API Governance:
The Case of Facebook’s Evolution
│ │
📂History and Evolution of Facebook Platform Researchers, policymakers, and competition and regulation authorities worldwide recognize the utility of application programming interfaces (APIs) in powering the digital economy and driving datafication and platformization processes. However, it remains unclear how the APIs of leading social media relate to platform governance and how this relationship evolved. This article traces the evolution of Facebook’s APIs, which evolved from a relatively simple programming interface for data access into a complex layered and interconnected governance arrangement. The study draws on a large corpus of (archived) developer pages and API reference documentation to examine the history of Facebook’s API governance; that is, the governance of and by Facebook through its APIs. This historical analysis emphasizes the technical dimensions and dynamics of what, how, and whom powerful platforms seek to govern, thus highlighting the technicity of platform governance and how it evolved. Because APIs facilitate and govern the material conditions of app development and the social and economic processes they sustain, powerful platforms influence the evolution of their larger ecosystems. As such, the technicity of Facebook’s API governance represents a major source of the platform’s “infrastructural power.”
🏷APIs 🏷platform evolution 🏷platform governance 🏷Facebook 🏷infrastructural power
📋 ✍Cite
| 📋Cite (APA) | van der Vlist, F. N., Helmond, A., Burkhardt, M., & Seitz, T. (2022). API Governance: The Case of Facebook’s Evolution. Social Media + Society, 8(2), 1–24. SAGE Publications. DOI: 10.1177/20563051221086228. |
|---|---|
| 🔗Link (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221086228 |
| Kind | Journal Article; Original Research Article |
|---|---|
| Author | F. N. van der Vlist; A. Helmond; M. Burkhardt; T. Seitz |
| Designer | F. N. van der Vlist |
| Publication Date | 2022, May 7 [first published online]; 2022, April–June [issue published] |
| Journal | Social Media + Society (SM+S) |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1–24 (24) |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (London, United Kingdom) |
| Identifier | 10.1177/20563051221086228 [self]; 2056-3051 [part of]; cais.nrw [funded by]; 262513311 [funded by]; 275-45-009 [funded by] |
| License | CC BY-ND 4.0 |
| Data Availability | The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/wfxyp. Additionally, PyCatFlow (a Python package for visualizing categorical time series data used to create Figures 4 and 5) is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5531785. |
🖇Attached ⋮
| 🖇Attached | Name | 🕓Date Modified ↧ | Kind | Access | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ↩ | [Parent Directory] | ||||
| ↪ | spir.aoir.org ├ DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12181 |
The Governance of Facebook Platform | 2021-09-16 | 📄 🔍Conference Proceeding | 🔓Open Access |
| 📌 | seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees.html |
Seeing the Forest for the Trees Diagrams | 2021-09 | 📊Infographics | 🔓Open Access |
| the-technicity-of-platform-governance.html ├ DOI: 10.25819/ubsi/9951 ├ URN-NBN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:467-19380 |
The Technicity of Platform Governance | 2021-07-23 | 📄Working Paper | 🔓Open Access | |
| platform-and-app-histories.html ├ DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_16 |
Platform and App Histories | 2021-07-01 | 📄 📗Book Section | 🔒Closed | |
| ↪ | osf.io/wfxyp/ ├ DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/wfxyp |
Historical Facebook Platform ‘Boundary Resources’ for Application Development, 2006–2020 | 2021-06-12 | 🗄Research Data | 🔓Open Access |
| ↪ | spir.aoir.org ├ DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11185 |
The Evolution of Facebook’s Graph API | 2020-10-05 | 📄 🔍Conference Proceeding | 🔓Open Access |
| 📌 | tools.digitalmethodologies.center |
Center for Digital Methodologies Tools | 2020-01 | 🔧Research Tools | 🌍Public |
| 📌 | social-media-and-platform-historiography.html ├ DOI: 10.18146/tmg.434 |
Social Media and Platform Historiography | 2019-11-06 | 📄 🔍Research Article | 🔓Open Access |
| 📌 | facebooks-evolution.html ├ DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667 |
Facebook’s Evolution | 2019-05-01 | 📄 🔍Research Article | 🔓Open Access |
| ↪ | osf.io/47zyc/ ├ DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/47zyc |
Historical Facebook Platform ‘Boundary Resources’, 2006–2018 | 2018-12-07 | 🗄Research Data | 🔓Open Access |
| the-political-economy-of-social-data.html ├ DOI: 10.1145/3097286.3097324 |
The Political Economy of Social Data | 2017-07-28 | 📄 🔍Conference Proceeding | 🔒Closed |