Does Playlabor Create Value?Based on the Perspective of Platform Users

“Playlabor” is a kind of digital labor that produces data commodities in the form of “production and consumption” under the dominance of platform capital. Different from traditional labor and other types of digital labor, it highlights the entertainment nature of “play”; Different from traditional leisure activities, it highlights the productive nature of “labor”. According to the different leisure motivations of platform users, “playlabor” can be divided into three types: lounging participation, exploration out of interest and professional interaction. These three types of “playlabor” respectively create three data products: “user awareness data”, “exploratory data”, and “professional data”. Just like general goods created by labor, data products created by platform users “playlabor” also have value attributes. In the process of value creation, users are included in the logic of capital accumulation by platform capital, which promotes the value multiplication of platform capital and reflects the productive characteristics of “playlabor” and even platform capital.