Platform Politics: Corporate Power, Grassroots Movements and the Sharing Economy

The platform economy, powered by companies like Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo, promised to revolutionize the way we work and live. My presentation shows how platform capitalism is not only shaped by business decisions, but is a result of struggles involving social movements, consumer politics and state interventions. It focuses in particular on the controversial tactics used by platform giants to avoid regulation. It identifies some common trajectories of political struggle across contexts and across several 'lean platforms'. It discusses platform rhetoric, the contentious and confrontational language and stories told by platform businesses. Using a case study of former Airbnb workers, it also delves into ‘platform power’, the ways in which platforms mobilise their users and allies to shape or avoid state regulation. These concern the imaginaries, potential and future of the new digital economy: platform possibility.