Author: Naomi Uli Quanti Siahaan (Call for Commentary)Editor: Hosea Immanuel Latumahina
The use of social media allows individuals to share personal information freely and openly in public spaces. Social media has become a platform where people feel free to share information about their life, personal experiences, thoughts, and emotional feelings. Users are also provided with opportunities to construct and manage their self-image through the content and information they share. These dynamics are often perceived as forms of self-expression, social validation, and identity formation. However, an important question remains: do these practices emerge solely from the opportunities and benefits offered by social media, or are they part of a broader platform mechanism designed to fulfill economic interests?
The Mechanism of Social Media in the Commodification Process
Social media operates on a specific logic in managing information, communication, and the flow of interactions. According to Van Dijck and Poell (2013), social media is characterized by four key principles: programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication. Through programmability, social media platforms direct and shape information flows through algorithms, such as TikTok’s For You Page. Popularity refers to the significance attributed to users when their content receives reactions through likes, comments, saves, and other engagement features. Popularity subsequently fosters relationships and connections among users and content. Datafication is the process through which user activities—such as watching videos, reacting to content, and scrolling—are transformed into data that can be stored, analyzed, and commercialized. [1]
Social media platforms are designed to allow users to express themselves and subsequently convert these expressions into economically valuable data. [2] Through these mechanisms, stories and experiences shared by users undergo a process of commodification. Commodification refers to the transformation of use value into exchange value. Karl Marx regarded commodities as the most explicit manifestation of capitalist production.[3] In this context, commodification occurs when content, digital interactions, and media consumption habits are utilized and converted into profit for platforms through digital advertising and other economic practices. Commodities are no longer limited to goods and services; rather, individuals themselves become commodities, as their identities, emotions, relationships, and experiences are exploited. Practices of sharing information on social media, which appear to be forms of self-expression, social validation, identity formation, and relationship maintenance, constitute forms of digital labor that generate economic value for platforms. [4]This design is closely linked to the presence of artificial intelligence (AI), which supports and enhances platform operations.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Its Role
The development of artificial intelligence has become a crucial element within the social media ecosystem. Algorithms function by creating coded instructions that transform incoming data into desired outputs based on specific calculations. AI is capable of accurately interpreting large volumes of data, learning from that data, and utilizing the results of its learning processes to achieve specific objectives. In other words, AI modifies and even creates algorithms.[5]
Within the digital economy context, AI possesses strategic value and plays a central role in accelerating commodification on social media. AI acts as an agency that identifies user behavioral data, measures engagement levels, and recommends content deemed attractive or relevant. Personal stories and experiences that receive strong audience responses tend to gain greater access, visibility, and virality. Consequently, users are directed into algorithmic bubbles containing similar topics and content. AI not only predicts behavior but also modifies it through techniques such as nudging and A/B testing. Notifications, personalized recommendations, and experiments based on user responses are employed to subtly influence user decisions. Zuboff describes this condition as instrumental power, a form of power in which AI systems are capable of engineering human behavior for commercial purposes.[6]
While Digital Representations Become Dominant
AI’s ability to identify and categorize content influences not only patterns of information and interaction through algorithms but also the ways users understand and represent reality on social media. Jean Baudrillard (1994) defines this phenomenon as hyperreality, a condition in which the boundary between reality and representation becomes increasingly blurred.[7] Representations on social media are often perceived as more real than everyday life itself. Media no longer merely presents reality; it creates new realities filled with images, simulations, and performances of identity, generating confusion in meaning and interpretation among audiences. Truth becomes simulation, beauty becomes fashion, and reality becomes hyperreal.[8]
In content-sharing practices, AI contributes to the creation of hyperreal conditions. Through algorithms, AI determines which types of content are granted higher visibility and greater potential for virality. As a result, users tend to adapt both the form and substance of the content they share according to algorithmic preferences that offer the highest prospects of visibility and engagement. Furthermore, the presence of generative AI, filters, and other automated features assists in modifying and enhancing shared content. Consequently, self-representations on social media increasingly become selectively curated and refined versions of reality. This dynamic suggests that users are not merely sharing experiences but are also constructing simulations of their lives, identities, and activities. These simulations are subsequently consumed by other users and gradually become new standards through recursive feedback loops.
