# Enshittification  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Enshittification - Show: 99% Invisible - Owner / Host: Roman Mars - Guests: [Cory Doctorow](https://share.snipd.com/person/9aaa68f8-51c1-4864-9646-ea0802a7da2e), [Jared Wilson](https://share.snipd.com/person/660574e3-7521-4570-a2d4-5d06090ff098) - Episode publish date: 2026-05-05 - Episode AI description: Cory Doctorow, sci-fi writer and digital rights advocate, joins Jared Wilson, a Missouri farmer fighting for right to repair. They dig into why smart gadgets make simple tasks harder. Tractors become locked software platforms. Repair delays can wreck a harvest. Phones, printers, and appliances get caught in the same trap, with parts pairing and anti-circumvention laws tightening the screws. - Mentioned books: [In Shittification](https://share.snipd.com/book/9add77b8-ebad-4060-81c2-4cb95b4928da) by [Cory Doctorow](https://share.snipd.com/person/9aaa68f8-51c1-4864-9646-ea0802a7da2e) - Duration: 35:04 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/baa04955-f564-47ad-a3a1-b8e4dbdcbd01) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/21b3fb50-2013-4954-ba0b-9dae5fcbd483) - Export date: 2026-07-08T01:13:06 ## Snips ### [Roman Mars Versus His Smart Thermostat](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6c77c07a-9d41-483b-944c-994664ffaedd) 🎧 01:59 - 03:25 (01:26) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f3f9121a-6998-4597-be4e-8d53b50857ef" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Roman Mars hates his smart thermostat because it repeatedly disconnects from the heater when he only needs heat a few times a year. - He says he would rather have an old brass Honeywell dial than a device that adds confusion instead of convenience. #### 💬 Quote > All I want is just an old fashioned brass, round, Honeywell thermostat [...] instead of this other thing that drives me absolutely crazy. > — Roman Mars Roman Mars on how smart devices often make simple tasks harder #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** Okay, so Roman, I want you to think about smart devices. Okay, okay. I think you're on the right track, okay, to making me mad. Go ahead. Yeah, so let's just start. Think about all the devices that you own that used to be mostly analog. Today, they are now digital in some way. So can you think of some examples in your life? **Roman Mars:** Well, I can think of one very obvious example that drives me crazy. I have a smart thermostat in my house. It came with the house. I did not install it. And I live in the Bay Area, so I don't need heat a lot. But every time I need to turn it on, which is like a few times a year, the smart thermostat is like disconnected from the heater. And for some reason, unknown reason, I cannot make sense of it. And all I want is just an old fashioned brass, round, Honeywell thermostat, old fashioned analog thermostat that can just turn on and set it to a temperature and turn it off when I don't need it instead of this other thing that drives me absolutely crazy. So, Raman, this is a pretty common complaint, what you're saying, right? We all have these **Chris Berube:** devices that have some kind of a smart component. They're supposed to make things convenient in our lives. But in fact, they are making things really frustrating. Like, why does my fridge need to be smart and talk to me, right? Today, though, we're going to talk about how this phenomenon, it could be more than just annoying for a lot of people, because there are times when the digitization of pretty much everything is actively making people's lives worse. --- ### [Auto Steer Shows Why Farmers Adopted Software](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d24cbf81-010b-46f1-8096-21838ab97fc2) 🎧 03:59 - 05:47 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1b2b077d-c0c2-464d-b5a4-229b8efd6aa4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jared Wilson says modern tractor software helps in real ways, especially auto steer during exhausting 20-hour workdays. - He can create lines in a field and let the tractor drive itself, leaving him in far better shape when he gets off. #### 💬 Quote > We can create lines in the field and they'll drive themselves. > — Jared Wilson Jared Wilson on the practical upside of tractor software #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So like a lot of things, modern tractors are now run by a computer operating system. And one of the farmers who's not happy with the software in his tractor is a guy I spoke to for this story, a farmer in Missouri named Jared Wilson. On **Jared Wilson:** my lineage, I'm at least a seventh generation farmer on my father's side. So we've been doing this for a while. **Chris Berube:** So Jared runs a family farm. You know, he's deep in the trenches of this world. And he told me something I did not really know about farming equipment. Tractors, harvesters, spraying machines, you know, all of these vehicles that are critical to farming today, for the most part, they are run by computers. **Jared Wilson:** You know, in the 90s, we didn't have a lot of electronic control units on these machines. Mechanical fuel pumps, everything was mechanical. So you touch something and it has linkage and it's controlling something mechanical. And now in these machines, when you touch something, everything is electric over some system, electric over hydraulic, if you will, electric over engine controls. And that means that there's software that you're dealing with. I **Chris Berube:** am sure if you're a farmer, this is all incredibly obvious stuff. But, you know, this was a surprise to me. Like, it's the same thing with a lot of cars now, where functions that used to be mechanical, they are now all run by an operating system. And my car, you know, gives me a driving score, for example, which is very, very annoying. But for the most part, Jared told me this digitization of the tractor, it's a really positive thing. Like, in lots of ways, these controls make his job a lot easier. One **Jared Wilson:** of the simplest things that comes to mind is auto steer, right? These tractors, can create lines in the field and they'll drive themselves. And when you're on a machine for 20 hours and you don't have to steer it, you're in a lot better shape when you get off of it than you are hand driving the machine. --- ### [A Software Lockout Cost Jared Wilson Harvest Time](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aa8accc0-dfaa-4800-90ac-19cbc3fc2cd1) 🎧 05:59 - 08:59 (03:00) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fbed7e5d-ff5c-409f-a137-88b8bd647fdb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - A failed sensor triggered a tractor derate, but the machine gave Jared Wilson only an error code, not a real diagnosis. - While he waited days for a technician, he heard dry soybean pods popping open and dropping unrecoverable crop onto the ground. #### 💬 Quote > You could stand in the field and you could hear the pods opening and the soybeans hitting the ground. > — Jared Wilson Jared Wilson on the cost of repair delays during harvest #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** there are some drawbacks. So Jared told me if there's a problem with the tractor, sometimes the software will just slow down the tractor's horsepower. If **Jared Wilson:** anything is not working correctly on the emission system, if you have a sensor, for instance, that has failed or malfunctioned, it won't perform the necessary emissions operations to satisfy the system. And it will do something called a derate of the machine. **Chris Berube:** So a derating, this is when the software basically makes the tractor unusable. Like it slows down the horsepower so much, you cannot use the tractor to do farming. That **Roman Mars:** sounds so incredibly annoying. But I would assume that this software was doing this for some kind of good reason, like for a safety reason. Right. So there could be safety reasons for doing this or smaller issues like **Chris Berube:** a sensor isn't working on the tractor. And Jared gave me this example from his life where he had a problem with the tractor and the operating system slowed it down, but it didn't **Jared Wilson:** tell him what was wrong. You know, the terminals inside of the machine might give you an error code, but very rarely does that error code actually tell you what's wrong. You have to have an external piece of software to plug into the machine to figure it out. So **Chris Berube:** when this happened to Jared, he was faced with a choice, right? He could either spend a lot of time trying to figure out the problem, you know, waste a day doing that, or he could do the much easier thing, which was call out a technician. But according to Jared, that's also kind of a pain. So **Jared Wilson:** I was forced to call the dealership out. They came out and replaced, I think, one of the Delta pressure sensors. And **Chris Berube:** that **Jared Wilson:** didn't end up fixing the problem. But the logistics of that mean that the technician comes out. You may have to wait a day or two