Digital Overtime
How we’ve become constant workers for tech capitalism and why we need to resist
Several years ago, a friend of mine committed suicide. Days before she had posted on Facebook saying she was struggling and calling out for help. I saw her post and reached out, although I would later spend months upset at myself that I didn’t do more. After she died, several friends noted that her post hadn’t even appeared in their feeds. As one friend commented, “it feels weird that I didn’t see that because of an algorithm”. Indeed, there is something terribly wrong if an algorithm can silence a friend’s call for help. While our friend sought community in a time of crisis, social media companies didn’t provide it to her. What’s going on here?
The Internet, and social media, has often been heralded as a liberatory force. Tech CEOs love to talk about how their companies are supposed to bring a new wave of freedom, democracy and community. In his book on the founding of the company, for example, former Reddit-CEO Alexis Ohanian titled the first chapter ‘The American Dream Online’. Ohanian states:
The American dream is rooted in a country where anyone with enough talent and enough determination can accomplish whatever she or he wants. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet, but a pair of undergraduates at the University of Virginia (himself and fellow co-founder Steve Huffman) once got lucky on spring break during their senior year, inadvertently playing a small part in the rebook of that dream, at least on The Internet.[1]
The Internet has certainly been amazing in many ways. It has dramatically increased access to information and the ability for many to participate in democratic discourse (although it is very hard to tell what influence that actually has on any policy). It has gone some way to break down many of the traditional gatekeepers of knowledge. Social movements use social media and other elements of the web to organise and mobilise. In the past years of the pandemic, the Internet has made it much easier for people to stay connected while having to be apart.
Yet, embedded within a capitalist system, this great technology has also been built and is being used for less liberatory means. Relevant to this edition, in this article I want to talk about what these changes have meant for work, and how this relates to the development of community, my friend, and what many others are seeking online.
There are obvious ways that the Internet has fundamentally changed our working life. I am sitting here, writing this article, on my couch, utilising the Internet to conduct quick and easy research. The Internet has made working from home so much easier, as we can stay in touch with colleagues and access documents and resources all through the web. The increased flexibility is incredible. Yet, this also comes with its own risks. With greater ‘flexibility’ has come an increasing intrusion of work into people’s home lives. Bosses can now access their employees 24/7, with the ability to work seeing a dramatic increase in working hours (which particularly rose during the pandemic).[2] Employees are also often forced to bear the costs of this ‘flexibility’, paying for home offices, furniture, and their internet connections.
In this article however I want to examine a less explored, but potentially more insidious way the Internet has encroached into our personal lives. The issue isn’t just that bosses can email people after work hours, although it is a big part of it. Instead, much of the infrastructure behind the web, in particular social media, is built upon unpaid work. In doing so we have all, unwittingly, become workers for social media companies, a practice that is increasing both exploitation and alienation of all of us. In giving our free labour to big tech companies, I argue we are becoming more alienated, both from our labour, but also from our own communities.