A New Reality Space: The Intersection of Commodification and Hyperreality
The convergence of commodification and hyperreality on social media demonstrates that digital platforms are not merely spaces of communication but also spaces for the production of reality oriented toward economic value. Through algorithms, AI constructs new realities and shapes how users produce, consume, and interpret information on social media. User experiences no longer appear simply as representations of reality but as constructions that have been adjusted to algorithmic preferences. The more blurred the boundary becomes between genuine experiences and social media representations, the greater the opportunity to attract attention and gain visibility.
The result of the construction of reality—or hyperreality—refers to a new form of commodity. Data can be sold to brands and advertisers for targeted advertising purposes. The same data continuously serves as training material for AI systems, enabling the development of new social media features and AI technologies. Data is also processed to create experiences that maximize convenience and encourage addictive patterns of social media engagement. These activities, in turn, generate even more data, which is continuously collected and processed by platforms.
Conclusion
The commodification and hyperreality that emerging within social media environments invite critical reflection among users. Social media practices should not be viewed solely as opportunities for self-expression and identity construction, but also as components of systems and mechanisms that have been deliberately designed by platforms to fulfill commercial objectives and economic value activities. Therefore, social media users need to understand the economic logic and AI-driven algorithmic mechanisms underlying the sharing process. Such awareness can enable users to exercise greater control over the surveillance and commodification processes that affect them. Ultimately, this understanding may encourage users to engage with social media more critically, responsibly, and cautiously as an expressive medium.
[1] Van Dijck, J. and Poell, T. (2013). Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), pp. 2–14. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2309065
[2] Törnberg, P. and Uitermark, J. (2022). Tweeting ourselves to death: The cultural logic of digital capitalism. Media, Culture & Society, 44(3), pp. 574–590. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211053766
[3] Fuchs, C. and Mosco, V. (eds.) (2016). Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Vol. 80. Leiden: Brill. http://digamo.free.fr/fuchsmosco.pdf
[4] [2] Fuchs, C. (2013). Social media and capitalism, in Olsson, T. (ed.) Producing the Internet: Critical Perspectives of Social Media. Göteborg: Nordicom, pp. 25–44. https://fuchsc.net/wp-content/SocialMediaCapitalism.pdf ; Törnberg, P. and Uitermark, J. (2022). Tweeting ourselves to death: The cultural logic of digital capitalism. Media, Culture & Society, 44(3), pp. 574–590. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211053766
[5] Kang, H. and Lou, C. (2022) ‘AI agency vs. human agency: Understanding human–AI interactions on TikTok and their implications for user engagement. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 27(5), p. zmac014. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac014
[6] Ijuo, I. (2024). Artificial Intelligence and the Commodification of Human Behavior: Insights on Surveillance Capitalism from Shoshana Zuboff and Evgeny Morozov.
[7] Freund, L. (2025). All watched over by machines of loving grace—AI and control, symbolic violence, and the hyperreal, AI & Society, pp. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02433-4
[8] Reyza, F. (2025). Oversharing in the digital age: According to Herbert Marcuse’s study. Komunika, 21(01), pp. 1–8. https://doi.org/10.32734/komunika.v21i01.19054 ; Rezig, H. and Oulddjaballah, S. (2024). Social media influencers shaping social reality: A study of Jean Baudrillard’s perspective. https://aleph.edinum.org/12887 ; Kline, K. (2020). Ecstatic parenting: The shareveillant archival subject and the production of the self in the digital age. Ethics and Education, 15(4), pp. 464–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2020.1822706