Today's links

No, "convenience" isn't the problem: Enshittification isn't caused by "lazy consumers."
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

No, "convenience" isn't the problem (permalink)

Using Amazon, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or Doordash, or Uber doesn't make you lazy. Platform capitalism isn't enshittifying because you made the wrong shopping choices.

Remember, the reason these corporations were able to capture such substantial market-share is that the capital markets saw them as a bet that they could lose money for years, drive out competition, capture their markets, and then raise prices and abuse their workers and suppliers without fear of reprisal. Investors were chasing monopoly power, that is, companies that are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

The tactics that let a few startups into Big Tech are illegal under existing antitrust laws. It's illegal for large corporations to buy up smaller ones before they can grow to challenge their dominance. It's illegal for dominant companies to merge with each other. "Predatory pricing" (selling goods or services below cost to prevent competitors from entering the market, or to drive out existing competitors) is also illegal. It's illegal for a big business to use its power to bargain for preferential discounts from its suppliers. Large companies aren't allowed to collude to fix prices or payments.

But under successive administrations, from Jimmy Carter through to Donald Trump, corporations routinely broke these laws. They explicitly and implicitly colluded to keep those laws from being enforced, driving smaller businesses into the ground. Now, sociopaths are just as capable of starting small companies as they are of running monopolies, but that one store that's run by a colossal asshole isn't the threat to your wellbeing that, say, Walmart or Amazon is.

All of this took place against a backdrop of stagnating wages and skyrocketing housing, health, and education costs. In other words, even as the cost of operating a small business was going up (when Amazon gets a preferential discount from a key supplier, that supplier needs to make up the difference by gouging smaller, weaker retailers), Americans' disposable income was falling.

So long as the capital markets were willing to continue funding loss-making future monopolists, your neighbors were going to make the choice to shop "the wrong way." As small, local businesses lost those customers, the costs they had to charge to make up the difference would go up, making it harder and harder for you to afford to shop "the right way."

In other words: by allowing corporations to flout antimonopoly laws, we set the stage for monopolies. The fault lay with regulators and the corporate leaders and finance barons who captured them – not with "consumers" who made the wrong choices. What's more, as the biggest businesses' monopoly power grew, your ability to choose grew ever narrower: once every mom-and-pop restaurant in your area fires their delivery drivers and switches to Doordash, your choice to order delivery from a place that payrolls its drivers goes away.

Monopolists don't just have the advantage of nearly unlimited access to the capital markets – they also enjoy the easy coordination that comes from participating in a cartel. It's easy for five giant corporations to form conspiracies because five CEOs can fit around a single table, which means that some day, they will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

By contrast, "consumers" are atomized – there are millions of us, we don't know each other, and we struggle to agree on a course of action and stick to it. For "consumers" to make a difference, we have to form institutions, like co-ops or buying clubs, or embark on coordinated campaigns, like boycotts. Both of these tactics have their place, but they are weak when compared to monopoly power.

Luckily, we're not just "consumers." We're also citizens who can exercise political power. That's hard work – but so is organizing a co-op or a boycott. The difference is, when we dog enforcers who wield the power of the state, and line up behind them when they start to do their jobs, we can make deep structural differences that go far beyond anything we can make happen as consumers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

We're not just "consumers" or "citizens" – we're also workers, and when workers come together in unions, they, too, can concentrate the diffuse, atomized power of the individual into a single, powerful entity that can hold the forces of capital in check:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

And all of these things work together; when regulators do their jobs, they protect workers who are unionizing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And strong labor power can force cartels to abandon their plans to rig the market so that every consumer choice makes them more powerful:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

And when consumers can choose better, local, more ethical businesses at competitive rates, those choices can make a difference:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/10/view-a-sku/

Antimonopoly policy is the foundation for all forms of people-power. The very instant corporations become too big to fail, jail or care is the instant that "voting with your wallet" becomes a waste of time.

