EP 385: Context Clues: Who do you work for?

Do you spend more of your time working for internet companies than for yourself or your clients?

Show Notes

It seems like every business owner or freelancer I know wants to quit social media. But very few people are actually doing it. It seems easier to imagine the end of your business than the end of social media, to paraphrase Mark Fisher. There’s something about our relationship to social platforms that makes them feel inescapable. And, perhaps without even noticing, it’s started to see like we’re working for them more than working for ourselves. In this episode, I unpack our relationship to platforms and who profits from our labor. And it starts in an unusual place: the recent Etsy strike.
 
Footnotes:

• “Etsy sellers will go on strike in April and ask customers to boycott” on The Verge
• “Why Etsy sellers are going on strike” on Yahoo Finance
• “16,000 shops join Etsy strike” via KERO
• Rob Kalin speaking to the World Economic Forum
• Mark Zuckerberg testifying before the House Energy & Commerce Committee
• “How Facebook (Meta), Twitter, social media make money from you” via Investopedia
• Tyler McCall on Instagram and Twitter

 
 

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What is What Works?

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.