Why ‘old’ social media matter Maxigas - University of Amsterdam Guillaume Latzko-Toth - Laval University Biographies Maxigas, University of Amsterdam & Lancaster University Maxigas is a Senior Lecturer in Media & Culture at the Media Department, University of Amsterdam; Lecturer in Critical Digital Media Practice at Lancaster University; member of the Centre for Science Studies and the Data Science Institute in Lancaster. Guillaume Latzko-Toth, Laval University

# Conclusion: Towards a social media commons?

# Chapter 4: What are the alternatives? ## Outline * Opening gambit: Stephen Levy in 1984 already proclaimed “decentralisation” as the main demand of the hacker ethics. * Start with Aaron Swartz’s ideas on the open web vs O'Reilly's web as platform. * Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.): [See what Roel Roscam Abbing is doing in terms of his Phd on the Fediverse!] * IRC: We are not recommending it as a solution to the contemporary problems of social media – what we argue is that a prime example of alter

Outline A taxonomy of (political) issues: BASICALLY THE PLATFORMS' BUSINESS IS NOT TO PROMOTE PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS. All they can do is block and censor. Their business model is concerned with the sheer volume of messages (like telcos) and the commercially-relevant data that can be extracted from them, not their quality nor their contribution to "the city" (civic life) - Example of Facebook's dealing with Whatsapp appropriation by its users to turn it into a group communication system (by curbing them from large scale message forwarding) Cognition-related issues: attention suckers, unconscious manipulation vs. informed consent [@Yeung2017a], cognitive skills weakened [@Hayles2007a] Privacy-related issues: numerous breaches, data sovereignty, surveillance capitalism: both business and governance model [@Zuboff2015a] Democracy-related issues: undermining democratic public sphere and national sovereignty [@Bratton2015b] Market-related issues: market concentration [@Srnicek2016a], anti-trust problematic, social media monopolies (because of network effects, falling transaction costs because of automation), US hegemony From @Maxigas2017c

Missing elements GUILLAUME: Enclosure as part of platform dynamics (walled gardens, filter bubbles, etc.) -> First or second step? [Bruns book on Polity Press against bubbles? Bruns, Axel. 2019. Are Filter Bubbles Real? Digital Futures. London: Polity Press.] GUILLAUME: Moderation -> Step three [DONE] Dissappearance of public infrastructures [@Plantin+Lagoze+Edwards+Sandvig2018] APIs, technical means and strategies of enclosure (Helmond 2015; Helmond, Nieborg, and Vlist 2019) --> open standards = public protocols = interoperability (and the prefix "inter" is important because it implies a symmetrical relationship between

Abstract NB: Chapter 2 is 6500 words right now. Abstract In this chapter, we describes platforms and provide some illustrative and illustrous examples. Our distinctive approach to platforms is informed by a Science and Technology Studies perspective, so that we refer to socio-digital platforms. Nonetheless, we take stock of a range of disciplinary perspectives on platforms in the course of putting forth our own undersanding. The next chapters address the history, critique and alternatives of platforms, respectively. Therefore, we can concentrate on the discussion of platforms as a stable contemporary social formation in this chapter. Outline In the introduction, we use Poell et al's paper as a starting point, before introducing our three-level scale-oriented model. We approach socio-digital platforms on three levels: As devices (apparatus) where the digital manifest is code in use (also interfaces).

Escaping platforms is not easy to achieve, as the authors of this book found out when they started to look for a non-proprietary collaborative writing solution. It occurred to us that it would be particularly ironic to write about escaping platforms while using Google Docs as a our main device for four-hands writing. But we quickly realized that cloud-based devices allowing for real-time, simultaneous writing on a series of files (chapters) grouped within a folder and which are not Google, Dropbox, Quip, and so on... are not legion! Shared "pads" based on the open-source code of Etherpad are convenient for very small documents (we used one to write the outline of the book), but they don't allow for long paragraphs, comments, and version management. Moreover they don't handle multi-segmented documents (chapters). We renounced using GitHub (not synchronous enough for our needs) and considered using a wiki, but there again, free wiki farms meant for academic writing have virtually disappeared with Wikispaces. We finally turned to the web-based service that offered the best compromise in terms of features (hackmd.io), but then, the first contact with the service was a sign-up page inviting us to use our Facebook, Google, Dropbox or even Twitter account to sign in! Only at the very bottom of that page could we see a discrete "sign-up" link letting us create an email-based account. That was to us yet another example of the ubiquitousness of platforms and of the many ways by which they keep us within their hold [empire?]. From @Maxigas2017c [Short IRC definition (longer one in Chapter )] Internet Relay Chat is a very basic but very flexible protocol for real time written conversations. It has been first implemented in 1988, one year before the oWrld Wide Web. IRC reached the height of its popularity as a general purpose social media during the first Gulf War and the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). At this time it performed various functions that were later fulfilled by specialised programs and platforms, such as dating, following friends or file sharing. As the population of the Internet grew and market consolidation set in on the turn of the millennium, IRC faded from the public view. …

Introduction Chapter 1: What are socio-digital platforms? Chapter 2: The platformisation of social media Chapter 3: Why to escape platforms? Chapter 4: What are the alternatives? Conclusion: Towards a social media commons? We try to write 8-10.000 words per chapter, so TOTAL 48.000-60.000 words. Rationale