It's significant that Facebook is extremely secretive about exactly what information they sell, which companies they sell it to, and how much money your personal information is worth. I would argue this secrecy indicates that Facebook believes people would be upset if people knew how their information was being used. If it's not exploitative, why the secrecy?

I think exploitation is circumscribed by choice. Of course, there's the issue of defining choice. I'm barely part of Facebook (pretty much off the grid) and one thing that irks me deeply is that so many groups I want to join, or news of events I want to get, are only available through Facebook. This is when choice diminishes dramatically: the choice to participate in this one network becomes the choice to participate, or not, in culture and social life at large.

This is a problem with anything governed by the network effect.  Facebook isn't selling just your information, it's selling the information of 750 million, including their interactions.  That kind of aggregate is far more valuable than the sum of its parts.

I suppose in a general sense, this is a problem with the labor theory of value.  When value is created because of an interaction, it is not a direct product of labor.  Who deserves what compensation, when the contribution is split over the user, server manager, Facebook programmer, etc?  Capitalism avoids this problem, but only through the default of "all profits flow to capital."

From another perspective, valuing personal information is problematic because is not a product of labor.  I may have a favorite color, but I did not labor to produce that information -- it is an attribute of my self.  It is perhaps closest in kind to intellectual property, but it certainly wasn't the product of creative labor.

I think a Marxist analysis of Facebook et al. is entirely apt.  The concept of consuming and item and at the same time being 'sold' to advertisers is not new.  Many TV channels are free, or available at substantially subsidized prices to consumers because the advertisers pay such a premium to advertise.  

Facebook, much like Seinfeld or The Simpson, is selling the viewers/users to the advertisers.  

I think what is interesting about Facebook is that all of the content is provided by free by all its users.  The widgets, if you will, are basically costless (servers, techies to facilitate).  Facebook is unlike and like other corporations in that it has successfully externalized yet another aspect of its production process.  The way a multinational might externalize environmental hazards, Facebook has externalized the production of its content.  What I think is unique about Facebook is the extent to which they have externalized, it must represent some sort of qualitative shift and not merely the invention of a new way to externalize certain costs of doing business in a capitalist economy.  

I think Marx would have been fascinated by Facebook - a factory where the workers work for free to produce content, which is identical to other commodities (textiles, cars, etc.), and do so willingly.  

I always think of Marx's idea of capitalism reaching right up under your fingernails - and Facebook is a perfect example of this idea.  It has managed to make profitable one of the last bastions of genuine humanity left in our fragmented and corporatized world: human interactions.

Some Simple Math:
$1.86B Revenue [1] / 750M Active Users = $2.48 per user per year.

For my part, I definitely feel like I get more than $2.50 worth of value out of FB.  I communicate with friends and family, I play games, and I share news/views that are important to me.  I am a lot closer with people who I am FB friends with than I was in the past.  We get together more, share more, and have a better quality of friendship. 

I am not "doing work" for Facebook - I'm using a service they provide.  That they are able to make money off of that service doesn't automatically entitle me to a cut of their profits.  I assume that anything I post or share on FB could be monetized by them.  However, they still only get the information that I choose to share with them - there
is no exploitation where there is mutual consent.  It's a value for
value trade. In some ways, I wish that I was worth MORE to FB, so they would have a greater incentive to improve their service.

I've been pretty pleased with the changes they've made to their privacy settings, especially the most recent changes, which closely mirror the innovations made by Google+.  I have played around with G+ and, while it has a bunch of features I like, it doesn't have nearly the network value of FB.  I only just recently convinced my mother to go on FB, I don't think I could convince her to switch to a new service.

Everyone likes to bash on FB because they're so big . . . and they certainly are unscrupulous.  But FB is the new town square.  In a small town everyone knew what you were doing because of the gossip train.  There were few secrets.  The town grocer knew what to buy because he saw what people bought.  FB is just the small town writ large.  Marketers want to market to me better?  Don't throw me in that briar patch!  Oh noes, I'm being offered things I want, rather than crap I don't.  Meh.  At least I get to keep in touch with my family.

[1] http://mashable.com/2011/01/17/facebooks-ad-revenue-hit-1-86b-for-2010/

Facebook has its issues, to be sure, but I have a hard time calling this "exploitation." Facebook provides a free service to hundreds of millions of users, allowing you to contact people, invite them to events, etc etc - doing things that you would maybe have had to pay to do otherwise (phone bills, postage costs, I could go on.) I won't pretend for a second that this is some sort of selflessness, of course - its founder and executives have made billions from this business model - but the Facebook user experience is definitely one that allows you to do a lot for free.

I think of it sort of like the way TV networks make money. You pay a fixed monthly fee for cable or satellite (or, possibly, pay nothing at all and use "bunny ears" to reach a few limited channels). Those networks bombard you with advertisements to make up for all the shows you're going to watch, which are unlimited in number - you could leave your TV on 24/7 on the same channel and never pay that channel a dime. That's how advertising works. And advertisers target their audience as well; they purchase ad space on shows that they think will attract viewers who like their product or service.

