korrents

korrents · piece

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

Cory Doctorow · 30 Jan 2024 · pluralistic.net ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Cory Doctorow did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Platform decay is the result of specific decisions by identifiable people rather than impersonal historical forces, which is precisely what makes it reversible.

    Their wordsI think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.
    Interesting

  2. Our reading

    People stay on a platform they have come to dislike because leaving requires everyone they care about to agree to leave at the same time.

    Their wordsIn theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.
    Interesting