The platformisation of illicit drug markets: How datafication,technological affordances,and platform-mediated labour practices shape illicit drug markets

Abstract

Digital technologies go beyond merely facilitating illicit drug exchanges; they actively reconfigure and reorganise interactions in illicit drug markets. In this article we consider the ongoing evolution of illicit drug markets against the backdrop of platform capitalism in order to conceptualise the platformisation of illicit drug markets. The platformisation of illicit drug markets illustrates how drug markets are becoming contingent on the technological, economic and socio-cultural logics of digital platforms. We explore three key themes that are useful in framing the process of platformisation: (i) the datafication of drug markets, (ii) platform affordances and drug exchanges and (iii) platform-mediated labour practices. These themes unpack the transformations underway in illicit drug markets, but the paper also invites broader conversations on how criminology engages in discussions of crime in an era dominated by technology giants (e.g. Meta, Google and Amazon).

Keywords

Cybercrime datafication digital platforms illicit drug markets platformisation technological affordances

Introduction

It has now become almost a cliché to remark on how digital technologies have changed crime. Indeed, over the last several decades, there has been an influx of criminological work exploring the myriad of ways that technologies facilitate offending. Among these significant changes has been the emergence of online illicit drug markets to describe the various drug distribution methods that now rely on digital technologies. The growth of these novel forms of illicit drug supply have raised critical questions regarding if, and to what extent, online illicit drug markets are an extension of traditional forms of illicit drug markets, or if they are an entirely new frontier for drug supply. Accurate depictions of these markets are important to avoid over-simplifications of both drug markets and the individuals within these markets (Coomber, 2015, 2023).

The rapid growth in tech-facilitated crimes, such as online forms of illicit drug distribution, has resulted in numerous efforts to better conceptualise how offenders use digital technologies. Traditional criminological theories have often been applied to these new contexts (Holt and Bossler, 2015), however, this is increasingly being critiqued by those calling for a ‘more distinctive and self-standing body of cybercrime theory’ (McGuire, 2018: 19) and to develop theoretical frameworks for cybercrime through an interdisciplinary lens (Lavorgna, 2021). Approaches grounded in Science and Technology Studies (STS) can offer a viable path forward in better understanding the connections between technologies, crime and individuals. Brown’s (2006) nod towards human/technical hybridity for understanding how ‘crime and control are played out in technosocial networks’ (p. 237) has gradually inspired a wave of criminological work concentrating on the materiality of digital objects, human-nonhuman assemblages, actor networks and the affordances of technologies (Goldsmith and Wall, 2022; McGuire, 2019; Wood, 2021). Collectively, this research has provided insightful perspectives on the complex interrelations between humans and technologies and prioritised the recognition of technologies as active agents in crimes. Relating this back to illicit drug supply, it is therefore imperative to shift away from views that digital environments and technologies are passive conduits in drug exchange processes to instead look towards ways to analyse how digital technologies reshape illicit exchanges and markets (Childs et al., 2020a).

This paper aims to critically examine the transformation of illicit drug markets by analysing how technologies configure change in illicit drug markets. We address this aim by turning to the concept of platformisation – an approach that has emerged in the nexus between media/communication studies, STS and digital sociology – as the foundation for our paper. Platformisation captures the transformative processes underway in society as a result of the growing indispensability and entanglement of digital platforms (Nieborg and Poell, 2018; Van Dijck et al., 2018). Digital platforms, defined by Gillespie (2017) as digital infrastructures that host, organise and circulate content and social exchanges, are entrenched in daily life. Digital platforms have become the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the web in a form of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017) that has resulted in the remaking of our social, economic and cultural landscapes to serve digital platforms (Van Dijck et al., 2019). As Poell et al. (2019) state, there has been a restructuring of ‘cultural practices and imaginations around platforms’ as large technology companies (e.g. Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta) do more than just digitalise aspects of life such as shopping, transportation, accommodation and leisure as they become an integral part of the platform society (Nieborg and Poell, 2018; Valtysson, 2022; Van Dijck et al., 2018).

Despite growing discourse in adjacent fields there is little criminological work that deeply considers the role of digital platforms (as digital infrastructures), platformisation (the process of societal practices adapting to platforms) and platform capitalism (the economic dynamics underpinning platformisation). For instance, Matamoros-Fernandez (2017) explores how racism, through platformisation, develops as it becomes influenced by the culture of social media platforms. Similarly, Davis (2023) explores how the platformisation of extremism commodifies hate in digital environments, and Recuero (2024) notes how the infrastructures of social media platforms facilitate toxic discourse. These existing applications of platformisation highlight its potential in understanding how crimes, such as illicit drug supply, are adapting to platformisation. In this article we introduce and unpack the notion of the platformisation of illicit drug markets to describe how illicit drug markets are becoming contingent on the technological, economic and socio-cultural logics of digital platforms.

