Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #AdversarialInteroperability
Most recents (16)
#Enshittification is platforms devouring themselves: first they tempt users with goodies. Once users are locked in, goodies are withdrawn and dangled before businesses. Once business customers are stuck, all value is claimed for platform shareholders:
pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/pot…
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pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/pot…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…
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pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…
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Enshittification isn't just another way of saying "fraud" or "price gouging" or "wage theft." Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a *digital* businesses.
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#Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-#PasswordSharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger @netflix's automated enforcement mechanisms:
thestreamable.com/news/confirmed… 1/
thestreamable.com/news/confirmed… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/non… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/non… 2/
Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same "#household" to share an account. 3/
In Bezos's original plan, the company called "Amazon" was called "Relentless," due to its ambition to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." Today, Amazon is an enshittified endless scroll of paid results, where winning depends on ad budgets, not quality. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/ens… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/ens… 2/
Writing in Jeff Bezos's newspaper the @WashingtonPost, veteran tech reporter @geoffreyfowler reports on the state of his boss's "relentless" commitment to customer service. The state is grim.
washingtonpost.com/technology/int… 3/
washingtonpost.com/technology/int… 3/
#ObliqueStrategies is @brianeno and Peter Schmidt's deck of 100+ cards, each with a sentence of gnomic advice. They inspired Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads and Devo. My favorite? "Be the first person to not do something that no one else has ever not done before." 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/div… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/div… 2/
Why that one? Because it challenges us to imagine how something that we perceive as unitary and indivisible might be decomposed into smaller units. It's a challenge to the notion that one must "take the bad with the good." What if we could just get rid of "the bad?" 3/
Remember when they sneered at Geocities pages for being an unusable eyesore? True, they had some, uh, *idiosyncratic* design choices, but at least they reflected a real person's exuberant ideas about what looked and worked well. Today's web is an unusable eyesore *by design*. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/06/28/bar… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/06/28/bar… 2/
Start with those fucking "sign up for our newsletter" interruptors. Email is the last federated protocol, publishers are desperate to get you to sign up to their newsletter, which nominally bypasses Big Tech's chokepoint on communications between creators and audiences. 3/
Back in 2019, I wrote a case-study on ad- and tracker-blocking as part of @EFF's series on #AdversarialInteroperability (AKA #CompetitiveCompatibility or #Comcom).
eff.org/deeplinks/2019… 1/
eff.org/deeplinks/2019… 1/
My point was that the ad-tech industry says that it tracks you as part of a bargain: you trade away your privacy and get media in exchange, but that this was a bizarre kind of take-it-or-leave-it form of bargaining. 2/
The ad-tech deal boils down to this: "Just by following a link to this page, you have agreed to, well, *anything* we feel like doing. We can collect your data, sell it, merge it with other data, share it, mine it, exploit it. Forever."
That's not much of a bargain. 3/
That's not much of a bargain. 3/
Gig work companies like Uber and Doordash are committed to misclassifying their workers as contractors, which lets them escape employer obligations like a minimum wage, health care or worker's comp (driving for Uber/Lyft is one of the most dangerous jobs in America). 1/
These companies spent $225m to pass California's #Prop22, a ballot initiative that formalized worker misclassification, paving the way for all kinds of companies to convert employees to contractors at the stroke of a pen:
pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/man… 2/
pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/man… 2/
Hilariously, all that money was wasted. Prop 22 was unconstitutional. It usurped the assembly's constitutional duty to establish universal worker's comp. It was (idiotically) drafted such that if any clause was struck the whole thing was invalid.
latimes.com/california/new… 3/
latimes.com/california/new… 3/
"Innovation" is in very bad odor these days. "Disruption" is even more disreputable. 1/
But as tech and the global south researcher @qadrida writes in @wired, "innovation" isn't limited to inventing unregulated banks and calling them "fintech" and "disruption" is more than just misclassifying employees as contractors.
wired.com/story/disrupti… 2/
wired.com/story/disrupti… 2/
Qadri studies workers who are seizing the means of computation, reverse-engineering and repurposing the apps that are meant to keep them in bondage and setting themselves free. Her research on gig drivers in Jakarta is essential reading:
pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuy… 3/
pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuy… 3/
A historical accident made Massachusetts a lab for studying how tech can serve monopolies, and the moves, countermoves and counter-countermoves show how businesses, tinkerers, governments and the public can liberate themselves from seemingly all-powerful monopolists. 1/
If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/02/05/tim… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/02/05/tim… 2/
It all starts with #RightToRepair. Companies love to monopolize the repair of their products. If the only place to get your broken stuff fixed is at its manufacturer's authorized depots, the manufacturer can move all kinds of value from your side of the deal to their own. 3/
The city of Stockholm commissioned Skolplattform, an omnibus app to deliver timely information to students, teachers and parents. It was a mess: a late, SEK 1B (USD 117M) "IT disaster" boondoggle with a 1.2 star rating.
