{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","uuid":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","normalized_title":"digitallabortheinternetasplaygroundandfactory","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","isbns":["9780415896948","9780415896955","9780203145791"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":267,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/DIGITAL%20LABOR%20THE%20INTERNET%20AS%20PLAYGROUND%20AND%20FACTORY","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/search"},"page":{"printed_page":107,"pdf_page":114,"physical_index":114,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"536ed2e51937d048fe0262e835a6e95bbf90f7097a80c67b753788292d90b7a1"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"Ross sees this expropriation of Internet users' freelabor as a form of“selfexploitation among creative workers.\" What one of Ross'sinformants calls “work you just couldn't help doing,\" work that seems like play and recreation, is, states Ross, “value-adding work\" that can be “digitally extend[ed]. .. into every waking moment of an employee's life\"—and one need not even be an employee to perform this work. Applying Terranova's conclusions regarding 1990s-era AOL chat rooms to present-day social media sites, Ross claims that wage-free labor infuses all such sites with their financial value, which is a huge boon to the sites founders:\n\n[F]or the business entrepreneur, [establishing a social networking site] is a virtually wage-free proposition. There are costs involved for bandwidth, hosting, and maintaining commercial platforms, but as far as the monetizable product goes, it is the users, or prosumers, as industry strategists call them, who create all the surplus value (which could be described as the difference between the value such free services offer to users and the value they create for business).²4\n\nRoss, like Terranova, acknowledges that the “pleasures of communication and exchange\"and the fact that fan labor is “not imposed\"prevent fans from seeking compensation for their value-adding activities. For many fans, the donation of labor is willingly given in exchange for the opportunity to enjoy and play in à relativelyopen, unrestricted Internet. Ross clarifies this point of view in his writing:\n\n[T]he role the social web is currently playing in new modes of capital accumulation is simply the price one pays for preserving a free medium of exchange whose scope of activity is large enough to outpace any government or corporate surveillance. It's another kind of trade-off, in other words, and the balance, for the time being, is still in favor of the commons. From this point of view, all of the interactive free labor that goes into user-generated value can be seen as a kind of tithe or tribute we pay to the Internet as a whole so that the expropriators stay away from the parts of it we really cherish.25\n\nThe fact that wealth is unevenly distributed between social media companies (and, we can add, all companies that benefit from social media sites) and the fans who produce content and value for those entities is willingly accepted by fans who regard their volunteering labor as a prerequisite for their attainment of the benefits of Internet participation.\n\nFandom as Free Labor\n\n107","previous_page":106,"next_page":108}