The Digital Tech Deal: a socialist framework for the twenty-first century

The twenty-first century global economy is largely driven by Big Tech and, more broadly, digital capitalism. This is a global phenomenon, with US power at the centre preying on global markets through the process of digital colonialism. Mainstream antidotes to the ills of Big Tech and digital capitalism are US/Eurocentric and revolve around a collection of liberal and progressive capitalist reforms, including anti-trust, limited privacy laws, unionisation of Big Tech, algorithmic discrimination and content moderation – all of which are conceived within a capitalist framework which ignores or neglects digital colonialism and the twenty-first century ecological crisis, despite their analytical and moral centrality to contemporary political economy. This author argues that a combination of political, economic and social alternatives based on a Digital Tech Deal are needed to turn the tide against digital colonisation, entailing the socialisation of knowledge and infrastructure; passing socialist laws that support digital socialism; and new narratives about the tech ecosystem. These solutions are to be nested within an anti-colonial, eco-socialist framework that embraces degrowth to ensure environmental sustainability and socioeconomic justice.

Digital Labour: Digital Capitalism and the Alienation of YouTube Content Creators

YouTube is a digital platform that allows content creators to stream their videos in exchange for money earned through the YouTube Partner Program mechanism, motivates many people to join YouTube. However, what they do not realize is the hidden effect YouTube brings in the form of alienation experienced by YouTube content creators as digital labour. This article discusses this phenomenon of alienation experienced by digital labours. Using a qualitative approach with a descriptive research design, it offers a narrative research strategy to examine the narrative and discourse of alienation of content creators on YouTube. The unit of analysis of the study is the content of YouTube creators as digital labour. The findings show that YouTube is mainly a vehicle used by digital capitalism for the sake of profit accumulated by exploiting content creators from the videos they make. Content creators receive disproportionate or even no financial compensation from YouTube for the videos they produce for YouTube. As a result, YouTube content creators as digital labour experienced alienation from their work, their work activities, from themselves as a human species and from other humans.

Problems of destandardization and precarization of labor in the context of globalization-americanization-deglobalization of the world economy in the XXI century

The article is devoted to the analysis of the content, essence and social consequences of the transformation of employment in industrially developed countries after the Second World War in the context of globalization - americanization - deglobalization of the world economy. The author pays great attention to exposing the modern mythologization of the digitalization of labor and labor relations in the countries of the global North in order to cover up the true essence of various forms of non-standard work, which has become widespread in the modern world-system within the framework of digital capitalism. At the center of the study and research of the problems of destandardization and precarization of labor in the world of digital capitalism is the digitalization of the world of work and labor relations and the impact of the digital economy on the situation of workers in Western countries, especially in the United States, which has become a role model throughout the world, including the countries with "economies in transition". The author draws special attention to the fact that the introduction of non-standard employment into economic practice in the West was caused by the transition of economically developed countries to the new social structures of accumulation by means of withdrawal, that is, by reducing labor costs within the framework of the neoliberal economy. Based on the study and analysis of foreign sources, the author concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has become a trigger to the exacerbation of the current systemic crisis of global capitalism, which puts on the agenda the need to search for and implement new, fairer and more humane forms of world order under the slogans of the social movement of alterglobalists "People are higher than profits!" and "Another world is possible!"

Platform NHS: Reconfiguring a Public Service in the Age of Digital Capitalism

The platform is emerging as a key organizational form and operational logic of contemporary capitalism, intimately tied to financialization and assetization. However, discussions to date have focused on platforms and platformization in the context of the private, corporate, and technology sectors. In this paper, we develop an analysis of how platformization operates in the context of public policy. Using the UK’s National Health Service as a case study, we explore how platformization is altering the form and function of the state. The platformization of the NHS has its roots in the UK government’s strategic interest in the development of the bioeconomy. This led to the creation of a research infrastructure within the health service. Subsequently, the NHS has leveraged various assets into a range of data- and technology-focused initiatives. We argue that platformization has been a major form of neoliberalization within the NHS. The paper concludes with a discussion of what an analysis of public platformization can teach us about ongoing transformations of the state.

Smartphones and Exploitation in the Age of Digital Capitalism: Ordinary Aspects of the Transformation of Everyday Life

This study examines the transformation of everyday life through smartphones, focusing on the daily experiences of smartphone users in Turkey. With their multimedia features, smartphones (defined as a “melting pot” from the technological perspective or polymedia and metamedia in a broader sense) take an important place in users’ everyday lives. As these features and the services accessible through smartphones are offered in commodity form, they inevitably result in the exploitation of users’ labour, the commodification of user data, the shifting of paid work into ‘leisure time’, and finally the transformation of everyday life through smartphones. The main argument of this study is that, under these social conditions, smartphones, referred to as “a melting pot” from the technological perspective, turn into a melting pot of exploitation, and their users experience these interactions not as direct economic relations but as routine social relations.