El Cartel de Los Metas: Plataformas, Imperialismo y Narco-Estado

Autores/as

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22409/hsrdng77

Palabras clave:

Plataformas, Compañias-Estado, Imperialismo, Cártel de la droga, Contenido tóxico

Resumen

El concepto de compañias-Estado se acuñó para describir el papel de la Compañía de las Indias Orientales (CIE) en la colonización británica de Asia. Este concepto se ha empleado en estudios de plataformas para describir el enorme poder que estas ejercen sobre sus usuarios y sus operaciones transnacionales al servicio del imperialismo. Aquí, destacamos una tercera dimensión de la comparación: la centralidad del opio en el modelo de negocio de la CIE. Este artículo argumenta que una lógica similar se aplica también a las plataformas, cuyo modelo de negocio se basa en la distribución de contenido tóxico y adictivo para fomentar la interacción de los usuarios.

Descargas

Los datos de descarga aún no están disponibles.

Biografía del autor/a

  • Afonso de Albuquerque, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF)

    Doutor em Comunicação e Cultura pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Professor do Departamento de Estudos Culturais e Mídia da Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) 

Referencias

BANNERMAN, Sarah. Platform imperialism, communications law and relational sovereignty. New Media & Society v. 26 n.4, p. 1816-1833, 2024.

BARBROOK, Richard & CAMERON, Andy The Californian Ideology. Science as Culture v. 6 n. 1, p. 44-72, 1996.

BARLOW, John Perry. A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Davos, 1996. Disponível em: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence.

BARGHAVA, Vikram R. & VELASQUEZ, Manuel. Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly v.31 n.3, p. 321–359, 2021.

BBC. O julgamento que pode mudar como Facebook e Instagram funcionam para mais jovens. 18 de agosto. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cx27zvg0vpro, 2026

BECK, Ulrich. What is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

BENTES, Anna. A plataformização da influência da publicidade e seu papel no capitalismo de vigilância: infraestrutura, mercados e governança. Eptic, v. 27 n. 3, p. 157-168, 2025

BEVIR, Mark. Governance as theory, practice, and dilemma. In BEVIR, Mark (ed.). The Sage Handbook of Governance (pp. 1–16). Sage, 2011.

BRATTON, Benjamin H. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2015.

BROWN, Wendy. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books, 2013.

BRUNS, Axel. After the ‘APIcalypse’: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research, Information, Communication & Society 22(11): 1544-1566, 2019.

CAMARGO, Camila A. et al. Jornalismo financiado por plataformas: análise dos apoios concedidos aos arranjos alternativos às corporações de mídia. E-Compós 26, p. 1-22,

CELESTE, Edoardo. Terms of service and bills of rights: new mechanisms of constitutionalisation in the social media environment? International Review of Law, Computers & Technology v. 33, n. 2, p. 122-138, 2018

CHEN, Song-Chuan. Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

CNN Brasil. Zuckerberg acusa países latino-americanos de terem “tribunais secretos”. CNN Brasil 7 janeiro https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/internacional/zuckerberg-acusa-paises-latino-americanos-de-terem-tribunais-secretos/ 2025

COULDRY, Nick. & MEJIAS, Ulises A. The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019.

CREECH, Brian & MADDOX, Jessica. Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry power. New Media & Society v. 26 n. 7, p. 4201-4218, 2024.

DALRYMPLE, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

D’ANDRÉA, Carlos. Para além dos dados coletados: Políticas das APIs nas plataformas de mídias sociais. MATRIZes, v. 15, n. 1, p. 103–122.

D’CUNHA, Christian. “A State in the disguise of a Merchant”: Tech Leviathans and the rule of law. European Law Journal v. 27 n. 1-3, n. 109-131, 2021.

DEMING, Sarah. The economic importance of Indian opium and trade with China on Britain’s economy – 1843-1890. Whitman College Economics Working Papers, 2011

DE TONI, Bianca. N & SEGURA, Maria Soledad. La irrupción de las plataformas digitales como financiadoras en los sistemas mediáticos latinoamericanos: ¿problema o solución? Comunicación y Sociedad 22, p.1-28, 2025.

DIJCK, José van. Facebook and the engineering of connectivity: A multi-layered approach to social media platforms. Convergence v. 19 n. 2, p. 141-155, 2013.

DORFMANN, Ariel & MATTELART, Armand. Para Leer al Pato Donald. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 1971.

DYSON, Esther et al. Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age The Information Society 12(3), 295–308, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1080/019722496129486

GERLITZ, C & HELMOND, A. 2013. The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web. New Media & Society v. 15 n.8, p. 1348-1365.

GIDDENS, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. London: Polity Press, 1990.

GILLESPIE, Tarleton. Platforms are not Intermediaries. Georgetown Law Technology Review v.2, n. 198, p. 198-216, 2018

GOWDER, Paul. The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023

GROHMANN, Rafael. & BARBOSA, Alexandre Costa 2025. Sovereignty-as-a-Service. How Big Tech companies co-opt and redefine digital sovereignty. Media, Culture & Society. DOI: 10.1177/01634437251395003

GULATI, Rishi. Meta’s Oversight Board and Transnational Hybrid Adjudication—What Consequences for International Law? German Law Journal v. 24 n. 3, p. 473-493, 2023

GUNKEL, David J. Social Contract 2.0: Terms of Service Agreements and Political Theory 2: 145-167, 2014

JIANG, Yifan. & BRUIJN, Oscar de. Facebook helps: a case study of crosscultural social networking and social capital, Information, Communication & Society, v. 17 n.6, 732-749, 2014.

