EAN: 9780262047227

CLOUD EMPIRES - VILI LEHDONVIRTA GEBUNDEN

The rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs 
users  and workers. The early Internet was a lawless place  populated by scam artists who made
buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon  eBay  Upwork  and Apple
established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods  crowdsourcing labor  and
downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did
this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires?
The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires  digital
economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike
dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward. Digital platforms create new
marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet  Lehdonvirta explains  but they are ruled by
Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can vote
with their feet and find another platform because in most cases there isn't one. And yet using
antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult.
Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create-or resist-the new social order
established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects-Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos  Travis Kalanick of Uber  and Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto-as well as
Kristy Milland  labor organizer of Amazon's Mechanical Turk  and GoFundMe  a crowdfunding
platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand
digital platforms for what they are-institutions as powerful as the state-can we begin the work
of democratizing them.

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