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THE PLATFORM SOCIETY - Public Values in a Connective World José Van

Dijck | Thomas Poell | Martijn De Waal

The introduction puts forward the notion of the “platform society,” which
emphasizes the inextricable relation between online platforms and societal
structures. Platforms are gradually inltrating in, and converging with, the
institutions and practices through which democratic societies are organized. It
refers to a society in which social and economic trac is increasingly
channeled by a (corporate) global online platform ecosystem that is driven by
algorithms and fueled by data. In turn, an online platform should be understood
as a programmable digital architecture designed to organize interactions
between users—not just end users but also corporate entities and public
bodies. It is geared toward the systematic collection, algorithmic processing,
circulation, and monetization of user data. Crucially, platforms cannot be seen
apart from each other but evolve in the context of an online setting that is
structured by its own logic. A “platform ecosystem” is an assemblage of
networked platforms, governed by a particular set of mechanism (datacation,
commodication and selection) that shapes everyday practices and it’s global.
The responsible for anchoring public values are: corporation, governments and
civil society actors.

1. The Platform Society as a Contested Concept

1.1 Introduction

The invasion of online platform creates many battlegrounds in a society where

social and economic interaction increasingly happens through a digital
infrastructure that is global and highly interconnected. Platform at every level
(micro-level: single platforms; meso-level: platform ecosystem; macro-level:
platform societies) are all (inter)dependent on a global infrastructure.

1.2 Platform Anatomy

Elements of Construction Platform is a programmable architecture designed to

organize interactions between users. It shapes the way we live and how society
is organized. It is fueled by data, automated and organized through algorithms
and interfaces, formalized through ownership relations driven by business
models and governed through user agreements. Platforms collect a large
quantity of data and sometimes they use Applications programming interfaces
(APIs) and oer a third parties controlled access to their platform data, giving
them detailed insights into user behavior and metrics - information on which
they can build applications or platforms. Algorithms are the connective
architecture of platforms, they are sets of automated instructions to transform
input data into a desired output. There are two important things in a platform’s
architecture: its ownership status and business model. The rst one is the
legal-economic status, if it’s for-prot or nonprot or the area where it
operates, so it’s dierent implication for compliance with regulatory regimes
including taxation. Ownership status also has consequences for a site’s
economic transaction and its social interaction with users. Business models in
the context of platforms refer to the ways in which economic value gets

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created and captured. In the online world, values gets measured in various
types of currency: along with money and attention, data and user valuation
have become popular means of monetization. The “free” strategies adopted by
many platforms have resulted in an ecosystem where the default mode is to
trade convenient services for personal information. Platforms can target and
prole individual users as well as user groups. Single platforms can opt for a
range of dierent business models, creating value out of data, content, user
contact, and attention by selling advertisements, subscriptions, and user data
or by charging fees: moreover, they can sell data to other companies or
governments in need of proling information.

Another element in platform-governing methods is its user agreement, usually

called “terms of service” (ToS). These pseudo-legal contracts dene and shape
the relationships between users and platform owners. but they are often long,
dicult to understand and subject to change (it can be used to impose norms,
value, state privileges). With it platform owners govern their relationship with
users, partners, clients and other (legal) parties.

1.3 The Platform Ecosystem

Building an Infrastructural Core The epicenter of the information ecosystem

that dominates North American and European online space is owned and
operated by ve high-tech companies: Alphabet-Google1, Facebook2, Apple3,
Amazon4 and Microsoft5. This system appears to replace “top-down” “big
government” with “bottom-up” “customer empowerment”, yet it is doing so by
means of highly centralized structure which remains opaque to its users. There
are two types of platforms: most inuential infra- structural and sectoral
platforms. The rst ones are owned and operated by the Big Five, they also
serve as online gatekeepers through which data ows are managed, processed,
stored and channeled. The sectoral platforms serve a particular sector o niche.
Their platforms are “superplatforms”, they provide service in dierent sectors.
They are like mediators connecting providers to users or customers. The Big
Five platforms oers its users convenience in exchange for control over their
data, to the extent that the “total inltration of basic needs also imposes
potentially dire political, environmental and ethical risks”.

