“In
social media’s early heyday—the time of Occupy and the Arab Spring—big
tech was heralded in the mainstream as a democratizing force, but it’s
become clear that these commercial platforms aren’t serving the public
good. In fact, these platforms consolidate the worst extremes of
neoliberal ideology. While users are turned into products, the ruling
class becomes increasingly powerful and unaccountable to the people.

Digital
infrastructure offers no true space for dissent when it is privately
owned. Online activism only serves to direct atomized attention to
advertisers. This process mirrors the shift of public wealth to private
hands, whereby what were once shared resources (e.g. libraries) become
data-optimized, privatized operations. Work and life are merged entirely
and solidarity disappears behind corporate smokescreens. Underneath the
technophilic rhetoric of progress lies a race for information,
financial, and labor control that ensures growth is the domain of only
the rich and the few.”

DIS