How Not to Know Ourselves. Platform data do not provide a direct… | by Angela Xiao Wu | Jul, 2020 | Data & Society: Points

What are the human actions and predispositions that initially spark our curiosity? What is the kind of self-knowledge that we would cherish as a foundation for enriching our sociality, our civil and public institutions, and our democratic process? Readily resorting to platform data analytics for such knowledge risks taking platform environments as our entire world. Instead, when dealing with platform data we should aspire to “put the platforms in perspective,” foregrounding rather than obscuring their interventions in how we behave.