Platform Brutality: Closing Down Internet Toxicity

Platform Brutality explores the concept of “the public” in online and offline spaces, examining how knowledge, values, and commodities circulate in a digitally connected world. The series questions boundaries, responsibilities, and solidarities while highlighting how artists and cultural critics shape debates on social, political, and technological change.

This issue addresses the internet’s toxic impact, from online harassment and fake news to systemic exclusion embedded in platform architectures, showing how social media can wound society while remaining unavoidable. It also explores alternatives, including techno-feudalism, social media loneliness, radical data critique, smartphone mythologies, and strategies to redesign networks for a healthier balance between analogue and digital life.

Richly illustrated and conceptually rigorous, Platform Brutality is essential for readers interested in contemporary art, digital culture, and social critique.