This book has been the product of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, ‘The Platform Governance Project: Rethinking Internet Regulation as Media Policy’ (DP190100222). I would like to thank the ARC for their support, and acknowledge my co-investigators on that project: Fiona Martin, Nicolas Suzor, Tim Dwyer, Philip Napoli, and Josef Trappel. I would also like to acknowledge those who have offered research assistance during the project: Rosalie Gillett, Chunmeizi Su, Lucy Sunman, Yuan Jiang, Callum McWaters, and Katherine Kirkwood.
This book has been written in two institutional environments. At the Queensland University of Technology I benefited from the input of John Banks, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Stuart Cunningham, Uwe Dulleck, Joanne Gray, Donna Hancox, Stephen Harrington, Greg Hearn, Ozan Isler, Brendan Keogh, Amanda Lotz, Kylie Pappalardo, Michael Rosemann, Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Mark Ryan, Kevin Sanson, Mandy Thomas, and Aljosha Karim Schapals. In the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, which I joined as Professor of Digital Communications and Culture in 2021, I was able to present the findings of the book to the Digital Cultures Research Cluster, where the overall argument received valuable feedback. My thanks go to Olga Boichok, Benedetta Brevini, Marcus Carter, Chris Chesher, Mitchell Hobbs, Justine Humphry, Jonathon Hutchinson, Mark Johnson, Catharine Lumby, Alana Mann, Penny O’Donnell, and Margaret van Heekeren.
At Polity, I wish to thank Mary Savigar for her commitment throughout this project and Stephanie Homer for her support in the later stages of the book. I also benefited from the observations of two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript: this is a better book for their insights. I would also like to thank Manuela Tecusan for her meticulous copy-editing of the draft manuscript.
Much of the book was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected my ability to present ideas to other researchers. Yet I was lucky enough to benefit from numerous conversations. Among those whom I wish to thank for these important contributions to the book are Peng Hwa Ang, Sandra Braman, David Craig, Mark Deuze, Claes de Vreese, Lelia Green, Larry Gross, Jennifer Holt, Minna Horowitz, Petros Iosifidis, Amy Jordan, Ramon Lobato, Graham Murdock, Sora Park, Pawel Popiel, Philip Schlesinger, Julian Thomas, Rod Tiffen, Derek Wilding, and Dwayne Winseck.
Aspects of the book’s main arguments have been presented to the Media Industries Conference in London in 2018, the International Association for Media and Communications (IAMCR) conference in Madrid in 2019, and two International Communications Association (ICA) conferences, in 2020 and 2021 (both virtual). I have also presented versions of the book’s arguments, in both in-person and virtual forums, to the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communications at the University of Southern California; the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University; the Communications University of China; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Xiamen University; Zhejiang University; Moscow State University; and the Swinburne University of Technology.
I would like to acknowledge the encouragement of my wife, Sandra Phillips, and her generosity and support throughout the writing process. As a proud Wakka Wakka and Gooreng Gooreng First Nations Australian woman who works in a predominantly white academy, and as the mother of three sons whom she brought up as a sole parent while pursuing a publishing, then academic career, Sandra has taught me that my privileged status in the global academy has institutional underpinnings that are easy for people like myself to take for granted. She has also reminded me of the importance of an orientation to justice in my research and scholarship.
Finally, I dedicate this book to my daughter, Charlotte, and to the coming generation of students and researchers. Having lived their childhoods in the big shadow of digital platforms and social media, they come into the landscape traversed in this book with their eyes wide open. May they be the agents of transformative change.
Figures
1.1. Ideas, Interests, and Institutions
1.2. Trajectory of a Technological Innovation
1.3. The Growth of the GAFAM in the 2010s
2.1. Platforms as a Layer of Applications and Content
2.2. Platform Business Models Based on Direct and Indirect Network Effects
2.3. Digital Platforms and their Relationships in Media Businesses
2.4. Interactions of Digital Platforms with their Users
3.1. Deanonymized User Data
3.2. Trust in Media across 26 Countries
3.3. Declining Trust in Newspapers and TV News in the United States
3.4. Continuum of Discriminatory and Hateful Speech
3.5. Decline in Journalism Employment in the United States, 2008–18
4.1. Elements of a National Communications Policy
5.1. The Platform Governance Triangle
6.1. Number of Patents Filed for Different Offices by Earliest Priority Date, 1970–2014
6.2. Top Patent Offices by Number of Applications for Different AI Techniques, and Number of Scientific Publications for Different AI Techniques
7.1. The New Free Speech Triangle
7.2. European Union Regulatory Typology of Online Services
Tables
2.1. Domains of Circulation and Platform Types
2.2. Three Taxonomies of Digital Platforms
5.1. Classification of Six Case Studies of Digital Platform Regulation
7.1. International Inquiries and Reviews of Digital Platforms since August 2020
7.2. Variables Affecting Platform Governance
1 The End of the Libertarian Internet
Revisiting the Californian Ideology
In his three-part documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the filmmaker Adam Curtis developed an account of the influence of libertarian ideas on both US public policy and US digital culture (Curtis, 2011). Curtis points out that the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand has been one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century, and that one of the places where her works have been particularly influential was among the emerging class of computer scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors in the Palo Alto region of California, south of San Francisco. In this region, Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged was the second bestseller, after the Bible. Palo Alto was going to be at the heart of what we now know as Silicon Valley: a cluster of technological corporations established within proximity of Stanford University that include Apple, Google, Facebook, PayPal, Hewlett-Packard, and many others (Porter, 1998).
Rand’s appeal to the emergent entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, argued Curtis, was her commitment to a radical individualism and to the proposition that personal prosperity comes – and can only come – from free individuals who apply their talents and accumulate wealth, while they are protected by constitutionally
