That’s a pretty serious criticism, so I would like to know how that plays out.
All too often, I see some social critique of a broad, complex problem that finds the roots of the problem in capitalism and class, then throws its hands up, regarding this as an insoluble problem; the critique ends up arguing for more conservative solutions than more naive approaches that completely ignore capitalism entirely. E.g., “Well, the main reason for unequal outcomes in education is class inequality, but there’s nothing we can do about that, so we’ll just settle for more standardized testing and for attacking teachers’ unions, which will actually make everything worse, but at least we’ll be doing something.”
One of the things that makes me uncomfortable about social media is that not only are they increasingly commercialized, but that there’s a heavily propagandistic aspect to it – not propaganda for nationalism, but for capitalism itself. My impression is that teens are aware of this to a significant extent, are cynical about it and joke about it often, but also underestimate how much they’re being exploited and manipulated (as does nearly everyone). My stepson takes the attitude that whatever they’re getting out of him is a fair exchange for what he gets for free. Yet it should be obvious that most social media outlets depend entirely upon network effects and the creativity of the users, especially the younger users.
My job involves doing support work for some important communication tools owned by a giant corporation (with many lawyers), and I keep urging friends and family to use open source, free alternatives – but, I’m bashing my head against network effects and the endless flood of marketing.
