Platforms extract free work while paying recognition and perks instead of wages

Evidence

There is a lot of unpaid work performed by humans on social quantification platforms, even when this work provides value to the network and allows the platform owners to enrich themselves. Consider, for instance, all the ways in which users can contribute free labor in the Local Guides program that is part of Google Maps. This program asks individuals to “Review a place,” “Rate a place,” “Add photos to a place,” “Answer questions about a place,” “Edit a place’s information or Edit a road on the map,” “Add a missing place,” “Check facts about places nearby,” and “Respond to Q&As.” In return, the platform offers recognition; working for them can help “your contributions get noticed” and valued in this “gamified” system. The work can also be remunerated not in cash but in perks that can be used to further integrate workers into the platform (such as “3 months of Google Play Music and 75% off a movie rental on Google Play” or something similar). Many social quantification platforms have similar ways of rewarding users, but in general, the more “social” a platform is, the less expectation there is that users will be recompensed for their work, since the joy of social interaction facilitated by the platform is presented as enough payment. Julian Kücklich refers to this phenomenon in which participation itself generates value as playbor (part play, part labor), suggesting that from the perspective of capitalism, the means of production here are the players themselves. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 215

Categorization

• DEFINE: Playbor (Kücklich) defined as participation itself generating value.
• SHARE: The gamified Google Maps Local Guides ‘Rewards’ perk (Google Play Music credits) is a concrete nerdy example of surplus-value extraction.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing whether Google Maps data drawn from unpaid Local Guides in the Global South functions structurally like the maps-militarization cases common in the attention literature.
• XREF: connects to: Glamour of cool jobs acts as nonmonetary compensation for workers — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 143; 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 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks #corroborates (1.00)
• Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338
• Social media participation constitutes unpaid labor from which platforms extract value #corroborates (0.95) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 505
• Platform ‘gamified’ labor substitutes token payments and rankings for wages #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 1034
• Users freely did unpaid labor that increased Facebook’s own value #exemplifies (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1011
• Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity. #corroborates (0.90) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197
• An everything app charges vendors rent and extracts free labor from users #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 513
• Platform users become unpaid servants who train algorithms. #expands (0.88)
• Quality-content rules extract unpaid user labor benefiting platforms #expands (0.85) — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet, 211
• Platforms extract data as a form of unpaid payment from users #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 128
• Platform profit does not come from exploiting labor but from commodifying social life itself #contradicts (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 144
• Offering free digital tools functions as Freirean false generosity to entrap users #qualifies (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 536