Refusing Platform Promises

Abstract

Platforms have recently come under scrutiny, both in policy and in scholarship. Yet, there is little attention paid to the notion and materiali-ty of gendered practices. Although gender is present on these platforms, it is not necessarily endemic or critical to the analysis of these platformed practices. Platform Promises is a way by which we look at platformisation of gender, focusing on how gender politics are coded into the logic and infrastructure of these platforms. I propose that we stop thinking about platforms as technological engineering artefacts upon which conditions of gender are operationalised. This framing makes us believe that gen-dered and sexual violence online are a state of exception which can be fixed through better regulation and governance. I propose that we use gender as both a discursive and an analytic category by which to rewrite the discourse on platforms, to see the platform promises that are taken for granted and are not questioned in the dominant narratives.