Digesting the (Not So) Free Lunches of Social Media: “Dark Patterns” and Party Autonomy

It has become com­mon wis­dom that »there is no such thing as free lunch.« Social media shows us dai­ly how true this obser­va­tion remains until today. The ›con­ven­tion­al‹ busi­ness mod­el of these plat­forms focus­es on data exploita­tion, and, increas­ing­ly, ›freemi­um‹ mod­els. While it is obvi­ous­ly worth­while to explore objec­tion­able busi­ness prac­tices in e‑commerce and on social media, as ›freemi­um‹ mod­els gain trac­tion, this con­tri­bu­tion sug­gests that the dis­course on ›dark pat­terns‹ is some­what sketchy and incom­plete – and in need of more specificity.