The Governance of Disinformation. Everyday Practices of Platform Sovereignty

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Shoshana Zuboff (2019) and Benjamin Bratton (2016), this article discusses the emergence of platform sovereignty in the context of deplatforming and deplatformization practices. Content moderation measures can be implemented by dominant subjects under exceptional circumstances, such as the Ukraine War, or in the aftermath of a coup d’etat, such as the Capitol Hill assault in 2021, and they underline the sovereign role of platforms vis à vis that of national states in the context of information and disinformation governance. This article analyzes deplatforming and deplatformization practices to highlight the leading principles of platform sovereignty: the radical indifference to social media communications and the defense of the data stack, which enable dominant platforms to maintain their superiority in the social media ecosystem.