The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust  🔗 **Source:** [The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [enshittification, digital-sovereignty, big-tech, platform-power, right-to-repair, antitrust] > author: Cory Doctorow > source: The Walrus > reference: https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/ > date created: 2026-06-03 09:00 > > # 🏷️ Title: The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Cory Doctorow — Pluralistic (enshittification source)](https://pluralistic.net/) - [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://www.eff.org/) - [EU Digital Markets Act / Digital Services Act](https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/) - DemocracyXChange keynote, April 16 (origin of this edited text) ## 📝 Summary - **What happened**: An edited Cory Doctorow keynote arguing that US Big Tech has fused with the Trump regime, making the "American internet" an instrument of US foreign policy, and that Trump's belligerence is paradoxically creating the political conditions to finally build a "post-American internet." - **Why it matters**: It reframes platform dependence (Office 365, app stores, mobile OSes, networked firmware) as a national-security and sovereignty risk, not just a consumer or antitrust problem — and names a concrete policy blocker (anti-circumvention law) and a concrete remedy (interoperability / right-to-repair). - **Key stakeholders**: National governments outside the US (Canada, EU members, Australia, Mexico), digital-rights activists, entrepreneurs/technologists, national-security establishments, and the dominant US platforms (Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon). - **Risks and tradeoffs**: Acting makes the US angry and risks retaliation; not acting leaves states and households remotely controllable by a foreign power (the John Deere kill-switch and Microsoft/ICC examples). A separate risk: the ~$1.4T AI bubble bursting and being used to justify austerity. - **Bottom line**: Stop trying to *regulate* or *tax* extraction after the fact; instead use interoperability and right-to-repair to *prevent* the extraction ("pre-distribution beats redistribution"), and treat the dominant corporations themselves as the dangerous, unaccountable "artificial life forms" already loose in the world. ## 📖 Main Content - **The slow-motion-disaster frame.** Doctorow opens with a roof-leak/climate metaphor: humans tolerate accumulating harm ("drip, drip") until catastrophe forces a move. Trump is cast as a "chaos agent" who converts slow-motion disasters into unavoidable ones — including dependence on the American internet. - **The surveillance lineage.** The distrust is not new: Mark Klein's 2005 EFF disclosure of AT&T's NSA beam-splitter (Folsom Street "secret room"), the resulting litigation, Clapper's 2013 Senate lie, and Snowden. Because the world's fibre lands in America, the US sits as the global data hub — a structural interception point. - **Enshittification, defined.** A three-stage decay of platforms: (1) good to users while locking them in; (2) abuse users to court business customers while locking *them* in; (3) abuse everyone to benefit shareholders/executives. Facebook is the worked example (MySpace pitch → advertiser betrayal → publisher dependence → feed void). Lock-in mechanisms: collective-action problem + high switching costs. - **The corrected aphorism.** "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product" is *wrong*: platforms screw users, advertisers, AND publishers simultaneously to benefit themselves (P&G's $200M→$0 ad test with 0% sales drop; Amazon 50–60% seller junk fees; Apple/Google 30% app fees; the Google→Apple $20B/yr non-compete payment; Jedi Blue collusion). - **Tech as an arm of the state.** The core escalation: Big Tech has merged with the Trump regime, so platform control becomes geopolitical leverage — the ICC prosecutor losing Office 365 after charging Netanyahu; Microsoft acting again against a Brazilian judge; the John Deere remote tractor kill-switch as proof that "bricking" a state or sector is technically trivial. This is the exact Huawei-5G fear, now realized via US vendors. - **The three armies.** Trump has inadvertently unified (1) digital-rights activists, (2) profit-seeking entrepreneurs/technologists who want to turn "American trillions into their billions" via alternative clients/app stores, and (3) national-security hawks who want auditable, sovereign alternatives. Different motives, shared goal: a post-American internet. - **The policy blocker and the remedy.** The obstacle is anti-circumvention law (Canada's 2012 Bill C-11; EU Copyright Directive Art. 6; analogous clauses in USMCA, AUSFTA) that criminalizes modifying your own devices. The remedy is interoperability + right-to-repair — "pre-distribution" that stops the extraction rather than taxing it back. Whoever drops the law first becomes the "Disenshittification Nation." - **The AI coda.** Doctorow declines the rogue-AI fear and instead warns of the ~$1.4T AI bubble (seven firms = 35% of the S&P 500) bursting into austerity-then-fascism. His reframe: the dangerous artificial life forms are already here — Limited Liability Corporations — and the coalition that tames them can then be turned on AI. ### 🗒️ Notes - **Structural interception is geographic, not just legal.** Transoceanic fibre lands in the US to avoid ~tens-of-thousands of direct country-to-country links; that hub position is the surveillance affordance. Regulation can't relocate geography — only re-architecture can. - **"They are effects, not causes."** Doctorow's anti-great-man claim: removing Musk/Zuckerberg changes nothing because the "enshittogenic policy environment" manufactures interchangeable replacements. Reform must target the environment (law), not the personalities. - **Lock-in taxonomy.** Prepaid commitment (Prime), predatory subsidy (Uber's $31B / 13 years of losses), paid non-competes (Google→Apple $20B), and the self-imposed collective-action lock-in of social graphs. - **Kill-switch examples (the load-bearing evidence).** Microsoft/ICC, Microsoft/Brazil judge, John Deere/Ukraine tractors immobilized remotely. These convert an abstract sovereignty argument into a concrete operational threat. - **Pre-distribution vs redistribution.** The economic core: an alternative Canadian app store at a 3% fee turns "Apple's $100B into our $10B" by preventing the levy rather than recovering it through tax — and is exportable worldwide. - **The bubble, not the basilisk.** Doctorow's stated AI worry is macro-financial and political (bubble → austerity → fascism), explicitly not alignment/doom. Note the rhetorical move: corporations are the prior, proven "misaligned" optimizer. ## 📚 References - [The Walrus — original article](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) - [EFF: NSA spying / Hepting v. AT&T (Klein disclosure)](https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting) - [EU DMA](https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/) and [EU DSA](https://digital-services-act.ec.europa.eu/) - Doctorow, *The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation* (interoperability thesis) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Humans ignore accumulating harm until it forces a move; Trump accelerates that forcing function for tech dependence. - We have known since 2005 (Klein) and 2013 (Snowden) that US infrastructure is a surveillance chokepoint, yet we chose to regulate platforms rather than migrate off them. - Enshittification is a predictable three-stage extraction, and the "you are the product" line understates it: everyone is extracted from, payer or not. - Big Tech is now fused with the US state, so any platform you depend on is a lever a hostile foreign executive can pull. - A coalition of activists, entrepreneurs, and security hawks can build sovereign alternatives, but only if anti-circumvention law is repealed so devices can be modified and made interoperable. - The real AI danger is the financial bubble and the corporate "life form," not a rogue superintelligence. ## 📰 Newsletter For the WordPress crowd, this keynote is a sharp argument *for* the open-source, self-hosted, own-your-infrastructure worldview WordPress was built on. Doctorow's "post-American internet" is, functionally, a federation/portability argument: own your data, run your own stack, keep exit costs low. It pairs naturally with the WordPress data-sovereignty conversation (the FAIR project's local-metadata/provenance posture, the ActivityPub federation work, and the broader "right to fork" ethos). The actionable nugget for site owners and hosts: **interoperability and portability are security features**, not just user conveniences — the same logic that makes a kill-switched tractor terrifying makes a lock-in-free CMS valuable. Worth a community post connecting "right to repair your tractor" to "right to export your site." ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: frame portability/interoperability ("no lock-in") as a security and sovereignty selling point in talks, not just an ethics one. - Education: a workshop on data export/portability and self-hosting as risk mitigation. - Developer experience: document clean export/import paths and API portability for any platform you steward. - Developer marketing: content series — "interoperability is a security feature." - Community management: surface member concerns about vendor/platform dependence in surveys. - Internal/external/cross-project: align with federation/ActivityPub efforts as a sovereignty story. #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: add platform-dependence / exit-strategy criteria to vendor review. - License Compliance: prefer licenses and tools that permit modification and interoperability. - Security Management: treat single-vendor remote-update capability (kill-switch risk) as a tracked threat. - Software Inventory: SBOM should flag networked-firmware blobs with remote-update authority. - Developer Support: legal guardrails review for anti-circumvention exposure in tooling. - Community Engagement: fund interoperability/right-to-repair-adjacent projects. - Strategic Alignment: report platform-concentration risk to leadership as a strategic KPI. #### Community - Maintainers: document