Today’s links Podcasting “Microincentives and Enshittification”: They’ve run out of lands to conquer and they’re taking it out on you. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Podcasting “Microincentives and Enshittification” (permalink) This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, “Microincentives and Enshittification,” about the way that monopoly drives mediocrity, with Google’s declining quality as Exhibit A: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/ It’s not your imagination: Google used to be better – in every way. Search used to be better, sure, but Google used to be better as a company. It treated its workers better (for example, not laying off 12,000 workers months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years). It had its users’ backs in policy fights – standing up for Net Neutrality and the right to use encryption to keep your private data private. Even when the company made ghastly mistakes, it repented of them and reversed them, like the time it pulled out of China after it learned that Chinese state hackers had broken into Gmail in order to discover which dissidents to round up and imprison. None of this is to say that Google used to be perfect, or even, most of the time, good. Just that things got worse. To understand why, we have to think about how decisions get made in large organizations, or, more to the point,…Pluralistic: Podcasting "Microincentives and Enshittification" (24 Oct 2023)