The Capability Approach and A Critique of the Design of Digital Spaces

Much of today’s public sphere, where people come together to participate in public discussion, exists in digital spaces, as in social media, news media, and online discussion forums. This paper argues that the current framework for evaluating such digital public spaces has been under examined. We argue that a specific version of utilitarianism that defines welfare as the satisfaction of revealed preferences implicitly guides the technology industry’s design and evaluation of these spaces. This approach allows the big tech platforms to collapse any difference between a firm’s interests and those of users. Instead, we argue that this evaluative space lacks the conceptual resources to diagnose or to understand the shortcomings of today’s digital public spaces, or to coherently respond to these shortcomings. We consider a libertarian rights-based framework as an alternative philosophical framework for the design of digital spaces but find it insufficient. We argue that the capability approach, as an objective and pluralist value theory, in which people critically evaluate and deliberate about their values together, offers a more constructive understanding of individual flourishing in digital public spaces. While this paper primarily seeks to argue why we should apply the capability approach to digital spaces, we conclude by suggesting how to apply the capability approach to digital spaces.