Why the Internet Is Turning to Shit | Hacker News Reader

Why the Internet Is Turning to Shit

currentaffairs.org

75 points_p2zi72 comments

> "Instead of better-regulated companies, why shouldn’t the solution be no more companies?"

This is a very weird, even quite childish, criticism.

There's an outside chance that some of the stuff Doctorow wants can be implemented. There's literally zero chance that companies in general are abolished (in favor of what, exactly?) just because a few megacorps, given perverse incentives, have become bad actors.

Besides, large firms are, effectively, the most unkillable human-derived things that exist. If you "abolish" them in one place, they'll nevertheless still exist in another, or they'll simply pick up move somewhere else, like high-net-worth individuals. "Headquarters" are often merely a formality.

> There's literally zero chance that companies in general are abolished (in favor of what, exactly?)

You have extremely overstated the author's position. He doesn't say anything about abolishing companies in general, and for the handful of companies that he suggests could be abolished, he says very clearly in favor of what.

He talks about possibly having public broadband providers instead of just (for example) Comcast, says there could possibly be "a nationalized search engine to compete with Google," and says we "could even have public alternatives to social media networks like Facebook and Twitter."

That's it. That's the sum total of the alternative he's proposing. Whatever you think of the merits or likelihood of that alternative, the idea is hardly a "childish" fantasy.

Companies provide a legal framework for co-operative ventures between people. Companies are people. They are a legal construct that serves a useful purpose in society. They are not inherently evil. People who believe they are evil have been bleating about it for over a century and had multiple opportunities and the support of revolutions and empires to find an alternative and have failed every time.

Companies exist within a society and it is up to that society to engage politically for the common good or the bad companies will bribe law makers, buy votes and evade taxes and regulations. People never want to recognize their own culpability. They hate company practices but keep purchasing from them. They hate politicians but refuse to vote for alternatives.

A really simple idea I had for the problem of perverse corporate incentives.

For each of the Fortune 500, assemble a committee of 100 random citizens. Have them spend a couple months deliberating on the conduct of that firm, before finally voting on what corporate income tax should be levied on that firm in the coming fiscal year.

The beauty of this solution is that in principle, it solves the problem of virtually any possible corporate misbehavior in a single fell swoop. No need to play whack-a-mole with mountains of laws and regulations. If a random citizen might learn about it, and decide that it isn't right, you shouldn't do it. If you do it anyways, you'll feel pain in your wallet (on expectation at least), and acquire a cost disadvantage relative to competing firms which are more virtuous. Simple.

I have no quibble with that historical perspective, and I share disappointment in our collective anthropological failings, but I take issue with the moral considerations and the false equivalence between company and corporation. Not all companies are incorporated; companies are a much broader category than simply corporations, since they include associations, trusts, institutions, partnerships and so forth.

Moreover, if corporations are people, then it is not moral to parcel them out as property. No person should be owned, whether wholly or in shares. The legal doublethink sustaining both ideas simultaneously reveals a fundamental contradiction of principles and profound lack of moral clarity.

In the most debased extrapolation of the ownership scenario, the corporation must obey even the most shameless demands of its owners, taking all the blame and liability upon itself, whilst forwarding any gains back to the owners.

Of course, this has already happened.

Consequently, in this era, corporations have become primarily a liability shield for the exploitation and concentration of wealth.

The practical alternative to communism is capitalism. But pure, unadulterated capitalism isn't what we want. Otherwise we end up with lead paint in children's toys and adulterated pet food that kills dogs.

The reason regulations exist, is because humans -- for whatever god damn reason -- are willing to throw their fellow humans under the bus for a quick profit.

What if a company could figure out how to profit from destroying the social fabric of the US, even if it wasn't a direct intention of it's original inception? Well now you're talking about all of social media in 2025.

As I see it corporations by themselves are not really bad at all. Monopoly is really bad. What is the worst is when the law and Supreme Court allows them to use unlimited amounts of money to effect the outcome of elections. Fascism that way lies.

Antitrust is worse than monopolies. If all the petroleum companies in the US decided to collude to set prices, that's really bad.

And with the current administration, it's just a bribe away from a pardon.

Corporations are not inherently evil, but there are evil companies.

If you work for an evil company, you're complicit. Even if you're working on a weird corner of open source esoterica.

Meta delenda est.

Cultures develop within companies like any other organization. As those cultures develop they tend to push the decent people out and promote more of the same. Some companies are clearly abhorrent. My argument is that its a cultural issue unrelated to the legal framework. You can find similar weirdness in any group of people. Those bad companies exist due to a lack of regulation and transparency. Unfortunately just as companies can amplify the potential of groups of people to do productive things they can shield bad people and become hostile to democracy.

If they are attacking us we need to learn to push back. I don't understand why people go from being walked on to wanting to burn stuff down. There is a really good middle ground and too many people have abandoned it.

A company might discover that the most profitable thing is to destroy the social fabric to make money. We call this "engagement". In practice, it's the most controversial opinions that generate clicks. The social media company realizes the controversial opinions generate the most clicks. Generating discord in the populace creates more click -- and therefore more profit.

If you work social media company, often you're going to make a literal shit ton of coin. Often, it's enough make you think twice before voicing opinions about the corporate gravy train.

A lot of the great things that were achieved were done by companies. Some bad things as well.

Companies (and I guess capitalism) is a great system. But it needs to have checks and balances. The problem isn't the idea of a company. The problem is companies with so much influence that the historical checks and balances do not work any more. The Internet, which was a public resource, is how those companies got to be so influential.

If we look at the Amazon example most of the issues could be solved via regulation. The company can be broken up. There can be laws that govern its behaviour (like extending consumer protection laws to cover newer situations). The problem is that where in the past law makers were less "afraid" to take on businesses now they are. Especially in the US where money talks and companies spend large amounts influencing policy makers. This is by the way not a partisan issue, it's a systemic issue.

EDIT: Maybe a precursor, or another variation, of some of this was allowing companies that had a business model of "circumventing" the law to operate (Uber, Airbnb etc.). Being a taxi without requiring a taxi fee, being a hotel without the requirements of a hotel etc. If this is our innovation then it shouldn't be a surprise when more laws are bent and worked around.

Companies are a legal fiction. They can be abolished as easily as they were created. We just lack any imagination to think of something different. That doesn't mean there isn't a better idea.

Are they not a "legal fiction" in the way that a marriage, or a state, is legal fiction? Even in the absence of legislation codifying them they will still exist in some form. People will still form long term romantic relationships for the purpose of raising kids, joint decision-making, and ensuring that the other receives your possessions in death. Groups of people who share a language, culture, and geography will still form tribes or clans or some other form of institution even if it isn't strictly Westphalian statehood.

Similarly, skilled workers will still find that their labor is more efficient when they work together. And with scale comes the need for sales, administration, and all the other components which make up a company as we know it today.

I assume by "we" lacking imagination you mean humanity as a whole, and that just isn't true - we have lots of imaginative people who have attempted lots of different ways to arrange an economy, with varying degrees of success. We've tried flavors of state-run enterprise (from "crown corporations" here in Canada all the way to full collectivization in leftist and fascism in rightist systems) plus voluntary co-ops like kibbutz or communes. Not to mention publicly traded vs privately held corporations.

Humanity has the imagination and often has had the pleasure of "experimenting" with various methods.

Companies are an acknowledgement that sometimes groups of people do things together.

Ideally, maybe. In most cases however, companies feel more like groups of people forced to work together, and often are working against each other.

You have workers laboring for the profit of owners. It’s more than just people doing things together.

That's part of the balance we (most developed/Global North societies) have fallen into.

