Cory Doctorow

And then finally, there was new market entry.

There were new companies that could exploit something that I think is exceptional about tech.

I'm not a tech exceptionalist broadly, but I'm an exceptionalist about this, which is that every program in your computer that is adverse to your interests can be neutralized with a program that is beneficial to your interests.

And that means that when you create a program that is deliberately bad, you invite new market entrants to make one that's good, right?

If you lock up the printer so it won't take generic ink, you just invite someone to not only get into the generic ink business, but get into the alternative printer firmware business, which eventually could just be the, I'm going to sell you your next printer business.

But what we've done over 20 plus years is monotonically expand IP law until we've made most forms of reverse engineering and modification without manufacturer permission illegal, a felony.

My friend Jay Freeman calls it felony contempt of business model.

And as a result, you don't have to worry about market entry with this incredible, slippery, dynamic character of technology.

And when you unshackle firms from these four forces of discipline—

when they don't have to worry about competitors or regulators or their workforce or new market entry through interoperability, the same CEOs go to the same giant switch on the wall on the C-suite marked in shitification, and they yank it as hard as they can, as they've done every day that they've shown up for work.

And instead of being gummed up, it has been lubricated by an inshitogenic policy environment that allows it to go from zero to 100 with one pull.

And that's how we end up where we are today.

So Facebook, really, its big bang is 2006.

That's when they opened the platform to anyone, not just people with a .edu address from an American college.

And Mark Zuckerberg needs to attract users.

And his problem is that they're all using a platform called MySpace.

So he pitches those users and he says, look, I know you enjoy hanging out with your friend on MySpace, but nobody should want to use a surveillance-driven social media platform.

Come to Facebook and we'll never spy on you.

We'll just show you the things that you asked to see.

So that's stage one, but part of stage one, remember, is that there's a lock-in.