Matthew, I have no idea how to fix this either, but I believe that your writing is part of the solution. Its raising awareness of the problem in a way that people can grasp.
I had a horrible realisation when I read your essay: The cost of using chat GPT is higher than the tech bro's would have you believe. Accounts vary, but its one of the reasons I don't use LLMs. However, now when I use my browser (Brave) it annoyingly gives me a LLM generated answer to my search, so I'm involuntarily using LLMs and contributing to the cost of the planet against my will...
Looking forward to tomorrows posting Matthew, keep being angry, it suits you...
That's it. Next phone is going to be CalyxOS. The amount of enshittification is unheralded.
I'm going to experience the Internet in a manner of my choosing and I suggest you all do the same. Even DDG and lightweight browsers like Kiwi Browser are providing AI responses in their native searches...
Regarding Aaron Schwartz, shortly after his death Matt Stoller wrote a very powerful obituary that I think gets at some of the points you made above.
"As we think about what happened to Aaron, we need to recognize that it was not just prosecutorial overreach that killed him. That’s too easy, because that implies it’s one bad apple. We know that’s not true. What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There’s a reason whistleblowers get fired. There’s a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There’s a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person – John Kiriakou – who told the world it was going on. There’s a reason those who destroyed the financial system “dine at the White House”, as Lawrence Lessig put it. There’s a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There’s a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There’s a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq. This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.
More prosaically, the person who warned about the downside in a meeting gets cut out of the loop, or the former politician who tries to reform an industry sector finds his or her job opportunities sparse and unappealing next to his soon to be millionaire go along get along colleagues. I’ve seen this happen to high level former officials who have done good, and among students who challenge power as their colleagues go to become junior analysts on Wall Street. And now we’ve seen these same forces kill our friend.
It’s important for us to recognize that Aaron is just an extreme example of a force that targets all of us. He eschewed the traditional paths to wealth and power, dropping out of college after a year because it wasn’t intellectually stimulating. After co-founding and selling Reddit, and establishing his own financial security, he wandered and acted, calling himself an “applied sociologist.” He helped in small personal ways, offering encouragement to journalists like Mike Elk after Elk had broken a significant story and gotten pushback from colleagues. In my inbox, every birthday, I got a lovely note from Aaron offering me encouragement and telling me how much he admired my voice. He was a profoundly kind man, and I will now never be able to repay him for the love and kindness he showed me. There’s no medal of honor for someone like this, no Oscar, no institutional way of saying “here’s someone who did a lot of good for a lot of people.” This is because our institutions are corrupt, and wanted to quelch the Aaron Swartz’s of the world. Ultimately, they killed him. I hope that we remember Aaron in the way he should be remembered, as a hero and an inspiration."
I have mixed feelings about the Google/Apple case. Sure, Google is paying Apple for an advantage. However, no one is forced to use Google. It is akin to companies paying supermarkets to put their products in a more prominent position. Where do we draw the line between corporate excess and personal responsibility? If most people can’t be bothered to make a few clicks on their phones to change search engines should we blame Google and Apple for taking advantage of that? Do we blame companies for using bright colors on their packaging to attract customers? I worked for a while as a software engineer/product designer. It was humiliating how little people cared about the details of our products. Apathy was the biggest competitor. After all the fights we had internally about design we did a detailed survey that showed that 90% of the users just used the most basic features.
Matthew, I have no idea how to fix this either, but I believe that your writing is part of the solution. Its raising awareness of the problem in a way that people can grasp.
I had a horrible realisation when I read your essay: The cost of using chat GPT is higher than the tech bro's would have you believe. Accounts vary, but its one of the reasons I don't use LLMs. However, now when I use my browser (Brave) it annoyingly gives me a LLM generated answer to my search, so I'm involuntarily using LLMs and contributing to the cost of the planet against my will...
Looking forward to tomorrows posting Matthew, keep being angry, it suits you...
Thanks Adrian. You’re too kind.
That's it. Next phone is going to be CalyxOS. The amount of enshittification is unheralded.
I'm going to experience the Internet in a manner of my choosing and I suggest you all do the same. Even DDG and lightweight browsers like Kiwi Browser are providing AI responses in their native searches...
At least there’s always Lynx!
Regarding Aaron Schwartz, shortly after his death Matt Stoller wrote a very powerful obituary that I think gets at some of the points you made above.
"As we think about what happened to Aaron, we need to recognize that it was not just prosecutorial overreach that killed him. That’s too easy, because that implies it’s one bad apple. We know that’s not true. What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There’s a reason whistleblowers get fired. There’s a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There’s a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person – John Kiriakou – who told the world it was going on. There’s a reason those who destroyed the financial system “dine at the White House”, as Lawrence Lessig put it. There’s a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There’s a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There’s a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq. This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.
More prosaically, the person who warned about the downside in a meeting gets cut out of the loop, or the former politician who tries to reform an industry sector finds his or her job opportunities sparse and unappealing next to his soon to be millionaire go along get along colleagues. I’ve seen this happen to high level former officials who have done good, and among students who challenge power as their colleagues go to become junior analysts on Wall Street. And now we’ve seen these same forces kill our friend.
It’s important for us to recognize that Aaron is just an extreme example of a force that targets all of us. He eschewed the traditional paths to wealth and power, dropping out of college after a year because it wasn’t intellectually stimulating. After co-founding and selling Reddit, and establishing his own financial security, he wandered and acted, calling himself an “applied sociologist.” He helped in small personal ways, offering encouragement to journalists like Mike Elk after Elk had broken a significant story and gotten pushback from colleagues. In my inbox, every birthday, I got a lovely note from Aaron offering me encouragement and telling me how much he admired my voice. He was a profoundly kind man, and I will now never be able to repay him for the love and kindness he showed me. There’s no medal of honor for someone like this, no Oscar, no institutional way of saying “here’s someone who did a lot of good for a lot of people.” This is because our institutions are corrupt, and wanted to quelch the Aaron Swartz’s of the world. Ultimately, they killed him. I hope that we remember Aaron in the way he should be remembered, as a hero and an inspiration."
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/aaron-swartzs-politics.html
I have mixed feelings about the Google/Apple case. Sure, Google is paying Apple for an advantage. However, no one is forced to use Google. It is akin to companies paying supermarkets to put their products in a more prominent position. Where do we draw the line between corporate excess and personal responsibility? If most people can’t be bothered to make a few clicks on their phones to change search engines should we blame Google and Apple for taking advantage of that? Do we blame companies for using bright colors on their packaging to attract customers? I worked for a while as a software engineer/product designer. It was humiliating how little people cared about the details of our products. Apathy was the biggest competitor. After all the fights we had internally about design we did a detailed survey that showed that 90% of the users just used the most basic features.