The darker turn of intimate machines: dark webs and (post)social media

ABSTRACT

Newly emerging technologies for digital communication facilitate rapid data collection, storage and processing whereby subsequent interactions can be unpredictable. This creates a ‘darker turn’ in neo-communicative practices. That which is 'dark' is understood as communication that has either limited distribution, is not open to all users – closed groups by way of example – or is veiled. Dark social spaces are, however, indistinct requiring further study. This is giving rise to new work in what I call ‘dark social studies’. To further explore the nature and use of dark social spaces, a digital (auto)ethnographic study of ‘dark’ social connection was undertaken. The analysis specifically focused on Mastodon, Galaxy3 and 8Kun’s ‘.onion’ available over Tor (The Onion Router). This article concludes that for a number, virtual ‘dark’ spaces provide affirmative, intimate and vital zones of connection to others and peer collaboration. Further, the interconnected and interactive capacity of dark social spaces facilitates user expectations for dark connection while exposing simultaneously the limitations of our intimate machines.

KEYWORDS:

• Dark social spaces
• dark social studies
• dark web
• (post)social media
• social-network
• intimacy
• identity
• surveillance
• critical studies in data cultures

The promise of great acceleration

This article develops a conceptual framing of ‘dark’ through an interpretation of intimacy for the ways emerging dark social spaces might clarify especial communication that would otherwise be inaccessible online. A definition of dark can first be underpinned by following a technical description that relates to access whereby information is: (a) hidden by facilitating encryption; (b) hidden through regulatory constrains for select access; (c) hidden because information is closed off to select groups accessible to individuals by invitation only, and; (d) ‘dark’ through access to required telecommunications services themselves. The provocation herein is that there are four broad socio-technological concerns connected to the big social media services that have helped increase the tendency for users to actively seek alternative spaces to social-network. These are digital privacy and (perceived loss of) agency; platforms monetizing user data by selling this to advertizers; the negative effects (and affects) associated with mainstream social media engagement, and; the increasing integration of IoT devices in everyday life. The surrounding concerns can be found and underscored in popular media.

Ahead of launching their fictional book Attack Surface, the latest in a three-book cyberpunk series, science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow (2020) declared to audiences:

If you found yourself in tech because you were excited by how much self-determination and power and pleasure you got from mastering technology, and then found your entire professional life devoted to ensuring that no one else ever felt that, this is the time for your moral reckoning.

(Greenberg 2020, np)

The term Attack Surface is also used to describe the range of points or vectors through which an attacker could infiltrate a network or virtually enter an environment (usually uninvited), but this essay is not intended as a ‘moral reckoning’. Nor is it intended as a discussion of binary oppositions¹ applied to the web using cinematic tropes of good (clear/white) versus evil (dark/black), but a consideration of the contribution to social, affirmative communication that dark social spaces might afford. Emphatically for some, the communicative future is at a crossroads now, being controlled and constrained by a ‘new frontier of power’ that extends beyond the conventional terrains of public and private institutions. In their study of ‘the age of surveillance capitalism’ Zuboff critically examined the impact of data ‘management’ in that not only are surveillance assets (data and information) and capital being accumulated, but also individual rights and many operations function without meaningful mechanisms of consent (Zuboff 2019; see also Mosco 2015; Fuchs 2014). Increasingly in the West, the balance of power is transitioning from nation-states to private mega-corporations that feature the sensibilities of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff’s consequent claim is that it is arguably ‘up to us to use our knowledge, to regain our bearings, to stir others to do the same, and to found a new beginning’ (Zuboff 2019, 524). This is a useful assertion that prepares readers for what follows. That is, the reasons for such a position reasonably stems from four broad themes that frame core issues for why dark social spaces have emerged.

