Resisting walled gardens and big tech silos

PlaceCal is a software in direct opposition to the capture and funneling of community infrastructure into big-tech walled-gardens. It works on a principle that communities should have agency over their own data, and understand how to get the most out of the tools we use to organise our communities without becoming complicit in the big-tech agenda.

In the current tech landscape, the tools which are most accessible are also often tools which come with a catch. Many sell your data to advertisers or to train AI models, or have punitive algorithms which can obscure or limit your reach unless you play into their games of regular posting and ultimately spending more and more time and energy on their platforms.

What are walled gardens?

Walled gardens are platforms and services which don't interoperate easily with software outside of their ecosystem. They usually require you to have an account and sign in with them to view the content on their platform, and might also require additionally becoming part of a specific channel or group on top of logging in. Walled gardens can also be referred to as silos, and are most associated with 'big tech' companies like Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), X, Apple, etc.

On top of requiring you to log in to see the content on their platform they will usually disincentivise linking out to other sites, sometimes algorithmically 'punishing' posts which encourage users to leave their platform. They're not interested in playing nicely with others, because they have an economic incentive to keep you reliant on their ecosystem (and bring all your friends along too) as this allows them to track your data and sell it to advertisers and for AI training.

Algorithms

A key way walled gardens function is through the use of algorithms to determine what users of their site see. Algorithms are employed to make it more addictive to use their platforms, pushing posts which are more divisive or 'engaging' to the feeds of their users. This doesn't work in the favour of groups who are simply trying to let people know about something happening in their neighbourhood—it pushes groups into using a platform daily to try and grow their reach on top of the thing they are on the platform to promote in the first place. This wastes time which could otherwise be spent planning and delivering services and creates a sense of disappointment when posts advertising events don't do as well as hoped. Algorithmic feeds also often surface days-old posts just at the wrong time, meaning potential attendees might not find out about an event until after it's happened.

PlaceCal resists this by using a non-algorithmic, chronological feed of upcoming events. Curation happens at the Partner level, through human connections fostered by PlaceCal Organisers. By showing all events by trusted Partners in chronological order, PlaceCal sites stay populated, relevant and local while resisting spam and avoiding the addictive properties of algorithmic feeds.

Accessibility issues around logging in

When information is on a walled garden platform, this means anyone who wants to know what's going on in a community has to sign up to the same walled garden. Logging in is a significant accessibility issue—ask any librarian. It's not a given that everyone who needs to access your community information will be able to keep track of email addresses, passwords, and 2FA. This also assumes that everyone in your community has access to their own personal computer or smartphone.

PlaceCal resolves this by generating a public-facing website which is accessible without logging in. This means anyone in a community can access their PlaceCal Site from any internet-connected device, regardless of if they own it, if it's a library machine, or if it's borrowed from a friend.

Tracking and surveillance

Walled gardens rely on the data they collect from users in order to make a profit. It's their incentive for the walled garden behaviour—they want to keep you on their platform as long as possible so they can extract as much data from you as possible. Ultimately, this goes against many of the goals of community organisers and means that even the most well-intentioned work is propping up the same hegemony we're trying to organise against.

Lack of agency over data

On top of the surveillance, relying on corporate platforms to maintain the infrastructure our communities are built on means that they're free to change how they operate at any time, which can scupper community communication. PlaceCal used to be able to pull data from Facebook, but they changed how their API works and now it can't. This has been a significant barrier for people using Facebook to organise events. Accounts are also subject to the terms of service on the platforms which host them, which be difficult to navigate when it's not possible to talk to a person about why an account has been suspended.

Cumulative impact

A cumulative effect of the shortfalls of walled gardens over time is a general sense of disillusionment with platforms and technology. PlaceCal is designed to combat this by demonstrating that it doesn't have to be like that—we have the tools we need to communicate about and within our communities without needing big tech companies to act as a mediator. This disillusionment however can be a significant obstacle PlaceCal Organisers face when onboarding Partners—many people simply don't want to give any more time to learning a new technology because the ones they've already used have broken their own usability promises.