Ecologies of friction in digital platform investment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Digital platforms are underpinned by the ideal of a frictionless market, obscuring the simultaneous practices of market monopolisation and the restriction of consumer choice and movement. This concurrent removal and erection of barriers to participation triggers ecosystemic responses such as individual adaptations and establishing alternative organisations to counter the progression of these ‘walled gardens’. In this article, we contribute to theorising ecologies of friction in the platform economy, drawing on Tsing’s friction in the creation of global connections, Orbach’s friction paradox, and Bateson’s ecological epistemology. Analysing a European short-term rental platform cooperative’s difficult launch, we ask: How do frictions emerge on alternative platforms in the digital economy, and what effect do they have on prefiguring the platform business? Frictions become apparent in platform investment, a complex resource-allocating relationship binding together multiple stakeholders, laden with expectations about the future. We highlight the interconnected frictions of individual investment into platform work, collective investment into platform participation, and resource investment into the business model. These are bound with platform organising, community development, and managing scale as the cooperative tries to prefigure a future platform economy in establishing its current practice. We contribute by extending the concept of ecologies of friction in connecting individual and collective investment with ideas around platform growth. We illustrate how all platform economy actors – participants and platforms alike – are entangled in frictions. We suggest that alternative platforms’ struggles are largely caused by the impossibility of escaping the broader ecosystemic dynamics established by dominant platform imaginaries.