Determining the Extractive Casting Mold of Intimate Platforms through Document Theory

This paper introduces document theory as a mechanism to analyze intimate platforms as sociotechnical systems. The theory, developed in documentation studies and applied to HCI, focuses on the casting mold or how agents, through particular means and modes, produce documents that govern social relations. We studied the process of creating a profile by identifying and mapping out the fields asked among the ten most popular online dating apps in the US. By looking at dating profiles as documents and their creation as a process of documentation, we argue that the current casting mold of these intimate platforms is designed to extract profit via invisibilization of labor in digital networks leading to the emergence of a constrained rational market agent. Our study illustrates how document theory makes visible the assumptions of technological systems, calling on us to imagine alternatives beyond incremental design changes given broader structural realities of market and power.