The Janus faces of Silicon Valley
TL;DR: In recent years, the power of large technology corporations has become a focus of public debate in both developed and developing countries as discussed by the authors, and this growing chorus brings together complaints about brea...
Abstract: In recent years, the power of large technology corporations has become a focus of public debate in both developed and developing countries. This growing chorus brings together complaints about brea...
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TL;DR: In this article , the authors examine how policymakers grapple with the problem by looking at a growing number of expert inquiries on digital platforms, that focus on policy problems ranging from market dominance and privacy risks to the spread of disinformation.
Abstract: A key concern in international policy debates about articulating oversight of digital platform markets involves policy silos, arising from the scope of platformization and datafication, and the challenges in defining their policy boundaries and coordinating a comprehensive policy response. This article examines how policymakers grapple with the problem by looking at a growing number of expert inquiries on digital platforms—a proxy for the international policy debate—that focus on policy problems ranging from market dominance and privacy risks to the spread of disinformation. Specifically, the article develops a schema of related policy silos and tradeoffs that arise in these debates: (1) policy area silos, (2) market/sectoral silos, (3) temporal silos, and (4) normative tradeoffs. Then, it critically examines the implications of these silos and tradeoffs for policy interventions aimed at addressing concerns related to datafication and platformization, raising key questions about the scope of and assumptions underlying platform regulation internationally and noting the way they constrain policy design and thwart more holistic policy solutions. 关于阐述数字平台市场监管的国际政策辩论中，一个重要关切涉及政策孤岛（policy silos），后者源于平台化和数据化范围、以及在“定义其政策边界和协调全面的政策响应”一事中遭遇的挑战。通过审视越来越多关于数字平台的专家调查（以作为国际政策辩论的替代物），这些调查聚焦于从市场主导性、隐私风险到虚假信息传播的一系列政策问题，本文分析了决策者如何设法解决该问题。具体而言，本文对这些辩论中出现的相关政策孤岛及政策得失提出一项纲要，这些辩论包括:1）政策领域孤岛，2）市场/部门孤岛，3）时间孤岛，4）规范性得失。随后，本文批判检验了这些政策孤岛及得失对政策干预措施产生的意义，旨在应对与数据化和平台化相关的顾虑、提出与国际平台监管范围及潜在假设相关的关键问题、并指出其如何限制政策设计和阻碍更全面的政策解决方案。 Una preocupación clave en los debates políticos internacionales sobre la articulación de la supervisión de los mercados de plataformas digitales involucra los silos de políticas, que surgen del alcance de la plataforma y la datificación, y los desafíos para definir sus límites políticos y coordinar una respuesta política integral. Este artículo examina cómo los formuladores de políticas lidian con el problema al observar un número creciente de consultas de expertos en plataformas digitales, un indicador del debate sobre políticas internacionales, que se enfocan en problemas de políticas que van desde el dominio del mercado hasta los riesgos de privacidad y la difusión de desinformación. Específicamente, el artículo desarrolla un esquema de silos de política relacionados y compensaciones que surgen en estos debates: 1) silos de área de política, 2) silos de mercado/sectoriales, 3) silos temporales y 4) compensaciones normativas. Luego, examina críticamente las implicaciones de estos silos y compensaciones para las intervenciones de políticas destinadas a abordar las preocupaciones relacionadas con la datificación y la plataforma, lo que plantea preguntas clave sobre el alcance y los supuestos subyacentes a la regulación de la plataforma internacionalmente y observando la forma en que restringen el diseño de políticas y frustran soluciones políticas más holísticas. This article includes online-only Supplemental Data. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that assetization is an important focal point for wider debates in human geography by focusing attention on the moment of enclosure, rent extraction, and material remaking of society which the making of a financial asset implies.