before there's a technician available. And **Chris Berube:** losing a couple of days during the season, that's a total disaster because Jared told me losing a day can cost him a ton of money. The **Jared Wilson:** soybeans, we'd had a dry year and you could stand in the field and you could hear the pods opening and the soybeans hitting the ground. So you can imagine how sick to your stomach that makes you. There's no way to reclaim those once they fall on the ground. They're just, that's just lost revenue that's just gone. And it's difficult to convey how frustrating that is when you're sitting on your hands and your crop is literally falling on the ground and you don't have the ability to do anything about it. Jared **Chris Berube:** didn't have a guess about how much these kinds of delays have cost him, but in 2023, the Public Interest Research Group, so they're this advocacy group, they estimated downtime for farmers caused by these repair delays cost them about $3 billion that year. And this is at a time when farmers are facing all sorts of challenges, like unpredictable weather, tariffs. And then on top of that, you have to figure out these software problems. So the stakes are really, really high for somebody like Jared. --- ### [Enshittification Starts After Users Get Locked In](https://share.snipd.com/snip/190f77d6-dfca-4c99-8c37-ec887b7856fa) 🎧 10:16 - 12:39 (02:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/577127a4-369d-4554-9bc7-7c4cfe549162" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Cory Doctorow defines enshittification as a three-stage process where platforms first attract users, then lock them in, then degrade the experience to enrich business customers and shareholders. - Facebook-style communities become hard to leave, letting platforms flood users with ads, spam, and data extraction. #### 💬 Quote > It describes this three-stage process where you have platforms that start off being good to their end users, but are also finding a way to lock those end users in. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow defining enshittification #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So it's a word that he coined that seems to be capturing a lot of what's going wrong in modern society right now. And that word is in shittification. Roman, have you heard the word in shittification? **Roman Mars:** I have. I'm also a big fan of Corey Doctorow. And what I know of it is that this is the idea that, you know, kind of everything on the Internet is getting worse. **Chris Berube:** Yeah. So that's a part of it. And there's actually a little bit more to **Cory Doctorow:** it than that. It's a way to talk about platform collapse, platform decay. It describes this three-stage process where you have platforms that start off being good to their end users, but are also finding a way to lock those end users in. And then having locked them in, it makes things worse for them in order to make things better for business customers. **Chris Berube:** So let's just lay this out with an example. You're on Facebook. You are part of a Facebook group that likes something very, very niche, right? Like let's say baseball cards from the 1980s, just to use an example of a hobby someone might have, right? I'm not saying that is me. Someone has this hobby, though. Got it. The first step is Facebook sets up the infrastructure for you to meet lots of new people, right? So you're finding other fans of 80s baseball cards. You're all becoming friends. You're building up this community. But then you cannot leave. Like, maybe the platform is buying up all the competition, right? So there's nowhere else to go. Or they make it hard to transport your group somewhere else. And maybe like people don't want to leave because you have years of thrilling 80s baseball card conversations built up. And then you get stuck, right? So if you leave, you're going to lose all of these friends that you've built up and you become locked in. And that's when the big companies will start to make things shittier. They in-shittify. And instead of serving the users, they will serve businesses, right? They'll make things worse for you. They will sell your private data. They will let the platform become filled with these kind of spammy, annoying ads that you can't get rid of. **Cory Doctorow:** The value is just hoovered up by the platform and given to its shareholders and its executives, even as the platform just turns into a pile of shit. **Chris Berube:** And I think a lot of us can recognize that pattern. OK, that description makes a lot of sense to me. So here's the other thing with Corey's argument. He says in shitification, it is not exclusive to being online, you know, on Facebook, on Google, wherever. It can also affect things in the physical tactile world, such as all of our smart devices. --- ### [Connected Devices Spread Enshittification Into Daily Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89f37a33-5a82-4a81-ad3e-128bc1c8a10b) 🎧 12:39 - 14:02 (01:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f004d867-164f-4f20-9dc4-ffde66642745" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Cory Doctorow argues enshittification escaped the internet because digitization turned ordinary products into computers in fancy cases. - Chris Berube notes the average American household now has about 21 connected devices, expanding the places companies can lock users in. #### 💬 Quote > Reality is being infected with digital stuff. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on cyberspace moving into physical products #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** Okay, so how does that work? Well, Corey says this same principle applies to basically all of our smart devices, right, including our cars, our smart fridges, our tractors, stuff that just wasn't **Cory Doctorow:** previously digital. Willing Gibson, the science fiction writer who coined the term cyberspace. He's quite a prophet. And in one of his books, he has this line, cyberspace is everting, so turning inside out. And what he means is that reality is being infected with digital stuff. And digitization is becoming a feature of things that weren't digital before. Everything's just becoming a computer in a fancy case. Let's **Chris Berube:** just talk about how many of our devices today rely on computers and rely on the internet. So how many smart devices would you estimate you have in your home right now? Uh, 20, possibly. That's pretty average, if that's right. So according to this survey I found from 2023, the average American household has about 21 connected devices. So that means devices that are connected to the internet. **Roman Mars:** Wow. Wow. That **Chris Berube:** is way too high. I can **Roman Mars:** already think of the ones that I wish I could eliminate from my house **Chris Berube:** right now. Oh, 100%. And the thing with all of these smart devices is that it makes it a lot easier for a company that makes this device to lock you in, right? So the first step into gentrification, it's locking you in. --- ### [Repair Lock In Turns Owners Into Captive Customers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0af7419c-1db5-46d5-b026-7ed48b4c1834) 🎧 13:52 - 17:54 (04:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0f23e834-6910-4680-8fc3-f9b64e968b63" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Software lets manufacturers lock owners into their repair ecosystem by withholding diagnostic tools, charging high fees, and blocking independent mechanics. - Jared Wilson's mechanic lacked the needed software because the tools cost $6,000, and John Deere can still require an unlock step. #### 💬 Quote > It doesn't work until you get a service call and pay 200 bucks for someone to show up and type the unlock code into your tractor's keyboard. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on how software lock-in changes repairs #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** And the thing with all of these smart devices is that it makes it a lot easier for a company that makes this device to lock you in, right? So the first step into gentrification, it's locking you in. Because if something is a smart device, the manufacturer has quite a bit of leeway. Let's go back to tractors where we started this whole episode. Cory Doctorow says they are a prime example of this. Since **Cory Doctorow:** Roman times, farmers have fixed their own gear because when the storm is coming and you need to get the crops in, you can't wait for someone else to come and fix your stuff. According **Chris Berube:** to Jared, you know, back in the 90s, the tractor is mostly mechanical, right? And if you wanted to replace a part or fix something in the tractor, it was a pretty straightforward process. You would go down to your local John Deere dealership and you know, that was owned by a guy who lived down the road. I **Jared Wilson:** remember as a kid going with my dad, and if you had a complaint, you went to Leland Beams, and he might take you back in the shop and ask what was going on. You know, he wanted the customer to be satisfied, and he knew that if he didn't, you'd go down the road to the next dealership the next time you were buying a piece of equipment. You know, **Chris Berube:** say you have a problem with a wire or you need a replacement part, you go to Leland Deems, right? And if you're not happy with Leland Deems, you could go to another dealership. Or maybe you go to an independent repair person who's somewhere down the road, right? They'd hook you up, and then you would go about your day. But in Jared's experience, a few times this has happened. He received the error code, didn't get a lot of information from the operating system, and without much to go on, he went straight to John Deere. And at that point, John Deere holds all the cards, right? Because to restart the tractor, Jared needed a technician who knows how to access the tractor's computer. And then at that point, he had to pay that person **Cory Doctorow:** to come and check it out. The farmers still mostly fix their tractors. They get the part they put it in and so on. So they're farmers. They know how to fix their stuff. