Big tech trajectories: A layer-model approach to extensions of platform power in the emerging XR economy

While social media platforms continue to dominate the ways in which people connect online, a transition towards more immersive experiences is underway.Extended reality (XR) is an umbrella term for media that enable experiences in augmented, mixed and virtual reality.Many of the corporations behind the dominant social media platforms are active in the XR economy.Meta has garnered much attention in this regard, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent, and ByteDance have all either entered the market or are reported as having XR ambitions.Through an analysis of current material economic conditions, this article maps out key dimensions of the emerging XR economy and shows how the platform and infrastructure characteristics of the 'big tech' XR participants are likely to lead to new but familiar concentrations of platform power.The authors propose a layer-model approach to meet the regulatory challenges emerging from the increasing complexity of new XR platforms.