platform logic

how tech companies structure our conversations

I find it quite unsettling how we talk about reading something “in” a book, but watching something “on” TikTok.

Previously, the word “in” was for a message, while the word “on” was for a medium. The metaphor was that the word “on” indicated a form of support, while “in” connoted immersion.¹ If you put an actor on a stage, he is able to perform in a play.

Until the invention of the telephone, we were pretty good at keeping these prepositions separate, but now the means of communication is increasingly getting conflated with the communication itself.

Each technological advancement has eroded the distinction between the medium and the message. A book feels different from a page, but TikTok doesn’t feel different from a TikTok video. If you say “I saw that on TikTok,” your statement is essentially synonymous with “I saw that in a TikTok video.”

And yet this conflation creates a dangerous fallacy, where the language of infrastructure is used to describe the act of communication itself.

I also see this happening with the word “platform.” A platform was originally a physical surface to stand on, like a soapbox. It was something that lifted you up, making it easier to directly communicate with your audience.

Meanwhile, a “platform” on social media is more like an intermediary—one that intercepts your speech and only distributes messages that are profitable for the company. You don’t know your audience, and your message is spread indirectly.

These are two distinct definitions, and yet the tech companies want you to confuse them. The wording is a trap—they’ll deliberately use the incorrect “platform as raised structure” metaphor when it benefits them.² Each meaning subtly affects how we organize and understand information online.

On one hand, there is physical platform logic: this is a harmless, neutral venue enabling the exchange of ideas. Anybody “on” the platform has equal access to a potential audience. No matter what, the auditorium stays the same capacity; the stage stays the same height from the ground.

In reality, we should be using digital platform logic: there is an entity controlling the size of the auditorium. Any message going “into” this intermediary only succeeds if it optimizes for the metrics they established to profit off our ideas. The “platform” is anything but a neutral venue for ideas—but we lose that nuance when we think about it inhabiting physical space.

As an influencer, I’ve been to my fair share of events where a platform representative highlights the “digital town square” or “marketplace of ideas” available on their app. These phrases set up an assumption that our ideas have equal weight. Each person can show up, share what’s on their mind, and be heard by others. We forget that there is an asymmetry toward ideas that benefit the tech company. We are using physical platform logic.

Then there’s the fact that a physical stage doesn’t do anything; it is there for us to use it. A digital platform does everything: it decides what qualifies as an acceptable message and who gets to hear it.

Unlike a soapbox, then, a digital platform has agency, and yet they consistently use soapbox rhetoric to absolve themselves of responsibility. Any problems with radicalization, or misinformation, or slop, are the fault of creators who make it. We’re just a platform! It’s not our fault for what others say “on” the platform! Never mind that the intermediary structures incentives for influencers to talk a certain way, and then chooses how to distribute content.

Even our choice of preposition plays into physical platform logic. Research shows that we ascribe a different locus of control when we use the words “on” and “in.” An actor has less control in a play, since he’s just following directions, but he has more control on the stage, since a raised surface doesn’t tell him what to do.

“On” has figure control—the thing “on” the surface has more agency—while “in” has ground control—the container affects the embedded object.³ Essentially, we use physical platform logic when we talk about seeing things “on TikTok”; that implies TikTok is merely a supportive surface for communication. A more accurate metaphor might be that we see things “in TikTok,” where the platform indeed controls everything we say.

Once you start paying attention to platform logic, you’ll notice it every time a social media CEO does an interview or testifies in front of Congress. When it comes to something like regulating explicit content, they’ll proudly use digital platform language: “we have safeguards in place,” “we’re putting restrictions on that.” If the discussion pivots to the harmful effects of social media, they’ll switch to physical platform language: “we can’t control that,” “this is up to the users.” The more we notice this kind of fallacy, the more we can hold the platforms accountable.

But it’s even more important to extend this thinking to your own relationship with social media. Are you really looking at something “on” a “platform” when all your messages are being intercepted and all your information is being gathered? A physical, raised structure certainly doesn’t do that—but a digital intermediary does. Don’t use the wrong kind of logic, because it will affect how you understand reality.

If you liked this essay, you should get my book Algospeak, which describes how platforms affect communication!!

1. Ferrando, Ignasi Navarro. “The metaphorical use of ‘on’.” Journal of English Studies 1 (1999): 145-164.

2. Gillespie, Tarleton. “The Politics of ‘Platforms.’” New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738. Originally published 2010.

3. Jamrozik, Anja, and Dedre Gentner. “Well‐Hidden Regularities: Abstract Uses of in and on Retain an Aspect of Their Spatial Meaning.” Cognitive Science 39.8 (2015): 1881-1911.