Perpetual precarity: Cycles of value extraction in the platformised multi-level marketing scheme

This article examines the emergence of platformised multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes as a significant, yet understudied, phenomenon in the ongoing transformation of work and labour on digital platforms. Promising wealth, freedom, and community, platformised MLMs organise individuals into cycles of value extraction by leveraging aspirational narratives of financial independence and entrepreneurial success. Through a case study of iGenius, a global MLM firm working through local recruiters, the article analyses the strategic and progressive embedding of individuals into the MLM. The article focuses on the cyclic character of recruitment operations, and identifies three stages of the process, namely recruitment of customers on social media platforms, the commodification of customers through complex and obfuscated brokerage relationships with affiliate trading platforms, and, finally, the embedding of individuals into the MLM organisation as recruiters seeking new prospects, starting the process over again. Throughout the analysis, we show how the nature of work, the value extraction methods, and the control mechanisms intensify as people move from merely subscribing to engaging in financial trading and in the end, turning to recruitment for the MLM. In the concluding discussion, we situate the analytical findings in the broader discussion of precarious work relations and atomisation of the workforce as well as the broader context of investment schemes and online scams. Thus, the article contributes to the study of labour relations and data extraction relationships on platforms and in the digital economy more generally.