Platform reality

One could strongly argue that I’m also stupid like Sloan. I don't publish the Weekly Thing on Substack even though it would be easy to do, free, and would for sure drive user metrics up. That is what their platform does. But we know where this train ends.

Expect enclosure; expect a few big winners; expect advertising, with all the attention-hacking that will demand. Expect, also, that writers will continue to mold their work to fit Substack’s particular ecology, rather than “merely” use the tools to pursue their independent visions and ambitions. We learned this about platforms a long time ago: following the old newspaper schematic, they aren’t the printing presses, but rather the assignment editors.

I feel like we need a new word for this that isn't platform. Platform just feels wrong. Ecosystem feels like a more accurate word since it describes more accurately both the provider and consumer in a loop and the boosting to driven objectives that happen in there. Overall they are systems, but that seems too neutral as well. Platform sounds like a tool, and these ecosystems are highly opinionated in ways tools are not.

There’s one platform for which none of this is true, and that’s the web platform, because it offers the grain of a medium — book, movie, album — rather than the seduction of an algorithmic ecology. The web platform makes no demands because it offers nothing beyond the opportunity to do good work. Certainly it offers no attention — that, you have to find on your own. Here is your printing press.

Yes, the web itself is a platform. It allows you to express yourself. These ecosystems require you to adapt to them, and fundamentally change your expression — and you.