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Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy
The book that started the Techlash. A stinging polemic that traces the destructive monopolization of the Internet by Google, Facebook and Amazon, and that proposes a new future for musicians, journalists, authors and filmmakers in the digital age. Move Fast and Break Things is the riveting account of a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs who in the 1990s began to hijack the original decentralized vision of the Internet, in the process creating three monopoly firms -- Facebook, Amazon, and Google -- that now determine the future of the music, film, television, publishing and news industries. Jonathan Taplin offers a succinct and powerful history of how online life began to be shaped around the values of the men who founded these companies, including Peter Thiel and Larry overlooking piracy of books, music, and film while hiding behind opaque business practices and subordinating the privacy of individual users in order to create the surveillance-marketing monoculture in which we now live. The enormous profits that have come with this concentration of power tell their own story. Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70 percent; book publishing, film, and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Today, Google's YouTube controls 60 percent of all streaming-audio business but pay for only 11 percent of the total streaming-audio revenues artists receive. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to the creators and owners of that content. The stakes here go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, as well as music and other forms of entertainment, from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.
321 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 18, 2017
266 people are currently reading
4837 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Taplin
13 books60 followersJonathan Taplin Bio
Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of The Concert For Bangladesh and major films in the ’70s for Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders and Gus Van Sant, an executive at Merrill Lynch’s Media Mergers and Acquisition Group in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock and Roll Life and the forthcoming The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Medium, The Washington Monthly and the Wall Street Journal. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the Chairman of the Americana Music Foundation.
Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of The Concert For Bangladesh and major films in the ’70s for Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders and Gus Van Sant, an executive at Merrill Lynch’s Media Mergers and Acquisition Group in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock and Roll Life and the forthcoming The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Medium, The Washington Monthly and the Wall Street Journal. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the Chairman of the Americana Music Foundation.
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July 20, 2017
Move Fast and Break Things made me angry. Why? Because I really wanted the book to be great. Alas, it isn't. Let me explain.
I'm very sympathetic to Taplin's general thesis: Yes, the internet broke the traditional media system. Yes, the downward spiral that followed hurt exactly the wrong people, the creators. Yes, the giant internet platforms of our era - particularly Google, Facebook, and Amazon - certainly show monopolistic traits. And yes, the libertarian school-of-thought Taplin depicts in his book should cause suspicion. All those topics are important.
It might surprise you, given my opening remarks, but I'm also with Taplin on many of the solutions he proposes. I'm a proponent of re-decentralizing the web, I regard subsidiarity as an important and very useful organizing principle (especially in complex systems), and I'm a friend of platform co-operativism (though it has limitations). I don't even think that Taplin's most radical claim is beyond reason: he suggests to declare the web's big platforms as public utilities (using a similar model as with AT&T in the 50s). Particularities aside, I indeed think that platform ownership is going to be an important, decisive debate over the next one or two decades.
Why, then, did the book enrage me?
Well, Taplin is a good storyteller and he makes some interesting observations about culture. However, he is not a good analyst, particularly not when it comes to business. The reason I state that? His book lacks nuance and he picks his examples rather selectively.
Most of Taplin's criticism of the internet economy and its influence on the media and entertaining industry reads like a 101 of mainstream media internet aversion: Google took all the ad dollars without paying for content. Internet companies detest copyright laws. Peter Thiel is the archetypical Silicon Valley protagonist. And so forth.
But Taplin's critical observation ability all-to-often seems to stop when it comes to his peers in the media and entertainment industry. Several important aspects go unnoticed. Why isn't there a chapter on old media's severe omission to adapt their business model to the internet (hint: even in a web without an ad platform duopoly, advertising wouldn't earn them the profits physical media granted them; zero marginal costs are inherent to digital goods, with or without Google).
Taplin complains that the internet put creators in a tough spot and, a few pages later, argues (correctly) that Hollywood - all too focused on low volatility - became a superhero franchise assembly line. Wouldn't it be fair, then, to at least mention that Netflix - an internet business - has likely become the biggest buyer of indie movies?
Why does the book contain some very recent data - the manuscript was clearly handed in after the Trump election - but portraits music streaming at the state of circa 2015? Maybe because writing a book takes time and keeping data up-to-date is tough; but maybe because it would have ruined some of the author's arguments had he used current data. Streaming revenue didn't only take over sales as the music labels' biggest revenue source, it even brought growth back to the industry. Something it hadn't seen in over a decade.
