How Big Tech like Facebook, Google and Amazon created monopolies and hijacked user data, and what we can do about it, from a New York Times bestselling author and leading technology critic.
When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection," they were
lying. They said their "walled gardens" would keep us safe, but those
were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and
made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other
Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the
people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and
customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these
people after you delete your account has nothing to do with
technological limitations: it's a business strategy in service to
commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can–we must–dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con,
Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by
forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate.
Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing
users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices
without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.