Our article begins by tracing the emergence and chronology of illicit drug markets and technologies. We then advance the concept of the platformisation of illicit drug markets by discussing (i) the datafication of drug markets, (ii) platform affordances and drug markets and (iii) platform-mediated labour in drug markets. These key themes draw on a review of existing research and insights from our own digital immersion in this field to enrich the conceptual analysis in understanding the processes of platformisation in illicit drug supply. We conclude by considering broader implications and research directions for criminology and platform studies.

A primer on technology and drug markets

Technologies have always played a crucial role in the evolution of illicit drug supply. Mobile phones, for instance, revolutionised street-based drug markets at the turn of the millennium because the devices were able to improve the efficiency of distribution strategies while also reducing the perceived risks of organising drug exchanges with unknown parties (Eck, 1995; Natarajan et al., 1995). The popularity of mobile phones, and reliance on simple SMS and calling functions, persists today in many current drug supply models that has led to more fluid, geographically dispersed and accessible drug markets (Coomber and Moyle, 2018; Sogaard et al., 2019). In recent years the burgeoning intersection of technology and illicit drug markets has spurred a growing body of research around the study of online illicit drug markets. The evolution of these markets, though it is not always linear, has taken place around key phases of digital infrastructures.

In the initial phases of the internet, often referred to as web 1.0,¹ online forums and chat rooms represent some of the earliest examples of using digital technologies to facilitate drug distribution to organise in-person meetings or discuss clandestine drug manufacturing techniques (May and Hough, 2004). However, although these early forms of online drug market activities were not widespread enough to significantly disrupt traditional drug dealing methods, they nevertheless represent an important initial phase of how technology could be successfully integrated into the drug trade. An important milestone in the development of online illicit drug markets emerged with surface-web² shops. These are web-shops accessible via simple Google searches and aided (as well as still catering to) the distribution of grey-market³ and lifestyle pharmaceuticals (e.g. Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs, research chemicals and New Psychoactive Substances and precursors such as cannabis seeds; Clement et al., 2012; Walsh, 2011). These websites formalised digitised market structures by capitalising on early technologies that facilitated electronic payments and digital infrastructures connecting buyers and sellers.

The landscape changed drastically as illicit drug supply began to accommodate encrypted communication services and diverse financial transaction methods. The Farmer’s Market (formally known as Adamflowers) was a market that combined the encrypted email service Hushmail with payment remittances like Western Union and Paypal to obscure transactions from law enforcement (Power, 2013). The Farmer’s Market transitioned to Tor⁴ (The Onion Router) services towards before being shut down, but the marketplace Silk Road is widely regarded as one of the chief innovators in the dark web supply of illicit drugs. Silk Road successfully showcased how (1) user-friendly interfaces can allow the widespread browsing of drug suppliers, (2) customer reviews of products and vendors can facilitate trusting environments and (3) new payment methods with cryptocurrencies and escrow payment systems minimise anxieties about exchanging with scammers or law enforcement (Martin, 2014). This creates an appealing exchange environment for both sellers and buyers alike (Martin et al., 2020). After Silk Road’s dominance on the dark web ended its adoption among interested parties established the demand for an array of similar dark web cryptomarkets (e.g. AlphaBay, Dream Market, Black Market Reloaded and Hansa) that borrowed extensively from Silk Road’s features to solidify the trade of illicit drugs through dark web environments.

The current state of these new dimensions of illicit drug markets is characterised by a diversification of services, interconnected digital environments and the blending of online and offline processes. In the dark web, some vendors now also simultaneously deal with customers via encrypted messaging applications and will offer discounts to make moving away from markets more appealing (Childs et al., 2020b), or alternatively, dark web drug suppliers might opt to build their own digital infrastructures to create single-vendor marketplaces (Laferriere and Decary-Hetu, 2023). Elsewhere, as was seen with the Russian-based cryptomarket Hydra, traditional postal delivery systems have been eschewed for dead drop services where the item is left at a location only known to the vendor and buyer (Meylakhs and Saidashev, 2021). Concurrently, the rise of social-media facilitated supply, where social media apps are used to arrange offline transactions, further demonstrates the ongoing hybridity of offline and online operations as well as how various types of technologies have now become entrenched in contemporary forms of illicit drug supply (Demant et al., 2019; Moyle et al., 2019). This genealogy of illicit drug markets and technologies emphasises a continuous adaptation of the operations and dynamics of drug markets.

