Mark SylorI Bought Enshittification via Cory @pluralistic Kickstarter as hard copy and don't regret it at all. The topic and thoughts are familiar to me because I read Cory's scratch pad blog for thinking at pluralistic.net. BUT… it's great to see it all put together and it makes a somewhat disconnected narrative (from the blog) into a cogent argument for why the world is enshittified and what we can do about it. 🧵 1/5
The process of how it happens is clear. 1) Platforms burn capital to be good to users to gain market share and trap users. 2) Platforms are good to business customers to make them dependent on the platform to reach users. 3) Platforms take back all the profits for themselves leaving a tiny share to users and businesses and make things worse for everyone else. 4) Platforms take it too far and then they die. The book provides lots of examples, showing lots of evidence for the thesis. 🧵 2/5
Cory describes 4 forces that have opposed enshittification, and why each has fallen by the wayside. 1) Competition, which has fallen to monopolies and cartels. 2) Regulation, which has fallen to politics and wealth and neo-liberal/libertarian/authoritarian/oligarchies. 3) Interoperation which has been effectively banned by Digital Rights Management. 4) Programmer power, which has finally fallen under the recent layoffs in the tech industry. 🧵 3/5
The cure follows directly from the 4 forces. 1) Break up monopolies through anti-trust. 2) Strengthen regulation thru smart regulation. 3) Repeal DRM laws to allow third parties to interoperate and innovate on the platforms. 4) Increase worker power thru unions. Of these, fixing interoperability and getting rid of DRM seems most productive to me, but I am convinced we must push for all 4. 🧵 4/5
Overall 5/5 stars. I recommend this to everyone. 🧵 5/5
Bruce Heerssen 
@msylor
Strengthening unions will provide the political muscle to achieve the other three goals, and much more. There's a reason why oligarchs and authoritarians hate unions with such fervor.
Strengthening unions will provide the political muscle to achieve the other three goals, and much more. There's a reason why oligarchs and authoritarians hate unions with such fervor.
Kevin Russell
mike805@bruce @msylor I don't think you will ever get tech workers into unions. We're cats, not dogs. We are not joiners. We don't want to go to meetings, deal with politics, etc. We want to make stuff, which is the drive that the tech industry has taken advantage of all along.
Breaking DRM both technically and legally, yes that needs to be done. We need to look at the breaking open of the phone monopoly and the defeat of marijuana prohibition in many places for pointers.
Three plus or minus five@ThreeSigma @bruce @msylor Nah, that is HACKING and technical people love to hack.
The legal part, looking for small loopholes and prying them open (like how radios for doctors and teletypes for deaf people were used to pry open the phone company) is still a form of hacking.
It's the organizing, deliberate non-production, and general garbage associated with union organizing techies would not like.
@mike805 @bruce @msylor
I think you greatly underestimate how much politics is already done in tech jobs. Heck, sometimes I think attempting to project an “apolitical” attitude takes more political expertise than anything.
The difference is which political sphere you’re in. Engineers are trained to navigate politics in a technical sphere but don’t know how to extend that training to other spheres.
I wasn't talking about tech workers specifically, but about unions in general. Middle class wages and political power over the last century has correlated strongly with the strength of unions. That's why would-be oligarchs and authoritarians attack them first. We don't need everyone to join a union, just a critical mass. Perhaps 25 or 30 percent of private sector workers. Perhaps less.