For critical theorists of the web, this rhetoric obscured a shift to business models premised upon the exploitation of 'free labour'. From this perspective, the story of how Google and Facebook generate profit has been a simple one: users are unwaged labourers who produce goods (data and content) that are then taken and sold by the companies to advertisers and other interested parties. There are a number of problems with this account, however. A first issue with the free labour argument is that it often slides into grand metaphysical claims. All social interaction becomes free labour for capitalism, and we begin to worry that there is no outside to capitalism. Work becomes inseparable from non-work and precise categories become blunt banalities. It is important, however, to draw distinctions between interactions done on platforms and interactions done elsewhere, as well as between interactions done on profit-oriented platforms and interactions done on other platforms. Not all – and not even most – of our social interactions are co-opted into a system of profit generation. In fact one of the reasons why companies must compete to build platforms is that most of our social interactions do not enter into a valorisation process. If all of our actions were already captured within capitalist valorisation, it is hard to see why there would be a need to build the extractive apparatus of platforms.

Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, loc. 53