Unequal Gift Exchange—User Interactions and Value Creation on Digital Platforms

Abstract

This article proposes a relational approach to understanding value creation on digital platforms such as social media channels and free internet services. In this, it combines Marxian and anthropological value theories. Accordingly, the interactions of platform users are not exploited labor, as has been argued on various occasions, but practices of gift exchange. This exchange of digital gifts forms the production condition for the value creation of internet platforms and is continuously reproduced by their asymmetrical field of interaction. Therefore, it is not the individual who is exploited, but the community of those who interact in this field. This is anchored in the platforms’ terms and conditions, which stipulate that users share their data not only with each other but also with the company. This, in turn, enables a three-step process of commodification of data on the part of the platform. First, the data are appropriated as use values by the platforms to optimize their own services. Subsequently, a secondary commodification takes place, which, unlike other value creation processes, is decoupled from the use value of the data. Third, there is a process of cybernetization, in which the ability to influence users is sold to third parties as a commodity.