The Meta swamp2025
The Meta swamp is filled with your data.
The Meta swamp is filled with my data.
The Meta swamp is filled with everyone's data.
The good data, the bad data, the ugly data.
The Meta swamp is brown in colour from mashing all the data up into one great sludge.
The Meta swamp is toxic, dead of life, soulless.
The Meta swamp is waiting for you to be pushed in by Mark Zuckerberg when you're not looking.
The Meta swamp is big.
The Meta swamp is hungry.
The Meta swamp is not drying out anytime soon.
As Meta and other tech giants expand their AI training, the lines between consent, creativity, and exploitation blur. ‘The Meta Swamp’ unpacks the hidden social relations behind AI-generated content, using Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism to reveal how individual digital contributions are absorbed into an untraceable mass. But if the swamp can’t be drained, can we at least make it clearer? A proposal for ‘fair trade’ AI certification asks whether transparency could shift the balance, or if we’re already in too deep.