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scienza-magia · 2 months

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Proteggiamo insieme internet con la interoperabilità

Il web come bene comune non è un’utopia. Cory Doctorow, scrittore e attivista, individua nell’interoperabilità la via necessaria per costruire una rete più giusta. Cory Doctorow non si risparmia. È uno scrittore di fantascienza di successo, è un pioniere dei blog, è un attivista che si batte per la giustizia sociale e la salvaguardia dell’interpretazione aperta e libera di internet ed è un saggista che si dedica con attenzione straordinaria a comprendere le conseguenze delle norme che regolano la vita digitale. Chi lo incontra per la prima volta non può che restare profondamente colpito dalla sua disponibilità. E chi poi inizia una corrispondenza con Doctorow non può che restare a bocca aperta per la velocità con la quale riesce a rispondere ai messaggi di mail che riceve, pur essendo il suo indirizzo di posta elettronica pubblico e la sua fama quella di un personaggio di rilevante notorietà. In vista della sua conferenza (il 21 aprile 2024) alla prossima Biennale Tecnologia di Torino, ha trovato il tempo di parlare con Nòva, mentre si occupava del tour in California per la presentazione del suo nuovo romanzo, «The Bezzle», il secondo della serie centrata sulle vicende del revisore finanziario forense Martin Hench. In preparazione dell’intervista, Doctorow ha confermato la sua visione profondamente critica ma costruttiva del mondo digitale che naturalmente vede come un ecosistema la cui evoluzione non è definita soltanto dalla dimensione tecnologica, ma piuttosto dalla complessità delle dinamiche sociali ed economiche sottostanti. E ha chiesto come un favore di essere per una volta esentato da domande sull’intelligenza artificiale, un argomento che considera «persino più stupido del bitcoin». Naturalmente, così è avvenuto: ma le motivazioni di questo giudizio sono indirettamente emerse nella conversazione. E si sono rivelate molto istruttive. Come si è evoluto il web rispetto alle origini

Doctorow rappresenta, in effetti, una versione contemporanea della cultura digitale originaria. Il web era nato come un bene comune. I valori degli scienziati del Cern di Ginevra - dove è stato progettato come sistema per facilitare l’uso di internet come strumento per la condivisione della conoscenza - si sono riversati nella cultura di chi lo ha adottato all’inizio dell’epopea digitale. Poi, lentamente, molto è cambiato. Nella seconda metà degli anni Novanta, la decisione dell’amministrazione americana guidata da Bill Clinton e Al Gore di deregolamentare le attività economiche che si sviluppavano sul web e conseguente accelerata commercializzazione della rete, attirò ingenti capitali finanziari e lanciò una fase molto diversa. Tra bolle speculative e grandi innovazioni, il valore reale della rete si è accresciuto, quasi cinque miliardi di persone si sono connesse, una decina di gigantesche imprese hanno preso il controllo della gran parte della ricchezza generata in Occidente dalle attività digitali, i diritti delle persone che lasciano i loro dati in quelle piattaforme non sono stati particolarmente salvaguardati. Ma l’obiettivo di salvaguardare e coltivare quel bene comune del web non è certo scomparso. E che cosa vede Doctorow davanti a noi, da questo punto di vista? La trappola delle big tech Uno scrittore di fantascienza non prevede il futuro come Nostradamus» dice Doctorow: «Cerca alternative». E un attivista? «Crede nella possibilità che l’azione umana possa realizzare l’alternativa più giusta». Mentre un saggista: «Studia le forze che facilitano il raggiungimento degli obiettivi». Quali forze? «Come dice Lawrence Lessig, è più facile che qualcosa succeda se è profittevole, legale, tecnologicamente possibile e accettabile secondo le norme sociali». Big Tech ha approfittato di queste regole, evidentemente. Possono riuscire a cavalcarle anche coloro che cercano di sviluppare una rete aperta, libera, interoperabile? Doctorow crede che la strategia dell’interoperabilità sia potentissima. Secondo lui, di fatto, diversi miliardi di utenti delle grandi piattaforme digitali si sono trovati intrappolati nella versione della rete definita dalle strategie di Big Tech. Ma la via della liberazione è chiara: immaginare le alternative, chiarirsi le idee su quali sono le possibilità più adatte per lo sviluppo umano, definire gli obiettivi e credere nella possibilità di fare qualcosa di importante per realizzarli. «Le leggi antitrust sono le regole fondamentali. Vanno fatte valere. Non soltanto per difendere i consumatori: ma anche per difendere i lavoratori e i cittadini. E intanto la società può lavorare per costruire la rete giusta: quella che si muove all’insegna dell’interoperabilità». La chiave per ricreare una rete aperta e innovativa è che gli utenti possano sempre cambiare tecnologia. Il che avviene se nessuna tecnologia può chiudere i suoi utenti in uno spazio dal quale non possono uscire. Interoperabilità e antitrust al servizio dei cittadini «È un obiettivo molto pratico» dice Doctorow. «La libertà degli utenti è una conquista possibile. Le Big tech non sono tanto sofisticate da avere messo in piedi un sistema di controllo delle menti insuperabile. Semplicemente si muovono molto velocemente. E questo mette in grandi difficoltà i propugnatori di alternative». La risposta di Doctorow è articolata: un’antitrust al servizio dei cittadini, un ecosistema di innovatori che trovano il modo di generalizzare l’interoperabilità, un nuovo sviluppo di corpi intermedi e sindacati. Perché non è la tecnologia a determinare il futuro. È la società, con le sue dinamiche profonde, che torce anche la tecnologia nella direzione che ha scelto di seguire. E questo vale anche per l’intelligenza artificiale. Read the full article

