Anticipatory identity control: Upstream governance on digital platforms

Abstract

This commentary examines the entrenchment of authoritarian governance through the algorithmic architectures of major digital platforms. As identity formation increasingly occurs in online spaces, the capacity to explore, articulate, and inhabit non-normative or politically inconvenient subjectivities is contingent upon the technical affordances and moderation protocols of the platforms that mediate digital public life. Authoritarian regimes have capitalized on this dependency, embedding ideological control both in content policy and in the infrastructural substrate of platforms themselves. These developments reflect a mode of algorithmic sovereignty in which the state's authority over identity is operationalized through digital infrastructure rather than direct censorship alone. This commentary argues that such infrastructural interventions constitute a form of anticipatory governance: preemptively structuring the field of possible selves to align with state-sanctioned norms. In doing so, they reshape digital identity not as an open-ended process, but as a site of containment, coercion, and control.