Towards the platformisation of illicit drug markets

The increasingly diverse nature of these drug markets makes it timely to critically analyse the interactions between illicit drug markets and digital technologies. Clear distinctions between online and offline drug exchanges are elusive, and broad designations of a market as being online or digital risks homogenising the range of actors, technologies and practices assembled in these drug exchanges. In the remainder of this article, we further develop the theoretical and conceptual aspects of online illicit drug markets (see Bakken et al., 2018; Moeller, 2022) by focussing on the material impact of digital technologies within the context of illicit drug supply. We adopt the lens of platformisation to discuss how digital platforms reorganise and transform illicit drug markets and drug exchanges. Specifically, we examine the platformisation of illicit drug markets as a way to describe how illicit drug markets are being reconfigured around the technological, economic and socio-cultural logics of digital platforms.

We develop the concept of the platformisation of illicit drug markets by synthesising existing research and reporting on findings from an ongoing period of digital immersion into illicit drug markets⁵ on the dark web, social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Discord and TikTok) and encrypted messaging applications (e.g. Telegram). The digital immersion embraced the fluidity and unpredictability that is usually required when performing crime ethnographies (Ferrell, 1997, 2018). We were adaptive to the changing landscapes of digital environments and guided by Caliandro’s (2018) and Hine’s (2015) suggestions for effective digital ethnographies, which advocate for tracing the journey of empirical objects across diverse domains rather than confining data collection and analyses to singular communities or platforms. This approach enabled us to fluidly navigate between various digital spaces, focussing on the connective threads that bind these environments together and thus providing a holistic view of how platformisation is becoming embedded in illicit drug exchanges. We performed actions that actors in these markets might often be required to do to appreciate the immersive experiences of these crimes (Ferrell, 1997): searching hashtags and key words on social media, navigating information resources to access dark web cryptomarkets, and dealing with the frustrations of participating in unstable digital environments where content is deleted and dark web cryptomarkets may be unavailable for significant periods of time due to DDoS attacks and marketplace closures. These observations serve primarily to support the paper’s conceptual orientation and examples are leveraged to enrich the conceptual discussions herein.

We approach the platformisation of illicit drug markets by explicating on three defining features of how illicit drug markets embed the logics of digital platforms: (i) drug exchanges become datafied, (ii) platform affordances shape drug market agency and (iii) platform-mediated labour sustains illicit drug markets. Our analysis aims to provide a comprehensive view of how these markets are adapting and transforming within a digital landscape fundamentally influenced by the economic and technological backdrop of platform capitalism and platformisation.

The datafication of drug markets

Digital data has become a leading commodity in contemporary society and digital platforms emerge primarily as mechanisms to extract, and then utilise, digital data from its users (Srnicek, 2017). Taffel (2021) further argues that data has become one of the world’s most valued resources and is heralding social change commensurate to the industrial revolution. These processes of datafication – the rendering of all aspects of life into forms of digital data (Flensberg and Lomborg, 2023) – has become a critical part of the platform society. Although large-scale data collection efforts did not begin exclusively with the pervasive creep of digital technologies (e.g., census data, health records and taxation systems exemplify earlier forms of datafication, see Hintz et al., 2019), a defining feature of contemporary digital data extraction are the political and economic drivers that underpin this datafication. As Sadowski (2019) has argued, digital data is now an embedded part of the capitalist era whereby capital-driving ideologies means that ‘all spaces must be subject to datafication’ (p. 8). As a result, the expansion of datafication practices that measure and monitor individuals’ behaviours becomes justified and the platform model becomes essential infrastructure to harvest data (Sadowski, 2019; Srnicek, 2017; van Dijk et al., 2018). More broadly, surveillance scholars have similarly illustrated how datafication prompts a new type of mass culture that is attuned to data extraction as a way of life (Lee, 2022; Lyon, 2018).

