Closed platforms extract rent because users must surrender identity to use them

Evidence

In the world of Internet Two, shaped by the New Enclosures, you are routinely forced to hand over your identity to a part of the digital realm that has been fenced off, such as Uber or Lyft or some other private company. When you request a ride to the airport, their algorithm dispatches a driver of its choice with a view to maximise the exchange value the company owning the algorithm extracts both from you and the driver. These New Enclosures enabled the plunder of the digital commons which drove the incredible rise of cloud capital. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 305

Categorization

• QUESTION: The line that the algorithm maximizes exchange value extracted ‘both from you and the driver’ — worth checking against Uber’s actual pricing/dispatch logic.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 305
• XREF: connects to: Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent; Click-wrap contracts function as a unilateral private seizure of user rights — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 151; Platforms’ private rules affect users more than the law does — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 121

Broader Connections

• Click-wrap contracts function as a unilateral private seizure of user rights #corroborates (0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 151
• Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent #complicates (0.90)