Tomás G.

thanks to @rachbgm.bsky.social @beccalew.bsky.social @katejsim.bsky.social @xiaochang.bsky.social and many others not here for their help in getting this out!

eBay's story shows how the cyberlibertarian dream died: founder Pierre Omidyar’s (left) vision of a self-governing community was supplanted by ex-Bain Meg Whitman’s (right) idea of a well-lit marketplace. an emerging discipline called “Trust and Safety” would come to synthesize both.

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/...

Everyone should read @tomasgna.bsky.social's brilliant article about eBay and its creation of centralized "trust and safety" efforts!!!

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

Getting Really Into Walks Original essays, each of which pulls an artifact from the Whole Earth Index and plumbs its deeper histories, arguing for why it helps us understand our present, and add nuance to the Whole Earth legac...

fantastic, from @kolahr.bsky.social 🤖 redux.wholeearth.info/index/gettin...

latour's/jim johnson's sociology of a door closer! or derrida's the animal that therefore i am

fantastic article by federico perelmuter (not here yet!) in @parapraxismag.bsky.social on the depoliticization of psychoanalysis in argentina

two images i hope to talk about -- marcos galperin's mythical founding site of mercadolibre in a parking garage, and this very emblematic and random photo shoot with ebay's pierre omidyar and meg whitman.

hello blueskiers! reporting here to say i’ll be in #aoir2025, presenting a paper on latin american startup entrepreneurs (which got the honorable mention for best paper award 🥳) and another one about the history of “trust and safety” at eBay (and everywhere!) 📦 excited about the panels, rio, all!