Platforms manipulate on-screen representations to appear more responsive than they are.

Evidence

Bridle (2018) also describes the obscure ways in which Uber visualizes the movement of cars on users’ phone screens, inserting “ghost cars” into the platform’s map and deliberately distorting real car positions on the map to make it appear more responsive than it actually is. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 641

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to surveillance-capitalism and platform-deception literature, and to general themes of representation vs. reality in financialized/digital interfaces. — connects to: Mass media exploit receiver attention through a stark production-to-reception asymmetry. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 192
• CANDY: Ghost cars on Uber’s map is a fun, tweetable detail about how platforms fake responsiveness.

Broader Connections

• Mass media exploit receiver attention through a stark production-to-reception asymmetry. #expands (0.78) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 192