Meta: beyond the fees and advertisement

It is 10/11/2023 and as I try to log in to Facebook, I see that they have decided to play along with the rules of European data protection, as evidenced by the picture below:

But here is the problem about the law and other institutions that we like to imagine as all-powerful, fair, and protective: they often avoid philosophical concerns such as autonomy, free-will and concepts of Self. In doing so, sticking exclusively to Materialist thought, they are bound to fall short of the protection promised its people.

It is not understood, it would seem, how one would protect autonomy, as Couldry (1) pointed out. This shows when Meta/Facebook attempts to lay down a victimized discourse, as if it was hurt by socially-minded, albeit limited, laws: “You need to make a choice to continue using Facebook”, or “listen, we are so sorry about this, we wish we could just keep providing you with our services, but the evil Europeans won’t let us, so we are being forced to charge you!”. One can almost imagine a Zuckerberg angrily hitting his desk and screaming “those European Communists!”, or so Meta would like us to believe: in truth they probably stand to either gain as much as they already do, if not more. As for autonomy? The threat remains, as I try to explain below.

First, let’s look at option “b”, and its phrasing of how your data will be used for ads, also known as “your current experience”. It’s written in words that all-but shine in happy glitter: “discover”, as if you’ll be thrown into an amazing adventure of “products and brands” that are deliciously “personalized”. Yes, my friends! Only the best for you! You’ll have an experience that only you get and no one else, because Meta cares that you know how special and unique you are. Not at all because it wants to maximize the chances of you making a purchase through the website, no nothing so crass.

Of course: it is worse than crass, it’s good old consumerism, but faster. It is the result of the collection of your own data being sold to third-parties, based upon fast-paced algorithm feedback (A.I.) that intends to learn consumer behaviour, thus maximizing the chances of purchases. It is more than sales, it is the capture of the shadow of your essence, it is an act of violence against your freedom.

It’s not so much that the consumer is shown a series of options of some item they are interested in and have real intention to buy. It is rather that before they have formulated even the will to make a purchase of anything, items of their interested are presented so that one might be tempted to buy that which they otherwise would not.

Imagine you go to the mall, because first you decided to buy a pan, inside the mall you are presented a variety of other things, and all store owners expect you to deviate from your course and buy something more than just that pan. But you see, you had to go to the mall, and even more important, the stores don’t know what you are interested in or not, if the items on display don’t get your attention you will likely not go inside the other stores, instead you will focus on that hypothetical pan, which you will compare to other pans (note that I’m ignoring market techniques to convince the consumer to make purchases, in order to give a simple example of how things would work in a truly liberal capitalist economy where the free-market reigns, which has never been the case).

What the advertisement system in social media does, instead, is move the whole mall to your every waking moment, and all the stores have a pretty good guess of what they can sell you and what you are more likely to buy. You now live in the mall, and every move you make is plagued by store clerks screaming that you should come and check this brand-new cat-house (since they know you got a cat), a selection of pans, some retro items from your childhood, bedding items, anything at all that the AI has concluded you are likely to buy. As you can see, the pan is the only item you were really going to buy, but now you are bombarded by other goods that, before Meta showed you, you had barely given a thought about, if that.

Personalized means they abused your trust, they invaded your privacy, they learned all they could from you and now they will take advantage of you. Let’s move on to the novelty, the fees for Facebook!

The phrasing there is quite clear: pay and “your info won’t be used for ads”. But see, there’s no deal that includes data not being collected at all, or if so, being kept in a manner where the user holds dominance over their own data. There’re no deals regarding how this data, that will be collected regardless, will be handled.

The monetization of the Self does not end at a matter of advertisement, I’d even risk and say that ads, despite having once played a large role in the social media industry, have for long not been the biggest concern of users. Of course, it might be that they pay for a good chunk of the structure itself of Meta, but as far as the protection of the law goes, there is a bigger problem, and it goes back to the matter that laws, as we understand them, seem ill-equipped to handle immaterial and more philosophical concepts, like autonomy and free-will. For it is in this field that data is used in a fashion that, at least according to the narrative presented, Meta makes no promises to stop. It’s here, and not in advertisement, that one will find those issues of socio-political polarization, emotional manipulation (never forget the unethical experiment to test massive-scale emotional contagion) (2) (Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014) echo chambers, post-truth discourses, among other problems.

Furthermore, by using a discourse of victimization, and shuffling the options as presented, Meta tries to obfuscate the data usage beyond consumerism: if in one hand they reveal part of the money-making dynamics, with another they enhance the invisibility of their other, more pervasive, and more perverse, manipulations.

It is quite important that people understand the matter of data, no matter their position in the political spectrum: imagine you have a pot of gold (data), someone comes and takes the gold, they do so after you sign some documents you didn’t really understand. In exchange for the gold, you get to watch the pretty excavators (social media itself) that are taking the gold; not much of a good deal, is it? We’re basically paying the thief to come and still our most personal property and calling the chance to see them in action a “service”! All the while being convinced to help the thief. And this is not even to speak of the impact on younger generations that are born into such technologies.

This is the constant condition of social media as it exists today, never mind any monthly fees. Pay if you will, but know that you are still the product, only you’ll be paying twice: with your hard-earned money and with your data.

The author is a PhD Student in Sociology at HÍ, researching the dynamics of technologies of the 4th Industrial revolution (such as AI) to the social fabric of Iceland.