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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months ago

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My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms 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.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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#pluralistic #transmediale #lectures #enshittification #big tech #berlin #mcluhan lecture #Youtube

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newsfromstolenland · 3 months ago

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Atlantic Canada's largest newspaper chain is now officially owned by Toronto-based Postmedia Network Inc.

On Monday, Postmedia confirmed the closing of its $1-million purchase of SaltWire Network Inc. and the Halifax Herald Ltd. in a short statement on its website. The sale was approved by a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge on Aug. 8.

Andrew MacLeod, Postmedia's president and CEO, said his company is "delighted" to welcome the new media properties, saying the sale "preserves their vital role within the community."

Full article

Let's explore why this is a very bad thing.

Postmedia, the company that just bought a chain of over two dozen Atlantic canada newspapers, is known for many things- none of them good.

This is an incomplete list of harmful things that Postmedia and its executives have done/are known for:

Right-wing politics. "The National Post was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black, who has connections to conservative politics and sat as a Conservative Party member of the United Kingdom's House of Lords. The Post has always been aligned with the right side of the political spectrum. ..."Just in the past couple of years, Postmedia has issued an edict stating that they should move even farther to the right, so they're very reliably conservative," said [Media journalist Marc] Edge. "In fact, [they] endorse Conservative candidates often over the objections of their local editors.""

Union busting. "They employed a mix of cajoling (such as with buyouts and raises), entreaties to preserve the paper’s uniquely collegial newsroom culture, office-wide memos decrying the havoc a union would wreak, and, according to CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon, one-on-one meetings between staff and management."

Monopolization of canadian news media. "Postmedia Network’s purchase of Saltwire Network will extend its grip from coast to coast, as it already dominates Western Canada with eight of the nine largest dailies in the three westernmost provinces. This purchase will give Postmedia the largest dailies in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland to go along with the largest in New Brunswick, which it acquired from the Irving Oil family two years ago."

Cuts to pensions and benefits while giving large bonuses to executives. "...several top Postmedia executives had received enormous retention bonuses at a time of aggressive belt-tightening (after which many left regardless), and second, the March 2017 announcement that benefits and pensions would be curtailed significantly."

Already beginning to lay off staff from the Atlantic canada newspapers they now own. "...the long-term future of workers in departments like circulation, advertising, customer service, finance and production remains uncertain. "Staff believe maintaining local jobs in the community is critical to retaining both subscribers and clients," the union said. Last week, the union representing workers at The Telegram confirmed that four of the paper's 13 newsroom positions will be eliminated."

More reading: source 1, source 2

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

#mine #cdnpoli #postmedia #national post #media #news #news media #newspapers #conservatives #conservatism #atlantic canada #capitalism #monopolies #monopolization #canada #canadian news #canadian politics

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chattahoochiecoochie · 2 months ago

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theres been a lot of sadness in recent days obviously, I've felt so deeply for appalachia, having called it home for so many years. there have been so many bright spots though and I thought it might be nice to highlight some of those.

a local man, and master operator, took his own set of master keys and commandeered several pieces of heavy equipment to begin shifting debris. stating to his wife he intends to work first, and ask for forgiveness later.

private pilots across the region are using personal aircraft to deliver supplies and move people out of unsafe areas.

mountain mule packer ranch have moved into rural areas and are bringing supplies in by mule to hard to reach places

the nolichucky dam held. taking on an estimated 1.3 million gallons of water per second at the height of the storm, the dam survived the storm and remains under emergency monitoring.

the wnc nature center has reported that their animals are safe and accounted for.

more than 700 canadian linemen have been deployed to assist north and south carolina to restore power.

the unites states national guard has deployed over 5500 service members from 11 states to support areas affect by helene.

the north carolina national guard has activated five hundred service members and allowed over 200 vehicles and aircraft to move into the western region to begin relief efforts.

search and rescue teams from around the country are making their way east to assist in rescue and recovery.

neighbors are helping neighbors. a woman has been able to make contact, and while doing so has taken it upon herself to catalogue the names of surviving locals in several areas, easing the efforts of local officials as they try to conduct wellness reports.

in cashiers, north carolina, a group of locals have taken their personal off road vehicles in the mountains to excavate debris and deliver supplies to those in need.

people in the south take care of their own. for generations, these communities have stuck by one another and bonded through good fortune and hardship alike. there is light at the end of this hideously long tunnel.

#appalachia #hurricane helene #north carolina

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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KIBBUTZ GEZER, Israel (JTA) — As she eulogized Vivian Silver, her friend and longtime fellow activist, Ghadir Hani said, “Vivian, my beloved, if you could hear, I would want you to know: Hamas did not murder your vision.”

Hani, who is from Hura, a Bedouin town in southern Israel, was one of several speakers at a “parting ceremony” for Silver, the Canadian-Israeli peace activist who was killed by Hamas in its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7. Many in the mixed crowd of Jewish and Palestinian women at the ceremony held each other in tears, and a friend of Silver’s from Gaza sent a written note.

Silver was previously presumed to have been held hostage, and confirmation of her death in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri came earlier this week. Before moving to Be’eri in 1990, Silver had lived at Gezer, in central Israel, for more than a decade.

Cars lined the road for several kilometers outside of the kibbutz, and the large crowd included current and former Israeli lawmakers, Reform and Orthodox Jewish leaders, international and local media and activists wearing shirts bearing the names of left-wing organizations including the one she co-founded, Women Wage Peace.

“It is impossible to destroy humanity, solidarity, the wish for a safe future,” Hani said in her eulogy.

Arab-Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh, who leads the Hadash Party, described Silver in remarks to journalists as “the shining light of our community” and lamented that “instead of dancing together after achieving peace, she became a victim in the most horrible way.”

Dov Khenin, a longtime Knesset member from Hadash and later the Joint List, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that his “heart is broken” and that Vivian “was optimistic, very smiley and personable” while working together with him on many campaigns promoting Jewish-Arab partnership.

Many speakers from diverse backgrounds described their immense pain at Silver’s death, and determination to pursue the causes to which she was devoted: peace and feminist activism.

