From a screed re: the internet of today

It isn't just your grouchy imagination. Everything WAS better in the 1990s, before the "enshittification" of the internet.

Or so says a delightfully written screed on the subject, "Disenshittify or Die," by Cory Doctorow.

I'll just quote one little detail as a sample of the vigor of the writing.

"The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist."

But the golden age of the internet came AFTER that. We lost our ability to regulate enshittification before the golden age even happened. That's the hypothesis.

Want to read more? I'll just link:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

BTW, the line in that URL for this screed, "how about a nice game of chess" is even more old school than the Video Privacy Protection Act. The line comes from a 1983 movie, WarGames, in which the supercomputer informs the protagonist that thermonuclear war is a strange game, that the only way to win is not to play. The computer thoughtfully (so to speak) proposes an alternative.

I gather Doctorow is offering an analogy between nuclear war and enshittification. And suggesting we go back to chess.

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