The Digital Labor Thesis

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Sally Kohn: We have a tendency to look at the political economy of the internet or tech companies through a number of different approaches. The dominant ones that you talk about are an approach of digital labor where we're looking at people on social media platforms and whatnot is performing free labor for these companies surveillance capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff's work. She says even though surveillance capitalism is about the production of data it doesn't talk about well for whom and to what purposeDigital labor will often talk about theProduction of content but again how do the end of the day platform social media platforms actually turn the production of that content into their business like Facebook is an advertising company they make most of

Paris Marx is joined by Daniel Joseph to discuss why advertising is central not just to the tech economy, but modern capitalism itself, and how the business models of companies are increasing shaped by serving ads and collecting data to inform them.

Daniel Joseph is a Senior Lecturer of Digital Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He’s also written for a number of publications, including Briarpatch Magazine, Motherboard, and Real Life Magazine. Follow Daniel on Twitter at @DanjoKaz00ie.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Daniel wrote about how advertising and the need to create audiences is much more central to the tech economy than is often discussed.
Shoshana Wodinsky explained why so many companies are getting into advertising, including hotel chains, retailers, and more.
Unity faced criticism for merging with IronSource, a known advertising malware distributor.
After reporting a subscriber decline earlier this year, Netflix launched an ad-supported tier in October.
Companies like Apple and Uber are expanding their efforts to increase advertising revenue.
Ramon Lobato wrote Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution.

Support the show