Responsibility for Platform Problems

Abstract

Last en zeker niet least: dankjewel Nic. Dankjewel dat je met me meeging naar het Hoge Noorden, dat je jezelf opzijzette om mij mijn droom te laten najagen. Dankjewel dat je me steunde, mijlpalen meevierde, luisterde naar mijn geklaag -en door alles heen mij onvermoeid voorhield: eyes on the prize. D 1Platforms themselves readily integrated this discourse into their branding (Acquier et al., 2017, p. 2; Schor, 2014, p. 7). "A friend, not a front desk", was Airbnb's first slogan (Stone, 2017, p. 28). Airbnb claims to build a community among hosts and guests around the world, fostering social reciprocity and mutual trust (Calo & Rosenblat, 2017, p. 1636. Uber, in turn, advertises its platform to drivers as "an 1 The term 'stranger sharing' comes from Schor (2014, p. 7). W 3 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ABNB/airbnb/net-worth (accessed 23 May 2023).4 https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-q4-2022-and-full-year-financial-results/ (accessed 23 May 2023).5 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UBER/uber-technologies/net-worth (accessed 23 May 2023).6 https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ (accessed 23 May 2023).7 I discuss these platform problems in more detail in Chapter 1 ( §1.3).8 See: https://www.scoop-program.org/.12 This subset of for-profit peer-to-peer platforms more or less extensionally coincides with the subset of peer-to-peer platforms that facilitate monetary exchanges (rather than barter exchanges or gifting). Phrased differently, peer-to-peer platforms that facilitate monetary exchanges between peers typically operate on a for-profit basis. OChapter 1 -Peer-to-Peer Platforms 10 base (Gerwe & Silva, 2020, p. 72), whence they have a more profound impact on economic and societal processes relative to non-profit peer-to-peer platforms. 13 Later this chapter, my focus will further narrow to Uber and Airbnb. As I mentioned in the introductory chapter, these two are the largest peer-to-peer platforms in operation, in terms of both user bases and market capitalization. As a corollary, most scholarly literature on peer-to-peer platforms has been devoted to Uber and Airbnb. This chapter is organized as follows. In the next section (1.1), I lay out the main characteristics of peer-to-peer platforms, with the aim of offering a solid understanding of how these platforms operate as well as on how they relate to, and differ from, other types of (online) platforms. In sections 1.2 and 1.3, I shift focus to the economic and social impacts of two particular peer-to-peer platforms: Uber and Airbnb. I discuss the benefits they deliver as well as the concerns they raise. Platform AnatomyFar from being a monolithic phenomenon, peer-to-peer platforms widely differ according to their business practices and the activities they specialize in (Gerwe & Silva, 2020, p. 65). This frustrates efforts to formulate a universal definition of peerto-peer platforms. Therefore, a more fruitful strategy is to identify the key characteristics that they share. I distinguish four such characteristics, bearing on:(1) on...