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The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust
(thewalrus.ca)
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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It's so hard for me to read anything by Cory Doctorow or Ed Zitron these days because there's always this giant, gaping void where class analysis should be. Is this the time they finally connect the dots, I ask myself? No! It's never the time. It's always enshittification this and business idiots that and never, ever a single whisper about capital. Brian Merchant and Ed Ongweso Jr. are much better in this regard - if you haven't read anything by them I recommend you start.
As to the actual content here, this is precisely what the internet was always created to be. Do you think the ~~DoD~~ sorry, DoW created this as a happy accident? Just to help people? It's always been intended as an anti-informational weapon and a surveillance network in-one. And all the attempts by vassal states to wriggle out of the trap will prove futile. China is the only country handling it the right way, and no capitalist nation will ever have the motivation to follow their example. There's too much money to be made in making their own little tech fiefdoms.
What no class analysis does to a MFer.
The National Security Hawks in the US are in on the surveillance, feeding the data to AI, and churning out lists of targets to eventually drone strike - domestically and abroad.
Can someone connect me with these National Security Hawks that are for actual privacy and autonomy, instead of their own stupid surveillance states? Because I'm convinced Doctorow is making them up in hopes of inciting their existence.
His pitch of "stealing American Trillions to keep Billions" is enticing and elegant, but flies in the face of All of the political Momentum. I wish to flee to his first country to destroy American Copyright in favor of their own national sovereignty! But not even France is taking this step in declaring "independence" from American Tech.
He's Canadian, so he seems to be under the impression that the Canadian equivalents aren't working with the CIA (though they absolutely are). No vassal state is going to make such a move when they all know what happens to those that step out of line; the empire will have to be way more collapsed before the EU and Canada start testing their leashes.
What no class analysis does to a MFer.
The National Security Hawks in the US are in on the surveillance, feeding the data to AI, and churning out lists of targets to eventually drone strike - domestically and abroad.
Can someone connect me with these National Security Hawks that are for actual privacy and autonomy, instead of their own stupid surveillance states? Because I'm convinced Doctorow is making them up in hopes of inciting their existence.
His pitch of "stealing American Trillions to keep Billions" is enticing and elegant, but flies in the face of All of the political Momentum. I wish to flee to his first country to destroy American Copyright in favor of their own national sovereignty! But not even France is taking this step.
I agree, without applying a materialist lens, you just end up discussing symptoms endlessly and ignoring the actual mechanics of the system responsible for producing these outcomes. This is another example I just ran across today where the author is discovering the contradictions of capitalism from first principles. https://www.owenmcgrann.com/p/the-dead-economy-theory
Thanks for the link. I found it very interesting.
I don’t know what Doctorow’s politics are now, but I know he was deep in the dot-com libertarian milieu 30 years ago.
That doesn't surprise me. I think he's probably a socdem at best these days, specifically the kind of lib that thinks that we are in Bad Capitalism and if we just trust bust enough, we can go back to Good Capitalism, and all the smaller companies definitely won't just devour each other and repeal regulations, putting us in this exact position or worse in another 20-30 years.
China is doing internet right?
china has a lot of people online to push its agenda.
cry ab it