[Plura-list] How lock-in hurts design

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/

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Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/zusaetzlicher-autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html?day=20240128&times=1706466600,1706466600

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Today's links

* How lock-in hurts design: Felonizing the desire path.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2004, 2014, 2019, 2023

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, the sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by Wil Wheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:

http://thebezzle.org

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🆘 How lock-in hurts design

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a *host* of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But *zero* app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enought IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists *love* the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick - especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on - a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance - 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then *Apple* started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences - they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are *pure* moral hazard - for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths - and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions - is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want *relevant* ads is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can *never* anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers - people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps - and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in - are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is not the same thing as asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

(via Belem, CC BY 2.0, modified
)

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🆘 Hey look at this

* HP CEO evokes James Bond-style hack via ink cartridges https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

* 50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974 https://thenewstack.io/50-years-later-remembering-how-the-future-looked-in-1974/

* American Oligarchy https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/american-oligarchy/

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🆘 This day in history

#20yrsago Get Your State of the Union On https://web.archive.org/web/20040125025227/http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war31.html

#20yrsago Cambodian hybrid motorcycle/WiFi network https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/business/technology-e-mail-on-wheels.html

#10yrsago Study: French three-strikes law did not deter or reduce piracy https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2380522

#10yrsago European Court of Human Rights will hear case about GCHQ spying https://www.privacynotprism.org.uk/news/2014/01/24/british-government-to-answer-fast-track-spy-challenge/

#10yrsago Cthulhoid damask wallpaper (also fabric & wrapping paper) https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/2037672-i-love-craft-cthulhu-damask-by-rosalarian

#5yrsago “Slow multitasking” is the good kind of multitasking https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford_a_powerful_way_to_unleash_your_natural_creativity/transcript

#5yrsago Even as Google was making nice during employee walkout, it was secretly asking the Trump administration to ban email labor organizing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/google-urged-the-u-s-to-limit-protection-for-activist-workers

#5yrsago Denver’s legendary Tattered Cover bookstore “breaks up” with Audible https://www.tatteredcover.com/dear-audible

#5yrsago Emboldened by the LA teachers’ “blue state” victory, Denver’s teachers declare strike https://www.democracynow.org/2019/1/23/a_blue_state_teacher_rebellion_denver

#5yrsago German Minister of Justice to receive the largest EU petition in history, opposing Article 13 of the Copyright Directive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwj-hDvJWM8

#1yrago How Facebook's Real Names policy helps Cambodia's thin-skinned dictator terrorize dissenters https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

#1yrago The public paid for "Moderna's" vaccine, and now we're going to pay again (and again and again) https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#herd-immunity

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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

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: What kind of bubble is AI? https://craphound.com/news/2024/01/21/what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Upcoming appearances:

* The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 28
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/zusaetzlicher-autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html?day=20240128&times=1706466600,1706466600

* Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29
https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

* The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html

* The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow

* Tuscon Festival of Books, Mar 9/10
https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676

Recent appearances:

* Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (Crash Course Economics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7AxrFQ7jIM

* Generation of Lost Causes with Vass Bednar (Toronto Public Library)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rGj5VaJSDQ

* Low-Key Clippy (This Week In Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/963

Latest books:

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "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?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (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 Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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