Artificial Intelligence Mystification and Data Financialization: An Intensive Case Analysis of User-data and Value Realization in the Platform Firm

The social relation between the platform firm and its users is defined by engagement with platform infrastructure and the rendition of this engagement into data. This type of data is often compared to gold, oil, and other fungible goods. User-data, however, are not generally accounted for as intangible assets and their value, economic and otherwise, is not transparent. I problematize a priori assumptions about a direct line from data to capital by asking: How do platform firms realize value from user-data? I engage the question through structural analysis by abstraction in an intensive case study of two transnational platform firms. I use qualitative content analysis to analyze annual and earnings reports, terms of service agreements, and internal documents from 2017 through 2023 with Atlas.ti data analysis software. The findings reveal a perceptual disconnection between user-data inputs and artificial intelligence (AI) related service and product outputs. I argue that the platform functions as digital real-estate to extract monetary and data rents and securitizes its users through a process of mystifying the relationship between user-data and AI related products, services, and infrastructures. I posit the processes of AI mystification and user securitization as mechanisms of value realization that suggest the dilation of an entrenched social relation rather than a divergence from capitalism. The study places financialization as a critical factor in data seeking and calls for the inclusion of the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors in future research of data and AI in political economy. I suggest a focus on data as property and its ownership and control as regulatory articulation points for future policy formation.