Do you work with machines, or for machines? Cory Doctorow, who coined the term “enshittification,” has a new book that asks exactly that. In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late, he challenges the belief that AI is inevitable, explains why tech boosters are pushing this message, and how it leads to companies that are “too big to fail… too big to jail… too big to care.”
Cory Doctorow and Oz discuss the economics of a bubble, algorithmic wage discrimination, and what you can do to help save your industry from disruption.
Additional Reading:
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late | Verso Books
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week and next, we’re bringing you recordings from our second-ever live taping in San Francisco. First, we sit down with Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, to hear what he’s maxing out his A.I. tokens on, why he’s skeptical that software developers will ever be fully replaced, and how he’s hoping to create a new business model for Xbox. Then, Phil Mohun tells us what it has been like to watch people in the Bay Area interact with two robot dogs that wear the faces of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And finally, we talk with the longtime privacy defender Cindy Cohn about where things stand in the fight to protect internet users from digital surveillance by Big Tech and the government.
Guests:
Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive of Microsoft.
Phil Mohun, executive director of Node.
Cindy Cohn, former executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.”
Additional Reading:
Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella Says, ‘Everyone Is a Stakeholder’ in A.I.
Node presents “Beeple: /Infinite_Loop”
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Four months after Australia’s landmark law that banned all minors under the age of 16 from creating or owning social media accounts, the California legislature is trying to follow suit.
But free speech advocates worry that these laws will infringe on the First Amendment rights of many kids and even adults. However, Aaron Mackey, the free speech and transparency litigation director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, says there is growing sentiment to regulate and protect children from the harms of social media.
“Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Mackey about how we can still protect kids and consumers without restricting free speech.
Enshittification. It's fun to say, hard to spell, and a useful descriptor of exactly how the internet has gone wrong. Cory Doctorow, the author and activist who coined the term a few years ago, recently published a book on the subject, called Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. He was on Decoder a few weeks ago to explain what happened, and joins The Vergecast this week to help us figure out what to do about it. Can we, as regular people on the internet, help to de-enshittify the place? What responsibility do we have, and what kinds of choices should we be making? Cory has lots of thoughts on whether you can shop your way out of a monopoly, and what it really takes to enact structural change online.
Further reading:
Cory Doctorow on Decoder
Read Cory's book, Enshittification
Cory's last Vergecast appearance
From Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon
AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born
FTC files a massive antitrust lawsuit against Amazon
Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11.
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This is Sarah Jeong, features editor at The Verge. I’m standing in for Nilay for one final Thursday episode here as he settles back into full-time hosting duties. Today, we’ve got a fun one. I’m talking to Cory Doctorow, prolific author, internet activist, and arguably one of the fiercest tech critics writing today.
He has a new book out called Enshittifcation: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. So I sat down with Cory to discuss what enshittification is, why it’s happening, and how we might fight it.
Links:
Enshittification | Macmillan
Why every website you used to love is getting worse | Vox
The age of Enshittification | The New Yorker
Yes, everything online sucks now — but it doesn’t have to | Ars Technica
The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals vast, deadly rot | Cory Doctorow
Mark Zuckerberg emails outline plan to neutralize competitors | The Verge
Google gets to keep Chrome, judge rules in antitrust case | The Verge
How Amazon wins: by steamrolling rivals and partners | WSJ
A new web DRM standard has security researchers worried | The Verge
Netflix, Microsoft & Google just changed how the web works | The Outline
Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today on the show, it’s all about the future of phones… and your data. The Verge’s Allison Johnson joins the show to talk about the new Samsung Galaxy S25, what’s new in this high-end phone, and what it means for all the other smartphones coming this year. After that, Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, talks us through how to think about the privacy implications of RedNote, TikTok, DeepSeek, and all the other tech that puts us in contact with China. Finally, we enlist The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy to help us answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline all about the Meta Portal. Remember the Meta Portal?? If you’re missing yours, we have some ideas.
Further reading:
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra isn’t so ‘ultra’ anymore
Samsung Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus hands-on: more of the same
Samsung Galaxy S25 vs. S25 Plus vs. S25 Ultra: specs comparison
Trump signs order refusing to enforce TikTok ban for 75 days
TikTok’s service providers still risk billions in penalties for bringing it back online
TikTok is still on shaky ground in the US
Chinese social media app RedNote tops App Store chart ahead of TikTok ban
As Americans flock to RedNote, privacy advocates warn about surveillance
Will RedNote get banned in the US?