Also, Taplin often doesn't distinguish between creators and media companies. But doing that is critical. While the internet renders many old media business models obsolete, creators - particularly those with an entrepreneurial mindset - have gained some very interesting new opportunities. The missing Netflix would have been a case in point. Taplin wonders how the TV industry can avoid the same downward spiral that caught the music industry. If he really is primarily worried about creators, not incumbent businesses, he makes a mistake many media industry veterans make regularly. He assumes that the old way is the only way to finance the creation of "quality content" and proper art. But that's not the case. As the Netflix case would have shown.
These are only a few examples of Taplins rather lopsided analysis. There are several others in the book. And this makes me mad (and sad!).
Partial analysis comes with several problems. It's questionable per se. But we don't have to get into ethics. There are very mundane reasons to oppose it, too. First, analysis that's based on such lopsided representation is flawed by definition. Which, often, leads to wrong conclusions in turn.
Most importantly, though, both the work and the author become vulnerable. Even if only parts of the analysis are one-sided, while other points are perfectly valid (as is the case in this book), readers who aren't convinced of the presented position anyway, will likely disregard all arguments as soon as they perceive the work to be partial.
And that is the essence of my anger. Taplin wrote a book about important topics. He addresses issues that deserve to be heard and thought about. And, critically, not only by Taplin's media peers but also by the tech and founder community. Because even if Taplin portraits the tech community (by and large) as a bunch of little Peter Thiel's, technologically savvy entrepreneurs need to be part of the solution.
Alas, many of them likely won't finish the book. And that's a shame.
For additional context: I cover related topics on my blog attentionecono.me where I write about the intersection of tech, media and digital business.
I'm very sympathetic to Taplin's general thesis: Yes, the internet broke the traditional media system. Yes, the downward spiral that followed hurt exactly the wrong people, the creators. Yes, the giant internet platforms of our era - particularly Google, Facebook, and Amazon - certainly show monopolistic traits. And yes, the libertarian school-of-thought Taplin depicts in his book should cause suspicion. All those topics are important.
It might surprise you, given my opening remarks, but I'm also with Taplin on many of the solutions he proposes. I'm a proponent of re-decentralizing the web, I regard subsidiarity as an important and very useful organizing principle (especially in complex systems), and I'm a friend of platform co-operativism (though it has limitations). I don't even think that Taplin's most radical claim is beyond reason: he suggests to declare the web's big platforms as public utilities (using a similar model as with AT&T in the 50s). Particularities aside, I indeed think that platform ownership is going to be an important, decisive debate over the next one or two decades.
Why, then, did the book enrage me?
Well, Taplin is a good storyteller and he makes some interesting observations about culture. However, he is not a good analyst, particularly not when it comes to business. The reason I state that? His book lacks nuance and he picks his examples rather selectively.
Most of Taplin's criticism of the internet economy and its influence on the media and entertaining industry reads like a 101 of mainstream media internet aversion: Google took all the ad dollars without paying for content. Internet companies detest copyright laws. Peter Thiel is the archetypical Silicon Valley protagonist. And so forth.
But Taplin's critical observation ability all-to-often seems to stop when it comes to his peers in the media and entertainment industry. Several important aspects go unnoticed. Why isn't there a chapter on old media's severe omission to adapt their business model to the internet (hint: even in a web without an ad platform duopoly, advertising wouldn't earn them the profits physical media granted them; zero marginal costs are inherent to digital goods, with or without Google).
Taplin complains that the internet put creators in a tough spot and, a few pages later, argues (correctly) that Hollywood - all too focused on low volatility - became a superhero franchise assembly line. Wouldn't it be fair, then, to at least mention that Netflix - an internet business - has likely become the biggest buyer of indie movies?
Why does the book contain some very recent data - the manuscript was clearly handed in after the Trump election - but portraits music streaming at the state of circa 2015? Maybe because writing a book takes time and keeping data up-to-date is tough; but maybe because it would have ruined some of the author's arguments had he used current data. Streaming revenue didn't only take over sales as the music labels' biggest revenue source, it even brought growth back to the industry. Something it hadn't seen in over a decade.
Also, Taplin often doesn't distinguish between creators and media companies. But doing that is critical. While the internet renders many old media business models obsolete, creators - particularly those with an entrepreneurial mindset - have gained some very interesting new opportunities. The missing Netflix would have been a case in point. Taplin wonders how the TV industry can avoid the same downward spiral that caught the music industry. If he really is primarily worried about creators, not incumbent businesses, he makes a mistake many media industry veterans make regularly. He assumes that the old way is the only way to finance the creation of "quality content" and proper art. But that's not the case. As the Netflix case would have shown.
These are only a few examples of Taplins rather lopsided analysis. There are several others in the book. And this makes me mad (and sad!).
Partial analysis comes with several problems. It's questionable per se. But we don't have to get into ethics. There are very mundane reasons to oppose it, too. First, analysis that's based on such lopsided representation is flawed by definition. Which, often, leads to wrong conclusions in turn.
