Saved by Talin Koutnouyan
Social Media = Sharecropping? — Regina Anaejionu
Ana Fragoso added
I’d argue that the gist of sharecropping on social media is:
We rent space on platforms we don’t own.
We pay for that space by becoming “the product” whose attention is sold to the highest ads bidder.
Our attention is also being usurped by the makers of the platform and what they’ve programmed their algorithm to show us.
Our data is being collected, stored, and reused without our knowledge or permission (at times).
We are still the workforce that fills the platform with value, ideas, content, and meaning.
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It doesn’t benefit major social media companies (in a modern, capitalistic business sense) to encourage us to do the things that actually help us change the world and grow our businesses, and spread our ideas the way “gold standard” people are.
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In the age of AI—and tons of people competing for attention online, if you are a thought leader with meaningful ideas to share:
• Trying to compete on quantity is actually foolish.
• Trying to compete on quality will weed a few people out, but is clearly not enough because most people I know are already trying that.
• Competing on placement, relevance, and the strategic platform you build for your thought leadership is a much better way to spend your energy.
What’s being concentrated, in other words, is not content but the economic value of content. [The platforms] have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the... See more
Tara McMullin • 'The Creator Economy Is Eating Creative Acts'
In web2, basically anyone who posts any form of content surrenders it to a continuous feedback loop wherein the platform not only owns and controls your data—it also earns a vast majority of the revenue from what you’ve created.
Eileen Isagon Skyers • Dirt: Are we post-platform?
Keely Adler added
In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.
Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrialized farms with lit... See more
Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrialized farms with lit... See more
Sari Azout • Notes on Scale + Quality
Om Malik blog post : "I wonder if this culture of participation was helping build businesses on our collective backs. If we tag, bookmark, or share and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commerical entities, aren't we commoditizing our most valuable asset: time? We become the outsourced workforce, though it is still unclear what ... See more
Anthony Williams • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
sari added
If our primary urge when we go online is to avoid remaining static, why should our content be siloed within the enclosed walls of a proprietary platform?
Eileen Isagon Skyers • Dirt: Are we post-platform?
Keely Adler added
I do think that social media is largely a trap... for users and for brands. It’s purposely built to create insecurity and false proxies, metrics that get people to work for free to support the business model of the social media companies, as opposed to their own goals.
When Wendy’s or Oreo cookies pulls some sort of stunt on a social media platform,... See more
When Wendy’s or Oreo cookies pulls some sort of stunt on a social media platform,... See more
Rachel Karten • What Seth Godin Really Thinks About Social Media
Artisanal software
In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.
Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrial... See more
In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.
Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrial... See more
Patricia Maeda messaged you
Daniel Wentsch and added