“The act of creating and modifying online identities by deciding which images to share is also an act of erecting boundaries between self-conception and assimilation to an avatar. Avatars are vulnerable to exploitation by social media platforms.”
“Like its competitor Google, Facebook is a company that aims to be a central Internet institution for the various forms of exchange — cultural, financial, social, and so on.”
“The imperial nature of Internet corporations’ business strategies is rarely grasped in its full effect. Active campaigners for net neutrality aside, individuals may impute benevolent intent to the global presence of Facebook and companies like it. To consumers raised under neoliberalism, a company’s size is an indication of its trustworthiness.”
“Too habituated to be critical, they become lax in their politics and behavior, rarely challenging the ethics of companies they are loyal to and remaining logged in.”
“Self-perception is deeply informed by the content displayed to users by Facebook. In a sense this content mirrors users’ behavior, and the projected self-image desired rests on tracked behavioral data. The effect is that of “autocannibalism,” a term coined by new-media pundit Rob Horning which describes users’ act of consuming their feed. Autocannibalism, he writes, “can create a hermetic feedback loop, where past actions fully dictate future potentialities, foreclosing the possibility of surprise or change. That is part of the pleasure Facebook brings.””
“This self-consumption forms an image in users’ mind that they will strive unwittingly to actualize through future shares, likes, and perhaps even personal lived interactions and self-expressions.”
“As a result, users’ identities become shaped by the social media platforms they participate in. A remedy for autocannibalism can be found in the dignity image. Deliberately withheld from social media, dignity images provide an escape from the hermetic feedback loop that Horning describes.”
“The feeling of assimilation by social media can prompt impulsive behavior in users. Use of Facebook, Instagram, and other popular social media platforms becomes compulsory. Left feeling that they are incapable of leaving the sites, some users act rashly by deactivating or deleting their profiles.”
“Social media refusal occurs when a user ceases to provide content for a platform. The power of refusal lies in the lack of contributions from the user. As Portwood-Stacer points out, “it is only in comparison with the normalcy of use that non-use has social and political significance.” Because a fundamental component of social media content is shared images, social media refusal relies on the declaration of dignity images by a former user.”
“The possibility or impossibility of social media is an aspect of the post-Internet condition, a time in which Web use is at once ordinary, humdrum, and utterly necessary. In “The Image Object Post-Internet,” author Artie Vierkant writes that the post-Internet condition is characterized by “ubiquitous authorship, the development of attention as currency, the collapse of physical space in networked culture, and the infinite reproducibility and mutability of digital materials.””
“It is a time in which all consumers are producers, things “liked” may immediately be monetized, no one is out of reach, and nothing is unique.”
“In “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism,” author Shoshanna Zuboff follows Hannah Arendt in advocating replacement of inalienable human rights with an idea of human dignity.”
“Arendt saw an argument for inalienable human rights as resting on a basic level of citizenship; in order to have them individuals must have a place within a state. If they have no place, they become “worldless.””
“Dignity, on the other hand, is something owed to all individuals, even if they are without a place.”