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We Didn’t Ask for This Internet
| USA | general

We Didn’t Ask for This Internet

#Cory Doctorow #Tim Wu #Enshittification #Antitrust #Net Neutrality #Digital Monopolies #Interoperability

📌 Key Takeaways

  • Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu argue that the internet's decline is a result of corporate monopolies and poor policy, not technology itself.
  • The concept of 'enshittification' describes how platforms systematically degrade their services to maximize profit extraction.
  • The lack of antitrust enforcement has allowed major tech firms to create walled gardens that trap users and stifle market competition.
  • Restoring interoperability and strict regulatory oversight are essential steps toward fixing the broken digital ecosystem.

📖 Full Retelling

Renowned tech activists and authors Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu participated in a high-profile discussion on the systemic decay of the digital landscape, concluding that the modern internet has failed to fulfill its early democratic promise due to the predatory behavior of monopolistic platforms. During the recent forum, the critics argued that the shift from a decentralized, user-centric web to a landscape dominated by a handful of massive corporations was driven by a lack of antitrust enforcement and the prioritization of shareholder profits over social utility. This critical retrospective highlights a growing consensus among technology experts that the current state of the web is the result of deliberate policy failures rather than inevitable technological progress. Doctorow, who famously coined the term "enshittification," detailed the lifecycle of digital platforms that first attract users and creators with subsidies, only to eventually pivot toward extracting maximum value from both groups to satisfy stakeholders. He and Wu, a legal scholar widely known for popularizing the concept of Net Neutrality, argued that this cycle degrades the user experience and stifles innovation. They pointed to the erosion of interoperability—the ability for different systems to work together—as a primary reason why users find themselves trapped in "walled gardens" where switching costs are prohibitively high. To move beyond the current crisis, the duo proposed a return to robust regulatory oversight and the implementation of adversarial interoperability, which would allow third-party developers to create tools that work with existing platforms without needing the incumbents' permission. They emphasized that the internet was never destined to become a vehicle for surveillance capitalism, but rather became one because regulators allowed tech giants to buy out their competitors and control the flow of information. By restoring competition and transparency, they believe it is still possible to reclaim the open, egalitarian vision that characterized the early days of the World Wide Web.

🐦 Character Reactions (Tweets)

Tech Cynic

The internet was once a wild frontier. Now it’s a walled-off amusement park run by mega-corporations. Enjoy your overpriced ticket to ride, folks! 🎢💸

Net Nomad

They say the internet brought us together, but I feel like I’m stuck in a friend zone with my ISP. Thanks for the bandwidth... I think? 🤔🌐

Dystopian Dreamer

Remember when we thought the internet would be a garden of knowledge? Now it feels more like a digital landfill... brought to you by Big Tech! 🌱🗑️

Regulatory Rumble

Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu are like the dynamic duo of internet justice. If only they could use their powers to fight the 'walled gardens' with a high-flying 'antitrust cape'! 🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️

💬 Character Dialogue

malenia: I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella, and I shall never know defeat; yet this internet rots like a festering wound, betrayed by the very hands that forged it.
geralt: Hmph. It’s like slaying a monster, but instead of a beast, we get corporate beasts, draining the lifeblood of creativity.
sailor_moon: Wait! Are we talking about monsters? Because I think the real monster here is the greed in the hearts of those giants! In the name of the Moon, I will fight for justice!
malenia: Your naïve optimism is charming, yet the rot has spread too deep. It is a struggle against fate, not just against greed.
geralt: Exactly. We need more than hope; we need action. Otherwise, we’ll just be participants in this charade of a digital age.

🏷️ Themes

Technology, Digital Economics, Public Policy

📚 Related People & Topics

Competition law

Law maintaining market competition

Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust law (or just antitrust), anti-monopoly law, and trade pr...

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Net neutrality

Net neutrality

Principle that Internet service providers should treat all data equally

Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent transfer rates regardless of content, website, platform, application, type of eq...

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Tim Wu

Tim Wu

American legal scholar (born 1972)

Timothy Shiou-Ming Wu (Chinese: 吳修銘; born 1971 or 1972) is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion...

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Enshittification

Decline in online platform quality

Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and fi...

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Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow

Canadian-British writer (born 1971)

Cory Efram Doctorow (; born 17 July 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences...

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🔗 Entity Intersection Graph

Connections for Competition law:

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