Primitive Digital Accumulation: Privacy, Social Networks, and Biopolitical Exploitation

Abstract

This essay argues that the recurrent controversies surrounding the violation of user privacy on social networks are better understood as instances of struggle against exploitation. To make this argument the author revisits Marx's concept of “so-called primitive accumulation,” offers a more nuanced interpretation of the political economy of Web 2.0, and applies Hardt and Negri's concept of biopolitical exploitation to a form of labor never considered by the original authors. Drawing on interviews with members of the photo-sharing website Flickr.com, the article argues that privacy and social networks are conceptually oxymoronic in that adherence to the principles of the former would render pointless the purposes and functionality of the latter. The privacy discourse has thus far dominated explanations of “user” uproar. The main purpose of this article, then, is to open new cognitive spaces untainted by the privacy debate so as to encourage further reflection, argumentation, and political action.

Keywords:

• Privacy
• Web 2.0
• Exploitation
• Primitive Accumulation
• Immaterial Labor

Notes

¹According to Tim O'Reilly (2005), the man responsible for coining the term, Web 2.0 is not a revolutionary alteration in the underlying structures that regulate the production, distribution, and consumption of digitized content but is rather “a fuller realization of the true potential of the web [as a] platform” to host and distribute this content. In general, the rapid rise of user-generated content and the widespread popularity of social media are indicators of Web 2.0's arrival.

²Various terms or concepts have attempted to adequately describe the users’ role as both producer and consumer of digital content. In addition to Cohen's use of “producer-consumer,” Axel Bruns (2008; drawing inspiration from Alvin Toffler's [1981] concept of the pro-sumer) posits the “Prod-User” and “Prod-Usage” as concepts that attempt to reconcile the new subject position occupied by individuals that both use and produce immaterial artifacts. For reasons explained below, I prefer to refer to these same individuals as Unwaged Affective Laborers.

³The controversy over the theoretical nuances of immaterial labor is interesting but is addressed sufficiently elsewhere (see Dowling, Nunes, and Trott 2007).

⁴All figures given are in U.S. dollars.

⁵The interview in question took place over an instant messaging application. All grammatical errors and errors in spelling are those of the interviewee. In an attempt to respect the integrity of the original interview and the nuances of the medium over which it took place, I have not corrected any of the errors.

⁶Instagram is a photo-filtering and photo-sharing application bought by Facebook in December 2012 for roughly $1 billion in cash and stock.