Cory Doctorow: How the internet went to sh*t | Part One of the Prospect Podcast interview

So Corey Dr. welcome to the Prospect podcast. Very nice to have you here.

podcast. Very nice to have you here.

>> Thank you very much. A pleasure to be here.

>> Um and we're here to talk about your book in shitification which is you know both well both the title of this latest book but also kind of a whole theory about the world and there's so much that

we're going to get into that I'm excited to talk about. Um could you kick us off by explaining what is initiation? How

did you kind of first identify this concept?

>> Well, uh, I for 24 years have been working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's a digital rights group

Foundation. It's a digital rights group that tries to get people to care about and ultimately do something about whether our human rights follow us into the digital realm and whether the computers that we end up using end up taking away our human rights here in the

physical realm. And it's hard because

physical realm. And it's hard because these ideas, they're like abstract, they're technical, the problems are a long way off and it can take a a really long time to get people to care about this stuff. You could of course just do

this stuff. You could of course just do nothing and wait for everything to be on fire and then they will care about it.

It's nice if people care about it before things are on fire. And so you come up with metaphors and simileies and parables and you know funny words. And

it turns out that a minor license license to vulgarity was the secret sauce for getting people to care about abstract technical issues. And in

shitification it describes an observation about what happens to platforms when they are unmed from any discipline when they can treat us as badly as they like and thrive. and also

a thesis about why they can treat us so badly and still thrive. What happened in the policy environment? Because

ultimately this is a theory about transcending the idea that your consumption was the problem with this.

You shopped uh with insufficient vigor and therefore we have monopolies which is I think a really dumb idea. It's like

you didn't recycle hard enough and that's why there's a wildfire. Um, it's

also about transcending though the personal moral failings of these kind of ketamine adult Zucker Muskian mediocrities who seem to be in charge of everything these days because as terrible as they are, they are just

filling a niche. You know, if there's a succession battle for Elon Musk's fortune after he pops his clogs from taking too much ketamine, like there will be 10 big balls fighting in an

arena and whoever emerges victorious will be indistinguishable from him because ultimately this is about the initic policy environment. the specific

choices taken by name policy makers in living memory that had the foreseeable and foreseen uh outcome of producing an environment where treating people as badly as possible makes you as much

money as possible who did it anyway and who want us to believe that this is just because of like teiology it's the great forces of history it's the iron laws of economics it's returns to scale it's you

know the moon and Venus or something no it's like you did it we told you this would happen we need to do something else.

>> Another word I want to just kind of note for listeners and viewers is enshine which is another great word that you've come up with.

>> Yeah, I can declen this like a a Latin scholar [laughter] disinitifying init prefix for every there's so much >> anti- disinitifying you know >> and I also want to point out that you

are wearing a a little pin there with a emoji and >> and a little bit of vocabulary. The um

the punctuation coming out of a cartoon character's mouth that indicates cussing is called agrolix. G R A W L A I L I X.

Agralix.

>> Thank you so much for that too. Um so

you in the book, you know, you just mentioned um Musk and Zuckerberg. Um you

know, you talk about all kinds of platforms in the book that have been initified. You talk about Facebook, you

initified. You talk about Facebook, you talk about X, you talk about Amazon, you also talk about Apple and the iPhone, you talk about Google. When these

platforms were first created, who were they built to serve and how how did they how did the goals of those companies change later through initification?

>> Well, look, I don't think you can build a company like Google without money, right? And investors put money in firms

right? And investors put money in firms that they believe will generate a surplus that can be extracted and returned to investors. That's just how things work in this world, at least in

the world of for-profit uh invested in firms. So in some sense this is just about extracting money. And of course if you're an investor your platonic ideal of a firm is one that charges infinity

for a product but pays nothing to produce it. So it's like an academic

produce it. So it's like an academic publisher who in fact that is their business model. Everyone else can't do

business model. Everyone else can't do that right because if you charge infinity pay nothing to your suppliers no one will buy it. No one will work for you. And so firms always have to uh if