“We promise you Vivian, we will continue your path even stronger and braver, since now it is clear where the path leads to that is not the ‘way of peace,'” said Avital Brown of Women Wage Peace. Brown promised to “continue to work with our Palestinian partners and the global community of women. “

After the final speaker, members of Women Wage Peace, all wearing light blue scarves, gathered in a circle, singing Israeli folk songs and concluding with “We shall overcome.”

“You taught us the most important lesson: to be human, to see the other, the weak, the one whose voice is not heard,” said Hani, who discussed the difficulty of saying goodbye to Silver during wartime.

“I wait here without words,” she said. “We are all in shock. What would you tell us to do now? How can we continue from here?”

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opencommunion · 7 months ago

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The geopolitics of labor: Israel's quest to replace Palestinian workers with Indians

"Canadian immigration attorney Aidan Simardone, speaking to The Cradle, compares the situation to historical colonial practices in North America where marginalized European religious groups, like the Puritans, were brought in to service colonial interests.

Israel, he points out, is adopting a similar strategy by recruiting economically disadvantaged Hindu Indians from regions like Uttar Pradesh, aiming to manage demographic and political challenges seamlessly. 'The move is also an attempt by Israel to pull the rug out from under one of the thorns on the side of colonialism. Colonialism requires squeezing blood out of a stone, yet this squeezing depends on the sweat and tears of those who are at the bottom of the barrel.'

Simardone notes the inherent risks for the colonizer in relying entirely on an indigenous labor force, as workers will rebel when colonialism reveals its true nature.

'To steer clear of this predicament, colonizers bring in labor from other parts. These laborers are often pushed to the sidelines as well, but unlike the Indigenous population, they go with the flow rather than swimming against the tide when it comes to the colonial project.'

... A Haaretz report claims that Indian candidates seeking work in Israel were, in many cases, made aware that the jobs were not available to Muslim Indians, a move that undermined the rights of the Muslim minority in India.

Simardone explains that Islam is seen as a mutual threat by the right-wing ethnocentric regime currently leading Israel and Hindutva-dominated India: 'For both countries, the very existence of Muslims undermines their fascist ethnonationalism, which seeks to build a country solely for Jews in Israel and Hindus in India. That is primarily the reason that job recruiters in India who are posting positions in Israel have specifically required Hindus and excluded Muslims, who are more likely to sympathize with the plight of Palestinians.' ... However, the partnership faces criticism domestically, especially concerning the program to shift thousands of workers into an insecure environment. The Construction Workers Federation of India (CWFI) has voiced strong opposition to sending Indian laborers to Israel, arguing that such actions tacitly support Israel’s controversial policies in Palestine.

The association reflects the views of a much broader Indian worker demographic who naturally reject collaboration with an oppressive occupation state that so clearly exploits the Palestinian working class. Instead, CWFI has urged New Delhi to leverage its diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv to advocate for the observance of UN resolutions and to reconsider Israel’s labor-import demands."

#palestine #zionism #hindutva #colonialism #imperialism

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coquitlammovers · 2 years ago

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Why You Should Hire Professional Moving Company

It can be expensive, worrisome, and time-consuming to move to a new location. By managing everything themselves instead of using moving companies, many people attempt to reduce their moving expenses. It takes time to develop a skill set for packing and organizing. Reputable Residential Moving Services in Coquitlam are aware of the most effective ways to bundle your possessions to avoid breakage and make things simpler to locate.

#Residential Moving Services in Coquitlam #Commercial Moving Services in Coquitlam #Local Moving Company in Coquitlam #Local Residential Movers in Coquitlam #Professional Moving Services in Coquitlam #Experienced Movers in Coquitlam #Experience Local Movers Coquitlam #Real Canadian Coquitlam Movers #Canadian Local Coquitlam Movers #Long Distance Movers Coquitlam CA #Reliable Long Distance Movers in Coquitlam #Coquitlam Long Distance Moving Company #Office Moving Services in Coquitlam #Professional Office Movers in Coquitlam #Containerized Moving Services in Coquitlam

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allthecanadianpolitics · 4 months ago

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A young surgeon is suing Alberta Health Services, alleging senior AHS executives strung him along for two years when they knew they had no intention of hiring him for the job he had been offered and for which he had been specially trained at the University of Alberta.

The claims in the 12-page lawsuit allege a chronicle of behaviour by AHS that was misleading, dishonest, unfair and unreasonable in its “bad faith” dealings with Dr. Daniel O’Brien.

In a statement of claim filed last week, O’Brien, a head and neck surgeon with specialized training in complex sinus and skull-base surgeries, sued AHS for more than $3.2 million for lost income and damage to his career as both a surgeon and an academic.

The Tyee documented the travails of O’Brien, an American, and his Canadian wife, University of Alberta doctoral student Andrea Dekeseredy, who wanted to stay with their young son in Edmonton but left Canada for Omaha, Nebraska, after AHS failed to give O’Brien a clear picture of his potential future employment. [...]

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid, @abpoli

#cdnpoli #Alberta #healthcare #workers' rights #healthcare workers

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blurredcolour · 1 year ago

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You Arms Pull Me In Like The Tide Pulls Me Under | Part Two

Your Arms Pull Me In Like The Tide Pulls Me Under Masterlist

Dick Winters x Female SOE Agent!Reader

Dick's mandated dose of civilization puts him, quite literally, on a collision course with someone he had not expected to see again.

Warnings: Discussion of Injuries and Death, Hints of PTSD, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Language, Mature/Explicit Themes [handjob, fingering, vaginal sex, condoms] - 18+ ONLY.

Note: This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal of Dick Winters by Damian Lewis. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within. Non-English is denoted in italics.

Word Count: 6723

--------------------------

Paris – December 10, 1944

Seeing your roommate off on her train to Arnhem was not exactly how you’d pictured spending your first day off in months. But Lucy had become a close friend to you over the past several weeks you’d shared the relatively luxurious accommodations, and she was all nerves as she headed even closer to the German border. Dressed in your Canadian Women’s Army Corp uniform with Lucy, or Luus in her native Dutch, in her Women’s Royal Navy Service uniform, you had helped her cart her belongings to Gare du Nord to catch her train.