#Antitrust #BiennaleTecnologia #BigTech #CoryDoctorow #intelligenzaartificiale #NOSTRADAMUS

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kapitaali · 2 months

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The Scam Economy with Cory Doctorow | Lost Dollar Business Club Ep426

Join us on this riveting episode of the “Lost All Business Club” as we dive into the intricacies of the scam economy with none other than Cory Efram Doctorow, the Canadian-British maestro of science fiction and an outspoken advocate for the liberalization of copyright laws. In a world rife with economic sleights of hand, Cory sheds light on his latest work, "The Bezzel," an exposé that promises to rattle the cages of conventional thinking.

TimeStamps (0:00 - 1:00) introduction to the show's theme, focusing on the determinants of business success and failure.

(1:01 - 2:30) Cory Doctorow Introduction

(2:31 - 10:00) Discussion on "The Bezzel

(10:01 - 15:00) Economic Scams and Real Economy Impact

(15:01 - 20:00) Technology and Prison Tech Story

(20:01 - 28:19) Goals of Writing

(28:20 - 35:00) Consequences of Economic Scams

(35:01 - 40:00) Role of Technology in Economic Scams

(40:01 - 45:00) The Ethical Dilemma in Tech Innovation

(45:01 - 50:00) The Real Victims of the Scam Economy

(50:01 - 55:00) Lost and Found

Join us on this eye-opening episode of the Lost Dollar Business Club, where we delve into the intricate world of business successes and failures, with a special focus on the burgeoning scam economy. Featuring the critically acclaimed Canadian blogger, journalist, and author Cory Doctorow, this episode is a riveting exploration of the shadows cast by technological advancements on our financial systems. Doctorow, known for his penetrating insights into the digital and economic landscapes, shares his thoughts on the mechanisms of high-tech finance scams and their profound impacts on society. #CoryDoctorow #ScamEconomy #BusinessInsights

In "Unveiling the Scam Economy," we navigate through the complexities of the digital age, guided by Doctorow's expertise. He introduces us to "The Bezzel," his latest work that centers on Martin Hench, a forensic accountant unraveling the web of deception spun by Silicon Valley's elite. This episode is not just a conversation; it's an enlightening journey into the heart of economic scams, the illusion of prosperity they create, and the harsh realities they mask. #TheBezzel #TechnologyScams #EconomicReality #technology

Doctorow's discourse extends beyond his novels, touching on the broader implications of the scam economy on the real world. He elaborates on how technological exploitation has reached into the lives of the most vulnerable, particularly prisoners, turning advancements into tools of injustice. This episode challenges us to look beyond the surface, questioning the ethical boundaries of our rapidly evolving tech landscape. #TechEthics #PrisonTech #DigitalExploitation

