{ "docId": "019dd923-5e88-73ef-bd59-dddef82be3b0", "docSlug": "b5722f8c12c21bf3", "documentTitle": "The importance of being human in a digital world", "authorId": "Deloitte", "authorName": "Cambridge University Press", "documentKindSlug": "consulting-deck", "documentKindLabel": "Consulting deck", "sourceTypeSlug": "strategy_consulting", "sourceTypeLabel": "Strategy consulting", "presentationDate": null, "orientation": "portrait", "aspectRatio": 0.667, "pageNumber": 169, "pageCount": 224, "prevPage": 168, "nextPage": 170, "slideType": "other", "function": "summarize", "density": "overcrowded", "nDataPoints": 1, "notes": "This is a page from an academic book or report, not a standard consulting slide deck.", "elementsJson": [ "paragraph", "footnote" ], "metadataConfidence": 0.9, "imagePath": null, "slideHref": "/slides/019dd923-5e88-73ef-bd59-dddef82be3b0/169", "deckHref": "/decks/019dd923-5e88-73ef-bd59-dddef82be3b0", "deckJsonHref": "/decks/019dd923-5e88-73ef-bd59-dddef82be3b0.json", "deckAnchorHref": "/decks/019dd923-5e88-73ef-bd59-dddef82be3b0#slide-169", "components": [ { "bbox": null, "kind": "callout", "text": "Many platforms profit by creating new opportunities for old forms of exploitation.", "attrs": null, "subkind": null, "toolName": "Visual emphasis", "toolSlug": "visual-emphasis", "confidence": null, "componentId": "019dd952-1044-75f9-bd09-25d123e1ec8c", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.25, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.27 }, "kind": "paragraph", "text": "Unlike ordinary service providers, platforms function primarily as social and technical infrastructure for interactions between other parties. TikTok, Instagram, and social media platforms more broadly find audiences for content creators and advertisers who will pay to reach them. Gig economy platforms, like Uber and Lyft, facilitate exchanges between workers and people in need of their labor. As Tarleton Gillespie (2010, 4) points out, the term “platform” misleadingly brings to mind a sense of neutrality: “platforms are typically flat, featureless, and open to all.” In fact, digital platforms work tirelessly to shape the interactions they host and to influence the people involved. As we’ve seen, they do this by carefully designing technical affordances (such as opaque and personalized pricing algorithms) and by pressing economic advantages (when, for example, they leverage venture capital to underprice incumbents and eliminate competition).", "attrs": null, "subkind": "paragraph", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "38dce6c2-7d18-43cd-abac-8e65cbe7f438", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.18, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.09 }, "kind": "paragraph", "text": "The term “platform” is used in multiple registers. In some contexts, it is used to describe a set of companies – for example, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta, or Google. In other contexts, the term is used to describe the heterogeneous set of digital technologies such companies build, deploy, and use to generate revenues – for example, Amazon’s marketplace, the TikTok or Instagram apps, or Google’s digital advertising service. This ambiguity or multiplicity of meaning is neither a mistake nor an accident; platforms are both of these things simultaneously, businesses and technologies, and they must be understood both in economic and sociotechnical terms.", "attrs": null, "subkind": "paragraph", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "876ea205-7891-4202-8518-3cef28da700a", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.09, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.64 }, "kind": "paragraph", "text": "Many platforms profit by creating new opportunities for old forms of exploitation. Platform-mediated work is a case in point: while not all employers exploit their employees, the labor/management relationship is frequently a place where worries about exploitation arise, and digital platforms breathe new life into these old concerns.", "attrs": null, "subkind": "paragraph", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "a7e6ab8a-2e6f-4ae8-a506-fb38a12afb4d", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.14, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.73 }, "kind": "paragraph", "text": "Indeed, platforms can increase the capacity of exploiters to take advantage of exploitees by enabling exploitation at scale, expanding the reach of exploitative firms and growing the pool of potential exploitees (Pfotenhauer et al. 2022). Gig app firms, based in Silicon Valley and operated by a relatively small number of engineers, managers, and executives, profit from workers spread throughout the world – in 2022, for example, Uber had 5 million active drivers worldwide (Biron 2022). Moreover, as we have seen, these dynamics are visible in the broader phenomenon", "attrs": null, "subkind": "paragraph", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "b4142f16-261b-4cd2-99cb-e7c501a35fe6", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.07, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.52 }, "kind": "paragraph", "text": "So: platforms mediate and structure relationships. Some of these relationships have long existed and have often been sites of exploitation; when platforms enter the picture, they perpetuate and profit from them. Other relationships are new – innovations in exploitation particular to the platform age.", "attrs": null, "subkind": "paragraph", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "dbd0aa89-cc57-431f-92be-cfc9abbaf32d", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": null, "kind": "quote", "text": "platforms are typically flat, featureless, and open to all. — Tarleton Gillespie (2010, 4)", "attrs": null, "subkind": null, "toolName": "Authority citation", "toolSlug": "authority-citation", "confidence": null, "componentId": "019dd952-1044-75f9-bd09-292c72f7f3f1", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.04, "w": 0.76, "x": 0.12, "y": 0.88 }, "kind": "source-note", "text": "23 Pfotenhauer et al. (2022) describe the inexorable march toward massive scale as “the uberization of everything,” which introduces, they argue, “new patterns of exploitation.”", "attrs": null, "subkind": null, "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "0ad58cfc-50b7-497f-a33a-7437358c78ba", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.02, "w": 0.28, "x": 0.36, "y": 0.05 }, "kind": "title", "text": "Exploitation in the Platform Age", "attrs": null, "subkind": "headline", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "c1d5fa03-73dc-4fd8-a671-c0d469c81d32", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null }, { "bbox": { "h": 0.02, "w": 0.3, "x": 0.35, "y": 0.61 }, "kind": "title", "text": "10.3.1 Perpetuating Exploitation", "attrs": null, "subkind": "subtitle", "toolName": null, "toolSlug": null, "confidence": null, "componentId": "af5fdc8f-90b3-4bd9-a708-c9021e3bcc61", "frameworkName": null, "frameworkSlug": null } ], "metrics": [], "tools": [ { "name": "Canvas framework", "slug": "canvas-framework", "agent": null, "layer": "slide", "matchId": "d10552c2-870f-445a-b7e6-16e3bac670e9", "evidence": "The term “platform” is used in multiple registers. In some contexts, it is used to describe a set of companies – for example, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta, or Google.", "confidence": 0.6 } ], "frameworks": [], "arcBeats": [], "loops": [], "imagePathAlt": null, "thumbSrc": null, "thumbSrcAlt": null, "locked": true }