Platform algorithms mediate and restrict what buyers and sellers can see and do.
Evidence
In sharp contrast, on trading sites like Amazon or Alibaba buyers and sellers enjoy none of these freedoms to associate, to even see the same things, while online – the algorithm instead banning buyers and sellers from autonomous communications with one another and selecting itself what each one of them can, and cannot, see or do. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 923
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the platform feudalism thesis — algorithms as lords mediating between tenant-subjects, vs. marketplace capitalism where parties transact directly. — connects to: Algorithmic trading interfaces can render harmful working conditions invisible to users. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 281; Screen-based trading platforms mechanically enforce non-overlapping turn-taking among traders. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 111; Platforms that claim neutrality actually set the market rules — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 49 (+10 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 923
Broader Connections
- Algorithmic platforms made ad revenue independent of brand quality or gatekeeping
#complicates(0.95) - Platform algorithms individually curate each user’s reality into isolated bubbles
#exemplifies(0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 343 - Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior
#expands(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939 - Branding constraints predate the internet and resemble platform algorithmic pressure
#qualifies(0.85) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 203 - Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers
#responds-to(0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43