WHERE’S THE LIKE BUTTON?

One of our main 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 and Twitter at one end of the spectrum, and more specific tunnel miners at the other end, such as the torture lab at Guantanamo Bay.

The recent study conducted by Facebook in conjunction with researchers from Cornell University and The University of California, makes no bones about the nature of the ore extracted from the data mine:

As discussed at length inside James Grimmelmann’s consistently excellent Laboratorium:

In an almost unbearably mealy-mouthed and sniveling “apology” that belies not only the absence of any ethical compass but also a dregs pit in the neuronal space where one might hope to find something resembling philosophy, author Adam Kramer writes:

Mr. Kramer does not have the guts to tell it like it is: YO PEOPLE THIS IS WHAT WE DO. EVERY DAY AND NIGHT. 24/7. GET OVER IT! Read his last sentence again: even the “reaction to this paper” will swiftly become absorbed within the behavioral algorithm. Your behavior; your algorithm. Forever, for however long is left to us.

Dear DP readers, we know that the sand is spilling quickly from the hourglass of the anthropocene. Yet in this time of massive crisis in every domain in which our species does the dirty to every other living thing over and over and then all over again, there are small yet important ways we can all resist:

Friendica and Diaspora offer decentralized and user-controlled alternatives networking possibilities that remain outside the data mine. As for WordPress, though not perfect, it is certainly far superior to Facebook, and DP has discovered a variety of ways to strengthen privacy, and minimize participation within the strip mine. We are happy to share our methods with anyone who contacts us.

PORTRAIT OF A FACEBOOK USER