Political Economy and Facebook Privacy

Political Economy and Facebook Privacy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJXOavGwAW8&feature=player_embedded

Quiz Question #1 “We should therefore go beyond a bourgeois notion of Facebook and try to advance a _______concept of privacy that aims at strengthening the protection of consumers and citizens from corporate surveillance and other forms of domination” (Fuchs, p. 141). Socialist Smart Secret Financial

Quiz Question #2 • What does Fuchs say that Facebook relies on to stay in business? • Mark Zuckerberg • Privacy policy • Unpaid labor of Facebook users • Government regulations

Quiz Question #3 ________ describes the increasingly blurred line between producers and consumers. Surplus value Internet users Prosumers Conducers

Quiz Question #4 “direct participation of citizens in the regulation of the key institutions of society, including the workplace and local community” is a key feature of what notion? Freedom Transparency Capitalism Participatory democracy

Privacy

Liberal conception of privacy Financial privacy “The anonymity of wealth, high incomes, and profits makes income and wealth gaps between the rich and the poor invisible and thereby ideologically helps legitimate and uphold these gaps.” (Fuchs, p.140)

Socialist conception of privacy Contextual privacy Privacy needs to protect consumers and workers from company control… but corporate interests and power should be made visible.

Has the internet become “participatory”? “Social networking sites and other internet platforms need to be controlled by the users themselves and organized within the framework of a participatory economy in order to be sensitive to the economic privacy of users” (Fuchs, p. 149).

FB invests $ to create free platform and hires employees to run it Users populate with data FB sells information to advertising clients Targeted ads What are the commodities here? http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

Facebook studies so far: Individual responsibility vs. corporate exploitation EULA’s and neoliberalism Did you know this? How transparent is Instagram’s new TOS?

So…what can we do? Opt-in privacy policies Alternative internet platforms Negotiate terms of service? Petitions, protests, and lobbying Opt-Out

Privacy Watchdogs – increase transparency

Do Not Track Online Act of 2011 Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights – early 2012

Other social media sites?

Group Work Define your term or phrase in your own words Explain how it is used in the article, or how it relates to Fuchs’ arguments Think of two examples of this concept (can be from your experience or not – real or hypothetical) Prosumer Transparency Surveillance Playbor Exploitation “Liberal privacy values” Contextual privacy Participatory democracy

Political Economy and Facebook Privacy