Category: By topic

*New publication* App store governance: implications, limitations, and regulatory responses

Josh Cowls

In this article, we analyse two case studies: the removals from app stores in 2021 of the fringe American social media app Parler and of the Russian opposition app Smart Voting. On the basis of this analysis, we identify three critical limitations for app store governance at present: Apple’s and Google’s dominance, the substantive opacity of their respective app store guidelines, and the procedural arbitrariness with which these guidelines are applied to specific cases. We then assess the potential efficacy of legislative proposals in the EU and US to intervene in this domain and conclude by offering some recommendations supporting more efficacious and socially responsible app store governance.

I have a new article with Jessica Morley and Luciano Floridi now published in Telecommunications Policy, which looks at the issues for app store governance raised by the removals of Parler and Smart Voting from app stores.

*New publication* Constitutional metaphors: Facebook’s “Supreme Court” and the Legitimation of Platform Governance

Josh Cowls

A range of rhetorical devices have been used to simplify the complexities associated with the governance of online platforms. This includes “constitutional metaphors”: metaphorical allusions to traditional political concepts such as statehood, democracy, and constitutionalism. Here, we empirically trace the ascent of a powerful constitutional metaphor currently employed in the news media discourse on platform governance: characterizations of Facebook’s Oversight Board (OB) as a “supreme court.”

I have a new paper published open access in New Media and Society with Philipp Darius, Dominiquo Santistevan and Moritz Schramm, about Facebook’s “Oversight Board” and the depiction of it as a “Supreme Court”.

New article in Monocle Magazine’s anniversary issue

Josh Cowls

While social media’s incredible growth has fostered extraordinary new possibilities for human connection and creativity, it has also enabled – and at times even incentivised – a 21st century resurgence of extremism, disinformation, surveillance, and many other ills.

For the 15th anniversary issue of Monocle, I was commissioned to write a piece about the many changes to social media, and society, since 2007. The piece is now available in print and online.

Trump Central? App stores as a new front in the platform governance of Donald Trump

Josh Cowls

Trump’s transition from mainstream platform user to putative platform operator marks a watershed moment in the politics of platform governance. The launch of “Truth Social” brings to light a frequently underrated aspect of platform governance: how platform operators govern not only their own users, but also other platforms. 

I have a new blog post at the OII discussing what the launch of Donald Trump’s “Truth Social” app may mean for platform governance going forward.

The 2020 Yearbook of the Digital Ethics Lab

Josh Cowls

In the midst of lockdowns and social distancing, the role of digital technology in society has become made ever more integral. For many of us, the lived experience of the pandemic would have been strikingly different even a decade ago without the affordances of the latest information and communication technology—even as digital divides persist within, and between, societies. Yet as digital technology “fades into the foreground” of everyday life, for both scholars and civil society at large it is necessary to engage even more robustly with the implications of such shifts.

I am pleased to say that the latest edition of the Digital Ethics Lab Yearbook, which Jessica Morley and I co-edited, is now in print. In our Introduction, we provide an overview of this year’s contributions.