But it isn't entirely one-sided. A laborer is not legally responsible or liable for the legal or financial decisions a company makes. Their relationship is much clearer: do X work and get Y pay, as agreed (and hopefully labor law gets involved when that agreement is breached or contested. Hopefully.)

Meanwhile a (co-)owner is more liable and subject to enforcement than an employee. That owner may (let's be honest, will) make much more profit than a laborer if a company is successful. But will also be much poorer if that company fails. The owners declare bankruptcy while the laborer still has their salary and just looks for a new job.

It's the risk-reward balance in action, codified in how we organize our businesses.

The owner has the privilege of risking capital. The worker has no choice but to work for basic necessities - because they have no capital. The worst case for an owner is that they declare bankruptcy - and are forced to join the working class to make ends meet. It’s hardly an exchange among equals.

That's a big (and almost offensive) assumption. Who is to say that the worker does not have their own alternative sources of capital, such as a farm, inheritance, creative outputs, own company, etc?

It's also an assumption that the worst case for an owner is to declare bankruptcy. Depending on the jurisdiction, they may be financially responsible for losses and debts; face civil or criminal charges for their role in the downfall; and reputational damage which prevents them from meaningful employment that someone else would get.

It's far from ideal, sure. But it also isn't as black-and-white as you assert.

It’s true at an aggregate level. Most workers don’t have capital. And owners dealing with consequences from bankruptcy is still a risk they have the privilege of taking. Jeff Bezos and the Amazon warehouse worker are not equals participating in equal exchange. Owner-worker is an intrinsically unequal relationship, with the deck stacked in favor of the owner.

I'm sick of people who cry "fire" but then follow up with "but, hey, I'm no fireman". WHAT is the alternative? What are you doing to realize it? We don't need anymore more specialists who focus on pointing out the problems.

Yeah, people who aren't firemen shouldn't be allowed to shout "fire!" they should just burn to death.

On a charitable reading I think the gist of the comment you're responding to is that we could use some more volunteer firefighters.

Read The Dawn of Everything if you want to see all the possibilities. If there is any fact about human organization it's that there have been and continues to be a huge variety of forms. You just have to be creative enough to see them.

> That doesn't mean there isn't a better idea.

I'm genuinely curious, what better idea are you referring to that would replace the concept of companies?

"it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism"

Only a child would be so unfamiliar with history as to make a claim like that.

Sure, so perhaps you can enlighten me rather than make a cryptic single-sentence post. When have companies as entities of commerce been abolished, and what did the results look like? What's more, has this ever happened in a society when every large "bad actor" company is expressly a multinational concern?

Seems to me that whatever might have happened 90-500 years ago is of no modern relevance, for good or ill, and that what the author of the article alludes to is a foolish and indeed childish criticism.

Most people don't mind enough to put in any effort to move to something less sucky.

Some do, and you get things like that one paid search engine that a few people here like to praise, or the various replacements for the big "social" sites.

I think it likely needs to get bad enough that people actually stop using them altogether or ask government to step in. we do this with social media now where the school systems here strongly discourage social media use at home, and the government is considering bans or age restrictions (the latter requiring some kind of ID upload). this is similar to smoking; it wasn't that people would necessarily ban themselves from doing it, but bowed to a desire for the government to make forceful pushes to shove people out of it.

of course, not all social media is bad, I think. maybe. -but I think it's easier to get people to make the government ban Facebook/Instagram/Reddit/whatever than have people individually switch; it's sort of inherently antisocial for a person to peel off from the main hive and switch to a smaller self-selecting platform, I might argue.

It's really more complicated than this.

There are two things there that tend to work together building each other up at the expense of individuals.

One is technology allows things to scale massively if you insert enough money.

The other is there are massive amounts of capital available for those that can spin a good enough story that said investors will get a return.

These two things together tend to lead to a few dominate sites at the expense of all the others. Especially when it comes to social sites and the network effects from them.

