Words such as exploitation and labor have very specific meanings in Marxist theory, so it is worth discussing how they might be employed in the context of datafication. Strictly speaking, as Nick Srnicek observes, internet users do not receive wages, and their work is not used to lower production costs, increase productivity, and so on, so “it is hard to make the case that what they do is labor, properly speaking.” Thus, from a Marxist perspective, internet users cannot be said to form part of a working class, and we can’t say they are exploited in the traditional sense. But theorists argue that media consumers are exploited not because they literally work for media companies but because as an audience they become a commodity sold to advertisers without themselves benefiting at all (for researcher and activist Dallas Smythe, for instance, watching advertisements was a form of labor and exploitation).

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 327