# The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. | Aaron Bastani Meets Cory Doctorow Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wE8G-d7SnY Recap page: https://rapidrecap.app/video/7wE8G-d7SnY Generated: 2025-12-07T16:30:46.659+00:00 --- ## Quick Overview The plan for the future internet, as detailed by Cory Doctorow, involves the systematic degradation of digital products and services, a process he terms "inshitification," driven by monopolies that exploit their lack of competition through tactics like stock buybacks, rigging ad markets, and predatory pricing to maximize rents over profits. **Key Points:** - The process of digital services getting worse is called "inshitification," where platforms move from good service to locking users in, then making things worse for users to benefit businesses, and finally making things worse for businesses to benefit shareholders. - Google internally decided to make search worse so users would search more often, resulting in more ads, as revealed in Department of Justice memos showing Pravagar Ragavan overriding Ben Gomes's objections to prioritize profit over product quality. - Tech workers previously held power because they were adding a million dollars a year to their employer's bottom line, but this power dissipated when they failed to consolidate it through organizing, leading to mass layoffs like Google's 12,000 cuts despite an $80 billion stock buyback. - Stock buybacks manipulate stock prices upward without improving company productivity by reducing the number of outstanding shares, effectively acting as "wash trading" that drains cash reserves needed to weather market changes. - Amazon squeezes third-party sellers by charging junk fees (now 50% to 60% of sales) and using its 'Most Favored Nation' policy to impose these increased costs economy-wide, exemplified by predatory pricing against Diapers.com. - Anti-circumvention laws prohibit users from defending their privacy by changing technology, making app usage fundamentally worse than website usage because defending privacy on an app requires illegal reverse engineering. - The decline in market competition stems from neoliberal economists convincing governments to stop enforcing anti-monopoly law 40 years ago, leading to monopolies across nearly every sector, not just tech. **Context:** This discussion is an interview between Aaron Bastani and Cory Doctorow, an activist, journalist, and author of the book "Chokepoint Capitalism" (implied context, as the book discussed is about why everything suddenly got worse). The conversation centers on the observable decline in the quality of digital services, exemplified by issues on WhatsApp, Amazon search, and X, framing this degradation not as accidental but as the deliberate utopian goal of Silicon Valley leaders like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk, analogous to frustratingly expensive and dysfunctional printers. ## Detailed Analysis Cory Doctorow argues that the internet is unequivocally getting worse due to a systemic shift where monopolistic power eliminates the natural disciplines of competition and worker leverage. He introduces the term "inshitification" to describe the lifecycle of platforms: starting good to lock in users (Stage 1, like Facebook targeting MySpace users), then worsening service for users to benefit businesses like advertisers (Stage 2), and finally worsening conditions for businesses to extract maximum value for shareholders (Stage 3), culminating in drastic pivots like Meta's metaverse push. Doctorow provides concrete evidence, citing Google memos showing executives intentionally degraded search quality for more ad impressions, and highlights how stock buybacks prioritize share price manipulation over reinvestment, weakening companies financially. Furthermore, he details how Amazon acts as a powerful monopsony, imposing 50-60% fees on sellers and using predatory pricing, as seen when they bankrupted Diapers.com to acquire them cheaply. This process is enabled by the erosion of antitrust enforcement, which historically prevented fascism and monopoly power, and reinforced by IP laws like anti-circumvention clauses that prevent users from fixing products or defending their privacy, contrasting the high discipline faced by workers (like drivers on Uber receiving algorithmically discriminatory wages based on their debt) versus the lack of discipline faced by firms due to regulatory capture and the triumph of rents over profits. ### The Inshitification Process - Stage 1 involves locking in users via collective action problems (Facebook) - Stage 2 worsens user experience to favor businesses (advertisers/publishers) - Stage 3 worsens conditions for businesses to extract shareholder value, leading to brittle equilibrium or a pivot (Metaverse). ### Corporate Profit Mechanisms - Google engineers intentionally made search worse to increase ad revenue - Stock buybacks are criticized as wash trading that drains cash reserves - Amazon uses junk fees (50-60% of sales) and Most Favored Nation policies to impose economy-wide taxes on merchants. ### Erosion of Market Discipline - Competition enforcement halted 40 years ago based on Chicago School economics claiming monopolies are efficient - Loss of worker power occurred when tech workers failed to organize despite high individual value (contributing $1 million/year). ### Legal and Technological Constraints - Anti-circumvention law makes it a crime to change technology if the manufacturer prefers you don't, preventing privacy defense on apps - Apps impose an 'infinity markup' (30% fee vs. 0% for direct payment) on transactions. ### Algorithmic Discrimination and Control - Uber uses algorithmic wage discrimination, showing identical jobs at radically different wages to manipulate drivers into accepting low pay by creating false influencer narratives (like the carnival teddy bear trick). ### Geopolitical and Systemic Shift - Technofudalism represents the triumph of rents over profits, contrasting with capitalism's historical triumph of profits over rents - The US Trade Representative historically enforced pro-US tech policies globally via tariff threats, but Trump's isolationism is creating a new rivalrous dynamic.