What’s the different between mainstream social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook and Steemit…if we disregard the crypto, then not that much!
‘A critical analysis of the political economy of mainstream social media and a comparison to Steemit?
Very much a ‘first thought’s’/ streem of consciousness critical analysis…
Corporate Control of mainstream social media…
In a capitalist system, economy and society tend to be organised so that the capitalist class can maximise the returns on their investments (according to David Harvey, an absolute minimum of 3% per annum is required to keep people investing, below that, people don’t invest because it’s not worth the risk.). In other words, society is shaped in the interests of the extreme minority of people, or these days huge corporations who own capital (defined as money or assets which are free to be invested for profit, rather than savings or ‘assets’ you need for your own existence).
In terms of mainstream social media such as Facebook and YouTube, we see this logic writ large. While the platforms are free to use, which seems generous, these companies get two very profitable resources in return:
Firstly, they get free content, which drives consumers of that content to the platform, where they can be subjected to advertising (messages trying to convince them to buy shit they don’t need)
Secondly, and arguably more importantly, the companies get huge amounts of data about what kinds of people like what, and how all of these things correlate, so adverts can be targeted specifically to the people most likely to be susceptible to them.
In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky (talking about independent media channels) pointed out that as far as media corporations are concerned, the ‘primary relationship’ is between the media and advertisers – that is, the primary concern of media companies is to make as much profit as possible selling advertising space to typically other large companies – the ‘content’ that the media companies produce or pay for is merely a means of drawing in viewers that are going to be subjected to said advertising. Fast Forward to today, and the ‘great coup’ that companies such as Facebook and YouTube have managed to engineer, is that they don’t even have to produce any content themselves: thousands of desperate people are falling over themselves to churn out content and be the next Zoella.
Of course, if someone becomes the next Zoella, they get a share of that advertising revenue (the model has, of course, evolved), but it remains a relatively small handful of content producers who make sufficient money to actually earn a decent living, and what is increasingly happening is that it is Corporations who are churning out the content (think music videos), so Corporations who will benefit from the advertising revenue.
The social class structure of mainstream social media…..?
I’d hypthosesise that the ‘class structure of social media looks something like this:
(0.001%) At the top we have massive Corporate interests (and at the top of this some very rich individuals) such as Zuckerberg), obviously the CEOs of the tech companies themselves, BUT ALSO the entertainment companies who benefit from being among the top beneficiaries in terms of views and share of advertising revenues, and of course the companies benefitting from having an audience who are regularly exposed to adverts.
(0.01%) Next we have a relatively small ‘super-celebrity’ class – the millionaire lifestyle vloggers. I’m not sure how many of these there are, but I’m sure we’d collectively struggle to get to more than 1000 YouTube millionaires, for example,
(1%?) Further down we have what I like to call your ‘small-circle’ local users of social media – your small entrepreneurs who use social media as part of their ‘service-provision’ and earn a decent living or second income through their day to day grind: everyone from fitness gurus to DIY experts, I’m also one of these through revisesociology.
(10%) The triers/ very low-income earners – the wannabes who upload shed loads of content but just make a few squid here and there.
(90%) And then we’ve got ‘everyone else’ – the regular prosumers, who earn nothing on social media, but just upload content, engage, like, give away their data for free and just soak up the advertising.
NB – these figures are just my best guesses atm, something I’m going to be exploring at some point in the future.
Mainstream social media and ‘the extraction of surplus value’
To anyone who knows anything about social media, the whole Cambridge Analytica/ Facebook affair wasn’t news as such – this is just the way Facebook, and other data companies work - people post content on social media/ search/ purchase goods, creating a huge amount of ‘big data’ and Facebook and sell this data to companies who analyse it and then use this analysis to manipulate people into purchasing more products, or voting in particular ways through the use of targeted advertising campaigns.
In some senses this is Facebook etc. ‘extracting value’ from users’ data – at least it sort of is…. Although it’s a little more complex – it’s not straightforwardly about paying workers less than the value of the goods they produce – it’s about not paying them for the data they produce that’s then sold (at a profit obviously) and// or used to target advertising which convinces a certain percentage of people to part with yet more money… when you consider that something like 30% of Amazon’s sales are derived through its ‘recommendations’, based on big data analysis, this gives you some idea of the scale of this!
The ideological functions of mainstream social media…
The alleged role which social media played in manipulating voting behaviour in both the Trump election and the Brexit vote are obvious examples of the potential power of these platforms to make people think differently.
However, the most innocuous ideological function is simply that the most of the content of mainstream social media is actually about consumerism and entertainment – being part of these platforms subtly reinforces the idea that all you have to do the ‘engage’ in society is to consume.
The potential of social media to bring about social change?
Well clearly these platforms have played a role in facilitating social change – Momentum used social media very effectively to boost Labour’s standing in the last election, for example.
