Posting party images online makes users unpaid workers for platforms
Evidence
Images of hedonistic excess provide much of the content on Facebook, uploaded by users who are effectively unpaid workers, creating value for the site without being remunerated for it. Partying is a job in another sense – in conditions of objective immiseration and economic downturn, making up the affective deficit is outsourced to us. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 463
Categorization
- SEED: A contemporary essay updating ‘digital labour’ through the lens of the always-on affective economy of posting our own leisure.
- XREF: connects to: Communicative technology undermined the collective dancefloor that 80s tech built — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 462; Quality-content rules extract unpaid user labor benefiting platforms — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 211; Whether unpaid online activity is expression or exploitation structures the digital labor debate — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 113 (+15 more)
Broader Connections
- Social media participation constitutes unpaid labor from which platforms extract value
#corroborates(0.95) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 505 - Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners
#corroborates(0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338 - Users freely did unpaid labor that increased Facebook’s own value
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1011 - Building an attention-grabbing Instagram feed required unpaid laborious audience-engagement work
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1047 - Platform users become unpaid servants who train algorithms.
#corroborates(0.82) - Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity.
#corroborates(0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197 - Platforms extract data as a form of unpaid payment from users
#corroborates(0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 128 - Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks
#corroborates(0.80) - Social media makes users unwaged image managers and avatars.
#corroborates(0.78) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 70 - Networked audiences force users into unpaid labor to keep their brand image pure
#qualifies(0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 492 - Social media platforms simulate a public sphere they now merely exploit.
#corroborates(0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 580 - Users have paid for platform transparency with their own data
#corroborates(0.72) — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet, 609