you. And so firms always have to uh if not out of a sense of moral duty at least out of a sense of self-preservation firms always have to

accept less than everything and charge less than everything and share less than more than nothing. And so these firms when they started they produced good products. We can say oh it was produced

products. We can say oh it was produced for users it was produced for business customers or whatever. Sure it was. But

that's one tier down from why they were doing it. And the why of why they were

doing it. And the why of why they were doing it is they thought that was how they would make the most money. And so

back to this idea of the initic policy environment when we created the conditions for them to make more money by abusing us, it shouldn't surprise us that they abuse us. I'm trying to get at

this idea that like firms abuse us not under the moral failings or the the problems with the mottos of the company.

They do it for the same reason your dog likes its bollocks because they can, right? and and if we stop them they

right? and and if we stop them they won't.

>> Can you explain? So in the book you talk, you know, quite nostalgically about the internet pre-intentification that it was a good place. What is the main difference between the internet as

it was and the internet as it is now?

>> So it's not that platforms don't go bad because of course we had platforms that sucked. I in the early days of search

sucked. I in the early days of search engines we had companies like Ask Jeieves and Alta Vista that started off as fairly good but then just sold so much advertising basically auctioned off

the top spots that they became unusable.

Right? The difference is from today to then is that the companies that suck still thrive. So that's the biggest

still thrive. So that's the biggest difference. So you know that early what

difference. So you know that early what I call the old good internet. Uh cuz I'm trying not to be nostalgic. I think as John Hodgman says nostalgia is a toxic impulse.

>> So sorry nostalgic good. That's why the old good and not good old cuz the good old internet definitely sounds nostalgic but the old good internet what it had going for it what its strength and its

failing was or its weakness was was that it had a lot of technological self-determination because the people who used it were mostly pretty technical and even if you weren't right even if you were someone who was using it because maybe you were

a neopile or maybe just things didn't work well for you out there in the world you wanted to say things that couldn't be said or find a community that couldn't form out there in the world and and and so it was worth learning how to

use this esoteric system. The millu you were in was that you were surrounded by people who knew how to work, how it worked and they could change it. And so

if things bothered people, they fixed them, >> right? And and the problem was that not

>> right? And and the problem was that not everyone wanted to endure those initial what an economist would call transaction costs of figuring out how to use them.

So our normie friends couldn't join the party. And I love my normie friends and

party. And I love my normie friends and I wanted them in the party. And so what that gave way to was web 2.0 you know, where we created these grease slides to get on the internet, which I'm 100% in

favor of, but then the only way out was climbing a grease pole. And so nobody could escape. They became kind of um uh

could escape. They became kind of um uh roach motel where you could check in, but you couldn't check out. So in the book, you, as Alone said, you go through a bunch of different platforms,

Facebook, Amazon, etc. Lots of things as users, many of us will now be thinking, "Yeah, it's legit. It doesn't work. It's

so frustrating." Um well what does the are have those companies all reached the kind of final stage of mitification?

What does that look like? Where does it leave us as users if everything is kind of on a trajectory to this end stage in shitification?

>> Well, I'm a great believer in an axiom out of the finance sector called uh Stein's law that holds that anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. And so obviously there's a limit

stops. And so obviously there's a limit to how bad these things can get, but we don't want them to um we don't want them to sink, right? We want them to be

evacuated and then we want to we want to sink them, right? I you know, >> as in to have an alternative first.

>> Yeah. If you think about like MySpace, right, or or Live Journal, Live Journal was this rollicking online community.

People loved it. They made really good friendships there. They formed

friendships there. They formed communities that carried on all kinds of business. And and fun fact, the man who

business. And and fun fact, the man who bankrolled uh um Live Journal, their founding CTO, his grandpa invented the TV detector van as a way to uh find German radio installations. And it was

the royalties from the patent that funded Live Journal. So Live Journal was eventually sold to um Vcont, the Russians, and uh they started censoring and cracking down on it and everyone

left, right? And they did leave like

left, right? And they did leave like MySpace or Live Journal effectively doesn't exist anymore. It's kind of a little Russian community, but it's small, unimportant, and the people who are being tormented by it have made

their escape. The problem is they

their escape. The problem is they haven't found anywhere to go where they can reform those communities. Those

communities are gone. So, you think about like why people are on Facebook.