But it doesn't only affect social sites. In countries with strong IP laws like the US it leads to a few businesses that can raise capital to corner their markets by buying our or bullying any competitors leading to almost no competition.

Effort or actually pay for services that are good.

Rather than turning to shit, I think the internet may be getting more diverse stuff in general. More good stuff and more shit.

As an example of anti-shit I watched Veritasium "The Biggest Misconception in Physics" https://youtu.be/lcjdwSY2AzM yesterday and thought wow this is good. Much better than the physics lectures I had at Cambridge Uni.

Everything is turning to shit due to short term extraction of profit. An incredibly stupid and incompetent management class are burning companies for fuel. It's crazy. Creative working people are seeing their futures and works destroyed by insane people who seem to have no proper oversight from their shareholders. Management has become a cult run by dodgy preachers grifting their way to bigger bonuses. Where is the critical thinking?

Then there is the ridiculous non-productive speculation class looking to get rich off the misery of others, stealing their wealth whether it be AI, crypto, gambling, financial scams, investment scams. Its all dodgy as hell and shame on everyone who knows better for pumping that rubbish and defending it (sure to be a controversial take with the get-rich-quick techbro crowd)

He claims Google, Facebook, Amazon used to be great but are now shit. What's stopping anyone from recreating what Google, Facebook, and Amazon used to be? If the 2010 equivalent versions of those companies were online, wouldn't you switch to them?

First, network effects. Amazon was able to grow because there wasn't already an Amazon that they'd have to pry users (and sellers) away from. No replacement will have that luxury. Even harder to wean people off Google search, let alone Chrome, let alone Android. In social media, many people are unwilling to leave all their friends (and family) behind to go somewhere and be a stranger again.

Second, funding models. Because of that network effect, nobody will dump the ungodly amounts of cash on an Amazon or Google or Facebook replacement that they dumped on the originals. They can't grow, so they can't compete, so they can't grow, etc.

Third: regulatory capture. Meta is the clearest example of this, secretly funding PACs and lobbyists to get regulation that they are well able to comply with but no smaller competitor possibly could. It's an effective moat.

"If it was done once it can be done again" is just wishful thinking. It's not generally true, and especially not in internet-facing tech. The soil is already depleted, or even poisoned. Reining in the incumbents is a prerequisite to any alternatives getting on their feet.

Half of the time it’s because the companies “good” era was when it was running at a massive loss. And the other half of the time it’s because the whole online environment changed.

Google didn’t deliberately sabotage search results. The internet just became full of more slop than valuable content.

Facebook might have ruined their product, but people wouldn’t want to use the original site anymore either.

Google “deliberately” sabotaged search results.

1. They heavily prioritized commercial sites, especially e-commerce sites, for monetary reasons. 2. They deprioritized everything but yhr first page of results. Clicking the “next page” buttons on Google is almost completely irrelevant. This further stymied the growth of the non commercial internet. 3. They let blogger go stale after purchasing it. Again, this damaged the growth of the independent Internet which hurt search, since information was now siloed in non open private platforms 4. They killed Google Reader which was the final nail in the blogging coffin. 5. They spent vast amounts of energy pushing AMP which meant Google was now prioritizing a standardized version of news sites, essentially, instead of encouraging freedom to experiment and express. This further stymied the open internet.

IOW, Google, after establishing itself as the gateway to the open, independent internet, through its excellent search, took many steps that destroyed the open and independent internet, which in turn made its search worthless

Google didn't have to "deliberately sabotage search results" for them to be meaningfully culpable in that happening.

They are unquestionably the dominant player in the search market. They are the ones that all the SEO is aimed at gaming. They could have made it a top priority to ensure that search results were useful to the average person. Instead, they made it a top priority to ensure that search results were maximally profitable for them. This is what enabled the rise of SEO slop polluting search results.

And yes, I can absolutely blame them for that: the idea of "maximizing shareholder profit" as a primary goal of companies is a cancer on our society and needs to be destroyed utterly.