Sure, choose that small local grocery, but everything on their shelves is going to come from the consumer packaged-goods duopoly of Procter and Gamble and Unilever. Sure, hunt down that local brand of potato chips that you love instead of P&G or Unilever's brand, but if they become successful, either P&G or Unilever will buy them out, and issue a press release trumpeting the purchase, saying "We bought out this beloved independent brand and added it to our portfolio because we know that consumers value choice."

If you're going to devote yourself to solving the collective action problem to make people-power work against corporations, spend your precious time wisely. As Zephyr Teachout writes in Break 'Em Up, don't miss the protest march outside the Amazon warehouse because you spent two hours driving around looking for an independent stationery so you could buy the markers and cardboard to make your anti-Amazon sign without shopping on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

When blame corporate power on "laziness," we buy into the corporations' own story about how they came to dominate our lives: we just prefer them. This is how Google explains away its 90% market-share in search: we just chose Google. But we didn't, not really – Google spends tens of billions of dollars every single year buying up the search-box on every website, phone, and operating system:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Blaming "laziness" for corporate dominance also buys into the monopolists' claim that the only way to have convenient, easy-to-use services is to cede power to them. Facebook claims it's literally impossible for you to carry on social relations with the people that matter to you without also letting them spy on you. When we criticize people for wanting to hang out online with the people they love, we send the message that they need to choose loneliness and isolation, or they will be complicit in monopoly.

The problem with Google isn't that it lets you find things. The problem with Facebook isn't that it lets you talk to your friends. The problem with Uber isn't that it gets you from one place to another without having to stand on a corner waving your arm in the air. The problem with Amazon isn't that it makes it easy to locate a wide variety of products. We should stop telling people that they're wrong to want these things, because a) these things are good; and b) these things can be separated from the monopoly power of these corporate bullies:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

Remember the Napster Wars? The music labels had screwed over musicians and fans. 80 percent of all recorded music wasn't offered for sale, and the labels cooked the books to make it effectively impossible for musicians to earn out their advances. Napster didn't solve all of that (though they did offer $15/user/month to the labels for a license to their catalogs), but there were many ways in which it was vastly superior to the system it replaced.

The record labels responded by suing tens of thousands of people, mostly kids, but also dead people and babies and lots of other people. They demanded an end to online anonymity and a system of universal surveillance. They wanted every online space to algorithmically monitor everything a user posted and delete anything that might be a copyright infringement.

These were the problems with the music cartel: they suppressed the availability of music, screwed over musicians, carried on a campaign of indiscriminate legal terror, and lobbied effectively for a system of ubiquitous, far-reaching digital surveillance and control:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

You know what wasn't a problem with the record labels? The music. The music was fine. Great, even.

But some of the people who were outraged with the labels' outrageous actions decided the problem was the music. Their answer wasn't to merely demand better copyright laws or fairer treatment for musicians, but to demand that music fans stop listening to music from the labels. Somehow, they thought they could build a popular movement that you could only join by swearing off popular music.

That didn't work. It can't work. A popular movement that you can only join by boycotting popular music will always be unpopular. It's bad tactics.

When we blame "laziness" for tech monopolies, we send the message that our friends have to choose between life's joys and comforts, and a fair economic system that doesn't corrupt our politics, screw over workers, and destroy small, local businesses. This isn't true. It's a lie that monopolists tell to justify their abuse. When we repeat it, we do monopolists' work for them – and we chase away the people we need to recruit for the meaningful struggles to build worker power and political power.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

A 2-Axis, Multihead Light Positioner https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/a-2-axis-multihead-light-positioner/
A new bill would try to make tools like Zoom and Teams work together securely https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/8/24119268/wyden-secure-interoperable-goverment-collaboration-technology-act-encryption
Nobel Prize economist Angus Deaton rethinks unions, free trade, immigration https://www.businessinsider.com/nobel-prize-economist-angus-deaton-rethinks-unions-free-trade-immigration-2024-4 (h/t James Boyle)

A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Implicit ideology in video games https://reason.com/2004/04/01/free-play-2/

#20yrsago BBC tries DRM-free distribution https://web.archive.org/web/20040422090025/https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/mp3.shtml

