"And it's important to note that the reason those firms (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) were allowed to grow as large as they have, the reason that state regulators turned such a blind eye, is because states view those firms as potential deputies for their own exercises of power."

They certainly work like deputies whenever an authoritarian pops up.

"We must abolish Mark Zuckerberg"

YES. And Musk. And spez. And all of these techtyrants.

No need to use an archive link for Doctorow's site. It's not paywalled and he deserves the clicks. Here it is for anyone who wants to give him some clicks.

The long near 0 interest rate made lending money so cheap. Once it started to rise it's easy to see how the tech sector has been overvalued. I think most people "knew" this but couldn't articulate it since the value of social networks was so high. I am hopeful we can see some of the businesses split up or burned.

Hopefully this will reduce the obsession with business and we can focus on helping people but I doubt it

Great article. It doesn't just have one salient point, it has a bunch of related points that reinforce the big one, and a ton of zinger quotes everywhere to make it memorable. My favorite is this:

Rather than devoting all our energy to keep Meta’s empire of oily rags from burning, we could devote ourselves to evacuating the burn zone.

It's honestly amazing that perhaps the aspect of technology that has most profoundly shaped peoples lives during the 2010s has turned out to be almost completely financially unsustainable