Reforming individual platforms within a system replicates rather than challenges its foundations

Evidence

The problem of inconvenience drives the temptation toward partial solutions—for example, the idea that we just need better networks, perhaps networks with an element of public purpose or, indeed, that we should follow big tech’s own proposals for how to use their products in ways that enhance “digital wellness.” “Better” data-driven networks will not save us, however. For by attempting to reform a particular network within a wider system of platforms, we are not challenging the foundations of the system but merely finding alternative ways to replicate it. There is a danger here of repeating the error of those early nineteenth-century political economists, mocked by Polanyi for their “mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 586

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Milgrom-style institutional arguments and the structural critique in Parable of the Sower — reforming the system’s tools does not change its root logic. — connects to: Cooperative platforms cannot compete with entrenched data monopolies — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 100; Social systems reproduce through self-referential communication, not individual will — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 20; Worker-owned ride services can invert platform algorithms from control to liberation. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 738 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle for an essay: why ‘digital wellness’ and pro-social tech reform are the modern equivalent of Polanyi’s early-19th-century economists’ mysticism.

Broader Connections

• Cooperative platforms cannot compete with entrenched data monopolies #exemplifies (0.78) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 100
• Social systems reproduce through self-referential communication, not individual will #corroborates (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 20