You know, I have a a friend called Andrea Downing who started a nonprofit called The Light Collective. She's a

breast cancer prevor. So, she knows she has the gene for breast cancer. and she

and a community of breast cancer prevors made the mistake of gathering on Facebook when it was much better and found themselves trapped there. And

they're making these very consequential decisions about their health, right?

Should I have my ovaries removed? Should

I have my breasts removed? Should I have my uterus removed? Their wives, their daughters, their sisters, their mothers, their grands, they're they're dying or sick and they're supporting one another.

So, we don't want those people to like just be scattered to the four winds. And

you know, it's a testament to the fact that they love each other so much that they will stay in a place even though they hate Mark Zuckerberg, right? So

long as you love your friends more than you hate Zuckerberg, you will stay there. So we want to

there. So we want to >> so long as you can find your friends on that, >> right? Yeah. Indeed. And so this is the

>> right? Yeah. Indeed. And so this is the this is the equilibrium that Mark Zuckerberg is seeking. How much of the company of the people that you love can I deprive you of so that I can create a

void that I can fill with ads and slob um before you leave? and he's seeking the dial of near maximum misery. He

wants to be one tick off of near m of maximum misery so that you're sitting there and they're they're just trying to game that out and they're doing with algorithms they're doing it manually.

It's happening in product meetings where they're saying well how much worse can we make this in the book I talk about how in in in uh 2019 2020 Google had hit a a cap on its growth because they had

90% search market share. So how are you going to grow? you could raise a billion humans to maturity, but Google Classroom takes a while to like bear fruit. And so

they needed a way to grow. And the

solution that the kind of wicked faction at Google came up with was like, let's make Google search worse because if you have to search twice, we get to show you ads twice. And there was another faction

ads twice. And there was another faction that was like, well, I didn't miss my mother's funeral to make a product that sucks. This is a moral injury. And they

sucks. This is a moral injury. And they

were like, yeah, but we'll make more money, right? Money talks and

money, right? Money talks and walks. That's the initic policy

walks. That's the initic policy environment. So Facebook is full of

environment. So Facebook is full of people who want to do the right thing, people who want to do the wrong thing.

And the people who want to do the right thing lose the argument for so long as doing the wrong thing is more profitable. So when I say evacuate them,

profitable. So when I say evacuate them, I mean we have to find ways to keep these communities intact as we as we take them off these platforms, which is the thing that Facebook did. When

Facebook started, everyone who could have been a Facebook user was a MySpace user. And Mark Zuckerberg didn't say

user. And Mark Zuckerberg didn't say abandon your friends and come to Facebook. He said come to Facebook and

Facebook. He said come to Facebook and keep your friends. I'll give you a bot.

You give that bot your login and your password. It will go to MySpace several

password. It will go to MySpace several times a day. Grab everything waiting for you there. Stick it in your Facebook

you there. Stick it in your Facebook feed. You can reply to it there. You can

feed. You can reply to it there. You can

eat your cake and have it too. But if

you do that to Facebook today, they will use IP law to nuke you until you glow.

So we can with digital technology preserve these communities. They don't

have to be shattered.

>> Is this a So is this a tech problem and shitification or is it is it a problem that's inherent to capitalism more generally?

>> Neither. It's a policy problem, right? I

I'm not the world's biggest believer in markets. I I think there are places

markets. I I think there are places where they are good ways to allocate resources, but I think they're just a tool. Um, but nevertheless, for markets

tool. Um, but nevertheless, for markets to work, there needs to be discipline.

Um, capitalists hate capitalism more than any socialist I know. Every

capitalist wants to be a rantier. They

don't want to extract profits. They want

to extract rent. They don't want to be exposed to competition. They want to own a factor of production, have a captive customer base, have a captive workforce.

