Underlying the Internet and the city square is the same deceptively simple but actually brilliant idea, which is to be as neutral as possible between uses.

the platforms today, whatever they may say, are really in the business of herding a rather mercurial and moody form of livestock (us).

Hoffman and Yeh argued that the fundamental reason to invest in massive scale at money-losing speeds was to reduce “the risk of competition.” As they put it, “Your goal is not to beat the competition. Your goal is to break free of competition entirely.” The best means to do that was to “achieve a critical mass that confers a lasting competitive

“platformization.” By that I mean the creation, within an existing industry, of a platform that made a new class of businesses and products possible. The computing industry became platformized, and all those new companies were writing “to the platform.” That created, in effect, an industry where none existed before.

More effective advertising also relates to understanding not only individual behavior but also aggregate behavior. What you do—what you look at, what you click on, and what you buy—helps build a model of people like you.

rewards or punishments that follow a “variable reward schedule,” or an unpredictable pattern.

But from the beginning, the Internet’s design distributed power and resources to those at the “ends” of the network, that is, those on the network, as opposed to the owner of the network itself. It was, in its way, a modest design that relied on the passive virtues of connection and empowering others.

As the tech platforms have grown and evolved over the last decade, they have focused their attention on refining their methods of extraction. In return for an undeniable and unescapable utility, they are fine-tuned to take as much as possible—data, attention, profit margins—from everyone else.

Technology has never been neutral, but rather reflects ideology and what it is designed to do.