“The division of labour … as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour … while the others attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves.”
—— Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
I remember on my recent lecture, our instructor said a word that impressed me: If you are not paying for a product, you are the product. This is not a new theory but it incurs a profound reflection when I give it a second thought. When we have countless free ways to kill time today, how much invisible labor have we paid?
To answer this question, firstly, we need discuss what social media platform is. When I started to use social media about ten years ago, I was amazed by how these free apps allow me to see my friend’s life updates and get instant conversation with them. Now I am a heavy user of these apps. But I find these apps are pushing different advertising contents to me every day. When I want to quit using them, I realize that I can’t do it. As Nicole S. Cohen says in her article, social media platforms are designed to make advertising more personalized and user- specific, its priority is not for people’s communication convenience. When users think they are enjoying the free services, they are actually both commodity and workers. What they pay is their own attention, time, and sometimes personal information. At the same time, those labour is sold at a marked price to advertisers by platforms.
And, I’m saying, the digital labor exploitation is real. With the emergence of platforms like TikTok, it requires more labor to gain likes (for people who wants to be an influencer). You need the ability to shoot the video and edit it, even write the script. Here is a guide of how to be TikTok famous:
The big companies weave a shining and fancy dream for the users, lure them to become an influencer. Millions of people were attracted by this low-threshold opportunity and put effort into it. There is a living example in my life: I have a friend who wants to be an influencer and have made many attempts on this path. Every time I ate with her in a restaurant, she would spend a lot of time photographing the food and the environment. In the past, all she needs just nice pictures, but now with the popularity of TikTok, she often asks me to take videos for her. Sometimes I think she is very hard, since she can’t completely relax during leisure time and enjoy delicious food.
However, some people would argue this deal is pretty fair. While we labour on social media, we also get many services with no charge. Also, many people become an influencer through these platforms, and earn a considerable income even in part-time. The big Internet companies provide a platform and open to everyone.
I also agree with this idea that, we are not laboring for nothing. But I want to point out, DON’T TAKE IT AS A REWARD. The question is: do we really need all these platforms and technologies? I mean, we didn’t ask for these services at the beginning. These services were the product of technological development and then used by big companies to make profit. As we gradually get used to this environment, there is no other choice for us. Like Marx mentioned, we the audiences are the passive and receptive one. We are not in control of the progress, and all the leisure and convenience provides by the platforms are incidental.
About few months ago, Facebook changed their name to Meta, and launched the Metaverse which aroused a heated discussion around the world. I think this is a very adventurous exploration in the history of technology, and could be a whole new chapter of social media. Along with this, I can see there is a further exploitation of users by the digital economy.