"Unveiling the Scam Economy" is more than just an episode; it's a call to action. Through engaging discussions and Doctorow's compelling narratives, we're invited to scrutinize the policies and decisions shaping our digital and economic futures. This episode is a must-watch for anyone interested in the intersections of technology, economy, and society, offering insights and inspiration to navigate the challenges of the scam economy. Tune in, be informed, and join the conversation on how we can build a more equitable digital world together. #DigitalFuture #EconomicJustice #LostDollarBusinessClub #CoryDoctorow #ScamEconomy #ESGDebate #TheBezzel #CopyrightReform #CreativeCommons #EducationCrisis #LostAllBusinessClub #EconomicExpose #SaturdayThoughts #esg #2ofentertainment #twooldfartsmakingnoises #lostandfound #china #useducation #podcast

Our Social https://linktr.ee/tofentertainment Our Merch https://2oldfarts.vip/

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f0restpunk · 1 year

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@sxsw Day 1 Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin; Chokepoint Capitalism @levarstoney & @ron_nirenberg; " Does the American Dream Still Exist?" @hiltonaustintx . . . . . #sxsw #sxsw23 #sxsw2023 #sxswday1 #march10 #march102023 #corydoctorow #rebeccagiblin #chokepointcapitalism #levarstoney #ronnirenberg #doestheamericandreamstillexist #americandream #sanantonio #richmond #austin #austintx #hilton #hiltonaustin #conference #techconference #urbanism #urbandesign #streetphotography #travelphotography #ontheroad #journalism #journalismstillmatters #blackandwhite #jsimpson https://www.instagram.com/p/CpqGy8ru7L-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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travelinlibrarian · 2 years

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Friday Reads: Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow

A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big MediaCorporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both.In Chokepoint…

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#fridayreads #corydoctorow

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kevinproulx · 1 year

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Just arrived! Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Red Team Blues.

#CoryDoctorow #RedTeamBlues

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mr-free-spirit · 2 years

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…& as The Year of Luigi Keeps on Truckin’ & Groovin', this is part 10 of "Down & Out in The Magic Kingdom".

Back in 2002, I once read a cool new science fiction book by Mr. Cory Doctorow called "Down & Out in The Magic Kingdom". If U dig really well-written scifi I highly recommend it, especially if U're a total Disney dude, or dude'ette as the case may be. ;)

Well, around 3 months ago while listening 2 David Bowie (of course!) I was thinking about what it would be like 2 create my own unique variation of Mr. Doctorow's story. I heard that he totally digs people making versions of it, so I asked him on Twitter if that would be a-ok with him. Here was his answer:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1543717942256230400?s=21&t=2ZzwnGg0HGASOar1fTVYLA

So here we go!

I just also want 2 quickly note that I got the idea 4 this opening from 2 sources: "Rococop" & this video:

https://youtu.be/PC7nANIOexk

#cartoon #videogame #videogames #surreal #surrealism #surrealist #psychedelic #psychedelicrock #trippy #hippy #hippie #hippies #hippielife #waltdisney #disney #nintendo #mariobros #tokyodisneyland #luigi #yearofluigi #tokyodisneyresort #yearofluigineverends #corydoctorow #downandoutinthemagickingdom #tokyodisneysea #sciencefiction #bowser #sanfrancisco #bayarea #koopa

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callmebliss · 4 years

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It has been out for a decade. Thrifted, it has been sitting on my self for almost two years. I hoped to like it. I didn’t expect it to make me cry. #makers #corydoctorow #blissreadsthings https://www.instagram.com/p/CFDaESbAh5F/?igshid=1qgf3tkppw8ji

#makers #corydoctorow #blissreadsthings

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scifitalk · 4 years

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Cory Doctorow

#authors #corydoctorow #novella #radicalized

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tachyonpub · 5 years

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It's #CanadaDay! A mysterious holiday that's probably aboot the anniversary of Sir Tim Horton discovering maple syrup. But Canada is more than just the Land of the Mounties and a Functional Healthcare System. They have writers, too! #canadianwriters #canadianauthor #peterwatts #jowalton #nalohopkinson #wpkinsella #claudelalumiere #corydoctorow #kelleyarmstrong #canada #canadaday🇨🇦 #bookstagram #books #bookstack #bookpile #bookspinebeauty #fantasybooks #scifibooks #thefreezeframerevolution #fallinginlovewithhominids #publishing #tachyon #tachyonpublications https://www.instagram.com/p/BzYvhkBg1re/?igshid=kquk6x0mpuha

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mostlysignssomeportents · 29 days

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Algorithmic feeds are a twiddler’s playground

Next TUESDAY (May 14), I'm on a livecast about AI AND ENSHITTIFICATION with TIM O'REILLY; on WEDNESDAY (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD with HARRY SHEARER for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Like Oscar Wilde, "I can resist anything except temptation," and my slow and halting journey to adulthood is really just me grappling with this fact, getting temptation out of my way before I can yield to it.

