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I like Doctorow, and these point are valid. I just don’t see the American government doing anything to benefit the people, regardless of left or right orientation. Most Americans want abortion access and reasonable restrictions on gun sales; I can’t imagine any candidates, local or federal doing little more than making empty promises on these subjects. Even Obama care is a hugely compromised husk of reasonable healthcare for all, and you still have republicans clamoring to dismantle it.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.
I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.
That's the feature
The FTC under Biden has begun to push back against tech monopolies.
The Supreme Court overturning the Chevron doctrine could stop that pretty quick
And Harris will probably replace the ftc head actually trying to enforce anti trust because of lobbying.
Fucking citizens united
Don't "both sides" this. It's the kind of thing people use to justify voting third party. Off the top of my head the Biden admin has been working to restore net neutrality and has an antitrust case against Ticketmaster and Live Nation
What you've expressed is not pessimism it's cynicism.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t think any American politician would take on this topic.
it's only pessimism if it's not true and there are plenty of demonstrably true public examples to guarantee that this isn't pessimism; it's reality that sounds like pessimism.
- Lack of competition in the market via mergers and acquisitions
- Companies change things on the back end (“twiddle their knobs”) to improve their fortunes and have a united, consolidated front to prevent any lawmaking that might constrain them
- Companies then embrace tech law to prevent new entrants into the market or consumer rights (see: DMCA, etc.)
This is the criteria he has laid out for the "enshitifacation" of the Internet.
This is funny to me because this is the exact pattern of every industry and service in the United States ever. The Internet isn't special, it's just the latest frontier for capitalism.
The corporations have been doing this with housing. I live in CA and it is awful how many unhoused there are now, and the supreme Court made it illegal!I hope one day this will finally be the last straw for the uprising.
I loved the net when you had to have a clue to be there.
The Eternal September is real
Eternal September
Mine began in truth about eight years before that. BBS and tymnet nodes enabled by shit load of blue and black box phone calls. Just go look at the neat and orderly wiring in a blue box and know that mine was nothing like that. Mine looked like low rent spider web of components stuffed in a cigar box.
At one point, I ran my local Radio Shack out of alligator clips...
This is nice and all but any solution requires a government captured by capital to work against capital feels as likely to work as thoughts and prayers.
Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.
But what if some change in the right direction doesn't fix everything immediately? Then what?
May as well just not bother.
Yup. All of these "solutions" that sound original are known. The reason we don't apply them isn't because we don't know how to solve these issues, it's because capital has pulled the handbrake. This is the problem we have to solve. All the other problems fall downstream and will magically start getting solved if we can release the handbrake. If we're not talking about how to reduce regulatory capture, we're not taking about real solutions.
Interoperability is how we “seize the means of computation.”
Good luck with that. If the success of the iPhone has taught me anything it is that the average person loves them some incompatible with anything but itself vertical integration.
Friendly reminder: Dotorow's wife is a director of a Disney subsidiary highly likely to be involved with DRM.
Ms Taylor is now the Director, StudioLab at The Walt Disney Studios. In that role she is responsible for ensuring that Disney continues to invest in the intersection between online tech and content distribution.
EDIT: You all are reading way too far into me bringing this up. Didn't say this to invalidate his point, mostly wanted to highlight something that I find most people don't know about him. It's something I think is important considering how much he styles himself as an idealogue/icon for technological freedom. He still makes good points, but the position he's doing it from should be known is all.
Does that invalidate his point regarding enshittification?
I think it might matter if Cory came out and said, I am starting an org with the resources to fix it. But I don’t see how this tidbit is relevant for a guy who coined the term about what’s happening here and has been beating the drum about the problem.
Yeah this feels like a “no true Scot” fallacy to me, where anything he says should be invalid because of his wife’s position, which is false
Only if you take it that way. I've said nothing about his point being questionable, and it wasn't my intent.
For me this is more about that his status as a free software/internet icon for well over a decade should be tempered, if only slightly, by knowledge of what pays his bills.
Cory has self styled and been treated as a free software icon for well over a decade. The whole enshittification thing is just the latest thing to bring him back into the public eye.
It doesn't invalidate his point whatsoever, but it's important to know that what pays his bills is all.
Her running MakieLab (which might indeed utilise DRM, idk) doesn't invalidate her husband's point.
It's no longer Makielab, as it was acquied by Disney. What they actually do now ias a subsidiary is unclear beyond the quote from her Wikipedia page, especially as her personal site linked to by Wikipedia is down.
I spent a good chunk of my teen years on 4chan, I'm normally the one pushing the idea that a good point is valid regardless of the source.
Anyway, I edited my comment and I'll copy that here: Didn't say this to invalidate his point, mostly wanted to highlight something that I find most people don't know about him. It's something I think is important considering how much he styles himself as an idealogue/icon for technological freedom. He still makes good points, but the position he's doing it from should be known is all.
I don't have a stake in this argument, as this is my first time learning about Doctorow. I just want to add that a good phrase to express the situation you described is "potential conflict of interest."
I met Cory at a book signing and told him how much I loved Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and he told me his wife works at Disney straight up.
He's an honest dude who has done more for how we think of the internet (and how it could be) than the majority of humans on this planet.
See Kelly Ann Conway and George Conway.
He still makes good points, but the position he’s doing it from should be known is all.
I'll remember that whenever George Conway or his wife talk about politics: apparently their diametrically-opposed views are somehow intertwined.
Through no intervention or design, the market creates perverse incentives that only benefit a few. So the solution is to fiddle with the incentives?
Ya ever notice that "market reform" schemes always seem like negotiations with an angry god? Sometimes I think that ancient civilizations would be much better understood if we stopped referring to the "priest class" and started calling them economists.
My default position remains the same, kill god.
I think the best way to make the Internet less sh*tty is to get away from Google search.
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.
It's also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
I like Kagi a lot. It has a Small Web feature that is results from smaller sites like the good old days. Also has a Fediverse filter.
I like Cory Doctorow.
However, I bought the novel Rabbits solely because Doctorow had a front cover blurb praising the novel.
It was downright a bad novel. Doctorow owes me $16.