This is why in America, the non-compete agreement rules the roost. One in 18 American workers is under a non-compete, which means you can't quit your job and get another job in the same field for 3

years. And the media non-compete is

years. And the media non-compete is being signed by a fast food worker whose boss is worried that they'll make 25 cents an hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's than they are uh working the

cash register at a Wendy's. and and so you know bosses don't want competition >> but as you know in the book in California there is no non-compet >> that's right so Silicon Valley is the

great exception and the argument for non-competes is oh well how do I protect my IP if my workers can walk out the door the two most IP intensive industries in the world Hollywood and

Silicon Valley are in a state where not only are non-competes not enforceable it's actually illegal to put one in a contract uh even though you can whether or not you can enforce because it's misleading to even imply that you could

and it's a matter of the state constitution so it's universal.

>> You said this is like a policy problem basically. So I'd love to kind of jump

basically. So I'd love to kind of jump to that a bit and maybe talk about sort of what we do that about this situation.

The picture that you've painted so far is like it feels pretty bleak. I think a lot of people when they log on to the platforms that they use if they're even logging on at all you know it's depressing. They hate it. They're like I

depressing. They hate it. They're like I want to leave. I can't. Yeah.

>> So what are what are the tools available? What are the levers that are

available? What are the levers that are there that can be pulled maybe by a government we would assume to end initification?

>> Well, historically there were four things that kept firms on their toes, right? One was competition, then we let

right? One was competition, then we let them buy their competitors. Another was

regulation, but when companies dwindle to a cartel, they find it easy to capture their regulators. A third one was labor because tech workers had a lot of power. They're just scarce and

of power. They're just scarce and valuable. the median tech worker was

valuable. the median tech worker was making a million dollars a year for their boss in Silicon Valley. So, their

bosses were worried that they'd leave because a million dollars would walk out the door with them. So, if your boss ordered you to do something terrible, you could say no and make it stick. Uh,

and then the final thing was something unique to digital technology. I think

I'm I think you could safely say obsessed with something called interoperability, which is making two things work with each other. And I'm

sitting here staring at this laptop in front of us. It's not quite on the camera, but there's a USB cable plugged into it, but it's not plugged straight into it. It's plugged into a little

into it. It's plugged into a little dongle that converts it from USBA to USBC. This is an Apple laptop. The

USBC. This is an Apple laptop. The

dongle comes from a second vendor. The

cable comes from a third vendor. I bet

it came separate from the mic, which is a fourth vendor. And so, we have this ability to make things work together.

Now, that's true in other realms. You can wear anyone's shoelaces in your Nikes, right? But the difference is that

Nikes, right? But the difference is that with digital, there's no way to escape it. The only computer we know how to

it. The only computer we know how to make is something that computer scientists call the universal touring complete vonoyoman machine. An idea so cool that we put it on the 50 lb note.

And uh it is an engine that is capable of calculating every valid program, which is another way of saying if someone puts a 10-ft pile of in a program you like, someone can give you

an 11t ladder made of code that'll go straight over it. If you have a web browser that's leaking your private information to companies from America, you can install an ad blocker that'll

protect your privacy. And 51% of internet users have installed an ad blocker. It's the largest boycott in

blocker. It's the largest boycott in human history. And that's true whether

human history. And that's true whether we're talking about installing third party app stores or making it possible for independent mechanics to diagnose while your check engine light is on or even, you know, getting your um uh Tesla

now that you know like Elon Musk and don't want to pay him a subscription fee anymore. getting your Tesla jailbroken

anymore. getting your Tesla jailbroken so that all the subscription features just come for free and you give a hundred pounds to a mechanic and you never give another penny to Elon Musk.

