CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societycommercial and non-profit and therefore do not have an interest in economicsurveillance and that see privacy as a fundamental right that needs to be well-protectedunder all circumstances, are hardly available or hardly known. Commercial profitorientedsites such as studiVZ, Facebook, or MySpace have reached a critical mass ofusers that is so large that these commercial providers have become cultural necessitiesfor most young people. For non-commercial platforms, it is hard to compete with theseeconomic corporations because the latter have huge stocks of financial means (enabledby venture capital or parent companies such as News Corporation or Holtzbrinck),personnel, and technological resources. Capitalist business interests and the unequaldistribution of assets that is characteristic for the capitalist economy result in thedomination of markets by a handful of powerful corporations that provide services andthat make influence by non-commercial, non-profit operators difficult. Given the factthat students are knowledgeable of the surveillance threat, it is obvious that they arewilling to use alternative platforms instead of the major corporate ones, if suchalternatives are available and it becomes known that they minimize the surveillancethreat. Not students are to blame for potential disadvantages that arise from their usageof social networking platforms that in the opinions of our respondents threaten privacyand advance surveillance, but the corporations that engage in surveillance and enablesurveillance are to blame. Corporate social networking platforms are for example notwilling to abstain from surveillance for advertising because they have profit interests.The antagonism between communicative opportunities and the surveillance threat isnot created by students’ and young people’s usage of social networking platforms, butby the economic and political logic that shapes social networking corporations’platform strategies.7.8. The Usage Rate of Social Networking Platforms in ComparisonFigure 42 shows the share of users in our sample in different platforms that wereconsidered as being “social networking platforms” by the respondents. There is a largeconcentration of users on studiVZ (88.3% of the respondents), which implies that thereis also a market concentration with one dominant actor. Other important platforms areFacebook (39.5%), MySpace (15.9%), Xing (9.0%), Lokalisten (7.4%), and Szene1(4.3%). The remaining 61 platforms that were mentioned in our survey, each reach lessthan 1% of the respondents. This means that among the 67 platforms listed by therespondents, we find one large platform, 5 medium-sized ones, and 61 small ones.These data give reason to assume that profit distribution in the social networkingmarket is highly centralized.97