fork/exit procedures as part of governance hygiene. - Contributors: onboarding that explains data ownership and portability. - Sponsors: transparent ledgers as the accountability analog to "pre-distribution." - Ecosystem: cross-project drills for "what if our upstream platform is switched off." #### WordPress - Core: keep export/import and data portability first-class. - Core Performance: n/a directly — focus area is portability, not perf. - Core AI: responsible-AI guardrails that avoid hard vendor lock-in for AI features. - **Core Program Team:** coordinate a data-sovereignty narrative across teams. - Mobile: ensure mobile apps don't introduce new platform-dependence chokepoints. - Playground: a lab demonstrating full site export → re-host elsewhere. - Community: a meetup kit on "own your platform" / sovereignty. - Training: a learning path on data ownership and migration. - Marketing: narrative connecting WordPress values to the post-American-internet argument. - Support: KB articles on full-site export and migration. - Design: UX audit of export/portability flows. - Documentation: examples-first docs for data export/import APIs. - Photos: provenance/portability of contributed media. - TV: index talks on open infrastructure and sovereignty. - Polyglots: translate sovereignty/portability messaging for non-US locales (the primary audience here). - Accessibility: ensure export/migration tools are accessible. - Meta: .org API reliability as an anti-lock-in commitment. - CLI: robust `wp export`/migration command coverage and docs. - Hosting: cross-host migration checklists; avoid host-specific lock-in defaults. - Tide: transparency in plugin scoring as anti-capture practice. - Openverse: portability and licensing clarity for ingested media. - Themes: avoid builder lock-in patterns that raise switching costs. - Plugins: provenance checks; flag plugins that create hard external dependencies. #### The WPCC - Programs: a fellowship track on data sovereignty / interoperability in the WP ecosystem. - Projects: governance clinics on exit rights and anti-capture covenants. - Funding experiments: microgrants for portability/migration tooling. ### FAIR - Technical independence: local metadata, provenance, and signature checks (directly aligned with the article's "auditable, transparent alternatives"). - Policies and covenants: anti-capture and sunset clauses as governance analogs to "stop the extraction." - Productized governance artifacts: scorecards rating platform-dependence and exit cost. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - A state that repeals anti-circumvention law will see measurable growth in domestic interoperability/right-to-repair startups within 24 months. - Framing portability as a *security* feature (vs an ethics feature) increases enterprise adoption of open/self-hosted platforms. - Concentration of remote-update authority in single vendors correlates with geopolitical coercion incidents over time. - The ~$1.4T AI capex cluster shows bubble dynamics (circular financing) detectable in inter-company revenue recognition. - Jurisdictions with stronger interoperability mandates retain more domestic ad/app revenue (pre-distribution effect) than those relying on after-the-fact taxation. ### 📊 Methodology - Natural experiment / difference-in-differences across jurisdictions that do vs don't relax anti-circumvention law (startup formation, revenue retention). - Event-study analysis of "platform-as-coercion" incidents (ICC, Brazil, tractors) against diplomatic-dispute timelines. - Financial-network analysis of the seven AI-cluster firms for circular revenue. - Survey/A-B of enterprise buyers on "security-framed" vs "ethics-framed" portability messaging. ### ❓ Questions - What is the minimum viable legal change (full repeal vs narrow exemptions) to unlock interoperability without collapsing legitimate copyright protections? - Which sovereign bloc is structurally best positioned to become the "Disenshittification Nation" first — EU, Canada, India, Brazil? - Does federation (ActivityPub, the Fediverse) satisfy the "post-American internet" requirement, or does hardware/firmware sovereignty also need solving? - How do you prevent a "post-American internet" from simply re-concentrating under a new national champion? ### 🔮 Future Research - Empirical mapping of "kill-switch surface": which critical sectors run on single-vendor remote-update authority. - Comparative study of interoperability mandates (DMA Art. 6/7) and realized switching-cost reductions. - Whether right-to-repair coalitions (agriculture, medical, auto) can be politically merged with digital-rights coalitions, as the article assumes. ### 💡 Implications - **Practice**: design for export/portability and minimal switching cost as a first-class, security-grade requirement. - **Policy**: anti-circumvention law is the chokepoint; interoperability mandates are the unlock. - **Security**: single-vendor remote-update authority is a national-security dependency to be inventoried and mitigated. - **Education**: teach data ownership, migration, and self-hosting as risk literacy. - **Funding**: pre-distribution (prevent extraction) is framed as more reliable than redistribution (tax it back) — a funding-design claim with broad reach. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: ~grade 10–11 (Flesch–Kincaid approximate); long sentences and rhetorical asides raise it, but vocabulary is mostly accessible. Profane/satirical register. #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: a single hero illustration; otherwise prose-only. - Improve: a three-stage enshittification diagram; a "kill-switch surface" map; a three-armies Venn. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: derived from a spoken keynote (an audio original exists). - Improve: link the DemocracyXChange recording; a 3-minute audio summary. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: strong analogies (roof/buckets, alligator-river), coined terms (enshittification, enshittocene). - Improve: a short glossary of coined terms with plain definitions. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: none (essay). - Improve: a checklist "audit your platform dependence" companion. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: a clear three-stage model and a three-armies taxonomy. - Improve: a causal diagram from "policy environment" → "enshittification" → "geopolitical leverage." #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: keynote framing invites collective action. - Improve: discussion prompts for community reading groups. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: reflective rhetorical questions. - Improve: journaling prompts on personal platform dependence. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: climate/energy metaphors throughout. - Improve: lifecycle framing of devices (repair vs landfill) tied to right-to-repair. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: standard article headings on The Walrus; hero image present. - Improve: ensure descriptive alt text for the satirical hero illustration. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: standard publisher template, generally navigable. - Improve: verify visible focus and skip-links on the site template. #### Contrast and readability - Present: standard editorial typography. - Improve: confirm 4.5:1 on captions/membership CTAs. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: responsive publisher layout. - Improve: verify no clipping at 200% zoom on pull quotes. #### Media and captions - Present: text article; an audio keynote original exists elsewhere. - Improve: provide a transcript/caption link to the source keynote. #### Forms and interactions - Present: donation/membership form at end. - Improve: ensure labels and accessible error handling on the donate form. #### Standards reference - Map any gaps to WCAG 2.2 AA (1.1.1 alt text, 1.4.3 contrast, 1.4.10 reflow, 2.4.1 bypass blocks). ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: explicitly non-US framing (Canada/EU/Australia/Mexico); names global examples (Brazil, Greenland/Denmark, Ukraine). - Improve: more Global South perspectives on platform dependence (the examples skew to wealthy democracies). #### Inclusive language - Present: plain language with defined coined terms. - Improve: heavy profanity and ableist-adjacent insults ("ketamine-addled," "mediocrities") may alienate some readers; a cleaner companion summary would broaden reach. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: consistent structure, vivid concrete analogies. - Improve: dense, allusive asides (pop-culture references) reduce predictability; a chunked TL;DR helps. #### Representation - Present: names a range of actors (activists, engineers, judges, officials). - Improve: voices of affected workers (gig economy is mentioned but not centered). #### Psychological safety - Present: righteous-anger register, clearly opinion. - Improve: content note for political/profane content; framing as one argument among several. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - **Causal (environment over agents)**: "They are effects... products of an enshittogenic policy environment" — well-supported by the interchangeability argument and lock-in mechanics. - **Inductive (pattern from cases)**: the kill-switch claim is built from multiple concrete incidents (ICC, Brazil, John Deere), making the "platform-as-coercion" generalization reasonably grounded. - **Analogical (roof/climate, alligator-river)**: clarifies the inaction-until-catastrophe thesis; analogies are illustrative, not load-bearing for the policy claim. - **Deductive (pre- vs redistribution)**: if extraction can be prevented at lower cost than it can be taxed back, prevention dominates — valid given the premises. #### Fallacies - **Ad hominem / poisoning the well**: "ketamine-addled Zuckermuskian mediocrities," "crapulent... vampire." Vivid but substitutes ridicule for argument in places. *Fix*: keep the structural argument; drop reliance on insult as evidence. - **False dilemma (latent)**: "regulate/tax (fails) vs interoperability (works)" underplays hybrid approaches (regulation + interoperability together). *Fix*: acknowledge complementary, not either/or. - **Hasty generalization (potential)**: a few coercion incidents → "any platform is a lever." Directionally strong but the inductive base is small. *Fix*: quantify the kill-switch surface to firm up the claim. - **Appeal to motive / selection**: the "three armies" assumes durable coalition among groups with divergent values. *Fix*: treat coalition durability as a hypothesis, not a given. #### Tone of voice - Polemical, satirical, profane, urgent, activist. Coined vocabulary (enshittification/enshittocene) and pop-culture allusion. Persuasive keynote register — high energy, low hedging. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - **Deny**: Not applicable as self-defense — the author is the accuser, not the accused. He notes the *platforms'* denials (Microsoft "swears this was just a coincidence") as the DARVO move by the powerful, not by himself. "Not applicable to this source" as a self-DARVO; the article instead *documents* others' deny-and-minimize. - **Attack**: The piece attacks the powerful (Big Tech, Trump) — rhetorically aggressive, but punching up rather than discrediting a vulnerable accuser. - **Reverse victim/offender**: The author flags the *risk* of this move (austerity narrative recasting a corporate-caused crash as a reason to punish the public) rather than performing it. ## 🎯 Conclusion - **Bottom line**: Treat US platform dependence as a sovereignty and security risk; the durable fix is interoperability + right-to-repair (prevent extraction), unlocked by repealing anti-circumvention law — and the dangerous "AI" to fear first is the unaccountable corporation, not a rogue model. - **Next steps for readers**: audit your own platform/vendor dependence and exit costs; support interoperability and right-to-repair policy; for builders, make portability a security-grade default; watch the AI-bubble/austerity risk as a political, not just financial, event. ## 🔄 Refactor Appendix — The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust > Density: 2–5 Literature atoms (H3), 0–3 Permanent candidates (H4). > Defaults: 3 Literature, 1 Permanent. Resonance filter: if you can't > articulate in one line why a claim matters, drop it. ### 📚 Literature Atoms (H3) #### Big Tech has fused with the US state into a foreign-policy weapon > [!quote] ID:rw_doctorow_natsec > Big Tech is Trump, and Trump is Big Tech. Big Tech is now an arm of American foreign policy. When Trump gets angry at someone, his tech companies punish them. **Context & use**: - The article's central escalation — platform dependence becomes geopolitical coercion (ICC/Office 365, John Deere kill-switch). - Reframes "vendor lock-in" as a national-security dependency, not a consumer-rights footnote. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: [view highlight](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### Platforms extract from everyone, paid or not > [!quote] ID:rw_doctorow_product > anyone who says "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product" has been tricked. Facebook didn't screw its users to benefit advertisers. Facebook screwed its users, its advertisers, and its publishers to benefit itself. **Context & use**: - Corrects the most-repeated platform aphorism; payment status doesn't determine who gets extracted from. - Underwrites the "platforms vs the world" framing and the three-stage enshittification model. **Tags**: #xref #aphorisms **Highlight**: [view highlight](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### Prevent extraction rather than taxing it back > [!quote] ID:rw_doctorow_predistribution > rather than letting Big Tech steal billions and then attempting to tax some of it back, why don't we just stop them from stealing it in the first place? Any economist will tell you that pre-distribution is far more reliable than redistribution. **Context & use**: - The policy thesis: interoperability/right-to-repair prevents the levy; taxation only recovers a fraction after the fact. - The Canadian-app-store math ("Apple's $100 billion into our $10 billion") is the worked instance. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: [view highlight](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### Platform bosses are effects of policy, not causes > [!quote] ID:rw_doctorow_effects > the ketamine-addled Zuckermuskian mediocrities that run our digital lives aren't smart enough to be causes. They are effects. They are products of an enshittogenic policy environment **Context & use**: - The anti-"great man" argument: swapping executives changes nothing; the policy environment manufactures replacements. - Directs reform at law/structure rather than personalities. