Digital Sharecropper
Digital Sharecropping is not Digital Sovereignty
When you don't own or control the digital space you use to publish content, it's called "digital sharecropping" or "platform dependency".
In these cases it's usually the owner of the space (Facebook, for example) who gains from your content's presence on their site (by selling advertising in the FB feed.)
There is no doubt you can profit from sharing in spaces you don't own, but be aware rules and situations can quickly change, leaving your plans in the dust.
Sharecrop Fields Are Not Created Equal
In the digital domain, the level of sovereignty varies.
The Really Good
- Your self-hosted website (I use WordPress)
- an email provider such as Kit.
The Pretty Good
- Substack, since it makes money by taking a cut of your paid subscriber fees. See my 30 Days of Substack Challenge for ways to stay sovereign.
The Bad
- Facebook is notorious for changing their methods without telling their users, nor seeming to care.
- TikTok, in addition to being highly insecure
Related Ideas
"Free users are not customers, they are the inventory" (Tim O'Reilly)
and
"If something online is free, you're not the customer, you're the product" (Jonathan Zittrain)
Enshitification a term coined by Cory Doctorow, (science fiction author, blogger, and digital rights activist) to describe how digital platforms tend to degrade over time.
- learn more Enshittification - Wikipedia