The missing ontology: why platform interventions systematically fail

This paper examines a profound philosophical disjunction in platform capitalism: corporate actors, despite their technological orientation, operate as practical realists through sophisticated mechanism design and multi-layered interventions, while critical scholars and reformers, despite their social science foundations, remain trapped in an instrumental-technological view of platforms. Applying relational emergence theory from critical realist philosophy, we demonstrate how digital platforms function as emergent entities whose causal powers and properties transcend their constituent technological components. Through analysis of worker reclassification efforts and platform cooperativism initiatives, we reveal how this ontological asymmetry produces persistent reform failures: platform organizations continuously redesign mechanisms to preserve essential extractive properties, effectively neutralizing reformers’ surface-level interventions through strategic reorganization of underlying mechanisms. Our philosophical analysis challenges the dominant conception of platforms as neutral technological tools that can be simply reformed or repurposed, revealing them instead as emergent entities purposefully designed for value extraction. This perspective makes three key contributions: (1) developing a comprehensive emergent ontology of platforms that bridges technological and social dimensions; (2) providing an ontologically-grounded explanation for the recurring failure of reform efforts – what we term platform morphostasis; and (3) proposing new conceptual foundations for effective resistance based on engaging with platforms at the level of their generative mechanisms rather than their empirical consequences. The paper ultimately argues that addressing platform dominance requires critical actors to adopt the realist ontological approach that has proven so effective for corporate platform developers.