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: [view highlight](https://thewalrus.ca/the-internet-has-become-too-american-to-trust/) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### 🧠 Permanent Candidates (H4) #### Vendor lock-in is a sovereignty risk, not just a consumer harm **Claim**: When critical infrastructure depends on a single foreign vendor's remote-update authority, ordinary platform lock-in becomes a national-security dependency a hostile state can weaponize. **Evidence pointer**: [[#Big Tech has fused with the US state into a foreign-policy weapon]] > [!quote] > Big Tech is now an arm of American foreign policy. **Scope & conditions**: Holds for networked firmware/services with remote disable or update authority (OSes, app stores, ag-tech, cloud-tethered hardware); weaker for fully local, forkable, or self-hosted software where exit cost is low. **Links**: - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Concentrated Authority Without Accountability Produces the Same Failure Patterns Across Religious and Software Ecosystems]] — because extends the unaccountable-concentrated-power pattern to platform/state fusion - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Reverse Centaur Pattern - Humans Forced to Work Like Machines]] — because contrasts on who holds control (same author, Doctorow; here the control is geopolitical rather than workplace) - [[Open Source Governance MOC]] — because applies-in the right-to-fork / exit-cost governance context <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Connect "right to repair your tractor" to "right to export your WordPress site" as a community post — sovereignty-as-security framing #fleeting #inbox - [F2] Track which sovereign bloc moves first on interoperability/anti-circumvention repair law (EU DMA Art. 6 vs Canada C-11 repeal) #fleeting #inbox ### → Things 3 (max 2 actions) - [ ] Draft a short post linking interoperability/portability to security for the WP audience — #things - [ ] Add a "platform-dependence / exit cost" line item to vendor-review criteria — #things <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** ![[Full Document Contents/Articles/The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust.md|The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust by CORY DOCTOROW]] ## Highlights - the world would be better off without mad emperors and their wars of choice. But if there *is* a mad emperor, and there *is* a war of choice, at the very least we should strive to salvage what we can out of their depraved and unforgivable acts of aggression. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt6s753hg05zgsdgvtjs3xn1)) - We don’t need Zuck to learn to be better at his job. We don’t need someone else in that job. We need to abolish that job. Because the ketamine-addled Zuckermuskian mediocrities that run our digital lives aren’t smart enough to be causes. They are effects. They are products of an enshittogenic policy environment that rewards the worst ideas of the worst people with the most money. Which means that if Elon Musk popped his clogs tonight, there would be an overnight succession battle amongst twelve equally horrible Big Ballses, and whoever emerged victorious would be indistinguishable from Musk himself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt6pvbg7jq2jzx2txtvc93hh)) - Note: Anti-'great man' argument: the executives are effects of an enshittogenic policy environment, not causes — so reform must target the law/structure, not the personalities. - Tags: atom/literature/h2 - What’s the lesson here? It’s that anyone who says “If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product” has been tricked. Facebook didn’t screw its users to benefit advertisers. Facebook screwed its users, its advertisers, *and* its publishers to benefit itself. Just like Amazon screws the sellers on its platform, who pay 50 to 60 percent out of every dollar in junk fees. Just like Apple and Google screw every app publisher on iOS and Android, who pay 30 percent out of every dollar in junk fees. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt6pv63ektrw5e29z66w61hs)) - Note: Corrects the most-repeated platform aphorism: payment status doesn't determine who's extracted from — platforms screw users, advertisers, and publishers alike. - Tags: atom/literature/h2, fallacy/correcting-aphorism - In other words, rather than letting Big Tech steal billions and then attempting to tax some of it back, why don’t we just stop them from stealing it in the first place? Any economist will tell you that pre-distribution is far more reliable than redistribution. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt6pv8djg658tkdvv01ax9h7)) - Note: The policy thesis: interoperability/right-to-repair prevents the extraction ('pre-distribution') rather than recovering a fraction via tax. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - Big Tech is Trump, and Trump is Big Tech. Big Tech is now an arm of American foreign policy. When Trump gets angry at someone, his tech companies punish them. Like the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who, after swearing out an arrest warrant for the genocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu, promptly lost access to his Office 365 accounts—all his documents, working files, diaries, address books, email archives, and the email address he needed to log in to every *other* account he had. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt6pv3fqt1mmkzcq7a5r8rvh)) - Note: Central escalation: platform dependence becomes geopolitical coercion (ICC prosecutor loses Office 365 after charging Netanyahu). Vendor lock-in as a national-security risk. - Tags: atom/literature/h1