The discussion above provides the context for examining how the platformisation of illicit drug markets increasingly seeks to render drug exchanges between market participants into digital data. These datafication practices are most evident when examining dark web cryptomarkets (see Tzanetakis and Marx, 2023), whereby these illicit markets adopt platform logics to surveil drug exchanges and ‘transform social practices and relations, recasting them as a surveillant exchange whose coordination must be technologically mediated and therefore made exploitable as data’ (Wood and Monahan, 2019). When examining numerous dark web cryptomarkets that were currently operating we see the varying ways that the logic of digital platforms and platform surveillance manifests (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The datafication of drug exchanges on dark web cryptomarkets.

Acquiring data from drug exchanges in dark web cryptomarkets establishes reliable feedback systems to verify the authenticity of drug suppliers, the quality of their products and their ability to deliver illicit drugs via postal services to evade detection. In these market contexts, any perceived risks that actors might harness towards these models of drug supply can be minimised if they are governed by an assemblage of platforms, platform operators (i.e. the administrators of marketplaces) and data to inform the functioning of trust and feedback systems. These datafication practices also provide a way for dark web cryptomarket administrators to govern the behaviour of vendors on their platform by ensuring that drug suppliers are complying with the rules of the platform and sending packages to buyers. In turn, by adopting the logics of datafication and capitalising on them, cryptomarkets can then gain further popularity and their ability to grow as a platform thus becomes dependent on extracting data from drug market exchanges. In addition to these formalised trust and feedback systems, the datafication of drug exchanges is also evident in drug supply practices on digital platforms such as Discord and Telegram where vendors take mobile phone screenshots of vouches from previous customers in order to demonstrate their legitimacy (see also van der Sanden et al., 2022). Mobile phone screenshots emerge as a practice to preserve moments in unstable digital environments where there are no built-in features to systematically collect data from exchanges. These examples of the datafication of drug exchanges demonstrates the power embedded in the platform model for illicit drug markets, as these markets resemble Big Tech platforms that place strategic importance in transforming practices into data and gain power in being able to effectively use data.

The normalisation of data extraction for illicit actors also demonstrates complexity in how actors in these illicit markets engage with their own digital traces. This datafication of drug exchanges, including within it the datafication of other activities such as accumulating information to access these drug markets, has concrete implications for these drug market actors because digital data has become increasingly prioritised for investigating and prosecuting crimes. This has followed broader shifts in policing whereby data is often viewed as a panacea for assisting policing efforts in investigations on crime and technology (Maurushat and Al-Alosi, 2020; Sarre et al., 2018). An extract in the DNM Bible – an online resource distributed by dark web cryptomarket communities – reflects the concerns around mass data extraction from technology companies as a result of their activities:

Keep your darknet activity as far away from your real identity as possible. For example, your browser could store the visited websites in its history and somebody else sees it when using your computer. Or Reddit sells the account data it has collected from you to other companies (e.g. for advertising purposes) and so others know that you are very interested in buying illegal drugs online. Reddit also tracks you across different sites and links your different identities (e.g. your Facebook account) together so they might even get your real name at some point. Extracted Excerpt from the ‘DNM Bible’.

Critical data studies (see Dalton and Thatcher, 2014; Kitchin and Laurialt, 2014) is useful here in emphasising the complexities of data generation and human-data assemblages (Lupton, 2016) in data saturated environments. In the datafication of drug exchanges, risk perceptions are entangled not only to the volume of digital data produced through interactions with digital platforms, but also to the nature of the data collected, its ownership and the potential consequences of aggregating data across digital spaces. Informed by new materialism, the concept of data as lively (Lupton, 2020) highlights these new agentic capacities of data. Data is not just a by-product of interactions in illicit markets but is a dynamic agent that reshapes illicit activities.

The datafication of drug markets also contributes to algorithmic processes that are characteristic of platformisation. To this end, Turnock and Gibbs (2023) recently discussed how online human enhancement markets on e-commerce platforms, such as eBay and Alibaba, are being driven by algorithms that potentially point buyers to other similar products. Demant and Aageson (2023) similarly describe the increasing role of social media algorithms that could unintentionally be functioning to increase access to illicit drug suppliers. The datafication of drug market activity feeds into platform algorithms that leverage extracted data to steer user behaviour by promoting analogous interests and products, thereby algorithmically amplifying the ubiquity and accessibility of these methods of illicit drug supply. During our observations of Facebook Groups that connected buyers and sellers for illicit drugs in local areas in Australia, Facebook’s recommendation system promoted similar groups based on browsing activity where drug supply was also active (Figure 2). In addition, we also received pop-up notifications from the e-commerce platform Wish that directed recommendations of drug paraphernalia (e.g. crack pipes) based on prior browsing and searching history on the platform (Figure 3). This algorithmic promotion of illicit drug markets highlights an unintended consequence of the datafication of activities that opens up new possibilities for the accessibility and normalisation of illicit drugs and related products.

