“IP is a euphemism for any law that lets an exective reach outside the wall of their business and exert control over customers, critics, and competitors; and an app is just a webpage skinned with the right kind of IP to make it a felony to put an adblocker in it.”
“So it follows that if we want end the enshittiscene, if we want to dismantle the enshitternet, if we want to build a new good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that those constraints are durably installed on our new internet, wound around its roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over those forces so that they can’t be dismantled again.”
“For years your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders-in-waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs momentarily drawing a salary, not workers. Your power came from intrinsic virtue not like those lazy slobs in their unions. Now that was a trick and you got scammed. The power you had came from scarcity so when scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing in six-figure layoffs your power went away. The only durable source of power for Tech workers is as workers. In unions.”
“As Tech bosses beef up this Reserve Army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, those tech workers – you folks – will arrive at the same future as [warehouse workers]. Look, I know you spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to entify your company’s products and I thank you for your service, but if you want to go on fighting for the user you need power that’s better than scarcity. You need a union.”
Oh boy is this some good syndicalism. Oh boy is this good solidarity. This is the point that I think is missing in the labor movement today – solidarity, not just between similar labor organizations, but between unions and a better world. Unions should be fighting the climate crisis, and covid, and spyware, and all of the things that make the world as hard to live in as it is. That is our ultimate goal – a better society for all, not just better working conditions for the in-group.