The digital public square is a trap, and the newsstand is full of slogans.
On The Ezra Klein Show, Cory Doctorow diagnosed the internet's rot as a feature, not a bug. He argues the shift from user empowerment to corporate extraction was deliberate. Platforms first attract users, then abuse them for business customers, and finally squeeze everyone for shareholders. The feeling that things are broken and unfixable is the point of this enshittification cycle.
This sense of a degraded environment extends to media itself. The No Agenda Show deconstructs war coverage, highlighting the mindless repetition of political justifications like 'short-term pain for long-term gain.' Their analysis suggests media often functions as a megaphone for unexamined narratives, from decades-old Trump quotes to misidentified locations, rather than a tool for clarity.
These aren't separate problems. A media landscape reliant on cliché thrives on platforms optimized for engagement over understanding. Both systems discourage the belief that improvement is possible.
Resisting this requires rejecting the idea that it's inevitable. For the internet, that means breaking platform monopolies. For media, it means deconstructing the narratives. The alternative is accepting a world where our primary channels for information and connection are designed to let us down.
Cory Doctorow, The Ezra Klein Show:
- 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.
