Cory Doctorow: “Who Broke the Internet, Part IV (permalink) “Kick ‘Em In the Dongle” is the fourth and final episode of “Understood: Who Broke the Internet?”, a podcast series I hosted and co-wrote for the CBC. It’s quite a finale! https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16148346-kick-em-in-the-dongle – The thesis of the series is the same as the thesis of enshittification: that the internet turned into a pile of shit because named people, in living memory, made policies that were broadly “enshittogenic” because they insulated businesses that tormented their end users and business customers from any consequences for their cheating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydVmzg_SJLw – Moreover, these people were warned at the time about the certain consequences of their policies, and they ignored and dismissed both expert feedback and public opinion. These people never faced consequences or any accountability for their actions, as tech criticism focused (understandably and deservedly) on the businesses that took advantage of the enshittogenic policies and enshittified, without any understanding that these firms were turning into piles of shit because of policies that reward them for doing so. Episode one of the series tells the story an enshittification poster-child: Google. We look at the paper-trail that emerged from the Department of Justice’s successful monopoly prosecution of Google, and what it reveals about the sorry state of internet search today…”