Abstract: An asset is both a resource and property, in that it generates income streams with its sale price based on the capitalization of those revenues. Although an asset's income streams can be financially sliced up, aggregated, and speculated upon across highly diverse geographies, there still has to be something underpinning these financial operations. Something has to generate the income that a political economic actor can lay claim to through a property or other right, entailing a process of enclosure, rent extraction, property formation, and capitalization. Geographers and other social scientists are producing a growing literature illustrating the range of new (and old) asset classes created by capitalists in their search for revenue streams, for which we argue assetization is a necessary concept to focus on the moment of enclosure and rent extraction. It is a pressing task for human geographers to unpack the diverse and contingent ‘asset geographies’ entailed in this assetization process. As a middle range concept and empirical problematic, we argue that assetization is an important focal point for wider debates in human geography by focusing attention on the moment of enclosure, rent extraction, and material remaking of society which the making of a financial asset implies.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the relationship between states and the private corporations holding the resources states seek to exploit is more dynamic and contested than assumed, and a paradigm shift in the market has significantly limited the authority of states vis-à-vis key market players.
Abstract: Abstract The ability of states to exploit private resources at an international level is an increasingly salient political issue. In explaining the mechanisms of this shift, the framework of Weaponized Interdependence has quickly risen to prominence, arguing that those states that are centrally placed in global networks can exploit their centrality given the appropriate domestic institutions. Building on this framework, I suggest that the relationship between states and the private corporations holding the resources states seek to exploit is more dynamic and contested than assumed. Drawing on developments in the industry for constructing and operating submarine cables, I find that a paradigm shift in the market has significantly limited the authority of states vis-à-vis key market players. The contribution of this finding is to expand Weaponized Interdependence as a framework, paying closer attention to the relationship between private companies and states. This expansion allows for the utilization of Weaponized Interdependence as a framework for a broader set of cases, explaining not only when a network is prone to weaponization but also the limitations states face when they seek to do so.
7 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors build a model of platform competition with two-sided markets and reveal the determinants of price allocation and end-user surplus for different governance structures (profit-maximizing platforms and not-for-profit joint undertakings), and compare the outcomes with those under an integrated monopolist and a Ramsey planner.
Abstract: Many if not most markets with network externalities are two-sided. To succeed, platforms in industries such as software, portals and media, payment systems and the Internet, must “get both sides of the market on board.” Accordingly, platforms devote much attention to their business model, that is, to how they court each side while making money overall. This paper builds a model of platform competition with two-sided markets. It unveils the determinants of price allocation and end-user surplus for different governance structures (profit-maximizing platforms and not-for-profit joint undertakings), and compares the outcomes with those under an integrated monopolist and a Ramsey planner. (JEL: L5, L82, L86, L96)
3,317 citations
TL;DR: The Retreat of the State as mentioned in this paper is a seminal work in the field of international political economy, where the authors argue that there is no effective conclave of big corporations with United States government power, though these forces do seem to be the predominate actors.
Abstract: In April 1970, Susan Strange published an article in the Chatham House review which challenged the mutual exclusivity of international economics and international politics.(f.1) The consequence was a rebirth of the concept of political economy in international studies. She has continued consistently her liberation struggle from academic self-enclosure, disciplinary defensiveness, and turf wars. She insisted that the new international political economy be a broad church open to historians, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and the whole range of humanistic studies, as well as economists and political scientists. In this, she echoed Fernand Braudel's appeal in 1958 for the integration of the human sciences in his famous essay on the longue duree. Her work never stood still. She moves forward in responding to her critics and, above all, by her acute perceptions of change in reality. She is not alone in perceiving that the field of international relations study (IR) is beset by an identity crisis.(f.2) The problem now is not just the need for a more ecumenical use of methods and approaches but also for a new ontology -- an updated view of the basic entities and relationships that constitute reality. This is what The Retreat of the State is all about. Susan Strange is a realist in the literal sense that she asks: Where does the power lie? What is the nature of the power? Who benefits? Who suffers? Conventional IR has said a priori that power lies with states. Susan Strange challenges the exclusivity of that assumption. Her enquiry into power and its workings contributes to a 'new realism' quite different from the 'neorealism' of established IR. It has, she writes, led her to a 'final parting of the ways from the discipline of international relations' (p xv). As a realist, Strange cuts through such currently fashionable euphemisms as 'regimes,'(f.3) 'interdependence,' 'globalization,' and 'global governance,' to demonstrate that