Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Section1201
Most recents (7)
Google's search quality has been in steady decline for years, and Google assures us that they're working on it, though the most visible effort is replacing links to webpages with lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a confident habitual liar chatbot:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/twe…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/pai…
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The internet is increasingly full of garbage, much of it written by other confident habitual liar chatbots, which are now extruding plausible sentences at enormous scale.
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Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals is *money*, not *content*. Talking about the news, excerpting it, linking to it, quoting it - these are all beneficial, normal news activities. If you can't talk about the news, it's not news - it's a *secret*.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/cur…
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But tech *does* steal from news. A variety of monopolistic tricks allows tech to interpose itself between reporters, publishers and outlets, and the audiences they serve. By creating chokepoints between the news and its audience, tech can extract gigantic sums from the news.
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They said it was impossible. After decades of #antitrust cases over #PredatoryPricing - selling below cost to kill or prevent competitors - the #ChicagoSchool of neoliberal #economists "proved" predatory pricing didn't exist, so courts could stop busting companies for it.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fak…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fak…
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Predatory pricing - the economists explained - was illegal, but it was also imaginary. A mirage. No one would predatory price, because it was "irrational." Even if someone irrational enough to try it, they would fail. Stand down, American judges - predatory pricing is solved.
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Amazon is *very* proud of its #flywheel: first, they subsidized customers, luriing in sellers. Then they demanded lower prices, luring more buyers. With more customers, more sellers piled in. Faster the flywheel spins, creating the #EverythingStore:
fourweekmba.com/amazon-flywhee…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/gre…
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pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/gre…
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The flywheel is everywhere - they even teach it in business-schools. But Amazon is not a reliable narrator. It doesn't tell the truth about the flywheel. To understand what's really going on with the flywheel, you have apply #enshittification to it.
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This week on my #podcast, I read #Twiddler, a recent @Medium column in which I delve more deeply into #enshittification, and how it is a pathology of digital platforms, distinct from the rent-seeking of the analog world that preceded it:
doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9… 1/
doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/kno… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/kno… 2/
Enshittification, you'll recall, is the lifecycle of the online platform: first, the platform allocates #surpluses to end-users; then, once users are locked in, those surpluses are taken away and given to business-customers. 3/
Mobile tech is a duopoly run by two companies - Google and Apple - with a combined $3.5T market cap. Each uses a combination of tech, law, contract and market power to force sellers to do commerce via apps, and each extracts a *massive* commission in-app sales - 15-30%! 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kit… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kit… 2/
This is bad for users and workers. Many companies' gross margins are less than 30%. In some categories, that means there's *no* competition. 3/
Two visions competed at the dawn of the modern digital era: computers could be a way to empower people to push back against corporate and state control; or computers could transfer power from the public to corporations or governments. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/pai… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/pai… 2/
I've always been baffled by the technologists who pursued control over liberation: surely their own formative experiences were of the liberatory power of technology. 3/
