The word usually used as a sort of stand-in for this constant pressure (physical, psychological, emotional) is “stress.”

The problem we’re examining here is that these platforms have a tremendous amount of power and no legal responsibility to behave. You could say that’s not their fault, they built their muscle fair and square, they should be allowed to flex. But at the very least they have a moral responsibility to behave. To respect the trust between the customers, suppliers and the platform.

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pers, good ones that is, I can hear the structure of their lyrics. Good rappers play with rhythmic patterns. It’s not simple, last word of the line rhyming raps. Not the good ones. You might get hit with three words rhyming in one line. You might not get any word rhyming for three.

Naturally, its a fine line. Recommendations are very helpful. That is recommendations based on reviews, quality checks, or choice filters. But promoting your products or products you have a stake in, in your marketplace, above others, because they’re yours, is not okay.

That is called a shop. Not a marketplace. A company is of course allowed to sell their own products. But then you are not a marketplace, or really a platform, you are a shop. You cannot own the platform and sell your products in your own marketplace. Even if you have all the right intentions, even if you take all the right precautions to make it fair. You have an overwhelmingly unfair advantage and it creates a distrusting environment. Monopolies monopolise, suppliers go under and customers get the wool pulled over their eyes.

Here’s the problem: What if I then decide to publish my own books? If I move the other publisher’s books to the back and put mine in the window, and on the central table, and stick a big happy sticker on them that says ‘Essential reading!’. Sound familiar?

These kinds of winning platforms have cropped up across industries. Amazon is the obvious dominant with Amazon staked essential products, and the Google and Apple app stores only co-exist because of the fundamentally different platforms that their platforms run on, even though by the sheer volume of customers/suppliers Google is far ahead (Apple is usually a special case wherever it plays though). Are they far ahead because of their software or because their software is pre-installed when you buy the device and you don’t know about alternatives? I’m sure you can think of more examples.

Let’s look at a bookshop as an example. (The name ‘bookshop’ is actually misleading, it’s a marketplace venue, not what you would typically call a shop). Let’s say I took money from publishers (suppliers) to display their books in my shop. A customer buys a book. Most of that money goes back to the publisher, and a little goes to me, the venue, that’s the model.

That’s easy, I’ll cycle their books to central tables or in the window. And to make a little extra money because not all parts of the bookshop are made equal I’ll allow publishers to pay me a bit more to get their books in the window more often. Aka ads. (This is capitalism after all). Fine. I also hold events, signings and book clubs completely separate from the publishers to foster a community and bring us all more business. Perfect.

We are starting to see a subtle abuse of this power cropping up across the board. Platforms using their position to push their own products and compete with their suppliers. Rather than respecting their position as a venue and supporting them. Yes, a morally good and productive platform should support their suppliers, help growth, improve discoverability and encourage best practices, not compete.

But of course, since this is a marketplace and because these platforms have bigger budgets for the user experience than you can possibly imagine, it feels fine. You still have all of the choices, it’s just further down the page, they’re just pointing you at the best choice. Oh? But when did the best choice become their choice?

If this were to happen in a physical marketplace, if the folks who owned the market square took a fee and let people come in and set up their stall in the corner, but then flogged their own wares at the front, with a big sign, it would be simple. People would go elsewhere. Suppliers would find another, fairer square and customers would follow. Ultimately the venue would have to change or go out of business.

Sounds reasonable. So, now I have a responsibility to all of my publishers and customers to display the books fairly. That’s okay, I organise sections by genre, I put the newest stuff in the window, I make sure everything is well lit and categorised. (Online shopping categories, featured products at the top of the page etc). Good. Now I also have a responsibility to support my publishers.

Or if I am an app store giving developers and tech organisations the opportunity to publish and promote their apps in my store. But then I put my own software on their devices by default and on the front page, and I put theirs behind some clicks and after some scrolling? You can see this is bad form, it’s unethical and it doesn’t foster trust or a positive competitive environment.

In a world of algorithms, big data and companies big enough to take on governments, this is not possible. There simply isn’t somewhere else to go. More so than ever, platforms like this have a responsibility to behave, or should be held accountable if they can’t. This breakdown of trust between venues and their suppliers undercuts suppliers and affects the customer. Platforms designed to provide more choice, and more opportunity flip, and are suddenly forcing what we see.

Anyone who suffers from depression knows that it is its own pain, but we don’t categorize it this way. It is a mental illness. A chemical imbalance. Even though depression has been linked to inflammation, our medical institutions are heavily invested in separating what it sees as two distinct forms of pain: psychological (usually in terms of psychosomatic illness or “not real,” “only in the mind”) and physical (which simply means that it has been tied to a bodily function or dysfunction and, more importantly, another illness that is testable) — despite growing evidence that illness/disease and its causes extend beyond the body to environment (see stress, powerlessness, and poverty as links to disease) and all of its effects on the body, including psychological.