Cory Doctorow

One is like a description of how platforms go bad.

One is a theory about why they're going bad.

And one is a proposal for how to make them better.

So the first part, this description of how platforms go bad, it's a three-stage process.

And in stage one, platforms are good to their end users, but they're also trying to find a way to lock those end users in.

And then once the users are locked in, they make things worse for those end users in stage two.

And because the users are locked in, they know that they can turn the screw without risking those users' immediate departure.

And so they make things worse for those end users in order to take something from them and give it to business customers.

who get lured in, that's stage two.

And stage three, those business customers who've been locked in as well, because they're now dependent on those end users, they have all the value withdrawn from them as well.

The platform harvests all the value from users, all the value from its business customers.

It leaves behind kind of the barest kind of homeopathic residue of value needed to keep users locked to the platform, businesses locked to the users, and delivers all that value to themselves, to the shareholders and the executives.

Yeah, let's talk about Facebook.

So 2006, Facebook goes beyond American College Kids with a .edu address.

They try to lure in people from the general public.

Anyone who wants social media at that point already has an account on a rival service called MySpace.

So Mark Zuckerberg makes a pitch to those users.

Look, I know you love your friends that you hang out with on the MySpace, but I don't know if you realize this.

MySpace is owned by an evil, crapulent, senescent, immortal vampire billionaire named Rupert Murdoch.

And he's spying on you with every hour that God sends.