Today’s links Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth: “Nonprofits” can and do enshittify. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 20241 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I’ve been. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth (permalink) The only way to truly billionaire-proof the internet is to a) abolish billionaires and b) abolish the system that allows people to become billionaires. Short of that, any levees we build will need constant tending, reinforcement, and re-evaluation. That’s normal. No security measure (including billionaire-proofing the internet) is a “set and forget” affair. Any time you want something and someone else wants the opposite, you are stuck in an endless game of attack and defense. The measures that block your adversary today will only work until your adversary changes tactics to circumvent your defenses. For example, mining all the links on the internet to find non-spam sites worked brilliantly for Google, because until Pagerank, there were zero reasons for spammers to get links to point to their sites. Once Google became the dominant way of finding things on the internet, spammers invented the linkfarm. This principle can be summed up as “Show me a ten-foot wall and I’ll show you an eleven-foot ladder.” Security designers address this with something called “defense in depth”: that’s a series of overlapping…Pluralistic: Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth (23 Jan 2025)