• LinkedIn claims it helps to ‘connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful’.7
• tumblr says it enables you to ‘share the things you love’.8
• VK sees itself as ‘a web resource that helps you stay in touch with your old and new friends’.9
• Baidu’s says it mission is ‘providing the best way for people to find what they’re looking for online’, ‘We provide our users with many channels to find and share information’.10
• Sina Weibo says it is designed to ‘allow users to connect and share information anywhere, anytime and with anyone on our platform’ and provides ‘an array of online media and social networking services to our user to create a rich canvas for businesses and brand advertisers to connect and engage with their targeted audiences’.11
• Renren’s self-understanding is that it ‘enables users to connect and communicate with each other, share information, create user generated content, play online games, watch videos and enjoy a wide range of other features and services. We believe real name relationships create a stronger and more enduring social graph that is essential in the mobile internet world and dificult to replicate. […] Our vision is to re-define the social networking experience and revolutionize the way people in China connect, communicate, entertain and shop. To achieve this, we are focused on providing a highly engaging and interactive platform through technology that promotes connectivity, communication and sharing. The mobile internet is making the world more connected, and Renren stands at the forefront of this evolution’.12
• Tencent’s (QQ, WeChat) mission is ‘to enhance the quality of human life through Internet services’.13 WeChat is a ‘value-added Internet, mobile and telecom services and online advertising under the strategic goal of providing users with “one-stop online lifestyle services”’ that provides users the possibility to ‘connect with friends across platforms’.14
4.5.5. Inverted Commodity Fetishism
Social media ideology inverts commodity fetishism. In inverted commodity fetishism (Fuchs 2014a), the users do not immediately experience the commodity form because they do not pay money for accessing a commodity. Rather they get access without payment to social media platforms that are not commodities. The commodity form takes place without an exchange that users are involved in: the platforms sell usage data to advertising clients, who in return for paying money get targeted access to users’ profiles that become advert spaces. It is rather dificult for users to think of corporate social media use as labour or exploitation because inverted commodity fetishism creates a social experience and social use-value for them and tries to ideologically hide the role of the commodity.
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Critical Theory of Communication