As I have elsewhere summarized (Cinque 2021) the first is in regard to the obvious privacy-invasive social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snap Chat and so forth. Second, are platforms, advertising technology companies,² surveillance contractors and intelligence agencies that collect and monetize our actions and related data about such; as well as the increased ease of use and interoperability brought about by Web 2.0. The third factor is in regard to the negative individual and societal affects associated with depressed mental health and wellbeing cause by ‘psychologically damaging social networks’ such as from sleep loss, anxiety, poor body image, real world relationships, and the fear of missing out (FOMO) (Royal Society for Public Health (UK) and the Young Health Movement 2021). Fourth is acceleration towards post-quantum IoT. While quantum computing is “still in its nascent age, its evolution threatens the most popular public-key encryption systems (Fernández-Caramés 2020, 6457). Fernández-Caramés (2020, 6457) undertook a detailed examination of what they called ‘post-quantum IoT systems (IoT systems protected from the currently known quantum computing attacks)’ that has ‘researchers currently developing solutions to mitigate such a threat’ into the future (Fernández-Caramés 2020, 6457). The provocation is that as quantum computing’s digital components are: (1) further miniaturized; (2) coupled with advances in electrical battery capacity, and; (3) interconnected across telecommunications infrastructures – the ontogenetic capacity of the advanced network/s affords supralevel surveillance.

IoT systems from the micro-level (embedded within the body or worn on the skin) to the mid-level of society and environment (found in so-called SMART devices from phones to domestic appliances to street sensors and connected homes/government/health services, and natural environments), and further entangled at the macro-level (geo-satellites orbiting the globe) are ‘watching’ but exposed to differing levels of security protections. Predictions are that there will be 75 billion IoT devices used in homes and workplaces in 2025 (Statista 2016). While this relates to ‘things’ in the home and in many aspects of daily life, new communication spaces might be a space away from such; even a place to gain better understanding about the implications.

Returning to supralevel surveillance, individuals’ data is commodified through their devices and the services that they provide (Gillespie 2018; Neff and Nafus 2016; Nissenbaum and Patterson 2016). Increasingly, data and personal information are retrievable, sharable and potentially exposed across a variety of now ‘intimate’ machines. I use ‘intimacy’ in this context in regard to: (a) connection with likeminded others for the flourishing of the self through issues of identity and gender; (b) the personal nature of content shared in micro-communities across devices from topics across personalized medicine, fertility tracking, reproductive health, menstrual cycles, individuals’ biometric information including heart rate, body temperature and so on, to naked images; (c) that data can be collected from devices on and in the body itself. An intimate step further is that multiple sites ‘implicitly contain a rich array of personal information, including cues to a speaker’s biometric identity, personality, physical traits, geographical origin, emotions, level of intoxication and sleepiness, age, gender, and health condition’ (Kröger, Lutz, and Raschke 2020, 242). Real-time global digital markets, indeed.

A further point for this article pulls on a thread from the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), philosopher and maker of telescopic lenses, that we need to move away from thinking primarily about technological artefacts and their origins (a material totality of things or objects) because they are just a vector of forces, whereas the better considerations are around what they are capable of doing, for whom and how. For its part, the dark net is composed of sites that are hidden on the internet using encryption to facilitate anonymous ‘peer-to-peer’ sharing of data but affording a cultural and legislative ‘darker turn’. Certainly, much discussion about ‘dark’ cultures on the internet is with regard to its use for committing crimes and/or to evading authorities. With anonymization software such as Tor and a Virtual Private Network (VPN), transactions can be processed anonymously without revealing a user’s location (Ghappour 2017), but a VPN for its part alone cannot guarantee anonymity to the server or the internet service provider (ISP). Together, – this is what make aspects of the web hidden or ‘dark’. Another description and related to the first is that because of the capacity for anonymization, the dark web has been used for such nefarious purposes as selling illegal drugs, firearms and services (border crossings, Doxing, Phishing, iCloud activation) – a famous example are actions of Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), founder in 2011 of the Silk Road – or circulating child pornography (Caldwell 2016).