All of that is technically possible. And

it really did keep tech bosses on their toes because if you really piss people off, you open up the world for someone to come in and offer them a not not a whole new product, but a complimentary good, right? First, you raise the price

good, right? First, you raise the price of ink. And boy, have they raised the

of ink. And boy, have they raised the price of ink. Ink is now $10,000 a gallon. It's the most expensive fluid

gallon. It's the most expensive fluid you can buy as a civilian without a special permit. It'd be cheaper to print

special permit. It'd be cheaper to print your grocery list with a seaman of a Kentucky Derby winning stallion. Right?

So, you raise the price of ink and under normal conditions, you would expect someone come in and say, " $10,000 a gallon. That's outrageous. The price of

gallon. That's outrageous. The price of making this stuff is a penny a gallon. I

will charge you $50 a gallon." And take that margin and be thankful for it. And

then maybe once I've alienated your customers affections by being a reliable vendor of ink, they'll buy their next printer for me. And so, this is how you get new market entry. So IP law over 20

years has basically extinguished this conduct. You can't do what Mark

conduct. You can't do what Mark Zuckerberg did. You can't give people a

Zuckerberg did. You can't give people a scraper for Facebook that lets them leave Facebook but still see what's being posted to it as they work in their Blue Sky app or their Masttoon app. Um

Facebook gets to uh ensure that you never do unto them as they did unto Rupert Murdoch when he was owning MySpace. And so that I think is a lever

MySpace. And so that I think is a lever that we can really yank on. So you may have seen that the European Commission has been trying to take on Apple.

>> They said you have to allow a third party app stores and third party payments because Apple makes a hundred billion dollars a year charging 30 cents on every dollar that people spend in an app. Right? So as a transaction fee,

app. Right? So as a transaction fee, this is a very high transaction fee.

Like if I'm going to back you 10 pounds to pay you back for the pint of the pub last night, that's free, right? So how

many times you have to multiply a 0% transaction fee to get 30%? Infinity,

right? It's an infinity markup that Apple has. They and the academic

Apple has. They and the academic publishers have found the infinity markup, right? So, the European

markup, right? So, the European Commission orders them to knock this off and they say, "Okay, fine.

We've got a plan. You can use third party app stores, but we will charge 35% junk fees for every pound you spent in the app store. But also, if we think your phone is out of the EU for more

than 20 days, we will delete your apps and all your data. Oh, and also, you can't put any apps in that app store that we disapprove of." So after like a year of just wasting time on this, they're like, "Okay, no, no, no. I'll

tell you what. We're just not going to sell iPhones in Europe anymore. Let's

see how you like that." And then their shareholders were like, "I don't think you're serious." And so they're like,

you're serious." And so they're like, "Okay, we got a new plan. 18 spirious

legal objections that will take 10 years to litigate." So it turns out to be very

to litigate." So it turns out to be very hard to get monopolists to do stuff, right? The reason we used to have

right? The reason we used to have muscular competition law was that once the monopoly is formed, it's really hard to make them stop doing bad things. They

become sort of not just too big to fail, but too big to jail. And then that makes them too big to care because why should they care if no one's going to punish them? So um now we have this problem,

them? So um now we have this problem, right? We can't make Apple do things.

right? We can't make Apple do things.

But the thing we can control with 100% fidelity entirely at our own discretion is what we do. So the European Commission gets to decide whether Apple can sue someone who just jailbreaks the

phone, right? Who who sells you a thing

phone, right? Who who sells you a thing in the checkout line at the big Tesco.

It's a dongle. You plug it into that USB port that's now at the bottom of your iPhone and then it just jailbreaks it and installs a third party app store.

That's a business for someone to have, right? To to support that software and

right? To to support that software and it's an export market because everywhere in the world people don't like sending 30p in the pound to California for every performer they pay on Patreon, every

crafter they buy something for on Etsy, every news magazine that they buy a subscription to inside of an app. they

don't want to give 30 cents to Apple.

