The chapter concep­tualizes platform units (such as likes, upvotes, retweets, followers, shares) as social media of valuation. They are specifi­cally vague and indeter­minate objects, often drawing seman­tics of irony. It is this ambi­valence that makes platform units not only flexible for a range of different prac­tices. It also enables them to change what Appa­durai called “phases”: They switch from personal gifting prac­tices to rather impersonal commodi­fication practices – and back again. However, their indeter­minate­ness and irony obfus­cate distinc­tions such as “phases”, which makes up the speci­ficity of platform units. The chapter argues that this can be demon­strated with a brief recon­struction of the platform units’ history: Prac­tices of gifting and commodi­fication have long been purified from one another – until ironic platform units obfus­cated, and in part hybridized, those practices.

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Johannes Paßmann (2024): “The Social Logics of Platform Units: A Brief History of Valuation Practices Online”, in: Anne Krüger, Thorsten Peetz and Hilmar Schäfer (Eds.): The Routledge inter­national Handbook of Valuation and Society. London. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003229353-33.