[Plura-list] Podcasting "Enshitternet"
Cory Doctorow
doctorow at craphound.com
Tue Aug 22 12:19:32 EDT 2023
Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/22/the-new-good-internet/
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Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.
On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of *Doppelganger*:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610326/doppelganger
On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book *The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation*:
https://anotherstory.ca/?q=h
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Today's links
* Podcasting "Enshitternet": The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet.
* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
* This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022
* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
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👩👩👧 Podcasting "Enshitternet"
This week on my podcast, I read "Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet," my recent Medium column about building a better internet:
https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b
As John Hodgman is fond of reminding us, "nostalgia is a toxic impulse." It is easy for an old net.hand like me to fall into the trap of shaking his fist at the cloud. Having been on the other side of that dynamic, I can tell you it's no fun.
When I got on BBSes in the early 1980s, there was an omnipresent chorus of grumps insisting that the move from honest acoustic couplers to decadent modems was the end of the Golden Age of telecommunications:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
When I got on Usenet shortly thereafter, the Unix Greybeard set never passed up an opportunity to tell us newcomers that the Fidonet-Usenet bridge allowed the barbarian hordes to overwhelm their Athenian marketplace of ideas:
https://technicshistory.com/2020/06/25/the-era-of-fragmentation-part-4-the-anarchists/
When I joined The WELL in the late 1980s, I was repeatedly assured that the good times were over, and that we would never see their like again:
https://www.well.com/
Now that I'm 52, I've learned to recognize this dynamic, from the Eternal September:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
to the moral panic over menuing systems replacing CLIs:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses
to the culture wars over what would happen when the net got a normie-friendly GUI:
https://www.dejavu.org/1993win.htm
And yeah, I've done it to, explaining "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)":
https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
But there's a key difference between my own warnings about the enshittification that new "user friendly" technologies would engender and all those other AARP members' complaints: they were wrong, and I was right.
As Tom Eastman reminded us, the internet really *was* better, back before it became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text of the other four":
https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040
The underlying pathology of that enshittification wasn't the UI, or whether it involved an app store. As the Luddites knew, the important thing about a technology isn't what it *does*, but who it does it *for* and who it does it *to*:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
The problem wasn't which technology we used. There is nothing inherent about touchscreens that makes them into prisons that trap users, rather than walled gardens that protect them.
Likewise, the problem wasn't who made that technology. We didn't swap wise UUCP Monks for venal tech bros. The early tech world was full of public-spirited sysops, but it was also full of would-be monopolists who tried - and failed - to get us to "stop talking to each other and start buying things":
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
If it wasn't the technology that killed the old, good internet, and if it wasn't the people who killed the old, good internet, where did the enshitternet come from?
It wasn't the wrong tech, it wasn't the wrong people: it was the wrong *rules*. After all, the Apple ][+ went on sale the year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail. Consumer tech was the first industry born after antitrust was dismantled, and it created the modern monopoly playbook: buying and merging with competitors. The resulting unity of purpose and anticompetitive profit margins allowed tech to capture its regulators and secure favorable court and legislative outcomes.
The simultaneous drawdown of antitrust enforcement and growth of tech meant that tech's long-standing cycle of renewal was ended. Tech companies that owed their existence to their ability to reverse-engineer incumbent companies' products and make interoperable replacements and add-ons were able to ban anyone else from doing unto them as they did unto the giants that came before them:
https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980
The pirates became admirals, and set about creating a "felony contempt of business model":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences
They changed the rules to ensure that they could "disrupt" anyone they chose, but could themselves mobilize the full might of the US government to prevent anyone from disrupting *them*:
https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/
The old, good internet was the internet we we able to make while tech was still realizing the new anticompetitive powers it had at its disposal, and it disappeared because every administration, R and D, from Reagan to Trump, yanked more and more Jenga blocks out of the antitrust tower.
In other words: the old, good internet was always doomed, because it was being frantically built in an ever-contracting zone of freedom to tinker, where technologies could be operated by and for the people who used them.
Today, the Biden administration has ushered in a new era of antitrust renewal, planting the seeds of a disenshittification movement that will tame corporate power rather than nurturing it:
https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby
In other words, we are living in the first days of a better nation.
In other words, rather than restoring the old, good internet, we should build a *new, good internet*.
