platform capitalism

We can be certain, at least, that the near future will be characterized by weakened institutions, machine domination, and governments indifferent to human flourishing.

We learned this about plat­forms a long time ago: fol­lowing the old news­paper schematic, they aren’t the printing presses, but rather the assign­ment editors.

The more benefits a network provides, the more it enslaves its users.

Three factors keep us on a given platform: its monopolistic aptitude, its habit-forming design, and the fact that users can earn a return on their investment only on the platform they’re invested in. Much like a genie enslaved to his lamp, users cannot escape these magical apps.

The result is that increasingly capable technologies are going to be a fundamental part of 21st-century life. They mediate a growing number of our deeds, utterances and exchanges. Our access to basic social goods — credit, housing, welfare, educational opportunity, jobs — is increasingly determined by algorithms of hidden design and obscure provena... See more

Treating attention as infrastructure rather than a market to be optimized. Right now, we treat attention like a commodity. It’s something to be mined, optimized, and sold to the highest bidder. But attention is infrastructure! It’s the invisible highway that ideas, identities, and institutions travel on. We have to invest in it like we would a high... See more

Since culture now primarily exists online, attacking the social media feed as a source of information, human contact, and self-expression means going right at the jugular of civil society