Yesterday, parliament heard that the major parties will come together and pass a law banning teenagers from social media, after a period of careful thought roughly commensurate with that of a 15-year-old making a Black Friday impulse buy at Shein.com.

Annabel Crabb’s analysis of parliamentary goings on this week.

  • Gorgritch_Umie_KillaOPEnglish
    4·
    13 hours ago

    Certainly is better. But i don’t think it needs a ‘technology industry’ specific term.

    Old terms like market monopolisation, or corruption of the public sphere.

    Or something like those are better, because nothing the tech platforms have done is new, their tactics aren’t different from any other company seeking to dominate their respective product market. The key difference being the speed at which their product travels around the world.

    • zero_gravitasEnglish
      3·
      12 hours ago

      You make a reasonable point. I think there is difference, though, which is the degree to which ‘the customer is the product’ for these platforms, and that’s a key ingredient in Doctorow’s original post:

      Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

      Sure, advertising is nothing new, but the degree to which these platforms can target content and ads to the individual is qualitatively different to ‘old media’. Emphasis on ‘the customer’, singular, being the product, not ‘the readers/viewers’ as a whole.