The Art of Deplatforming | Part II | Revolving Floors
The Art of Deplatforming | Part II | Revolving Floors
II of IV | ecology, affordances, display, undesign, grey zones, black mirrors |
When touched they touch back, when struck they strike back; in short, they interact with the observer and with one another. Behavior affords behavior.
— James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (2015).
Though speaking of animals in 1979, Gibson could well have been speaking of platforms in 2022.
I. Monkeys, Frogs, Humans
Behaviour affords behaviour? One will struggle to get to the heart of deplatforming without first understanding what Gibson means by ‘affords.’ The unusual wording can be traced back to a previous mouthful entitled The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, wherein Gibson coined the concept of affordances to describe the action possibilities between the animals (monkeys, frogs, humans) and their ecology (branches, lily pads, other humans).ᶦ
To a monkey, branches afford climbing. To a frog, lily pads afford jumping. To a human, other humans afford socializing. Affordances not only shape how we act within our ecology, but how we perceive it (hence the title of The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception). Though a frog does, humans do not perceive lily pads in terms of their ‘jumpability.’
II. Plots, Plans and Platte Forms
If Gibson had lived to see the day of Facebook and Twitter, The Ecological Approach to Visual Misperception would have been the title of the sequel. Display is the modus operandi of platforms. Yet, as psychologist Donald A. Norman points out, displays are not affordances: “they are visual feedback that advertise the affordances: they are the perceived affordances” [italics added].ᶦᶦ
In The Stack, which explores the Rorschach-meets-M. C. Escher nature of platforms, design theorist Benjamin Bratton begins at the source:
The etymology of platform refers to a ‘plan of action, scheme, design’ and, from the Middle French, platte form, or, literally, a plateau or raised level surface. As Benedict Singleton writes, this conjoined with the plot, which itself first implies a plot of land. Once situated on the platform of the stage, the ‘plot’ becomes a more abstract structure that situates characters into the forgone conclusion of its unfolding, even as they suffer the choices that aren’t really theirs to make.ᶦᶦᶦ
Designs de-sign, remember. To paraphrase the Professor of Design at Northumbria University, Bill Gaver: a pit affords falling even if it is hidden with twigs and leaves.ᶦᵛ
The complexity does not end there, however, for not only are there affordances we can misperceive, there are affordances we cannot perceive at all. ‘Sequential affordances,’ for instance, only reveal themselves over time (like Russian roulette), while ‘nested affordances’ hide within one another (like Russian dolls).
In the spirit of theorist Benjamin Bratton, design strategist Benedict Singleton has put forward a counter-history of design:
… one in which artisans have been treated as deeply suspicious figures: purveyors of an unruly practice that broadens its palette beyond wood, stone, metal and animal parts (and latterly, plastic and pixels) to human behaviour.ᵛ
For such artisans of undesign or de-sign , platforms have opened the door to a new and invasive species of affordance: one that not only affords falling, but pushing; one that not affords striking back, but striking first. Today, the hills are very much alive: for they not only have eyes, but limbs.
III. 5,000,000,000 Shades of Grey
In sum, despite their frictionless interfaces and endlessly scrollable surfaces, platforms are neither flat nor laissez-faire. If, as Mark Zuckerberg claims, all users are placed on “equal footing,”ᵛᶦ some users are placed more equally than others. Indeed, since the 2016 United States Presidential Election, users of all political persuasions and geographical locations have begun to lose faith in the flatness of platforms.
Facebook is facing accusations of electoral interference and whitelisting celebrities;ᵛᶦᶦ on Instagram and Twitter, users are calling foul on shadowbanning;ᵛᶦᶦᶦ the YouTube Partner Program has come under fire for preferential treatment;ᶦˣ while doubts about algorithmic integrity are surfacing at Spotify.ˣ
Platforms afford deplatforming. The former cannot exist without the latter, and vice versa. It is the ever-present flipside: the black mirror to the visibility machine.
It is the counterfactual—the coulda, woulda or shoulda—that can rarely be proved, but sometimes perceived (if one knows where to look).
Unlike monocular vision, which lacks depth perception, binocular vision enriches objects with a sense of shadow and shade. Such is the beauty of adding the de- to platforming, for when one begins to look sideways at the ‘straightforwardness’ of design, one can begin to see through the glass, darkly.
Black-and-white disbands into many shades of grey—almost five billion shades, in fact, for the ecology of social media adapts itself (or rather, maladapts itself) to the perceptual systems of each and every user. To say nothing of the ecommerical mediators—Google, Apple, Amazon—for whom the Venn diagram of ‘users’ and ‘human beings’ is approaching circularity.
As of June 2022, ‘to platform’ returns 5,580,000 results on Google Scholar, whereas ‘to deplatform’ returns 2,180. Academia has yet to fully explore the ghettos of platforming, whose bleeding edge is slicing through the lives and livelihoods of Big Tech’s working class.
Connectivity, celebrity, cash. Everyone knows what platforms afford. Platforms make sure of that. But what do platforms cost? One is never sure, until one steps on the wrong patch of twigs and leaves.
Be a hero…
Be a saint…
Be a god…
References
ᶦ James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1983), 285.
ᶦᶦ Donald A. Norman, “Affordance, Conventions, and Design,” Interactions, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1999), 40.
ᶦᶦᶦ Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), 43.
ᶦᵛ Bill Gaver, “Technology Affordances,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1991), 80.
ᵛ Benedict Singleton, “Subtle Empires: On Craft and Being Crafty,” Design Ecologies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2011), 250-251.
ᵛᶦ Mark Zuckerberg: quoted in Jeff Horwitz, “Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt,” The Wall Street Journal, 13 September 2021. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-files-xcheck-zuckerberg-elite-rules-11631541353.
ᵛᶦᶦ Victor Pickard, “Media Failures in the Age of Trump,” The Political Economy of Communication, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2016).
ᵛᶦᶦᶦ Sarah Myers West, “Censored, Suspended, Shadowbanned: User Interpretations of Content Moderation on Social Media Platforms,” New Media & Society, Vol. 20, No. 11 (2018).
ᶦˣ Robyn Caplan & Tarleton Gillespie, “Tiered Governance and Demonetization: The Shifting Terms of Labor and Compensation in the Platform Economy,” Social Media + Society, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020).
ˣ Marcus O’Dair & Andrew Fry, “Beyond the Black Box in Music Streaming: The Impact of Recommendation Systems upon Artists,” Popular Communication, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020).