I find kind of funny that the article mentions the AI book ripoffs being sold on Amazon when they share so much about the book contents that now I don’t feel like I need to read it at all.

Greed ... Shareholder value became more important than anything else, and this is nothing wait until AI and robotics deliver on what they're promising.

The introduction of monetization and smartphones turned the internet to shit.

Doctorow's writings are good, and this book summary is excellent.

One of his recommendations is unlikely to go far: tech worker unions. Most comments on HN underscore the extent to which techies have bought into capitalist propaganda, which we slavishly repeat. We dream of becoming the next multimillionaire, but it's far more likely we'll get laid off at some point(s) in our career by the enshittification machine. A worker's union isn't communism, it represents the workers who build the systems. Germany, a social democracy, provides for a worker's representative on company boards. This isn't communism!

BTW, it's the reviewer who suggested abolishing companies, not Doctorow. Now that is communism. What we do need is some regulation of companies that have become information utilities. Same as regulations for the water company or the power company.

The thing with unions is that it’s very easy they end up turned into some sort of extortion mafia and end up making output shit and the work quality mediocre. In many cases they end up run by a tight circle that never worked in the field they represent.

Then they need to be expanded, so that their membership is broad enough and cares enough to vote out the people who are running them poorly.

Getting laid off in our careers is indeed likely, but part of the deal is that it’s not mutually exclusive to becoming a multimillionaire. We work cushy jobs for high pay, with the possibility of absurd payouts, accepting that the deal we get from the industry is good enough to not rock the boat too hard by unionizing. There has been enough excess value to go around.

I think it’s not a coincidence that most of the unionization pushes i hear about are in the Games industry: it’s superficially similar to the software industry but workers are treated much worse for much smaller payouts. If software industry keeps heading in that direction, maybe unions are coming. But the idea of unionizing up until now has been mostly laughable, and proponents haven’t made themselves look informed or relatable by pushing it.

I see everything turning to shit. It's the collapse of society. We've seen that no one is out there protecting us and "fighting the good fight".

We had a good run.

Society has always been collapsing, at least since the younger generation first started making written notes and letting their brains rot instead of keeping their memory exercised.

You're right fellow snarky silly redditor this is just business as usual and the young and the old people freaking out! The polycrisis of climate, collapse of a hegemon and brain of the west, billions starving from climate collapse and the effect that will have on the psyche of our species are just silly little problems that wont fuck us forever. We're going to be living in a hell of sorts for like over a century. It really is those dang people overreacting isn't it?

Civilization does not collapse from the edges, but rot from the center — in our case when middle management silences vision, and shareholders trade legacy for dividends.

Shareholders aren't the center of civilization. Pretty much everyone is a shareholder now, at least indirectly through some sort of retirement plan or pension fund. We all benefit when profitable companies return some of that profit to shareholders in the form of dividends or share buybacks.

For all of its flaws, the EU does attempt to protect consumers. Lina Khan had a good run while she was around.

What about the Antichrist guy that allegedly took down 4chan because they came after him/her?

Less scatalogically, everything has a lifecycle.

So true.

Quite a bit before Doctorow started emphasizing his feelings about a particular type of stink, I was having a bit of hindsight that we had already entered the Garbaceous Period which seemed like it could have the potential to permeate in a lot more different ways if something isn't done.

> "fighting the good fight"

Well certainly currentaffairs isn't unless the good fight is platforming genocide deniers like Noam Chomsky. Or complaining that the US is undermining Russia's power too much. Or advocating for Ukraine to give up land to Russia to end the war.

Thinking that there is such a thing as an infallible hero or idol is a fool's belief. Noam Chomsky can be right in some parts, and wrong in some other parts. Everybody is, that's kind of the point of our species.

He's not a fallible hero. Has he ever been anything more than a propagandist?

