In a letter addressed to the public meant to outline the "core values"" of his company, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission- to make the world more open and connected " (New York Times, 2012). Indeed, with over 1.3 billion users and nearly 2 million new users joining each day1, Facebook can easily be considered the most widespread and influential social utility of this generation. However, despite its homepage slogan claiming to "connect you to friends and the world around you ", Facebook actually disconnects its users from each other and from themselves through the commodification of human relationships. .
Karl Marx defines a commodity as "an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants in some form or another " (Selected Writings, 421). A commodity is essentially a product of capitalism, and according to Marx, those who own the production of commodities also maintain power within a society. Referred to as the "ruling class ", these owners of production construct what Marx calls the "ruling ideas ", which are the "ideal expressions of the dominant material relationships, hence of the relationships that make one class the ruling one " (The German Ideology, 173). The ruling ideas function to protect and preserve the interests of the ruling class, although oftentimes these underlying implications are hidden from members of the non-ruling class. In fact, Marx argues that the success of a ruling idea lies in its ability to remain external from the proletariat, while at the same time promoting the existence and status of the ruling class without the non-ruling class realizing that they are being subordinated. .
Facebook is a multi-billion dollar franchise grounded in capitalism, and operates primarily by exploiting its users and producing millions of new commodities each day.