An Alternative View of Privacy on Facebook

The predominant analysis of privacy on Facebook focuses on personalinformation revelation. This paper is critical of this kind of research and introduces analternative analytical framework for studying privacy on Facebook, social networking sitesand web 2.0. This framework is connecting the phenomenon of online privacy to thepolitical economy of capitalism—a focus that has thus far been rather neglected in researchliterature about Internet and web 2.0 privacy. Liberal privacy philosophy tends to ignorethe political economy of privacy in capitalism that can mask socio-economic inequality andprotect capital and the rich from public accountability. Facebook is in this paper analyzedwith the help of an approach, in which privacy for dominant groups, in regard to the abilityof keeping wealth and power secret from the public, is seen as problematic, whereasprivacy at the bottom of the power pyramid for consumers and normal citizens is seen as aprotection from dominant interests. Facebook’s understanding of privacy is based on anunderstanding that stresses self-regulation and on an individualistic understanding ofprivacy. The theoretical analysis of the political economy of privacy on Facebook in thispaper is based on the political theories of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Based on the political economist Dallas Smythe’s concept of audience commodification, the process of prosumer commodification on Facebook is analyzed. The political economyof privacy on Facebook is analyzed with the help of a theory of drives that is grounded inHerbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Sigmund Freud, which allows to analyze Facebookbased on the concept of play labor (= the convergence of play and labor).