1.4 Sectoral Platforms and Their Hybrid Actors

It’s possible also to distinguish sectoral platforms, which oer digital services
for one specic sector. Some of the best-known platforms have no material
assets, they are merely “connectors” between individual users to single
providers. Connective platforms are depended on “complementors” -
organization or individuals that provide products or services to end users
through platforms, interlinking dierent “sides” and hence constituting
multisided markets. Complementors can be organizations that are subject to
the regulatory bounds of a sector (they can be also public institution and
governments or micro entrepreneurs). This new class of intermediaries adds
much economic value to platforms but also raises all kinds of questions
pertaining to public values such as precarious labor, a fair and level playing
eld and public costs. Infrastructural platform operators are increasingly
looking at ways to extend their leverage by expanding into sectoral connectors

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with acquisitions or strategic partnership. The Big Five are accumulating

technologic and economic power from the combination of sectoral and
infrastructural platforms. They also introduced a new category of hybrid actors:
operators and users. This allows platforms operators and users to bypass
regulation or escape professional norms and standards to which most sectors
are subjected, either by law or by custom. The hybrid or uid reality gets rid of
the distinction between private and public, state and market. The ecosystem
itself - the way it is cemented in its architecture of algorithms, business
models, and user activity - is not neutral; the ideological principles put a mark
on what constitutes public value and whose interests are served.

1.5 Public Value and Private interest

“Public Value” is the value that an organization contributes to society to benet

the common good. The common good is often translated in a number of
propositions that are achieved through collective participation in the formation
of a shared set of norms and values. Ideally, the creation oers a number of
key facilities (search engine, mobile operating system, social network,
advertising, video sharing...) 2 dominates data trac and controls the 80% of
the market for social networking services. Google and Facebook also control a
substantial share of online identication services. 3 leading producer of mobile
hardware, with its system and software 4 one of the world’s biggest digital
retail platforms, including its extensive logistic network for distribution of goods
5 made personal computer software in 1980 and now its focus is in online
services (LinkedIn e Microsoft Azure) of public value for the common good
should be the shared responsibility of all societal actors - companies, citizens,
and governments. State actors and public institution are historically the
designate custodians of the common good in most Western democracies. In the
platform society, the creation of public value towards the common good is
often confused with the creation of economic value serving a nondescript
amalgam of private and public interests. Platforms, especially online ones,
claim their services benet as public because they can substitute the role of
governments and communities by assisting the self-organization of people. The
question whose interests a platform’s activity serves, which values are at stake
and who benets are central in disputes concerning the creation of public value
in the platform society. The current struggle about it happens simultaneously at
local and national level between sectors.

1.6 The Geopolitics Platforms in a Connective World

The platform society is not an ideal world order in which companies are
perfectly able to regulate themselves and users are equally engaged to support
the common good. It is not a society where technology rendered economic and
social trac perfectly transparent so that governments can retire. On the
contrary, platform societies, to some extent, are becoming opaquer because
social and economic processes are hidden inside algorithms business models,
and data ows which are not open to democratic control. The increasingly
present of the Big Five as social actors may have private stakes in the
ecosystem, but that have responsibilities similar to governments when it comes
to procuring public values. Local regulators and city councils are more
interested in the immediate local impact of platforms rather than the way

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global platforms aect the national or supranational world order in the long
run. Platforms are too important to leave their regulation to self-labeled
operators and users; civil society, citizens and government have big stakes in a
fair, democratic, and responsible platform society.

2. Platform Mechanism

2.1 Introduction

Platforms are never neutral tools: they make certain thing visible, while hiding
others. They are articulated in three platform mechanisms: “datacation”,
“commodication” and “selection”. The interplay between these mechanisms
can be decisive for the actors involved.

2.2 Datacation

Datacation refers to the ability of networked platforms to render into data

many aspects of the world that have never been quantied before: not just
demographic or proling data volunteered by customers or solicited from them
in (online) surveys but behavioral meta-data automatically derived from
smartphones. Every form of user interaction can be captured as data.
Datacation allows platforms with the potential to develop techniques for
predictive and real-time analytics, which are vital for delivering targeted
advertising and services in a wide variety of economy sectors. This data can
also circulate through APIs. Every activity of every user can be captured,
algorithmically processed, and added to that user’s data prole. The economic
and public value of datacation is especially located in the real-time dimension
of data streams. Real-time insights allow actors to modulate their message to
more eectively target voters and supporters. Platform can function as an
ecosystem because data are constantly exchanged between a wide variety of
online services (APIs). Third-party applications and programs can only use part
of the data captured by the platform. They can gain more extensive access
through engangin in formal partnerships or by gaining access to paid data
services, which have become a core part of platform business model.

The mechanism of datacation is beginning to play a central role in the

conguration of social relations. Platform corporations expand their collecting
and processing of data to track and predict an ever wider variety of users’
performances, sentiments, transactions, informal exchanges, and activities.
The social, economic and public value of data exchange is inscribed in its real-
tima and predictive character, allowing platform operators to directly track and
inuence streams of trac, public opinion and sentiments, or, for that matter,
students’ cognitive advances. The business models of these platforms, in turn,
inform how platforms technologically steer the ow of fata.

2.3 Commodication

The mechanism of Commodication involves platforms transforming online and

oine objects, activities, emotions, and ideas into tradable commodities. The
commodities are valued through at least four dierent types of currency:
attention, data, users and money. Commodication is intensied by mechanism

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