Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch - Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives

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Social slogans of the day: Das Ich ist nicht zu retten, Ernst Mach I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots, Albert Einstein I can buy a Ford, Toyota, BMW or Smart car and drive on the same roads and use the same fuel. Everything is interchangeable about them except the key that gets me in and starts the engine. Its a good model for how our communication systems should work, at all levels, Dave Winer Take a position, be an author the European concert of networks I am inspired by the internet, Johan Sjerpstra It is a small step from distributed to dispersion Neither information nor a drug fix ever gives any happiness when you have it, but will make you miserable when you dont, Michel Serres I am traveling a lot, online.

Whether or not we are in the midst of yet another internet bubble, we can all agree that social media dominates the use of the internet and smartphones. The emergence of apps and web-based user-to-user services, driven by an explosion of informal dialogues, continuous uploads, and user-generated content, have greatly empowered the rise of participatory culture. At the same time, monopoly power, commercialization, and commodification are on the rise as well, with just a handful of social media platforms dominating the social web. Tensions are increasing with the question of what to make of the influence and impact of social media? Two contradictory processes both the facilitation of free exchanges and the commercial exploitation of social relationships seem to lie at the heart of contemporary capitalism: empowerment and control, freedom and paranoia. On the one hand new media create and expand the social spaces through which we interact, play, and even politicize ourselves; on the other hand, in most countries they are owned by literally three or four companies that have phenomenal power to shape the architectures of such interactions. Whereas the hegemonic internet ideology promises open, decentralized systems, why do we, time and again, find ourselves locked into closed, centralized environments? Why are individual users so easily lured into these corporate walled gardens? Do we understand the long-term costs that society will pay for the ease of use and simple interfaces of their beloved free services?

The accelerated growth and scope of Facebooks social space is unheard of. As of late 2012, Facebook is said to have more than one billion active users, ranking in the top three first destination sites on the web, worldwide. Its users willingly deposit a myriad of snippets of their social life and relationships on a site that invests in an accelerated play of exchanging information. On the different platforms, from LinkedIn to Google+, we are all busy befriending, ranking, recommending, retweeting, creating circles, uploading photos and videos, and updating our status. Numerous (mobile) applications orchestrate this offer of private moments in a virtual public, seamlessly embedding the online world in the everyday life of users.