Platformer

Platformer provides the means of coordination in a form that truly belongs to everyone. All of the Platformer protocols and technologies are open source, meaning that they can be freely distributed and modified.1 Platformer is not a single piece of software, nor is it a web site or web service. Platformer can be most readily compared with two of the key technologies that underpin the Internet and World Wide Web—HTTP, and HTML.

Like HTTP, Platformer describes how computers can talk to one another:2 web browsers use HTTP to get content from web servers; Platformer specifies how nodes can request and exchange information related to identifying constituencies and organizing actions. Like HTML, Platformer supplies a format for the exchange of information: web servers deliver web pages to browsers as HTML; Platformer specifies the means for capturing and encoding information about political positions, intentions, planned actions, and results.

Generally, people do not use Platformer directly, just as they do not use HTTP or HTML directly.3 Instead, most people use applications that communicate via Platformer.

So, for example, someone who has previously established a link among several online identities, such as a Facebook account, a blog, and an instant messaging identity, might answer a poll on Facebook that asks for a position on a war. Later that day, the same user might receive a proposal via instant messaging to participate in a boycott of a popular coffee chain—which that person frequents—with the explanation that this action will have a measurable effect on military policy. Since the connection will likely not be immediately apparent, the user will be invited to click a link which opens a page explaining how the seemingly unrelated boycott of the coffee shop will lead to legislative action on war policy—in this case, perhaps, the corporation that runs the coffee shops will receive a message stating that a significant quantity of regular customers pledge to boycott the coffee shop unless the corporation uses some of its lobbying funds to press the legislature to vote in the desired direction.

While there currently exist web sites that approximate some of this functionality, a critical problem is that the data on these sites is managed by a single entity. Legal protections such as privacy policies, and IT security policies, presumably protect user data from unwanted exploitation. But they also prevent the use of that data for many constructive ends. The centralization of the data as well as the application that manipulates it means that a tremendous amount of personal information is spread around, and duplicated, across many sites, yet its collective political and economic power can only be leveraged by any one individual to the extent that any given site owner imagines and offers such possibilities.

One key characteristic of Platformer, then, is that the communication and coordination services it provides are not centralized. There is no single entity that houses the data that Platformer manipulates, nor any single location where its various component programs run. Rather, all storage and processing is distributed, and anyone may participate in operating the infrastructure of the network by running a Platformer “node”. Anyone may also develop an application that makes use of this data, and anyone may use tools that permit the creation and management of issue-based campaigns.

However, critically, Platformer builds in unassailable security mechanisms that make it impossible for anyone to access anyone else’s personal data. While it may seem paradoxical that anyone can run a node, and that the nodes together hold the data, and yet the data cannot be accessed by any given individual, this is possible thanks to the manner in which all data is distributed. Essentially, every piece of data, including the identity of the individual it belongs to, is broken up into several pieces, and those several pieces cannot be assembled by anyone except the owner of that data. So an application developer can specify, for example, that a message should be sent to all people who favor a given ballot initiative, without ever knowing the identities of any of those people.

The security mechanisms are vital for making Platformer useful for people under political regimes that suppress or punish dissenting opinions. Data collection and profiling by authoritarian states becomes much more difficult with Platformer, because it is impossible to seize a physical (or a virtual) asset and uncover individual identities.

That the Platformer technology set is open source is key to ensuring the security of the system, because this allows anyone with adequate expertise—or anyone with access to someone with adequate expertise—to evaluate the software in use and satisfy, personally, any concerns about safety.4

• 1. More precisely, the technology is available under the GNU General Public License (http://www.fsf.org/​licensing/​licenses/​gpl.html), and hence should be termed “free”. However, frequent misunderstanding of “free” in English (“free as in freedom or free as in beer?”) tends to lead to the colloquial use of “open source” even when “free” is what is meant. The bottom line is that the source code for the software is available to anyone for free, that anyone can modify the software freely, and that these same rights must be extended to users of all derivative works—in other words, they cannot be revoked.
• 2. More correctly, HTTP describes how certain programs can talk to one another—the communication between actual machines happens at lower levels of the “protocol stack”—but for this analogy we are not concerned with the details.
• 3. Even though people do sometimes write HTML “by hand”, rarely does someone read HTML directly—instead, the markup tells a browser how to display text, images and other content.
• 4. This perhaps surprising utility of open source to security concerns has been acknowledged by none other than the National Security Agency of the United States, which maintains an open source version of Linux called Security Enhanced Linux (see http://www.nsa.gov/​research/​selinux).