The enshittification of the internet wasn't inevitable. The old, good internet gave way to the enshitternet because we let our bosses enshittify it. We took ...

Personal review:

A good recap of his previous writings and talks on the subject for the first third, but a bit long. Having paid attention to them for the past year or two, my attention started drifting a few times. I ended up being more impressed with how much he’s managed to condense explaining “enshittification” from 45+ minutes down to around 15.

As soon as he starts building off of that to work towards the core of his message for this talk, I was more-or-less glued to the screen. At first because it’s not exactly clear where he’s going, and there are (what felt like) many specific court rulings to keep up with. Thankfully, once he has laid enough groundwork he gets straight his point. I don’t want to spoil or otherwise lessen the performance he gives, so I won’t directly comment on what his point is in the body of this post - I think the comments are better suited for that anyways.

I found the rest to be pretty compelling. He rides the fine line between directionless discontent and overenthusiastic activist-with-a-plan as he doubles down on his narrative by calling back to the various bits of groundwork he laid before - now that we’re “in” on the idea, what felt like stumbling around in the dark turns into an illuminating path through some of the specifics of the last twenty to forty years of the dynamics of power between tech bosses and their employees. The rousing call to action was also great way to end and wrap it all up.

I’ve become very biased towards Cory Doctorow’s ideas, in part because they line up with a lot of the impressions I have from my few years working as a dev in a big-ish multinational tech company. This talk has done nothing to diminish that bias - on the contrary.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    You don’t even need 15 minutes. Just one short paragraph.

    Here is how platforms die: first, they 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.

    • Doctor Cory Doctorow, 2023
  • Skydancer@pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    The most encouraging thing in the whole talk for me was when he told a roomful of IT folks that they need to join or form Unions and they cheered.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Well, yeah. The majority of IT people understand unionizing would benefit them. It’s the work, the fear, and the unknown holding them back.

      I’d vote to unionize in a heartbeat, but I’m not going to kid myself by pretending I’d put in the legwork to get that ball rolling. I have too much else going on in my life, I can barely hold together what responsibilities I do have.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I mean I understand his sentiment but the system is working exactly as defined. When he says stuff like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft used to work it’s not for a lack of trying. Their MO has not changed since the 80’s. What has changed is the ability to execute on their MO.

    The companies are fine. The problem is societal. Hackers ain’t gonna fix shit.

    • spacecadet@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I thought that was kind of funny. “Here is a talk about enshitification, click on this YouTube link!” One of the primary enshitifiers.