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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.
I've found this also. He's a liberal with zero class analysis or materialist literacy. If you've ever read his books, like his main one, enshittification, it reads like a middle-school age baby leftist wrote it.
It's a testament to the sad state of US and canadian education that he's considered a pioneer in any field.
I've read his newsletter and that was enough.
There's going to be a great need to properly educate the working class in the west before there's much hope of socialism gaining any traction. They keep people just educated enough to innoculate them against critical thinking. I forget the exact statistics, but a depressing number of people have not read a single book in their entire adult lives.
Is there a book or well cited investigations I can read more on this history? I have always suspected it but I want to learn the facts.
There was an old episode of TrueAnon about the links between Epstein (and the CIA) to MIT that went over some of this stuff. I'm sure there's probably a book or article about it somewhere, but I don't have any better citation at the moment.
Corry Doctorow is a hack who stole his theory of entshitification from me. He's incapable of thinking of anything by himself which is why you'll see him milking this for as long as he can, because he's a hack.
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.
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.
China is doing internet right?
They're sovereign.
American tech companies. American national security organs cannot touch them, cannot put the hurt on them. They are independent and there is nothing Meta, Google, Oracle, etc can do to them. Look at Europe, look at the rest of the world on Facebook and Oracle products with a big gun right at their temple held in the CIA's hand if they do something the US doesn't like. China doesn't have that gun at its head and because of that China can be truly sovereign from the US.
That's a single positive. Not "doing it right". What china has isn't even internet. Its intranet with some exceptions. Not to mention what the USA has also isn't truly internet but it's somewhat closer.
As someone who has lived in China for many years, including now, I have to say it's really not great for accessing the World Wide Web. Within China, the accessible internet is basically a Chinese national intranet. Which is not terrible if you are a native Chinese speaker, I guess. They censor because the US sending out massive propaganda. But China's government is producing a lot of domestic propaganda, too. Different goals - the US to destabilize and take over, China to stabilize and maintain support for the system.
As I have lived here many years, I've put in a great deal of effort to learn the language. Unfortunately, with limited results. Learning to read and write in Chinese requires a structured learning environment and about 10 years of focus for most people. Due to illiteracy in Chinese I can't just switch to using the Chinese intranet. And the government keeps cracking down on VPNs. It can be very frustrating accessing the internet outside the GFW. And frankly there is a lot of useful and interesting content that exists outside the GFW.
Totally understand your point. Iran has also imported the intranet bullshit from china.
cry ab it