Neither of you had technically trained in the respective uniforms you wore, instead coming to the service by way of the Strategic Operations Executive, due to your language abilities and other skills. Lucy’s family had only very recently moved to England from the Netherlands and her mastery of the Dutch language would be an asset to the Allied headquarters being established in Arnhem. Similarly, you were expecting to spend the rest of the war working in Paris. Exchanging knives and explosives for typewriter ribbon and file folders. Your feelings on the matter oscillated between relief and impotence on a daily basis, but you had little say in the matter.

Waiting until her train was pulling its way out of the station, you began making your way through the flood of passengers disembarking from another train that had pulled in across the platform. Several people bumped into you but only one apologized.

“Sorry –” Spoke a voice you’d probably recognize just about anywhere before he repeated. “Excusez-moi.”

You spun around quickly, eyes going wide as the Lieutenant from Normandy stood before you, sending your thoughts hurtling back to early June. You had been gasping for breath – the proximity of the detonation had driven the air from your lungs, compounded by the now dead weight of the German solider on top of you. An obnoxious ringing had taken up residence in your ears, obscuring any and all other sound as you had futilely pushed at the burden above you, shock weakening your muscles. The ground had begun to tremble then, an immediately recognizable sign that tanks were approaching, increasing the beat of your heart to a frantic rate as you lay essentially incapacitated in the road.

Suddenly the pressure above you had eased and you had frozen, holding your breath and closing your eyes, unable to determine just who exactly was intervening in your situation. When a pair of fingers found the pulse in your neck and two sets of hands lifted you from the road, you had risked cracking your eyelids only to be greeted by the sight of the Lieutenant carrying you by your knees. His face had been wreathed in sunlight, sea-glass green eyes striking in the shadow cast beneath his helmet, looking practically ethereal as he had moved you to safety.

Brought back to the present by the realization that you were gaping at him like a startled rabbit, lost in your memories, your eyes flicked to the cap on his head and confidently noted his promotion. “A captain now.”

“A Canadian now.” He replied as his own eyes settled on the patch embroidered on your shoulder. “Or were you always, Charlotte?” The hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips as his green eyes met yours.

Your throat clenched at the name, and you swallowed hard to clear it before smiling even wider than before. “I’m sorry you’ve got me confused with my good friend Charlotte Roussel. She’s told me all about you.” You offered your hand to shake as you introduced yourself properly, no pseudonym this time, only your real name.

Taking your gloved hand in his, he shook it firmly with a bemused expression playing on his face. “Dick Winters. A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, Captain. If you are in need of a place to stay, I happen to have a recently vacated room in my apartment I would be happy to loan to you, free of charge. The hotels in Paris would love nothing more than to liberate you of your American dollars.” You hazarded a guess that he was on a short leave based on the small bag he carried at his side.

“I wouldn’t want to impose…” His denial was half-hearted, leaving you with an opening to convince him.

“Not at all. Besides, Charlotte would not forgive me if I did not repay you for saving her life.” You insisted with a nod, not missing the way his eyes slid to your forehead. You flexed your fingers at your sides, willing them to remain there rather than nervously checking that your hair was covering the still-healing scar.

“If I remember it correctly, she saved mine first.”

“Please it’s just a short subway ride.” You gestured down the significantly emptier platform and he nodded his assent, turning to follow you.

You helped him purchase his fare, his unfamiliarity with the local currency somehow charming, before guiding him underground. Securing a pair of seats by the door, he had barely slid into place before someone was calling your name from further down the carriage.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back.” You apologized before hurrying over to greet one of your colleagues, a staff assistant to one of the officers at headquarters.

He asked you all about your plans for your days off while not-so-subtly trying to find out more about the American soldier you had boarded the subway with. It was an easy topic to skirt around by encouraging him to talk about his recent promotion and his new French girlfriend, but you found your eyes glancing at Captain Winters as his posture seemed to grow more and more rigid.

“Sorry to cut you off, First Sergeant Danvers, but I’ll see you in the office on Tuesday.” You excused yourself as politely but as firmly as possible before returning to stand beside the Captain, very carefully setting your hand on his shoulder.

“Captain?” You asked softly, swallowing as he looked to you sharply before slowly exhaling. “Next stop is ours.”

He nodded and gathered his things, following you off the train at the station and up the stairs back into the light of day. Your apartment lay in a building that had been requestioned by the British army, not two blocks from the station, on the second floor. The previous owners had fled in the face of German occupation and left some furnishings which you were using, though more beds were slated for delivery in January with the arrival of further CWACs. Unlocking the door, you led Captain Winters into the foyer, carefully removing your uniform cap to hang by the door.

“Kitchen is on the left, living room overlooks the street, bedrooms and the bathroom are this way.” You led him down a corridor to the room that Lucy had just vacated, retrieving her apartment key from the nightstand. “So you can come-and-go as you please.”

He took it carefully after tucking his garrison cap into his belt, setting his bag on the freshly made bed. “This is extremely kind of you, thank you again.”

Now that you were no longer in public, you licked your lips, feeling as though you owed him a proper explanation. “I considered our accounts balance, Captain, once you helped me retrieve my men. Therefore, I owe you for saving my life.”

Captain Winters eyed you intensely as he registered your use of ‘I’ and ‘my.’

“I’ve seen you wear many different costumes…how close to your real persona is this one?” He asked, looking over your CWAC uniform curiously.

“The closest, honestly, though I don’t feel like I’ve really earned the Sergeant’s stripes, they are necessary to explain my presence so far forward. The war is over for Charlotte, France all-but liberated, yet I still have skills to contribute. And my British accent is sh – shameful.” You corrected yourself with a smirk, recalling his distaste for coarse language, enjoying the twitch of his lips in response. “I’m assisting with translation in the Allied offices here. The delay in relaying them to England is no longer necessary.”

“So, really a Canadian.” He confirmed.

“Yes, and you know my real name, too.” You nodded reassuringly. “But I’m assuming you’d like to see more of Paris than just this apartment?” You laughed and he nodded quickly. “Would you like a guide or –”

The ‘yes’ was out of his mouth before you even had the chance to give him an out and you bowed your head lest he see the smile that pulled from you.

“That is, if you’re free and willing…” He amended, tone sheepish.

“It’s the least I can do for the man who saved me from being crushed by a tank.” You smirked and he chuckled before his eyes widened.

“I still have your knife, back at the base.” He frowned.

You grinned a little, shaking your head. “Good. That’s good.” Echoing his words to you when he realized your hearing had returned. “Keep it. It saw me through a lot of things. I hope it does the same for you.”

He eyed you a moment. “Thank you…for your honesty, and the knife.” He clarified.

“I apologize that I cannot always be honest with you, but I will endeavour to do so as circumstances permit. Now, I’m assuming you haven’t had lunch?”

“Not yet, no.”

“There’s an excellent café not far from here, shall we?” You led him back out through the foyer, snagging your cap on the way by, the pair of you taking a moment on the threshold to secure your uniform cover before you locked the door and headed back outside.

The streets were filled with soldiers on leave, but with his height and bright red hair, it was difficult to lose him in the crowd. Securing a table outside, you walked him through the menu before ordering on his behalf in French.

“Where did you learn to speak it so well?” He asked, tilting his head.

“Oxford.” You swallowed hesitantly as not many men appreciated the fact that you had studied at university, let alone a prestigious school in England. To your great relief he titled his head back and simply laughed.

“Nix would be so jealous to hear you say that…” He shook his head, taking a sip of his coffee as it was delivered.

“Lieutenant Nixon?” You clarified, taking the time to add the packet of Saccharin that you had requested to sweeten the bitter liquid.

“He’s a captain now, but yes. A Yale man, but not an Oxford man.”

You laughed in relief, sipping your own beverage once it was slightly more palatable.

“What took you there?”

“Scholarship, and my uncle, my mother’s brother, lived there. The opportunity to go to Europe was difficult to pass up. I began my undergraduate degree in 1938.”

He shook his head, presumably at the timing. “Did you manage to finish?”

You nodded quickly. “Graduated with a major in French, minor in German in the spring of 1942.”

He hummed thoughtfully, the strategic value of those two languages going unspoken in such a crowded space.

“How about yourself?” You prompted as your food arrived, laying your napkin across your lap.

“I went to Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania – definitely not Oxford or Yale. Graduated with an Economics degree in ’41. Tried to get my military service out of the way early but then Pearl Harbor happened and well, here I am…” He shrugged, tucking into his food.

The pair of you spent a good hour, trading questions back and forth between bites of your food, learning about your families, where you had grown up, why you had joined the war effort.

“My uncle was killed during an air raid in London in May of 1941. He’d gone to visit a friend and stayed the night – apparently, they had tried to drink the pub dry.” You shook your head fondly in memory. “The Luftwaffe decided to bomb the neighborhood that night, neither of them even made it into the shelter. I almost quit my studies the next day to join FANY or become a Land Girl or just…do something useful.” You sighed leaning back in your chair as the waitstaff came to collect your empty plates, avoiding Captain Winters’ gaze, though you could feel his eyes on your cheek. “Friend of mine convinced me I could do more good if I finished what I started – that my language skills would be put to good use once I honed them.”

“Sounds like a wise friend.” He replied softly and you turned to him.

“They are. Helped me get where I am today.” You nodded meaningfully, a movement which he mirrored in unspoken understanding. “Anyway, I’m meant to be showing you around.” You forced a smile and summoned the bill, though Captain Winters beat you to punch by laying a large number of francs on the table, not allowing you to pay for your own meal. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He replied, pulling out your chair once he’d received his change.

Leading him along the historic streets you showed him some of the more famous sites, waiting patiently as he picked up a pack of postcards to send home as the sun began to set.

“There’s a popular restaurant just up the street, did you want to try and get a table for dinner?” You offered once he rejoined you, tucking his purchase into his pocket.

“That would be nice, yes.” He nodded, his hand hovering just above your lower back as you navigated your way along the crowded sidewalk to the restaurant.

Placing your name on the waitlist, the pair of you were idling patiently in the foyer when your direct report Major Wilkes stepped out of the dining room, making you stand up straighter. “Good evening, sir.”

He looked over to you and the American Captain standing tall at your side, greeting you in kind. “Enjoying your well-earned rest, Sergeant?” He asked warmly.

“Yes sir, thank you again.”

“You’ve earned it.” He reminded you with a laugh.

“Major Wilkes, may I present Captain Winters of the 101st Airborne.” You introduced the men to one another properly as you recalled your manners.

The two shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before Major Wilkes turned back to the maître d,’ murmuring something neither of you could hear. “See you on Tuesday, Sergeant. Enjoy your time in Paris, Captain.”

“Good night, sir.” You smiled, glancing at the Captain before the maître d’ was calling your name to seat you, ahead of several other groups who had been waiting longer.

“Your CO seems to like you.” Captain Winters murmured once you were settled at a table a few rows back from the dancefloor, not too close to the bandstand.

“Major Wilkes is a good man, easy to work for.” You nodded, setting your cap on the empty chair beside you.

“I’m glad. And grateful.” He lifted the menu, and you leaned in once more to walk him through the options, swallowing as he smelled of Brylcreem and aftershave.

Conversation didn’t flow as easily once the band started playing, couples crowding the dancefloor as you enjoyed some delicious yet overpriced food. The Captain seemed to be watching you closely, glancing between you and the dancefloor, until a slow song began to play, and he leaned in. “Would you like to dance?”

Dabbing at the corner of your mouth with your napkin you nodded quickly, heart leaping into your throat as he pulled out your chair to help you stand. You set your hand in his, following him onto the crowded dancefloor as he set one hand on your waist, the other held out to the side in his as he swayed with you to the music. Neither of you were particularly talented dancers, but you could not deny how lovely it felt to be held this close by him. You glanced at him with a shy smile, certain the tips of his ears were pink, though it may have been the dim lighting, before you looked to the side as you nibbled your lip, trying to even out your breathing.

