Renting cloud infrastructure yields data extraction alongside rental income

Evidence

By moving businesses’ activities onto cloud platforms, companies like Amazon gain direct access to whole new datasets (even if some remain occluded to the platform). … Rather than relying on advertisers’ buying data, these cloud platforms are building up the basic infrastructure of the digital economy in a way that can be rented out profitably to others, while they collect data for their own uses. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 60

Categorization

• XREF: The key contrast with Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism: Srnicek frames cloud platforms as renting out means of production while collecting data as a byproduct, whereas Zuboff emphasizes behavioral surplus as the core asset. The reader’s Platform vs. Surveillance Capitalism framework hinges on this distinction. — connects to: Data is defined by its external storage infrastructure and profit destination — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 31; Colonial-style ownership extends to device production and cloud computing capacity — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 92; A few firms vertically dominate every layer of the data extraction pipeline — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 176 (+7 more)

Related

• Cloud computing converts data producers into renters dispossessed of their data (similarity 0.90)
• The cloud centralizes data ownership in corporations that earlier internet models distributed. (similarity 0.86)
• Platforms extract surplus value produced elsewhere without producing any themselves (similarity 0.85)
• Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud platforms operate like utilities centralizing essential infrastructure (similarity 0.85)
• Apple and Google’s wealth comes from cloud rent, not profit. (similarity 0.84)
• Cloud platforms consolidated the platform into a powerful business model (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial-style ownership extends to device production and cloud computing capacity (similarity 0.83)
• Data extraction under the Cloud Empire mirrors historical colonial extraction patterns (similarity 0.83)
• Data is defined by its external storage infrastructure and profit destination (similarity 0.83)
• A few firms vertically dominate every layer of the data extraction pipeline (similarity 0.83)
• By 2020 cloud rents dominated the developed world’s aggregate net income (similarity 0.82)
• Billions now organize personal lives around data-dependent platform infrastructures (similarity 0.81)
• Sharing-economy platforms fuse data extraction with labor at unprecedented scale (similarity 0.81)
• Digital platforms have displaced markets and profit with feudal rent extraction (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent #expands (0.85)
• Cloud capital is capital’s mutation into feudal wealth extraction, not capital’s death #epitomizes (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 906
• Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 660
• Seamless data flows breed opaque inequality and uncontrolled surveillance #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 607