This article examines how the internet's promise of universal visibility became trapped inside centralized platforms, which solved early internet problems but created a new kind of dependency. Through network effects, these platforms became the internet itself for most users, making exit practically impossible. It's the introductory piece to a series exploring the consequences of collective platform capture.
To potentially be seen by everyone, and to potentially see everything. This was the step change the internet introduced into society. Practically, time and space were condensed to irrelevance, no longer did you need to be at the right time in the right place. The data is there, patiently waiting on connected computers for the moment it is requested, by whoever for whatever reason.
At least in some abstract sense. In reality there are many ifs and buts about this. Not all these connected computers are open to anyone at any time for any reason. Not all data is preserved, and is not available forever. The sheer amount of data is simply too much to process and needs filtering and judgment as to what is relevant.
Aside from all these realities that might temper the bold claim this piece opened with, something else is at play. Something not as unavoidable as the restrictions mentioned already: the rise of the platform.
Platforms generally speaking do three things, and they actually relate to aforementioned issues of access, retention and relevancy. The platform grants you an account, an identity to log in with, determining who has access and who does not. The platform hosts the data, paying the bills for all the physical server infrastructure required to maintain all that data and make it available. Lastly, these platforms index all the data, providing users with the means to search as well as suggestions via algorithms.
From this perspective, the emergence of platforms was a way to deal with the problems while still delivering on the promise to potentially be seen by everyone, and to potentially see everything. And it worked, the world is connected and in a mere flash,something from the margins is able to reach the mainstream. Going viral leveled a playing field otherwise determined by privileged access. With a bit of effort, any voice can be found and heard.
Yet, for some reason, person that created one of the bigger platforms laments how things went. For some reason, people attempted to redesign the model away from platforms. This is because underneath its seeming achievement, the platform way of organizing ourselves on the internet created a whole list of problems of its own. It made a handfull of people responsible for...everything. Who is allowed in, who is allowed to participate and why, and for how long. What is allowed to be shared, and for how long will it remain available. What is allowed to be found, what is recommended, deemed relevant and pushed to the forefront and to whom, and what is pushed back and marginalized.
With platforms, we created an infrastructure to manage the problems inherent to the internet as such, but at the same time, due to its design, it determined something about this management itself. Fortunately for this management, but unfortunately for the rest of us, there is no easy way out.
The shape of the promise to potentially be seen by everyone, and to potentially see everything has been put into platform-shaped boxes. The way we delivered on it is by most of us going into the same box such that most people can see, and be seen, by most of everyone. The value of the box increased the more people joined the box; the more people joined the box the closer it got to delivering on the initial promise of the internet.
Platforms not only became a way to mitigate the problems of the internet, they became the means of the internet itself. Their position reinforced by this phenomenon of network effect, where once most everyone is already in a particular box, everyone else who wants access to this promise of the internet is left with no other option but to get in line and join that box as well. This also means that for most intents and purposes, leaving the box is not viable, because any alternative is not a real alternative as such.
So we are captured, stuck. In this series of articles I will walk across the landscape pointing out various consequences of the fact that the collective ‘we’ all depend on the same set of boxes to see and be seen.
Any complaint is only relevant in light of a solution. But such a solution can only become clear if the architectural nature of the problem, and the consequences that result from it, are in view first.