Belatedly you realized that Captain Winters was speaking to you, into your right ear, which had never fully recovered from your roadside escapade in Normandy. It had a habit of being particularly uncooperative in crowded, noisy places such as this. Registering the vibrations of his voice you turned your head quickly to look up at him. “I’m so sorry could you repeat that please?” You asked before offering him your left ear.

After a moment or two of nothing but music you turned back to see him frowning deeply.

“Oh, Captain, please, it’s the only thing, and then only sometimes, not always.” You tried to reassure him, reaching out to smooth the furrow of his brow with your fingertips.

“Please call me Dick.” He replied, leaning towards your left ear as he spoke.

“Alright, Dick.” You exhaled, your heart fluttering erratically as you turned your head to press your lips against his softy.

His feet stopped moving altogether, hand clasping yours tighter as you felt the fingers of his other hand curling into the back of your uniform jacket. His lips pressed closer to yours, drawing a barely audible sigh through your nose, until another couple carelessly bumped into you, jolting you apart. Dick carefully steadied you and you squeezed his hand, leading him back to the table to grab you cap. He flagged down a waiter and, infuriatingly, paid yet again before leading you out in the dim streets out black-out Paris.

“I was trying to save you money, not make you spend it all.” You gently chastised him, almost stepping off the curb in front of a cyclist you did not hear approaching from the right.

His arm quickly slid around your shoulders, pulling you close into his chest just before they zoomed by spewing curses in their wake. “Careful. I already told you it’s my pleasure.” He assured you before offering his arm.

“Thanks, Dick.” You took it slowly, trying not to let your frustration show. You had previously excelled at navigating dark places and now you were forced to rely on the guidance of others. Taking a fortifying breath, you began leading him along the sidewalk. “I thought we’d walk home, the subway didn’t seem to agree with you?” You asked carefully.

“I’d appreciate that.” He replied, keeping an eye out for further obstacles hidden by the shadows of the black out as the pair of you made your way back to the apartment in companionable silence.

“I just need to close the curtains before we turn on the lights, one moment.” You left Dick in the foyer, setting your cap on the hook by the door before tugging the black out curtains closed in each room, turning the lights on as you made your way back to him. “Sorry about that I wasn’t thinking when we left.”

He shook his head softly, watching you quietly from right where you’d asked him to wait. “Do you think it would be all right if I were to take a hot bath tonight?"

You smiled warmly and nodded. “Absolutely alright, I’ll get you set up.”

Leading him to the bathroom you set out some towels and the bar of soap, turning to him. “There should be plenty of hot water at this time of night, the boiler will have had time to refill. Anything else you need before I leave you to it?”

His lips quirked into a tentative smile. “Yes, might I kiss you goodnight?”

Your pulse quickened as you tried not to smile like a buffoon. “Please.” Your voice waivered slightly, much to your annoyance, but mercifully it did not seem to deter Dick.

He stepped forward, hands cupping the sides of your face tenderly as he angled your lips to meet his. Gripping his forearms to steady yourself, you came to realize that Dick was a different man when he set his mind to something. You had simply taken him by surprise on the dancefloor. This kiss was altogether more assertive and left you breathless as he pulled back.

“Goodnight.” He smiled gently, nose brushing the hair from your forehead to press his lips to the scar there softly.

“Night.” You exhaled, eyes fluttering shut briefly at the surge of emotions that unleashed within you, taking a steady breath before you were able to smile dreamily and slip out.

Retiring to your room, you unpinned your hair carefully before sliding into your cotton nightgown, pulling your quilted housecoat overtop and settling onto the double bed left by the apartments previous owners to do some reading while you waited your turn to use the washroom. Fully absorbed in the novel that Lucy had left for you, you were surprised when you noted that over an hour had passed since you had opened your book. Frowning, you slid your bookmark into place before cracking the door open slightly and peering down the hall, startled to see the bathroom door still closed while the door to the other bedroom remained open.

Gnawing on your lower lip you walked to the end of hall, knocking gently on the door. “Dick?” You waited, frown deepening as there was no response. Your main concern that he had fallen asleep in the deep claw-footed tub, at great risk of drowning. Knocking more firmly, you called his name again. “I’m coming in if you don’t answer.” You warned, giving it a slow count to ten before stepping into the humid washroom, careful to keep your eyes well above the waterline.

True to your concern, the man was sound asleep, thankfully with his head bent back over the edge of the tub, a washcloth cushioning his neck. Impressed by the level of comfort he must be feeling to sleep through all the noise you were making, you took a step closer, calling his name yet again. Kneeling beside the tub with your back to his lower body, you focused on his peacefully sleeping face, shaking your head in awe before reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He jolted awake, sending now-tepid water sloshing over the side of the tub and down your housecoat onto the backs of your calves. You let out an involuntary gasp at the temperature shock.

“Aw heck, I’m so sorry I…” His hands quickly dove under the water to cover himself.

“It’s alright, I’m glad you’re ok.” You smiled, waving off his concern and leaned in to kiss his cheek before moving to stand.

“Before you leave uh, could you uh pass the soap?” He’d gone red to the tips of his ears.

You bit the inside of your cheek to smother your grin and fetched it from atop the towel behind you. As you turned back to him, your eyes accidentally fell on the length of his body beneath the water, hands still firmly cupping between his legs. Unable to look away, to think, to move, Dick’s voice brought you back to reality.

“You alright, honey?” He asked softly and your eyes snapped to his face as the term of endearment dripped from his lips.

“More than alright.” You breathed in reply, seized by the need to lay your hands on his pearly white skin smattered in a constellation of freckles. Shrugging out of your housecoat you were left in your ankle-length nightgown with frills of lace at the shoulders. “May I help?” You tilted your head, kneeling at the edge of the tub once more.

He watched you with wide eyes, seeming unable to avert his gaze this time before his adam’s apple bobbed violently at your question. You waited patiently until he gave you one sharp nod, dipping the bar of soap into the water before you began to drag it along his neck and chest, sliding it beneath his dog tags. Their metallic jangle was the loudest sound in the washroom. You took a moment to rinse his skin clean with your other hand before repeating the pattern with his upper arms and abdomen, shifting to the bottom of the tub to do the same with his calves and feet. You did not miss the way his breaths grew heavier, lips parting slightly, his eyes never once leaving your face.