What is a new, good internet? It's an internet where it's legal to:
* reverse-engineer the products and services you use, to add interoperability to them so you can leave a social network without leaving your friends:
https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook
* jailbreak devices to remove antifeatures, like surveillance, ink-locking, or repair-blocking:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/17/have-you-tried-not-spying/#coppa
* move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:
https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6
On a new, good internet, companies can't practice algorithmic wage discrimination:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
They can't turn search into an auction between companies that match your query and companies that want to sell you fakes and knockoffs:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
They can't charge rent to the people whose feeds you asked to read for the privilege of reaching you:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
In fact, a new, good internet is one where we *euthanize* rentiers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
On the new good internet, your boss can't use bossware to turn "work from home" into "live at work":
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
And on top of that, you have the right to hack that bossware to undetectably disable it (and hackers have the right to sell or give you that hack):
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition
On the new, good internet, we stop pretending that tech is stealing content from news companies, and focus on how tech steals *money* from the news, with app taxes, rigged ad markets, surveillance ads, and payola:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech
The new, good internet is an internet where we seize the means of computation. It's an internet operated by and for the people who use it.
Hodgman is right. Nostalgia *is* a toxic impulse. The point of making a new, good internet isn't to revive the old, good internet. There were plenty of problems with the old, good internet. The point is to make a new, good internet that is the worthy successor to the old, good internet - and to consign the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, an unfortunate transitional stage between one good internet and another.
Here's a link to the podcast episode:
https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/21/enshitternet-the-old-good-internet-deserves-a-new-good-internet/
and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):
https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448_-_Enshitternet.mp3
and here's a link to my podcast's RSS feed:
https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
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👩👩👧 Hey look at this
* Our Economy Thrives on Bad Feelings https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/inequality-insecurity-economic-wealth.html (h/t Naked Capitalism)
* Watch an early performance by the Talking Heads at The Kitchen in 1976 https://boingboing.net/2023/08/21/watch-an-early-performance-by-the-talking-heads-at-the-kitchen-in-1976.html
* Related to Items You've Viewed Related to Items You've Viewed
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👩👩👧 This day in history
#20yrsago US goverment trying to sink WIPO open content talks https://archives.lessig.org/indexcd0e.html?p=2321
#20yrsago Gilberto Gil supports CD-burning automats https://web.archive.org/web/20031001111038/https://www.estadao.com.br/divirtase/noticias/2003/ago/19/30.htm
#20yrsago Out of Blue Six: a lost gem https://memex.craphound.com/2003/08/21/out-of-blue-six-a-lost-gem/
#20yrsago Paramilitary wing of the usability movement https://web.archive.org/web/20030823183246/http://www.oblomovka.com/entries/2003/08/19#1061283840
#20yrsago Anal Fissures in a nutshell http://www.ambiguous.org/quinn/medical/fissure.html
#20yrsago Beyond Fear: Required reading for Ashcroft’s America https://memex.craphound.com/2003/08/21/beyond-fear-required-reading-for-ashcrofts-america/
#15yrsago UK gov’t loses 4 million citizens’ personal info https://cdn.computerworld.co.nz/article/494185/data_four_million_lost_one_year_uk/
#15yrsago Slim Gaillard’s Vout dictionary: jazz hipster argot from the 30s https://web.archive.org/web/20080913131050/http://www.pocreations.com/vout.html
#15yrsago Are images of the early Mickey Mouse still copyrighted? https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-fi-mickey22-story.html
#15yrsago McCain’s D&D character stats https://www.wired.com/2008/08/john-mccain-cam/
#15yrsago Random House asks young adult writers to contractually promise not to behave immorally https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/aug/01/childrenswritersdontmisbeha
#15yrsago Australian Broadcasting Corporation launches Creative Commons community media site https://web.archive.org/web/20080820022723/https://pool.org.au/
#15yrsago Little Sammy Sneeze: Winsor McCay’s anarchic precurson to Little Nemo in Slumberland, now a beautiful, giant book https://memex.craphound.com/2008/08/20/little-sammy-sneeze-winsor-mccays-anarchic-precurson-to-little-nemo-in-slumberland-now-a-beautiful-giant-book/
#15yrsago Printcrime in Portuguese https://cronicasredux.blogspot.com/2008/08/printcrime.html
#15yrsago Writer who photographed HP Lovecraft’s headstone ordered to delete her photo, heaped with abuse https://web.archive.org/web/20080831143307/http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/482449.html
#15yrsago Cartoon depicts what went on in the NSA’s wiretapping room at AT&T https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/secret-room-eff-designers-cartoon-illegal-spying
#5yrsago All versions of Openssh share a critical vulnerability, including embedded code that will never be updated https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/vulnerability-affects-all-openssh-versions-released-in-the-past-two-decades/
#5yrsago Vulnerabilities in smart electric plugs give attackers a staging point for scanning and attacking your whole network https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/21/mcafee_flaws_smartplugs/
