The Price of Free Labor?
In their their writing, “Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks,” authors Cote and Pybus define immaterial labour 2.0 as “a more accelerated, intensified, and indeed inscrutable variant of the kind of activity initially proposed by Lazzarato or within the pages of Empire.” In essence, users embrace the idea of being subjects to databases and activity trackers. These users understand the intentions of social network sites, yet they continue to go on the site allowing themselves to complete the jobs of site designers and data trackers. Many may say, “This work will be done regardless because, as long as people continue to visit the site, data will be recorded.” Although this point is valid, could site administrators steal the work of many of the site’s most loyal visitors?
Author Marianne Martens states, “Users of content and manufactured goods are increasingly involved in the production process.” Many young teens have the ability to assist in the improvement of their product or service through surveys presented on websites or just by using the product, in general. In regards to books and other writings, teens create blogs expressing what they enjoyed about the books or what they feel as though could have been better. Many authors take this information, without informing the owners of these blogs, and make money of blogger’s ideas.
This can be relative to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This can even be relative to a site such as Tumblr. Many users express their opinions and beliefs about various topics on this site and much of the expressions on this site can be recorded for data and the enhancement of various products. The problem which presents itself is if this collection of data is a violation to the consumer. The price of free labor is the cost of ideas... this is worth more than money. A person’s ideas are the foundation of his/her being, when collected by content creators and used for monetary purposes, the price of free labor is a hefty one.