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work until you get a service call and pay 200 bucks for someone to show up and type the unlock code into your tractor's keyboard. **Chris Berube:** As a farmer, it's not as easy as you go to the repair shop down the road and they fix something for you. Because usually independent repair places, they don't have the tools that John Deere corporate has. Because John Deere is not making that stuff available unless the repair person is paying a big fee. **Jared Wilson:** My independent mechanic, I called him up and he said he didn't have the tools to do that because they cost $6,000. **Chris Berube:** So because John Deere makes it expensive for independent repair shops to fix John Deere products, as a consumer, you're stuck paying whatever John Deere is charging. And this is a big way you get locked in. It's replacement parts. So if Jared buys a replacement part, he probably needs to buy it from John Deere because he doesn't have a lot of options for where else you can buy the thing. I'm getting very angry, Chris. This is very upsetting to me. Keep some room. OK, keep some room. We need a ceiling that we could achieve later on in the episode. You're going to get there. So, Roman, in the past, farmers could actually buy a generic replacement part, right? Like a part that was built by somebody who isn't John Deere. But today, with the software, John Deere does this trick called parts pairing. So if you want to replace a drill, something like that, certain parts are not going to work unless they are compatible with John Deere's software. So that's parts pairing. And this is related to this really important concept called interoperability. I've definitely **Roman Mars:** heard that term before. But what does it actually mean here? Basically, **Chris Berube:** interoperability is whether two things can work together, right? So if you have shoes and shoelaces, if the laces are the right size, they fit inside the shoe. Those two things are interoperable. And in a digital context, two things are interoperable if they can talk to each other. And parts pairing makes that difficult because with tractors, you know, you can buy some generic parts that is cheaper than what John Deere is selling, but it won't necessarily work because John Deere software might lock it out. So these two things are not interoperable. --- ### [Parts Pairing Lets Software Reject Perfectly Usable Parts](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99d3afe4-38d5-4623-aa2b-6448a5f75adf) 🎧 16:52 - 20:25 (03:32) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f11ea2d8-e05f-4850-b57e-09591a3c79c0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Parts pairing and interoperability rules let companies reject cheaper third-party replacements even when the hardware could physically work. - Cory Doctorow compares tractors to printers that block outside ink, helping manufacturers charge extraordinary prices for consumables. #### 💬 Quote > It's not that your printer can't run that program. It's that your printer has been designed to reject that program to say no. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on software blocking third-party supplies and parts #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So, Roman, in the past, farmers could actually buy a generic replacement part, right? Like a part that was built by somebody who isn't John Deere. But today, with the software, John Deere does this trick called parts pairing. So if you want to replace a drill, something like that, certain parts are not going to work unless they are compatible with John Deere's software. So that's parts pairing. And this is related to this really important concept called interoperability. I've definitely **Roman Mars:** heard that term before. But what does it actually mean here? Basically, **Chris Berube:** interoperability is whether two things can work together, right? So if you have shoes and shoelaces, if the laces are the right size, they fit inside the shoe. Those two things are interoperable. And in a digital context, two things are interoperable if they can talk to each other. And parts pairing makes that difficult because with tractors, you know, you can buy some generic parts that is cheaper than what John Deere is selling, but it won't necessarily work because John Deere software might lock it out. So these two things are not interoperable. And tractors are kind of the tip of the iceberg here because this kind of thing can happen with all of our smart devices. **Cory Doctorow:** And Corey brought up this example to me, which is printers. Your printer company says, we don't like it when you use third-party ink. And so we're going to block third-party ink installation. Once we do that, we're going to charge you more for the ink that comes from HP or Epson or whatever. It's not that your printer can't run that program. It's that your printer has been designed to reject that program to say no. Ink's now $10,000 a gallon. It's the most expensive fluid you can buy as a civilian without a special license. It costs more to print your grocery list than it would if you printed it with the semen of a Kentucky Derby winning stallion. **Roman Mars:** This is why I like Corey. He paints some word pictures. He puts a little mustard on the fastball. And by the way, I did I **Chris Berube:** looked this up. This is a bit of an exaggeration. Like the Kentucky Derby winning semen is very expensive. It's worth a lot of money. But is expensive, too. Right. It costs like thousands of dollars a **Roman Mars:** gallon, which is so much money. I mean, shitty is the right word for it. I mean, it's awful. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, it's really shitty. And it's also a big problem with powered wheelchairs. You have smart fridges. You have ventilators. One more example is about the device you are probably listening to this on right now. So let's say you have an iPhone. I'm sure you've experienced some version of this as someone who owns an iPhone. If you need to repair an iPhone, there's lots of cases where you cannot get a third-party replacement part. Like those will just not be interoperable with an Apple device. So Apple urges you to buy an Apple replacement part and then go to the Apple store or go to an Apple authorized repair person. **Cory Doctorow:** Tim Cook in 2019 wrote a letter to his investors at the start of the year where he said our biggest risk is that our customers repair phones instead of buying new ones, that they like their phones. They work fine. And so when they break, they don't just get a new one. Apple uniquely among manufacturers, when you trade a phone in, sends it to be shredded **Chris Berube:** so that the parts can't be harvested to be used in a repair. So to recap, this is the inshittification of things, right? You buy something that has software in it. The software makes it hard to get the thing repaired by some third party. You have to go to the manufacturer and they will jack up the price, right? And perhaps they don't let you use third party parts. So they're just profiting off people because we're stuck, right? We have this stuckness going on. --- ### [Anti Piracy Law Became A Weapon Against Repair](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55377377-8043-4421-83ac-303491c66a92) 🎧 24:24 - 27:46 (03:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/07b5d1e6-2697-400f-8fcb-92319e261c0d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - People increasingly jailbreak devices and use cracked tools to restore repairs companies intentionally block. - Cory Doctorow says digital locks became dangerous because the DMCA turned breaking or even discussing them into a felony tied to anti-piracy law. #### 💬 Quote > They passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In Section 1201, it says it is a felony [...] to tamper with or expose weaknesses in or discuss weaknesses of a digital lock. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on how the DMCA constrains repair and security research #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So Cory Doctorow says, we're now seeing a lot of black market or kind of gray market efforts to fix this problem, right? We're seeing people hacking software an iPhone, for example, and making it work with third-party applications, right? When you do that with an Apple product, that is called jailbreaking. But people aren't just doing it with Apple products, they're doing it with all kinds of tech now. And **Cory Doctorow:** if you're like a bored grad student with an electron tunneling microscope, you can just like have at it, right? **Chris Berube:** Lots and lots of these softwares have been broken into, and it's actually pretty easy for someone who has, you know, hacker skills and experience. And obviously this kind of solution hacking into the software, like it is not something the company wants you to do. I don't think need to say that your user agreement usually says I will not do something like this, but it is becoming more and more common. And our farmer, Jared, he told me he's actually seen this kind of thing pretty often in his day to day life, like being used by repair **Jared Wilson:** people. There have been a lot of black market things that have been released that independent providers are using laptops from China that have cracked John Deere software on it. So **Roman Mars:** I'm completely on board with fixing this problem. However, you need to fix it. But I do think that there's probably a little room to be cautious if you do not know where the software or hardware that you're using to fix the problem came from. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, it does sound sketchy. And Jared, on our call, he made clear to me he has never used this kind of technology because, you know, he wants to follow the rules. And also, you don't actually know what you're putting on your computer when you are working with this kind of thing. So if something goes wrong, you know, you can't call John Deere because at this point you are doing something you're not supposed to be doing. Creates some **Jared Wilson:** hesitation in using technology like that on your hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machines because you're out of any ecosystem that can help you because you're operating outside of the margins. **Chris Berube:** So on top of that, Corey Doctorow says that in a lot of cases, this kind of solution, this hackery solution is probably illegal. Well, that just drives me crazy. So why is it illegal? Well, there is something called a digital lock that is on a lot of these things. And it's a very particular kind of software. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was concern about ripping DVDs and music piracy, stuff like that. So back then, record companies and movie studios, they added digital locks to their files. And in 1998, the U.S. passed a law that **Cory Doctorow:** made it illegal to break a digital lock. They passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In 1201, it says it is a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine to tamper with or expose weaknesses in or discuss weaknesses of a digital lock. And now this law that **Chris Berube:** was designed for MP3 sharing, it is now being applied to all of these other devices that we use every day. **Roman Mars:** Five years in prison. There should be a prison sentence for passing that law. **Chris Berube:** Well, Roman, I think you may have to take that one up with both parties in Congress in 1998. Yeah, no, **Roman Mars:** I know. Everyone's at fault for that one. **Chris Berube:** So as you can tell, the sketchy solution, you know, it has some problems. Obviously, they're not enforcing this law too often, but it's still a thing that exists that is out there. So they have that option to do that if they catch you with this kind of software. So **Roman Mars:** this is kind of a hacker path to solving and certification. But is there a more law abiding path? --- ### [Repair Laws Help Without Fully Breaking Lock In](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c139d43-5708-4f7b-ba94-620b73159354) 🎧 31:40 - 35:56 (04:16) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6083f857-d755-4f29-8acb-5000de52aa6d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Recent repair wins help, but they do not fully solve lock-in because companies can still collect data, invoke intellectual property claims, and keep parts pairing in place. - Chris Berube notes John Deere released software and some derate overrides, yet Jared Wilson still joined a class action over repair monopolies. #### 💬 Quote > You can make the platform better, but you're still locked into the platform. > — Roman Mars Roman Mars on the limits of current right to repair reforms #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** is good news. And actually, in response to this push, we have already seen some companies who have started sending out these repair tools. So these are companies trying to get out preemptively ahead of these laws. I bet. And an example of this a couple of years ago, a little company called John Deere, perhaps you have heard of them from multiple references in this story. A little company called John Deere have put out this software to their customers that's designed to make it possible for farmers to decode these error messages and troubleshoot lots of problems with their tractors, so to fix things themselves. And as of this year, John Deere told me, farmers can actually override a derating in some cases. So this is the problem we talked about at the beginning of the show, where the tractor shuts itself down. So this all sounds like good news, but there are still some caveats. **Roman Mars:** Okay, so what is this caveat? **Chris Berube:** Well, Jared says there are still flaws with the repair software. He's particularly concerned about the way it collects his data, his harvesting data. He says that's not ideal for him. He's actually been part of a class action lawsuit against John Deere saying they have an unfair monopoly on repair tools and the software is part of the complaints that they filed. And in a bigger sense, while there's been progress around right to repair, there's no guarantee that things like the federal law about car repairs is going to pass, right? Like there are some big lobbies pushing back against that. Some car companies have opposed more right to repair laws because they worry it could lead to their **Roman Mars:** intellectual **Chris Berube:** property being violated. **Roman Mars:** My **Chris Berube:** God, their intellectual property about the information **Roman Mars:** on my car. That is an absurd assertion. Yeah, I mean, when you put it **Chris Berube:** that way, it sounds pretty silly. But these right to repair laws, like they can make a big difference, right? But they aren't a magic bullet. Like many of these laws do not outlaw parts pairing, for example, so they don't solve the problem of interoperability. You know, you can't necessarily put third party parts on to repair something. So there's an argument that these laws **Roman Mars:** could go further. Yeah. So it can make the platform better, but you're still locked into the platform. **Chris Berube:** You're totally locked into the platform. So lots of ways, like you need these laws to be more comprehensive. And Cory Doctorow says, like, maybe we should start thinking beyond the laws. Like, he has other approaches to this. He thinks we actually need to be doing something a lot more radical. Oh, OK. Tell me more. What does he have in mind? One thing Cory is pushing for is countries outside the United States to basically break the digital locks, right, to allow third party manufacturers to make replacement parts, things like that. So Canada and Mexico are in a trade war with the U.S. right now. And Corey says, look, what if those countries made generic replacement parts that go around the locks and then export those generic parts all over the world? We could do the same for tractors and tractor parts and cars and car parts. We have **Cory Doctorow:** all the car part factories in Ontario, right? If we can't ship those across the border anymore, we can just make generic car parts in Ontario, sell them all over the world, with the software to turn off the car part checking tool in the cars. We could have third-party ink manufacturing. And you know what? If we don't do it, someone else is going to do it. **Roman Mars:** It is a very Cory Doctorow thing to turn Canada into a lawless land of jailbreaking. But I do love it. I don't see it ever really happening in that way, but I do love it. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, that can feel like a long shot, right? But we do have to think about different ways to fix this problem. I totally **Roman Mars:** agree. Roman, **Chris Berube:** there's so much going on in the world right now, but this issue feels pretty urgent to me. Because if we don't act, you know, if we don't do something about these kind of everyday frustrations, this general shittiness of things, but also this big cost for lots of people, it's just going to get worse. And on a much simpler level, Roman, I would like to live in a world where somebody like Jared can just fix his tractor. It **Jared Wilson:** doesn't benefit us, the citizen, to have stuff that we buy that we can't fix when it breaks. It's not good economically. It's not good environmentally. Allowing these companies to stymie competition is not in our best interest. And I really hope that people can take that to heart well --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts # Snips updated after 2026-04-05T10:16:17 ### [Roman Mars Versus His Smart Thermostat](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6c77c07a-9d41-483b-944c-994664ffaedd) 🎧 01:59 - 03:25 (01:26) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f3f9121a-6998-4597-be4e-8d53b50857ef" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Roman Mars hates his smart thermostat because it repeatedly disconnects from the heater when he only needs heat a few times a year. - He says he would rather have an old brass Honeywell dial than a device that adds confusion instead of convenience. #### 💬 Quote > All I want is just an old fashioned brass, round, Honeywell thermostat [...] instead of this other thing that drives me absolutely crazy. > — Roman Mars Roman Mars on how smart devices often make simple tasks harder #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** Okay, so Roman, I want you to think about smart devices. Okay, okay. I think you're on the right track, okay, to making me mad. Go ahead. Yeah, so let's just start. Think about all the devices that you own that used to be mostly analog. Today, they are now digital in some way. So can you think of some examples in your life? **Roman Mars:** Well, I can think of one very obvious example that drives me crazy. I have a smart thermostat in my house. It came with the house. I did not install it. And I live in the Bay Area, so I don't need heat a lot. But every time I need to turn it on, which is like a few times a year, the smart thermostat is like disconnected from the heater. And for some reason, unknown reason, I cannot make sense of it. And all I want is just an old fashioned brass, round, Honeywell thermostat, old fashioned analog thermostat that can just turn on and set it to a temperature and turn it off when I don't need it instead of this other thing that drives me absolutely crazy. So, Raman, this is a pretty common complaint, what you're saying, right? We all have these **Chris Berube:** devices that have some kind of a smart component. They're supposed to make things convenient in our lives. But in fact, they are making things really frustrating. Like, why does my fridge need to be smart and talk to me, right? Today, though, we're going to talk about how this phenomenon, it could be more than just annoying for a lot of people, because there are times when the digitization of pretty much everything is actively making people's lives worse. --- ### [Auto Steer Shows Why Farmers Adopted Software](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d24cbf81-010b-46f1-8096-21838ab97fc2) 🎧 03:59 - 05:47 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1b2b077d-c0c2-464d-b5a4-229b8efd6aa4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jared Wilson says modern tractor software helps in real ways, especially auto steer during exhausting 20-hour workdays. - He can create lines in a field and let the tractor drive itself, leaving him in far better shape when he gets off. #### 💬 Quote > We can create lines in the field and they'll drive themselves. > — Jared Wilson Jared Wilson on the practical upside of tractor software #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So like a lot of things, modern tractors are now run by a computer operating system. And one of the farmers who's not happy with the software in his tractor is a guy I spoke to for this story, a farmer in Missouri named Jared Wilson. On **Jared Wilson:** my lineage, I'm at least a seventh generation farmer on my father's side. So we've been doing this for a while. **Chris Berube:** So Jared runs a family farm. You know, he's deep in the trenches of this world. And he told me something I did not really know about farming equipment. Tractors, harvesters, spraying machines, you know, all of these vehicles that are critical to farming today, for the most part, they are run by computers. **Jared Wilson:** You know, in the 90s, we didn't have a lot of electronic control units on these machines. Mechanical fuel pumps, everything was mechanical. So you touch something and it has linkage and it's controlling something mechanical. And now in these machines, when you touch something, everything is electric over some system, electric over hydraulic, if you will, electric over engine controls. And that means that there's software that you're dealing with. I **Chris Berube:** am sure if you're a farmer, this is all incredibly obvious stuff. But, you know, this was a surprise to me. Like, it's the same thing with a lot of cars now, where functions that used to be mechanical, they are now all run by an operating system. And my car, you know, gives me a driving score, for example, which is very, very annoying. But for the most part, Jared told me this digitization of the tractor, it's a really positive thing. Like, in lots of ways, these controls make his job a lot easier. One **Jared Wilson:** of the simplest things that comes to mind is auto steer, right? These tractors, can create lines in the field and they'll drive themselves. And when you're on a machine for 20 hours and you don't have to steer it, you're in a lot better shape when you get off of it than you are hand driving the machine. --- ### [A Software Lockout Cost Jared Wilson Harvest Time](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aa8accc0-dfaa-4800-90ac-19cbc3fc2cd1) 🎧 05:59 - 08:59 (03:00) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fbed7e5d-ff5c-409f-a137-88b8bd647fdb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - A failed sensor triggered a tractor derate, but the machine gave Jared Wilson only an error code, not a real diagnosis. - While he waited days for a technician, he heard dry soybean pods popping open and dropping unrecoverable crop onto the ground. #### 💬 Quote > You could stand in the field and you could hear the pods opening and the soybeans hitting the ground. > — Jared Wilson Jared Wilson on the cost of repair delays during harvest #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** there are some drawbacks. So Jared told me if there's a problem with the tractor, sometimes the software will just slow down the tractor's horsepower. If **Jared Wilson:** anything is not working correctly on the emission system, if you have a sensor, for instance, that has failed or malfunctioned, it won't perform the necessary emissions operations to satisfy the system. And it will do something called a derate of the machine. **Chris Berube:** So a derating, this is when the software basically makes the tractor unusable. Like it slows down the horsepower so much, you cannot use the tractor to do farming. That **Roman Mars:** sounds so incredibly annoying. But I would assume that this software was doing this for some kind of good reason, like for a safety reason. Right. So there could be safety reasons for doing this or smaller issues like **Chris Berube:** a sensor isn't working on the tractor. And Jared gave me this example from his life where he had a problem with the tractor and the operating system slowed it down, but it didn't **Jared Wilson:** tell him what was wrong. You know, the terminals inside of the machine might give you an error code, but very rarely does that error code actually tell you what's wrong. You have to have an external piece of software to plug into the machine to figure it out. So **Chris Berube:** when this happened to Jared, he was faced with a choice, right? He could either spend a lot of time trying to figure out the problem, you know, waste a day doing that, or he could do the much easier thing, which was call out a technician. But according to Jared, that's also kind of a pain. So **Jared Wilson:** I was forced to call the dealership out. They came out and replaced, I think, one of the Delta pressure sensors. And **Chris Berube:** that **Jared Wilson:** didn't end up fixing the problem. But the logistics of that mean that the technician comes out. You may have to wait a day or two before there's a technician available. And **Chris Berube:** losing a couple of days during the season, that's a total disaster because Jared told me losing a day can cost him a ton of money. The **Jared Wilson:** soybeans, we'd had a dry year and you could stand in the field and you could hear the pods opening and the soybeans hitting the ground. So you can imagine how sick to your stomach that makes you. There's no way to reclaim those once they fall on the ground. They're just, that's just lost revenue that's just gone. And it's