Behavioral economists have a name for the steps we take to guard against temptation: a "Ulysses pact." That's when you take some possibility off the table during a moment of strength in recognition of some coming moment of weakness:

https://archive.org/details/decentralizedwebsummit2016-corydoctorow

Famously, Ulysses did this before he sailed into the Sea of Sirens. Rather than stopping his ears with wax to prevent his hearing the sirens' song, which would lure him to his drowning, Ulysses has his sailors tie him to the mast, leaving his ears unplugged. Ulysses became the first person to hear the sirens' song and live to tell the tale.

Ulysses was strong enough to know that he would someday be weak. He expressed his strength by guarding against his weakness. Our modern lives are filled with less epic versions of the Ulysses pact: the day you go on a diet, it's a good idea to throw away all your Oreos. That way, when your blood sugar sings its siren song at 2AM, it will be drowned out by the rest of your body's unwillingness to get dressed, find your keys and drive half an hour to the all-night grocery store.

Note that this Ulysses pact isn't perfect. You might drive to the grocery store. It's rare that a Ulysses pact is unbreakable – we bind ourselves to the mast, but we don't chain ourselves to it and slap on a pair of handcuffs for good measure.

People who run institutions can – and should – create Ulysses pacts, too. A company that holds the kind of sensitive data that might be subjected to "sneak-and-peek" warrants by cops or spies can set up a "warrant canary":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

This isn't perfect. A company that stops publishing regular transparency reports might have been compromised by the NSA, but it's also possible that they've had a change in management and the new boss just doesn't give a shit about his users' privacy:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90853794/twitters-transparency-reporting-has-tanked-under-elon-musk

Likewise, a company making software it wants users to trust can release that code under an irrevocable free/open software license, thus guaranteeing that each release under that license will be free and open forever. This is good, but not perfect: the new boss can take that free/open code down a proprietary fork and try to orphan the free version:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562

A company can structure itself as a public benefit corporation and make a binding promise to elevate its stakeholders' interests over its shareholders' – but the CEO can still take a secret $100m bribe from cryptocurrency creeps and try to lure those stakeholders into a shitcoin Ponzi scheme:

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/

A key resource can be entrusted to a nonprofit with a board of directors who are charged with stewarding it for the benefit of a broad community, but when a private equity fund dangles billions before that board, they can talk themselves into a belief that selling out is the right thing to do:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/how-we-saved-org-2020-review

Ulysses pacts aren't perfect, but they are very important. At the very least, creating a Ulysses pact starts with acknowledging that you are fallible. That you can be tempted, and rationalize your way into taking bad action, even when you know better. Becoming an adult is a process of learning that your strength comes from seeing your weaknesses and protecting yourself and the people who trust you from them.

Which brings me to enshittification. Enshittification is the process by which platforms betray their users and their customers by siphoning value away from each until the platform is a pile of shit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Enshittification is a spectrum that can be applied to many companies' decay, but in its purest form, enshittification requires:

a) A platform: a two-sided market with business customers and end users who can be played off against each other; b) A digital back-end: a market that can be easily, rapidly and undetectably manipulated by its owners, who can alter search-rankings, prices and costs on a per-user, per-query basis; and c) A lack of constraint: the platform's owners must not fear a consequence for this cheating, be it from competitors, regulators, workforce resignations or rival technologists who use mods, alternative clients, blockers or other "adversarial interoperability" tools to disenshittify your product and sever your relationship with your users.

he founders of tech platforms don't generally set out to enshittify them. Rather, they are constantly seeking some equilibrium between delivering value to their shareholders and turning value over to end users, business customers, and their own workers. Founders are consummate rationalizers; like parenting, founding a company requires continuous, low-grade self-deception about the amount of work involved and the chances of success. A founder, confronted with the likelihood of failure, is absolutely capable of talking themselves into believing that nearly any compromise is superior to shuttering the business: "I'm one of the good guys, so the most important thing is for me to live to fight another day. Thus I can do any number of immoral things to my users, business customers or workers, because I can make it up to them when we survive this crisis. It's for their own good, even if they don't know it. Indeed, I'm doubly moral here, because I'm volunteering to look like the bad guy, just so I can save this business, which will make the world over for the better":

https://locusmag.com/2024/05/cory-doctorow-no-one-is-the-enshittifier-of-their-own-story/

