API Governance: The Case of Facebook’s Evolution

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are not merely technical objects for data access but have evolved into complex governance arrangements. We examine the relationship between the ‘technicity’ of platform governance–”governance of and by APIs–and the material conditions of a platform’s power. A new open access article by Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Marcus Burkhardt, and… Read more API Governance: The Case of Facebook’s Evolution

Facebook’s evolution: development of a platform-as-infrastructure

We just published a new article (open access🔓): Helmond, Anne, David B. Nieborg, and Fernando N. van der Vlist. “Facebook’s Evolution: Development of a Platform-as-Infrastructure.” Internet Histories 3, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 123–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667. In this article we present a methodological approach for tracing a platform’s evolution using archived sources from the Internet Archive… Read more Facebook’s evolution: development of a platform-as-infrastructure

The Political Economy of Social Data: A Historical Analysis of Platform–Industry Partnerships

David Nieborg, Fernando van der Vlist and I would like to circulate the pre-print of our conference paper on ‘The Political Economy of Social Data: A Historical Analysis of Platform–Industry Partnerships’. [PDF: SMSociety17_paper_138_preprint.pdf]. Abstract Social media platform–industry partnerships are essential to understanding the politics and economics of social data circulating among platforms and third parties. Using Facebook as a… Read more The Political Economy of Social Data: A Historical Analysis of Platform–Industry Partnerships

Speculative data selfies

Fernando van der Vlist and I wrote an op-ed for Internet Policy Review on Data Selfie, an open-source Chrome browser extension that collects and analyses data about your behaviour on facebook.com. Our article “Speculative data selfies” discusses the plugin as a way of raising awareness through the datafied self. In the piece we briefly describe how Data… Read more Speculative data selfies

De nieuwe gebruikersvoorwaarden van Facebook: Like of Dislike?

An English version of this text has appeared in the Internet Policy Review. Een nieuwe versie van deze tekst is verschenen in de Correspondent. Heb je de nieuwe Data Policy van Facebook al gelezen? Of heeft u, net als vele gebruikers, de notificatie bovenaan in de nieuwsfeed zonder te lezen weggeklikt en de email van Facebook genegeerd? Onderzoek… Read more De nieuwe gebruikersvoorwaarden van Facebook: Like of Dislike?

The Materiality of Facebook and Localizing the Cloud

In “The Like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web” colleague Carolin Gerlitz and I looked into the way Facebook uses the technical infrastructure of social buttons buttons to create a data-intensive web. In this study we aimed to go beyond the interface level by analyzing the infrastructure of the Facebook Platform (API) itself. Recently,… Read more The Materiality of Facebook and Localizing the Cloud