difficult to convey how frustrating that is when you're sitting on your hands and your crop is literally falling on the ground and you don't have the ability to do anything about it. Jared **Chris Berube:** didn't have a guess about how much these kinds of delays have cost him, but in 2023, the Public Interest Research Group, so they're this advocacy group, they estimated downtime for farmers caused by these repair delays cost them about $3 billion that year. And this is at a time when farmers are facing all sorts of challenges, like unpredictable weather, tariffs. And then on top of that, you have to figure out these software problems. So the stakes are really, really high for somebody like Jared. --- ### [Enshittification Starts After Users Get Locked In](https://share.snipd.com/snip/190f77d6-dfca-4c99-8c37-ec887b7856fa) 🎧 10:16 - 12:39 (02:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/577127a4-369d-4554-9bc7-7c4cfe549162" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Cory Doctorow defines enshittification as a three-stage process where platforms first attract users, then lock them in, then degrade the experience to enrich business customers and shareholders. - Facebook-style communities become hard to leave, letting platforms flood users with ads, spam, and data extraction. #### 💬 Quote > It describes this three-stage process where you have platforms that start off being good to their end users, but are also finding a way to lock those end users in. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow defining enshittification #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So it's a word that he coined that seems to be capturing a lot of what's going wrong in modern society right now. And that word is in shittification. Roman, have you heard the word in shittification? **Roman Mars:** I have. I'm also a big fan of Corey Doctorow. And what I know of it is that this is the idea that, you know, kind of everything on the Internet is getting worse. **Chris Berube:** Yeah. So that's a part of it. And there's actually a little bit more to **Cory Doctorow:** it than that. It's a way to talk about platform collapse, platform decay. It describes this three-stage process where you have platforms that start off being good to their end users, but are also finding a way to lock those end users in. And then having locked them in, it makes things worse for them in order to make things better for business customers. **Chris Berube:** So let's just lay this out with an example. You're on Facebook. You are part of a Facebook group that likes something very, very niche, right? Like let's say baseball cards from the 1980s, just to use an example of a hobby someone might have, right? I'm not saying that is me. Someone has this hobby, though. Got it. The first step is Facebook sets up the infrastructure for you to meet lots of new people, right? So you're finding other fans of 80s baseball cards. You're all becoming friends. You're building up this community. But then you cannot leave. Like, maybe the platform is buying up all the competition, right? So there's nowhere else to go. Or they make it hard to transport your group somewhere else. And maybe like people don't want to leave because you have years of thrilling 80s baseball card conversations built up. And then you get stuck, right? So if you leave, you're going to lose all of these friends that you've built up and you become locked in. And that's when the big companies will start to make things shittier. They in-shittify. And instead of serving the users, they will serve businesses, right? They'll make things worse for you. They will sell your private data. They will let the platform become filled with these kind of spammy, annoying ads that you can't get rid of. **Cory Doctorow:** The value is just hoovered up by the platform and given to its shareholders and its executives, even as the platform just turns into a pile of shit. **Chris Berube:** And I think a lot of us can recognize that pattern. OK, that description makes a lot of sense to me. So here's the other thing with Corey's argument. He says in shitification, it is not exclusive to being online, you know, on Facebook, on Google, wherever. It can also affect things in the physical tactile world, such as all of our smart devices. --- ### [Connected Devices Spread Enshittification Into Daily Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89f37a33-5a82-4a81-ad3e-128bc1c8a10b) 🎧 12:39 - 14:02 (01:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f004d867-164f-4f20-9dc4-ffde66642745" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Cory Doctorow argues enshittification escaped the internet because digitization turned ordinary products into computers in fancy cases. - Chris Berube notes the average American household now has about 21 connected devices, expanding the places companies can lock users in. #### 💬 Quote > Reality is being infected with digital stuff. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on cyberspace moving into physical products #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** Okay, so how does that work? Well, Corey says this same principle applies to basically all of our smart devices, right, including our cars, our smart fridges, our tractors, stuff that just wasn't **Cory Doctorow:** previously digital. Willing Gibson, the science fiction writer who coined the term cyberspace. He's quite a prophet. And in one of his books, he has this line, cyberspace is everting, so turning inside out. And what he means is that reality is being infected with digital stuff. And digitization is becoming a feature of things that weren't digital before. Everything's just becoming a computer in a fancy case. Let's **Chris Berube:** just talk about how many of our devices today rely on computers and rely on the internet. So how many smart devices would you estimate you have in your home right now? Uh, 20, possibly. That's pretty average, if that's right. So according to this survey I found from 2023, the average American household has about 21 connected devices. So that means devices that are connected to the internet. **Roman Mars:** Wow. Wow. That **Chris Berube:** is way too high. I can **Roman Mars:** already think of the ones that I wish I could eliminate from my house **Chris Berube:** right now. Oh, 100%. And the thing with all of these smart devices is that it makes it a lot easier for a company that makes this device to lock you in, right? So the first step into gentrification, it's locking you in. --- ### [Repair Lock In Turns Owners Into Captive Customers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0af7419c-1db5-46d5-b026-7ed48b4c1834) 🎧 13:52 - 17:54 (04:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0f23e834-6910-4680-8fc3-f9b64e968b63" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Software lets manufacturers lock owners into their repair ecosystem by withholding diagnostic tools, charging high fees, and blocking independent mechanics. - Jared Wilson's mechanic lacked the needed software because the tools cost $6,000, and John Deere can still require an unlock step. #### 💬 Quote > It doesn't work until you get a service call and pay 200 bucks for someone to show up and type the unlock code into your tractor's keyboard. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on how software lock-in changes repairs #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** And the thing with all of these smart devices is that it makes it a lot easier for a company that makes this device to lock you in, right? So the first step into gentrification, it's locking you in. Because if something is a smart device, the manufacturer has quite a bit of leeway. Let's go back to tractors where we started this whole episode. Cory Doctorow says they are a prime example of this. Since **Cory Doctorow:** Roman times, farmers have fixed their own gear because when the storm is coming and you need to get the crops in, you can't wait for someone else to come and fix your stuff. According **Chris Berube:** to Jared, you know, back in the 90s, the tractor is mostly mechanical, right? And if you wanted to replace a part or fix something in the tractor, it was a pretty straightforward process. You would go down to your local John Deere dealership and you know, that was owned by a guy who lived down the road. I **Jared Wilson:** remember as a kid going with my dad, and if you had a complaint, you went to Leland Beams, and he might take you back in the shop and ask what was going on. You know, he wanted the customer to be satisfied, and he knew that if he didn't, you'd go down the road to the next dealership the next time you were buying a piece of equipment. You know, **Chris Berube:** say you have a problem with a wire or you need a replacement part, you go to Leland Deems, right? And if you're not happy with Leland Deems, you could go to another dealership. Or maybe you go to an independent repair person who's somewhere down the road, right? They'd hook you up, and then you would go about your day. But in Jared's experience, a few times this has happened. He received the error code, didn't get a lot of information from the operating system, and without much to go on, he went straight to John Deere. And at that point, John Deere holds all the cards, right? Because to restart the tractor, Jared needed a technician who knows how to access the tractor's computer. And then at that point, he had to pay that person **Cory Doctorow:** to come and check it out. The farmers still mostly fix their tractors. They get the part they put it in and so on. So they're farmers. They know how to fix their stuff. