Priming and the Exploitation of Digital Labour

Within Marlia E. Banning’s article entitled, “Shared entanglements – Web 2.0, info-liberalism & digital sharing”, the affective motions of online sharing and its connection to neoliberal capitalism are critically examined. Within the article, the author focuses her argument on the idea that online sharing is yet another avenue through which digital labour is exploited and turned into capital.

After reading and reflecting on the article, one point that stuck with me was the notion of priming. Within the article, the author outlines this technique as a way for Internet companies to create affective situations encouraging user participation and expanding their profitability. Here, she used the example of automated invitations that come from ‘bots’ that imitate the behaviour of a human using contact information they have gathered online. I found this to be both interesting and relatable as I find myself constantly getting friend requests from what appears to be a person I know (due to mutual friends and common interests) only to find out it is not. This technique has recently gone even further as I have received texts from digital companies, which the author calls ‘app-spam’, with no understanding as to how the company got my phone number. Even after reporting these promotional texts as spam, I continue to get messages to join their service or purchase their products. Now that I have read Banning’s article, I recognize the way in which these techniques rely on people’s impulse to respond and are solely used to expand business models.

While this technique parallels several of the authors concepts we have covered in this course, I feel that it can be best explained through Kylie Jarret’s article, “Who Says Facebook Friends Aren't Your Real Friends?”. Here, she notes that the various ways to extract revenue from user information means that all hours spent online by users of Facebook constitute work time, in which data commodities are generated. In our digital world today, many social media users do not even realize their time spent on social media platforms is being surveilled and converted into capital. Ultimately, this parallels how users often do not realize the “friends” they are accepting on Facebook are actually software programs imitating human behavior to fuel the Web 2.0’s business models.

Personally, I feel that priming is taking promotional efforts too far and that it is a complete invasion of privacy. Has anyone ever received a friend request or promotional email from a ‘bot’? Do you think that these types of promotional efforts are becoming the norm for small-businesses to fuel their companies?