Membership versus Surveillance Capitalism
I finally became a Medium member several months ago…after a bit of back & forth deliberation I decided that on principle alone its worth it.
Why would anyone become a member…especially when so much of the great content is available for free. That’s a good question and the answer is complicated but the primary reason is that I am really tired of all up with the Data Pimps/Brokers and their “surveillance capitalism” practices. The more you buy into free services (e.g., Facebook), the more you are directly supporting and validating their practices of using you and your data as their product.
Truthfully, I have always liked Medium. The content has a certain freshness and authenticity…its a bit hard to explain but I certainly feel it. I have been following people and reading content on Medium for quite a while now; I really have not tried to write much myself. I could have easily continued reading the content for free but becoming a member is one conscious step I can take in the opposite direction from the current advertising industry model and the data pimps that support it.
I probably don’t need to explain the term “Data Pimps”…the name is self-explanatory but just to be clear — it is the name I use for all those companies that appear to offer free services (e.g., storage for pictures, emails, basic storage) in exchange for information about you and/or your habits. Facebook and Google are probably the largest companies that fit this bill but there are a number of other companies too. Technically, I believe they are called Data Brokers but the term “broker” is a bit too friendly and largely disenguinuous. Broker sounds as if they are brokering a deal between you and some other entity; a deal in wherein both parties benefit is some way. Uh…no…not so much. They are straight up selling your data and you are not getting anything from the deal.
The Data Pimps…uh…I mean “Brokers”
Generally speaking, the Data Pimps provide a terms of service agreement that usually includes some “murky” indication that your membership info and all other information (tracking, cookies, etc) maybe used for “yada yada yada” to enhance your user experience. In most cases they only produce/provide “free” products. And, of course, as the saying goes “when a company doesn’t sell a product…“You” are the product! Selling your membership demographics and user activity/data is their product; a product they offer to other companies — Advertisers, Marketers, etc. The company’s value is determined by monetization of their monthly active users (MAUs) or some other similiar calculation.
There is no free lunch!
Ok…yes, I know that there is “no free lunch”, “no such thing as free”, “you get what you pay for” and a few other sound bites about “how a buyer should be ware”. In fact, I agree (to a certain extent) that any data they collect while you are using their services is data they own and is “fair game” to be used as they see fit. However, there is a “creepy” underbelly to that statement that even the Data Pimps acknowledge, so much so that they attempt to provide you with “loose” assurances about ways in which that they will not use the information they have collected on you. I can’t say that I honestly believe any such assurances that would be delusional. Bottomline, its pretty safe to assume the “buyer be ware” adage applies to these services. In any case, sound-bites notwithstanding, I have finally reached the point that I’m ready for a new model. I am increasingly underwhelmed by this current model of…”lure your MAUs with free goods/services…gather as much data about your MAUs…and sell to them or sell their data”.
Can’t We Do Better?
This is really a very unimaginative model, it is basically the same model used by the television industry. Admittedly, it has the “new” wrinkle that includes selling/pimping-out user data instead of just having a closed community to market goods to, but thats not much of a plus up. The internet is arguably the greatest democratizing, catalyzing invention ever…nothing else comes close to connecting human thoughts and endeavors. Unfortunately, it predominantly fueled by “Surveillance Capitalism”. Man, I love that term! The term was coined/popularized by Shoshana Zuboff. I ran across it while listening to “Reclaiming Europe’s digital sovereignty” from FT Tech Tonic”. The podcast does a great job of describing the current state of affairs with respect to digital sovereignty. I encourage you to listen to the podcast…its good stuff. In my opinion, the notion/reality of surveillance capitalism fueling the internet ranks right up there with — nuclear power being used basically for “heat engines”.
Here we have one of the greatest technologies of the century and its primary model for generating money is advertising. Certainly, I understand the need to sell stuff…everything is driven by advertising dollars but its just so unimaginative…is this the best humanity can do. The largest new media companies (e.g., Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, etc) are really just advertising pens/troughs for Advertisers. I know they all claim to have lofty goals and such but at the core of those goals is the desire to get more user data to sell to more advertisers. Hmm, maybe a social media company cannot be built any other way. Perhaps there are some sort social media laws of physics at work here. The only way to generate money from a large group of people is to sell their human interactions to companies that want to sell them stuff. Consumption is the name of the game; perhaps there is no need to “overthink” anything…its just laws of social media physics but every time I think about this model, its hard not be underwhelmed.
The Direction of Truth
No, I don’t know what the better model is yet…but I am pretty confident growing a user base for advertisers is not in “the direction of the truth”. In light of that, I’m going to fall back on my general strategy…if I don’t know the right/exact path…I will try to head in the “direction of the true” path. In this case, the “direction of the true path” is *away* from surveillance capitalism. I’d rather support models that promote “paying for services rendered”. Medium is offering curated, authentic content; that’s definitely content that I’m willing to pay for. Additionally, hopefully my patronage incentivizes Medium to build and sell more services to me. I don’t know what those services will be but I’m betting they will be more creative and imaginative than the offerings of the Data Pimps and there surveillance capitalism traps.
Next stop on my “direction of the truth” path…patreon.com and Brave.com
