The Politics of Platforms. Exploring Platforms’ Infrastructural Role and Power

Once assumed the infrastructural dimension of platforms, I shall explore and extend what means to consider platforms as infrastructures in terms of politics and, ultimately, in terms of power. Indeed, collaborating or competing with the State platforms display their politics challenging Leviathan prerogatives. Many platforms do so. Additionally, I shall extend the analysis of platforms power by investigating two further original sources: the use of algorithms and the extraction of users’ data. These two additional power tools led them to achieve a peculiar position in the global present as much that they cannot be considered as merely economic actors. They represent the politics within Capital: they are polit-ical players within the political arena. As such we should trait them both to grasp their actual influence on States policy and to clench the “extrastatecraft” players that address society.