Achieving direct observational/interviewing access to big, data-intensive digital platforms is notoriously difficult, so this paper will follow a materially disruptive episode that renders platform practices more visible. That episode is Apple’s 2021 App Tracking Transparency changes to iPhones. The paper will begin by discussing the material practices of data accumulation involving mobile phones that are highlighted by the disruption, and Apple’s efforts to block those practices. It will then turn to the “messy,” implicit, largely subterranean, conflict that has replaced 2020-21’s fierce, overt controversy. At stake in that conflict are two very different ways of materially organising the data flows crucial to the $500 billion app economy. The paper draws upon 111 interviews with 88 practitioners of digital advertising and related technical specialists, along with extensive participation in sector meetings, and, e.g., a training course on the advertising of games and other apps.

About the lecturer

Donald Mackenzie is a sociologist of science and technology, and his research aims to throw new light on their role in shaping the modern world. He works on topics such as how financial-market participants use mathematical models, how nuclear weapons systems are designed, and how those involved try to produce high-confidence knowledge of the safety and security of computer systems. He is the author of several books: „Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets“, on HFT was published by Princeton University Press in May 2021; „Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance“ (MIT Press, 1990) and „An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets“ (MIT Press, 2006).

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About the lecture series