Anshul Kumar
Ever since the Arab Spring erupted in Egypt and its neighbouring countries, the victory of democracy was touted as possible only because of the internet revolution. At that time, Twitter had a role as an alternative form of media, over which dictatorial regimes in the Middle East had little or no control.
The message it sent was that new-age social media is the solution to the social injustice prevalent in non-Western societies. At that time, even Facebook shifted from a photo-sharing website to a powerhouse of debates and discussions, which promised an escape from the mainstream media
Slowly, advertising and marketing took hold of these social media giants, and the promise of offering a voice to the voiceless turned into a ruthless ‘market-pace of ideas’. There was no place left for organic thoughts, just a capitalistic battle of advertising and marketing.
These social media giants started becoming monopolistic and captured the attention of the people to advertise incessantly.
The bait that was set, to sell democratic platforms to give voice to social justice, was successful, and the well-meaning pursuit of social justice rolled backwards into a somersault. A highly capitalistic notion of selling your own selves as a brand. This idea of selling pitted every individual against each other into the realm governed by market ideology, the more you can advertise, the more is your revenue, the more your revenue, more the worth of the opinion you have, which you can use as a means for propaganda to your own niche audiences.
These social media platforms have turned into large-scale advertising monopolies, which now dictate and even fraudulently influence their users for or against anything. This is based on the fact that whatever generates more advertisement will generate more revenue, so they started selling themselves to whoever could be the highest bidder, be it Donald Trump in the USA or Narendra Modi and the BJP in India. It was now all about advertising and generating revenue, and further using it to indoctrinate social media users for or against a certain ideology. Again, there was no place left for meaningful discourse, and what mattered was how much money you could make, increase advertising revenue, and get stuck in paying allegiance to anyone who could pour in or provide you enough capital.
This was pretty much similar to the 1970s Pepsi’s advertising commercials, which promised anti-racist gestures and a commitment to the civil rights movement, to brand itself against Coca-Cola’s market share.
This is what has happened with the Anti-Caste world, too. The hollow promise of fighting for social justice against caste has been captured by the market forces. It doesn’t matter what your niche market reach is. It could be the mushrooming of new age anti-caste YouTube channels, blog websites or, for that matter, Instagram influencers who promise you a commitment to the cause of social justice.
The idea was never about a well-meaning policy, but more about capturing the attention of its niche users and sustaining within the advertising model of techno-feudalist giants like Meta (Facebook).
There came websites run by NGOS powered by academic cheerleaders, run by academics who sought a new place in the highly saturated social science academic world. They often talked about and showcased atrocities against Dalits, Muslims or other marginalized identities.
There came YouTube channels which specifically catered to atrocities against Dalits and discourse centred thereupon and created their user base, just to earn revenue from the advertising model of these techno-feudalist MNCs.
Although it is the anti-caste realm I am referring to here, this is not limited to this world. This is just a limited fraction of the entire marketplace of ideas, which has something for someone or everyone belonging to any social identity or ideological location.
In short, the well-meaning discourse of social justice saw a gradual death and re-incarnated itself as a model based on market preferences governed by algorithms generated and pushed by techno-feudalist giants.
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Anshul Kumar is currently pursuing MA in Sociology at JNU.
