We built the Internet to remove gatekeepers and accidentally created bigger ones.
The first generation of the Internet expanded participation and empowered new voices. The second concentrated attention, influence, and control into a handful of platforms and chokepoints. The third is still being built.
As AI, digital identity, cloud platforms, and new forms of online interaction reshape the technology landscape, the Internet industry faces a familiar question: are we creating new opportunities, or new chokepoints?
Drawing on his recent work exploring enshittification, despotification, and Internet architecture, Mike Masnick examines how power accumulates online, why centralized systems repeatedly drift toward control and extraction, and what builders can do differently as they help shape the next generation of the Internet.
The future may depend less on the technologies we build than on the incentives and architectures we choose to build them around.
Join Mike Masnick, CEO at @CopiaInstitute / @techdirt for this awesome session at #NamesCon and #CloudFestAmericas
Sign up today: namescon.com/tickets/
- We built the Internet to remove gatekeepers and accidentally created bigger ones. The first generation of the Internet expanded participation and empowered new voices. The second concentrated attention, influence, and control into a handful of platforms and chokepoints. The third is still being built. As AI, digital identity, cloud platforms, and new forms of online interaction reshape the technology landscape, the Internet industry faces a familiar question: are we creating new opportunities, or new chokepoints? Drawing on his recent work exploring enshittification, despotification, and Internet architecture, Mike Masnick examines how power accumulates online, why centralized systems repeatedly drift toward control and extraction, and what builders can do differently as they help shape the next generation of the Internet. The future may depend less on the technologies we build than on the incentives and architectures we choose to build them around. Join Mike Masnick, CEO at @CopiaInstitute / @techdirt for this awesome session at #NamesCon and #CloudFestAmericas Sign up today: namescon.com/tickets/
See you there.
