Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Only available when logged in.
mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

12K
active users

mstdn.social: AboutStatusProfiles directoryPrivacy policyTerms of service

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.4.1

Cory Doctorow

The internet didn’t enshittify because we got the wrong technology.

The internet enshittified because we got the wrong rules.

doctorow.medium.com/enshittern

The internet didn’t enshittify because the honorable UUCP Monks who served as the internet’s patrician guardians were replaced by venal tech bros out to make a quick buck. The moneygrubbers were always there (as were those selfless guardians). The internet enshittified because we dismantled the anti-enshittification systems that kept the internet good: the antitrust laws that ensured that big, ossified companies couldn’t maintain their dominance by spending their way to glory. We ended the cycle of renewal. Once, when a company grew so big thatit became a threat to our future, it collapsed under its own weight. Once, honorable hackers wielded interoperability, that elegant weapon from a more civilized age, to fell the giants who claimed dominion over our digital lives — only to be felled themselves, when they forgot their humble origins and took up the wicked practices of the giants they had helped to slay. The internet didn’t enshittify because we got the wrong people. The old, good internet had lots of companies founded by mediocre cowards who would have bought out their competitors or dirty-tricked them out of existence in a heartbeat. The internet didn’t enshittify because we got the wrong technology. The old, good internet had plenty of sticky traps and walled gardens. The internet enshittified because we got the wrong rules.
#enshittification#IncentivesMatter#Antitrust
Cory Doctorow

We can't (and shouldn't) bring back the old, good internet.

We can (and must!) make a NEW, good internet.

doctorow.medium.com/enshittern

I miss the old, good internet, but I don’t want to bring it back. I want a new, good internet. One where users can’t be locked in because we make it legal to: reverse-engineer products and services, so you can leave a social media platform but still send and receive messages from the people you leave behind; jailbreak your devices so you can remove antifeatures like surveillance, ink-locking or repair-blocking; move your media and files out of the silo whence they originated and into any player you want. I want a new, good internet where we constrain the conduct of tech companies, banning unfair labor practices, deceptive marketing, corporate hostage-taking and other forms of rent-extraction. I want a new, good internet where it’s both illegal to impose bossware on your employees, and where those employees can legally hack the bossware their bosses shove down their throats. I want a new, good internet where creative workers and their audiences can reliably connect with one another, where news reporting isn’t held hostage to extractive processes. I want a new, good internet where we seize the means of computation so that the digital infrastructure that connects our romantic, personal, political, civic, economic, educational and family and social lives is operated by and for the people who use it.
#enshittification#interoperability#labor
Kevin Karhan :verified:

@pluralistic Exactly!

We can see this in bs policies that only strenghtened the and destroyed regional and domestic competition.

For example @EU_Commission regulations re: taxation basically killed as with more favourable terms than :

web.archive.org/web/2014112502

·
1boost·1favorite
TrendingLive feeds
About