Personally I think it's a bit of a both/and. Because why did we get deregulation, Walled Gardens, DMCA criminalising unauthorised modification, and union busting? Because a financial extractor class, including VCs and the people who buy shares in IPOs, thought they could hoard more wealth that way. Because they had the political power to impose this enshittigenic environment on digital tech.
If you couldn't get rents from other people's work that way, would they have bothered?
(3/3)
"When Katharina and I would greet everybody personally ... that kind of thing shouldn't scale, because it's about personal connection. You can't scale that. But now these services that we see online are so slippery, before you know it, you're in the service and ... *publishing* things."
#GeorgeOates, 2025
https://revolution.social/episodes/our-mission-is-to-keep-flickr-pictures-visible-for/
(Emphasis mine)
(1/?)