The fake simple exchange between Facebook and its prosumers

Abstract

Social networks, in their rapid upgrowth, ubiquity and socioeconomic power, have given rise to many debates about their role reproducing capitalists modes of production. One of these discussions deals with the hypothesis of labor and generation of value in the use of these networks (DANTAS, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019; FUCHS, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). Insofar as some of these propositions are consolidated as successful or  problematic, the criticism towards them also did not close the subject. We understand that certain elements of the theory of value may have had too little enfasis in the discussions and our goal in this article is to try to validate their importance in the debate. Thus, we will discuss immediate needs and their extensions (MARX, 2011); confront them with their inverted mirroring, the value of labour-power; reiterate variable capital as one of the historically determined reflexes of these needs; and thereby, we will discuss whether and how, in technocapitalism, this combination of factors would favor the coagulation of labor and production of value in spheres and activities outside its central node (ANTUNES, 2018), especially with the emergence of digital social networks and prosumers (COMOR, 2015). We propose to continue the debate by questioning the idea that users are despoiled (they work for free), insofar as (1) specific needs of theirs would be met by these commodity-services; (2) the right to its consumption would be given to them by its exchange for the labour-power that produces data; and that, meanwhile, (3) the specificity of these data can only be produced in the act of consuming the so-called social connectivity.