Social media algorithms financialize and profit from the uncertainty they create, mirroring derivatives trading.

Evidence

The routine use (consumption and production) of imaged-based data streams such as those I have so far discussed reveals an intricate power dynamic at play in speculative communities. More than just crude or sophisticated instruments of control, digital media driven by recommendation algorithms are sites for the reproduction of the particular tastes, dispositions, and imaginations texturing social life under surveillance capitalism. My contention here is that speculative technologies share a deeper and more profound affinity with finance’s cutting-edge infrastructures of derivatives trading. Just as the latter create price volatility and then commodify it into risk, the former financialize and profit from the uncertainty they seed in social media platforms. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 189

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional anchor for ‘homo speculans’ — establishes the speculative mechanism shared between derivatives and social media.
• XREF: Directly connects speculation-as-core-mechanism across finance and social platforms, the book’s central through-line identifying homo speculans. — connects to: Tech platforms seed uncertainty and profit from it, like derivatives — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 297