The Technicity of Platform Governance: Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIs

Fernando N. van der Vlist; Anne Helmond; Marcus Burkhardt; Tatjana Seitz

doi:10.25819/ubsi/9951

📄Working Paper │ 🔓Open Access

The Technicity of Platform Governance:
Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIs

By: ✍F. N. van der Vlist, A. Helmond, M. Burkhardt, & T. Seitz │ Illustrations: 📊️F. N. van der Vlist │ On: 🕓2021, July 23 │ In: 📗CRC ‘Media of Cooperation’ Working Paper Series, 20, 1–25 │ DOI: 🔗10.25819/ubsi/9951

📂History and Evolution of Facebook Platform Researchers, policymakers, and competition and regulation authorities worldwide recognise application programming interfaces (APIs) for powering the digital economy and driving processes of datafication and platformisation. However, it is unclear how APIs tie into the power of, and governance by, large digital platforms. This article traces the relationality between Facebook’s APIs, platform governance, and data strategy based on an empirical and evolutionary analysis. It examines a large corpus of (archived) developer pages and API reference documentation to determine the technicity of platform governance – the technical dimension and dynamics of how and what platforms like Facebook seek to govern. It traces how Facebook Platform evolved into a complex layered and interconnected governance arrangement, wherein technical API specifications serve to enforce (changes to) platform policy and (data) strategy. Finally, the article discusses the significance of this technicity in specifying the material conditions for app and business development ‘on top of’ platforms and for maintaining infrastructural and evolutive power over their ecosystems.

🏷APIs 🏷platform governance 🏷platform evolution 🏷platform power 🏷data strategy 🏷Facebook

Access: ↪ 🔓 🔗Access [bit.ly] ↪ 🔓 🔗Access [dspace.ub.uni-siegen.de] ↪ 🕓 📄Latest Download: ↪ 🔓 📥Download [PDF] │ Data: ↪ 🔓 🗄Data [osf.io]

📋 ✍Cite

📋Cite (APA)	van der Vlist, F. N., Helmond, A., Burkhardt, M., & Seitz, T. (2021, July). The Technicity of Platform Governance: Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIs. In CRC ‘Media of Cooperation’ Working Paper Series No. 20. Siegen, DE: Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’, University of Siegen. DOI: 10.25819/ubsi/9951.
🔗Link (DOI)	https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/9951

Kind	Working Paper Series; Working Paper
Author	F. N. van der Vlist; A. Helmond; M. Burkhardt; T. Seitz
Designer	F. N. van der Vlist
Publication Date	2021, July 23
Journal	CRC ‘Media of Cooperation’ Working Paper Series
Issue	20
Pages	1–25 (25)
Publisher	Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’ (Siegen, Germany)
Identifier	10.25819/ubsi/9951 [self]; urn:nbn:de:hbz:467-19380 [self]; 2567-2509 [part of]; 2567-2517 [part of]; 262513311 [funded by]; 275-45-009 [funded by]; cais.nrw [funded by]; 10.1177/20563051221086228 [version of]
License	CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Data Availability	The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/wfxyp. Additionally, PyCatFlow (a Python package for visualizing categorical time series data used to create Figures 4 and 5) is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5531785.

🖇Attached ⋮

	🖇Attached	Name	🕓Date Modified ↧	Kind	Access
↩	[Parent Directory]
	seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees.html ├ Part of DOI: 10.1177/1461444820940293 ├ Part of ISSN: 1461-4448 └ Part of e-ISSN: 1461-7315	Seeing the Forest for the Trees Diagrams	2021-09	📊Infographics	🔓Open Access
	platform-and-app-histories.html ├ DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_16 ├ Part of ISBN: 978-3-030-63290-5 ├ Part of e-ISBN: 978-3-030-63291-5 ├ Part of DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5 ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 ├ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009 └ Cited by SERP: scholar.google.com	Platform and App Histories	2021-07-01	📄 📗Book Section	🔒Closed
	osf.io/wfxyp/ ├ DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/wfxyp ├ Linked to DOI: 10.1177/20563051221086228 ├ Linked to DOI: 10.25819/ubsi/9951 ├ Funded by URL: cais.nrw ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 └ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009	Historical Facebook Platform ‘Boundary Resources’ for Application Development, 2006–2020	2021-06-12	🗄Research Data	🔓Open Access
	spir.aoir.org ├ DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11185 ├ Part of e-ISSN: 2162-3317 ├ Funded by URL: cais.nrw ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 ├ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009 ├ Version of DOI: 10.25819/ubsi/9951 └ Cited by SERP: scholar.google.com	The Evolution of Facebook’s Graph API	2020-10-05	📄 🔍Conference Proceeding	🔓Open Access
📌	tools.digitalmethodologies.center └ Part of URL: digitalmethodologies.center	Center for Digital Methodologies Tools	2020-01	🔧Research Tools	🌍Public
📌	social-media-and-platform-historiography.html ├ DOI: 10.18146/tmg.434 ├ Part of URL: tmgonline.nl ├ Part of e-ISSN: 2213-7653 ├ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009 ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 └ Cited by SERP: scholar.google.com	Social Media and Platform Historiography	2019-11-06	📄 🔍Research Article	🔓Open Access
📌	facebooks-evolution.html ├ DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667 ├ Part of ISSN: 2470-1475 ├ Part of e-ISSN: 2470-1483 ├ Linked to OSF DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/47zyc ├ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009 ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 └ Cited by SERP: scholar.google.com	Facebook’s Evolution	2019-05-01	📄 🔍Research Article	🔓Open Access
	osf.io/47zyc/ ├ DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/47zyc ├ Linked to DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667 ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 └ Funded by Grant №: 275-45-009	Historical Facebook Platform ‘Boundary Resources’, 2006–2018	2018-12-07	🗄Research Data	🔓Open Access
	the-political-economy-of-social-data.html ├ DOI: 10.1145/3097286.3097324 ├ Part of ISBN: 978-1450348478 ├ Linked to OSF DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/47zyc ├ Funded by Grant №: 262513311 ├ Version of DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667 └ Cited by SERP: scholar.google.com	The Political Economy of Social Data	2017-07-28	📄 🔍Conference Proceeding	🔒Closed