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Title: Bot Logic vs. Platform Logic Slug: 02-s4-bot-logic Date: 2020-11-01 12:02 Summary: Bot logic disperses, fragments, develops intimate knowledge & encourages new habit formation.
The term bot logic is phrased as [claim your term!] a response to platform logic, which Jonas Andersson Schwarz describes as
digital platforms enacting a twofold logic of micro-level technocentric control and macro-level geopolitical domination, while at the same time having a range of generative outcomes, arising between these two levels1. [this needs a bit of further unpacking it is too abstract to comprehend now]
To unpack the term bot logic further, we will look at [replace will look at with explore]four differences between bot logic and platform logic.
- Where platform logic accumulates, bot logic disperses
On commercial platforms, the engagement of users equals [perhaps creates rather than equals] economic value that is translated through data capture and organisation. Metadata is extracted from users that then through pattern matching can be used to target users for advertisements. While bots can and do participate in this economy, they can also enable its sabotage. In the case of buying bot followers, this can be a means to generate noise in the collected dataset and blur the perception of the user as a set of behaviours that the platform has.
- Where platform logic centralises, bot logic fragments
Platforms such as Twitter or Facebook are built as centralized systems: the servers on which information is stored are owned by these companies. The servers are triggering the need for immensive datacenter infrastructures throughout the world. Bots, on the other hand, do not require a lot of computational power in order to run. They can be simply executed from the computers of the bot-makers themselves. In fact, bots really point to the materiality of the systems on which they run, as researcher Stuart Geiger also points out when he talks about bespoke code:
[code that] runs on top of or alongside existing systems instead of being more directly integrated into and run on software-side codebases2.
- Where platform logic creates distance between user and infrastructure, bot logic develops an intimate knowledge of the platform
If we consider means of communication as means of production3, there is a process of alienation that happens on commercial centralised platforms, where the user has no stake in the development of the material conditions of the platform on which they communicate. From this point of view, the making of bots implies a closeness to the platform that is indicated through the understanding of both the sociological and technical systems that determine the usership of a platform. In order to write a bot, as mentioned before, you need to know what kind of actions are allowed and how the bot would be received by the community.
- Where platform logic reinforces habitual behaviour, bot logic encourages new habit formation
If we think about a commercial platform as a structure or surface on which actions can take place, these actions are often predefined by the affordances of the platform. However, bots are the automation of certain actions and behaviours. To be able to define these behaviours, a user needs to be provided with the means to alternate the socialities of a platform.
[mb: i think that this section on the Fediverse can work well on a next page, for example under the title "centralized vs. federated networks"]
All of the bot logic points were written with commercial platforms in mind, however, exciting developments are happening in federated platforms such as Mastodon, where users are part of defining features and possibilities of interaction.
To understand how Mastodon operates differently, it is useful to look at two examples of communication platforms that employ different network topologies and governance models: Twitter (centralised) and Mastodon (decentralised, federated)4. Both microblogging platforms Twitter and Mastodon have a significant amount of bot agents.
How do these bots relate to their computational infrastructures differently?
As opposed to Twitter, Mastodon is a free and open source self-hosted networking service. Anyone can become a node in the network by installing the software and thus federate with other servers. The nodes, or user bases, are referred to as "instances" which have community-determined norms. There, the norms of the platform and the way they are codified into the technical structure are more often revised and reformulated together with the people using the platform, such as a Code of Conduct.
Mastodon is part of a bigger network, which is also known as the Fediverse, which has grown into a social media space that is currently used by more then 5 million people. In contrast to social media platforms as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, it consists of a whole range of different kind of social media: blogs, micro-blogging, photo-sharing, video-sharing, link-sharing, etc., that can exchange posts and content with each other. Each instance does this, however, under their own terms. In contrast with the top-down organisation of centralized networks, the Fediverse and its federated network typology allow different groups to configure their network differently.
Each network is being shaped by its stakeholders. Which is sometimes a single individual, sometimes a group of peers that share the same interest and other times by an organisation. Often it is the system administrator(s) of a network who decides what the rules are: who can publish? What kind of material can be published? What communication features are available?
Interestingly enough, with a different infrastructural system comes a different type of ruleset. The federated network structure of the Fediverse also has concequences for bots. On platforms like Mastodon, bots need to both comply to the terms of services of the API and to community agreements, such as the formentioned Code of Conduct or Community Guidelines.
Footnotes
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Andersson Schwarz, J. (2017). "Platform Logic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Platform-Based Economy" Policy & Internet, 9(4): 374–394. DOI: 10.1002/poi3.159 ↩︎
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Geiger, R. Stuart (2014). "Bots, bespoke, code and the materiality of software platforms" Information, Communication & Society. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2013.873069 ↩︎
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Williams, R. (2005[1978]) "Means of Communication as a Means of Production" Culture and Materialism. London: Verso. ↩︎
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Mastodon, Social networking, back in your hands (accessed on 30 October 2020) https://joinmastodon.org/ ↩︎