The Myths of Platform Governance: How Tech Works to Create Online Trust and Safety

Abstract

Platform governance is often conceptualized in terms of external rules or algorithmic systems. This article shifts the analytic focus inward, examining how governance teams within technology firms create social order through their everyday practices. Drawing on organizational sociology and cultural analysis, I argue that internal governance is shaped less by formal policy than by the underlying “myths” that structure how practitioners understand harm, responsibility, and effectiveness. These organizational myths—rooted in engineering culture and reinforced by institutional routines—shape not only how governance work is carried out, but also what counts as legitimate intervention. By analyzing the symbolic and practical dimensions of governance labor, I show how cultural logics embedded within platform teams produce specific orientations to risk, fairness, and authority. Understanding these logics is essential for researchers and practitioners seeking to explain—and ultimately influence—the ways in which social order is maintained online.