Quality-content rules extract unpaid user labor benefiting platforms
Evidence
Unlike rules against child pornography or personal attacks, where the platform stands opposed to the bad intentions of the user, these rules align the user and the platform, both (presumably) invested in producing a quality experience for all. This alignment, however, is in the service of convincing users to produce quality content and proper participation—work that benefits the platform. Many of these platforms depend to a great degree on their users producing the bulk of the content, labeling it, organizing it, and promoting it to others. This “labor” has been of growing scholarly concern, seen by many as work that goes largely unnoticed and uncompensated, while the benefits and revenue accrue to the platform. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet, 211
Categorization
- XREF: Ties to the digital-labor literature (Terranova, Fuchs, the immaterial-labor debate) and to critiques that free-speech framing masks platform economic motives. — connects to: Users have paid for platform transparency with their own data — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 609; Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 338; Social media participation constitutes unpaid labor from which platforms extract value — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 505 (+15 more)
Broader Connections
- Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners
#corroborates(0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338 - Social media participation constitutes unpaid labor from which platforms extract value
#corroborates(0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 505 - Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks
#corroborates(0.85) - Users freely did unpaid labor that increased Facebook’s own value
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1011 - Platform users become unpaid servants who train algorithms.
#corroborates(0.85) - Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity.
#corroborates(0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197 - Networked audiences force users into unpaid labor to keep their brand image pure
#corroborates(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 492 - Platform ‘gamified’ labor substitutes token payments and rankings for wages
#corroborates(0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 1034 - Posting party images online makes users unpaid workers for platforms
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 463 - Sharing-economy platforms fuse data extraction with labor at unprecedented scale
#corroborates(0.80)