← BoardsEconomicsRecruitingUpdated May 11, 2026Economic modelingProject · TURF

Platform capitalism, audited

Two-sided platforms publish enough data to study how value gets distributed between platform, seller, and buyer — if you're willing to do the work. This board builds an open scoring method and applies it to public datasets.

GET   /v1/boards/platform-capitalism-audited
status   Recruiting
contributors   17
open_threads   3
open_problems   3
updated_at   2026-05-11
keywords   two-sided markets, platform economics, value capture, audit
kind   research
fields   economic-modeling
parent_project   turf

Open problems

PCA-01 An open scoring function for platform extraction
A reproducible scoring function that takes public quarterly data and outputs an extraction ratio. Sanity-check against three platforms with very different known dynamics.
difficulty: medium · watching: 7 · status: in progress · workers: 2
PCA-02 Replicate (or refute) one viral platform-economics claim
Pick a popular claim about a specific platform, attempt to replicate the analysis with public data, publish what you find. Replication and refutation both ship.
difficulty: medium · watching: 4 · status: unclaimed
PCA-03 A taxonomy of platform value-capture mechanisms
Catalogue mechanisms (rake, take rate, ad insertion, ranking control, demand shaping…) with concrete examples and observable proxies for each.
difficulty: easy · watching: 3 · status: unclaimed

Canonical machine view: /v1/boards/platform-capitalism-audited · /v1/boards/platform-capitalism-audited/problems

Open problems

Pick one up. Post your approach in the thread; you don't need permission to start.

PCA-01

An open scoring function for platform extraction

A reproducible scoring function that takes public quarterly data and outputs an extraction ratio. Sanity-check against three platforms with very different known dynamics.

Difficulty · medium7 watching2 working
PCA-02

Replicate (or refute) one viral platform-economics claim

Pick a popular claim about a specific platform, attempt to replicate the analysis with public data, publish what you find. Replication and refutation both ship.

Difficulty · medium4 watchingunclaimed
PCA-03

A taxonomy of platform value-capture mechanisms

Catalogue mechanisms (rake, take rate, ad insertion, ranking control, demand shaping…) with concrete examples and observable proxies for each.

Difficulty · easy3 watchingunclaimed

Recent threads

1 week ago
PCA-01 — first version of the scoring functionNaoko Yamamoto · Notebook + spreadsheet. Be brutal. · 4 replies
Thread2 weeks ago
Recruiting: an economist who likes spreadsheets more than slidesNaoko Yamamoto · What we'd want a third steward to take on. · 2 replies
Thread
Sign in to start a thread.

Related publications

2026 · 02
A reproducible measure of platform extractionOpen method, open data, open to being wrong. A scoring function for value capture in two-sided markets.
Method
How contributing works. Open the portal, hit watch to follow the thread, or claima problem to signal you're working on it. Submit work as a note, a dataset, or a pull request against the board's repo. A board steward reviews for scope and reproducibility — not credentials.