“The most effective way to diffuse collective action — and the sweeping, systemic changes it can spark — has always been to turn those who are suffering against one another,” Petersen writes. That is also a concise way of explaining what Ring cameras accomplish: They reject the possibility of collective action and embed “every person for themselves” ​ With social media, the reasonable desires for social recognition and tailored information metastasized into addictive use patterns and “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” ​ while the app can continually foreground a sense of the world is fundamentally dangerous.

In other words, the ‘success’ of technologies like self-checkout machines is in large part produced by the human effort necessary to maintain the technologies ​ Their broader point is that automation doesn’t eliminate human labor; it often leads to its disguising and devaluation ​ Customers have to bridge the gap between the norms of human customer service and the company’s imposition of inhuman staff shortfalls without completely losing their patience or simply taking what they couldn’t find a reasonable way to purchase. ​ That is, they rely on the kinds of consideration from users that the companies themselves don’t practice. ​ They have prioritized user growth, data collection, and advertising over providing a safe, reliable service to users. It’s no wonder that some users will adopt the same attitude and the same goals: try to spread unwanted messages as far as possible.