Figure 2.

Facebook recommending similar Facebook Groups where drug supply was active.

Figure 3.

Wish shopping’s recommendation system providing a notification of deals based on browsing of drug paraphernalia.

The datafication of drug markets has emerged as a key feature in the platformisation of illicit drug markets. As illicit drug markets become platformised, drug exchanges are being increasingly embedded within the dominant cultural, economic and political milieu of digital platforms. In this context, data extraction is normalised among platform users; platforms build power and are economically incentivised to harness data from users, and the datafication of activities such as browsing and searching for illicit drugs, drug suppliers and paraphernalia shape platform algorithms that then attempt to further steer user behaviour and thus drug market dynamics.

Platform affordances and drug market agency

As the second pillar of our exploration of the platformisation of illicit drug markets, platform affordances are important in shaping the boundaries of possible actions for drug exchanges on digital platforms. The concept of affordances first emerged from Gibson’s (1977) propositions that opportunities for action are afforded by objects and/or environments. This perspective has developed considerably throughout the years and has led to the contextual turn in affordance studies that shifts questions of what objects afford towards how, for whom and under what circumstances (Davis and Chouinard, 2016; Pentzold and Bischof, 2019). Also essential here is understanding that affordances emerge in the interactions between people (their perceptions, attitudes and expectations) and technologies as opposed to being an inherent feature of digital technologies (Davis and Chouinard, 2016; Evans et al., 2017; Nagy and Neff, 2015).

In the platformisation of illicit drug markets the possibilities and limits for drug exchanges become increasingly conditional on platform affordances. However, rather than proposing that all digital platforms share identical features and structure behaviours in the same way (Bucher and Helmond, 2018; Pond and Lewis, 2019; Ronzhyn et al., 2022), these affordances should be considered on a platform-sensitive basis. The table below outlines some of the various key affordances across digital platforms where illicit drug supply is enacted (Table 1).

Table 1.

Platform affordances and technological features in emerging illicit drug markets.

Digital platform/s	Platform affordances	Technological features
Dark web cryptomarkets	• Enhanced security • Utility-maximisation	• Cryptocurrencies, escrow payment systems, feedback systems • Market structures that enable widespread browsing and decision-making (e.g. price, quality and vendor location)
Encrypted messaging applications	• Enhanced security • Immediacy of supply	• Encrypted communications • Instant messaging prompts faster exchange processes
Social media and ‘surface web’	• Accessibility of market • Immediacy of supply	• Drug suppliers located via hashtags and public posts • Instant messaging prompts faster drug exchanges

The table is by no means exhaustive, as new ways of imagining the use of technologies will emerge and new platforms will inevitably supplant currently existing platforms, however, it illustrates how many of the appealing attributes of illicit drug markets for market actors (e.g. accessibility and security) are the result of interactions between technologies and users. Platform affordances have also become key aspects of how illicit drug markets become diversified in organising drug exchanges. For example, Haupt et al. (2022), via an analysis of drug dealing posts across social media spaces, show how social media platforms with affordances for longer messages (e.g. Tumblr) had higher concentration of drug mentions per post as well as a higher variety of drug type mentions. This is also evident elsewhere as we see in numerous instances how illicit drug supply conforms to the technological features of platforms: illicit drug supply on Instagram clearly prioritises visual and auditory cues such as the integration of Spotify songs onto advertisements (Figure 4), Facebook group sellers appropriate text features of the platform to use text descriptions, and Telegram-based sellers have the ability to publicise lengthy menus and can integrate bots (see Barratt et al., 2022) into their channels. These varying platform affordances reshape the organisation of drug exchanges between buyers and sellers and illicit drug supply processes become dictated by the functionalities of digital platforms.

Figure 4.

An Instagram-based illicit drug supplier that uses the platform features of Instagram stories (e.g. images, text and integration of songs with Spotify) to advertise illicit drugs.

