As digital platforms become the norm of emerging business models, often defying sectoral fragmentation, they present new conceptual and practical challenges for people impacted by them. They also present concerns for government of regulation as well as for the public about privacy. As the stock markets increasingly pin all hope of a speedy recovery on these platforms, we need to think anew about these platforms.

The following is a limited list of concerns that may become relevant to our economic and social life in a few years:

• What will platforms mean for wages and workers?
• Just because a technology exists, to collect new and pervasive kinds of datasets, should it necessarily be deployed and made the norm?
• Is the economic framework of competition sufficient to explain the economic trends that we seen on platforms?
• What would competition mean when the marketplace is not some self-regulating space but a privately owned infrastructure which records every transaction to it’s own advantage?
• In this ‘growth over profits’ model which relies heavily on predatory pricing, how do we think about anti-trust regulation – the very basis of which has been the preclusion of predatory pricing?
• In considering mergers and acquisitions, is the economies of scale analysis sufficient in this context of strategic consolidations motivated by data accumulation?
• What does it mean to own a device in this new environment of digital platforms? Is this ‘good as a service’?
• How we define the ownership of intangible data when it is stored in distant servers?
• What would reselling of digital content mean on these hyper-coordinated platforms? Can an Amazon book, once read, be sold? Can a CAT scan machine that stores data on a company-owned server be sold? What would that transfer of ownership look like?
• Given a platform’s commercial imperatives, it has every incentive to comply with pervasive government requests for user data. The question then becomes under what framework are those requests to be assessed?
• The code gives platforms a better deal. But does this deal make public sense?
• Platforms encode only limited possibilities. In light of the fact that they are becoming essential economic infrastructures, who decides these possibilities?
• Some desirable but unprofitable actions might be coded away while some other undesirable but profitable actions happen freely. Ultimately, this will depend on the architecture that the platform code designs. So, indirect regulation of human behavior – either due to government compliance or for commercial purposes is not unthinkable. Which behavior, in what instances, do we think should be regulated? Who decides?
• While it is acknowledged that complete anonymity is impossible, how do we devise a framework to allow only judicial use of traceability and identification?
• What would be the implications of trade treaties signed by government in the context of these platforms which store the most essential raw material, data, in distant places which can be used for diplomatic coercion?
• How far will easy monetary policy, over-dependence on digital economy and cross-subsidization go in reviving growth?
• Just because it has been difficult to regulate the platforms doesn’t mean that is how it should be. And how should it be – is an important question that should be openly debated. We need to be wary of the demands to keep these technologies out of political considerations because they will inevitably affect politics.

Some Readings:

1. Platform Capitalism. Nick Srnicek. Polity Press. 2017.
2. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace : Version 2.0. Lawrence Lessig. Basic Books, NY. 2006.