#platformcapitalism — Public Fediverse posts

Why your fare cost so much, and uber drivers get paid so little:
It is the result of a highly calculated corporate strategy known as surveillance pricing (or algorithmic personalized pricing).
In a genuine free market, prices function as transparent signals shaped by open supply and demand. Both buyers and sellers see the market rate, ensuring fairness. If a business overcharges, consumers walk; if it underpays, workers leave for a competitor.
Surveillance pricing completely subverts this dynamic by weaponizing information asymmetry. Using a massive hoard of data, the platform creates an invisible digital partition between the customer and the service provider. Instead of a shared, transparent marketplace, the algorithm isolates both sides into separate, closed-door negotiations where the platform holds all the cards.
For the passenger: The algorithm calculates the exact upper ceiling of what you will tolerate paying at that specific second—factoring in everything from your immediate location, time of day, and urgency, to your historical behavioral trends.
For the driver: The platform acts as an electronic monopsony (a market with many sellers but only one dominant buyer of labor). It isolates the worker and calculates the absolute structural floor of what that specific driver will accept to keep their car moving. By dangling unpredictable, variable incentives, it extracts hours of uncompensated labor (waiting and idling time), leaving the driver to absorb all the capital risk, vehicle depreciation, and fuel costs.
By blinding both sides of the transaction, the platform acts as a centralized command structure rather than a passive matching service. It systematically strips away the "consumer surplus" (the extra value and savings a buyer gets) and the "producer surplus" (the fair profit a worker keeps) and absorbs that wealth entirely for itself.
This mechanism is profoundly anti-free market because it replaces transparent competition with a proprietary information monopoly. True markets thrive on decentralized, shared knowledge; this system relies entirely on keeping everyone else in the dark.
#SurveillanceCapitalism #GigEconomy #PlatformCapitalism #FreeMarket #Economics #monopsony

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116834783814639866

Fixed it for you: #Google threatens to leak stolen PII after #EU threatens Google to take away their criminal business model

#AlphabetLLC #SurveillanceCapitalism #dataCapitalism #privacy #CoverYourTracks #PrivacyBadger #Decentraleyes #GDPR #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism

As #Invidious and piped.video are not to be used by third parties (for good and understandable reasons) and for those who can't or don't want to self-host, is there still a #privacy-preserving non-#CORS #YouTube proxy REST API out there somewhere?

#FollowerPower #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneOfYourBusiness #SurveillanceCapitalism #dataCapitalism #platformCapitalism #digitalFeudalism #GDPR #predatoryCapitalism #privacyPreserving #privacyFriendly #privacyRespecting #digitalSelfDefense

If your website is #AntiPrivacy, your website has #JSNakedDay all year long

#privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneOfYourBusiness #SurveillanceCapitalism #dataCapitalism #privacy #CoverYourTracks #PrivacyBadger #Decentraleyes #GDPR #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism

Okay, maybe, we haven't been clear enough on this:

People who respect #Zuckerberg, #Musk, and #Bezos more than you, don't remove tracking parameters from URLs, they send you.

#MarkZuckerberg #ElonMusk #JeffBezos #Amazon #Facebook #privacy #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneOfYourBusiness #GDPR #SurveillanceCapitalism #dataCapitalism #CorporateGreed #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism

One mistake, #Microsoft made by buying #GitHub, is that developers are harder to lie to

#amCoding #amProgramming #softwareDevelopment #softwareEngineering #GitHubCopilot #enshittification #ensh11n #dataCapitalism #CorporateGreed #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism

Wait until I tell *my* lawyers about *your* cookies

#privacy #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneOfYourBusiness #GDPR #SurveillanceCapitalism #dataCapitalism #CorporateGreed #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism

"#Gesundheitskarte: Diese Funktion kann Ihr Leben retten – aber nur, wenn wir davon auch profitieren"

#PayOrOkay #PayOrConsent #GDPR #DSGVO #privacy #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneOfYourBusiness #CorporateGreed #surveillanceCapitalism #digitalFeudalism #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #dataCapitalism #BerlinerMorgenpost #MorgenpostPlus

Why specifically #TikTok is a problem?

– Because it's a Chinese app (#racism) and people like to suppress the fact how problematic big American tech companies are (#corpocracy)
– Because right-wing propaganda works and middle and left-wing politicians don't want to admit that they just didn't try to be equally present there

#Corporatocracy #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism #privacy #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneofYourBusiness

How long until this next #enshittification "feature":

Premium users can see your cam in the meeting software, non-premium users can't—BUT: You can't either and you can't deactivate your cam.

#ensh11n #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism

It should be mandatory to display the revenue of tracking and selling personal identifiable data as the cost of a free plan.

#privacy #privacyMatters #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism

Social Quitting

https://craphound.com/news/2023/01/22/social-quitting/

#platformcapitalism #enshittification #networkeffects #switchingcosts #locusmagazine #post-facebook #corydoctorow #post-twitter #socialmedia #spokenword #surpluses #webtheory #Articles #podcasts #Podcast #exodus #audio #locus #News