And so um that's a business that's quite good and we have on the one hand therefore investors and entrepreneurs many of whom might have been chased out of Donald Trump's America quite recently. But you you need to ask

recently. But you you need to ask yourself like why do we have this law in the first place, right? Why would we even pass a law that puts our entrepreneurs in chains, deprivives us

access of uh this market and also like uh uh takes 30p out of every pound that our consumers spend, right? Just as it like a a drag on our economy. And it's

because the US said that if we didn't pass this law, which in the UK is the transposition of article six of the copyright directive, this being an EU directive that very famously we don't have to follow anymore. Um we we got it

because they said pass this law or there will be tariffs on your exports. So we

have tariffs on our exports, right?

Happy liberation day. And if that's not enough, Donald Trump just ordered Microsoft to take away the chief prosecutor, the International Criminal Court's Outlook access, because he was angry that he swore out a criminal

complaint against Benjamin Netanyahu for genocide. And now everyone who's in a

genocide. And now everyone who's in a government ministry, anyone who runs a major firm is like, will Donald Trump's trade war result in our government being shut down or our company being shut down? And it doesn't stop with

down? And it doesn't stop with administrative software. You remember

administrative software. You remember when those Russian looters stole those tanks from Ukraine and or not tanks rather uh tractors and they showed up in Cheschna and then the John Deere company

sent them a kill signal and they were immobilized forever. I mean, it's an

immobilized forever. I mean, it's an adorable story kind of as a cyberpunk writer, I love it, right? But it does mean that the John Deere company or anyone who can push them around, eg the American president, can immobilize some

or all of the the tractors in any country of their choosing. And the only way to get around that is to jailbreak the tractor and put third party firmware in it. I think farmers have been begging

in it. I think farmers have been begging for because John Deere just uses this to extract money from them for repairs. But

there's a much more urgent geopolitical question. So you combine the

question. So you combine the geopolitical question here, all those national security hawks with the people who'd like to make some money here with people like me, consumer rights advocates, privacy advocates, labor

advocates who want Uber drivers to be able to jailbreak their apps to detect when their wages are being stolen and so on. And that three-legged stool I think

on. And that three-legged stool I think is quite sturdy and I think this is our way out.

>> So I mean the idea of a kind of mass jailbreak has a bit of the means of computation. Move fast and break kings.

computation. Move fast and break kings.

kick him in the dongle.

>> So, who leads this mass jailbreak?

>> This is the beautiful thing is it can be any country because they're all in this position. Donald Trump has made it clear

position. Donald Trump has made it clear that every country in the world is not an ally nor is it a trading partner.

It's a rival and an adversary. Every

country in the world has access to technologists and investment capital. If

for no other reason, then so much of it has left America. Lots of people would like to invest in a business whose success factor isn't how many Trump coins do I buy, right? So you have uh um every country that would benefit from

this because it'll be a big export market um and they'll get the consumer surplus. Your ink won't cost as much,

surplus. Your ink won't cost as much, your apps won't cost as much and so on.

But one country gets the industrial policy. One country gets to be the

policy. One country gets to be the country that makes the toolkit that jailbreaks phones so that everyone who has an app store pays you a license fee to have that toolkit, maintain that toolkit. So, it's like being like

toolkit. So, it's like being like Finland in the era of Nokia and having like a national export market except Nokia had to endure the capital expenditure of making phones and the risk that people wouldn't buy the phones

whereas the country whose flagship firm is just jailbreaking iPhones gets to externalize all of their costs to Apple.

Yeah.

>> Right. And they just get to reap this the totally like zero capital cost service revenue that is the reason Apple itself is worth $2 trillion.

>> Do you have a prediction? I don't. But

it could be a country in the global south. I mean, Mexico signed up to the

south. I mean, Mexico signed up to the US, Mexico, Canada agreement, the su successor to NAFTA on the grounds that it would guarantee them no tariffs. Now

they have tariffs. Plus, Donald Trump has uh embarked on a pogram against Mexicans. So, I think they've got a good

Mexicans. So, I think they've got a good reason to do it, right? Could be Canada right now. Like Mark Carney, the Mr.

right now. Like Mark Carney, the Mr. Austerity, his his answer to uh he's our PM now. uh his answer to the uh Trump

