At a time when capital searches for new forms of profitability with the decline of the manufacturing sector, with the exploitation of data the platform business model raises productivity levels (Srnicek, 2017). Apart from being used in improving advertising, for Nick Srnicek, data can
educate and give competitive advantage to algorithms; […] enable the coordination and outsourcing of workers; […] allow for the optimization of flexibility of productive process; […] make possible the transformation of low-margin goods into high-margin services; and data analysis is itself generative of data, in a vicious cycle.
(2017: 56)
Data then becomes a raw material that has to be manufactured and the activity of users is the natural source of this material (Sadowski, 2019; Powell, 2019). If the source of data is activity, that is, what a person does—which can range from chatting to browsing and from friending or unfriending to posting— then we can think of data, as Alison Powell puts it, as “traces” instead of simply numbers; traces encompassing “relationships, locations, attention, or engagements” that make up one’s life activity (2019: 121). In this regard, datafication is dependent on how efectively users are persuaded to give away their traces: where they went, who they communicate with, and what pages they search. The platform categorizes, analyzes, interprets, and uses these traces to produce better data. In this sense, the platform interface shapes, or curates, the circulations of internet culture, including discussing, posting, commenting, and messaging; circulations which are mobilized to produce as much data as possible (Langley and Leyshon, 2017). These circulations, or trafic in internet jargon, are dependent on user time and attention and thus a platform must entice users to engage with or simply spend time there (Celis Bueno, 2017). Platforms can use various methods to entice users, such as keeping access free (or partially free) or designing an architecture which encourages dialogue, connectivity, exchange, and “market encounters” (Çalişkan and Callon, 2010: 1416). Insofar as user participation becomes a source of profit, the more users participate, the more profitable a platform becomes (Celis Bueno, 2017: 117). The widely publicized saga of Twitter’s \$44 billion sale to Elon Musk demonstrates that controlling communicative exchange and participation can have enormous value for capital.
Curating and Platforms
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