Super apps, integrating diverse digital functions into single platforms, have reshaped mobile ecosystems, drawing scholarly attention beyond Silicon Valley models. While research has focused on Asian cases like WeChat and Alipay, East Africa’s super apps, such as Kenya’s M-Pesa and Ethiopia’s Telebirr, remain underexplored despite their rapid rise. M-Pesa, operated by Safaricom, serves over 30 million users, while Telebirr, under Ethio Telecom, has reached 36 million in two years. Both, supported by Huawei, dominate nearly 50% of mobile connections in their countries and evolve through third-party integrations, mirroring Asian super apps.

This study investigates: (a) M-Pesa and Telebirr’s data collection, storage, and usage strategies, and their impact on state and corporate control over personal information; (b) how Kenya’s market-driven and Ethiopia’s state-led regulatory environments shape these platforms compared to Asian counterparts; and (c) whether power dynamics among states, corporations, and users reinforce or challenge data colonialism in the Global South’s digital infrastructures. Employing postcolonial computing and platform and infrastructure studies, the research combines case study and comparative methods, using desk research, online fieldwork, and document analysis to examine policy environments, data practices, and platform functionalities.

Preliminary findings reveal Kenya’s competitive fintech landscape fosters M-Pesa’s corporate expansion, while Ethiopia’s statism embeds Telebirr in governance, enhancing surveillance. Both platforms’ reliance on Huawei raises data sovereignty concerns. These dynamics suggest data colonialism, as unchecked data extraction risks exploitation. This study enriches postcolonial and infrastructural theories, deepening insights into East African platformization.

Discussions of gender diversity in open-source software (OSS) often focus on increasing women’s participation rather than questioning how their contributions shape development itself. This study examines React, a widely used tool for building websites and applications, to explore gendered patterns in contribution over 11 years (2013–2024). Using data from GitHub, a dominant platform for software collaboration, I analyze who contributes to different aspects of the project and how participation shifts around major software updates.

Findings show that women’s contributions are concentrated on improving existing features and maintaining project stability, critical yet often undervalued areas of software development. Their exclusion is not just a matter of representation; it reinforces structural inequalities in whose labor is recognized and rewarded in digital infrastructure governance. By shifting the focus from simply counting participation to examining how gendered divisions of labor shape digital tools, this study highlights the need to rethink whose work is valued in the development of internet technologies.

Trust is often framed as something platforms want to maintain, but this paper argues that trust is a resource that platforms actively manage through their regulatory compliance. Compliance, therefore, is not merely subject to a dichotomous debate between symbolism or functionality, but malleable: it can be utilized to disrupt user experience (malicious compliance) or to create an illusion of regulatory success through selectively highlighted due diligence (performative compliance). For instance, DMA-induced design changes can frustrate users and create an impression that regulation is overly burdensome, whereas DSA-compliant content moderation and risk mitigation can be showcased as lawful, responsible governance.

To acknowledge these dynamics, this paper builds on Viljoen’s relational theory of data governance and applies it to platform governance. It argues that trust is not merely an asset for platforms to maintain but a means of controlling how users and regulators perceive their legitimacy. By leveraging, what we term, “malleable compliance”, platforms dictate not only how regulatory frameworks are implemented but also how other stakeholders perceive them. The politics of compliance matter just as much as the rules themselves, and in these politics, user trust is a strategically managed commodity. To counter this, and to avoid the risk of being counterproductive, regulatory strategies need to go beyond individual regulatory silos. Regulators need to acknowledge how compliance can be a mode of governance, too. By examining these mechanisms, this paper contributes to debates on critical platform governance, political economy of trust, and the ‘repurposing’ of legal frameworks.

In the past decade, firms like X/Twitter, Meta, and Google have invested heavily in what they term ‘integrity’ or ‘trust and safety”. These companies operate extensive bureaucracies to police user-generated content, including thousands of employees, automated systems, human flagging, and outsourced labour. There is widespread interdisciplinary agreement that these structures - and how they adapt in relation to regulators, civil society, and academics - play an important role in shaping online speech. But much research focuses on the largest players (like Facebook), at the expense of salient (yet less responsive to academic insight) services, such as the Apple Store, Amazon, YouTube, etc. What precisely distinguishes the trust and safety apparatuses of one company from another? How can we understand the practices of a single firm as ‘the industry standard’, and that of others as potential outliers?

This paper introduces a conceptual framework for comparing T&S operations across companies and over time. Drawing from institutional theory (Hall & Thelen, 2009) and the "varieties of capitalism" literature (Hall & Soskice, 2001), we propose a model of "varieties of trust and safety." Our framework categorizes T&S structures along three core dimensions - institutional complexity, hierarchy, and ideology - while examining variations in rules, practices, and actors. Building on platform governance scholarship, we develop a structured approach to assess power dynamics within T&S systems, the role of external stakeholders, and the institutionalization of content moderation. We apply this model to selected case studies, including Meta’s 2024 policy changes and Anthropic’s T&S strategies, illustrating how firms’ governance structures evolve.