- The logic of the argument “A is not exploited because the exploitation of B is more violent” disregards how different forms of exploitation are united in an international division of labour, from which transnational corporations benefit. They exploit a diverse range of workers in order to accumulate capital. The production of digital media and data is based on an international division of digital labour, in which we find slave workers extracting minerals, Tayloristic assemblage workers, low-paid software engineers and call centre agents, highly paid and highly stressed software engineers, precarious freelancers, user labour, etc. The notion of the international division of digital labour stresses that digital capital exploits all of these digital workers and that they therefore have a common interest to struggle against capital and to organise across national boundaries in the form of a digital labour union. The notion of digital labour is not limited to the users of targeted-advertising-based social media platforms. Marx stressed the connectedness of diverse forms of labour with the notion of the collective worker. In the international division of digital labour, there is collective digital labour.
Not all digital labour is unpaid and based on advertising. YouTube has introduced YouTube Red in the USA and is also rolling out the same programme in other countries: Members of YouTube Red pay a subscription fee for access to ad-free premium videos (including music, series, and vloggers’ content).
Our new paid membership, YouTube Red, lets members enjoy any video on YouTube without ads while still supporting creators. […] New revenue from YouTube Red membership fees will be distributed to video creators based on how much members watch your content.<sup>5</sup>
YouTube celeb vloggers such as Lilly Singh (who had 11 million followers on her YouTube Channel in January 2017), PewDieDie (53 million), MatPat (8 million), Toby Turner (2 million), and Joey Graceffa (7.5 million)<sup>6</sup> have produced series and movies for YouTube Red. YouTube stars are a labour aristocracy, who can earn some money from their profiles because they managed to accumulate a large number of subscribers. Whereas there is a small number of labour-aristocratic YouTube-Vloggers, the vast number are proletarianised digital workers, working precariously and struggling to earn a living online. YouTube only enables this YouTube aristocracy to produce premium content that is paid for by YouTube Red subscribers. In this model, YouTube can be seen as a temporary employer of these YouTube celebs that pays them a wage for the creation of specific content. YouTube Red subscribers are consuming audiences paying for access to premium content. With the introduction of YouTube Red, Google has diversified its capital accumulation model. It continues to use targeted advertising as main revenue source and has in addition introduced a subscription service. YouTube is therefore based on two forms of digital labour: (a) Users’ digital labour of watching and creating in the case of advertising sponsored part of the platform; and (b) The YouTube labour aristocracy’s paid labour that creates premium content for YouTube Red.
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5 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276?hl=en-GB
6 http://uk.businessinsider.com/youtube-red-original-movies-and-shows-2015-10?r=US&IR=T/#youtuber-joeygraceffa-will-star-in-a-new-youtube-murder-mystery-series-10