Platform Sovereignty a Critical Reflection on Deplatforming and Deplatformization in the Context of Disinformation Governance

The essay argues the emergence of platform sovereignty observed through deplatforming and deplatformization practices (Rogers, 2020; Van Dijck, 2021a, 2021b) initiated by the dominant platforms (Google, META, X, Apple etc.), in the context of disinformation governance. Those content moderation measures have been implemented recently under exceptional circumstances such as the Ukraine war, targeting the main Russian media outlets online - Russian Tv and Sputnik - (Sisu et al. 2022), or in the aftermath of a coup d'etat such as the Capitol Hill assault in 2021 (Di Salvo, 2021) and, as the paper wants to highlight, they reveal the sovereign role of platforms in the social media ecosystem. Through the critical approaches of Shoshana Zuboff (2019) and Benjamin Bratton (2016), the contribution theoretically analyzes dominant platforms as socio-technical structures highlighting the complexities of the power relations among big tech, social media users and fringe environments (eg. GAB, 4chan, Rumble, Parler) in the social media ecosystem. Deplatforming and deplatformization are thus examined as pragmatic dimensions of dominant platform sovereignty that can illuminate the ambiguity and principles underlying its enactment.

In particular, the paper discusses the guiding principles of platform sovereignty, namely radical indifference to the communicative facts unfolding on social media, and the safeguard of the data stack, as the main objectives that allow platforms to preserve their sovereign role over the fringe environments in the social media ecosystem.

As a result, the essay emphasizes the heuristic importance of the concept of platform sovereignty to better understand the unfolding of power relations among dominant platforms, social media users, and fringe online environments, as well as the implicit principles that guide their enactment.