Platforms exceed most nation-states in network size and act as social infrastructures

Evidence

The largest platforms distribute their presence across the internet via plug-ins that allow platform users, wherever they are, to link back to the resources of the platform, creating even more possibilities for aggregating data continuously across space and time. These power concentrations depend on the emerging social centrality of these platforms in a genuine sense, for we really do go onto platforms because we know others will be there (the so-called network effect). That is why platforms are fast becoming meaningful social infrastructures too. In these various ways, platforms are a principal organizational form through which capitalism’s connected social and economic order is being realized. They are a key tool for ensuring that the colonial-scale appropriation of data for human life becomes the norm. As networks, some platforms are larger than most nation-states. The largest platforms conceive of themselves accordingly. As Zuckerberg put it, “In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company.” The longer-term implications for legal, political, and social power are as yet unknown. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Network-effect-as-infrastructure parallels the attention/surveillance schools’ accounts of platform centrality; a point where the colonialism frame converges with rivals. — connects to: Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941; Ubiquitous networked computing constitutes an unprecedented form of power unlike prior totalitarianism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1265; Digital technologies reach three billion people and now mediate nearly all social life — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 22

Broader Connections

• Ubiquitous networked computing constitutes an unprecedented form of power unlike prior totalitarianism #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1265
• Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941
• Digital technologies reach three billion people and now mediate nearly all social life #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 22