#5yrsago Taiwan’s legal crowdsourcing tool is working surprisingly well to resolve thorny legislative problems https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/21/240284/the-simple-but-ingenious-system-taiwan-uses-to-crowdsource-its-laws/
#5yrsago The true story of Notpetya: a Russian cyberweapon that escaped and did $10B in worldwide damage https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/
#10yrsago Groklaw shuts down over fears of email snooping http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175
#10yrsago Anonymous funeral director explains the big con behind the industry, coffins, and embalming https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1kfoy5/comment/cbp748j/
#10yrsago Burning Man drone rules https://web.archive.org/web/20130819020808/http://www.burningman.com/preparation/event_survival/drones.html#.UhF-LtHP1qY
#10yrsago The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man’s Canyon https://memex.craphound.com/2013/08/20/the-expeditioners-and-the-treasure-of-drowned-mans-canyon/
#10yrsago EFF wins big: secret FISA court opinion will be released https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/eff-victory-results-expected-release-secret-court-opinion-finding-nsa-surveillance
#10yrsago UK Serious Crime Agency proposes ban on small cellphones that don’t look like cellphones https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23782136
#10yrsago Swedish seventies neoretrofuturism: the paintings of Simon Stålenhag http://www.simonstalenhag.se/index.html
#10yrsago How British spies exorcise a leak-haunted laptop https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london
#10yrsago David Miranda’s lawyers nastygram the UK government https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/20/david-miranda-letter-home-office
#10yrsago EFF and Public Resource fight back against copyrighted, paywalled laws https://www.eff.org/press/releases/publicresourceorg-fights-back-against-copyright-lawsuit
#10yrsago Monster and Chips: fun, gross-out chapter books https://memex.craphound.com/2013/08/21/monster-and-chips-fun-gross-out-chapter-books/
#5yrsago European lawmaker writes post warning about dangers of automatic copyright filters, which is taken down by an automatic copyright filter https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/21/automated-filter-removed-parliament-members-article-warning-about-censorship-automated-filters/
#5yrsago The peculiar hazards of megaprojects https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2424835
#5yrsago The Clown Egg Register: photos of the painstakingly painted eggs that English clowns stake their faces on https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/20/17719884/clown-egg-register-luke-stephenson-helen-champion
#5yrsago How much would universal health care really cost? https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/08/calculate-costs-medicareforall-properly.html
#5yrsago 22 states jointly petition the Federal Circuit appeals court to reinstate Net Neutrality https://web.archive.org/web/20181109180138/https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-files-suit-stop-illegal-rollback-net-neutrality
#5yrsago Amazon’s cloud business leads American companies in shifting its electric cost to taxpayers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/amazon-isn-t-paying-its-electric-bills-you-might-be
#5yrsago Touring the haunting ruins of abandoned Second Life university campuses https://splinternews.com/we-took-a-tour-of-the-abandoned-college-campuses-of-sec-1793849944
#5yrsago Elizabeth Warren’s anti-corruption bill bans foreign lobbyists, subjects domestic lobbyists to strong oversight https://theintercept.com/2018/08/21/elizabeth-warren-unveils-radical-anti-corruption-platform/
#5yrsago Verizon to fire department: you’re exceeding your bandwidth while you fight wildfires, so we’re throttling you https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/
#5yrsago Here’s the funniest, most scathing, most informative and most useful talk on AI and security https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/mickens
#5yrsago Zephyr Teachout wins the New York Times’s endorsement for Attorney General of New York State https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/opinion/zephyr-teachout-new-york-attorney-general.html
#5yrsago Federal officers establish unconstitutional checkpoints on road to Burning Man https://memex.craphound.com/2018/08/22/federal-officers-establish-unconstitutional-checkpoints-on-road-to-burning-man/
#5yrsago Facebook sends man animation featuring cartoon characters dancing on his mother’s grave https://memex.craphound.com/2018/08/22/facebook-sends-man-animation-featuring-cartoon-characters-dancing-on-his-mothers-grave/
#1yrago Google falsely told the police that a father was a molesting his son https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches
#1yrago Workplace surveillance is coming for you: Empricism-washing as a form of wage-theft https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust
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👩👩👧 Colophon
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (audiobook outtake) https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/01/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-audiobook-outtake/
Upcoming appearances:
* Burning Man Center Camp, 1430h, Aug 29
https://playaevents.burningman.org/2023/playa_events/03/
* EFF Awards (San Francisco), Sept 14
https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023
* An Evening with VE Schwab (Des Moines), Oct 2
https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab
* 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (Minneapolis), Oct 16
https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/
Recent appearances:
* Hurriquake! (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/941
* New Books Network
https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-internet-con
* Haunted Mansion Ghost Post Panel Live From Midsummer Scream
https://dizneycoasttocoast.libsyn.com/haunted-mansion-ghost-post-panel-live-from-midsummer-scream-disney-podcast-episode-1027
Latest books:
* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books:
* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023
* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023
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