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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 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.
To unpack the term bot logic further, we will look at four differences between bot logic and platform logic.
- Where platform logic accumulates, bot logic disperses
On commercial platforms, the engagement of users 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.
All of these 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. 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, as Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam Abbing have pointed out in their article Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of FLOSS4.
This in itself creates a different space for bots, which are still active contributors in the way sociality is imagined on these platforms. However interestingly enough, with a different infrastructural system comes a different type of ruleset. On platforms like Mastodon, bots don't only need to comply to the terms of services of the API, but also to collective agreements such as a code of conduct.
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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Mansoux, A., Roscam Abbing, R. (2020). "Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of FLOSS" The Eternal Network: The Ends and Becomings of Network Culture, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., Feb 2020, pp 124-140. ↩︎