I realize this is quite different from the Facebook model, which knows a lot more about you, its user, than TV networks know about their viewers. Depending on how detailed your profile is, Facebook knows if you're single, it knows your sex, your job industry, your hometown, your sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion and favourite bands. But is targeting that information to attract the right advertisers exploitative of the user base that knows perfectly well how Facebook makes their money? Exploitation is a pretty loaded term; I'd be wary of using it here.

think the important question is not whether the sort of work Facebook extracts from users is fairly compensated (that Facebook users perform labor seems to me beyond question, regardless of how users experience it or describe it to themselves), but instead whether the sort of subjectivity it fosters has pernicious political ramifications -- one potential concern is in how it makes labor seem to disappear on the one hand ("I'm not working; I'm sharing and socializing") while simultaneously encouraging an entrepreneurial attitude toward social behavior ("I must efficiently use my social time online and extract the most value in the form of measurable attention from it. Only then will my value as an online media brand be enhanced.")

This crowds out the space for a noneconomic sociality. It becomes harder to have self-concepts that are not insecure, that are not tied to continual growth in personal brand equity --  

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're
inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers,
lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that
makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are
not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Mmm hmm... Carry on all...

I echo the thoughts of those above who don't see this as labor or exploitation. The things I *do* on facebook are entertainment; I shouldn't be paid for them any more than I should be paid to listen to music (which also increases its value, no?). 

If my information is sold, however, I do think that is exploitive, though not an exploitation of labor. My intent in sharing online is to share with those I am friends with--that is why I have highly restrictive privacy settings. I'm of the opinion that my information shouldn't be shared beyond those who can view my page, either by friending me or by servicing the page technically. Outside companies? They have no right to it and Facebook has no right to sell it.

I think using the Marxist definition of "exploited" is ridiculous.  Comparing factory workers being compensated unfairly for hard work is HARDLY comparable to the issues with facebook.  Facebook users may be a source of profit for Facebook as a company, but the users are not workers, they're voluntary participants.  And as to the question of whether it is voluntary: I am in college, not only part of the population facebook was made explicitly for, but the population facebook still today most directly benefits.  It IS possible not to have a facebook and still stay in connection, provided you use other well-used means (Skype, email, cell phone).  If a college student (like many of my peers) can do it, anyone else who feels uncomfortable using facebook absolutely can.  Facebook doesn't really force it's users to do anything nor do they pay users, so I don't see how the comparison to exploutation according to Marx makes sense, despite the many flaws of facebook.

Would collection of data by sociologists from, say, the census represent exploitation of freely-generated content?

Why or why not?

I don't even notice the ads.

1. I really don't care what kinds of ads Facebook gives me (as long as they are not obscene). I've never clicked a Facebook ad, ever, and I basically ignore them (though I'm sure I subconsciously process them somehow).

2. If I did pay attention to the ads, then I think I'd prefer personalized ads anyway. For example, when watching TV, I'd much rather see a Coke ad than a Women's hair conditioner ad, because the latter is irrelevant to me.

3. I don't think it's exploitation and I don't think it's Marxian (though I agree with nathan that I'm sure Marx would be fascinated by Facebook) because we are basically customers, not workers. Facebook is acting like a middle-man between other companies (the ones who buy the ads) and us (who buy the products). We can buy through Facebook, or through some other online service, or through some non-online method (like, you know, walking into a store...). The services Facebook provides us are merely tools to attract us to use their service and to show us products we are (in theory) more likely to buy.

You won't be able to make sense of this with Marx's labor theory of value because the labor theory of value, and indeed all absolute theories of value, are just flat wrong.

Trades and economic interactions can only be understood thru a subjective theory of value. It should be obvious that if value were not subjective, no trade would occur at all. Trades occur only because people value things differently, which is why they go thru the trouble in the first place and why both sides can come out better off.

It avails nothing to try and look for ways that you're not getting your "fair share" every time you interact with others.

The people that say they don't notice ads are always the ones covered in labels.

It is absolutely exploitation--just because it has a happy face on it doesn't mean that it's not exploitation, which doesn't always come in the form of hard labor. It's social labor for profit that we perform.

There's an interesting take on this by Rob Horning--whose blog often asks these sorts of questions: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/blogs/marginal-utility/ --over at n+1, where he likens Facebook labor to the fast fashion world of the likes of Forever 21. http://nplusonemag.com/the-accidental-bricoleurs

the article is flawed. exploitation isn't and has never been a feeling. marx, whose work is drawn on here, certainly never expressed it as such, and would also likely take that to be an unfortunate misunderstanding of his term, and his ideas.

As an employee you HAVE to create more value than you are being paid. If you don't, you are not going to be hired. 

If you are selling a product, you HAVE to provide more value to customers than what you are asking those customers to pay. If you don't, customers won't buy your product.

Another way to look at this is: As a member of this economy you try to create value for others and you try to keep some of that value for yourself in exchange for your work. The ethics around what percentage of value should goes to each side seems to be a difficult question. I have no idea how to define that.