Response to Trebor Sholz’s “Digital Labor”
Hello class, my name is Angeline Henriquez and this post is in response to an excerpt read in class from Trebor Scholz’s Digital Labor. In this fragment Scholz talks about how websites used for social media make their money. He is specifically critical of Facebook, which sells their collection of user data to third party advertisers. He states “We, the user, are sold as the product” for every post and every like. Undeniably, Facebook makes a substantial profit from information that its users once considered private, or thought would only be shared to selected groups or friends online. This then proposes the argument that if there is a profit involved, then the leisure time we spend online could be considered as labor. This is where the line between work and leisure starts getting blurry.
The buying and selling of data turns our online experience into a business transaction but to us, the users, it never really feels like so. One because we don’t get a paycheck for every “like” (although I’m starting to think we should), and two because we are able to do so much creatively online without worrying about being sued every time we reference a franchise or corporation. Scholz makes an example out of the writing and sharing of fanfiction, and how it would not make sense to assume that the user writing it would view it as labor. I believe this is a good point that Scholz makes but I can’t help thinking if ultimately, this distinction should be left up to the writer and user to determine.
