Thread · 9 tweets · 17 May 2023

LOL, we're already there — this is just the next step in a well-established trend. Remember those "Optimized for Internet Explorer" buttons? We no longer see those, but the whole web has become optimised by and for Google, and this is the predictable result: a wasteland.

One of the several threads that lead is the belief that advertising is the only business model that can make content and services widely available, explicitly to the poor and further to the global poor. There's a reason MFA (Made For Advertising) is a junk site classification.

The web is awash in MFA sites, that range from garbage content farms to rabid misinfo. Why? Because it's profitable. What makes them profitable? Third-party cookies. Whenever something is presented as done "to help the publishers" the question to ask is "which publishers?"

It's hard to convey just how deep this conviction runs. I've had Googlers very angrily yell at me that cutting cookies is irresponsible because it's keeping people in the global south from web content. Like a rich white dude is Mother Theresa for keeping third-party cookies on.

This is interesting because we've been here before! People used to believe that "essentials" like food and shelter were more important in international development than "niceties" like democracy & self-determination. The results of this ranged from underwhelming to destructive.

It turns out that people do better when they can make autonomous decisions than when you just throw free stuff at them. Who knew? Interestingly, having a small engineering priesthood capture everything to make it "free" and distribute abundance isn't a new idea either!

In the early 20th century, the technocrat movement held very much the same ideology that we have now seen implemented.

It's not over and there's still hope though! The web is the set of networked technologies that work to increase human agency. We've figured ways out of technocratic hegemony before and we will again. I see a lot of parts in the process of being rebuilt as the old collapses.

If you enjoyed this thread, you might like this longer presentation of the basic ideas: youtube.com/watch?v=s878bm…