He did some work on grammar long ago. Then he held back research in cognitive science for decades promoting nativism.

And he's spent most of his time embracing Kremlin talking points both during the cold war and post cold war. Some of that work includes denials of genocide that he has still not apologized for.

I disagree I think China is doing a fine job of working on a future of the country they can be proud of. And their expansionist efforts all over but especially Africa are something that I hope yield great and positive outcomes.

The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

I think a better way of putting it is the collapse of western style free and democratic societies. This is the post-truth era where reality doesn't matter and you can consume any version of "reality" you feel like on Internet.

China is not impacted because it has a tight grip on what its citizens can consume. Society will not collapse all over the world it will just become an authoritarian dystopia.

I think that’s another way of saying social cohesion is critical, and China has very strong cohesion whilst in Western countries it’s falling apart. We can’t stop dividing ourselves and fighting and I think social media is a major driver of that.

Perhaps, but it's entirely possible that China will collapse in another violent revolution within our lifetimes. It has happened several times before and will probably happen again. China has serious structural problems with food and energy security, and in a crisis the central government may find it difficult to maintain the loyalty of internal security forces.

As the old Chinese saying goes, "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away."

*Turned to Shit

in my niche (korean entertainment) i now have to compete with 200 indian slop scammers when before it was 10 malaysian scammers, then everyone else was mixed race.

really sad what google has done.

you can see it really obvious on some of these korean queries for singers, eg, google "taehyung" and look at the news tab and give it a count.

it's not.

but peoples' "navigation" or "traversal" skills are.

it's the fault of the upper classes, starting at journalists and psychologists, if you care for some help with your research. they've been sucking for a while; at their jobs, understanding their true desires, fulfilling them, obviously, too, and they've been really really really (don't use this word as a scalar) bad in general, at developing their ability to get closer to what they want, and what they want to get on the way. they all submitted to shit.

and because journalism submitted to shit, it was very very very very ( don't use this word as a scalar) easy for ads people and ads divisions to trash peoples' "traversal" or navigation skills via ... well, shit.

> But it was a necessary investment, because when I Google synonyms for a word, I can no longer trust that the results I get will be accurate or useful

Why would you use Google as a thesaurus in the first place? Why not go directly to the Cambridge or Merriam-Webster thesaurus (the article even links to Merriam-Webster):

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/thesaurus/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/

The internet may well be turning to shit but people also need to take responsibility for their own abdication of thinking.

Because Google provides (or used to provide) a fast consistent interface for a lot of basic queries. Sure, if I'm researching etymology in depth then I'll go to a specialist site, but 90%+ of the time I'm just double checking the definition of a word or something like that.

In general, internet browsing is biased towards sites that you're familiar with and can be reasonably sure aren't going to do something annoying (it used to be popup adverts and auto playing music, now days it's popups about newsletters / memberships or aggressive notifications about cookies / privacy notices.). This is particularly true if you ever spent time browsing in an open plan office or similar public place. There's also a cognitive load of interacting with a new interface which isn't something you want to deal with if you're midflow and want to check a word.

This is not to say that those sites you mentioned are guilty of bad practices, but the point is I'm not a regular enough user of them to have them on my mental "generally trust" list.

This is precisely the abdication of thinking I'm talking about.

Your claim that merely using a different website is an unacceptable cognitive load is truly bizarre to me. It is a form of illiteracy.

> abdication of thinking

I want <X>. How do I expend the least amount of effort to get a good-enough <X>?

How much intelligence have you gained from accessing the same information in a slightly more convoluted way?

In my experience, all thesauri suck, either having far too few quasi-synonyms (and thesauri that divide them into closeness tiers aren't very useful in practice), or having far too many quasi-synonyms without distinguishing senses or parts of speech (sometimes, but only sometimes, intersection search works to avoid this), or both.

As for antonyms, good luck finding anything at all.

So, using additional tools, even if not designed for the task, is often useful.

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