PM now. uh his answer to the uh Trump tariffs is retaliatory tariffs, which is very dumb. It's like punching yourself

very dumb. It's like punching yourself in the face really hard and hoping the downstairs neighbor says, "Ouch." And if there's one thing we've learned about politics in the last like 5 years, it's that if you make prices go up, no one

will vote for you in the next election, right? So this makes prices go down. It

right? So this makes prices go down. It

doesn't make prices go up. It's national

development. So it could be Canada, Mark. It could be China. I think China's

Mark. It could be China. I think China's got a slightly different situation because I think um it'd be very difficult to convince the Europeans to buy Chinese jailbreak software. I think

they'd be more likely to say, "Hey, uh there was this other time in re recent memory that geopolitics made us do something technological we thought was impossible. Russia invaded Ukraine and

impossible. Russia invaded Ukraine and we all got off gas overnight." And it turns out that the seemingly insurmountable problem of Germans being aesthetically offended by their neighbors hanging solar panels on their

balcony just disappears like a you know butterfly and a flamethrower the minute you're shivering in the dark. Right? So

I think they are actually not irrationally worried about the fact that all those solar inverters and batteries are connected to clouds and can be um have software updates that render them

inoperable and leave you shivering in the dark again. So I think you know it's much more likely on a g geopolitically at least in the global north that you'll see people interested in in liberation

from China not a flight to China >> and until until this kind of mass jailbreak happens led by some country who knows who what can somebody in their

just general life do to kind of escape this initification in every platform they're using >> well look you know make some consumption choices if you feel it would make your life better by all means if there's

something like if you want to shop the support the shop in your street rather than you know Jeff Bezos's penis rocket factory that's fine right but uh like like don't kid yourself that it's going to make a difference right it'll

make a difference to you it's not going to change the system right so if you want to change the system get involved in systemic change uh I helped found a pressure group here in the UK called the open rights group open rightsgroup.org

And then the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group I've worked for for a quarter century. We're very active here as well, eff.org.

Other groups are available. And uh um but getting involved in a polity, it's great. Join a union, right? You know,

great. Join a union, right? You know,

even if it's not a tech workers union, the way tech workers are going to get unionized is by making recourse to their comrades and other unions as solidarity to help them with strike pay, all those

other things they're going to need to go up the long slog of erasing the uh delusion that tech workers are temporarily embarrassed founders and realizing that what they really are is just workers.

>> You think the fact that there are no unions in tech is one of the problems. >> Absolutely. Yeah. So they had a lot of

>> Absolutely. Yeah. So they had a lot of power from scarcity. But uh unless you consolidate scarcity power with solidarity, then when scarcity goes away, the power goes away too. And so it

used to be like free kombucha and like massages and a surgeon will freeze your eggs so you can work through your fertile years. But that was because they

fertile years. But that was because they were worried that if you left a million dollars would leave with you and no one they couldn't give your job to anyone else. There was no one to take the job.

else. There was no one to take the job.

Well, now they've they've had supply catch up with demand. They've put about this uh ridiculous story that you can replace programmers with chat bots and a bid to terrorize programmers into being

meek and biddable and just the power is gone. They had half a million tech

gone. They had half a million tech layoffs in the last 3 years. October was

the worst month for tech layoffs in Silicon Valley since like 2000, right? I

mean, tech workers are scared and they should be, not least because we know how those bosses treat the workers they're not afraid of, right? If you program software for Amazon, you get to show up for work with your pink mohawk, facial

piercings, a black t-shirt with things on it that your boss doesn't understand, but feels a little uncomfortable about.

But if you work in an Amazon warehouse, you're injured at three times the national rate. And if you drive for

national rate. And if you drive for Amazon, you have to pee in a bottle. And

there is nothing about writing code that says that there can't be a piss bottle next to your computer, right? And so if you are worried about what Jeff Bezos will do to you when he's not afraid of you, you should be. And the only way out

of this is to find solidarity with other kinds of workers, especially the tech workers who don't write software, the drivers, the warehouse workers, the people who make iPhones in China, but other kinds of workers, too.

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