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Cory Doctorow on "The Internet Con" : Bullseye with Jesse Thorn Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (now X) aren't what they used to be. Some of those social media platforms have changed beyond recognition, many others have just become harder to use. In 2022, Cory Doctorow put a word to it: ens**tification. Cory joins us to talk about his book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, and what we can do when platforms change. Plus, how the internet can become a better, more rewarding place.

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Cory Doctorow on "The Internet Con"

Cory Doctorow on "The Internet Con"

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Content warning: This episode contains unbleeped obscenities.

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (now X) aren't what they used to be. If you used just about any social media platform for any extended amount of time, you can probably attest to this. The platform isn't as fun or as easy to use as it once was. Maybe it's changed so drastically, it's barely recognizable.

In 2022, writer Cory Doctorow put a word to it: "ens**tification." He defined the demise of platforms pretty succinctly in that blog post for Wired:

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves."

Doctorow tapped into something. The word caught on fast, gettting used more and more. It was eventually named the 2023 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

Cory doesn't frame the process as inevitable or irreversible, though. In fact, he wrote a whole book filled with solution to make the internet a better, more rewarding place. Cory joins us to talk about The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, and what we can do when platforms change.