Most importantly, though, both the work and the author become vulnerable. Even if only parts of the analysis are one-sided, while other points are perfectly valid (as is the case in this book), readers who aren't convinced of the presented position anyway, will likely disregard all arguments as soon as they perceive the work to be partial.
And that is the essence of my anger. Taplin wrote a book about important topics. He addresses issues that deserve to be heard and thought about. And, critically, not only by Taplin's media peers but also by the tech and founder community. Because even if Taplin portraits the tech community (by and large) as a bunch of little Peter Thiel's, technologically savvy entrepreneurs need to be part of the solution.
Alas, many of them likely won't finish the book. And that's a shame.
For additional context: I cover related topics on my blog attentionecono.me where I write about the intersection of tech, media and digital business.
September 1, 2018
This book wasn’t what I was expecting. I guess that’s what I get for not reading past Break Things.
Move Fast and Break Things is a biased work in which a guy who spent his career in the music industry bemoans the death of that golden goose and blames tech for the plight of the modern artist.
It’s well-written. The pacing is perfect, but the underlying arguments, specifically those centered around the state of content creation, are flawed. Many of the later sections are quite good, but chapter one is particularly bad. I found it difficult to organize my thoughts, so here’s what I have to say.
Chapter 1
The first argument is that social networks are responsible for the proliferation of what was called fake news during the 2016 election cycle. Facebook’s main purpose is to curate content. Then, due to various external pressures, it moderates some content too. But I can’t understand the outrage surrounding fake news (well—I can—it’s because the bad guy won) because we as citizens have a duty to verify the authenticity of the news we view. People act like Facebook was running a ticker tape with fake news headlines. It wasn’t. It was just highlighting what most people were sharing and often this came from sites with no news credentials whatsoever. This was pronounced because everyone’s parents had joined Facebook since the last election cycle, so they didn’t view articles with titles like “Lil Wayne dies of Lean overdose” with the same suspicion as my generation.
The next point in chapter one is that studies have shown that 98% of people can’t begin to understand the implications of the internet. This is scary, but, having run a consumer-facing business on Instagram, I have to believe that this is true. And it generally helps push forward the arguments in this book.
Then we get to Peter Thiel and other megarich people wanting to prolong their lives into the 100s. I say let them. Eventually that technology will trickle down to me. Nay, says the author, for some reason this means that the average man’s life expectancy will fall to 60.
There is the argument about Amazon decimating the book industry. My family has held many different posts in the book industry, including, most recently, running a packaging and warehousing business, until—yeah—we closed up shop. The employees had lucrative layoff packages because the publisher we contracted for was able to prove in court that eBooks destroyed the print business and that, since eBook readers’ manufacturers were located overseas, the jobs were effectively outsourced. Did I cry over it this cruel twist of fate? Of course I did! We could no longer afford to pay my college tuition! But at the end, in all honesty, there was no point in scapegoating Amazon. The paradigm shifted, it took 15 years for us to feel the pain, and we were left behind fair and square.
The author talks about a lot of things such as income inequality, but, as is common amongst liberals, he frames otherwise innocuous words and phrases in a way that makes them seem dirty. I can tolerate this if it’s accompanied by some explanation, but it never is, and these sections are worthless.
It seems that musicians really have it rough these days. But is it such a terrible thing that mediocre musicians need day jobs? I can’t sympathize.
TimBL
There’s a lot of talk about Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the internet. There is a notion that he didn’t use his invention to enrich himself because he wanted to forever be known as the white knight (he literally has been knighted) who didn’t create a monopoly. The author mentions how TimBL is still dependent on government funding for his research and how that must be such a bad life. But he seems to forget that there are only a couple of companies that have monopolistic control over their segments of the internet. Of those, they all became monopolies sort of by accident. Is it not a possibility that Tim Berners-Lee didn’t fully understand what opportunities there were for generating profit on the internet? He’s had almost 30 years to latch on to one project that interests him and ride it to IPO. If the man wanted cash money he could have obtained it in a way that didn’t involve sullying his reputation.
Peter Thiel
Chapter 4 is the worst chapter in the book. The author takes aim at Peter Thiel and his controversial book The Diversity Myth. I just read it and find the author’s criticisms to be laughable. Particularly funny is that the author claims it is hypocritical that Peter Thiel, who is gay, spoke out against the collective behaviors of certain groups gay people in the book. If anything, Peter Thiel being gay and writing what he did in the book demonstrates even greater conviction in his beliefs.
