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Dominant digital platforms today act as gatekeepers of user attention. This gives gatekeepers enormous power over their ecosystems of suppliers, who are reliant on how the platform will allocate user attention for their visibility.
This research explores how a dominant platform allocates value algorithmically and how they might increase their share of value when they exploit patterns in user behaviour and their captive ecosystems of suppliers and/or advertisers. This might involve the gatekeeper disregarding user preferences when it allocates user attention, ignoring the information content of their supplier ecosystems, promoting paid information over optimally relevant organic information, or manipulating user attention through subtle changes in the decision-making context of the platform.
Research
- Ilan Strauss, Tim O’reilly, and Mariana Mazzucato, Amazon’s Algorithmic Rents: The economics of information on Amazon, 15 Hastings Sci. & Tech. L.J. 203 (2024). Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_science_technology_law_journal/vol15/iss2/5
- O’Reilly, Tim., Strauss, Ilan., and Mazzucato, Mariana. 2024. Algorithmic attention rents: A theory of digital platform market power. Data & Policy, 02 February 2024, Volume 6, 2024, e6.
- Strauss, I., O’Reilly, T. and Mazzucato, M. (2023). Amazon’s Algorithmic Rents: The economics of information on Amazon. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2023-12)
- Rock, R., Strauss, I., O’Reilly, T. and Mazzucato, M. (2023). Behind the Clicks: Can Amazon allocate user attention as it pleases? UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2023-10).
- O’Reilly, T., Strauss, I. and Mazzucato, M. (2023). Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2023-10).
- Mariana Mazzucato, Ilan Strauss, Tim O’Reilly, and Josh Ryan-Collins, 2023. Regulating Big Tech: The role of enhanced disclosures, Oxford Review of Economic Policy. Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2023, Pages 47–69.
- Mariana Mazzucato, Marietje Schaake, Seb Krier, Josh Entsminger, 2022. Governing artificial intelligence in the public interest, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2022/12)
- Mariana Mazzucato, Josh Ryan-Collins, Giorgos and Gouzoulis, 2020. Theorising and Mapping Modern Economic Rents, UCL IIPP Working paper 2020/13
In the press
- Governments Must Shape AI’s Future, in Project Syndicate's Quarterly Issue Profit and Peril, Mariana Mazzucato and Fausto Gernone, 11 March 2024.
- The Algorithm and Its Discontents. Project Syndicate. Mariana Mazzucato and Ilan Strauss, February 2024.
- We must stop AI replicating the problems of surveillance capitalism. Financial Times. Interview with Tim O'Reilly, November 2023.
- Pluralistic: Big Tech's "attention rents. Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow. Working Paper review, November 2023.
- Tim O’Reilly on AI’s Role in the Attention Economy. Rockefeller Foundation. Tim O'Reilly, August, 2023.
- AI in the Common Interest. Project Syndicate. Gabriela Ramos and Mariana Mazzucato, December 2022.
- Reimagining the Platform Economy. Project Syndicate. Mariana Mazzucato, Rainer Kattel, Tim O'Reilly, and Josh Entsminger, February 2021.
- ‘The landlords of the Internet’. Danny In The Valley. Tim O’Reilly, Dec 4, 2020. Apple Podcasts
- Antitrust regulators are using the wrong tools to break up Big Tech. Tim O’Reilly, Quartz. July, 2019.
Events
1. Algorithmic Rents research showcase,12 October 2023 in conversation with Mariana Mazzucato, Tim O’Reilly and Ilan Strauss on Algorithmic Rents. Download here the showcase presentation slides.
2. UCL IIPP hosted an expert workshop on algorithmic rents in October 2022 - To inform our research process investigating algorithmic attention rents, UCL IIPP hosted an expert workshop in October 2022. Experts from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, Ofcom, and the Financial Conduct Authority joined academics to discuss IIPP’s latest digital economy research on ‘algorithmic rents': how algorithms distribute benefits through allocating users’ attention.
Our Supporter
Contact
Ilan Strauss, Senior Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).
Email: i.strauss@ucl.ac.uk