An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification (Encore)
Cory Doctorow delivers an encore analysis on the decay of monopoly web platforms, advocating for aggressive antitrust action and adversarial interoperability.
Summary
Deconstructing Platform Degradation and Lock-In
Cory Doctorow explores the structural causes behind the decline of dominant digital platforms, detailing how monopoly consolidation harms users and business customers alike.
The Threat of Anti-Circumvention Laws
Corporate platforms leverage Section 1201 of the DMCA and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) litigation to criminalize reverse engineering, scrapers, and interoperability tools.
Restoring Digital Sovereignty via Interoperability
Mandating open APIs and legal safe harbors for adversarial interoperability allows third-party developers to build privacy-respecting wrappers around incumbent services.
A Call to Action for Hacker Self-Help
Doctorow calls upon the technical community to develop aggressive self-help tools—including tracker blockers, sideloading tools, and decentralized networks—to reclaim the open web.
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