Subnostr

Or think of #BigTech, locking up whole swathes of your life inside their silos, so that changing mobile OSes means abandoning your iMessage contacts; or changing social media platforms means abandoning your friends, or blocking Google surveillance means losing your email address, or breaking up with Amazon means losing all your ebooks and audiobooks:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Cory Doctorow 2y ago

Businesspeople understand the risks of competition, which is why they seek to extinguish it. The harder it is for your customers to leave - because of a lack of competitors or because of lock-in - the worse you can treat them without risking their departure. This is the core of #enshittification: a company that is neither disciplined by competition nor regulation can abuse its customers and suppliers over long timescales without losing either:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

It's not that public institutions can't betray they public interest. It's just that public institutions can be made *democratically* accountable, rather than *financially* accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by "voting with your wallet." In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your *ballot*.