Social media design decisions prioritize profit over user benefit or democratic ideals
Evidence
My original impetus behind this project was to look realistically at the influence of profit-driven business models on the use and development of social media applications. I wanted to provide a counterbalance to the notion that social media promoted some sort of ideal, egalitarian society. I knew from my years of working in dot-com companies that decisions about software were often based on what would make the most money, rather than what would be the most beneficial for the user or, even less realistically, what was more democratic or participatory. I also wished to test the theory that social media was providing new, meritocratic opportunities for visibility and success. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 718
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: the foundational motive behind platform studies — testing whether the egalitarian promise of social media actually holds under profit-driven design.
- XREF: connects to: Social media’s technical features encode and reinforce contradictory status values — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 644; Valuation on social media rewards homogeneous streams over genuine difference — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 224; Web 2.0 openness ideology serves corporate profit over individual benefit — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 640 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Web 2.0 openness ideology serves corporate profit over individual benefit
#corroborates(0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 640 - Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity.
#exemplifies(0.82) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197 - Platform monetization replaced artistic gatekeepers with view-maximizing incentives
#exemplifies(0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 289 - Valuation on social media rewards homogeneous streams over genuine difference
#corroborates(0.78) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 224 - Social media instruments natural empathy to modify behavior for others’ benefit
#exemplifies(0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1489