The Thing About Social Media, Part 4—Enshittification, dis-enshittification, and silver linings

Cory Doctorow’s 2024 Marshall McLuhan lecture  “Seizing the means of computation: a better internet is run by and for the people who use it”

There is a lot to take away from Cory Doctorow’s 2024 Marshall McLuhan lecture, “Seizing the means of computation: a better internet is run by and for the people who use it.”

Enshittification is a thing: the shiny new platforms in the digital landscape entice us to join them and bring all our friends. Hooked by free plans, we imprison ourselves in lies and social pressure. Eventually, our agency to communicate is taken hostage, and our attention is stolen by stupidity or sold to the highest bidder. And it will get worse from here. 

So far, Doctorow is preaching to my personal choir. However, I find myself questioning his proposed solutions. Regulation, more regulation, and some more regulation? Isn’t it a bit late for that? 

Meta products like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp aren’t free—we pay with our privacy and our attention, allowing others to invade our space with comfortable lies and junk, and it is making us sick. Congratulations, we have privatised our mind space.

We sold out for the idea of a freebee in a capitalistic society*. We have disenfranchised and commodified ourselves, and we will die one subscription fee at a time. 

Cory Doctorow argues that “The internet isn’t more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality. But the internet is the terrain we’ll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it’s joined.” 

I think we might already have lost that terrain and that opportunity. But, for a short time, the people still hold the power. We need to work harder to find grass-roots ways out of this. I don’t want regulators to give me more cookie consent forms. I want to be a shareholder in a co-op, owning my niche of the metaphorical shit pile and turn it into compost and grow relationship trees and harvest meaningful connections. 

*) Says the author, typing this post into Google Docs**. 

**) But she is going to publish it on her open-source website, hosted by her friendly neighbourhood hosting company on a server in New Zealand.