CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - UniversitÃ¤t Salzburg

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Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance SocietyFigure 2. Internet advertising profits in the USA (Data Source: IAB Internet AdvertisingRevenue Report 2007)The implications of these observations are manifold: New media companies generateprofit by exploiting the labour of their users without paying them anything. In order torealize this profit (i.e. transforming surplus value into money capital), the collection,aggregation, assessment, and selling of data is necessary. As this collection servesinstrumental economic reasons (profit maximization, money accumulation), we canspeak of data collection that serves repressive economic goals. Therefore this is a formof economic surveillance.This chapter intended to show that there are two major influences on the character ofcontemporary surveillance society: a political and an economic one. On the one hand,new imperialism has produced a situation, in which war and terror potentially reinforceeach other, and the West reacts by increasing surveillance. This results in acontradiction between freedom and security and the short-sighted belief that moresurveillance solves societal problems. On the other hand, not only the state, but alsocorporations have an interest in gathering personal data in order to developpersonalized advertising strategies that target individual tastes and related tastes byaggregating and assessing user data.Due to the ubiquity of the interest of the state and corporations in surveillance, users ofISNS are likely to be confronted by both.33
Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society5. Integrated Social Networking Sites: The Platforms in Our StudyBased on the theoretical foundations worked out in sections 1-4, the task is to researchhow students in <strong>Salzburg</strong> use ISNS in the context of economic and politicalsurveillance. We have chosen three platforms that the study focuses upon: studiVZ,Facebook, MySpace. These platforms and their legal foundations will be introduced inthis section.5.1. studiVZstudiVZ (studi=student, VZ=Verzeichnis, list, list of students) is an ISNS focusing onstudents as user group. It is primarily used in Germany and Austria. Ehssan Dariani andDennis Bemmann formed the platform in October 2005. In January 2007, the Germanmedia corporation Holtzbrinck Networks purchased studiVZ for more than 50 millionEuros. Holtzbrinck is a corporation that owns for example the publishing housesFischer, Rowohlt, Macmillan, Scientific American, and publications such as Die Zeit,Der Tagesspiegel, or Nature. The corporation’s profits were 206.6 million Euro in 2006 5 ,which is a 10% annual increase in comparison to 2005. In December 2007, the termsof use of studiVZ were changed so that personalized advertisements became possible.Users can opt out of personalized ads, but the standard option is that they receive suchads. In September 2008, studiVZ was the fourth most visited website in Germany (158583 022 visits 6 ). It is ranked number 9 in the Alexa traffic rankings for Germany andnumber 14 for Austria (alexa.com, October 28, 2008). 86.6% of studiVZ users comefrom Germany, 7.6% from Austria 7 . The profits of studiVZ are not known, but one canimagine that they must be high given the advertising rates. So for example a colouredadvertising wallpaper on the start page of all users costs 78 000 Euro per day 8 .When registering, users must agree that studiVZ can store their usage behaviour, cansend them emails and messages about news that concern studiVZ, can send up to fiveadvertisement emails and messages per months to them, and that profile information isanalyzed for providing personalized advertisements. The latter three points can bedeactivated once one is registered by changing the privacy settings. This is an opt-outandnot an opt-in-process.studiVZ does not define property and usage rights of content in its terms of use,therefore the users are the sole owners of the content that they post on their profiles.The privacy policy of studiVZ states that users agree that usage data are saved for amaximum of six months: “I agree that information is transmitted automatically by myInternet browser if I access the studiVZ network and that it is stored for a period of sixmonths at maximum in so-called protocol files (server log files)” 9 (Privacy Policy §4).5 Accessed on October 28, 2008.6 IVW online usage data, http://www.ivwonline.de/ausweisung2/search/ausweisung.php, accessed onOctober 28, 2008).7 http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/studiverzeichnis.com (Accessed on October 28, 2008).8 http://www.gwp.de, accessed on October 28, 2008.9 “Ich willige ein, dass bei einem von mir veranlassten Zugriff auf das studiVZ-Netzwerk automatischInformationen durch den von mir verwendeten Internet-Browser übermittelt und dass diese durchstudiVZ für eine Zeitdauer von höchstens sechs Monaten in so genannten Protokolldateien (Server-34
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