Platform mediation is worse than monopoly because it blocks buyer coordination entirely

Evidence

Even the ugliest of markets are meeting places where people can interact and exchange information reasonably freely. In fact, it’s even worse than a totally monopolised market – there, at least, the buyers can talk to each other, form associations, perhaps organise a consumer boycott to force the monopolist to reduce a price or to improve a quality. Not so in Jeff’s realm, where everything and everyone is intermediated not by the disinterested invisible hand of the market but by an algorithm that works for Jeff’s bottom line and dances exclusively to his tune. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 344

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to platform capitalism critique literature and to the reader’s ongoing work on surveillance/platform economics. — connects to: Platform algorithms mediate and restrict what buyers and sellers can see and do. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 923; Platforms look like markets but are centralized fiefs owned by algorithms — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 868; Platforms curtail freedoms even pure monopolies preserve, like buyer association — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 344
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 344

Broader Connections

• Platform algorithms mediate and restrict what buyers and sellers can see and do. #qualifies (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 923
• Platforms look like markets but are centralized fiefs owned by algorithms #complicates (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 868