A platform’s structural position gives it privileged access to record interactions

Evidence

What are platforms? At the most general level, platforms are digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact. They therefore position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, and even physical objects. More often than not, these platforms also come with a series of tools that enable their users to build their own products, services, and marketplaces. … Rather than having to build a marketplace from the ground up, a platform provides the basic infrastructure to mediate between different groups. This is the key to its advantage over traditional business models when it comes to data, since a platform positions itself (1) between users, and (2) as the ground upon which their activities occur, which thus gives it privileged access to record them. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 46

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the platform as two-sided digital infrastructure that intermediates between user groups.
• XREF: This definitional grounding of platforms as extractive intermediaries sets up the key contrast vs. Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism — both describe the same extractive mechanics but Srnicek locates it in the platform’s structural position rather than a distinctive behavioral surplus. — connects to: Building proprietary hardware and analytics drives platform centralisation — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 86; Platform monopolies are also monopsonies over the data users produce — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 174; Microsoft’s platform metrics reveal the sheer scale of the instrumentarian apparatus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1270 (+1 more)

Related

• Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized (similarity 0.85)
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies (similarity 0.83)
• Platforms are the first business model with data extraction built into their core DNA (similarity 0.83)
• Surveillance platforms extract behavioral data from users and sell predictions to advertisers (similarity 0.82)
• Platform power rests on structural influence over data, not revenue size. (similarity 0.81)
• Publicly owned platforms could rival corporate platform control. (similarity 0.81)
• Industrial platforms extract data to cement monopolies over global manufacturing (similarity 0.81)
• Building proprietary hardware and analytics drives platform centralisation (similarity 0.81)
• Platform companies converge into similar forms as they compete for the same data. (similarity 0.80)
• Microsoft’s platform metrics reveal the sheer scale of the instrumentarian apparatus (similarity 0.80)
• Platforms’ convening power forces all content into platform-ready extractive form. (similarity 0.80)
• Platform monopolies are also monopsonies over the data users produce (similarity 0.80)
• Sharing-economy platforms fuse data extraction with labor at unprecedented scale (similarity 0.80)
• Publicly owned data platforms could replace corporate ones as utilities (similarity 0.79)
• Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Platform monopolies are also monopsonies over the data users produce #expands (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 174
• Building proprietary hardware and analytics drives platform centralisation #expands (0.80) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 86
• Microsoft’s platform metrics reveal the sheer scale of the instrumentarian apparatus #exemplifies (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1270