"...we are in the middle of a contest to define the contours of what we call the “platform society”: a global conglomerate of all kinds of platforms, which interdependencies are structured by a common set of mechanisms."

- José Van Dijck and Thomas Poell, Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space. Social Media + Society, July-December 2015: 1.

Human-to-human connection is what social media is supposed to be about. This belief, this hope, was an impetus for this book when I began writing it in 2016. Historically, human-to-human connection was also what the the internet itself reached for, at least in the dreams of creators including Tim Berners-Lee when they made it public in 1991. This Web 1.0 or the “read only” web as it would later be called was quite limited in its reach compared to today. And yet...that potentially infinite web of networks was still a wonder, and a site of international connections and information wars (as you'll see in Chapter 5 with the Zapatistas.)

Then what happened? Well on the surface, the web simply became more social. By the early 2000s there was Web 2.0, the “read/write web,” as we will read about in Chapter 2. Great excitement and euphoria surrounded the participatory cultures that blossomed on Web 2.0 sites. The wonder of the web refracted across our lives, as we marveled at how easily we could connect with one another. This world of connections broadened our human imaginations and expectations in irreversible ways. And many were overjoyed when by 2009 all this human connection grew teeth - which is to say viability in the form of real currency exchange - with the "sharing economy" that enabled regular folk to share services and goods with one another.

Yet behind the visible connections, all this sociality also marked the beginning of voracious - yet invisible - intermediaries. We were giddily giving up our data in exchange for the peer-to-peer exchange of services, a backroom exchange with implications few would recognize for nearly another decade.

And today? Welcome to the "platform society," in which we are connected to one another, but only through platforms that derive immense power from and over our human connections.

What are platforms?

I define a platform as follows:

Platform: An ecosystem that connects people and companies while retaining control over the terms of these connections and ownership of connection byproducts such as data.

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon: These are the major platforms that José Van Dijck argues have defined how society and both public and private life function today. These platforms reach deeply into human lives worldwide, with their publicly understood purposes forming only a fraction of their activities and profits. And rippling from these big four platforms are smaller ones, which emulate their models in various ways. These platforms and their stakeholders transform not just what we buy and enjoy but what we need to live and thrive: How we educate, how we govern and are governed, and how we structure our societies.

The impact of globally operating platforms on local and state economies and cultures is immense, as they force all societal actors—including the mass media, civil society organizations, and state institutions—to reconsider and recalibrate their position in public space. (Van Dijk and Poell, 1.)

Platforms have a profound effect on how societal life is organized. AirBnb has changed not just the hospitality sector but also neighborhood dynamics and social life. Uber has not only affected the taxi industry; it has affected the construction of roads and public transportation services. We do not yet vote through platforms, yet they have had irreversible effects on our elections. Today almost every sector of public life has become platformized: Higher Education. News and Journalism. Fitness and Health. Hospitality. Transportation. And in these platforms, transactions that are visible to consumers are undergirded by other transactions in which consumers become unwitting producers, their data a form of currency that subsidizes the transactions the chose to engage in in the first place.

It is essential that we use what leverage we have as users, consumers, voters, and public citizens to influence what digital, social media platforms can do and should not do. As social media users we are instrumental members of the Platform Society. We deserve more say over how they can function, and more of their power and profit.

Diana Daly, August 2018