Disconnect

An urgent examination of the threat posed to social media by user disconnection, and the measures websites will take to prevent it.

No matter how pervasive and powerful social media websites become, users always have the option of disconnecting — right? Not exactly, as Tero Karppi reveals in this disquieting book. Pointing out that platforms like Facebook see disconnection as an existential threat — and have undertaken wide-ranging efforts to eliminate it — Karppi argues that users' ability to control their digital lives is gradually dissipating.

Taking a nonhumancentric approach, Karppi explores how modern social media platforms produce and position users within a system of coded relations and mechanisms of power. Karppi uses Facebook's financial documents as a map to navigate how the platform sees its users and analyzes how Facebook's interface limits the opportunity to opt out — even continuing to engage users after their physical deaths. Showing how users have fought to take back their digital lives, Karppi chronicles responses like Web2.0 Suicide Machine, an art project dedicated to committing digital suicide.

Ultimately, Karppi's focus on the difficulty of disconnection, rather than the ease of connection, reveals how social media has come to dominate human relations.