RedNote: what it’s like using the Chinese app TikTokers are flocking to
Why everyone is freaking out about DeepSeek
DeepSeek’s top-ranked AI app is restricting sign-ups due to ‘malicious attacks’
US Navy jumps the DeepSeek ship.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Facebook’s new Portal Go is great for video calls, but not much else
Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.
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This week we’re talking with Cory Doctorow (this episode contains explicit language) about how we can get back to that “new good internet.” Cory’s new book The Internet Con offers a lens to this conversation about disenshittifying the internet through anti-trust laws, limits on corporate tweaking, regulating unconstrained capitalism, and all the ways enshittification is enabled. Cory also shares his experience recording his own audio book under the direction of Gabrielle de Cuir at Skyboat Media, and what’s to come from his next Science Fiction book The Lost Cause.
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Cory Doctorow – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
The Internet Con
libro.fm
The Lost Cause
Cory’s talk at DEF CON 31
Changelog Interviews #535: Examining capitalism’s chokepoints
Skyboat Media
The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida M. Tarbell
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
This week we’re talking with Cory Doctorow (this episode contains explicit language) about his newest book Chokepoint Capitalism, which he co-autored with Rebecca Giblin. Chokepoint Capitalism is about how big tech and big content have captured creative labor markets and the ways we can win them back. We talk about chokepoints creating chickenized reverse-centaurs, paying for your robot boss (think Uber, Doordash, Amazon Drivers), the chickenization that’s climbing the priviledge gradient from the most blue collar workers to the middle-class. There are chokepoints in open source, AI generative art, interoperability, music, film, and media. To quote Cory, “We’re all fighting the same fight.”
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Cory Doctorow – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Buy Cory’s books
Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk
TikTok’s Enshittification
Rural towns and poor urban neighborhoods are being devoured by dollar stores
What is Chokepoint Capitalism?
Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs
Cory on Twitter explaining “chickenization “
Red Team Blues: Another audiobook that Amazon won’t sell
The Memex Method
Changelog Interviews #221: How we got here with Cory Doctorow
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Biden will get a new Chief of Staff, the U.S. Attorney has questions for Amazon, and Elon takes the stand. Over at Netflix: strong subscriber growth, and Reed Hastings is out as Co-CEO. And of course, more layoffs. Then we’re joined by Friend of Pivot Cory Doctorow on his new book, “Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back.”
Cory is on Twitter at @doctorow and you can find his book here.
Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot.
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Last year I spoke with Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin about their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism. It’s a book about artists and technology and platforms, and how different kinds of distribution and creations tools create chokepoints for different companies to capture value that might otherwise go to artists and creators.. In other words, it’s a lot of Decoder stuff.
As we were prepping this episode, the Decoder team realized it previews a lot of things we’re going to talk about in 2023: antitrust law. Ticketmaster. Spotify and the future of the music industry. Amazon and the book industry. And, of course, being a creator trying to make a living on all these platforms.
This episode is longer than normal, but it was a really great conversation and I'm glad we are sharing it with you.
Links:
What is Mixer, Ninja’s new exclusive streaming home?
Ninja returns to Twitch
This was Sony Music's contract with Spotify
Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23311918
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
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What’s keeping author, journalist, and activist, Cory Doctorow, from publishing his books on Audible? Plus with both houses of Congress passing the CHIPs Act and an expected approval from President Biden will the US see a renaissance in domestic chip production? And can battery swapping in EVs be a realistic alternative to long recharging times?
Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Cory Doctorow, Roger Chang, Joe.
Link to the Show Notes.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Cindy Cohn is the executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. If you’re an internet user of a certain age like me, you know the EFF as the premiere civil liberties group for the internet. The EFF has fought pitched battles against things like government surveillance, digital rights management for music and movies, and government speech regulations that would violate the First Amendment. These fights were important, and shaped the internet as we know it today.
Links
Electronic Frontier Foundation
How to fix the Internet: Podcast by the EFF
How the EU is fighting tech giants with Margrethe Vestager
Apple pushes back on iPhone order, says FBI is seeking ‘dangerous power'
Here’s why Apple’s new child safety features are so controversial
Viacom vs YouTube
Texas passes law that bans kicking people off social media based on ‘viewpoint’
Santa Clara Principles
Carterfone
Decoder interview with YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Facebook v. Power Ventures
Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22805290
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
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Kara, Scott and a handful of Friends of Pivot make some predictions about what 2022 has in store for the Metaverse, China, Apple and more.
