Platform capitalism refers to the activities of companies such as
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
,
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
,
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
,
Airbnb
Airbnb, Inc. ( , an abbreviation of its original name, "Air Bed and Breakfast") is an American company operating an online marketplace for short-and-long-term homestays, experiences and services in various countries and regions. It acts as a ...
,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
and others to operate as platforms. In this business model both hardware and software are used as a foundation (platform) for other actors to conduct their own business.
[L. Weatherby, "Delete Your Account: On the Theory of Platform Capitalism," Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018.]
Platform capitalism has been both heralded as beneficial
[A. McAfee and E. Brynjolfsson, Machine, platform, crowd : harnessing our digital future. W. W. Norton and Company, 2017.] and denounced as detrimental
[J. Lanier, Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Henry Holt and Co., 2018.] by various authors. The trends identified in platform capitalism have similarities with those described under the heading of
surveillance capitalism.
[S. Zuboff, The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs, 2019.] Technology companies build platforms that entire industries rely on, and those industries can easily collapse due to the decisions of those technology companies.
The possible effect of platform capitalism on
open science
Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessib ...
has been discussed.
[P. Mirowski, "The future(s) of open science," Soc. Stud. Sci., vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 171–203, Apr. 2018.]
Platform capitalism has been contrasted with
platform cooperativism. Companies that try to focus on fairness and sharing, instead of just
profit motive
In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm ...
, are described as cooperatives, whereas more traditional and common companies that focus solely on profit, like Airbnb and Uber, are platform capitalists (or cooperativist platforms vs capitalist platforms). In turn, projects like
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
, which rely on unpaid labor of volunteers, can be classified as
commons-based peer-production initiatives.
See also
*
Enshittification
*
Platform economy
The platform economy encompasses economic and social activities facilitated by digital platforms. These platforms — such as Amazon (company), Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Microsoft and Google — serve as intermediaries between various groups of users, ...
References
Business models
Social sciences
Computing and society
Information Age
Science and technology studies
Capitalism
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