“Can I wash your hands?” You ask, biting your lip as he only offered one as the other tried and failed to hide his erection.

Swallowing thickly, you focused on washing it thoroughly – between each finger and up to his elbow, rinsing the suds from his skin before holding your hand out for the other. He set it in yours boldly, meeting your eyes, no longer feeling the need to hide from you as his clean hand gripped the edge of the tub. Once his second hand was clean you leaned in to press your lips to his, trailing the soap down his abdomen once more before dipping it to his left hip then sweeping it back up to before repeating the motion to his right. His breath shuddered against your lips, and you pulled back to look over his face.

“Ok?” You breathed, throat constricting at his blown pupils, and he nodded violently before sliding a hand to the back of your neck to pull you closer, kissing you hungrily. You traced your fingers along the length of him, reveling in the shiver that wracked his body. Abandoning the bar of soap, you wrapped your hand around him fully, running your tongue along his bottom lip as his mouth fell open with a soft gasp.

It was a noise you soon echoed as his tongue slid forward to meet yours, licking into your mouth teasingly at first before he was confidently dominating the kiss. Bracing your free hand against his shoulder, you began to move your first along his length in earnest, lips curling against his as his knees bent before falling open, sloshing still more water from the tub. You could feel the cotton of your nightgown wicking the water higher along the material, surely become more and more translucent with each bit of moisture, yet you remained undeterred.

Forced to part from his lips to suck in a greedy breath to soothe the ache in your lungs, you experimentally swiped your thumb across the tip of his cock, sinking your teeth into your lower lip as his head fell back with a moan, hips nudging towards your hand needily. Encouraged, you made a point of repeating that motion, paying special attention to the head as you reached the apex of each pull. You watched the way his eyebrows knit together, listened to the pants and breathy grunts, felt further onslaughts of water as his hips bucked to your touch. Your thighs pressed together as you felt your panties grow damp in response, desperate for some friction of your own, but nonetheless thoroughly enjoying the act of pleasuring him.

“Honey, I’m…” He lifted his head to look at you quickly, voice tense, jaw muscles ticking.

You nodded eagerly and his fingers, which had been clinging to the back of your neck this entire time, hauled you in to plant his lips against yours fiercely. You happily swallowed his hoarse shout as his hips surged up into your grip, cock twitching as you felt him release into the now-cold bathwater. Stroking him through his release, you placed gentle kisses across his cheeks before shifting your hand to stroke his side.

“That was…” He sighed, speechless before brushing his lips against yours gratefully, cheeks still flushed.

“I’m glad.” You smiled shyly, brushing your nose against his. “Now come on that water is cold.” You murmured, standing and holding open a towel for him.

He gave you a crooked grin before pulling the plug from the drain and leveraging himself to his feet, stepping onto the rather wet bathmat and taking the towel to wrap around his waist. It was only then he properly noticed how much of your skin he could see through the damp patches of your nightgown. “I splashed you quite a bit, didn’t I. Sorry about that.” He murmured.

“I have another nightgown I can change into, don’t worry about it.” You assured him, reaching for your housecoat, but his arms slid around your waist, pulling you against his still-wet torso, drawing a gasp from your chest.

“Don’t bother.” He muttered before kissing you deeply.

Fingers digging into his biceps you squeaked against his lips as he began to shuffle you backwards, shocked that he was confidently leading you through your own apartment nearly blind. Reaching your bedroom, he looked to you softly, gathering the fabric of your nightgown in his hands. “May I?”

You nodded, licking your kiss-swollen lips, before the flurry of sodden cotton obscured your view. He lay it over your desk chair, turning back to you and exhaling reverently.

“You are so beautiful, honey.”

“Dick…” You whispered shyly in protest, but he shook his head, long fingers cradling your face tenderly to force your eyes to meet his.

“So beautiful.” He repeated, guiding you to lay on the bed.

Sliding on the mattress next to you, his lips began to map the skin on your jaw, body braced on his left arm while his right slid along your collarbone. Delving your fingers into his short ginger locks, you sighed warmly, tilting your head to offer more skin to his exploring mouth. Touch featherlight, his fingertips traced down the swell of your breast, making you arch towards his hand in invitation as he trailed open-mouthed kisses down the column of your throat. You rewarded him with a soft moan as he cupped your tender flesh fully, gently kneading the weight of it in his warm palm, your nails brushing against his scalp.

As he reached the hollow of your throat, he darted his tongue out to lap at the skin there, making you writhe sightly beneath him. The contrast of his warm skin and the rough metal of his dog tags pressing against you was making your head swim. The addition of his tongue as he lapped at the supple flesh of your breast had you mewling breathlessly, once again pressing your thighs together to try and assuage the sheer need you felt. His hand slid along your side, progress slowing as his fingertips encountered the long, jagged scar there. It was well-healed by now, but still raised to the touch. He swiped his thumb along it tenderly before his hand moved to your hip, giving a gentle squeeze before skirting down your thigh. Exhaling shakily, you parted your legs for him, the pair of you gasping as his fingers cupped between your thighs.

“Dick.” You whimpered.

“Ok?” He looked to your face quickly and you nodded rapidly, lifting your hips to help him slid your panties down and off your legs.

Your eyes fluttered shut as his fingers returned to trace your folds before carefully parting them. His thumb came to circle your clit, the callous on the edge of his digit working wonders as his index finger dipped into the entrance to your warmth, teasing you.

“Oh my god..sh…” You belatedly caught your curse, not missing the way he chuckled against your shoulder before pressing his lips to your skin fondly. You forced your eyes open to look at him, if a bit blearily, but the smug bastard only replied by sinking his finger fully into you. “Christ!” You moaned richly, completely losing control of your manners, and your volume, as he stroked it along your silken walls before adding another.

Graciously, he pressed his lips to yours to smother any further curses his actions might have drawn from you, and you moaned richly against his tongue as you clung to his shoulders. You barely even noticed the way his dog tags were knocking into your chin, but he insisted on pulling back for a moment to swing them behind his neck before sliding a second finger into you. Your thighs began to tremble as you bucked wildly towards his hand, panting against his lips.

