The internet is broken by design. Its degradation is not a bug or a nostalgic illusion, but the predictable outcome of centralized platform economics.
On The Ezra Klein Show, Tim Wu and Cory Doctorow diagnose the structural rot. Wu frames it as extraction, where monopolistic platforms capture wealth far beyond the value they create. Doctorow labels the user-facing experience "enshittification," a systematic process where platforms first deliver value to users, then divert it to business customers, and finally siphon it for shareholders.
This shift is logical for a captured market. Platforms treat locked-in users as assets to be monetized, not communities to be served.
The resulting fatalism is a key symptom. Early web problems felt solvable by the community. Today's issues feel baked-in and immutable, a direct consequence of corporate control.
Resistance starts with rejecting technological determinism. The fight is to restore competition and user agency, breaking the cycle where dominance inevitably leads to abuse. It is about building alternatives to the distorted mirror monopolies have built.
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.
