Platform capitalism refers to the activities of companies such as

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

and others to operate as platforms. In this business model both hardware and software are used as a foundation (platform) for other actors to conduct their own business.N. Srnicek, Platform Capitalism. Wiley, 2016.L. Weatherby, "Delete Your Account: On the Theory of Platform Capitalism," Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018. Platform capitalism is either heralded as beneficial A. McAfee and E. Brynjolfsson, Machine, platform, crowd : harnessing our digital future. W. W. Norton and Company, 2017. or denounced as detrimental J. Lanier, Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Henry Holt and Co., 2018. by various authors. The trends identified in platform capitalism have similarities with those described under the heading of

surveillance capitalism Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, though the two can reinforce each ...

.S. Zuboff, The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs, 2019. The possible effect of platform capitalism on open science has been discussed.P. Mirowski, "The future(s) of open science," Soc. Stud. Sci., vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 171–203, Apr. 2018. Platform capitalism has been contrasted with

platform cooperativism A platform cooperative, or platform co-op, is a cooperatively owned, democratically governed business that establishes a computing platform, and uses a website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services. Platform coopera ...

. Companies that try to focus on fairness and sharing, instead of just

profit motive In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm's s ...

, are described as cooperatives, whereas more traditional and common companies that focus solely on profit, like Airbnb and Uber, are platform capitalists (or cooperativist platforms vs capitalist platforms). In turn, projects like

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, which rely on unpaid labor of volunteers, can be classified as commons-based peer-production initiatives.

References

Business models Social sciences Computing and society Science and technology studies Capitalism {{Business-stub

See also

References