There are a lot of terms and concepts that have not caught up with
the realities of scalability. If copying a book digitally does not
cost anything, why is it's value infinitely more in relation to
it's production costs than before? It should be practically free.
This goes double for scientific publication, in which case there
is also a moral imperative on letting the information free.
Then there are things like the term "giving someone a platform".
This is sort of opposite power-wise than the previous examples:
In the case of book publishing, scalability is seen as
something to not make waves about, since the people in power have
made gains through letting the scaling affect only one side of the
supply and demand equation. In the case of giving someone a
platform, we are talking about (relatively) small fish who have
an opportunity to become big. So the people in power have
something to lose unless they stop the upscaling of the small
fish.
So the power structure says in the first case that it doesn't want
artificial rules on scalability but on the second case that we
need to regulate people with platforms who have messaging that
doesn't fit the paradigm.
But what is a platform anyway? I would not say that a random
person who has their own website on their own server can be said
to have a platform. Sure, it theoretically scales up to so many
people that it may exceed the limits that were meant by
"free speech" back in the day you had to stand on a soap box or
a bar table orating. Still it sort of feels more like leaving a
note on a bulleting board on a public square. It's not going to
reach that many people.
But what about search engines? Are they giving you a platform?
I am thinking they are analoguous to phone books. You are listed
just because you exist and allow to be listed.
Here we start to get close to a platform, though. I think
something becomes a platform when you have some sort of
popularity contest or recommendation system built in. So in that
sense you could say that the step where the search engine starts
to actively promote some material, it becomes a platform.
Is gopherspace a platform or a collection of platforms? I don't
consider SDF a platform in this sense. I do consider it a
platform in the technical sense. But in "giving me a platform"
I think I am still in the phonebook analogy when I am listed
on the active phlogs. If there was a commenting feature that
pushed the most commented phlogs to the top, for example, I would
consider it a platform.
Notice, by the way, how "giving someone a platform" is a perverted
way of saying "someone is producing content". The person who is
producing content probably wasn't thinking "Oh, if only someone
would give me a platform". No, they felt some kind of a calling
and saw a place they can claim for the project and they started
producing. The justifications for "giving someone a platform" are
only questioned if the content producer becomes somewhat known.
