Aaron Shapiro

Article abstract: Early enthusiasts imagined a cyberspace free from centralized control. Today, Internet platforms surveil and regulate user activity through systematic governance mechanisms, including content moderation. This article examines how centralized control became the taken-for-granted solution to platform challenges, a shift that abandoned the dream of self-governance. By analyzing the rise of “Trust and Safety” at eBay between 1995 and 2007, I show that platform governance emerged to align eBay with corporate pressures as it transitioned from a startup to a public, multinational corporation. Trust and Safety at eBay came to designate a department, a discipline, and a philosophical approach to questions concerning the governance of users, synthesizing two competing visions: Pierre Omidyar's cyberlibertarian ideal of community self-governance through mutual surveillance, and Meg Whitman's corporate vision of a centrally regulated “well-lit marketplace.” Drawing on internal and external company documents, I demonstrate how Trust and Safety provided a moral justification for centralized governance by framing corporate vigilance as user protection, making control of users compatible with the “community” ethos of early Internet culture. As an early commercial platform, eBay acted as a laboratory for platform governance, where the visions and practices of Trust and Safety were developed and then exported to other major platforms.

Screenshot of eBay's homepage in 2009.

my (first!) article, “From the virtual community to ‘Trust and Safety’: eBay (1995–2007) and the rise of platform governance” is out on Big Data & Society! it is a history of content moderation at eBay, where they coined the term Trust and Safety 🌐 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I wrote a follow-up to my story about the police attack on the Eris Parade. 8 years later it was a very different story. "The parade takes on a life and logic of it's own, and being within it is to be, for a time, part of a creature much larger than yourself."

flaminghydra.com/encore-in-ne...

(PDF) Subscription's entanglements PDF | On Feb 5, 2026, Aaron Shapiro published Subscription's entanglements | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

new jawn from me out today in economy & society on the "subscription economy," part of my larger project on *the paywall society* www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Subscription’s entanglements Scholars cite subscription paywalls and recurring fees as evidence of a wider political-economic shift from commodification to assetization by digital enclosure, but the mechanics of the subscripti...

Now available in Latest Articles
@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social interrogates 'subscription', a taken-for-granted economic bedrock of digital capitalism
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

yay! congrats! the cover looks great!

Lots of people lost their jobs over this. Students lost badly needed resources. And the people who got f’d over were disproportionately already marginalized, underpaid & trying harder than they should’ve had to just to do their jobs in environments that were uncaring at best if not outright hostile

Value by weight, I don’t think one could do better than Aleppo Peppo from med deli, chapel hill USA

🚨 Don’t Miss The Virtual Private Donor Screening – This Sunday Feb 15th! 🚨

We’re excited to invite you to our Virtual Private Donor Screening of Moms Club happening:

🗓 Sunday, February 15th
⏰ 4:00 PM PT

gofund.me/7d1cd445f

How to Apply We are now welcoming applications from students wishing to start in the Fall 2026 semester. The deadline to apply is July 15, 2026. To be considered for admission, you must have: We prefer…

The John Jay economics program (where I teach) is accepting applications for Fall 2026 for our MA program. We are one of the only programs in the country focused on radical political economy, at a public school in the heart of Manhattan. For more information, see johnjayeconomics.org/how-to-apply/

Going to be reupping this periodically over the next month. Have thoughts about traditional craft work? A project on where traditional and platform economies collide? Analog/digital relationship in craft and creative work? Send me an abstract.

Hang it in the Louvre

this one's a banger (no mash)

me too !

Introduction to the special issue on Digital Solidarity Economies This introduction situates Digital Solidarity Economies (DSE) as an analytical and practical framework for reimagining the digital economy through cooperation, mutual aid, and shared ownership.

Introduction to the special issue on Digital Solidarity Economies
policyreview.info/articles/ana... 👏

I logged on today to post this after some hiatus and my gracious that Stancil guy truly is an economically illiterate asshole. Also, bump, look at my article.

I even made a graph

(PDF) Subscription's entanglements PDF | On Feb 5, 2026, Aaron Shapiro published Subscription's entanglements | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

new jawn from me out today in economy & society on the "subscription economy," part of my larger project on *the paywall society* www.researchgate.net/publication/...

JOB FAIRY: Reminder that I am hiring a Senior Researcher (2 years postdoctoral experience - 5 year post) for the ERC funded LivePlatforms research project exploring how people make livelihoods in platform work in Ireland. Please apply or share widely! Closing date Jan 5. www.ucd.ie/ics/vacancie...

archive.is/202512092300...

“Should our media system primarily serve democracy, or profit?”

NEW in @thenation.com: the team behind our new report argue the answer must be democracy—and lay out what it’ll take to break up corporate media and rebuild public media: www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Abstract: Recent political communication scholarship finds that groups and identities play a central role in the crises faced by political and media systems globally, particularly in democracies. Yet an individualist orientation in the literature has resulted in key theoretical and conceptual limitations, preventing a broader group-centric theoretical framework from emerging. We synthesize disparate bodies of theory on groups, politics, and communication to offer three basic propositions underlying a group theory of political communication. First, it is the group—not the individual—that is the fundamental organizing unit of social and political life. Second, groups are constituted through communication, which is central to how they define their politics. Third, groups and politics are reciprocally influencing forces through political communication, oriented around power. We offer a framework for studying the role of groups in political communication at the micro, meso, and macro levels, providing a concrete agenda for the study of groups in political communication.

🚨New pub alert!🚨 Now available open-access in @journal-of-comm.bsky.social, we (w/ @dkreiss.bsky.social, @danlane.bsky.social, & @shannimcg.bsky.social) critique political communication's "Identity Turn" and offer instead a foundation for studying #polcomm from a *group* perspective. 🧵

I do love getting a lil tiny bit high and watching ken burns docs. The american rev has some decent materialist analysis! Needle drop when narrator names the land speculators with investments west of the appalachians pissed at the british for closing the frontier (it's the founding fathers)

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Super excited to announce a new piece out in the world: States and platform capitalisms: A conversation. This is a collaboration with some amazing thinkers and friends- led by @sayshatim.bsky.social Joe Khalil @linzhang.bsky.social & @rahmuk.bsky.social

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I wrote about this here journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....
Non-paywalled version here www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Lori Emerson - Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook. Mexican Summer & Anthology. Buy Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook by Lori Emerson on Mexican Summer & Anthology.

a Friday surprise! my beloved book, Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, is now officially back in print AND ON SALE! #othernetworks if you know folks who have been trying to track down a copy, I'd love it if you'd repost shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898...

What’s the difference between “extractive assemblage” and “predatory formation” anyway?

cartoon graphic of robots repairing a spaceship -- Canvas is experiencing issues due to an ongoing AWS incident

blessed freedom

How I feel about my contemporaries turning 40..