Analyses of platform affordances need to be situated through the power negotiations between users and platforms (Dinsmore, 2019; Santos and Faure, 2018). These power dynamics can lead to the use of platform features that designers may not have anticipated. For example, although dark web cryptomarkets were created with the explicit purpose of a centralised platform to mediate exchanges, the ability to provide text descriptions of products along with vendor profile pages has resulted in drug sellers advertising alternative contact details to organise drug exchanges elsewhere (Childs et al., 2020b). The emergence of this ‘unanticipated affordance’ (see McVeigh-Schultz and Baym, 2015) is arguably attributed to the way that, because of the increased popularity of dark web platforms, these markets become more susceptible to policing crackdowns and exit scams⁶, which drives alternative ways of imagining how platform features can be best used to keep trade flowing. User behaviour and platform features co-evolve as they are shaped by socio-political forces and power dynamics within the platform ecosystem.

Platform affordances also continually adjust in response to efforts to regulate user behaviour. In an effort to curtail illicit drug supply on their platforms, social media companies materialise their power by enforcing platform policies (otherwise known as ‘terms of service’ or ‘community guidelines’). These platform policies are always adapting – to legal regimes, technological advancements, pressure from the media and public, etc – and are often enforced by a combination of algorithmic moderation processes and blocking features for unwanted content (Gorwa, 2020). Deplatforming, an approach also used by platforms to restrict the visibility of other unwanted content (e.g. far-right extremism and NSFW content creators; Rogers, 2020; van der Nagel, 2021), emerges as a way to restrict illicit drug supply on platforms. Platformisation enables new enforcement mechanisms for regulating illicit drug markets, where traditional state-based policing is increasingly being complemented (and at times supplanted) by platforms. This platform-centred regulation also redefines the spatial and legal contours of illicit drug markets. Despite significant national and international differences in the regulation of illicit drugs, these differences are succeeded by a new set of rules determined by social media platforms. This emergent form of governance for crime is also seen in the self-regulation of dark web cryptomarkets, where market administrators will explicitly prohibit the sale of some items (e.g. child exploitation material) as a risk-reduction strategy and thereby reinforce the platform model as the necessary infrastructure to guide activity.

Despite attempts from social media companies to restrict the presence of illicit drug market activity, like Snapchat who publicise their ‘zero tolerance for drug dealing on Snapchat’⁷ and how TikTok ‘take a strict stance against content that promotes drug use’,⁸ drug market participants modify their practices within these power dynamics and new regulatory spaces to continue drug supply. In response to Meta’s crackdown on the use of hashtags that explicitly name illicit drugs (e.g. #420brisbane and #weedbrisbane), buyers and sellers now obfuscate their communication on these platforms to evade content moderation through the use of coded language (e.g. ‘broccoli’ for cannabis) and use emojis to represent illicit drugs. Moreover, our observations on TikTok reveal that some sellers avoid direct product listings and limit text descriptions on posts to instead rely on trending hashtags (e.g. #fyp⁹ and #rap) to boost the discoverability of their profile.

Platforms increasingly define the parameters and possibilities for illicit drug supply. These platform affordances, offering both capabilities and limitations, significantly influence the nature of illicit drug supply among drug market participants across advertising, strategies for communicating and the delivery/deal of products in a way that balances technological features and user agency. These affordances evolve as the platforms themselves are continually reshaped by the shifting power dynamics between platform operators and their users; platforms create new regulatory landscapes in their attempts to block affordances that lead to illicit activities, and as a result novel practices emerge from these interactions.

Platform-mediated labour

The platform society has dramatically shaped contemporary labour practices as technology companies such as Amazon and Uber generate profits via workers’ labour by acting as pseudo-employers via a digital platform (Graham et al., 2017). Extending on notions of platform labour, Gandini’s (2021) reflections also considers the labour produced by users of popular platforms that will create content and produce value for digital platforms. Here, the rise of content creators and influencers is indicative of this type of labour as individuals amass online followings and monetise these followings via advertising revenue and brand deals (Abidin, 2018; Glatt, 2022). Content creators pursue visibility and consumer engagement through views, likes and watch-time with their produced content to drive additional sponsorship opportunities from brands. While a growing body of research has attended to ways that crime and digital technologies affect policing labour (e.g. increasing emotional labour and additional resources required in online child exploitation investigations, see Holt et al., 2020), the platformisation of illicit drug markets also opens up new avenues for exploring the evolution of drug market labour within digital platforms.

Research on digital labour typically excludes reflections on marginalised and/or criminalised populations (Rand, 2019). However, labour shifts in platformised drug market labour is also reflective of broader cybercrime trends. Hackers, for instance, are now no longer required to be adept at hacking tasks themselves as these products have become commodified on markets. This has transformed labour in this industry as actors professionalise practices by transitioning to customer service roles and performing maintenance duties on digital infrastructures for others to use (Collier et al., 2021; Childs, 2023). Building on the above, and nuancing existing work on the professionalisation of drug market actors in digital economies (Bakken et al., 2023), we describe two main types of platform-mediated labour that has appeared in the platformisation of illicit drug markets: (1) supplier labour and (2) digital content labour.

