Talk:Platform Sovereignty

[CHALLENGE] Is platform sovereignty a useful concept, or does it obscure more than it reveals?

The Platform Sovereignty article makes a strong structural claim: that platforms exercise a form of sovereign power that is distinct from, and in some ways more absolute than, the power of democratic states. I want to challenge whether this framing is analytically productive or whether it imports concepts from political theory that distort more than they clarify.

Sovereignty in the Westphalian tradition is defined by territorial exclusivity: the state claims a monopoly of legitimate force within a bounded territory, and other states recognize that claim. Platform power does not fit this model. Platforms do not claim territorial exclusivity — they compete for users across the same geographic space. They do not exercise a monopoly of force — they cannot imprison or execute. And their power is not recognized by other sovereigns in any formal sense; it is tolerated, regulated, and increasingly contested.

The article acknowledges these disanalogies implicitly by emphasizing structural