Resisting Commodification: Subverting the Power of the Global Tech Companies

Maria Bäcke

doi:10.1163/21983534-09010003

Abstract

Abstract In our digitised world, information and communication technologies (ict s) are used everywhere. In schools all over the world the well-known, easy-to-use, and highly affordable Google Education is used, but is this a safe and sustainable solution? A number of services online are free in terms of users not having to pay any money for their usage, but many companies, of which Google is one, instead make their money from the exploitation of what is labelled non-personal user data, Big Data, which is harvested from the users of their free services. This type of data mining or data harvesting can be used for other purposes as well, such as for intelligence reasons, where a foreign power may capitalise on user data from another country, but it may also be to control a country’s own population. Asymmetrical power distribution is inevitable and, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of power and subversion, my aim is to increase the awareness of the non-monetary costs involved in the choice of ict s and highlight ways to shift the inherent hierarchic power. A text analysis, based on policy documents and articles focusing on online privacy, data harvesting and user commodification, studies how legislators, journalists, as well as governmental and other organisations negotiate and sometimes subvert the hierarchic power of the global tech companies in order to protect privacy, integrity and democracy as well as the profit margin of companies. The paper highlights the need for legislation and education, an enhanced ict literacy, in the field.

Highlights

Since Google Education provides a highly affordable solution, many schools all over the world turn to this very well-known, and easy-to-use platform, often with the Google Chromebook included in the package
Little is being heard about the downsides and potential hazards of data harvesting/data mining or user commodification
Articles communicating and commenting on these regulative frameworks add to this backdrop. Using keywords such as “Google” + “user data,” “Google Education” + “user data,” “Facebook” + user data,” “data mining,” “data harvesting,” and “user commodification” and their equivalents in Swedish, Danish, and German, I searched for academic articles (17) and monographs (8) in the academic databases

Summary

Introduction

We live in an increasingly digitised world and the events during the Covid-19 pandemic, highly relevant at the time of writing, have underlined this further for many people as more and more of us are working from home and/or receive distance education to an even larger extent than previously. In this paper, drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felìx Guattari’s (1986) theories of power and subversion, my aim is to highlight how everyday technical solutions, such as Google’s services and those of Facebook and companies with similar business models, involve non-monetary costs for individual users. The internet does not regulate any type of usage It is a smooth space, to use Gilles Deleuze’s and Felìx Guattari’s concept, but it is a space that can be regulated, striate, and used for control and surveillance, as is the case for some companies and in some more authoritarian countries in the world. In turn, is controlled, hierarchic, regulated, but can become too rigid and too oppressive, according to others Between these poles there is constant negotiation and most social contexts and nation-states with reasonably balanced societies usually hover somewhere in the middle on this scale; there is a balance between (state) regulations and the freedom of the participants/citizens. As authoritarian and liberal thought-structures clash, both sides fight for their interpretation of, and perspective on, digital space

Method

A Brief Outline of this Paper

Findings

Conclusion