Power is often imagined as command: orders issued, rules enforced, choices constrained by force or authority. In this picture, politics is about who decides and who obeys.
In technologically mediated societies, this picture is increasingly inadequate.
Power today operates less by telling people what to do than by structuring what can easily be done at all.
This is the politics of platforms and defaults.
Platforms as Relational Environments
A platform is not merely a tool or a service. It is a relational environment within which actions, interactions, and meanings are coordinated.
A platform:
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defines roles and relations
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preconfigures sequences of action
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stabilises expectations of response
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constrains what counts as normal, possible, or visible
To enter a platform is not to make a choice and then act freely. It is to step into a pre-cut field of possibility.
Defaults as Silent Decisions
If platforms are environments, defaults are their most powerful operators.
Defaults matter because:
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most action occurs under time pressure
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most coordination favours continuity
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most users do not actively reconfigure systems
As a result, defaults:
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are enacted more often than explicit choices
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persist longer than deliberated decisions
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shape behaviour without appearing coercive
A default is a decision that does not feel like one.
This is why defaults are political even when they appear neutral.
Politics Without Ideology
The politics of platforms is often misunderstood because it does not look like politics.
Instead, there are:
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interface designs
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ranking algorithms
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eligibility criteria
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thresholds, limits, and exclusions
Power here is not exercised by persuasion or force, but by configuration.
It operates not on what people think, but on what they encounter, repeat, and rely upon.
Coordination at Scale Without Consent
One of the defining features of platform power is that it enables coordination without collective agreement.
Participants do not need to:
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share values
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endorse goals
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trust authorities
They need only to comply with the platform’s affordances.
And it is extraordinarily effective.
The Illusion of Choice
Platforms typically present themselves as expanding choice: more options, more connections, more flexibility.
But choice within a platform is always:
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bounded
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pre-structured
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asymmetrically costly
Power as the Weighting of Futures
From a relational perspective, power is best understood not as control over people, but as control over trajectories.
Platforms exercise power by:
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amplifying certain behaviours
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suppressing others
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accelerating some futures
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letting others wither
Once a trajectory is dominant, alternatives become harder to sustain — not because they are forbidden, but because they are no longer viable.
Responsibility After Platforms
Traditional political responsibility assumes:
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identifiable decision-makers
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moments of choice
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clear lines of causation
Platform politics disrupts all three.
Responsibility now lies in:
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design teams rather than leaders
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defaults rather than decrees
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maintenance rather than moments
Ethical and political critique must therefore move upstream — away from individual actions and toward the architecture of coordination itself.
Platforms and the Becoming of Possibility
Platforms reveal something essential about contemporary power:
Where This Leads
If power now operates through configuration, then political action cannot rely solely on resistance or critique.
It must include:
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redesign
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reconfiguration
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the reopening of closed pathways
The question is no longer:
Who should decide?
But:
Which futures are being made easier than others — and by whom?
That question leads us directly to the final challenge of acceleration:
How to keep possibility open in a world that closes it by default.
That is where we turn next.
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