The eclipse of the citizen

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By DENNIS DE OLIVEIRA*

Mark Zuckerberg, instrumental reason and the “communication problem” in government

1.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement to end moderation and analyst-based fact-checking of information posted on the company's social media channels sparked a series of discussions about the impacts on the dissemination of fake news and hate speech. Mark Zuckerberg announced in the first week of January 2025 that Meta's social media platforms – Facebook and Instagram – instead of having the content posted subject to evaluation and checking by company analysts, they will be subject to controls by a system called “community ratings”, similar to that used on Elon Musk's X platform.

This system leaves moderation to the network users themselves. On platform X, the system works as follows: users voluntarily sign up to write ratings about certain content, and then other users evaluate whether these ratings are pertinent or not – according to the number of positive evaluations received, the rating is included below the posted content.

This decision by the Meta company's management occurred on the eve of the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who, among other things, has been emphasizing the defense of a concept of freedom of expression without any restrictions or regulations. Mark Zuckerberg, in the same speech in which he announced Meta's new policy, criticized the positions of the judiciary, mainly in Latin America, that try to hold the social media platforms responsible for the content they disseminate. There is a clear political convergence here with the global far right, which already has another exponent of the digital platform, Elon Musk.

This episode is important to signal contemporary aspects of capitalist society. Jordi Dean calls the current moment of capitalism “communicative capitalism” because information flows acquire a strategic value in the dynamics of production (for example, the just-in-time is only possible with the existence of an efficient flow of information between the various ends of the production-distribution-consumption circuit) and it is evident that this logic of productive organization radiates as an ideological reference that shapes subjectivities.

All the characteristics of contemporary society that demand several studies on problems such as hyperspeed, anxiety, anguish, “society of fatigue”, among others, arise from social conformation as a need to adapt to a productive logic.

From a political point of view, the nature of this change is striking – from moderation by a fact-checking team to a classification or counterpoint based on the “number of users” who positively or negatively evaluate a post. Here we clearly observe a practice that signals what Max Horkheimer calls the transition from subjective reason to instrumental reason.

By subjective reason, Max Horkheimer defines a rationality based on the capacity of human beings to think and reflect autonomously in search of the meanings of existence and social justice. Such reason goes beyond practical utility and signals a critical stance, or in the words of Agnes Heller, a suspension of everyday life and its pragmatics. Instrumental reason is the very justification of the means in terms of their ends. The objective is efficiency, control and the search for practical results.

One caveat: it is clear that the moderation carried out by a Meta fact-checking team was not considered to be motivated by subjective rationality and was riddled with instrumental elements. However, the delegation to the users themselves clearly reveals the instrumental nature of the evaluation, without any qualms about it being legitimized by a group of “experts” with legitimacy constructed by other vectors.

2.

It should be noted that Zuckerberg's decision responds to a political trend (strengthening the far right) and has an economic purpose because it subjects quality assessments to the majority opinion of users (inputs of network platforms because their habits are transformed into information that becomes marketing strategies for advertisers on digital platforms). This is the full realization of the eclipse of the citizen by the totalizing shadow of the consumer, of subjective reason by instrumental reason and, finally, of the divorce between power (of capital) and politics (of the public sphere) that Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman speaks of.

At work Reinventing @ culture, Muniz Sodré speaks of a return to the dimension of rhetoric (power of argumentation) to the detriment of dialectics (search for truth) as one of the symptoms of the moment he calls technoculture (articulation between culture, technology and market economy). In this sense, it is not just a decline of enlightening or subjective reason in favor of its instrumentality for the effectiveness of capital, but rather the emergence of argumentative rhetoric or the “era of sensibilities” as Sodré himself says in another work. Based on this, the diagnosis is that the current moment is one of a war of arguments, or of “narratives”.

3.

Thus, in this moment of communicative capitalism with all its nuances, the federal government announces a change in the command of the Communications Secretariat, replacing Paulo Pimenta, federal deputy and therefore a figure originating from the classic institutions of politics, with Sidônio Pereira, whose resume includes having been the publicist responsible for Lula's victorious campaign in the 2022 presidential elections.

What motivates the change? The government’s main problem is “communication” – despite favorable economic indicators (GDP growth, inflation under control, unemployment reduction), the government’s popularity is not taking off. And here communication is placed in the perspective of an instrumental rationality (its effectiveness in terms of achieving expected results). And nothing is more symbolic than this instrumentality in establishing instrumental criteria for the change – the current minister “fails” in his work due to the results and, at the same time, the new appointee has the credential of having run a “victorious” campaign.

Saying that the problem is one of communication and that communication is strategic does not mean understanding the field of communication as an essential element in contemporary society. It is not about a more or less “efficient” use of social networks, but rather understanding the dynamics of communication flows within the productive logic of communicative capitalism and the functional sociabilities that result from it. Understanding this is essential to establish positions that are consistent with the construction of an emancipatory political project. What is clear is that the way this is discussed within the government sphere does not only express a lack of knowledge of the field, but also that it is far from considering new perspectives.

A sociability built from the information flows inherent to communicative capitalism is not just the exchange of analog information for digital information. It is the constitution of subjectivities impacted by technologies of sociability whose digital forms carry meanings, perceptions of time and space, all of which are appropriate and adherent to the current system. And it is clear that certain meanings will have more difficulty in gaining support.

This is where the danger lies in the user-driven moderation model that will be implemented by Meta’s social media platforms. It is not just a matter of extremists being more efficient or competent in occupying social networks, but rather that the meanings they defend are more in line with the model of sociability built by communicative capitalism. In a model of production organization centered on an increasingly fierce logic of competition, how can we think that messages with collective values, respect for diversity, and social regulation are more palatable than narcissistic and egocentric discourses that quickly descend into explicit intolerance or even “blasé cynicism”?

4.

In this complex process, journalism as an activity that connects citizens with the construction of history through factual singularities is impacted as the possibility of expanding the understanding of the singular fact is separated from the perspective of subjective rationality. There is an evident emptying of the intellectual role of the journalist as a mediator who can dissolve into the model of “curation of information disseminated on social networks” – as has been the case with several journalistic products sold as “reports” – or as a strategist of information management within the logic of instrumental rationality (it is no coincidence that several journalism professionals are hired by companies in the area of ​​speculative capital that lives off the dissemination of “rumors” or planted information).

With all this, it is not necessary to establish classic dictatorial powers to prohibit freedom of expression. It already occurs due to these metamorphoses of capitalism that require control of information flows for the reproduction of wealth and that mold the subjects suitable for this order within communicational paradigms that block critical reason.

The big problem is that even governments that claim to be progressive or left-wing give in to this logic out of ignorance, pragmatism or a combination of both. And then, when they become a poorly projected shadow of the dominant order, they quickly fall into disrepute and attribute this situation to a problem of “communication”. But between the poorly projected image and the referent, the latter ends up being preferred even if an attempt is made to improve the projection of the image.

The same applies to journalism. Submitting to the logic of the instrumental reason of communicative capitalism is its death. The essence of journalism is precisely to enable the understanding of a society in the making. The instrumental reason of communicative capitalism is to prevent such understanding precisely because it signals its critique.

*Dennis De Oliveira is a full professor of Journalism at the School of Communications and Arts at USP. Author of, among others, books on Structural racism: a historical-critical perspective (Dandara).


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