Detailed work by Faizan and Khan (2019) that manually categorized 6,000 html files for hidden services on the dark web found that bitcoin doubling, adult content, drugs, ethical hacking and uncensored journalism made up sizable parts of the hidden services in the study’s dataset. These categories bear witness to the formation of dark micro-publics. A crowning argument is, however, that not all users of dark websites and anonymization tools (Tor, Freenet, I2P etc) are engaged in criminal behaviours. Eric Jardine, Andrew Lindner and Gareth Owenson’s 2020 empirical study found that ‘only a small fraction of users globally (∼6.7%) likely use Tor for malicious purposes on an average day’ (31,716). Crucially, many seek (and find) a different social belonging (Drake 2020; Gehl 2018). There is also an intimacy of being alone together. Others are needing anonymity online such as journalists, people talking to journalists, activists to parents wishing to avoid their baby monitors being hacked (and hijacked by marketers) and their infant children harassed. There are also active movements specifically formed to ‘fight repressive censorship’ and control of the internet (www.internetfreedom.org). Freenet Project for its part in the mesh of connections is a distributed peer-to-peer network ‘for censorship-resistant communication and publishing’ (https://freenetproject.mk16.de). Now our communications and household items can be cloaked from tracking for commercial gain and spying (Greenberg 2016) and in the process many advertizers are deprived of controlled and quantifiable audiences from which to harvest data.

For the willing then, is the Fediverse. This is a decentralized communication system made up of groups of interconnected, or federated, servers used for web publishing. Specific examples from the Fediverse are capacities for social networking, microblogging, blogging, and file hosting. Each server is a node that is independently and voluntarily hosted, and which is able communicate with each other server using FLOSS-licence protocols (Free/Libre and Open-Source Software) for any and all purposes. This is analogous to the early days of the internet (mostly populated by white, educated men in the first instances) and an additional conceptual sedimentary layer to the notion of ‘homesteading’ on the virtual frontier (Rheingold 1993).

That is, once users contributed message postings on the virtual frontier in Usenet newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), bulletin board services (BBS) – the strata now are more inclusive of women, people from LGBTQI communities and of colour. Long ago, the early adaptors recognized that (then) existing mainstream media dominantly catered for a mass market whereas technologies of the ‘electronic age’ had little necessity to require an audience. Yet the early socially interactive internet activities have in fact been some of the most successful vehicles for the promotion of the internet. As indicated above, recent and emerging scholarship examines how social media have been used by activists in a neoliberal setting as tools of resistance (Fenton 2016; Poell and van Dijck 2018), with others now accounting for encryption-led dark nets.

By way of example, common now are decentralized CryptoParties.³ These are globally hosted gatherings created in the context of the Australian Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill (2011) and assented to on 12 September 2012 as an Act to implement the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, with the sober reasoning that these sorts of laws hold no water when everybody encrypts their communication. In CryptoParties, people meet virtually to pass on their knowledge or to learn about encrypting their online communications and digital media technologies for safer Internet browsing, and ‘[w]hile some people offer help in realizing these practices, others attend with their laptops, tablets and smartphones to learn how to encrypt’ (Kannengießer 2019, 1060). While the English language is currently predominant on this site, there is a wiki in development in which registered users can create pages and upload files. Ultimately, these sorts of practices in the dark structures of social spaces unearths a new identification of the dark in that there is resistance through ritual. The nature of what is afforded because of what is taken away is being reflected in everyday ‘real’ lives.

Outside the walled garden: digital method

What follows is a critical review of engagement in interconnected, smaller networked systems of servers that exist to receive public content and to distribute it to places it would not otherwise reach.⁴ The starting point for critical elaboration is the respected and respectful culture one (mostly) experiences and starts the conversation about dark social studies as a field. The broad swathe of personal and social intimacies draws a picture of how various forms of closeness, whether desired or not, are informed by regimes of soft power (and intended enlightenment), which can in the broader context, impact on lived experiences. From both a scholarly distance and intimately shared, we see that cultural norms are framed by the principle of anonymity and diligence in maintaining such in the face of the powerful mainstream social offerings. An argument could be made that finding a large tranche of curious ‘new’ users poking around and subsequently ‘mainstreaming’ the ‘.onion’ and others is not desirable for a number. While that might be the case in some instances, albeit largely hidden from view, there are numerous sites that are welcoming and predominantly easy to navigate. Those that are not are likely intended that way such that an ‘error 503ʹ message might also mean that one is being blocked. In the context of dark online interactions and not ignorant to what’s posted there that might be ‘inappropriate’, illegal and/or offensive, this present work seeks to understand the extent to which users experience social connection.

