How platforms govern: Social regulation in digital capitalism

Abstract

The rise of digital platforms has in recent years redefined contemporary capitalism—provoking discussions on whether platformization should be understood as bringing an altogether new form of capitalism, or as merely a continuation and intensification of existing neoliberal trends. This paper draws on regulation theory to examine social regulation in digital capitalism, arguing for understanding digital capitalism as continuities of existing capitalist trends coming to produce discontinuities. The paper makes three main arguments. First, it situates digital capitalism as a continuation of longer running post-Fordist trends of financialization, digitalization, and privatization—converging in the emergence of digital proprietary markets, owned and regulated by transnational platform companies. Second, as the platform model is founded on monopolizing regulation, platforms come into direct competition with states and public institutions, which they pursue through a set of distinct technopolitical strategies to claim power to govern—resulting in a geographically variegated process of institutional transformation. Third, while the digital proprietary markets are continuities of existing trends, they bring new pressures and affordances, thus producing discontinuities in social regulation. We examine such discontinuities in relation to three aspects of social regulation: (a) from neoliberalism to techno-feudalism; (b) from Taylorist hierarchies toward algorithmic herds and technoliberal subjectivity; and (c) from postmodernity toward an automated consumer culture.