(En)shit(tification) flows downhill, so tech workers grapple with their own version of this dilemma. Faced with constant pressure to increase the value flowing from their division to the company, they have to balance different, conflicting tactics, like "increasing the number of users or business customers, possibly by shifting value from the company to these stakeholders in the hopes of making it up in volume"; or "locking in my existing stakeholders and squeezing them harder, safe in the knowledge that they can't easily leave the service provided the abuse is subtle enough." The bigger a company gets, the harder it is for it to grow, so the biggest companies realize their gains by locking in and squeezing their users, not by improving their service::

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

That's where "twiddling" comes in. Digital platforms are extremely flexible, which comes with the territory: computers are the most flexible tools we have. This means that companies can automate high-speed, deceptive changes to the "business logic" of their platforms – what end users pay, how much of that goes to business customers, and how offers are presented to both:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

This kind of fraud isn't particularly sophisticated, but it doesn't have to be – it just has to be fast. In any shell-game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

Under normal circumstances, this twiddling would be constrained by counterforces in society. Changing the business rules like this is fraud, so you'd hope that a regulator would step in and extinguish the conduct, fining the company that engaged in it so hard that they saw a net loss from the conduct. But when a sector gets very concentrated, its mega-firms capture their regulators, becoming "too big to jail":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Thus the tendency among the giant tech companies to practice the one lesson of the Darth Vader MBA: dismissing your stakeholders' outrage by saying, "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Where regulators fail, technology can step in. The flexibility of digital platforms cuts both ways: when the company enshittifies its products, you can disenshittify it with your own countertwiddling: third-party ink-cartridges, alternative app stores and clients, scrapers, browser automation and other forms of high-tech guerrilla warfare:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But tech giants' regulatory capture have allowed them to expand "IP rights" to prevent this self-help. By carefully layering overlapping IP rights around their products, they can criminalize the technology that lets you wrestle back the value they've claimed for themselves, creating a new offense of "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

A world where users must defer to platforms' moment-to-moment decisions about how the service operates, without the protection of rival technology or regulatory oversight is a world where companies face a powerful temptation to enshittify.

That's why we've seen so much enshittification in platforms that algorithmically rank their feeds, from Google and Amazon search to Facebook and Twitter feeds. A search engine is always going to be making a judgment call about what the best result for your search should be. If a search engine is generally good at predicting which results will please you best, you'll return to it, automatically clicking the first result ("I'm feeling lucky").

This means that if a search engine slips in the odd paid result at the top of the results, they can exploit your trusting habits to shift value from you to their investors. The congifurability of a digital service means that they can sprinkle these frauds into their services on a random schedule, making them hard to detect and easy to dismiss as lapses. Gradually, this acquires its own momentum, and the platform becomes addicted to lowering its own quality to raise its profits, and you get modern Google, which cynically lowered search quality to increase search volume:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

And you get Amazon, which makes $38 billion every year, accepting bribes to replace its best search results with paid results for products that cost more and are of lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Social media's enshittification followed a different path. In the beginning, social media presented a deterministic feed: after you told the platform who you wanted to follow, the platform simply gathered up the posts those users made and presented them to you, in reverse-chronological order.

This presented few opportunities for enshittification, but it wasn't perfect. For users who were well-established on a platform, a reverse-chrono feed was an ungovernable torrent, where high-frequency trivialities drowned out the important posts from people whose missives were buried ten screens down in the updates since your last login.

For new users who didn't yet follow many people, this presented the opposite problem: an empty feed, and the sense that you were all alone while everyone else was having a rollicking conversation down the hall, in a room you could never find.

The answer was the algorithmic feed: a feed of recommendations drawn from both the accounts you followed and strangers alike. Theoretically, this could solve both problems, by surfacing the most important materials from your friends while keeping you abreast of the most important and interesting activity beyond your filter bubble. For many of us, this promise was realized, and algorithmic feeds became a source of novelty and relevance.

