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[...] platforms are technologies for the production of distribution itself, and if platform capitalism is about distribution, then it’s primarily about space. Platforms create a space in which specific forms of exchange can occur, and set the terms for those exchanges, all while extracting rents. T…

[...] digital platforms internalize consumption as well, turning it into a form of subtly incentivized labor. Previous forms of labor organization depended on managerial overseers and workers who were rendered into “docile bodies” by, in Foucault’s account, social institutions like factories, priso…

It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed and cynical about the state of the digital economy right now. In return for what mainly amounts to small measures of consumer convenience, massive economic control has been ceded to platforms. But this consolidation has also changed the configuration of capital and…

Platforms facilitate different epistemological realities and incentivizes content creation to sustain them. In the end, platforms see content as no different from any other consumer good. This is because platforms are theorized not as communication technologies, but as marketplaces.

To un…

Online platforms aren’t simply replacing stores by replicating their function. Instead they are making themselves gatekeepers capable of controlling and regulating commerce — just as Steam regulates the weapon skins market — playing a decisive role in which sellers continue to exist and which worke…