Social media platforms generate immense revenue by transforming user interactions into economic assets, profiting from user engagement while offering little in return. Although framed as “free” services, platforms rely on user activities as a hidden form of labour, exploiting attention, content, and data without fair compensation. This blog argues that social media users perform unpaid labour, a process that platforms exploit under the guise of “free” services, and calls for a reevaluation of the user-platform relationship.
As someone who is constantly on social media, I recorded my posting for one day. First, I posted my photography on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, about a commercial street. It received 547 views, 3 likes, and 1 comment. Next, I posted a video on the Chinese video platform BiliBili about a bug in the Steam market. It received 15,000 views, 154 likes, and 342 comments, which was due to the fact that many people encountered the problem I described in the video, and it also triggered a lot of discussion. Despite the good results, I did not receive any financial gain due to the platform’s threshold for user creative incentives return eligibility. But the ads posted on the platform appear in my post and video webpage, and the platform is monetising through advertising. In fact, my labour has not been rewarded as I had imagined.
Dallas Smythe’s “audience commodity” theory sheds light on this structure, arguing that media audiences are commodities sold to advertisers, performing “work” simply by paying attention to content (Smythe, 2012, p. 233). Social media intensifies this by turning every interaction—scrolling, liking, or watching—into a commodity that platforms sell to advertisers. Platforms are ostensibly “free,” yet users effectively “pay” through their attention, which becomes a monetizable product. This model converts moments of leisure into commodified labour, benefitting platforms while users remain uncompensated.
Nicole Cohen’s concept of “double commodification” extends this critique, explaining how platforms generate revenue from both user attention and the data produced by user interactions. (Cohen, 2013, p. 179) Platforms analyse these interactions, creating a stream of marketable data, or “cybernetic commodities” (Cohen, 2013, p. 183). Facebook’s extensive data collection on likes, comments, and shares illustrates this: each interaction informs personalised advertising, a revenue stream from which users derive no direct benefit. Through double commodification, users become both unpaid workers and commodified products within a system designed to maximise profit without rewarding its contributors.
Kylie Jarrett’s “Digital Housewife” metaphor offers further insight by comparing social media engagement to traditional domestic work. Jarrett argues that users, like housewives, perform unpaid labor that sustains a system from which they receive little direct reward (Jarrett, 2017, p. 3). On platforms like Pinterest, users curate boards and share ideas, driving engagement without compensation. This “affective labor” builds the community and platform appeal essential to Pinterest’s success, resembling domestic work that supports family life yet goes unrecognized economically. Jarrett’s metaphor underscores the gendered dimension of social media labor, as women are often central to community-building efforts online, yet their contributions remain underappreciated and uncompensated.
Brooke Erin Duffy’s notion of “aspirational labour” further reveals how social media exploits user ambitions. Many creators invest time and resources in building their social media presence. They “approach social media creation with strategy, purpose, and aspirations of career success” (Duffy, 2017, p. 48). Yet only a select few achieve such success, while the majority provide free content that keeps audiences engaged, benefiting the platform disproportionately. TikTok exemplifies this, where countless influencers work to grow followings, with only a fraction attaining financial rewards while the platform capitalises on their unpaid labour.
The notion that social media platforms are “free” is increasingly inadequate as they derive vast economic value from user activity while offering minimal reciprocal value. Users generate content, provide data, and fuel engagement—contributions that are essential to the platform’s business model but that go unacknowledged as labor. Recognising this dynamic and understanding social media engagement as a form of labour challenges us to consider alternative models of fair compensation or transparency. To create a more equitable digital economy, platforms should explore ways to reward users for their role in sustaining the platform and acknowledge the economic value users provide. Without such measures, social media remains an ecosystem where user contributions primarily enrich platforms, exposing the deeper exploitative dynamics of the digital economy.
Reference
Jarrett, K. (2017) Feminism, Labour, and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife. London: Routledge.