The paradox of digital criticism

Critics of digital technology abound: Airbnb is destroying city centers, instant access to everything is destroying our relationship with time, consumption is spiraling out of control. Yet these same critics massively use what they denounce. This contradiction reveals less a moral problem than a deep misunderstanding of the mechanisms at play.

Acknowledging Our Own Contradictions

I regularly meet people who develop harsh criticisms of digital technology. They denounce uberization, Airbnb emptying city centers of their inhabitants, the excessive speed of access to everything. In three clicks, a plane ticket. For a few euros, clothes produced on the other side of the world. They point to this ease that transforms everything into ultra-consumption, where we no longer even think before buying, before leaving, before clicking.

But when I ask them to specify the purpose of their criticism, the answers become vague. Is it ecological? Humanist? Social? And especially, when I observe their own uses, I discover that they fly regularly, book Airbnbs for their getaways, and use ChatGPT daily. Recently, I heard someone violently criticize artificial intelligence while admitting, a few minutes later, having become “completely addicted” to this tool for their research.

This paradox amuses me, of course. We are all full of contradictions. What bothers me is the absence of self-criticism. These people sincerely believe they are engaged in a struggle for good, while their actions totally contradict their discourse. The problem is not the contradiction itself, but the unconsciousness of this contradiction. It’s always others who are responsible, never oneself.

The Ease of the External Posture

This “external” criticism of digital technology strangely resembles other moralizing discourses. We think, for example, of the guilt-tripping around waste sorting: citizens conscientiously sort their trash while large industries massively pollute without really being bothered. British Petroleum, for example, was one of the main promoters of the carbon footprint concept, thus managing to mask the fact that they remain among the planet’s biggest polluters by using “ecological” lobbying to push people to become “responsible,” when real accountability that would make much more difference in ecological terms would be to mobilize to pass laws that would force these large companies to produce differently.

Bernard Stiegler, who worked extensively on these questions, spoke of technology as a pharmakon: both remedy and poison. For him, the challenge was not to reject technology, but to educate ourselves about it and educate it. What made his approach coherent is that he didn’t settle for an intellectual posture: he genuinely experimented with technologies, worked with them, to understand from within their psychic, social, and political effects. He didn’t approach the subject “from the outside.” Easy criticism consists of placing oneself above, denouncing without ever confronting the reality of uses, and above all one’s own. It’s intellectually comfortable, but truly dishonest.

The Trap of Misplaced Individual Responsibility

Take the example of Airbnb, often cited as responsible for all evils. Yes, in certain cities like Barcelona or New York, the multiplication of tourist rentals has driven inhabitants out of city centers. But is it Airbnb’s fault as such? Or isn’t it rather a problem of public regulation?
Initially, Airbnb represented a form of democratization: a platform allowing direct connection between individuals, without going through the traditional hotel industry. The problem arises when this innovation is not regulated. Some municipalities eventually legislated, New York requires for example that one be the owner of their primary residence to be able to rent. These measures work. But they often come too late, after years of deregulation that have caused considerable damage.

Making individual Airbnb users bear the responsibility seems like a real mistake to me, just like making individual actions bear the responsibility for ecological disaster. People do what they can in the world as it is given to them. If you’re looking for affordable accommodation for a weekend, you find an offer at a reasonable price on an easy-to-use platform, why not use it? You don’t necessarily have all the information about the systemic consequences of your action. And even if you did, what real power do you have to change things individually?

The Political Question of Regulation

The real issue is regulation. And in a capitalist system, regulation cannot be ensured by private actors themselves. It would be absurd to ask them to self-regulate: their logic is profit, that’s their raison d’être. Blablacar, HomeExchange, Airbnb, all these platforms make choices that maximize their development, sometimes to the detriment of users or communities. This is normal, it’s their function. I’m not saying it’s good.
But the responsibility for regulation falls to States and public institutions, and that is precisely their role. The problem we currently face is not so much the existence of digital platforms as the slowness and inefficiency of public authorities in the face of these developments. This slowness is not accidental: it often results from collusion between political decision-makers and shareholders of these same companies. Digital lobbies, like industry lobbies before them, have considerable power over legislative processes.

Democratic institutions function slowly, which is actually necessary to allow debate and deliberation. But this slowness becomes problematic in the face of innovations that deploy at high speed.

Two Complementary Paths for Engagement

To truly change things, I see two complementary axes of action. The first is individual, the second is collective:

• First, we must develop a critical gaze on ourselves. Acknowledge our own paradoxes, look at our own uses. I use artificial intelligence, I sometimes book on platforms, I own a smartphone. Acknowledging this doesn’t devalue my critical voice, on the contrary: it makes it more lucid, more embodied. François Bégaudeau, in L’Histoire de ta bêtise (2019), skewers this “humanist and cool bourgeoisie” that believes itself engaged while fully participating in the system it denounces. His criticism is painful precisely because it includes us all. Embracing our contradictions doesn’t mean giving up all criticism, but criticizing from within, with humility.
• Then, we must mobilize politically. The real challenge is at the level of collective regulation. Digital platforms, like other economic actors, will never regulate themselves. Voting then becomes a decisive act: not voting for one political side over another, but voting for candidates who have no conflicts of interest with the shareholders of digital capitalism. Candidates capable of thinking about agile, informed regulation, that is neither blind prohibition nor destructive laissez-faire.

Inhabiting Our Contradictions Rather Than Denying Them

Stiegler insisted on the necessity of “education in digital uses.” Not a moralizing education that would say “it’s good” or “it’s bad,” but an education that allows us to understand the effects of our tools on our psyches, our relationships, our societies. An education that assumes we are inside, that we cannot place ourselves above.

I think of my own relationship with my phone. I’ve disabled all notifications, ringtone and vibration. The phone remains a communication tool, but I decide when I’m available. This small technical modification has profoundly changed my relationship with the tool, and with my time.
This anecdote perhaps illustrates a path: neither pure rejection, nor passive acceptance, but conscious reappropriation. Not “digital is bad,” but “how can I inhabit the digital without letting myself be totally inhabited by it?”

From Posture to Engagement

Criticism of digital technology is more than necessary. Platforms do indeed create considerable problems: tourist gentrification, work precariousness, attention capture, data extractivism. But a criticism that ignores its own contradictions becomes sterile. Worse, it becomes an alibi, a way to feel virtuous without changing anything.

True engagement requires something else: accepting being involved, recognizing that we participate in the system we criticize, and from this uncomfortable position, acting politically to impose just regulations. Not regulation that would punish users, but regulation that would frame economic actors, that would protect the commons, that would allow us to maintain collective control over technical developments.

We live with digital technology. The question is no longer whether it’s good or bad, but how we want to live it, and especially: who decides the rules of the game? Private shareholders or organized citizens? That’s where the true political challenge of our time lies regarding this new and immense industry.