"Sometimes a term is so apt, its meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances, that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment," the columnist Kyle Chayka writes, in a review of Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification."
"the Google-D.O.J. antitrust trial last year surfaced all these memos about a fight about making Google Search worse," Doctorow explains, in a conversation with Chayka."
"what if we make it so that you got to search two or three times, and then, every time, we got to show you ads?"
"The coalition [against this] is so big, and it crosses so many political lines," Doctorow says, "that if we could just make it illegal to spy on people, we could solve so many problems."
Tech platforms pursue business strategies that prioritize monetization and surveillance over optimal user experience. Corporate decisions sometimes intentionally degrade product performance to create more ad-serving opportunities and increase user engagement frequency. Antitrust investigations have revealed internal deliberations about making search results less efficient to surface additional ads. Widespread surveillance underpins targeted advertising and platform power, affecting users across political lines. A legal prohibition on spying and comprehensive limits on surveillance could substantially reduce harms and realign platform incentives toward better user outcomes. Collective regulatory and policy action is presented as a viable path to improvement.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]