Cory Doctorow

Lawmakers, economists, regulators.

I wish it was that simple, right?

But if you're on Facebook because that's where the people who have the same rare disease as you are hanging out, or that's the only way you can stay in touch with the family you left behind when you emigrated.

It's okay.

Forget about them.

I mean, I hear you, right?

But it's a big lift, right?

It is a big lift.

And the thing is, it doesn't have to be.

You know, when Facebook was trying to get users off of MySpace, they didn't say, oh, come to Facebook, read our superior privacy policy, and smug solidarity or solitude until your dumb friends get the message and join you.

They gave them a bot.

And you gave that bot your login and password, and it went to MySpace several times a day, grabbed everything waiting for you, impersonating you, put it in your Facebook feed, and you could reply to it.

That's called interoperability.

And over the last 20 years, we've expanded IP law to make that kind of stuff illegal.

When Mark Zuckerberg did it to Rupert Murdoch, that's progress.

If we do it to Mark Zuckerberg, that's piracy.

With these guys, it's always disruption for thee and never for me.

We could change the policy environment so that we could evacuate the platforms, right?

But if we just shatter the platforms, we shatter all those communities that matter to people.

And they really do matter.