> "What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?"
It was "free," which is impossible because software (especially usable software) is actually very expensive to create and services cost money to run. Since "free" is and always has been a lie, the market found all kinds of alternative ways to monetize. These are called "enshittification."
The concept is useful but I find his views on it oversimplified and one-sided to the point of being infantile. He avoids addressing the elephant in the room: the combination of users being price-anchored on "free" with the fact that software and services are anything but free. This dissonance guarantees a perverse market.
This article also says that you'll get exploited even if you are a paying costumer. (that's a part of enshittification as defined by Cory Doctorow, even! companies first exploit their customers, then their business costumers/ad providers)
Paying is not sufficient to guarantee non-enshittification business models, but it is necessary to make them even possible. If users are price anchored on "free" then it is impossible to found or operate a company that attempts to put users first. If software and services must be free then all tech companies must sell out their users. This in turn pushes the industry to normalize these practices, which is what has happened.
I also think this explains what I call the paradox of Apple-- they are the only big tech company left that even tries to be pro-user and respect privacy, and they are also the most closed ecosystem with taxes via the App Store on all kinds of things. Their expensive closed ecosystem allows them to operate this way.
Apple still might give into greed and become an ad company eventually, but my point is that they would have no choice but to sell out their users if it were not for the direct revenue model they have.
What Doctorow doesn't admit or address is that software is very expensive, especially software that ordinary non-geeks can actually use. Who is going to pay for it?
Most of the people on this site also don't get this because they are "computer people." If you're on HN chances are computers are not confusing to you. They are incredibly confusing and hard to use for everyone else, and making software that makes them easy to use requires orders of magnitude more effort than making software that just works for nerds.
I mean, the problem here is more that companies don't really want to be pro-user and respect privacy. You have to make it so that companies can't exploit their consumers to increase profits, because if there are no repercussions they will.
Also, I wouldn't say Apple is that pro-user. They regularly fight against right-to-repair, and Cory Doctorow even had an article about how they spy on their own users https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance (I haven't looked into this fully, though, so this might be hogwash) The 'Apple = Privacy' thing feels more like a marketing gimmick to me than a real commitment.
Basically the customer has to "outbid" the ad industry.
Example: Facebook makes about $40/user off ads and related things (at least as of a few years ago), so users would need to pay $40/month or more to have a chance at keeping Facebook away from the ad market.
Of course then the temptation is to double-dip, which is Apple's temptation. The only solution to that is either regulation or customers penalizing companies that invade privacy by voting with their wallet.