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work until you get a service call and pay 200 bucks for someone to show up and type the unlock code into your tractor's keyboard. **Chris Berube:** As a farmer, it's not as easy as you go to the repair shop down the road and they fix something for you. Because usually independent repair places, they don't have the tools that John Deere corporate has. Because John Deere is not making that stuff available unless the repair person is paying a big fee. **Jared Wilson:** My independent mechanic, I called him up and he said he didn't have the tools to do that because they cost $6,000. **Chris Berube:** So because John Deere makes it expensive for independent repair shops to fix John Deere products, as a consumer, you're stuck paying whatever John Deere is charging. And this is a big way you get locked in. It's replacement parts. So if Jared buys a replacement part, he probably needs to buy it from John Deere because he doesn't have a lot of options for where else you can buy the thing. I'm getting very angry, Chris. This is very upsetting to me. Keep some room. OK, keep some room. We need a ceiling that we could achieve later on in the episode. You're going to get there. So, Roman, in the past, farmers could actually buy a generic replacement part, right? Like a part that was built by somebody who isn't John Deere. But today, with the software, John Deere does this trick called parts pairing. So if you want to replace a drill, something like that, certain parts are not going to work unless they are compatible with John Deere's software. So that's parts pairing. And this is related to this really important concept called interoperability. I've definitely **Roman Mars:** heard that term before. But what does it actually mean here? Basically, **Chris Berube:** interoperability is whether two things can work together, right? So if you have shoes and shoelaces, if the laces are the right size, they fit inside the shoe. Those two things are interoperable. And in a digital context, two things are interoperable if they can talk to each other. And parts pairing makes that difficult because with tractors, you know, you can buy some generic parts that is cheaper than what John Deere is selling, but it won't necessarily work because John Deere software might lock it out. So these two things are not interoperable. --- ### [Parts Pairing Lets Software Reject Perfectly Usable Parts](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99d3afe4-38d5-4623-aa2b-6448a5f75adf) 🎧 16:52 - 20:25 (03:32) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f11ea2d8-e05f-4850-b57e-09591a3c79c0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Parts pairing and interoperability rules let companies reject cheaper third-party replacements even when the hardware could physically work. - Cory Doctorow compares tractors to printers that block outside ink, helping manufacturers charge extraordinary prices for consumables. #### 💬 Quote > It's not that your printer can't run that program. It's that your printer has been designed to reject that program to say no. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on software blocking third-party supplies and parts #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So, Roman, in the past, farmers could actually buy a generic replacement part, right? Like a part that was built by somebody who isn't John Deere. But today, with the software, John Deere does this trick called parts pairing. So if you want to replace a drill, something like that, certain parts are not going to work unless they are compatible with John Deere's software. So that's parts pairing. And this is related to this really important concept called interoperability. I've definitely **Roman Mars:** heard that term before. But what does it actually mean here? Basically, **Chris Berube:** interoperability is whether two things can work together, right? So if you have shoes and shoelaces, if the laces are the right size, they fit inside the shoe. Those two things are interoperable. And in a digital context, two things are interoperable if they can talk to each other. And parts pairing makes that difficult because with tractors, you know, you can buy some generic parts that is cheaper than what John Deere is selling, but it won't necessarily work because John Deere software might lock it out. So these two things are not interoperable. And tractors are kind of the tip of the iceberg here because this kind of thing can happen with all of our smart devices. **Cory Doctorow:** And Corey brought up this example to me, which is printers. Your printer company says, we don't like it when you use third-party ink. And so we're going to block third-party ink installation. Once we do that, we're going to charge you more for the ink that comes from HP or Epson or whatever. It's not that your printer can't run that program. It's that your printer has been designed to reject that program to say no. Ink's now $10,000 a gallon. It's the most expensive fluid you can buy as a civilian without a special license. It costs more to print your grocery list than it would if you printed it with the semen of a Kentucky Derby winning stallion. **Roman Mars:** This is why I like Corey. He paints some word pictures. He puts a little mustard on the fastball. And by the way, I did I **Chris Berube:** looked this up. This is a bit of an exaggeration. Like the Kentucky Derby winning semen is very expensive. It's worth a lot of money. But is expensive, too. Right. It costs like thousands of dollars a **Roman Mars:** gallon, which is so much money. I mean, shitty is the right word for it. I mean, it's awful. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, it's really shitty. And it's also a big problem with powered wheelchairs. You have smart fridges. You have ventilators. One more example is about the device you are probably listening to this on right now. So let's say you have an iPhone. I'm sure you've experienced some version of this as someone who owns an iPhone. If you need to repair an iPhone, there's lots of cases where you cannot get a third-party replacement part. Like those will just not be interoperable with an Apple device. So Apple urges you to buy an Apple replacement part and then go to the Apple store or go to an Apple authorized repair person. **Cory Doctorow:** Tim Cook in 2019 wrote a letter to his investors at the start of the year where he said our biggest risk is that our customers repair phones instead of buying new ones, that they like their phones. They work fine. And so when they break, they don't just get a new one. Apple uniquely among manufacturers, when you trade a phone in, sends it to be shredded **Chris Berube:** so that the parts can't be harvested to be used in a repair. So to recap, this is the inshittification of things, right? You buy something that has software in it. The software makes it hard to get the thing repaired by some third party. You have to go to the manufacturer and they will jack up the price, right? And perhaps they don't let you use third party parts. So they're just profiting off people because we're stuck, right? We have this stuckness going on. --- ### [Anti Piracy Law Became A Weapon Against Repair](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55377377-8043-4421-83ac-303491c66a92) 🎧 24:24 - 27:46 (03:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/07b5d1e6-2697-400f-8fcb-92319e261c0d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - People increasingly jailbreak devices and use cracked tools to restore repairs companies intentionally block. - Cory Doctorow says digital locks became dangerous because the DMCA turned breaking or even discussing them into a felony tied to anti-piracy law. #### 💬 Quote > They passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In Section 1201, it says it is a felony [...] to tamper with or expose weaknesses in or discuss weaknesses of a digital lock. > — Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow on how the DMCA constrains repair and security research #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** So Cory Doctorow says, we're now seeing a lot of black market or kind of gray market efforts to fix this problem, right? We're seeing people hacking software an iPhone, for example, and making it work with third-party applications, right? When you do that with an Apple product, that is called jailbreaking. But people aren't just doing it with Apple products, they're doing it with all kinds of tech now. And **Cory Doctorow:** if you're like a bored grad student with an electron tunneling microscope, you can just like have at it, right? **Chris Berube:** Lots and lots of these softwares have been broken into, and it's actually pretty easy for someone who has, you know, hacker skills and experience. And obviously this kind of solution hacking into the software, like it is not something the company wants you to do. I don't think need to say that your user agreement usually says I will not do something like this, but it is becoming more and more common. And our farmer, Jared, he told me he's actually seen this kind of thing pretty often in his day to day life, like being used by repair **Jared Wilson:** people. There have been a lot of black market things that have been released that independent providers are using laptops from China that have cracked John Deere software on it. So **Roman Mars:** I'm completely on board with fixing this problem. However, you need to fix it. But I do think that there's probably a little room to be cautious if you do not know where the software or hardware that you're using to fix the problem came from. