The Politics of the Internet We Have: Thoughts

Analysts of our online life such as Jen Schradie have found that, contrary to the expectations promulgated by the cyber-utopians, it has not been the case that the marginalized found in the Internet a leveler in the political battles they fight where they can make their voices heard. Quite the contrary, the Internet has worked for the privileged, the established, the powerful, for many reasons. To name just those that I have found most compelling, there is the extent to which the Internet has proven more conducive to broadcasting simple messages than the conveyance of complex ideas or nuanced conversations; its gatekeeping by big corporations, with their profit and associated motives; the microeconomics of getting anything actually looked at online favoring the well-resourced financially; the continued importance of legacy media in bringing attention to what is actually is to be found online, with its own biases in favor of the powerful; and the reality that the requirements of significant participation in online life, especially going beyond the most utilitarian tasks (doing your shopping, paying your bills, etc.) or simplest entertainments (streaming a TV show) to actively getting involved in political discussions favors those who are privileged in many ways. (They have more of the disposable time and energy such a situation requires; they feel safer expressing an opinion in public than do those who are socially disadvantaged, or have dissenting views, with all that means for what Internet users will be more likely to ignore, what they will be likely to share, certainly the more after seeing so much retaliation from employers , government authorities and others who didn't like their online activity.) And indeed, it seems possible that all of these factors, which have accrued to the advantage of the right, have aided them meaningfully in their run of political victories through the twenty-first century--their success online a factor in their success in political life broadly.

Of course, all that said one may say "That was in the past, but what about now?" For my part I do not see any of those factors becoming less important, but rather their becoming more so. Certainly the way our online life has evolved has made it less plausible that anything will be "discovered" online, and that much more important that anyone who wants their message noticed put in the time and money to make it visible to people. (Have I not been writing of the looming Maximum Era for the web for quite some time now?) Certainly those who have long gatekept the web have only got more aggressive about that, both in their own financial interest as enshittification itself holds Internet attention-seekers to ransom, and their increasing inclination to display the rightist biases that are the norm for Big Business and the wealthy--and perhaps the particular right-wing inclinations of Silicon Valley as well, certainly to go by the conduct of Musk in regard to X, the Ellison family in regard to its holdings, etc..

Meanwhile other recent developments in our online life would seem to reinforce that trend. There is the way in which the Internet is becoming less text-oriented, and more audiovisually-oriented, which means getting a message that people will be receptive to is costlier (video is more resource-intensive than text), while arguably also being less conducive to dialogue, and thus making the Internet that much more a broadcast medium. There is also the way in which rather than digging for information themselves people are turning to answer engines--with the result less contact and support for any source of information, to the particular disadvantage of smaller, alternative media-type sources as against the big operations, but also with the result their getting what answer engines tend to offer, the Establishment answer to any question, with all that is likely to mean, as their abilities to seek out anything else atrophy for lack of exercise, more generally translating to an audience more disposed to simply believe what Authority tells it. All these developments not yet advanced anywhere near so far as they eventually might get to be, those hoping for a more egalitarian Internet where the marginalized, the progressive, etc. have a voice would be very, very wrong to be complacent about these developments--the more in as the Internet has played its part in the unmitigated string of disappointments and disasters the twenty-first century has been for them to date.