This was an interesting read. I have to admit it mostly washed over me like a rainstorm given my lack of background on the subject.
That being said I think I understood enough to like to see more analysis of how the companies that depend on data extraction (Google,Facebook) themselves depend on actually productive companies. They are obligate parasites.
Google (for example) collects user data so it can sell targeted ads to companies that want to sell products to the users whose data was collected by Google. In the absence of these productive companies Google’s data is worthless. And similarly Google’s profit is directly tied to those upstream companies exploitation of their labor.
It seems like most analyses stop at the step where Google is making money from data and don’t really get into how that data is only valuable in the context of consumer goods, which are often produced by classically extractive or exploitative companies. The article’s “userism“ can’t exist in a vacuum.
That is also separate from companies that produce digital products for consumption and then profit off the “rent” of the intellectual property rights to those products.
But products themselves are being dematerialised also. I.e. looking at my kids who constantly watch “gamers” and dream of getting the next battlepass. And games themselves are about data and IP etc.
That being said I think I understood enough to like to see more analysis of how the companies that depend on data extraction (Google,Facebook) themselves depend on actually productive companies. They are obligate parasites.
Google (for example) collects user data so it can sell targeted ads to companies that want to sell products to the users whose data was collected by Google. In the absence of these productive companies Google’s data is worthless. And similarly Google’s profit is directly tied to those upstream companies exploitation of their labor.
It seems like most analyses stop at the step where Google is making money from data and don’t really get into how that data is only valuable in the context of consumer goods, which are often produced by classically extractive or exploitative companies. The article’s “userism“ can’t exist in a vacuum.
That is also separate from companies that produce digital products for consumption and then profit off the “rent” of the intellectual property rights to those products.