Returning to Sweden, I was struck by the differences in digital infrastructure between Switzerland and Sweden. In Zürich, you use WhatsApp, Twint and Luma; in Stockholm, Messenger, Swish and Facebook.

One of the great boons of coming to Switzerland was being free to delete Facebook. I’d reluctantly been using Facebook to be notified of events and for Facebook Marketplace, though I often found myself doomscrolling. I knew it was affecting my wellbeing negatively – I felt much better after deactivating my instagram two years prior¹ – so I tried lots of methods to minimise doomscrolling. Nothing worked (good job Zuck); getting rid of Facebook seemed like the simplest solution².

To be notified of events in Zürich, I relied on Luma, an event management platform, as well as newsletters and posters. Being a sucker for good UI, I became particularly fond of Luma. For messaging, I used WhatsApp and Signal, apps which aren’t nearly as buggy as Messenger.

Moving to Zürich meant I got to use better software in my day-to-day, and this had a surprisingly big positive impact on my life satisfaction. In fact, I suspect we’d be be much better off if we collectively decided to ditch bad software and use the apps everyone secretly wants to use anyway³. I also began reflecting on network effects more broadly.

When economists speak of ’network’ or ‘scaling effects’, they mean products which become more valuable as more people use them. A prime example is Facebook: people use Facebook because their friends use it, though, in reality, they might prefer alternative platforms. Markets with network effects are sometimes called ‘winner-takes-all markets’.

Let’s look at a few examples of positive and negative network effects, just to make things more concrete.

Amazon, digital payment platforms and Github are examples of good network effects. On Amazon, there’s a virtuous cycle: more buyers, more sellers, lower prices, more buyers, and so on – network effect, right there. Digital payment platforms like Twint, Wise or Swish only work when your friends have it, so also leverage network effects.

Social media, digital labor platforms and App Store are arguably examples of negative network effects. We could be using email, SMS and Discord to foster meaningful connections, but we’re stuck with general-purpose, ad-bloated platforms like Facebook and Instagram⁴. Network effects also lead to bad working conditions for platform workers⁵: food delivery drivers need to accept the conditions of digital labor platforms like Uber, Foodora or Wolt, often having to forego basic labor protections. Something similar happens on App Store: developers are forced, as it were, to sell their products on App Store and to accept Apple’s terms and conditions.

Unfortunately, such negative network effects are hard to disrupt. The standard way to address negative network effects seems to be through regulation, though good regulation is difficult.

Continental philosophers like statements of the form ‘X governs our lives’, where X could be ‘money’ (Marx), ‘power’ (Foucault) or ‘gravity’ (Weil). In the digital era, network effects can become ever stronger: the network can grow to include anyone with a smartphone.

For companies exploiting network effects: please, take care of us. For you and me in the network: today, network effects might govern our lives more than we think.