O sujeito neoliberal como chave do princípio e funcionamento das big techs: um desvendamento do neoliberalismo nas redes

Abstract

With this research it was intended to account for the presence of an ideology of subjectivation directed at a subject desired by neoliberalism, both in the origin and in the practical operation of the major data-processing companies commonly called Big Techs. In general terms, the research aims to analyze how large data-processing companies, especially through their products called social media, are, both in origin and in practice, permeated by the neoliberal subject and individualism, and consequently harmful to the social and political fabric. The research specifically aims to: 1) understand how neoliberalism and individualism, in the form of governmentality and the neoliberal subject, are intrinsic to the historical advent of these social media; and 2) identify how the data-capture practices of the Big Techs, profiling, tends to create opinion niches, and how much these niches result in bubbles of self-confirmation of those opinions, thus reinforcing governmentality and the neoliberal subject. To work on the object circumscribed in this proposition, I define the methodological approach in three stages, each of which uses its specific research techniques: 1) bibliographic/documentary analysis of the Californian magazine influential in Silicon Valley, WIRED, working with a set of issues from 1994 to 1996; 2) content analysis (categorization and inference), where a set of publications on Facebook were captured, inferred, and explored in depth from two politically antagonistic groups; and 3) analysis of advertiser support pages, where some advertiser support pages from Google and Meta, which allowed content targeting to specific profiles (profiling), were screenshotand analyzed. These stages of the research were finally brought into dialogue with one another, in a triangulation, which intends to open up the discussion of the general objective of the work. Regarding the results, in the first stage of the research the presence of a neoliberalism tied to a strong defense of an unrestricted individual freedom, together with a strong anti-bureaucratic sentiment, was found; and in the second and third stages, the evidence of an isolation of antagonistic groups, specifically in the third, accompanied by the admission by the technology companies themselves, on their support pages, of a mode of operation that creates and niches “profiles”, and the consequent reinforcement of an individualized subject who is liberated in that individualization, less inclined toward differences, also thus aligned with neoliberal subjectivation, although in another expression. By way of conclusion, with this research it is finally possible to observe the existence of different modes of sponsorship of a neoliberal subjectivation at the core of the Big Techs, from their origins to their contemporary operation, ranging from a libertarian orientation in the 1990s to an instrumental character for an information industry in contemporary times, both sponsoring, through various paths, an individualistic subject, less tolerant of difference, and detrimental to democratic coexistence.