Beyond the Dark Sides of the Web: For an Ethical Model of Digital Solidarity

ABSTRACT

In this article, I intend to propose an ethical model for digital solidarity. On the one hand, it emphasises the importance of adopting a solidarity model to escape the logic of surveillance capitalism and the race for profits typical of the digital giants’ business model. On the other, it is intended to point out that a model of solidarity embodied in the digital network may instead offer a more universalistic alternative to the types of solidarity that have often imposed themselves in our contemporary political landscape, namely solidarity limited to groups in opposition to others. In order to show what economic and political characteristics this model should respect, two case studies will be examined, namely Wikipedia and Occupy Wall Street.

KEYWORDS:

• Solidarity
• platforms
• surveillance capitalism
• Wikipedia
• Occupy Wall Street

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Morozov, The Net Delusion.

2 See Bauman, Liquid Surveillance.

3 See Bigo, “Globalized (In)security.”

4 Sunstein, #Republic, 110–3.

5 See Floridi, The Onlife Manifesto.

6 O’Neill, “Trust and Accountability in a Digital Age,” 14.

7 Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 12.

8 Ibid., 38–9.

9 See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.

10 Bayertz, Solidarity, 5.

11 Prainsack and Buyx, Solidarity in Biomedicine and Beyond, 41.

12 Stalder, Digital Solidarity, 58.

13 Gould, “Transnational Solidarities,” 2.

14 Scotti, Solidarietà digitale, 60 (my translation).

15 Gold, “Transnational Solidarities,” 155.

16 Stalder, Digital Solidarity, 13.

17 Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution, XII–XV.

18 Scotti, Solidarietà Digitale, 53 (my translation).

19 Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution, 76.

20 Scotti, Solidarietà Digitale, 54 (my translation).

21 Stalder, Digital Solidarity, 17.

22 Ibid., 36.

23 Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 9.

24 Ibid., 172–4.

25 Ibid., 253.

26 Ibid., 251.

27 See Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason.

28 Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 263.

29 See Honneth, Freedom’s Right.

30 Fuchs, Social Media, 371.

31 See Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century.

32 See Garton Ash, Free Speech.

33 Fuchs, Social Media, 368. See also Srnicek, Platform Capitalism.