One of our core themes here at DP:
Our social life-world has become increasingly transformed into a vast data mine, an extractive and highly lucrative corporate bonanza in which the “mine” is our own subjectivity, together with whatever is left of our communities and collective identities.
The behavioral psychology lab offers the dominant social organizational model, with strip miners such as Facebook, Alphabet and Twitter at one end of the spectrum, and more focused drill-hole miners at the other end, such as black sites and Guantanamo Bay.
Full disclosure: DP has no personal experience of Facebook, having declined to “connect” in a way that so obviously destroyed personal privacy and web autonomy. We submit for your consideration a montage of quotes and captioned images, beginning with a charming IM thread from the Prime Digger of the FB Data Mine, twitching his thumbs in a rare moment of brutal honesty, dating from 2004:
TWO TEENS WITH A DAY’S WORTH OF “LIKES” AND CLICK-THRUS
More recently, we have that exemplary “networker” Steve Bannon sifting tailings from the Cambridge Analytica strip mine:
FACEBOOK USER ENHANCING THEIR SHADOW PROFILE
Not to worry, because “Zuck” is sorry for stealing your subjectivity after tricking you into commodifying every quirk and foible from your most private self:
TWO UNPAID MINERS PUSH AND PULL THEIR PRIVATE IDENTITY TO MARKET
Gentle DP reader: We suggest that you treat Mr. Zuckerberg’s disingenuous apology with a degree of skepticism, and STRIKE the FB Data Mine until you are amply compensated for the sale of your self, over and over again.
IT WOULD BE SO COOL TO PAY MY MINERS NOTHING WHILE CONVINCING THEM THEY ARE THE ONES GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
DELETE FACEBOOK STRIKE THE MINE DELETE FACEBOOK
Desperado Philosophy 