But these feeds are a profoundly tempting enshittification target. The critique of these algorithms has largely focused on "addictiveness" and the idea that platforms would twiddle the knobs to increase the relevance of material in your feed to "hack your engagement":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has-dopamine-got-us-hooked-on-tech-facebook-apps-addiction

Less noticed – and more important – was how platforms did the opposite: twiddling the knobs to remove things from your feed that you'd asked to see or that the algorithm predicted you'd enjoy, to make room for "boosted" content and advertisements:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/z9j7uy/what_happened_to_instagram_only_ads_and_accounts/

Users were helpless before this kind of twiddling. On the one hand, they were locked into the platform – not because their dopamine had been hacked by evil tech-bro wizards – but because they loved the friends they had there more than they hated the way the service was run:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

On the other hand, the platforms had such an iron grip on their technology, and had deployed IP so cleverly, that any countertwiddling technology was instantaneously incinerated by legal death-rays:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/google-removes-the-og-app-from-the-play-store-as-founders-think-about-next-steps/

Newer social media platforms, notably Tiktok, dispensed entirely with deterministic feeds, defaulting every user into a feed that consisted entirely of algorithmic picks; the people you follow on these platforms are treated as mere suggestions by their algorithms. This is a perfect breeding-ground for enshittification: different parts of the business can twiddle the knobs to override the algorithm for their own parochial purposes, shifting the quality:shit ratio by unnoticeable increments, temporarily toggling the quality knob when your engagement drops off:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

All social platforms want to be Tiktok: nominally, that's because Tiktok's algorithmic feed is so good at hooking new users and keeping established users hooked. But tech bosses also understand that a purely algorithmic feed is the kind of black box that can be plausibly and subtly enshittified without sparking user revolts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Back in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg was coming to grips with Facebook's success, he boasted to a friend that he was sitting on a trove of emails, pictures and Social Security numbers for his fellow Harvard students, offering this up for his friend's idle snooping. The friend, surprised, asked "What? How'd you manage that one?"

Infamously, Zuck replied, "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me.' Dumb fucks."

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

This was a remarkable (and uncharacteristic) self-aware moment from the then-nineteen-year-old Zuck. Of course Zuck couldn't be trusted with that data. Whatever Jiminy Cricket voice told him to safeguard that trust was drowned out by his need to boast to pals, or participate in the creepy nonconsensual rating of the fuckability of their female classmates. Over and over again, Zuckerberg would promise to use his power wisely, then break that promise as soon as he could do so without consequence:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Zuckerberg is a cautionary tale. Aware from the earliest moments that he was amassing power that he couldn't be trusted with, he nevertheless operated with only the weakest of Ulysses pacts, like a nonbinding promise never to spy on his users:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050107221705/http://www.thefacebook.com/policy.php

But the platforms have learned the wrong lesson from Zuckerberg. Rather than treating Facebook's enshittification as a cautionary tale, they've turned it into a roadmap. The Darth Vader MBA rules high-tech boardrooms.

Algorithmic feeds and other forms of "paternalistic" content presentation are necessary and even desirable in an information-rich environment. In many instances, decisions about what you see must be largely controlled by a third party whom you trust. The audience in a comedy club doesn't get to insist on knowing the punchline before the joke is told, just as RPG players don't get to order the Dungeon Master to present their preferred challenges during a campaign.

But this power is balanced against the ease of the players replacing the Dungeon Master or the audience walking out on the comic. When you've got more than a hundred dollars sunk into a video game and an online-only friend-group you raid with, the games company can do a lot of enshittification without losing your business, and they know it:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/10/24153809/ea-in-game-ads-redux

Even if they sometimes overreach and have to retreat:

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-overturns-helldivers-2-psn-requirement-following-backlash

A tech company that seeks your trust for an algorithmic feed needs Ulysses pacts, or it will inevitably yield to the temptation to enshittify. From strongest to weakest, these are:

Not showing you an algorithmic feed at all;

https://joinmastodon.org/

"Composable moderation" that lets multiple parties provide feeds:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

Offering an algorithmic "For You" feed alongside of a reverse-chrono "Friends" feed, defaulting to friends;

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

As above, but defaulting to "For You"

Maturity lies in being strong enough to know your weaknesses. Never trust someone who tells you that they will never yield to temptation! Instead, seek out people – and service providers – with the maturity and honesty to know how tempting temptation is, and who act before temptation strikes to make it easier to resist.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

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#pluralistic #twiddling #for you #enshittification #intermediation #the algorithm tm #moral hazard #end to end

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