The BitSoil Popup Tax and Hack Campaign, data economy reversed.


Have you ever wondered how you could get paid for the unpaid labour you do for social media giants? We are still far removed from any fair reward for enabling companies like Facebook or Google to make huge profits. If we are ever to get that reward, something will have to change. The Belgian sisters Bénédicte and Laure-Ann Jacobs, artists working under the name LarbitsSisters, have created an elaborate campaign for the reclaiming of value of user-generated data: The Bitsoil Popup Tax and Hack Campaign. BitSoil is a lovely poetic pun on the notion of data being the new oil. The campaign consists of different layers and happens both offline and online. The LarbitsSisters employ a very smart combination of strategies. A particularly interesting one is the use of Twitter ‘prospector bots’ to approach potential claimants. The bots respond to a set of keywords. They invite Twitter users who use these words to visit the Bitsoil Popup Tax and Hack Campaign website to calculate the value of their social media data and make a claim towards the relevant companies. These claims are still made quite innocently by the LarbitsSisters sending postcards for you to, for example, Mark Zuckerberg, but one can also send a postcard to your national politician responsible for possibly supporting such a claim by creating new legislation or putting pressure on the industry. The Bitsoil Popup Tax and Hack Campaign is also an attractive visual work. The artists have created an installation that spits out Bitsoil paper cash, the Bitsoil Republic. It consists of a group of large imposing black printers endlessly churning out a visual proof of the value created by social media users. The sisters however also approach the audience directly. At the last Brussels Internet Yami-ichi (Internet Black Market), Bénédicte and Laure-Ann Jacobs had a stand in which they personally helped you calculate the value you generate, and they symbolically paid you for your services afterwards. I have a nice stack of Bitsoil on the table behind me now. Hopefully I can one day turn them into real profit. Josephine Bosma


Larbitslab – The BitSoil Popup Tax and Hack Campaign