{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","uuid":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"digitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","isbns":["2021022153","9781032119182","9781032119205","9781003222149","2405518376"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":343,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":169,"pdf_page":183,"physical_index":183,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ff70f4c50ad562639014c49b7536a38c997fdf9bfecefee30be80b06139ec6c6"},"chapter":"DIGITAL CAPITALISM","content":"Facebook users are productive transport workers who communicate advertising ideologies that make use-value promises. Their activities are productive labour. Politics for the digital age need to consider users as political subjects. Unions, organisations of the Left, and struggles are nothing that should be left to wageworkers but need to be extended to digital media users. Pirate Parties have understood this circumstance better than the orthodox wage-labour fetishistic parts of the Left, but they have not well understood that the exploitation of digital labour is connected to the commodification of the commons that include the communication commons and that as a consequence internet politics need to be connected to the critique of the political economy of capitalism as a whole. So whereas the orthodox part of the Left tends to dismiss users as politically unimportant and to neglect internet politics, Pirate Parties see users as the only political subjects.\n\nThe only feasible political way forward is to create unions and organisations of users that are connected and part of a broader political Left. For doing so, the orthodox part of the Left needs to overcome its ignorance of and technophobic biases against the internet and users need to perceive themselves as being ripped off by internet companies. We need social media unions and a fusion of Pirate Parties and left-wing parties.\n\nFacebook users are productive workers means that they have the power to bring corporate social media to a standstill. If users go on strike, then Facebook immediately loses money. If Facebook’s wageworkers go on strike, the platform is still online and can be further operated for exploiting users. Users are economically powerful because they create economic value. Organising a collective Facebook strike or shifting to alternative non-commercial platforms is a refusal of digital labour. Besides unionisation and online strikes, also policy-oriented measures are feasible in order to strengthen the protection of users from capitalist exploitation. Ad block software is a tool that deactivates advertisings on the websites a user visits. It can either be used as add-on to web browsers or is automatically integrated into a browser. Using ad block software is digital class struggle: it disables Facebook and others’ monetisation of personal data by blocking targeted ads. Think of a legal requirement that makes ad block the standard option in all web browsers: users are empowered because commodification of data is not the standard but an opt-in chosen by the users if they turn off the ad blocker. A useful complementary legal measure is to require all internet platforms to deactivate targeted and other forms of advertising and to make users optin if they want to enable such mechanisms.\n\nChapter Six | Dallas Smythe and Digital Labour\n\n169\n\nConclusion","previous_page":168,"next_page":170}