Supplier labour refers to the strategic engagement and operational tactics deployed by sellers to facilitate illicit drug transactions through digital platforms. Competitive drug supply on digital platforms has required new forms of drug market labour that compels drug sellers to distinguish themselves from the competition. In the search for effective promotional strategies the norms and practices established within influencer culture has ‘creeped’ (Bishop, 2023) into illicit drug supply where drug sellers will implement self-branding practices. On dark web cryptomarkets, for example, many drug vendors use the imagery and names from well-known brands and popular culture phenomenon such as Planet Hollywood, Chuck Norris, Caesars Palace and The Godfather. Alternatively, drug suppliers on digital platforms also aim to give the impression of a professionalised service by creating their own brand logos, publicising the drug supply as the operation of a team as opposed to an individual drug supplier and implementing rewards programs such as the use of ‘affiliate links’.¹⁰ Differentiating forms of platform-mediated labour was also evident on drug markets within Facebook Groups and Telegram Channels. In these particular market formations, platforms are often used as spaces where buyers make requests for vendors (as opposed to sellers advertising goods to solicit sales), and drug sellers are required to swiftly respond to requests from potential local buyers to get rewarded for their on-demand labour in monitoring and staying engaged on digital platforms, consequently mirroring the labour dynamics seen in gig-economy work models.

Who got weed hawksburn/south Yarra?

Weed in St Kilda?

Looking for green in Melbourne South eastern suburbs

Green in Ringwood, Melbourne

Green in Sunshine

Text Excerpts from a Telegram Channel

Any plug Logan ways?

Any mushies around?

Text Excerpts from a local drug buying/selling Facebook Group

Digital content labour, as a distinct form of platform-mediated labour than described above, captures the types of platform-mediated labour that involves the creation, management and dissemination of digital content to sustain digital infrastructures. While platforms like Reddit host large dark web communities, such as r/darknet, the information available on this community is only made possible due to the labour practices of forum moderators. These forum moderators balance the needs of developing a helpful community, possessing within it a trove of information for accessing dark web markets (e.g. assisting with enquiries and informing community members about market conditions), against the terms of service of Reddit where direct sourcing and hyperlinks to dark web markets are prohibited.

The active creation of digital content is also critical in new forms of platform-mediated drug market labour. Here, again, users adopt the techniques of content creators and influencers to disseminate content and distribute media to their followers. On YouTube, for example, specialty content creators have emerged to increase information and provide tutorials on accessing dark web cryptomarkets. As seen in the examples (Figure 5), these selected YouTube content creators design compelling and consistent thumbnails for their videos and seek to increase their visibility with catchy titles to draw in audiences, practices that echo how the platform is often used by content creators in gaming and lifestyle categories. Moreover, similar trends are observed on other digital platforms such as TikTok, where content creators develop subculturally-situated media (see Ferrell, 1998; Ferrell et al., 2001) as a form of digital content rooted in the shared experiences of individuals within the subcultures of these forms of supply. In the example below (Figure 6), one content creator is seen sharing obtained bodycam footage following an interaction with police. The video is presented as a comedic take of an outsider (the police) not possessing the in-group knowledge that insiders have regarding appropriate uses of USB operating systems. This is similar to the other video, whereby an in-joke is presented to those who know the names of popular dark web markets that were historically closed down. Through platforms such as TikTok, this content is fed into the algorithms of the platform to then reach viewers not embedded in the subculture.

Figure 5.

Specialised content creators on YouTube that facilitate access to dark web cryptomarkets.

Figure 6.

TikTok content creators.

The platformisation of illicit drug markets has required actors to shape their labour practices for new drug supply environments. This section has specifically described supplier labour and digital content labour to capture the various dimensions of platform-mediated labour in emerging drug markets. This allows us to distinguish between the labour practices of drug suppliers that seek to maintain competitiveness through branding and marketing strategies, the labour required form individuals in creating, managing and disseminating digital content, and how this is performed via the logics of platforms and the cultural shifts that platformisation produces.