I use a digital (auto)ethnographic approach (Pink et al. 2015; Finnegan 1997) for three brief case studies. Taking the key methodological principle of ‘multiplicity’ that stresses the importance of customizing digital ethnography to the research (Pink et al. 2015, 8–9), I explore the recent additions to the list of alternate social-networking spaces. Further, I draw on personal narratives (understood as how identity might be constructed/created – not simply communicated – through the stories someone tells about themselves) where acknowledgement of socio-cultural story-telling conventions that have impacted the frameworks someone uses to tell their life story allows for a deeper connection between reader and story (Finnegan 1997). The combined approach is built on critical questions of data access and control through the promotion of open-source software, its development and use. I specifically focus on Mastodon (see recent work by Zulli, Liu, and Gehl 2020), Galaxy3 and 8Kun’s ‘.onion’ via Tor. The aim here is to gauge the nature of public/social commentary, reaction and creative expression within the digital social spaces of the dark web.

Be it ‘lurking’ or actively posting comments, photographs, re-posting, creating personal sites or social pages, or uploading fan-fiction/art/vids among other subgenres, my prediction was that I would find the valuable opportunities taken by users for shaping and engaging with public opinion. With reference to Kozinets (2020), a netnographic method (online ethnography) and immersion in the users’ world through online spaces was drawn upon to specifically ask questions of: (1) how the selected dark social spaces have been engaged with by users; (2) how users share their experiences, and; (3) the nature of the creative practices or shared stories that might emerge as a result. In a focused cultural analysis of dark social spaces that brings to the surface identity politics and the wider social struggles in which a number might feel themselves to have a stake, this article explores the contested interpretations of ‘dark’ which are made salient. This ‘dark social’ study involved experiencing through observing, reading, viewing content and relevant posts (including the original and those re-posted) (ethics approval HAE-16-001). The focus was predominantly on the text as well as the many cases of emotive imagery that users felt connected to including photographic, audio and video material.

A limitation associated with the dataset is that of the hundreds of pages checked and analysed manually only 40 were used in detail because a number were in languages other than English and consequently removed. This is a cultural bias to be addressed in future studies for greater representation from international users and their communities.

A study in dark social practices via Mastodon, Galaxy3 and 8Kun

Mastodon

Located in the Fediverse is Mastodon, which is a German-born microblogging social network launched in October 2016 whereupon users ‘toot’ (and a step further is the ‘sticky toot’ or pinned post), as opposed to ‘tweet’. The layout is akin to Twitter (in late 2020). Each user has a count of Followers and the number they themselves are Following. While the site activates anonymous communications there might still linger some anxiety that size does matter. Site statistics or ‘server stats’ are detailed for account holders as are ‘Trending Now’ topics using hashtags, for example #fediverse or #books. Members can ‘Explore Radical Town’ based on their interests or sign up to join independent groups or ‘instances’ featuring representational images of each and filtered by topics from food, music, gaming, fandom, adult content and others. In one fan site, a user asserted that they were there because they were curious about how others were responding to an alternative-music star’s recent death and had the platform recommended to them by other fans. For another user they had moved on from Tumblr since the 2018 restriction of ‘explicit’ images – seen by a number as crucial aspects of community building and self-expression – with an ensuing loss of their freedom of expression on that site. However, the darkly posted digital paratexts from visual image forms and accompanying creative writing that featured within the communications technologies interrupted the present and fertilized the immediate contemporary experience of dark social uses and practices for these fans while acting as a ‘counterpolitics of visibility’ (Mondin 2017, 288). What these examples do is present characterizations of the site that are indicative of user motives for engaging therein.

