Class Politics And How The Internet Perpetuates Inequality

For all the democratization that the internet was previewed to offer the masses, many have questioned if the internet is actually a democratizing platform or one which has simply served capitalism and authoritarian interests. For instance, Gillian Bolsover in “Technology and political speech: commercialisation, authoritarianism and the supposed death of the Internet's democratic potential” posits that the internet is mostly a series of online commercially-owned sites “whose business model rests on the collection and monetisation of user data.” Bolsover explains:

The greater positivity of commercialisation for political speech in authoritarian systems seems to occur not despite the government but because of it. The Chinese state’s active stance in monitoring, encouraging and crafting ideas about political speech has resisted its negative repositioning as a commercial product. In contrast, in the U.S., online political speech has been left to the market that sells back the dream of an online public sphere to users as part of its commercial model.

And recent data suggests that Bolsover’s thesis is not incorrect. In The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy (2018), Matthew Hindman contends that as the internet enters its third decade, market forces are driving the majority of traffic and profit to an extremely small group of websites. And the future of monopolies controlling the internet is growing, not decreasing.

On the other side of this debate, there is Jesse Chen, a leading figure of engagement technologies, who contends that the democratizing effects of technology are quite distinct from democracy itself. Chen argues that even though the Internet may have communizing trappings, the Internet alone cannot create or enforce democracy unless technologies are designed to protect democracy, specifically the engagement needed to “sustain the democracy” of people between election cycles and to fill the gap between leaders and people. Ultimately, Chen suggests that power is being “connected with people” and that everyone can have such power to self-organize, to protest and for politicians to stay engaged with the public through “open feedback loops” such as his experimental app, Powerline.

While Chen’s hopeful gaze to the future of how democracy can benefit from technology, we are simply not seeing the internet as empowering the masses. Instead, as recent Facebook and Twitter debates rage and both platforms regularly stifle free speech by kicking off users who do not kowtow to what is often considered leftist rhetoric or political ideals. Aside from complaints from conservatives and feminists about these platforms kicking off users who do not mirror certain neoliberal political ideals, there are definite class issues at heart in how the internet is being used to advantage the wealthy while excluding women and other marginalized persons.

For instance, Sri Lankan writer Subha Wijesiriwardena has written about this issue maintaining that the internet “peddle[s] the fantasy of redistributed power while assigning new kinds of power to the same old powerful” as she weaves together an argument about the “digital divide” wherein females are almost entirely elided. Wijesiriwardena plants the argument fairly clearly, pointing to how analog and digital worlds are mirrors of the same historical paradigms:

The answer to the question ‘Is the internet a free and fair space?’ will vary according to who is being asked, just as the answer to the question ‘Is the world a free and fair place?’ would vary according to who was being asked. Persons who do not endure or experience daily discrimination, harassment, or violence can sometimes willfully believe that the world is free, fair and safe for everyone. This is the same logic within which policies to govern our societies are still often made.

Wijesiriwardena firmly demonstrates how the elision of women and girls from the internet takes place because of the very same real-world and pre-internet problems: the access to new technology by females; that females are still targets of online violence; and that women are excluded from policy-making of all things internet. 

Aside from the problems of misogyny replete within online culture and its use, there are other problems of class disparity within so much of what is happening online. For instance, the digital divide is easily observed within online learning where a 2016 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrates that economic inequality determines how the internet will be used, even by children. And this report includes within it the countries for which there is equal access to the internet which is a daunting revelation given that this flies in the face of all the predictions made about the internet thirty years ago. Where many thought the internet would be a boon in interpersonal communications with email and a paper-saving device for conducting an address lookup or researching a book in a local library, what has evolved looks quite different today.

There is growing criticism of who uses the internet and from what sorts of devices as the poor are increasingly accessing the internet from smartphones as they are unable to afford computers. But beyond this, we need to think of to whom the internet caters. Indeed, there is a sector of companies that market elite products for which the poor are simply ineligible such as the many companies that specialize in obtaining residency for immigrants with a high net worth. And the Pew Research Center reflects this in its 2010 assessment stating that “Solid majorities of higher-income internet users research products (88%), make travel reservations online (83%), purchase products or services online (81%), perform online banking (74%), use the internet to pay bills (71%), and use online classified sites such as Craigslist (60%).” What this means is that there is a direct mirroring of what is offered on the internet and who is demanding the products and services offered. From online therapy to vacation getaways to smart home security, it is abundantly clear that the internet is not focussed on the issues directly affecting the diminishing middle-class and the quickly exploding poor class.

Winston Churchill once remarked that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” For many, Churchill’s words should be interpreted to mean that we need to make democracy better. For others, however, Churchill’s observation means that we ought to invoke other political models that account for democracy’s clear shortcomings beginning with shifting the paradigm of who makes policy, who has access to visibility, and who is trolling whom in online encounters. In short, we need to address how the internet is increasing inequality. The reality is that the internet has changed nothing about the marginalization of the very same oppressed groups prior to the public launching of the worldwide web in 1989. If anything, the internet has made the problems of racism and misogyny worse, not better simply because it affords certain anonymity to the very actors who years before would have had to bully their victims in the visible public square.