§ 6. Types of Legitimate Algorithmic Order: Convention, Law, Code

This page is the English companion to the German section § 6. Types of Legitimate Algorithmic Order: Convention, Law, Code. It now follows the German Round 3 argument in condensed form while preserving the German page as the leading working text.

Algorithmic order does not operate in one medium only. It is carried by conventions of use, technical standards, platform rules, organizational instructions, law, and code. These carriers overlap but are not identical: a practice may be lawful, technically enforced, organizationally expected, and socially contested at the same time.

The paragraph therefore treats code as a regulative architecture without reducing legitimacy to technical possibility. Lessig's account of code as regulation, Cohen's analysis of informational capitalism, and Bowker and Star's work on classification and standards help clarify how technical arrangements become socially binding (literature).

Its function in Chapter I is to make § 5 operational. Legitimate algorithmic order must be examined through the plurality of its carriers. Precisely where these carriers conceal one another, legitimacy becomes fragile.