Users can sort their choices by language, which is practical because not all groups use English. Not everyone has the same interests or share the same opinions. Because users are diverse there have been calls to ‘defederate’ some servers’ content from reaching the network. Such calls to sanction some users raises interesting rhetorical questions about ‘what is reasonable content’. The conversation here is balanced between a voluntary loss of negative liberty or freedom from (freedom from unwanted information or influence) and an increase in positive liberty or freedom to (to read or say anything). Freedom from surveillance and interference can be read as a form of negative liberty in this example. What became apparent through this research of the dark discussions that accompany an image around a particular topic is that while users see the same text/footage/image each reads them in slightly different ways. For some, an image brought up long forgotten memories that they then shared, while the same image was a cause of frustration for others. By way of creative extension, the digital space was conferring the means for many to re-create the ‘conversation’ – be it with regard to politics, art to technology. In sum, the characterization of Mastodon brings into relief important insights for the way new spaces for connection and communications are being used.

Galaxy3

Devoid of slick visual communication is the functional Galaxy3⁵ over Tor that pitched itself as ‘a social media platform for free speech’ but with fairly heavy content moderation including offending links being removed and the right to ‘delete any account at anytime’. Specific examples of rules include no pornography or gore being permitted; no images of children of any form; no commercial trade (including markets or services especially activities that might be illegal and users are warned not to solicit other members into doing anything criminal), and; there is no cyber-begging allowed. This does not stop some trying with one user seeking the drug Teva-Fentanyl (opioids used to treat severe pain) to which another user overtly replies with a reminder that members are not allowed to make such requests for banned substances nor draw others to engage in illegal behaviour on the site.

Users can read from ‘the wire’, a thread of conversations or choose from open groups (click a link to join) and closed groups (click to ‘request membership’). Galaxy3 groups are listed either alphabetically, by popularity or by Featured Groups including ‘Food and Drinks’ with 83 active members that seemingly compete for the best recipes, without images, but assurances that each was delicious upon making and nutritious (reading the ingredients I had no reason to doubt them and was pleasantly surprised when inspired to try to recreate some when flat out of new meal ideas). At the time of writing the theme seemed to be chilli (‘Competition Chilli’, ‘Chile Colorado’) with chicken featuring predominantly. Without doubt there might be covert code words used that act to alert site moderators to inappropriate content that would lead them to block an offender. This could be read as a means to moderate the site by stealth. But, posts can still be read and appreciated at face value affording conversations in this virtual environment. One member’s share of a proposed KFC secret herbs recipe became a learned discussion, without flaming or negative comments, about whether one can actually be ‘allergic’ to MSG (monosodium glutamate). The representative conversation by way of example acting here to demonstrate how individuals converge and form communities but are equally free to diverge.

Other groups in Galaxy3 include Heavy Metal fans (<\m/METAL FANS\m/> (18 members at the time of writing) whose own rules include: ‘1. Be nice to people 2. Code good dude: P and 3. Use good encryption and privacy services and tell others to do the same’–to which one user commented ‘does “hello world” count as good code?’. For its part, Raven’s Room (179 active members at the time of writing) was ‘opened for people who have just started wandering around Darknet to find and chat with each other and find solutions quickly if they have any problems’. Some questions, along the lines of ‘is it true that you can buy all sorts of illegal goods on the darkweb’ seemed likely to lead to such posters being flamed, or simply being excluded from the group and its forum. Instead, a number have been sent links that once clicked included the picture of a gorilla rudely giving ‘the finger’ and the like. This act can be read as a rhetorical device of meme culture being morphed into refusal and social regulation. Other questions/requests were related to trouble shooting advice for navigation in the space that were mostly responded to in a speedy manner in useful ways (with instructions or links). In brief, my time spent in this space unearthed actions similarly read and felt in Mastodon and Galaxy3 as being by and for communities of like-minded others that are finding (and making) a ‘home’ in this alternate space.

