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 broken. We're overcommitted, underutilized, and out of whack. But it doesn't have to be this way. What Works is a podcast about rethinking work, business, and leadership as we navigate the 21st-century economy. When you're an entrepreneur, independent worker, or employee who doesn't want to lose yourself to the whims of late-stage capitalism, this show is for you. 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.