Acknowledgments

This book has spanned upward of three years of writing, and my thinking about the problems of platform governance began well before this book was even conceived, in 2018, when I was embedded in Facebook’s Civic Integrity team. In that time period, many people have influenced the course of this book, though, as is customary, none are responsible for its many flaws.

First, the Knight Foundation generously provided a grant to enable me to find the time to do the writing – without this assistance, the book would have been even further behind than it is. My thanks to John Sands and Anabelle Torek at Knight for their faith in the project, and to Derek Gundersen and Kevin Webb here at Northwestern for their work to handle the details of grant administration. The project was also supported by the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Faculty Research Program. It was initiated back when I was at the University of Iowa, and I thank the Dean there, Kevin Washburn, for originally bringing the Knight Foundation’s solicitation to my attention, as well as my current dean at Northwestern, Hari Osofsky, for continuing support. And – on the subject of the extraordinary amount of time that this book has taken – I thank Matt Gallaway for his seemingly endless well of patience and encouraging words as the span between the date written down in the contract and the date on which the manuscript was actually delivered grew longer, and longer, and longer still. Mandy Keifetz, who did the indexing, exercised similar levels of patience and toleration – this is the second of my books for which Matt was the editor and Mandy the indexer, and I am endlessly grateful to both. I must also express my gratitude to Wayne Shellabarger, the artist who provided the cover illustration. Wayne is not only a brilliant artist but also a seasoned professional who was an utter delight to work with.

I have also benefited greatly from the efforts of a number of student research assistants, including (in alphabetical order) Peter Chan, Chris Darby, Julia Gabriel, Janani Hariharan, Rohun Reddy, Leah Regan-Smith, and Leo Soh. The Northwestern Pritzker School of Law has the best librarians in the business, and Sarah Reis and Tom Gaylord provided irreplaceable support in getting this work achieved, as did Sarah Shoemaker and Jane Brock from Northwestern’s faculty support staff.

This book has also benefited from a variety of presentations, workshops, and meetings at which part or all of its contents were discussed, including a workshop at the University at Buffalo School of Law’s Baldy Center, the 2021 conference of the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILTing Perspectives: Regulating in Times of Crisis), the 2021 First Annual Conference of the Platform Governance Research Network, Albert Yoon’s seminar, “The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Academic Research” at the University of Toronto in Fall 2022, and various internal conversations at Northwestern, including a discussion with the J.D./Ph.D. seminar and an early presentation of the basic idea. I thank the participants in all of those events. Most significantly, Northwestern’s Center on Law, Business, and Economics organized a one-day manuscript roundtable for the penultimate draft of this book which provided critical feedback – I thank Matt Spitzer for inviting me to participate in this process, and Derek Gundersen (once again) for implementing it.

A number of individuals, either through those workshops or on their own, have offered particularly helpful feedback and advice, including Karen J. Alter, Chinmayi Arun, Julie Cohen, Zoe Darmé, Jennifer Forestal, Seth Frey, Gillian Hadfield, Katie Harbath, Aziz Huq, Andy Koppelman, Sahar Massachi, Naomi Shiffman, Jim Speta, Vanisha Sukdeo, Heidi Tworek, and Ari Waldman.

I would also be remiss not to thank the members of the Integrity Institute as well as the former Facebook Civic Integrity and Product Policy Research teams for many years of conversations about the problems of platform governance. I particularly appreciate Nicole Bonoff, who first brought me into the room by recruiting me to work with Civic Integrity.

Leonidas, of course, kept me (relatively) sane through the process, and Drew kindly and supportively tolerated the repeated bouts of derangement it occasioned.