8Kun

Recently relaunched in November 2019 is 8Kun⁶ (previously 8Chan which went offline in August the same year) where visitors are invited to ‘Speak freely–legally’ with the caveat (in red text in the banner) that ‘On 8Kun, boards and posts are user-created and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the 8kun Administration’, but content in violation of US laws will be removed and the poster banned. At the time of writing, the site reported that there were some 54, 612, 960 posts made on active boards since 15, October 2019. Indeed, many sites market themselves by flagging the number of users they have (albeit that it is not possible to get completely accurate user numbers on hidden sites given that people split identities and usually hold more than one as an Operational Security practice). The more users there are, the more effective the system overall and thus worth promoting for their integral purpose. And, despite dark social spaces seemingly being minority players for now in comparison to the large number of subscribers for the mainstream sites, there is a sense that change is taking place as others become dissatisfied with the unhidden/exposed nature of ‘clear’ web of commercial, accessible but surveilled options. One user that identified as an international researcher living abroad stated that they had ‘stopped posting on [another social media site] for fear of how their political views on Covid19 management would be perceived and acted upon by authorities in their home country’ (the statement is paraphrased here from the original to maintain the anonymity of the user). They stated that they found the forum to facilitate their open communication thus affording civic participation otherwise truncated. Others offered the same user technical support and guidance for up-to-date data sources on their research topic. Away from imperatives of surveillance capitalism described by Zuboff and others, one finds the tone of interactions adding to the sense that these are overarchingly compassionate users that care about their communities. At the same time, user engagement in dark social spaces is increasingly becoming normalized. In these places beyond ‘social media’ (Boccia Artieri, Brilli, and Zurovac 2021), exist communities of care. Here, each might exist even for the briefest moment in time or be ongoing for years. The shared purposes, interests and goals are constitutive of what is distinctive about them such that they afford flourishing as individuals therein find much needed advice, support or just a place to ‘be’ (themselves).

Summary and discussion of the dark

Despite everything seemingly set to the contrary in terms of standard remunerative business models, the emergence of dark social sites would seem to cater to, or leverage off, users’ perceived need to move away from established, techno-driven cognitive capitalism. In recognition of consumer sentiments around digital privacy, Apple for its part, offers users App Tracking Transparency in its latest update of its operating system (iOS 14.5) meaning that other companies’ apps and websites such as Facebook will also need to ask permission to collect personal data first. Rising from consumer sentiment and expectations is the apparent emphasis on communications models that emphasize the convergence between compassion, identity and technology.

Trust is still an issue on sites such as 8Kun, however, for the number that have gone dark in their social networking. For sites that have a reputation in the popular press for remaining ‘hidden’ there is increasing promotion of their own popularity to potential members as well as functionality that would allow for users speaking different languages to join. For other content from social/interest groups to markets, keen users would be guided to dark.fail⁷ with its overarching philosophy of providing users with embedded URLs that are verified by PGP (a random symmetric-key cryptography each browsing session).

Reflectively navigating through the sites noted above my personal memories were revived of days taking a statistics course over summer; a time when my then home institution first went ‘online’. I opened Netscape browser and had a private moment thinking ‘okay, what do I look for’. I was a ‘noob’ just as I read now that others are shining brightly and seeking shortcuts or ‘sauce’ (a term used for information and/or help navigating the dark web and deep web). A leap forward in time finds a new generation feeling the same keen interest in what’s next. Indicative comments from users:

A:

I really like the vibe of Tor web, but like I did when I used the internet for the first time. I really don’t know what to do.

B:

I did try it for a while to actually find out what’s happening there, but I found it too confusing and I don’t I didn’t really know at what point it was it was very it was very intimidating for me when I first joined and I didn’t know what’s out there, so I kind of stopped.

C:

Thanks for your help ‘X’ to solve that problem; worked a treat!

My sense of the socially dark spaces is that what is required for navigation and participation is time. One needs to be patient because pages requested from Tor take longer to load or just time-out. In addition is the need to read for information and upskill where necessary.

Dark social spaces for resistance, emancipation and individual becoming

A cross sectional view of the sedimentary layers of knowledge about online communications finds parallels in relation to the contemporary desire for social-networking options now in the face of current criticism over the commercial sites harvesting data and limiting functionality within walled gardens. Intimacy is used here to locate it at the intersection of techno-social and institutional relations. The dark web might not seem the most obvious site for consideration of the intimate where many ethnographic approaches speak to larger structural conditions and focus on dark practices from the perspective of being illegal and/or immoral. The aim here is to showcase dark sites (variously interpreted) of social connection that speaks, on the one hand, to the intimate worlds of subjects located in the virtual spaces while remaining attuned, on the other, to other regulatory frames that undergird these worlds. As demonstrated, the sites viewed (and used) do have ‘rules’ ‘and norms that shine a light on goals that might be related more to liberty as opposed to complete anarchy.

