructure—means submission to very particular conditions and terms of power. Perhaps the most frank admission of connection’s ideological role came in an internal memo, later discounted by its author, that Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, posted in June 2016: “We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact-importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China someday. All of it.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 95

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the critique that connectivity touted as neutral universal good masks extractive power — relevant to attention-economy and surveillance-capitalism debates. — connects to: Facebook’s profit model conditions users into living social lives on its platforms. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 190; Facebook weaponizes social proof by dressing commerce as friendship. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1455; Facebook builds fabricated social realities that normalize surveillance as interaction. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 348 (+3 more)
• SEED: The Bosworth memo is a ready-made exhibit for an essay arguing that platform insiders openly admit extraction that critics only infer.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing the Bosworth memo and its later ‘discounted’ framing — who disavowed it and why.

Broader Connections

• Facebook’s vision subordinates whole societies, not just users, to its predictive embrace #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1279
• Facebook weaponizes social proof by dressing commerce as friendship. #corroborates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1455
• Social media promotes an ideal of privatizing the self into corporate form #corroborates (0.75) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 354
• Facebook builds fabricated social realities that normalize surveillance as interaction. #corroborates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 348
• Social networks themselves constitute capital with measurable productive value #expands (0.70) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 33