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, it does sound sketchy. And Jared, on our call, he made clear to me he has never used this kind of technology because, you know, he wants to follow the rules. And also, you don't actually know what you're putting on your computer when you are working with this kind of thing. So if something goes wrong, you know, you can't call John Deere because at this point you are doing something you're not supposed to be doing. Creates some **Jared Wilson:** hesitation in using technology like that on your hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machines because you're out of any ecosystem that can help you because you're operating outside of the margins. **Chris Berube:** So on top of that, Corey Doctorow says that in a lot of cases, this kind of solution, this hackery solution is probably illegal. Well, that just drives me crazy. So why is it illegal? Well, there is something called a digital lock that is on a lot of these things. And it's a very particular kind of software. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was concern about ripping DVDs and music piracy, stuff like that. So back then, record companies and movie studios, they added digital locks to their files. And in 1998, the U.S. passed a law that **Cory Doctorow:** made it illegal to break a digital lock. They passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In 1201, it says it is a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine to tamper with or expose weaknesses in or discuss weaknesses of a digital lock. And now this law that **Chris Berube:** was designed for MP3 sharing, it is now being applied to all of these other devices that we use every day. **Roman Mars:** Five years in prison. There should be a prison sentence for passing that law. **Chris Berube:** Well, Roman, I think you may have to take that one up with both parties in Congress in 1998. Yeah, no, **Roman Mars:** I know. Everyone's at fault for that one. **Chris Berube:** So as you can tell, the sketchy solution, you know, it has some problems. Obviously, they're not enforcing this law too often, but it's still a thing that exists that is out there. So they have that option to do that if they catch you with this kind of software. So **Roman Mars:** this is kind of a hacker path to solving and certification. But is there a more law abiding path? --- ### [Repair Laws Help Without Fully Breaking Lock In](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c139d43-5708-4f7b-ba94-620b73159354) 🎧 31:40 - 35:56 (04:16) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6083f857-d755-4f29-8acb-5000de52aa6d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Recent repair wins help, but they do not fully solve lock-in because companies can still collect data, invoke intellectual property claims, and keep parts pairing in place. - Chris Berube notes John Deere released software and some derate overrides, yet Jared Wilson still joined a class action over repair monopolies. #### 💬 Quote > You can make the platform better, but you're still locked into the platform. > — Roman Mars Roman Mars on the limits of current right to repair reforms #### 📚 Transcript **Chris Berube:** is good news. And actually, in response to this push, we have already seen some companies who have started sending out these repair tools. So these are companies trying to get out preemptively ahead of these laws. I bet. And an example of this a couple of years ago, a little company called John Deere, perhaps you have heard of them from multiple references in this story. A little company called John Deere have put out this software to their customers that's designed to make it possible for farmers to decode these error messages and troubleshoot lots of problems with their tractors, so to fix things themselves. And as of this year, John Deere told me, farmers can actually override a derating in some cases. So this is the problem we talked about at the beginning of the show, where the tractor shuts itself down. So this all sounds like good news, but there are still some caveats. **Roman Mars:** Okay, so what is this caveat? **Chris Berube:** Well, Jared says there are still flaws with the repair software. He's particularly concerned about the way it collects his data, his harvesting data. He says that's not ideal for him. He's actually been part of a class action lawsuit against John Deere saying they have an unfair monopoly on repair tools and the software is part of the complaints that they filed. And in a bigger sense, while there's been progress around right to repair, there's no guarantee that things like the federal law about car repairs is going to pass, right? Like there are some big lobbies pushing back against that. Some car companies have opposed more right to repair laws because they worry it could lead to their **Roman Mars:** intellectual **Chris Berube:** property being violated. **Roman Mars:** My **Chris Berube:** God, their intellectual property about the information **Roman Mars:** on my car. That is an absurd assertion. Yeah, I mean, when you put it **Chris Berube:** that way, it sounds pretty silly. But these right to repair laws, like they can make a big difference, right? But they aren't a magic bullet. Like many of these laws do not outlaw parts pairing, for example, so they don't solve the problem of interoperability. You know, you can't necessarily put third party parts on to repair something. So there's an argument that these laws **Roman Mars:** could go further. Yeah. So it can make the platform better, but you're still locked into the platform. **Chris Berube:** You're totally locked into the platform. So lots of ways, like you need these laws to be more comprehensive. And Cory Doctorow says, like, maybe we should start thinking beyond the laws. Like, he has other approaches to this. He thinks we actually need to be doing something a lot more radical. Oh, OK. Tell me more. What does he have in mind? One thing Cory is pushing for is countries outside the United States to basically break the digital locks, right, to allow third party manufacturers to make replacement parts, things like that. So Canada and Mexico are in a trade war with the U.S. right now. And Corey says, look, what if those countries made generic replacement parts that go around the locks and then export those generic parts all over the world? We could do the same for tractors and tractor parts and cars and car parts. We have **Cory Doctorow:** all the car part factories in Ontario, right? If we can't ship those across the border anymore, we can just make generic car parts in Ontario, sell them all over the world, with the software to turn off the car part checking tool in the cars. We could have third-party ink manufacturing. And you know what? If we don't do it, someone else is going to do it. **Roman Mars:** It is a very Cory Doctorow thing to turn Canada into a lawless land of jailbreaking. But I do love it. I don't see it ever really happening in that way, but I do love it. **Chris Berube:** Yeah, that can feel like a long shot, right? But we do have to think about different ways to fix this problem. I totally **Roman Mars:** agree. Roman, **Chris Berube:** there's so much going on in the world right now, but this issue feels pretty urgent to me. Because if we don't act, you know, if we don't do something about these kind of everyday frustrations, this general shittiness of things, but also this big cost for lots of people, it's just going to get worse. And on a much simpler level, Roman, I would like to live in a world where somebody like Jared can just fix his tractor. It **Jared Wilson:** doesn't benefit us, the citizen, to have stuff that we buy that we can't fix when it breaks. It's not good economically. It's not good environmentally. Allowing these companies to stymie competition is not in our best interest. And I really hope that people can take that to heart well ---