JURNO, Amanda C. & D’ANDREA, Carlos. Between Partnerships, Infrastructures and Products: Facebook Journalism Project and the Platformization of Journalism’. Brazilian Journalism Research, v. 16, n. 3, p. 502-525, 2020.

KARPPI, Tero & NIEBORG, David B. Facebook confessions: Corporate abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism. New Media & Society v.23 n. 9, p. 2634-2649, 2021

LIM Elisha. Anticolonial Platform Studies. Social Text v. 43 n. 2, p. 45-74, 2025.

LOMBARDI, Claudio. Rethinking journalism protection: looking beyond copyright, Journal of Media Law, v. 15 n;1, p. 90-120, 2023

LYCARIÃO, Dyogenes et al. Is the Public Sphere Still Alive? Longitudinal Analysis of Climate Change Issue Attention Across Newspapers and Social Media Platforms (2014-2022). Brazilian Political Science Review v. 19 n. 1, p. 1-27. 2025

MALLIK, Senjuti The British East India Company and the Great Bengal Famine of 1770: Towards a Corporate Colonial Biopolitics. Geographical Review v. 114, n. 4, p. 464-488, 2024.

MEDE, Niels G & SCHÄFER, Mike S. Science-related populism: Conceptualizing populist demands toward science. Public Understanding of Science v. 29 n. 5, p. 473–491, 2020

MILLER, Shane Terence. Meta (Facebook) and US national security data requests: A study in media imperialism. Media, War & Conflict, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1177/17506352251356828

MUJICA, Alejandro L. et al. 2022. Addiction by design: Some Dimensions and Challenges of Excessive Social Media Use. Medical Research Archives v.10 n.2, p. 1-29.

NIEBORG, David. B., POELL, Thomas & van DIJK, José. Platforms and platformization. In FLEW, T; HOLT, Jennifer & THOMAS, Julian. (eds.). The SAGE handbook of the digital media economy. London: Sage, pp. 29-49, 2022

NOGUES-MARCO, Pilar. Measuring Colonial Extraction: The East India Company’s Rule and the Drain of Wealth (1757–1858). Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics v. 2 n. 1, p. 154-195, 2021.

OLIVEIRA, Débora Ferreira & MARQUES, Rodrigo Moreno. O ataque das plataformas digitais contra o projeto de lei das fake News: uma análise sob as lentes do colonialismo digital e do colonialismo de dados. Tendências da Pesquisa Brasileira em Ciência da Informação v. 17, pp 1-26, 2024.

O’NEILL, Cathy. Algoritmos de destruição de massa. Como o Big Data aumenta a desigualdade e ameaça a democracia. Santo André: Editora Rua do Sabão, 2021.

ORESKES, Naomi & CONWAY, Erik M. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

PAPAEVANGELOU, Charis. Funding intermediaries: Google and Facebook’s strategy to capture journalism. Digital Journalism v.12 n.2, p. 234-255, 2024.

POEHL Julia & THIEL, Thornsten. Digital Sovereignty. Internet Policy Review v9 n.4, p. 1-19, 2020.

RECUERO, Raquel. A Rede da Desinformação, estruturas e dinâmicas das plataformas de mídias sociais. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2025.

ROBERTS, James A. & DAVID, Meredith E. The Social Media Party: Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), Social Media Intensity, Connection, and Well-Being. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction v. 36 n.4, p 386-392, 2020.

SANTOS Jr, Marcelo Alves. As vanguardas da intervenção: o extremismo digital e o ataque às instituições democráticas no Brasil. Mauad: Rio de Janeiro, 2026.

SCHWARZ, Ori. Facebook Rules: Structures of Governance in Digital Capitalism and the Control of Generalized Social Capital. Theory, Culture & Society v. 36. n.4, p. 117-141, 2019.

SCHILLER, Herbert. Mass Communication and American Empire. New York: M Kelley Publishers, 1969.

SHARMA, Nabanita. The making of a ‘narco-state’: Opium consumption, trade and

regulations on the northeastern frontier of British India. The Indian Economic and Social History Review v. 61 n. 3, p. 293–324, 2024.

SOUZA, Rodrigo Ardissom de. Estados privados e soberania digital: a regulação de plataformas globais no Brasil e na América Latina. In ANTUNES, Henrique Souza et al. (eds). Atlantic Dialogues on Technology and Regulation. Pp. 136=164; Lisboa: UCP Press, 2026.

SRIVASTAVA, Swati. Algorithmic Governance and the International Politics of Big Tech. Perspectives on Politics v. 21 n.3, p. 989-1000, 2023

STERN, Peter J. The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

STOYCHEFF, Elizabeth. Under Surveillance: Examining Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly v 93 n. 2, p. 296-311, 2016.

SUZOR, Nicolas. Digital constitutionalism: Using the rule of law to evaluate the legitimacy of governance by platforms. Social Media + Society v. 4 n. 3, p. 1-11, 2018

TORNBERG, Petter. How Platforms Govern. Big Data & Society. 2023 https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231153808

TROCKI, Carl A. Opium, Empire, and Global Political Economy. A study in the Asian opium trade 1750-1850. London & New York: Routledge, 1999.

WU, Timothy S. Cyberspace Sovereignty? The Internet and the International System. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 10(3): 647-666, 1997.

Publicado

2026-09-30

Cómo citar

El Cartel de Los Metas: Plataformas, Imperialismo y Narco-Estado. (2026). Medios Y Cotidiano, 20(3), 10-29. https://doi.org/10.22409/hsrdng77