We Are the Product
By Ana Marsh
What if we paid for access to online services? In order to Google search, we would need to pay a $15.00 monthly subscription. Or In order to like our elementary school crush’s Facebook post, we would have to pay the premium package. In Tim Wu’s Attention Merchants, Wu addresses this monumental choice in the history of online services to seek profit through advertising versus profit through the physical users of the product. This was a deliberate decision, starting with the exploitation of students in Twin Rivers to make “free” money for the school district. Soon after we see the introduction of attention merchants in our homes and pockets. This decision was, of course, one way of addressing the monetization of internet services but Wu points out that it didn’t have to be the only option.
This led me down an interesting thought experiment where I tried to imagine what our current state would look like if we paid to access things like Google, Facebook, or Instagram. I suggested the idea to my roommate, who responded with an adamant yes as long as that meant we got rid of the advertisements on these sites. I thought about my financial situation where I already have the luxury of paying for monthly subscriptions like Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc and I started to imagine the divide this could create between those who could afford Google and those who couldn’t. Netflix is one thing. Those who don’t have Netflix might not get to enjoy widely talked about entertainment, but those who couldn’t afford Google wouldn’t have access to knowledge. Whether Google truly is a source of unbiased truth is a separate issue, but nonetheless we use Google as the answer to many of our questions. How far away is the moon? How many centimeters in an inch? When was the Great Depression? All of these can be answered with a simple search.
We see the internet as revolutionary in regards to a new age of knowledge. In fact, the internet and its potential to inform people scares some leadership so much that in certain countries specific sites are banned or regulated. Requiring a purchase for online services would effectively regulate the internet in a way that greatly favors a specific societal status, creating an alarming opportunity for inequality. We can already see in modern times with COVID-19 how technology can expose social and financial discrepancies. In the 6th episode of the Technically Human podcast, “Cultural Revolution: Chris Ategeka calls for a paradigm shift in tech”, Ategaka touches on how COVID has provided a new perspective into our peers’ lives. With Zoom calls, we get a view into the physical homes of others and see the inequalities in living conditions. Not to mention this push to online learning greatly harms students who don’t have access to technology, internet, or even an adult figure to supplement homework help that would have typically been provided by an in-person teacher.
If paid advertisements aren’t the answer and neither are paid subscriptions, then what is? I think the issue with online advertising that seems to shake ethics is the ability to have targeted advertising. In the Social Dilemma, we can see how this targeted advertising is polarizing people and their views. Advertising could still be achieved in a way that is unconnected to our data. Maybe the real problem at the end of the day was the decision to target and exploit the individual?