Three arguments about platform politics

Platform politics shapes how and to what extent platform businesses are adopted, rejected, reasserted and reimagined in our societies. The key tactics by which platforms pursue their aims, it is argued, are very distinctive, yet they are also multifaceted, bearing their own histories in corporate and civic culture. Important commonalities link platforms and contexts in the use of these tactics – across ride-hailing and short-term lettings platforms there are similarities in their approaches to avoid regulation, for example, and there are many parallels with what we know about other types of platform (Zuboff 2019). Lean platforms practise a common repertoire of contention when seeking to avoid regulation. That means that understanding platform politics can help policy makers, activists and citizens learn about contemporary modes of corporate influence, understand where they came from, and challenge them in the future. This final chapter of the book reflects on these arguments, their implications, contributions to our knowledge, and the areas where further research is needed. It also discusses the possible futures of lean platforms and their approach to governance.

The foundations and inspiration of this book are the growing critiques of digital platforms, discussions of platform regulation and the future of platforms, and the identification of new corporate political tactics. Adding to this work, Platform Politics provides the first book-length study of the political struggles shaping digital platforms. It also analyses the conflicts around more than one platform business, allowing for a review of the strategies of lean platforms across several sectors. This reveals the similarities and differences in platform tactics across platforms, emphasising a contentious repertoire of three broad and overlapping moments around incursion, politicisation and enforcement, each made up of several overlapping practices. This is the topic of the first main argument of the book.

While comparisons of particular platform businesses across contexts and cities have been very fruitful, these commonalities across different types of lean platforms suggest that there would be value in comparing their tactics and trajectories further, and at different scales. Future work might explore how far other businesses follow this shared repertoire, and whether there are exceptions or patterns of geographical variation. Another promising area to explore would be the variation in responses by states and communities to similar platform tactics, and patterns in the outcomes.