Thread by @charliehrysmith

My chapter (from a collection edited by @chrisdburr & @Floridi) is now online 🥳 link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

TL;DR: stop talking about 'digital identities' on social media. They're really 'corporatised identities', designed to monetise and shape our online interactions.

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To justify introducing this new 'corporatised identities' neologism, I start the chapter by discussing the two ways in which we can express ourselves on social media. Specifically, I distinguish @zephoria's 'digital performances' from @blurky's 'digital artefacts'.

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Armed with this distinction, I go on to argue we should differentiate corporatised identities – poor approximations of our actual digital identities, inferred and extrapolated by algorithms analysing our expressions of digital identity – from digital identities proper.

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What implications does this have, you might ask? Moving into some (political) philosophy, I draw heavily on Catriona Mackenzie's excellent relational account of autonomy to argue that social media platforms as they currently exist are undermining this vital liberal value.

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In short, designing social media sites around the algorithmic production of monetisable corporatised identities, rather than encouraging genuine performances of authentic digital identities, is damaging for our self-governance, self-determination, and self-authorisation.

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So, digital identities should come once more to drive our actions on social media sites (like Facebook's early days!).

To sum up: I hope my main contribution is this corporatised/digital identity distinction. But please give my analysis of social media design a read too!

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P.S. If you're interested in reading about the other fantastic chapters in the collection, @chrisdburr has a thread summarising them all here:

https://twitter.com/chrisdburr/status/1300753244369674241

My deep personal thanks to Chris, too, for all his help and support for a young PhD student these past months!

P.P.S. Pre-prints are available on @PhilPapers_CDP and you can always Tweet or email me with questions about access! philpapers.org/rec/SMICI-5 #digitalidentity #digitalethics