Cory Doctorow

And so when we talk about how these platforms have competed their way into toxicity, we're excluding a form of competition that we have made illegal.

For example, ad blockers, for example, privacy blockers, for example, things that discard algorithmic suggestions and so on.

Taking those off the table means that the only competitors you get are firms that are capable of doing a sort of holus bolus replacement to convince you that, no, you don't want to use Instagram anymore.

You want to use TikTok instead, as opposed to,

You'd like to use TikTok or Instagram rather, but in a slightly different way that defends your interests against the firm's interests.

And we mustn't ever forget that within digital technology and living memory, we had a mode of competition that we prohibited that often served as a very rapid response to specifically the thing you're worried about here.

I have a friend, Andrea Downing, who has the gene for breast cancer.

And she's part of a breast cancer previvor group that was courted by Facebook in the early 2010s.

And they moved there, and this group is hugely consequential to them.

Because if you have the breast cancer gene, you are deciding whether to have your breasts removed, your ovaries removed, the women in your life, your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, they're dying or sick, and you're making care decisions.

This group is hugely important.

And Andrea discovered that you could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group, whether or not you were a member of it.

This is hugely important to her friends there.

She reported it to Facebook.

Facebook said, that's a feature, not a bug.

We're going to keep it.

They sued.

It was non-consensually settled when the FTC settled all the privacy claims.

And they are still there because they cannot...

overcome the collective action problem that it takes to leave.