In this episode, we hear predictions from Co-Anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box Andrew Ross Sorkin, LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield, Senator Amy Klobuchar, author Cory Doctorow, WSJ Senior Personal Technology Columnist Joanna Stern, NBC News Senior Business correspondent Stephanie Ruhle, NYU Professor Aswath Damodaran, author Sheera Frenkel, and actor George Hahn.
Send us your Listener Mail questions through our site, nymag.com/pivot and use Yappa to leave a video or audio message.
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"Full access to a person's phone is the next best thing to full access to a person's mind," says cybersecurity expert Eva Galperin. In an urgent talk, she describes the emerging danger of stalkerware -- software designed to spy on someone by gaining access to their devices without their knowledge -- and calls on antivirus companies to recognize these programs as malicious in order to discourage abusers and protect victims.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this special Politics Politics Politics! snippet, Justin talks to Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn about ways our digital civil liberties could be affected during the Covid19 crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A journalist wrote articles critical of the Kazakhstan government. The government did not like this and attempted to silence her. But they may have done more than just silence her. Perhaps they tried to spy on her too. The EFF investigated this case and went down a very interesting rabbit hole.
Thanks to Cooper Q from EFF's new Threat Lab. Also big thanks to Eva from EFF, Andrew Blaich and Michael Flossman from Lookout.
For another story about the EFF listen to episode 12 "Crypto Wars".
This episode was sponsored by CMD. Securing Linux systems is hard, let CMD help you with that. Visit https://cmd.com/dark to get a free demo.
Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Claire Boyle, the managing editor of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about a special nonfiction issue the two organizations teamed up to produce, "The End of Trust."
In this episode: Why the EFF and McSweeney's decided to work together; have consumers given up on having privacy?; why "Facebook doesn't really have users or customers, they have hostages"; the current copyright battles in Europe; why the ability of AI to play chess says little about the usefulness of AI in general; surveillance that doesn't seem malevolent and the privilege of "I have nothing to hide"; China's "bonkers" social scoring system; the history of the internet and how things got screwed up; how to unscrew it; will Congress make a move on tech when the shutdown ends?; the importance of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
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Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, Senior Staff Technologist at the EFF and the lead developer of Let’s Encrypt, joined the show to talk about the history of SSL, the start of Let’s Encrypt, why it’s important to encrypt the web and what happens if we don’t, Certbot, and the impact Let’s Encrypt has had on securing the web.
Join the discussion
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Featuring:
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews – Website, GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews on EFF.org
Search Changelog.com for “http/2” and “http2”
The Changelog #161: The HTTP/2 Spec with Ilya Grigorik
Boulder: An ACME-based CA (written in Go)
Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME)
Certbot (previously the Let’s Encrypt Client) - EFF’s tool to obtain certs from Let’s Encrypt, and (optionally) auto-enable HTTPS on your server. It can also act as a client for any other CA that uses the ACME protocol.
Certbot’s Interactive Guide is rad
The Crypto Wars: Governments Working to Undermine Encryption
Root certificate trust store
Online Certificate Status Protocol
Jacob talked about using .wellknown in the root of projects
Go Time #14: CaddyServer, the ACME Protocol, and TLS with Matt Holt
[Wired] Google’s Chrome Hackers Are About to Upend Your Idea of Web Security
Let’s Encrypt Stats
Donate to Let’s Encrypt and/or Sponsor Let’s Encrypt
Wanna pitch in? Check for “help wanted” tags on their repos…
What It Costs to Run Let’s Encrypt
BONUS - From Jacob Hoffman-Andrews ~> How Not To Get Phished
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Cory is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of many books. We talked to Cory about open source, the open web, internet freedom, his involvement with the EFF, where he began his career, the details he’ll be covering in his keynote at OSCON, and his thoughts on open source today and where developers should be focusing their efforts.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
Code School – Learn to program by doing with hands-on courses. There’s a path for everyone at Code School. It’s the best place to start learning new technologies.
Toptal – Scale your team and hire the top 3% of developers and designers at Toptal. Email Adam at adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction to Toptal.
Linode – Our cloud server of choice! We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code changelog20 to get 2 months free!
Featuring:
Cory Doctorow – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
This episode was produced in partnership with O’Reilly Media and OSCON. Use the code changelog20 to get 20% off your registration.
Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com (Cory’s Literary Works)
Boing Boing
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on GitHub
How you got here: Cory Doctorow’s OSCON London Keynote
Ulysses Pact on Wikipedia
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
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