THE GOVERNANCE OF FACEBOOK PLATFORM

• DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12181
• Publication Date: 2021-09-15T20:43:49Z
• Authors: Anne Helmond; Fernando Van der ...; Marcus Burkhardt; Tatjana Seitz
• Keywords: APIs; Facebook; 0508 media and communications; platform governance; platform evolution; platform power; 05 social sciences

Competition authorities and regulators worldwide recognise application programming interfaces (APIs) for powering the digital economy driving processes of datafication platformisation. However, it is unclear how APIs tie into power of, governance by, large platforms. This paper traces relationality between Facebook’s APIs, platform governance, data strategy based on an empirical evolutionary analysis. It examines a corpus (archived) developer pages API reference documentation to determine technicity – technical dimension dynamics what platforms like Facebook seek govern. Platform evolved complex layered interconnected arrangement, wherein specifications serve enforce (changes to) policy (data) strategy. Finally, discusses significance this in specifying material conditions app business development top maintaining infrastructural evolutive over their ecosystems.