The moral in the machine: Rentier mechanisms in content recommender system on digital platforms

Platforms often champion user value as the primary objective to optimize for in recommender systems. However, as commercial marketplaces platforms must also balance the interests of other stakeholders, such as advertisers, creators, investors, and regulators. This easily creates conflicts of interest – whose value is more important to consider in recommendation systems. To address this issue, I develop a moral economy framework to platform studies that integrates studies of content recommendation with theories of fair allocation of recourses. Drawing on examples from digital media platforms, I show how three prominent rentier mechanisms shape which kind of content and creators that are likely to gain visibility, attract attention and conversely, acquire economic capital. The findings demonstrate that platforms often override user agency by promoting the content the platforms want users to see, blur distinctions between organic and paid recommendations, and create artificial scarcity by favoring commercially lucrative creators. These practices raise concerns about the sustainability of original content production versus standardized and derivative output, fueled in part by generative AI, and the marginalization of critical and diverse voices. As platforms continue to dominate digital media distribution, their moral economies warrant closer scrutiny to preserve original, diverse and critical perspectives in society.