There is also some discussion of ‘political alternatives’, however, when you look at the extremes (the alt right for example) there is censorship, YouTube is becoming notorious for this (although this could get more extreme - as with China’s new social media platform which links what you ‘like’ to your credit rating.
Social media as echo-chamber also limits the social-change potential.
As a final word on this, I’d say the final nail in the coffin of this argument is simply the problem of visibility – political ideas and radical alternatives just aren’t as appealing as Little Mix.
So how does mainstream media compare to Steemt?
Lack of Corporate Control of Steemit?
There is no ‘involuntary advertising on Steemit’ so it appears to be a social space where ‘ordinary people’ vote for the content and thus the primary relationships are between the producers and the consumers of that content.
Thus, there is no one ‘selling’ an audience to an advertiser and no manipulation to consume ‘shit that you don’t need’, thus at one level this is a space free of control by large corporations.
HOWEVER, there is absolutely nothing preventing Corporations from setting up accounts and staring up prom-blogs for their products, and for all we know this is already happening.
Class inequality on Steemit
I think it’s fair to say that, despite all of the talk about ‘content driving the value of steemit’ and the ‘sweat-equity’ principle – by far the easiest way to earn money is to invest £100K in steem and just upvote your own shit-posts – this is because the value of steemit seems to be largely driven by speculative investments into steem – the price fluctuations follow Bitcoin almost perfectly.
Just as with YouTube, a tiny handful have made an absolute killing, a few hundred people (early adopters) now make a reasonable living on here full time, and a few thousand more of us (me included) make an OK second income, then the rest are basically doomed to be forever bottom feeders as far as I can see!
The class structure on steemit: as percentage of active users according to @arcange’s latest data:
Ned – 0.001% and possibly another couple of other people who, let’s face it, controls the big account and can shut anyone down if they choose to.
Whales – 0.06% - the already millionaires (mostly) – already part of the established capitalist class in mainstream society. Mostly no different to the Corporate class running mainstream social media IMO.
Orcas – 0.4% - most of these are probably also very wealthy outside of the steem eco system and able to make a very comfortable living off the steem eco-system
Dolphins – 2% - for the most part able to ‘work it’ and make a reasonable living
Red Fish- 12% - in a position to make a reasonable second income, or if they really ‘work it’ a reasonable primary income.
Everyone else – just over 85% - nowhere, although with a small chance to make some cash if they write something of quality and find a suitable ‘patron’.
Conclusion – my version above is of ‘ACTIVE USERS’ so it seems better than mainstream social media. In reality, if you included all of the inactive accounts, it’d probably look remarkably similar…
The Extraction of Surplus Value on Steemit
While there is no direct exploitation of any one person by another on steemit… there is a kind of extraction of surplus value from all of us in a tragedy of the commons sort of way…. Because there is a collective reward pool, and the amount we all get for our posts and curation is partly determined by the value of our vote, which is determined mainly by the amount of fiat we have invested into the platform.
The well-known Donkey scenario shows you the damage one rogue millionaire can do by upvoting their own shit-posts and ‘raping the reward pool’ which lessons the amount left for the rest of us… so they are sort of extracting surplus value from us, at least the bit we’ve put in with our intellectual sweat.
And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can prevent a rouge billionaire coming in and doing the same and taking 70%, let alone 7%.
The ideological functions of steemit…?
Well, TBH this is where steemit does much better than mainstream social media – the anonymity and lack of centralised control mean effective lack of censorship, so if that’s your thang, fair play, top marks Steemit.
The trending pages get a lot of flak and rightly so because there is a lot of paid-for shit that gets to the top, but you are much more likely to see radical political ideas trending.
HOWEVER, this might just be for now, if mass adoption occurs, steemit’s probably going to become just another ‘pro-consumption’ general interest sight’ – in the same way as mainstream social media, and there is nothing stopping Corporations from hijacking it.
Probably more worrying than this is the built in idea that ‘market freedoms are sacred’ – the more money you have to invest, the more power you have, and there’s nothing even 1000 poor people can do against a rogue billionaire determined to cripple them. But there seems to be a tendency on here conflate economic freedom with all other types of freedom, when in reality, the economic freedoms of the very few wealthy people often to enormous harms to the majority – as with Donkey.
What is the potential of steemit to bring about radical social change….
Well this depends on the block chain and whether fiat collapses. If I turn my cynical dial up to maximum, ATM all I see is a crypto-currency whose value depends largely on fiat-speculation and a platform that helps the rich get richer and a handful of poor people scrape a second income, and acts as an echo chamber in the same way as Facebook and Twitter do.
There’s a little bit of nice community stuff going on too, of course, but it’s very fringe.
Next post: Is it necessary to restrict the power of capital to guarantee the future of Steemit?
NB - As I will say in the hub-post, this is very much a 'back of the fag-packet' flow of consciousness first thoughts on the matter type of post... discussion welcome!