cory on internet con
cory doctorow on internet con (his new book)
DEF CON 31 – An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Ensh*ttification – Cory Doctorow – sept 2023 – 45 min video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4]:
The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. It doesn’t have to be this way. Enshittification occurs when companies gobble each other up in an orgy of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the internet to “five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four” (credit to Tom Eastman!), which lets them endlessly tweak their back-ends to continue to shift value from users and business-customers to themselves. The government gets in on the act by banning tweaking by users – reverse-engineering, scraping, bots and other user-side self-help measures – leaving users helpless before the march of enshittification. We don’t have to accept this! Disenshittifying the internet will require antitrust, limits on corporate tweaking – through privacy laws and other protections – and aggressive self-help measures from alternative app stores to ad blockers and beyond!
(to me) cancerous distraction.. rather.. need a diff way to use tech (to me) .. what’s it’s best at.. ie: nonjudgmental expo labeling.. rendering all the things (plus) we think we need to de or anti as irrelevant s.. any form of fighting/refusing is just perpetuating same song.. aka: sea world
notes/quotes from video:
i do think internet used to be better.. i miss the good ol internet.. but this is about what a new/good internet could be.. why we don’t have it and how we can get it
platforms are the endemic form of the internet.. mediates between them.. platforms are just intermediaries..
2 min – platforms die: pleases.. misuses.. et al.. we are in the last stages of platform decay
3 min – i’m going to tell you what policy choices would let us seize the means of computation and build a new/good net that is a worthy successor to the old/good net.. how we make what we have now as an intermediate stage between the two
10 min – enshittification happens when 1\ competition is eliminated 2\ adversarial interop
24 min – we have options we’ve never had before.. those options are interop driven.. t.. interop is how we seize the means of computation.. how 1\ limit twiddling 2\ pass comprehensive privacy laws.. can sue if privacy violated 3\ end work misclassification.. every worker entitled to fair wages/schedule et al 4\ protections standards to platforms.. 5\ open walled gardens.. make switching cost low again.. 6\ align to encourage competition 7\ restore right to mod/tinker/hack these services
interoperability – without any restricted access or implementation
indeed.. and we’re missing it
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
anything else.. anything with any form of m\a\p.. cancerous distraction
27 min – co’s and tech giants and investors hate surprises
29 min – how to do it now.. 1\ wait for co’s to cheat. because incapable of not cheating.. 2\ while waiting put govt to work for us.. require that every tech co has to promise not to interfere w interop..
31 min – but how to keep interoperators honest
35 min – freeman: ‘when crisis comes ideas arise’.. we are lurching from crisis to crisis.. we do the same idea harder and hope for a better outcome..
yeah.. need something legit diff..
this is wack a mole
37 min – i came out of lockdown with 8 books.. choke pt c
you can email me.. cory@eff.org
dear cory –
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
i’ve been with eff since 2002.. 21 yrs.. i remember that old good internet.. and with my colleagues there we’re fighting for a new good internet
38 min – q&a
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be you. 