Unraveling the Power of Big Tech: A Review of The Internet Con
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by Jacob Pleasants
According to Cory Doctorow, Big Tech companies (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon) are monopolies, but they aren’t anything special. In fact, many industries are currently dominated by a very small number of firms (for a recent discussion of how this has occurred in the meat industry, see Chloe Sorvino’s Raw Deal). And as much as the leaders of Big Tech might want us to believe that their dominance is due to their having truly created the best possible products, Doctorow rejects such claims of technical brilliance. Facebook, for instance, may have many users, but that does not necessarily mean that they are particularly happy users. If people dislike the products, though, why don’t they just switch? This proves to be one of the central questions of The Internet Con.
Doctorow, C. & (2023). The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. Verso. 192 pages. ISBN: 978-1804291245.
Review by Jacob Pleasants
The short answer to this question is that Big Tech companies have solidified their monopolies by imposing high “switching costs.” Want to leave Facebook? Well, say goodbye to all those photos and contacts that you’ve curated over the years. Oh, and you won’t be able to send messages to all of those Facebook users and groups, either. Part of this comes back to network effects: it’s hard to leave a platform if that’s where all the people are, even if nobody really wants to be there. But there is a more subtle dimension to those high switching costs, one that Big Tech has deliberately - and artificially - created.
What makes Big Tech different from, say, meatpacking is that the core technology (computing) has technical features that should actually reduce switching costs. Namely: computers are universal. Every computer has the technical capacity to run any piece of software. Doctorow argues that this feature ought to make it very hard for monopolistic companies to control their customers and fend off competitors. In theory, for instance, it is absolutely possible to create a rival social networking platform that would allow new users to migrate all of their content (photos, posts, contacts, etc.) from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. It should also be possible for the users on this new platform to interact with users on different platforms without having to create separate accounts. This is possible because, Doctorow argues, computing technologies are inherently interoperable. So, how is it that so many tech companies have managed to create walled gardens in the face of that interoperability?
As Doctorow tells it, tech companies maintain their dominance not through technical prowess but through legal codes. An illustrative case here is printer ink. We all know that we are paying out the ears for a new cartridge of printer ink. Why hasn’t a third party seller come in to sell “generic” ink cartridges at a fraction of the cost? Well, it’s because when you buy a printer, there is a bit of code that checks to see if the microchip in the printer cartridge is one from the manufacturer. If it isn’t, the printer will simply refuse to work (even if it technically could work just fine). The funny thing is, though, these “locking” mechanisms are not actually all that difficult to crack. Many companies, in fact, barely put all that much effort into making them particularly secure. And that’s because the security of these locks lies not in the technical code, but in the legal code. In short: it’s a felony to bypass one of these locks. Companies erect legal walls around their gardens, not technical ones.
This is truly a frustrating revelation. Not only does our legal system seem to be impotent when it comes to actually enforcing antitrust (by, say, breaking up these monopolies outright), it actually hands companies the tools they need to maintain monopolistic control. The Internet Con not only names the problem but traces its legal history, touching on multiple cases and issues of copyright and trademarking in recent decades.
Many of the historical cases that Doctorow describes could be books (or at least chapters) unto themselves. For instance, as I read Doctorow’s relatively brief discussion of how the copyright and “locking” battles played out in the videogame industry, I very much found myself wanting to know more (this recent piece by the Verge gives a deeper dive into some of it, and it is fascinating). This is not necessarily a critique of the book. The Internet Con proceeds at a brisk pace (coming in at a slim 192 pages), and Doctorow does justice to the complex events and issues that he surveys. The Internet Con is not meant to be a deep history, and the way that Doctorow weaves together so many fascinating cases and events encourages further reading and inquiry in a good way.
What I found most satisfying about The Internet Con is that Doctorow offers up a solution to the mess in which we find ourselves. Sure, we could wait for antitrust suits to break up the big tech companies, and maybe that would be helpful (more power to Lena Khan!). But instead, we could de-monopolize these companies by simply enabling the interoperability of which the technologies are fundamentally capable. Doctorow especially highlights the importance of “adversarial interoperability,” which is what would be happening in the hypothetical “rival social media platform” discussed above. In essence, this is what allows rival companies to compete with tech giants despite the size differential.
We can unlock adversarial interoperability by simply changing the laws that currently make it illegal to do so. If we wanted to be more proactive, we could use regulations to force companies to be interoperable (as the European Union has recently done). Doctorow is not naive about such changes, and devotes the last sections of the book to wrestling with the complications that would ensue from those policy shifts. Even with those caveats, the argument that Doctorow puts forth is a compelling one, and worthy of serious consideration.
A Very Brief Summary
*Tech companies exert monopolistic control by imposing high switching costs
*High switching costs are upheld by legal systems that prevent rivals from creating alternatives
*Computing technology is inherently interoperable, which should reduce switching costs
*By changing protectionist laws and regulations, interoperability would unwind the big tech monopolies - without having to rely on antitrust litigation