Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized

Evidence

The largest platforms distribute their presence across the internet via plug-ins that allow platform users, wherever they are, to link back to the resources of the platform, creating even more possibilities for aggregating data continuously across space and time. These power concentrations depend on the emerging social centrality of these platforms in a genuine sense, for we really do go onto platforms because we know others will be there (the so-called network effect). That is why platforms are fast becoming meaningful social infrastructures too. In these various ways, platforms are a principal organizational form through which capitalism’s connected social and economic order is being realized. They are a key tool for ensuring that the colonial-scale appropriation of data for human life becomes the norm. As networks, some platforms are larger than most nation-states. The largest platforms conceive of themselves accordingly. As Zuckerberg put it, “In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company.” The longer-term implications for legal, political, and social power are as yet unknown. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the attention/surveillance school’s account of platform centrality, but reframed through colonial-scale appropriation rather than attention capture. — connects to: Platform profit does not come from exploiting labor but from commodifying social life itself — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 144; Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 40; Platform work fuses data relations with labor relations at unprecedented scale — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 87 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes network effect and social-infrastructure status as mechanisms underlying data colonialism.

Broader Connections

• Platforms are the first business model with data extraction built into their core DNA #corroborates (0.88) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 76
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17
• Platform monopolies are also monopsonies over the data users produce #expands (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 174
• Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 160