Discussion and conclusion

Digital technologies have undoubtedly impacted the nature of contemporary illicit drug markets, but as of yet, conceptual understandings of this transformation are scarce. Amidst continuing tropes portraying the uberisation of drug markets¹¹ and how dark web models of illicit drug trading represent the eBay of drug dealing,¹² this paper has integrated analyses of platforms (as digital infrastructures), platformisation (the process of societal practices adapting to platforms) and platform capitalism (the economic dynamics underpinning platformisation) into this criminological milieu. Specifically, we conceptualise the notion of the platformisation of illicit drug markets to describe the adaptation of illicit drug markets to the technological, economic and socio/cultural logics of digital platforms.

As a brief review of the main contributions of this article, the platformisation of illicit drug markets describes how (1) drug exchanges have become datafied, (2) platform affordances shape drug market agency and (3) platform-mediated labour sustains illicit drug markets. Firstly, illicit drug exchanges have become increasingly datafied as drug supply arrangements are increasingly conducted within and through platforms that render interactions into forms of digital data. These datafication processes consolidate power within ecosystems where data extraction is used to drive trust and feedback systems, as well as creating a situation where algorithms on social media and e-commerce platforms function to increase accessibility to illicit drug markets. Secondly, the processes involved in drug exchanges are increasingly conditional on platform affordances. These affordances are subject to continuous change through the power dynamics between platforms and their users, and new forms of regulation emerge to block affordances. Thirdly, platform-mediated labour practices are an integral component of these novel forms of drug supply. Drug suppliers adopt practices of self-branding, professionalisation and engagement in digital environments to conform to platform-based models of labour, and those in the wider subculture and community produce digital content via mainstream digital platforms akin to the influencer and content creator industries.

Our discussion of platformisation should not be understood as a suggestion that platformisation has, or inevitably will, replace all forms of illicit drug supply or that all types of illicit drug markets have been swept up in these shifts. Rather, platformisation itself is not uniformly distributed across geographic areas (Kaye et al., 2021), and the considerable differences in drug supply models (see Coomber, 2015, 2023) means that not all drug markets and individuals will be affected by platformisation. What we do consider is the ongoing ways that drugs, transforms to serve capitalist functions (Ayres, 2023) and how the platform model for organising social activity is becoming embedded in emerging forms of drug exchange.

Our article focussed on how drug markets have transformed under platform capitalism and this also illuminates some of the emergent forms of drug harms in these new assemblages: What changes will happen to visible street-based markets, that typically contain individuals most affected by illicit drugs, as technology corporations become increasingly entrenched in urban environments (Caprotti et al., 2022) to create ‘smart cities’? What transpires as some populations (i.e. younger, tech-savvy, drug dealing with less stigmatised substances) face minor consequences for their drug market involvement, such as social media account suspension, while other populations face harsher forms of enforcement because they have less access to, and ways of participating in, these ‘gentrified’ (Martin, 2018) illicit drug markets? It is clear that platformisation has the potential to reshape the broader landscape of drug-related harms in illicit drug markets.

We have developed our three themes in unpacking the platformisation of drug supply (datafication, platform affordances and platform-mediated labour) to examine the platformisation of illicit drug markets, and while these dimensions of platformisation will hold resonance for other areas of criminological research, we encourage researchers to focus on the particularities of what digital platforms transform in their fields. Thinking through platformisation effects follows considerations in digital criminology (Stratton et al., 2017) that implores a move beyond dualistic (online/offline) models put forward in most cybercrime research to consider the imbued nature of technology in daily life. Greater attention on digital platforms, platformisation and platform capitalism can extend on existing lines of inquiry in a digital criminology that investigates the unintended harmful consequences of algorithms on social media platforms (Wood, 2021) and how algorithms might make it easier for individuals to ‘drift’ (Goldsmith and Brewer, 2014) into offending and normalise crime. Digital platforms are also introducing novel forms of harms, such as the exploitation of vulnerable populations through food delivery apps (Snider, 2018), and are changing crimes in localised environments (see Ke et al., 2021 research on Airbnb and crime rates). Cultural criminology and platform studies is uniquely placed to examine the connections between emergent forms of crime and justice, digital media technologies and the broader cultural and economic factors that shape society and technology.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Dangerous Consumptions Colloquium 2023 and we thank attendees for productive conversations. We would also sincerely like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Andrew Childs

Notes

Author biographies

Dr. Andrew Childs is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. He explores how new technologies contribute to the evolution of online illicit markets as well as the theoretical and methodological implications for researching crimes in digital environments.

Dr. Ausma Bernot is a Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology and crime, specifically surveillance and technology governance.

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