and yet they're still wildly understating the problem.
Google isn't going for a competitive advantage - their goal is to put us in an inescapable stranglehold. There's a reason @pluralistic & others refer to the way things currently work, especially (but not exclusively) in the digital realm, as #ChokepointCapitalism
"Not using Google will be a hassle" isn't an acceptable argument. We can deal with this & foot the bill it now - or pay a far steeper price later.
“Amazon tracks the phrases we highlight, the words we look up, who else is reading from the same address. All this allows it to deduce the most intimate information about our lives…Public libraries have some of this same information and guard it fiercely, but Amazon feeds it into an insatiable machine designed to extract maximum profit.”
#Spotify zahlt mies, bei Nicht-Mainstream Künstler:innen kommen wenn überhaupt Centbeträge an, bei solchen mit weniger als 1.000 Streams gar nichts mehr. Von 100 Millionen Titeln bleiben ca 66 Millionen unter der Schwelle von 1.000 Streams. Wohin geht also das Geld? Zu wenigen Großen.
Hier in der Podcastfolge wird vorgerechnet, wie das zustande kommt.
Das ist auch für Autor:innen relevant, weil das Vergütungsmodell Schule macht und Amazon ein ähnliches Modell jetzt bei Streams auf Twitch fährt. Es ist schon am Horizont und könnte auch für Bücher von Indie-Autor:innen zuschlagen. Weniger als x Bücher im Quartal verkauft? Dann geht dein Anteil an die Rechteinhaber, die viel verkauft haben, also große Verlagshäuser. https://www.heise.de/news/Twitch-Amazon-passt-Monetarisierung-auf-seiner-Streamingplattform-an-9607405.html
Dieses Vergütungsmodell sollten wir also dringend a) im Auge behalten, b) aufhören, #Spotify –und auch #Twitch – zu nutzen und c) auch unsere #Podcast.s nicht dort listen, weil das Modell aus Sicht von Kreativen und aus Solidarität mit den kreativen Kolleg:innen in der Musik einfach nur verachtenswert ist und in Folge auch unsere eigene Existenz bedroht. #CreativeIndustry#Rechteverwertung#Rechteinhaber#ChokepointCapitalism#SlurpUpEconomics
Ich empfehle sehr das Buch von Cory Doctorow und Rebecca Giblin: "Chokepoint Capitalism", in dem sie die Geschäftsmodelle von Spotify, Amazon und großen Verlagshäusern sehr verständlich runterbrechen. Das Nachfolge-Buch "The Internet Con" kann ich auch nur wärmstens ans Herz legen. Und dann sollten wir Kreativen uns mal zusammensetzen, wie wir unser eigenes Modell aufziehen und diese #SlurpUpEconomics hinter uns lassen. #CreativeIndustry#Rechteverwertung#Rechteinhaber#ChokepointCapitalism
I've been playing online Scrabble with a relative who uses an Amazon Fire. Although this is an Android device, Amazon has their own app store (which doesn't include the official Scrabble GO app), because chokepoint capitalism.
(I am aware that there is an elaborate workaround for this, but it would involve setting up a gmail account for them.)
I keep having eyebrow raising moments reading the book #ChokepointCapitalism. This one being: the factual news is hidden behind paywalls, while the news articles based on lies are free.
I just finished the second chapter of #ChokepointCapitalism by @pluralistic and Rebecca Giblin, and I can already give this one a highly recommend. It’s one thing to be angry at the state of the world, but it’s strangely comforting to see exactly how we got here.
PSA: Read #EventBrite's new #ToS very carefully - section 9 requires you to use arbitration and reduces the ability for you to make a class action against them.
This is another example of #enshittification (per @pluralistic) and Rebecca Giblin's work on #ChokepointCapitalism - this sort of clause is one of the ways of creating a chokepoint and reducing the power users of a platform have, while concentrating power in the hands of the platform.
With the news that Amazon/Audible is now offering an ai narrator conversion beta for books in KDP Select...but that the resulting audiobooks will be offered in an all-you-can-eat Audible Plus subscription model, means that author royalties will likely take another dive (just like musicians have experienced with streaming on Spotify). That's not even taking into account the effect on narrators. More in my blog.
✨ Great interview about #ChokepointCapitalism with Doctorow @pluralistic on how a handful businesses control market "choke points" where their leverage makes both producers and customers worse off.
I'm thinking #OpenSource developers similarly are allowing themselves to be exploited by businesses depending on their work.
This is by (license) choice of course, and likewise not sustainable.
Is it really OK to exploit Vocational Awe this way?
This week on my podcast, I read my recent @medium column, "How To Think About #Scraping: In #privacy and #labor fights, copyright is a clumsy tool at best," which proposes ways to retain the benefits of scraping without the privacy and labor harms that sometimes accompany it:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
As #RebeccaGiblin and I write in our book #ChokepointCapitalism, in a market with five giant publishers, four studios, three labels, two app platforms and one ebook/audiobook company, giving creative workers more copyright is like giving your bullied kid extra lunch money. The more money you give that kid, the more money the bullies will take:
It's been 21 years since #BillWillingham launched #Fables, his 110-issue, wide-ranging, delightful and brilliantly crafted author-owned comic series that imagines that the folkloric figures of the world's fairytales are real people, who live in a secret society whose internal struggles and intersections with the mundane world are the source of endless drama.
Giblin and I wrote a whole-ass book about this and related subjects, #ChokepointCapitalism, which not only details the scams that writers like Willingham are subject to, but also devotes fully half its length to presenting detailed, technical, shovel-ready proposals for making life better for creators:
If you're frustrated by the #ChokepointCapitalism of the film/TV/streaming industry so aptly described by @pluralistic & Rebecca Giblin and have ever found yourself enjoying the work of actors, writers, and production crew without... actually paying for it, maybe now is a good time to contribute to the #WGA & #SAGAFTRA#union#strike and #solidarity funds: