Platforms, privacy, and power

A handful of firms now sit between people and the network: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and a short list of cloud and model vendors behind them. This paper treats them as subjects — employers, publishers of rules, defendants, lobbyists — not as a lifestyle beat.

What “platform” means here

An app store that takes a cut. A search box that assigns attention. A social graph that hosts speech and advertising. A cloud that rents compute. A model that answers in prose. Each of those is a product and a market and, increasingly, a regulated object.

Privacy is not a vibe. It is a statute, a setting, a breach notification, or a court order. When we write about privacy we will say which of those we have. When we write about AI we will say whether we are describing a shipped product, a research paper, or a company’s claim about the future.

This explainer sits on Tech. The same firms, as employers and as stocks, also appear on Business.