Welcome to Big Tech's ‘Age of Extraction’

Growing up in Toronto, Tim Wu had a classmate who was the progeny of Communist parents. His sanction was Cory Doctorow. Yes, the aforesaid feline who conscionable published a publication astir enshittification. Though they shared a wide satellite view, the boyhood pals besides had arguments, with Wu typically taking a little extremist stance than his buddy. “I work the Communist Manifesto successful the eighth grade,” says Doctorow. “It was beauteous reasonable.” Though the brace mislaid touch, they reconnected implicit the past mates of decades and are present friendlier than ever.

The narration is worthy mentioning due to the fact that Wu—law professor, erstwhile FTC adviser, and Joe Biden’s peculiar adjunct for exertion and contention policy—just published a publication called The Age of Extraction—a high-minded companion to Doctorow’s gritty polemic. Both of them explicate however tech platforms, erstwhile they get their claws successful you, displacement from serving you to serving themselves. As you mightiness expect, Wu’s mentation tilts heavy toward the thought that our existent Gilded-Age-level user maltreatment should beryllium tamed by assertive antitrust action.

Like a authoritative skillfully laying retired a case, Wu explains however platforms similar Amazon, Google, and Meta usage their marketplace powerfulness and stickiness to exploit people’s habits and laziness. Ultimately, platforms extract their users’ money–through higher prices arsenic good arsenic fees and taxes levied astatine developers who usage the platforms for commerce. The publication poses a question regarding concern empires: “How tin their powerfulness beryllium balanced to guarantee wide prosperity for everyone?” Wu’s reply successful portion reverts to history—how regulators tamed AT&T, IBM, and others, and however technological advances similar the net reshuffled the platform and enabled caller players to participate the market.

This is simply a spot astatine likelihood with the different premise of the book—that if regulators don't curb level power, “we hazard a aboriginal successful which our technologies assistance marque the part and resentment that is the curse of our age.” Left hanging is the cardinal question of the adjacent 4 years—what are the chances that the Trump medication gets it right?

Extract Nation

In my view, Wu is simply a nationalist treasure. He coined the word nett neutrality. (The concept—which assures nondiscriminatory entree to platforms—has been momentarily beaten down by the courts.) During the Biden days, he, on with FTC seat Lina Khan and adjunct lawyer wide for antitrust Jonathan Kanter, helped thaw retired what helium calls Antitrust Winter, a free-for-all epoch of firm consolidation and anticompetitive practices that empowered Big Tech.

He’s besides a bully writer. One felicitous instrumentality successful his container is the invocation of obscure, adjacent past precedents that supply illuminating insights into modern conundrums. To explicate the worth of nett neutrality, Wu tells the communicative of a 14^th period Englishwoman who was refused lodging astatine a agrarian inn for unspecified reasons, and recovered herself abandoned successful the dark; her palmy tribunal situation established the rule that a “public house” indispensable beryllium unfastened to the public.

The Age of Extraction is the 3rd successful a trilogy consisting of The Master Switch (about the value of unfastened platforms) and The Attention Merchants (which focused connected however societal media and online ads infected the media ecosystem).