Corporate advertising across many neighborhoods at once is what ‘local at scale’ actually means.

Evidence

In startup parlance, “at scale” refers to the expansion of a software or service to larger and larger contexts—i.e., the development of a local prototype into a widely used product. Given this meaning, only the phenomenon of national or even multinational corporations advertising simultaneously in many targeted neighborhoods can explain the oxymoron “local at scale.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 579

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines ‘at scale’ in startup parlance and unpacks the contradiction of ‘local at scale’.
• XREF: Extends the critique of simulated community from the chapter’s Nextdoor discussion and parallels the reader’s grasp of commercial social media’s fake commons.

Related

• Corporate social platforms fundamentally contradict genuine local community (similarity 0.93)