DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow
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The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things b...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5431344

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!

  • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Reposting from [email protected] in [email protected]

    Here’s an AI outline because this was actually a good talk:

    How Platforms Die
    The speaker introduces the concept of platform decay or “enshittification” and how it leads to the death of internet platforms.
        He defines platforms as firms like Uber, Amazon, and Facebook that connect users and business customers.
    He outlines a 3-stage process called enshittification where platforms:
        Are initially good to users
        Abuse users to benefit business customers
        Eventually abuse business customers to only benefit shareholders
    This results in the platform becoming a “pile of shit” that dies.

Facebook Case Study
    He uses Facebook as a case study of enshittification’s 3 stages:
        Initially attracted users by promising privacy protections and custom feeds
        Then broke promises and sold user data to advertisers and flooded feeds with publisher content
        Finally, reduced value to users and fees for publishers to extract all value for shareholders
            This led to an angry user base and brittle equilibrium

Causes of Enshittification
    Lack of Competition
        Weak antitrust enforcement has allowed consolidation across industries
        Companies can use predatory pricing to undercut competitors
        Mergers eliminate competition
            Example: Google relying on acquisitions rather than in-house innovation
    Unrestricted “Backend Tweaking”
        Tech platforms control the algorithms and systems behind their products
        They can arbitrarily change these to alter user experiences
            e.g. Facebook reducing visibility of publisher content in feeds
        Done without transparency, oversight or accountability
    Bans on Reverse Engineering
        Laws like DMCA 1201 and CFAA criminalize circumventing DRM and terms of service
        Makes it illegal to reverse engineer platforms to enable interoperability
        Tech companies use IP laws to prevent modding and adversarial interoperability
            e.g. Apple using IP laws to prevent iOS modding

Solutions
    Strengthen Antitrust Enforcement
        Block anti-competitive mergers
        Break up existing tech giants
    Pass Privacy, Labor and Consumer Protection Laws
        Comprehensive federal privacy laws with private right of action
        End worker misclassification through gig economy
        Apply consumer protection standards to platforms
    Allow Adversarial Interoperability
        Roll back laws criminalizing modding, reverse engineering
        Use government procurement to incentivize open ecosystems
        Appoint special masters to oversee platform legal threats
    Keep Interoperators in Check
        Bind interoperators to the same privacy, fair trading and labor laws
        Determined through democratic process vs corporate policy

Conclusion
    We need to prepare and spread these policy ideas to capitalize on the next crisis
    Efforts are underway to enable a better internet through this approach