“P..please…” You pleaded, so very close, not wanting him to lose interest in your pleasure as your only other partner had seemed want to do.

“I’ve got you, honey, I’ve got you.” He reassured you, the pace of his fingers increasing until your thighs clamped down around his hand. Hastily, he covered your mouth with his as he felt your walls begin to flutter, smothering your wail as your nails dug into his skin slightly.

Chest heaving, you pulled back from his lips to try and catch your breath, body still trembling with small aftershocks of pleasure. Dick gently slid his fingers from your body, your breath hitching in your throat before you smiled at him fondly.

“Good?” He asked softly, smoothing the hair from your face tenderly.

“Very good.” You reassured him, pecking his lips warmly.

They curled against yours in a soft grin before he whispered your name as you tugged the very loose towel from his lips to find his cock fully erect once more.

“Are you sure?” He asked, looking to you.

“Do you have a condom?” You asked and he paused a moment before nodding.

“I’ll be right back.” He quickly secured the towel around his waist again, making you chew your lip fondly as he dashed out of the room. He was not gone a full minute before he returned with several individually wrapped paper packets, making you raise an eyebrow.

“Optimistic man.”

He laughed under his breath. “It’s cold tonight, I didn’t want to have to leave this room again.” He explained, shutting the door behind him before shedding the towel and climbing into bed with you.

Working together, you secured the latex sheath over his length before Dick settled between your thighs. He rested his weight on his right forearm beside your head, fingertips stroking your hair as he took his cock in hand. “Ok, honey?”

He checked one last time and your hearth clenched warmly as you reached out to cup his cheek. “Yes.” You reassured him, running your thumb along his lower lip.

He pressed a kiss to the pad of your thumb before rolling his hips forward, carefully sinking into your warmth, his fingers, now free of their burden, lacing with yours and pining your hand to the pillow. His jaw hung open as your body welcomed him inch by inch, stretching to envelope him completely until his pelvis nestled snuggly against yours.

“Mhmm!” You keened, rocking up against him eager for him to move as he brought a feeling of completion that you’d never felt before.

His fingers flexed in your grip before he began the push and pull to build another orgasm within you, his grunts and breathy moans blended with words of adoration, all directed into your left ear. The mixture of it all – the pleasure, the care, the emotions – brought tears to your eyes and praise tumbled from your own lips in return.

“So good, Dick.”

“Like an angel, honey.”

“Just like that, yes!”

“Only you can make me feel this good.”

“Oh, Dick I’m…I’m gonna…”

“Yes honey, let go.”

You pressed your face tightly to his neck, your knees hugging his hips tightly as your back bowed with the force your release, an anguished cry of pleasure wrenched from your throat as you clamped down tightly around him. His rich groan followed shortly after as he rocked tightly against you in the throes of his own climax. Pulling from you slowly, he carefully rolled to lay beside you, the pair of you grinning up at the ceiling stupidly for a moment before you rolled onto your side to kiss his cheek.

Collecting the used condom, despite his protests, you padded to the washroom to run through your night routine at last, gratefully sliding into the housecoat to turn out the lights before returning to find him waiting for you beneath the quilt. Dick immediately pulled you into his chest as you slid into the bed and kissed your forehead.

As his fingers pulled at the tie of your housecoat, however, you could not help but laugh. “Really?”

He chuckled in return, pressing a kiss to your jaw before his fingers darted beneath the warm fabric to find the scar on your side. “What happened?” He asked softly and your throat clenched at the concern in his voice.

“Bayonet.” You replied quietly, frowning as his eyes jerked up to meet yours in the low light of the bedside lamp you’d left on. “I was lucky, really.” You smiled fondly at his incredulous look. “He tried firing on me first, but his weapon jammed, and then he got so flustered he barely stuck me.” You ran your fingers through his hair soothingly as you spoke.

“This looks like a little more than barely.” He countered flatly and you kissed him softly.

“I was furious. First mission and I made it all of four days before I got hurt.” You shook your head. “A sympathetic doctor stitched me up and then it was a long way back to England to heal.”

“So, I met you on your…” He prompted, thumb sweeping along your scarred flesh as though he might erase the mark with his touch.

“Second.” You nodded. “And last in a way. I’ll never be able to do those things again with my right ear the way it is…” You grimaced and it was his turn to kiss you reassuringly.

“You’ve done more than enough, honey, more than should have ever been asked of you. And yet you’re still here, in a uniform, helping all the same.”

Pressing your forehead to his you sighed fondly. “Thank you.”

“We should get some sleep.” He murmured, pulling you close into his chest so he could reach with a long arm to turn off the lamp behind you.

It proved difficult to leave his arms for the rest of his time in Paris, though you managed to see to it that you remained fed despite Dick’s efforts to tire you out completely. Not a single condom went to waste. As he lay sleeping in the late afternoon, you took the opportunity to write a letter for him to carry with him – not knowing where he would find himself next, nor when you’d have the chance to see him again. Seized by the radical idea to package it up with some small token, you pried the badge from your cap, hoping the three silver maple leaves would make him think of you. Folding the badge within the letter, you tucked it into the front pocket of his luggage, fully prepared to feign complete astonishment when its absence was noted by Major Wilkes, or whomever noticed first.

Early Tuesday morning, you delivered Dick to Gare du Nord to catch the first train back to Mourmelon-le-Grand, unable to ignore the way he crossed his arms against the chilly north wind that seemed to herald to arrival of winter. Glancing at the drab olive wool scarf dangling around your neck you bit your lip as you reached the platform before sliding it off. Grasping each end, as Dick turned to say goodbye, you carefully slung it over his shoulders.

“Keep warm, Dick.”

His eyes widened. “I can’t take this from you, you’ll freeze.”

“I can get a new one easily.” With your hands still on the ends of the scarf you pulled him in to kiss him softly. “Good luck out there.” You repeated your parting words from Normandy.

