The platform mousetrap
Almost everything here follows on from this video by Tom Nicholas:
Normally I find Tom Nicholas’ videos not only thoroughly entertaining, but deeply insightful. It will often be food for thought and I linger on them for a long time. This video, too, leads me to the term “platform capitalism” which I’m already thinking of as being more useful than “surveillance capitalism”, which being its own thing, doesn’t really capture everything these companies are trying to be as well as “platform” does.
Having said that, on this one I think I’m a little ahead of Tom. I kind of start where Tom finishes: Meta are trying to create the metaverse not only as looking beyond the mere platform of Facebook (having gotten all the eyeballs they’re going to get) but also as a way to wedge itself directly onto the devices people own, and not as a part of the platforms of Google and Apple.
Let me add my insight. Ahem…
We know already
And by “we” I mean Charlie Pickering knows already, and told me so now I know.
The thing about a lot of the platform companies Tom talks about is that there’s really nothing keeping anyone on the platform. Take Uber for instance, many Uber drivers have multiple phones and use Lyft and Uber at the same time, pitting them against each other, and Uber already has Taxis as a “competitor”. The real exchange happening isn’t with these massive platform companies, but between individuals.
Because a massive platform is a way to gain power in a transaction. With Uber and Taxis, if someone gets treated badly or doesn’t get their money’s worth, they just change providers. This means providers are heavily incentivised to keep tabs on their drivers. This might put drivers at the mercy of Uber, but it also puts them at the mercy of the passengers. With Taxis, even though they are heavily regulated, they also hold a lot of power as a monopoly provider.
Look at another example. With Amazon, if I don’t get a product to my satisfaction, I can complain and get my money back. I have a lot of power in my relationship with my seller, and this builds confidence and trust. However, I also have a lot of other vendors I shop online with, so I go to them directly for better prices.
Amazon does get power over me and the seller, this is a fact, but I think a lot of people see it as commensurate to the value they provide. Yes, they also get to grow from being central to a lot of shopping, and they also use their sellers’ data to create competing products and destroy the sellers from the inside, but I’ve had terrible customer experiences where I’ve been ripped off and had my time wasted. To some extent sellers really wouldn’t be willing to prostrate themselves in front of Amazon, and by extension, their customers, without the power Amazon wields.
Really the only thing I’m risking by using Amazon and other providers (and this is not a small risk) is actually these companies holding my financial information, but otherwise I can just create accounts everywhere. If financial institutions created standards for how to process and store credit card information in a secure way, that’d be all we’d need to have far less platform stickiness.
Facebook is a stronger platform, but there’s a way around it, too:
- Tell your friends to use Signal
- Find out who your real friends are
The second step really shows the social reasons for why Facebook is sticky. They give a lot of value to the people at the top of the social pile. These platforms are just software, and a lot of that software is actually reducing value for users in a way they can feel. I can literally make worse software and people would switch to it because Facebook is designed to suck. The reason they don’t leave is that there’s a pecking order. Fuck the pecking order.
Also, people know what Meta is trying to do. This is why Facebook’s video conferencing hardware failed, and their phones, and Occulus is more or less hobbled out the door. Having to create a Facebook account to use it is a dealbreaker for many. People like using Google and Apple to defend themselves against Facebook.
Except Gmail. Holy fuck Gmail is truly a platform and no one can escape. Google maps was close but thank god for OSM.
The end?
Turns out this probably could’ve been a tweet, maybe? There are platforms. Electric wires, telephone networks, gas lines, railways. They’re all real “platforms” and can dictate economies, but websites? They exist and wield the power they do for a much more nefarious reason. Us.
