Platform governance as a social movement

Most prior research on platform governance has focused on how large, central platform owners manage their ecosystems of third-party developers in a top-down fashion by setting, overseeing, and enforcing platform rules. Relative to the platform owner, each individual third-party appears small and insignificant. Even though third parties may be weak in isolation, this chapter develops the idea that they can create a counterweight to the platform owner by joining forces and forming a movement. We explore this idea in the context of Apple’s iOS ecosystem by investigating the attempts of various third parties to collectively protest and change Apple’s business practices. Using mainly secondary data, we illustrate how a movement of third -party developers emerged between summer 2016 and summer 2021. Overall, our findings show how various individuals and organizations that were initially disconnected and isolated became part of an emerging social movement, whose constituents became increasingly interconnected and organized. We show how this movement forced Apple into changing some of its App Store rules and influenced regulatory initiatives in the EU and the US. We conclude with a brief discussion of implications for the platform governance literature, regulators, and practitioners.