---
tags: [ecopolsoc, internet]
created: Friday, November 22, 2024
---

# a771a6d9_defining_internet_enclosure

## Defining _enclosure_

The attempt by capital interests to encircle, control and contain networked
digital communication with the object of extracting financial value from the
exchanges and the community from which they arise.

This constitutes the commodification of a human-constituted resource, like
labour rather than a natural resource, like oil.

## Main characteristics

### Strategic denial of alternative communication media

Where there is a _multiplicity_ of media and within media, a multiplicity of
channels, capital steers communication toward a _single_ entity.

In a "democratic free-market society", capital cannot simply ban alternative
media, it can however work to diminish the influence of alternatives through the
strategic denial of interoperability and the aquisition and subsumption of
rivals into its system.

### Tyrannical control of the rules of communication

Where the standards of communication are elective and established organically
and collaboratively between peers (possibly even democratically), capital
enforces rules derived externally and applied in an authoritarian manner. These
rules are mutable but changes are enacted unilaterally and arbitrarily by the
owners of the medium, not its users. Hence, tyranny in its technical political
sense.

### Total control of information and content

Where individuals share information freely in collaborative enterprise with
diminished concern for ownership (typically favouring citation and iteration as
models), capital takes full possession of the information generated such that it
can be removed and destroyed at will without consultation.

### Surveillance

Where communication is anonymised (loosly or strictly (i.e. through
cryptographic means)), capital _surveils_ all exchanges and the behaviour of
community members.

Typically this is not _personal_ in the sense of being interested in the
specific user's identity, rather it is abstracted into a composite of the
person's preferences which may or may not disclose their legal identity (i.e
metadata).

This characteristic is both an _attribute_ of internet enclosure and its
ultimate reason for existence. It is critical to the mechanism of extraction
since it provides both data that can be sold to other capital interests and
content that can be used to sell to community members as consumers.

### Artificial promotion of commercial content and prolongation of engagement

Where engagement with media is idiosyncratic and organic, capital circumscribes
the field. This is done to prolong engagement.

At one pole this is achieved through the excitation of visceral responses by
artificially favouring content that titillates, disgusts or angers the user. At
the other, it is achieved through mollification and the coddling of the user.
The user encounters only like-minded fellows who affirm and repeat his existing
beliefs and values, creating community and a sense of safety through the
othering of contrary viewpoints. Both techniques are demagogic in nature
familiar from the control mechanisms of cults and extreme political ideologies.
