Platform companies, drawing from their ideological roots in historic
countercultural and hacker movements (Turner 2009), have come to embody
a very distinct ﬂavor of transparency. Internally, companies like Google and
Facebook are famous for their founders’ embrace of “openness,” perhaps most
clearly manifest in their physical workplace environments. At Facebook’s
ofﬁces in Menlo Park, cubicles have been eschewed in favor of one of the
world’s largest open-plan ofﬁce spaces, meeting rooms have large glass
windows or doors that allow employees to easily observe what goes on inside,
and CEO Mark Zuckerberg works from the center of that open-plan ofﬁce in a
glass “ﬁshbowl,” visible to all (Flyverbom 2016). Google is known for its
similarly designed ofﬁces and open ofﬁce culture, including weekly Friday
meetings where senior executives share information (oftentimes sensitive,
nonpublic information) with effectively the entire company, engaging in an
Social_Media_and_Democracy