Throughout the transcript, there is a notable absence of discussion regarding the ownership structures, financial models, and profit motives behind the infrastructures being adopted. While Owango repeatedly emphasizes technical integration—“we are literally leveraging on existing technology…”—there is no mention that the DOI system is operated by powerful, for-profit and non-profit consortia, many of which have deep entanglements with commercial publishing giants like Elsevier. Nor is it acknowledged that DOIs and related identifiers often carry fees, shaping who can afford to participate fully in these infrastructures.
This deliberate omission obscures the political economy embedded within so-called neutral technical decisions, masking how choices about infrastructure adoption are also choices about whose economic interests are served. As Tarleton Gillespie (2010) argues, platforms and infrastructures are never “just technical”; they are sites of economic strategy and governance. Ignoring these dynamics depoliticizes technology adoption decisions, foreclosing critical conversations about sustainable, community-owned alternatives.