Publicly owned data platforms could replace corporate ones as utilities

Evidence

Rather than just regulating corporate platforms, efforts could be made to create public platforms – platforms owned and controlled by the people. (And, importantly, independent of the surveillance state apparatus.) This would mean investing the state’s vast resources into the technology necessary to support these platforms and offering them as public utilities. More radically, we can push for postcapitalist platforms that make use of the data collected by these platforms in order to distribute resources, enable democratic participation, and generate further technological development. Perhaps today we must collectivise the platforms. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 102

Categorization

• QUESTION: How would a public platform technically avoid becoming another surveillance apparatus? Srnicek flags the danger but doesn’t solve the control problem.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘collectivising the platforms’ — the concrete design question of what a democratic, public data utility would actually look like.
• XREF: connects to: Public data platforms make hidden flattery impossible in Silicon Valley networking — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 657; Publicly owned platforms could rival corporate platform control. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 1201; Cloud platforms operate like utilities centralizing essential infrastructure — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 60

Related

• Publicly owned platforms could rival corporate platform control. (similarity 0.91)
• The cloud centralizes data ownership in corporations that earlier internet models distributed. (similarity 0.80)
• Cooperative platforms cannot compete with entrenched data monopolies (similarity 0.80)
• A platform’s structural position gives it privileged access to record interactions (similarity 0.79)
• Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized (similarity 0.79)
• Cloud platforms operate like utilities centralizing essential infrastructure (similarity 0.78)