The internet didn't just connect us. It exposed everything.
On TFTC, the argument is that the core power of institutions was always information control. The church defined God's will, the state managed money, and the media curated facts. The internet demolished that monopoly, creating a transparency crisis for old powers. As Fernando Nikolic put it, their crumbling is not just economic but informational, a direct result of everyone having access to free flowing truth.
This collapse of centralized narrative happens to coincide with a feeling that the digital tools of this new era are themselves breaking. According to Tim Wu and Cory Doctorow on The Ezra Klein Show, that's not nostalgia. It's the result of a deliberate economic process called 'enshittification,' where platforms systematically degrade user experience to extract value for business customers and shareholders.
The two phenomena are linked. The same network that exposes the flaws of legacy systems now subjects us to new, designed-in flaws within the platforms we use to navigate that exposure. We see the rot of old institutions more clearly than ever, while the mirrors we use to see it are themselves distorted by corporate incentives.
The early web's promise was user agency. The current reality is a double bind of systemic exposure and platform capture. Fixing it means rejecting the idea that this is technology's inevitable path, and rebuilding systems where transparency doesn't automatically lead to extraction.
Cory Doctorow, The Ezra Klein Show:
- I think when I was a lurker on the early internet and I saw things that sucked, I would think someone's going to fix this and maybe it could be me.
- And now when I see bad things on the internet, I'm like, this is by design and it cannot be fixed because you would be violating the rules if you even tried.
