The Future of Platform Power

Making Middleware Work

Bibliographic Data

ID6287690
AuthorsDaphne Keller (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume32
Issue3
Pages168-172
Publication date2021-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of democracy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-5736 • E-ISSN: 1086-3214
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jod.2021.0043
OpenAlexW3195048599
LanguageEN
Citations received11

Unlike many other proposals to curtail platform power, middleware does not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In the United States, that makes middleware a path forward in a neighborhood full of dead ends. Before we can execute on the middleware vision, however, at least four problems must be solved. First, how technologically feasible is it for competitors to remotely process massive quantities of platform data? Second, how is everyone going to get paid? Third, who will bear the enormous costs of content curation? And fourth, how does middleware address privacy issues regarding users' friends' data? We have to solve these problems to make middleware work—but this is also what makes the concept so promising

Business · Competitor analysis · Computer security · Constitution · Distributed computing · Message oriented middleware · Middleware (distributed applications · Operating system · Path (computing · Political science · Power (physics · Process (computing · Work (physics · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Engineering · Law · Peer-to-Peer Network Technologies · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Scientific Computing and Data Management · Software

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