Back when I worked at a petition website, our Executive Team decided one day that we should be calling ourselves a platform, not a website. At the time, I had only a vague idea of what that change meant or why it was important. It had something to do with future possibilities, with how we saw the potential for the website. Beyond that, it was a word everyone else was using, so we had to get on board.
So what is a platform?
Looking back now, it’s clear that a platform is a shared foundation – of technologies, standards, infrastructure, and even users – on which other developers and users can build. Their magic is that by providing this foundation, platforms reduce the costs for others to create value in that same space. This creation often takes place outside the purview of the original design, outside the control of the platform builders. The platform is just the beginning of the possible.
We can think of platform thinking, then, as a mode of design in which you consider not only your own organization’s needs, but broader, hypothetical sets of users and use cases. Ideally, platform creators think ahead to how their database or tool might be used by future developers, and they design the platform in a way that enables that creation.
Why should we care about platforms?
Platforms punch above their weight by creating new layers of opportunity – and this multiplying effect makes them fascinating. The result is more, faster, and broader creativity.
Existing platforms matter to the government because they can often reach the kind of scale traditionally reserved for governments and government-sanctioned monopolies. This may either threaten the power of a government, or provide an additional, alternative public service.
More importantly, governments should care not just about platforms, but about platform thinking. Currently, government services are created and delivered one by one. Governments aren’t incentivized to simplify, cooperate between departments, or find economies of scale, particularly where budgeting and planning are decided department by department. Porting platform thinking over introduces a new model of government: government as platform, as “convener and enabler.”
It’s an exciting model because decentralizing power leads to much more innovation – and that innovation is likely better – more useful, quicker, and more efficient than it would have been had it been under complete control of the government, who can only predict so many uses for its own tools. Platform thinking also makes it easier for users, because it acknowledges separate government services as part of a cohesive whole the user must interact with. For instance, this model of thinking would encourage governments to reduce friction between similar systems. It would call governments to publish open data in useable form, or to build tools in a way that helps nonprofit partners use them.
Who has the power?
Platforms both create new power imbalances and perpetuate old structures of power. In giving up some of their own centralized control, platforms implicitly give power to those who build on top of them. While they set some standards and regulations, platforms usually can’t control exactly how people use the platform. The platform, in turn, is then controlled somewhat by those other players. If the platform changes, those players may not be able to play. It may well be in the interests of the platform to keep those players happy, and thus be somewhat constrained in their own work.
But of course platforms also exert a lot of control over the ecosystems they create. Because of their increased ability to scale to more users, platforms can become monopolistic, both horizontally (eating up huge portions of potential users) and vertically (fulfilling a wide range of their needs). They may achieve this monopoly without pressuring users, but their services are just so widespread and widely used that it becomes very hard not to be another user. I’m guessing my aunt, who rarely turns her computer on, is the only person I know who doesn’t use Google regularly. And when everyone uses them, that user lock-in minimizes competition further. Only if most people I know left Facebook for Google+ would I transition over. While user bases might decide to make that transition en masse – witness the MySpace to Facebook migration – individual users are a bit more stuck.
This monopolistic outcome can be problematic. Should private companies have that much power over our lives? And if they’re really providing basic services, should they be regulated like water? The Net Neutrality battle over how much control internet providers has set such a precedent. Simultaneously, platforms can exploit their appearance as utilities, as in the case of Facebook offering a “free” version of the internet, based closely on Facebook access, to developing countries.
To the extent that scale doesn’t necessitate accessibility, platforms may repeat structural power imbalances in ways that are hard to spot. When everyone I know uses Google, I forget about the large pockets of the world on the other side of a digital divide, who lack internet access, tools, or fluency in using this now “basic” service. Scale gives the illusion of openness.
Finally, platforms encourage power imbalances to the extent that layers of platforms become invisible to us. Invisible parts of the platform can be controlled more easily because they start to seem inevitable, magical, part of the infrastructure. As creators of Facebook content, we can forget that the platform itself is continually being created under us, that the Trending feature was not just a service provided by an algorithm but a process of creation marked by human choices. The invisibility of appearing to be part of the foundation itself can be quite dangerous.
Where should government go from here?
Interestingly, internet platforms already borrow from the government model to think about their own governance. At my old workplace, we used to compare our user base to that of the government of Germany. Like a country, the needs of a platform’s users are diverse and interlocking.
Clearly, the models of government and platform go well hand-in-hand. If governments can get that combination working, they can stay in control where it matters – while providing better service and spurring innovation.
The Demo in Democracy 