#20yrsago Remembering gopher https://www.wired.com/2004/04/gopher-underground-technology/

#20yrsago MSFT pays $440MM to settle DRM patent dispute https://www.theregister.com/2004/04/12/ms_settles_intertrust/

#15yrsago Billboards versus the attention economy: critical essay from 1960 https://web.archive.org/web/20090414052206/http://howtolookatbillboards.com/

#15yrsago Statebook: how UK gov’t spooks see the Internet http://www.statebook.co.uk

#15yrsago Manchester’s streets to be patrolled by CCTV cars that film you picking your nose at the wheel and then send you a fine http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/7994449.stm

#10yrsago Copy Me: a new critical animation series about copying, culture and copyright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-UT84-fXM

#10yrsago Everything is a Remix vs Patent Trolls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il9nXHoprsU

#5yrsago Foxconn’s inconsistent, chaotic behavior in Wisconsin looks awfully grifty https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18296793/foxconn-wisconsin-location-factory-innovation-centers-technology-hub-no-news

#5yrsago Victory! House of Reps passes legislation to restore Net Neutrality https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/victory-house-representatives-passes-net-neutrality-protections

#5yrsago Chicago is demanding that children on bail wear private-sector ankle-cuffs with mics that can record them without their consent https://theappeal.org/chicago-electronic-monitoring-wiretapping-juveniles/

#5yrsago Security keys are “transformative” and “revolutionary” for information security https://mrisher.medium.com/phishing-and-security-keys-b5c8e8e26931

#10yrsago RIP, Sue Townsend https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26982680

#5yrsago Text-mining journalists find that lawmakers introduced 10,000 bills that were copypasted from lobbyists’ “model legislation” https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/

#5yrsago Someone is targeting “critical infrastructure” safety systems in networked attacks https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/mysterious-safety-tampering-malware-infects-a-2nd-critical-infrastructure-site/

#5yrsago Courts and cops don’t know what to do with “sovereign citizens,” the delusional far-rightists who claim the law doesn’t apply to them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_y-gLm9Hrw

#5yrsago Amazon stores recordings of Alexa interactions and turns them over to internal staff and outside contractors for review https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio

#5yrsago Teen Vogue explains capitalism https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-capitalism-is

#5yrsago French officials call Project Gutenberg archive, 15 million ebooks, Grateful Dead recordings and Prelinger Archive “terrorism,” demands removal from Internet Archive https://www.techdirt.com/2019/04/11/eu-tells-internet-archive-that-much-site-is-terrorist-content/

#5yrsago Brexit is cratering London house prices https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/house-prices-in-london-southeast-u-k-forecast-to-keep-falling

#1yrago Alissa Quart's 'Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream' https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, holding a mic.

RISD Debates in AI (Providence), Apr 12
https://involved.risd.edu/event/9777963
The Bezzle at Anderson's Books (Chicago), Apr 17
https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1
Torino Biennale Tecnologia, Apr 21
https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia
The Bezzle at Book Passage Corte Madera (Marin County), April 27
https://www.bookpassage.com/event/cory-doctorow-bezzle-martin-hench-novel-corte-madera-store
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337
Wordfest (Calgary), May 3
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/
Massy Arts (Vancouver), May 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207
Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival, May 5-11
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/
Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow on “Enshittification” and the Future of AI, May 14
https://www.oreilly.com/live-events/tim-oreilly-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification-and-the-future-of-ai/0642572001651/
"Finding the Money" screening (LA), May 15
https://www.laemmle.com/film/finding-money?date=2024-05-15
Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9
https://media-ecology.org/convention
American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/

A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)

Deep Dive podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bS0DS1H7ghHkiyx4KzXBV?si=fe7242019e734d61
Digital capitalism course: What is digital capitalism? (Transnational Institute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCzWpEQcd7E
The Scam Economy (Lost Dollar Business Club)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SChg9ZiY_bk

A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)

The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
"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#/.

A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

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

Colophon (permalink)

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
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: Subprime gadgets https://craphound.com/news/2024/03/31/subprime-gadgets/

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