Platform profit does not come from exploiting labor but from commodifying social life itself
Evidence
What is core to the new capitalist social order is that ordinary social interaction today contributes to surplus value not as labor but as a factor of production. Human life is being incorporated within a vastly expanded production process and, as such, faces increasing pressure to be commodified, whether as data for which platforms get paid in some form or (in the vision of some reformers) as a form of disguised labor power, for which those reformers propose platform users get paid. The key point is not whether some payment results but that the data traces of our activities are under pressure to be commodified at all. This is the central change underway, and it flows not from the transformation of labor via digital platforms but from something deeper: an expansion of the whole process of capitalist production and the factors that contribute to it to encompass the flow of human life in all its open-endedness. In the long run, this expansion of production may develop into an entirely new “mode of production,” in Marx’s term, but just a decade or so into datafication, it is premature to name this yet. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 144
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the ‘data colonialism’ thesis against the rival claim that platform labor is disguised labor power — the reader’s entire frame-mapping purpose.
- XREF: Contrasts directly with the attention/surveillance school the reader is comparing this against; this is the ‘production not attention’ pivot. — connects to: Platforms create an essentially new servitude for users distinct from workplace exploitation — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 320; Voluntary and enjoyable platform use still constitutes unpaid extraction like feudal serfdom — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 338; Users, not paid employees, produce the most valuable capital of platform firms — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 333 (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Most social interactions escape capitalist valorisation, which is why platforms must be built
#corroborates(0.85) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 53 - Data exploitation resembles capitalism’s free ride on uncommodified life, not factory labor
#expands(0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 326 - Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads
#qualifies(0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40 - Autonomist ‘social factory’ theory cannot explain data extraction because it presumes labor-like activity
#corroborates(0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 153 - Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized
#expands(0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 131 - Social media participation constitutes unpaid labor from which platforms extract value
#contradicts(0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 505 - The attention economy captures pre-existing human communities onto platforms to monetize them
#qualifies(0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 324 - Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners
#contradicts(0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338 - Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity.
#contradicts(0.72) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197