Users, not paid employees, produce the most valuable capital of platform firms

Evidence

Consider what cloud capital consists of: smart software, server farms, cell towers, thousands of miles of optic fibre. And yet all of this would be worthless without ‘content’. The most valuable part of the stock of cloud capital is not its physical components but rather the stories posted on Facebook, the videos uploaded to TikTok and YouTube, the photos on Instagram, the jokes and insults on Twitter, the reviews on Amazon or, simply, our movement through space, allowing our phones to alert Google Maps to the latest spot of traffic. … In providing these stories, videos, photos, jokes and movements, it is we who produce and reproduce – outside any market – the stock of cloud capital. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 333

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what cloud capital physically is and establishes that user-generated content is its most valuable component.
• XREF: connects to: Platforms create an essentially new servitude for users distinct from workplace exploitation — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 320; Users rather than paid employees produce cloud capital outside markets — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 334; Platforms’ real novelty is making users unpaid laborers reproducing their own capital — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 339 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Users rather than paid employees produce cloud capital outside markets #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 334
• Platforms’ real novelty is making users unpaid laborers reproducing their own capital #expands (0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 339
• Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners #corroborates (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338
• Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks #corroborates (0.88)
• Platforms extract free work while paying recognition and perks instead of wages #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 215
• Cloud platforms exploit nearly everyone rather than only their employees #expands (0.82) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 873
• Platform profit does not come from exploiting labor but from commodifying social life itself #corroborates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 144