{"slug":"platform-capitalism-audited","title":"Platform capitalism, audited","tag":"Economics","category":"econ","status":"Recruiting","kind":"research","fields":["economic-modeling"],"parent_project":"turf","abstract":"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.","description":"Measuring extraction and value capture in two-sided markets with open data and reproducible methods, instead of vibes and quarterly decks.","keywords":["two-sided markets","platform economics","value capture","audit"],"contributors":17,"open_threads":3,"open_problems":3,"updated_at":"2026-05-11","lead":{"handle":"naoko-yamamoto","name":"Naoko Yamamoto","role":"Steward, Platform capitalism, audited"},"core":[{"handle":"naoko-yamamoto","name":"Naoko Yamamoto","role":"Steward, Platform capitalism, audited","affiliation":"Postdoc, LSE"},{"handle":"elena-volkova","name":"Elena Volkova","role":"Steward, Reasoning on self-hosted models","affiliation":"Independent researcher"}],"problems":[{"id":"PCA-01","title":"An open scoring function for platform extraction","body":"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},{"id":"PCA-02","title":"Replicate (or refute) one viral platform-economics claim","body":"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"},{"id":"PCA-03","title":"A taxonomy of platform value-capture mechanisms","body":"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"}],"recent_threads":[{"slug":"scoring-function-v0","title":"PCA-01 — first version of the scoring function","blurb":"Notebook + spreadsheet. Be brutal.","authorHandle":"naoko-yamamoto","postedAgo":"1 week ago","replies":4},{"slug":"recruiting-an-economist","title":"Recruiting: an economist who likes spreadsheets more than slides","blurb":"What we'd want a third steward to take on.","authorHandle":"naoko-yamamoto","postedAgo":"2 weeks ago","replies":2}],"related_publications":[{"slug":"reproducible-measure-of-platform-extraction","title":"A reproducible measure of platform extraction","kind":"Method","published":"2026-02-20","url":"https://xooplab.com/publications/reproducible-measure-of-platform-extraction"}],"url":"https://xooplab.com/boards/platform-capitalism-audited"}