The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation - Cory Doctorow

Published in 2023 by Verso, London, UK, and Brooklyn, NY

192 pages

ISBN: 978-1-80429-124-5

LCCN: 2023013541

LCC: HD9696.8.A2 D638 2023

As a young teenager in the early-mid 2000s, I flocked to the Internet as a place of refuge. Regulated to a single desktop in our “computer room,” I remember the excitement that came with hearing the harsh tones of the dial-up connection. That sound was a liminal space between the mundane offline world (which was often cruel and barely manageable as an awkward, nerdy teenager) and the endless possibilities of the online world. The Internet I grew up with consisted of mostly chat rooms, AIM message boards, flash games, blogs, and rudimentary social media platforms such as Xanga and MySpace. Without access to it 24/7 via smartphones, most of us utilized the Internet for either work during the day or leisure after school. Surfing the Internet brought a sense of excitement and connected so many people to communities that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to in their everyday lives. 

       Then, in the blink of an eye, the Internet became awful. The tech market has consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, placing a small handful of companies —most notably Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta — as the dominant powers controlling the tech sector. Over the past decade and a half, this consolidation of power has led to products and services becoming increasingly worse, as consumers have fewer alternatives to turn to despite widespread dissatisfaction. 

       While this might seem like a classic case of looking back at one’s childhood through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, there is a grain of truth to this sentiment. One of the foremost writers on this phenomenon of the “enshittification” of the Internet is journalist and blogger Cory Doctorow. A longtime advocate of open-source sharing and liberating media from the grips of Big Tech, Doctorow has been a consistent critic of the downturn in quality that has plagued the tech sector. In his latest book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, Doctorow outlines the process of the “enshittification” of our online experiences and advocates the necessity for interoperability as a way to fight back against Big Tech. 

Overview:

       A long-time critic of the consolidation of Big Tech, Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe how the Internet has gradually declined in quality due to the greed of these businesses. First, these corporations treat their users well, offering “free” services such as allowing users to connect with their friends across the world, upload and share images, and find like-minded communities. After gaining traction, these corporations begin to buy out smaller competitors and integrate these services onto their platforms, thus consolidating power and taking an increasingly larger portion of the market share. Then, after their user base is locked into the platform and has nowhere else to go for alternatives, the business gradually prioritizes the interests of advertisers and other business partners through measures such as monetizing previously “free” services or serving “suggested posts” instead of chronological news feeds to keep the user engaged longer and serve them more advertisements. 

       In short, to appease their shareholders, these corporations are financially incentivized to make their services increasingly worse while disincentivizing or outright disallowing users from leaving these platforms. Most of us know the feeling of being locked into Apple’s ecosystem of goods and services, as the company chooses which apps can be purchased on its App Store and incentivizes consumers to stay within its narrow range of products. If a person wanted to switch to an Android phone or Microsoft operating system, for example, they would face a high barrier to leaving due to their files and information being difficult to transfer to their new devices. By making the cost of leaving so high, troublesome, and expensive, these companies trap consumers into an ecosystem in which they are deeply unhappy but seemingly powerless to do anything about it. 

       Due to the loose regulatory laws regarding the tech industry in the United States, these businesses are allowed to consolidate power and become unaccountable monopolies. It can be easy to feel defeated and powerless before the immense power that these few companies hold. Doctorow, however, argues that we can fight back against these Big tech monopolies. The key to breaking the chokehold that these companies have on the digital economy is through legislating interoperability. 

       Interoperability simply means that one thing can work with another thing. For example, you can use any brand of socks with any brand of shoe. You can put lightbulbs from any brand in most lamps. In the late 80s and 90s, the tech sector grew rapidly due to interoperability between operating systems, which guaranteed low switching costs. Doctorow shows that throughout the early history of the Internet, software engineers would engage in competitive compatibility (shortened to “comcom”) in which they would reverse engineer programs to work across systems, even against the wishes of the original manufacturer. 

       Increasingly, however, the consolidation of power within the tech sector has not only made interoperability nearly impossible but also often illegal as well. For too long, Big Tech has relied on a legal web that prohibits interoperability and keeps competitors from reverse engineering their technology and improving upon it. Big Tech is not big due to the ingenuity of its engineers, but rather because of the protections enshrined by its lawyers that have allowed them to monopolize. When consumers have nowhere else to go, there is little incentive for these companies to improve their services, leading to the degradation of the user experience. 

       As such, Doctorow argues that interoperability is the key to breaking up Big Tech, as it will allow competition to flourish and incentivize companies to make their apps and services more accessible and enjoyable to use. By placing interoperability between platforms and operating systems back at the forefront of technology, allowing users to mix and match apps and services according to their preferences, and encouraging open-source software and the means to repair devices without interference, we can break apart Big Tech and reclaim the Internet once more for the common good. 

Commendations: 

       The Internet Con has many key strengths within its slender frame. First of all, Doctorow’s writing style is clear and conversational, often sprinkling in an ironic, snarky sense of humor to add a bit of spice to the text. It is short, punchy, entertaining, and imminently accessible, even to non-specialists. Doctorow has made a name for himself within the world of science fiction and tech-centered blogging, and it is easy to see why. His writing is often infectious and lucid, leading the reader along his line of thinking organically and persuasively. For example, Doctorow ends the book with a brief polemic against blockchain and NFTs that would make the most ardent defender of BitCoin blush with embarrassment. Doctorow has spent decades writing about the consolidation of Big Tech and the merits of interoperability, and this book serves as an excellent distillation of his large corpus on the subject. 

