Penalised by platforms

In a previous post, we intro'd a metaphor for the capabilities that Subset provides: couriers. Trustworthy, autonomous, performant entities that deliver saved things to high relevance targets. A whole army of 'em. But our cute little metaphor had an issue. A fundamental imperfection. IRL couriers are confident about the hostility of their surroundings; there is none. Their environment and its systems aren't designed to impede their activity or harm them outright. This is not true for Subset's custom information couriers.

As the channels we operate over expand, and as the sharing patterns our users deploy become more sophisticated, our couriers will be penalised and restricted by the punitive stances of our platform overlords. Fortunately, we can imbue our couriers with Boydian burglar-iness and escape platform draconics. More on that imbuement in the final post in this mini-series. But today we want to ask a question: why do platforms penalise cross-user, cross-content migrations at all?

To understand the motive, let's look at some common online behaviours.

On-platform sharing is typically snappy. Sharing an Instragram post to someone via an Instagram DM is quick and easy. Sending a spicy tweet to a friend on X is pretty rapid. Getting an intriguing LinkedIn post to a colleague is simple; just use the integrated messaging.

Now, take that Instagram, X or LinkedIn link and share it to someone not on those platforms. The experience of the recipient isn't gonna be stellar. If they're stubborn enough to not be on those platforms at all, they'll either be subject to a bunch of CTAs and intrusive requests in order to see the content itself, or just be stonewalled from accessing it all. Bonus: that shared URL will include a bunch of parameters which allow the parent platform to track engagement and provenance.

If you share a TikTok via WhatsApp with someone that doesn't have a TikTok account, the recipient can still manage to access the content—presumably because the bet is that the recipient is more likely to sign-up after an exposure versus a denial of access. Share a tweet via WhatsApp with someone who doesn't have an X account, however, and the recipient will likely just be hit with a login or sign-up screen. Different bet (complete restriction of access will lead to greater user conversion) but same stance—if you're not on the platform, you're a second class citizen.

This isn't just a user-centric bundle of strategies. It's content-centric, too.

Try opening a link on X. If you see a link at all, congratulations—link posting nets the posting user penalties to engagement which means that most links are buried downthread or in replies (or omitted altogether). But say you do find a link and dare to open it. What happens? It'll dump you in an in-app browser. Why not your device's regular, default browser? Because that in-app browser is an extension of the interiority of the X platform itself. It's a component of their sandbox-panopticon. It's like outside seating at a restaurant. Hey, go ahead, enjoy the sun, but make sure you add items to the bill and pay at the end. Sure, your device's browser offers up some telemetry but it's much more limited in scope.

Now try opening a link on Instagram. Good luck with that—Instagram has a pretty harsh stance for links. They're only acceptable in user bios, and even then they're somewhat obscured.

So what's the cause of all these shenanigans? Why don't platforms want to allow and/or encourage the migration of users and content? There's three core reasons, best articulated as verbs:

• Protect: tightly regulated behaviours occurring within the interiority of a platform are positioned as more secure and private for end users, whilst opponent platforms and the liminal spaces between are painted as dangerously wild spaces that expose end users to a dizzying range of invisible threats.

• Monopolise: once we're safe within the cozy confines of a platform then our attention can be monopolised—we only pay attention to one thing at a time and a limited number of things in a day, and the distribution of that scarce resource is a hyper-competitive zero-sum game won by the most seductive platform experience with the best retention rates.

• Extract: we're safe and we're attentive, which means the extraction can begin—our on/in-platform experience gets quantised, processed, packaged and leveraged by 1st/2nd/3rd parties in pursuit of growth, profit and shareholder value.

Of course, a reasonable claim can be made that there's a fourth, more wholesome way to explain why platforms disallow and/or discourage user and content migration:

• Value: situating end users within platform walls, guiding their attention and analysing subsequent engagement results in the generation of end user value that wouldn't otherwise exist.

The value claim is less reasonable upon closer inspection, though. Yes, platform wielding corporations have delivered profits of an extent never encountered before in human history. But the value claim obscures a deeper belief—that this way is the only way, that there is no alternative to the reality platform-wielding corporations have delivered unto us. That's not true.

In the digital realm, saving, sharing and search are fundamental practices of online humans. The current platform-privileging terrain positions these activities as platform-native. Saving equals observed behaviours that signal strong engagement (e.g. likes, bookmarks, collections). Sharing equals sandboxed exchanges via integrated messaging (e.g. DMs, group chats). Searching equals surveilled queries and biased results delivered via centralised infrastructure (e.g. Google, paltform search features).

In our current state, saving, sharing and search are presented as activities uniquely aspected to the particular platforms we happen to exist upon at that moment in time. In the coming state, however, saving, sharing and search regain their fundamental, platform-agnostic nature and are revealed as protocolised activities that thrive on user and content migration.

Naturally, the incumbents have no interest in helping the coming state arrive any sooner than absolutely necessary. Mostly because the value derived from the coming state of saving, sharing and search accrues to the end user themselves, instead of being captured wholly by the platform providers acting as greedy and unnecessary intermediaries. But arrive it shall.

Each of us won't just have access to custom information couriers that can take our sharing intentions and actualise them, abstracting away platforms in the process. We'll have personal archivists that manage individualised stores and make saving to them simple. We'll have search and discovery that's more effective and contextualised than ever before. And we'll have these things because that's the only way forward when users are retreating to the cozy web and digital infrastructure and social media are decentralising.

Why do platforms penalise user and content migration? What have they got against custom information couriers and the promiscuous, protocolised distribution of interesting things?

The non-answer is that it's value generating for end users. The real answer: platforms have an explicit mandate to protect (a.k.a. imprison) end users, monopolise their attention and extract maximal profit. Which makes for a tricky situation.

• Platforms: ready and willing to distort reality in defence of their historic interests

• End users: dissatisfied, uninterested in digital means, pursuing analog ends

• Subset: providing couriers that operate with a burglar mentality and Boydian intent

In the final post in this sequence, we'll unpack how Subset intends to break the platform-end-user deadlock and accelerate the arrival of the new state of saving, sharing and search.