During my own hidden years exploring in these spaces, I have felt keenly that there is a gazing elite. In this context the notion relates to the techno-related narratives (usually in regard to hacking and content creation/sharing) that require a level of skill of a complexity (a particular language) that might act to exclude a number. Moreover, as the examples above underscore, while it is possible to create an online community that can interface with the rest of the Fediverse and other networks–one/s that operates according to particular local rules, guidelines, modes of organization, and ideology – problematic is that as each community has its own set of rules, federated/virtual Feudalism can result. This is where each is a kind of dictatorship unto itself. A call is raised then for more liberal democratic systems. As this happens, each virtual community is able to define itself not only through its own memetic language, interests, and scope, but also in relation to the other, via difference. Moreover, there is an algorithmic language in this mediating culture that sits between technology and users. In other words, digital communities each have their own set of [ab]norms, goals, regulations and controls that not all have the time, willingness or the capacity to learn and follow.

Conclusion

This article grew out of four broad socio-technical concerns connected to the big social media services that have helped increase the tendency for users to actively seek alternative spaces: (1) digital privacy and agency; (2) monetarization of user data; (3) negative effects and affects associated with social media engagement, and; (4) increased integration of data-gathering devices in everyday life. In parallel with Zuboff (2019), Braidotti (2019) insists with reference to the practices of cognitive capitalism within the knowledge economies of First and Second World developing nations that the corporate social media companies operate within, that ‘if we are all part of a system that capitalizes on all that lives, we (remember to position “we” differently in different perspectives) need to work from within to make differences that actually matter’. This lucid statement is passionate without being untenable and speaks truth to power that many are dissatisfied with being quantified, studied, capitalized upon and farmed. In the context of communications be it hidden or otherwise remains the challenges for protecting people who are vulnerable, those unable to give informed consent online for a range of reason from literacy levels to being underage, people with a cognitive impairment, or mental illness, and the care for whom is magnified in this era of the ‘datalogical turn’ (Clough 2018). Putting users at the centre of the thinking for how and why the dark social cultures are working requires more attention to be directed towards social issues such as of specific cultural groups.

There are also affirmative opportunities to go beyond one’s echo chamber and there is plurality and difference that can only grow. Additionally, in the process of decentralizing content, advertizers are deprived of a controlled and quantifiable audience. But John Perry Barlow (n.d., np) once predicted:

… really it doesn’t matter. We are going there whether we want to or not. In five years, everyone who is reading these words will have an email address, other than the determined Luddites who also eschew the telephone and electricity.

While far beyond email now, these words have held true and there is now a new social re-engineering underway presently in emerging alternate systems for communication and social connection.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toija Cinque

Toija Cinque is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at Deakin University, Australia. Cinque’s research encompasses audience and reception studies, data cultures, studies in radical and participatory transparency/surveillance practices and dark social studies. Published and In Press books include Changing Media Landscapes: Visual Networking (Oxford University Press, 2015); Communication, Digital Media and Everyday Life, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2015, co-authored); New Media in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2012, co-authored), Materializing Digital Futures: Touch, Movement, Sound and Vision (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2022) and Digital Media Ecologies (Routledge, forthcoming 2024).

Notes

1. For a nuanced evaluation see Coëgnarts, M and Kravanja, P. (2014). ‘On the Embodiment of Binary Oppositions in Cinema: The containment Schema in John Ford’s Westerns’, Image [&] Narrative, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp 30-43.

2. For an alphabetical list and links <https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_advertising_technology_companies>

3. For definitions, to find and/or host a CryptoParty see: https://www.cryptoparty.in

4. https://socialhome.readthedocs.io/en/latest/running.html#running

5. galaxy3bhpzxecbywoa2j4tg4muepnhfalars4cce3fcx46qlc6t3id.onion [Tor]

6. jthnx5wyvjvzsxtu.onion [Tor]

7. Darkfailllnkf4vf.onion