these terms can act as ideological screens to obscure relations of dominance and subordination. Although she has been associated with the proposition that power is shifting from political authorities to markets,(f.4) in this book the classical notion of 'market' is also implicitly questioned. A market is no longer that abstractly defined infinity of buyers and sellers whose interactions are guided to a beneficent outcome by a providential unseen hand. There are many different markets, and they all need to be analysed as power systems. She illustrates with a few cases: telecoms, insurance, the big accountancy firms, and cartels. In all of these cases, the power systems work to strengthen big corporate translational business. On cartels, she asks why the subject of private protectionism seems to be taboo among liberal economists and concludes that 'while the rhetoric of free enterprise and open competition is necessary to a full integration of a world economy operating on a market principle, the rhetoric is often, in reality, empty of meaning' (p 60). The ontology of Strange's new realism includes a decline in the authority of states, an increase in the authority of big translational firms, a parcelling of authority downwards from states to smaller territorial entities, along with a general erosion of power based on territory and a rise in non-territorial power in economy, technology, and communications. Others have noted these tendencies; they give substance to Hedley Bull's vision of a new medievalism of overlapping authorities and loyalties.(f.5) While accepting this vision as foreshadowing present reality, Strange takes the next step and asks who governs in such circumstances. This must be the first question in reflecting upon the condition of the world and its future; and, of course, there is no clear answer to it. A conspiracy theory will not do. There is no effective conclave of big corporations with United States government power, though these forces do seem to be the predominate actors. A key word in this book is 'symbiosis. …
2,498 citations
"The Janus faces of Silicon Valley" refers background in this paper
...Scholars have drawn attention to the way responsibilities of governance once contained in the public sector are distributed or shared among numerous public and private actors (Avant et al., 2010; Risse, 2011; Strange, 1996)....
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Book•
15 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this world of surveillance capitalism, profit depends not only on predicting but modifying our online behaviour as mentioned in this paper, which is the opposite of what we are concerned about in this paper, in this article.
Abstract: Society is at a turning point. The heady optimism that accompanied the advent of the Internet has gone, replaced with a deep unease as technology, capitalism and an unequal society combine to create the perfect storm. Tech companies are gathering our information online and selling it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. In this world of surveillance capitalism, profit depends not only on predicting but modifying our online behaviour. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape the values that define our future?
1,825 citations
"The Janus faces of Silicon Valley" refers background in this paper
...At the same time, scholars in other fields, including law (Khan, 2018; Srinivasan, 2019), science and technology studies (Vaidyanathan, 2011; Zuboff, 2019) and communication and media studies (Gillespie, 2010; Helmond, 2015; Nieborg & Poell, 2018) have made significant contributions to theorizing…...
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...Indeed, in ‘surveillance capitalism,’ data provided by platform users are leveraged to generate revenue from customers (Ryall, 2013; Zuboff, 2019)....
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TL;DR: Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood.
Abstract: Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.
1,507 citations
"The Janus faces of Silicon Valley" refers background in this paper
...At the same time, scholars in other fields, including law (Khan, 2018; Srinivasan, 2019), science and technology studies (Vaidyanathan, 2011; Zuboff, 2019) and communication and media studies (Gillespie, 2010; Helmond, 2015; Nieborg & Poell, 2018) have made significant contributions to theorizing the platform companies, publishing principally in the disciplinary journals of these fields....
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...Executives from Facebook argued simultaneously that the platform was an inherently neutral public sphere insofar as its content was determined by algorithms—a claim that draws on the connotations of ‘platform’ as a mere support for the activities of others (Gillespie, 2010)—and also that it could not constitute a public sphere at all insofar as the content displayed was different for each individual (Manjoo, 2018)....
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...It suggested that the companies would be supporting those who stood on their platforms, when in fact the companies would come to control the people and businesses who depend on them (Gillespie, 2010, p. 350)....
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...They began to refer to the combined results of these mergers—whether between firms or within corporate product lines—as ‘platforms’ and to themselves as ‘platform companies’ (Gillespie, 2010)....
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...…including law (Khan, 2018; Srinivasan, 2019), science and technology studies (Vaidyanathan, 2011; Zuboff, 2019) and communication and media studies (Gillespie, 2010; Helmond, 2015; Nieborg & Poell, 2018) have made significant contributions to theorizing the platform companies, publishing…...
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1,254 citations
"The Janus faces of Silicon Valley" refers background in this paper
...Scholars have drawn attention to the way responsibilities of governance once contained in the public sector are distributed or shared among numerous public and private actors (Avant et al., 2010; Risse, 2011; Strange, 1996)....
[...]