       In addition to validating my own experience with the gradually declining quality of my experience with the Internet, Doctorow also convincingly highlights the importance of the legal apparatus that undergirds the current state of Big Tech. Through a litany of historical examples and legal cases, Doctorow illustrates how Big Tech has manipulated the legal system to shield itself from competition and maximize its profits at the expense of its users. As such, Doctorow proposes that the solution to this problem must also be through legislation. We need to create and pass laws that work to break up these tech monopolies rather than ones that protect them from competition, and Doctorow’s poignant and timely examples excellently illustrate this point. Accordingly, his scathing critique of Big Tech can serve as a site of commonality for a coalition across the ideological and political spectrum. 

       In the most optimistic of perspectives, this beginning salvo of anti-trust regulations against Big Tech could initiate a cascading effect across various sectors of industry. If we look to history as an example, we can see that the dissolution of Standard Oil in 1911 following the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 set off a chain reaction that led to the breakup of other trusts, such as American Tobacco and General Electric, within the same year. What seems impossible will always appear to be so until it happens. Breaking up Big Tech could summon the political will to open the floodgates to trust-busting in the 21st century. 

       One of the most valuable aspects of Doctorow’s account is the hope that he has that we can make lasting changes against the seemingly insurmountable power of Big Tech. I agree that interoperability and legalizing the ability to reverse engineer programs and operating systems are powerful tools to loosen the grip that these companies have on the tech sector. He is also realistic in acknowledging that interoperability is not free from risk, yet he believes that this risk pales in comparison to its potential rewards and that these risks can be mitigated and minimized. As such, there is much to agree with Doctorow’s diagnosis of our current tech ills, as well as a potentially effective tool to help alleviate the worst of its symptoms. 

Critique:

       On the other hand, The Internet Con suffers from a few small shortcomings. First of all, the book is a bit disorganized in its structure. It often reads more like an extended series of blog posts rather than a fully fleshed-out, detailed argument. This is especially apparent in the last chapters of the book, which are simply short rebuttals to common questions regarding issues such as privacy, harassment, algorithmic radicalization, blockchain, and more. While it is insightful to get short and punchy answers to these questions, it leaves the collection a bit disorganized and without much direction. While Doctorow does a great job of introducing the uninitiated reader to many concepts such as the various forms of interoperability, there needs to be more depth here for those who are already well-versed in the topic.

        While the main takeaway of the book concerns how we got here (“enshittification”) and what we can do about it (mandated interoperability), there’s not much exploration into other ways of combating Big Tech. This makes for a tedious and repetitive read at times, as Doctorow reiterates the same points over and over again with deeply polemical language. For some readers, Doctorow’s heavy reliance on snark and ironic humor may help to hammer home his central argument; for others, Doctorow’s forceful language and snide remarks can easily alienate them and turn them off from the rest of his points. 

       Finally, Doctorow’s proposed solution to fighting back against Big Tech -- namely, legally mandated interoperability -- has a few major problems. Far from placing the power in the hands of the common person, Doctorow’s reliance on interoperability rests on legislative power to have any possibility of being a feasible solution. While there are cracks that are beginning to show in recent months within these major companies when it comes to the possibility of facing regulation, their relative power in the global market makes such a legislation-focused approach unlikely to succeed without mass popular support. Doctorow gives no roadmap as to how we are to overcome the vast influence of Big Tech to wrestle enough power away from them to be able to pass regulatory legislation. If the recent hiccups of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe show us anything, it is that enforcing legislation and ensuring compliance can be uneven and difficult when tech platforms are large enough to comfortably flaunt such regulations. 

       Unfortunately, despite the subtitle’s promise to show us “how to seize the means of computation,” there are very few actionable steps that the average person can take away from Doctorow’s analysis. After much of the book describes how Big Tech became so powerful and how interoperability can be used to combat them, it then ends abruptly with little more than a hope that the federal government will reign in these mega-corporations. While Doctorow attempts to give the average reader hope through his work, it is all too easy to come away from this book with more knowledge, but little else in terms of practical application. 

Conclusion: 

       Overall, The Internet Con is a timely and informative examination of how Big Tech uses legal means to consolidate and protect its power. Doctorow astutely diagnoses the source of our shared ill-feeling that the Internet has become gradually worse, as tech companies have no incentive to keep their user bases satisfied when they have nowhere else to go. While they degrade the experience of their users at the expense of maximizing the profits of shareholders, these companies can be reigned in through the legislative mandate of interoperability, thus increasing competition and breaking their monopolistic power. 

       While some of his prescriptions might seem like a long shot, particularly in our current political climate, Doctorow’s analysis opens the door to wider discussions of how we, as individuals organizing against the forces of neoliberal capitalism, can begin to take back the reigns of power from monopolistic tech companies. As such, for anyone interested in policy-making, the history of the Internet, the evolution of the contemporary tech sector, and how to utilize computer science for the good of all people, this book is a fantastic place to start. We all need to prioritize actionable, workable solutions that can be grasped by the average person to mobilize enough political will to overcome the seemingly insurmountable forces of Big Tech and the legal system that shields its abuses. Doctorow’s work is a fantastic first step toward a more hopeful future in which tech is employed for the benefit of all.