His hands rose to cup your cheeks one last time as his eyes traced over the features of your face as if to commit it to memory. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

You nodded quickly, all possible responses congealing into a lump in your throat that made it impossible to speak. The rumble of the approaching train shattered the intensity of the moment and he quickly pressed one final kiss to your forehead before reluctantly stepping back, turning only at the last moment to step into the carriage. You stood rooted to the spot, only able to inhale tiny sips of air lest you shatter into tears, until it disappeared out of sight.

-------------------------

Read Part Three

Your Arms Pull Me In Like The Tide Pulls Me Under Masterlist

Tag list: @allthingsimagines, @bcon24

#dick winters x reader #dick winters #band of brothers x reader #band of brothers fanfic #band of brothers imagine #band of brothers imagines #band of brothers

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

Text

Vice surrenders

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in LA with Adam Conover at Vroman's, then on MONDAY in Seattle with Neal Stephenson, then Portland, Phoenix and more!

Vice died the way it lived: being suckered in by smarter predators, even as it trained its own predatory instincts on those more credulous than its own supremely gullible leadership. RIP, we hardly knew ye.

For those of you who don't know, Vice was a Canadian media success story. It was founded by a motley clique of hipsters, one of whom – founder of the Proud Boys – has since grown to be one of the world's great fascism influencers. Another perfected the art of getting young people to work "for exposure" even as he built a massive, highly lucrative media empire on their free labor:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/vice-oral-history/

Eventually, Vice transitioned to a string of progressively worsening corporate owners, each more dishonest, predatory – and gullible – than the last. The company was one of the most enthusiastic marks for Facebook's infamous "pivot to video" – in which Mark Zuckerberg destroyed half the media industry by tricking them into thinking that the public was clamoring for video content, based on fraudulent viewing numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video

Vice went all-in on video, spending hundreds of millions to finance Zuckerberg's doomed attempt to conquer Youtube. But unlike other the rubes who got zucked, Vice found greater fools to scam, convincing giant, slow-moving meidia companies that the best way to get in on the Next Big Thing was to shower them with vast sums of string-free money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceland_(Canadian_TV_channel)

And yet, at every turn, through a succession of increasingly incompetent owners who bought the stumbling, declining Vice at fire-sale prices and then proceeded to hack away at the wages and tools its journalists depended on while paying executives salaries so high that they beggared the imagination, Vice's reporters continued to turn out stellar material.

This went on literally until the last moment. The memorial posted by 404 Media rounds up a selection of major stories Vice's beleaguered, precarious writers produced even as Vice's vulture capitalist leadership were pulling the rug out from under them:

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-vices-legacy-and-the-idea-that-the-internet-is-forever/

True to form, those private equity scumbags locked all those workers out of the company's CMS without notice – and then forgot to lock down the podcasting back-end. That allowed a group of Vice veterans – Matthew Gault, Emily Lipstein, Anna Merlan, Tim Marchman and Mack Lamoureux – to gather for a totally unauthorized, tell-all session that they pushed out on an official Vice channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKT4OtDEJRA

It's a hell of a listen. Not only do these Vice veterans have lots of fascinating history to recount, but they also describe the conditions under which those blockbuster stories of Vice's final days were produced. As the "visionary leaders" of the company paid themselves millions, they halted payments to key suppliers, from Lexisnexis to the interview transcription service the writers depended on. Writers paid out of pocket to search PACER court records.

Not only did Vice's reporters do incredible work under terrible and worsening circumstances, but the Vice writers who got out ahead of the total collapse are also doing incredible work. 404 Media is a writer-owned investigative news publisher founded by four Vice escapees – Samantha Cole, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, which is both producing incredible work and sustaining the writers who founded it:

https://www.404media.co/

All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion: whatever problems Vice had, they didn't include "writers don't do productive work" and also didn't include "that work isn't economically viable*. Whatever problems Vice had, they weren't problems with Vice's workers – it was a problem with Vice's bosses.

Which makes Vice's final, ignominious punishment at the hands of those bosses even more brutal, stupid and inexcusable. According to the leaked memos emanating from the company's investors and their millionaire C-suite toadies, the business's new strategy is abandoning their website in order to publish on social media.

This is…I mean, this,..

This is…

Wow.

I mean, wow.

The thing is, the social media business model is a giant rug-pull. They're not even bothering to hide their playbook anymore. For social media, the game is to encourage media companies to become reliant on third parties to reach their audiences. Once that reliance is established, the companies turn down – or even halt – the ability of those media companies to reach their audience altogether. Then, they charge the media companies to reach their audiences:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Now, this wasn't always quite so obvious. Back when Vice was falling for Facebook's "pivot to video," it wasn't completely obvious that the long con was to take your audience hostage and ransom them back to you. But deliberately organizing your business to be reliant on social media barons today? It's like trusting your money to Sam Bankman-Fried…in 2024.

If there was ever a moment when the obvious, catastrophic, imminent risk of trusting Big Tech intermediaries to sit between you and your customers or audience, it was now. This is not the moment to be "social first." This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn't take a Sun Tzu – as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and Tiktok make gambits like "Lucy and the football" look like von Clausewitz.

The most bonkers part of this strategy is that it's coming from private equity bosses, who laud themselves as the great strategists of the 21st century, whose claim on so much of our global capital and resources is derived from their brilliant insight, which allows them to buy "distressed assets" like Vice, "restructure" them to find "efficiencies" and sell them on.

The reality is that PE goons – like other financiers – are basically herding animals. Everyone's hit on the tactic of buying up beloved media companies – from the 150-year-old Popular Science to modern publications like CNet – and then filling them with spammy garbage in the hopes that Google will fail to notice and continue to award them pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The fact that these billionaire brain-geniuses can't figure out how to "turn around" a site whose workers a) produce brilliant, popular, successful work; and b) depart to found successful firms that commercialize that work tells you everything about their ability to spot "a good business opportunity."

PE – like other mafiosi – only have one business-plan, the "bust out," where you invade a business that produces useful things, force them to pay your chosen suppliers sky-high fees for things they don't need, extract massive fees for your "management" and then walk away from the collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

#pluralistic #vice #motherboard #posse #apps #enshittification #media #chumboxes #botshit #bust outs #news bailouts

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