{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","uuid":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","normalized_title":"stateplatformcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","isbns":["9781009619714","9781009446594","9781009446587"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":98,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/State%20Platform%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/search"},"page":{"printed_page":1,"pdf_page":6,"physical_index":6,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"205c24c2a5a10f3b9262dca108b9007a08539b8171151112f088ce00d42c7874"},"chapter":"Cambridge Elements","content":"1 Introduction\n\n1.1 Calling All Influencers\n\nVisitors to the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, on March 22, 2023, were greeted by a curious scene. A group of demonstrators chanted slogans, bore placards, and spoke to a group of reporters gathered at the scene. But their immaculate hairstyles, expensive watches, and luxury sunglasses betrayed that these were not campaigners against war or racial injustice. They were social media influencers, and their demand was to ‘Keep TikTok’. They hoped to influence congressional representatives as they debated the fate of the short video app.\n\nInside Congress, lawmakers grilled TikTok’s US CEO, Shou Zi Chew, on the company’s handling of US citizens’ data, the nature of its relationship with its Chinese parent company ByteDance, and its purported links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The demonstrators outside were unable to influence the mood on Capitol Hill. Evidently unsatisfied with Mr. Chew’s answers, in March 2024, the Senate passed a bill forcing ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok or face a ban on operating in the United States. The ‘TikTok Bill’ (Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, PAFACA) will help ensure that the US digital media ecosystem remains under firm control of domestic firms like Meta (Facebook), X (formerly Twitter), and Google.<sup>1</sup>\n\nThese events are illuminating for three reasons. First, they highlight how growing concerns about the social power of digital media platforms – including their data collection and sharing practices, and the impacts of their algorithms on public life – are increasingly driving oversight and policymaking efforts. Second, they represent the US government’s political response to TikTok, which is the first major Chinese digital platform to succeed in the US market (since followed by retail platform apps such as Shein and Temu). The case suggests the United States is willing to use the full spectrum ofits policy toolkit to inhibit Chinese platforms from gaining market share in the United States, and to protect the dominance of its digital platform firms against Chinese competitors. Third, they demonstrate that platforms have become increasingly central to the broader US-China geopolitical rivalry, a competition which is increasingly reshaping world politics and the economy.\n\nHow did apparently innocuous internet platform companies like TikTok, Meta, and Google – known principally for their banal functionalities like short video content and search optimization algorithms – become entangled with the logic of a global geopolitical conflict? As we show in the following pages, platforms increasingly provide the infrastructure undergirding the world’s social and economic networks. Not only do they facilitate and intermediate the countless exchanges that comprise much of daily life, but they increasingly hold the power to (re)shape how, and even to decide if, these interactions take place. This infrastructural role affords them tremendous power, because they write the rules – both metaphorically and literally, in devising their ‘terms of service’ – by which other social and economic agents interact. If ‘code is law’, as Lawrence Lessig (2000) once wrote, then platforms represent planetary-scale judiciaries. What is more, platforms’ infrastructural power – manifest in their vast capital, compute, and data resources – is placing them at the centre of the global race to develop and commercialize artificial intelligence (AI) (Nitzberg and Zysman, 2022; van der Vlist et al., 2024).\n\nState Platform Capitalism\n\n1\n\nAt the time ofwriting, President Trump appears to have secured a deal, where ByteDance will sell TikTok to a consortium of investors apparently led by Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Bytedance will retain a minority stake in the new firm, to which it will license its algorithm. Oracle will store user data within the US and control how the TikTok algorithm operates.","previous_page":null,"next_page":2}