Avery
I think this book does a great job of providing an accessible and fairly actionable description of what has gone wrong with the Internet and digital products in general over the last decade or two.
There was plenty of stuff that I was expecting, mostly the negatives, but I felt it positively surprised me in a few important ways.
First, the book provides a really convincing description of what laws, policies and events have lead to a world where companies can get away with making terrible products.
It also contained a surprising amount of optimism. The recent progress in the EU, some glowing feedback for the Biden presidency and Lena Kahn, and the potential for using the recent tariff news cycle to repeal anti-circumvention laws globally.
As a tech worker, I went into the book fully expecting to be characterized as part of the problem. It was neat to see this group portrayed as one of the forces pushing against the worsening of digital services. While this leverage is going away, it's great to see it being replaced by such a strong grassroots support for more antitrust work.
I feel there were a number of flaws in the presentation. Mostly it would have been nice to have another editing pass. The fact that much of the content was originally published as essays comes out in the repeated explanation (tolerable) and the reused jokes (less so). It could have been nice to have the block of "case studies" near the beginning spread out a bit. I feel he uses the "enshit" prefix about 30% too often. The description of a "new good internet" felt simplistic but maybe that's ok for a general audience. All that said, the important stuff was good, and that's what's important. Would 100% recommend.
I think this book does a great job of providing an accessible and fairly actionable description of what has gone wrong with the Internet and digital products in general over the last decade or two.
There was plenty of stuff that I was expecting, mostly the negatives, but I felt it positively surprised me in a few important ways.
First, the book provides a really convincing description of what laws, policies and events have lead to a world where companies can get away with making terrible products.
It also contained a surprising amount of optimism. The recent progress in the EU, some glowing feedback for the Biden presidency and Lena Kahn, and the potential for using the recent tariff news cycle to repeal anti-circumvention laws globally.
As a tech worker, I went into the book fully expecting to be characterized as part of the problem. It was neat to see this group portrayed as one of the forces pushing against the worsening of digital services. While this leverage is going away, it's great to see it being replaced by such a strong grassroots support for more antitrust work.
I feel there were a number of flaws in the presentation. Mostly it would have been nice to have another editing pass. The fact that much of the content was originally published as essays comes out in the repeated explanation (tolerable) and the reused jokes (less so). It could have been nice to have the block of "case studies" near the beginning spread out a bit. I feel he uses the "enshit" prefix about 30% too often. The description of a "new good internet" felt simplistic but maybe that's ok for a general audience. All that said, the important stuff was good, and that's what's important. Would 100% recommend.