Hardcover, 192 pages
English language
Published Sept. 4, 2023 by Verso.
When the tech platforms promised a future of "connection," they were lying. They said their "walled gardens" would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it's a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can - we must - dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con , Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between …
When the tech platforms promised a future of "connection," they were lying. They said their "walled gardens" would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it's a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can - we must - dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con , Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.
Cory Doctorow provides a great overview of the problems with Big Tech and some possible solutions for going forward. The book is not exhaustive but provides gets you started and encourages you to dive deeper in the areas you’re interested in.
I consider myself pretty well versed in the shortcomings of capitalism, but this book still managed to shock me time and time again with tales of the brazen greed of tech companies over time. It was an easy read, which I appreciated, and I greatly enjoyed the conversational and sometimes colorful tone of writing.
Yet even though the author said multiple times that he would explain how we go about fixing the problems of Big Tech, he never really did. That is, unless I somehow figure out how to suddenly make Congress listen to me instead of a huge corporation, or learn how to reverse-engineer my own social media company. Nevertheless, it’s a great read, and one that more people probably should.
Not really a very actionable for the person on the street. Kinda needs "Chokepoint Capitalism" to make sense. Well written, timely given gestures to twitter, facebook, reddit, tiktok, youtube, etc
