The Erosion of Public Space in the Platform Society: From Data Colonialism to Generative AI

Abstract

In the decades between the 20th and 21st centuries, the transition occurred from a networked society based on the Internet as an open technology to the current platform society, where services are provided almost exclusively by a few large private companies. We are living today in the dawn of data colonialism, a phenomenon far more pervasive than the simple issue of Big Tech’s appropriation of personal data. In fact, despite the widespread metaphor of data as “new oil”, the data collected and transformed into wealth by platforms are not natural resources but are instead actively constructed and pre-structured by the platforms themselves according to opaque and non-transparent logic.