play.google.com/store/apps/det… 1/
play.google.com/store/apps/det… 1/
If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2021/11/09/skr… 2/
pluralistic.net/2021/11/09/skr… 2/
Among the groups that were poorly served by the app were parents, and among those parents was Christian @Landgren, a software developer. Landgren created a streamlined version of the app just for parents that he dubbed Öppna (open) Skolplattformen. 3/
Last Oct, the @RIAA launched a bizarre campaign of legal bullying against #youtubedl, a free/open library that lets people save Youtube (and other) videos for a variety of purposes, including critical analysis, offline viewing, archiving and remixing.
pluralistic.net/2020/10/24/120…
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pluralistic.net/2020/10/24/120…
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2021/08/01/bal…
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pluralistic.net/2021/08/01/bal…
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The RIAA attacked youtube-dl under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (#DMCA1201) a 1998 law that indiscriminately bans helping people remove DRM, even if no copyright infringement takes place.
pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/tru…
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pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/tru…
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Gojek is a $10B Indonesian "super app" that combines "Postmates, Apple Pay, Venmo, and Uber" serviced by an army of ojol - drivers - who are subjected to all the high-handed algorithmic horrors that gig workers everywhere suffer through.
vice.com/en/article/7kv…
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vice.com/en/article/7kv…
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But Indonesian ojol aren't helpless before their apps; a legion of toolsmiths produce, share, sell and support "#tuyul apps" named for "a child-like spirit in Indonesian folklore that helps his human master earn money by stealing," which modify the Gojek app.
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As part of her MIT PhD, @qadrida studied Gojek, ojol and tuyul apps, and her account of the grey-market Gojek ecosystem for @motherboard is riveting.
vice.com/en/article/7kv…
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vice.com/en/article/7kv…
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"Tread," a $3000 "smart" treadmill from @OnePeloton, is a deathtrap. 125,000 Treads have been recalled after the devices injured 72 people and killed a child.
bbc.com/news/business-…
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bbc.com/news/business-…
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Say what you will about Peloton's safety engineering, but never fault the evil genius of its strategists. The company responded to the news by bricking the Treads in the field and demanding $40/month "subscriptions" from owners to continue using them.
bleepingcomputer.com/news/technolog…
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bleepingcomputer.com/news/technolog…
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The pretense here is that the subscription comes with safety software that means that you treadmill will not maim you or murder your children.
This raises an obvious question: why not just put that software into all the existing Tread devices for free?
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This raises an obvious question: why not just put that software into all the existing Tread devices for free?
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2003's PRISONERS INVENTIONS is an underground classic, a high-stakes precursor to MAKE Magazine, combining ingenuity, adversarial interoperability, and user-centered design. After 13 years out of print, @halfletter's published a new, expanded edition.
halfletterpress.com/prisoners-inve…
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halfletterpress.com/prisoners-inve…
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/kin…
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pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/kin…
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Prisoners' Inventions was created by Angelo, a pseudonymous, long-serving incarcerated American who entered into a collaboration with the Temporary Services collective, who both published Angelo's work and staged multiple gallery showings of his work.
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Today in @WiredUK, my op-ed: "Why it’s easier to move country than switch social media" - an argument that the real power of social media comes from switching costs, not network effects.
wired.co.uk/article/social…
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wired.co.uk/article/social…
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(If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:)
pluralistic.net/2021/04/12/tea…
(or follow along below)
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pluralistic.net/2021/04/12/tea…
(or follow along below)
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Debates over market concentration in social media lean heavily on "network effects," the idea that social media services increase in value as their user-base grows, because the more users they have, the more likely it is that the people you want to talk to have accounts.
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AT&T invented the Unix operating system in 1969. Since then, it has grown to be the basis of almost every computer you use today, from OS X to GNU/Linux, Ios to Android, and all the embedded systems in the "smart" gadgets in your world.
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In the early days of Unix, all kinds of companies made their own commercial versions: Sun, SGI, IBM, Apple, DEC, etc.
But AT&T didn't.
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But AT&T didn't.
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The story of how AT&T - a vicious monopolist that jealously guarded its treasures - sat by while others commercialized, popularized and perfected Unix is a fantastic parable about how anti-monopoly laws connect with #AdversarialInteroperability.
eff.org/deeplinks/2020…
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eff.org/deeplinks/2020…
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