Platform socialism

Things like unionisation and strikes.

Muncipalism is probably not enough.

Local and municipal institutions may serve as ideal locations for new participatory structures of certain forms of platform governance, but concerted effort is needed at the level of the state to adequately regulate current multinational companies.

Regulations are needed to supplement. Regulations are a "necessary but not sufficient condition for the transformation of the platform economy".

Dozens of mini-Facebooks still operating on a similar model will not fundamentally transform the underlying problems of the digital economy.

But the liberal agenda of strengthening markets and enhancing competition runs counter to our ultimate goal of creating and sustaining non-market forms of coordinating economic activities.

We need new legislation that makes it clear that companies cannot find loopholes to exploit vulnerable classes of workers and erode the existing protections available to full-time employees.

Autonomous craftsmen in late nineteenth-century America safeguarded their collective control over the labour process by refusing to work when their bosses were watching.

Despite the limitations of the antitrust cases identified in previous chapters, the US federal government should pursue the unwinding of tech empires such as the mergers between Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram as a first step towards reducing their monopoly power

Predatory and unfair business practices by large tech companies should also be investigated.

As a step towards democratic ownership and control, companies that provide a service to the public should be designated as public utilities and regulated as such.

Another important regulation would be for platform companies to be compelled to share their data with public authorities.

This means that regulation will always have to be pursued through harnessing the power of a bottom-up people’s movement to put pressure on regulators to make decisions in the best interests of the public.

Throughout this book we have stressed the importance of constructing institutional designs that would empower voluntary associations in civil society to exercise effective control over digital platforms.

In order to recode Big Tech, we can’t be satisfied with just fixing the platforms we have. We need to imagine how we can build and support alternatives that will be able to grow and sustain themselves in the long term as centres of social power.

• draws parallels to real utopias. a la build the new web in the shell of the old

Drawing on the framework of sociologist Eric Olin Wright, this strategy could be characterised as one of interstitial transformation: building radical democratic institutions within the ‘cracks’ of the capitalist system with a view to eroding the dominance of capitalist institutions.

Wright’s reflections on theories of transformation are particularly pertinent to platform socialism because many of the examples of emerging ‘real utopias’ he championed were taken from internet-based forms of organisation. He characterises Wikipedia as an example of a non-capitalist form of knowledge production that exists alongside other forms on the internet. He also drew inspiration from online strategies to subvert capitalist intellectual property rights such as music sharing sites and free and open-source software.

The primary contradiction of this strategy of interstitial transformation is that the growth of alternatives would be strongly opposed by elites whose interests were threatened by transformation. Small-scale alternatives would be tolerated and even encouraged as convenient pressure release valves for the system. But as soon as alternatives began to threaten real change, elites would exercise their power to block and subvert them.

First chapter was a good intro, the next two are pretty heavy, focusing on the problems with Facebook and Airbnb. I get that it's necessary for a thesis, if you're going to propose something new then you need to examine what's currently wrong. That's fine but no longer new to me, and sometimes a bit draining just hearing about the problems. But the author stated early on that they will go on to discuss their proposals for how to change things. I'm eager to get to these parts.

Liking the chaper on guild socialism and democratic planning, heavily featuring Cole and Neurath. And the chapter on platform cooperativism and new municipalism.

Finished it. It was good. Lots of good food for thought. Resist, regulate and recode is a good framework to have in mind. I can try and see how that might be applied to digital ecosocialism.

Lots of highlights to incorporate elsewhere in the garden.