One reason the Cloud Empire is so successful at appropriating all of human life is because its biggest corporations can dominate our data relations both as sellers and buyers. Companies such as Google act as monopolies, “selling” us (sometimes providing to us for “free”) every device or service we need to live our datafied lives. But Google also acts as what economists call a monopsony, that is, the single buyer of all the data we produce (the identification of monopsony as the dominant market structure of the internet was made by one of us back in 2013 and has since become commonplace). A monopsony means that although digital tools have empowered us to become producers instead of mere consumers of media, there are limited options for choosing which platforms to participate in. Those of a certain demographic wanting to join a social networking site will probably join Facebook, because that is where their friends are more likely to be. Those wanting to upload videos of cats are highly incentivized to use YouTube, because that is where most users are likely to watch; and so on. We—the producers of data—are legion, but the buyers of what we produce are few. A platform, in particular, is the perfect medium for monopsony, a means to produce social content for capital.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 174