Further, the author criticizes Peter Thiel’s takedown of Gawker. Peter Thiel didn’t like Gawker because the website ousted him as gay. The article was published while Thiel was in Saudi Arabia, the most homophobic place on Earth. Also, Thiel had friends whose reputations were damaged by Gawker coverage. It makes sense to me why he’d cut a couple million loose and try to take down the operation. Also omitted by the author is the Gawker ignored the court order from the first ruling (actually, openly mocked it), and that is what sent the website down the digital drain.
Chapter 5 Missteps
It is suggested that it is a bad thing that Google decided to index the entire world wide web. You know, they didn’t ask for permission. The author forgets that indexing was already recognized as a major need (at least by academics) and that, before search engines, websites would be listed in haphazard phonebook-like directories. I cringe at the thought.
Then the author pretends that early YouTube is the YouTube of today in that “all music,” even copyrighted music, is available there (with the insinuation that most of it isn’t hosted in a way that benefits the artist) and is easy to upload. Later in the book, he contradicts this directly by admitting that YouTube has an extremely strict ID system that can catch and prevent virtually any copyrighted track from being posted. Anyone who creates content on the site knows this because they have been affected by it. Very early YouTube (2007) was the wild west, but I don’t agree that any website should have to devout significant resources to moderating copyrighted content unless that website’s express purpose is distributing copyrighted content (Megaupload).
The Band vs The Bandits
I have to give it to Joseph Taplin, who wrote this book and was also the ex-manager of a group known as The Band. Back in 2012, he debated Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian over many of the points recounted in the book. The debate was centered around the fact that The Band’s Levon Helm had cancer and no longer could pay his bills due to the need to tour to make a living. Alexis, after proudly proclaiming that he downloaded copyrighted works for free, tried to get in the last word by sending an open letter. Between that letter being sent and Taplin responding, Levon Helm passed away. Taplin’s eventual response was soul-crushing. It was recounted in this book and it was powerful. If you don’t read the book, you need to look up the exchange, because, though it’s ancient history now, it encapsulates what this debate is all about.
I believe that the internet has empowered the modern content creator. Back in the golden days where the A&R “took care of you” and all that—that’s because any major label’s roster could only support so many artists. If you sounded like The Beatles in the 1960’s, you were that group that sounded like The Beatles and you could make a couple pence playing at your local pub. Sure, the income distribution has become way more stratified, but at least you have a chance now. In the past, everyone aside from exceptional talents needed a lot of luck and sex appeal to make it. Now, it’s totally possible to make it from SoundCloud to the big time. Especially as a rapper, producer, or instrumentalist. In the past, you’d have a demo tape and would have to pray that you could get it into the right hands. Now, artist discovery is easier than ever. The music industry is based on touring and performing, and that’s not great because older artists who aren’t superstars, like Levon Helm, can’t make the same living. If it’s any consolation, I enjoy the current atmosphere because music consumption is so much more democratic. Most kids don’t grow up listening to the radio anymore. Aside from the Grammy’s, there’s no centralized body telling you what to listen to or telling artists what to say. I think that’s a good thing.
Also, was Netflix excluded because it didn’t fit into the narrative? My take is that new age video streaming services (including YouTube Red) have breathed a new life (and a hell of a lot of new money) into a nearly-dead industry. The author must have hit the skip button there.
Chapter 8
I’m going to say it—I like targeted ads. If there’s a server out there crunching all my data and determining what it is that I want, I’m all for it. I picked up cigar smoking as a hobby because I received a targeted ad for Cigars International. I purchased lip balm the other day because something out there made the educated guess that my lips were dry and knew that I preferred Burt’s Bees.
There’s the idea that it’s wrong for Facebook to treat us as lab rats. Every successful website on the internet treats users like lab rats. In the tech world, it’s called A-B testing and it’s where we display different things to different users. Sometimes at random; sometimes not. Facebook’s attempting to influence users’ moods does sound a bit extreme, but that’s all A-B testing is—seeing if different user segments respond differently to different versions of a site experience.
Kim Dotcom was a Loser
After spending his early life as a petty criminal, Kim Dotcom rose to prominence as the founder of Megaupload, which was one of the top torrent sites between 2005 and 2012. He hid behind the veil of being DMCA compliant, which basically means that the site owner has a duty to comply with all reasonable takedown requests. The only problem with Megaupload was that, by my estimate, 97% of the content on the site was infringing on copyrights.
In irony that has already been lost to the sands of time, major artists endorsed Megaupload. I remember visiting the site and seeing the hottest artists of the day coaxing me to rip their entire catalogues. What a strange few years those were!
Mr. Dotcom’s political ideology never became mainstream and the service he provided was parasitic. It’s no wonder that, once he got busted and stuck in the legal system, everyone stopped caring. He was not a pariah. He just found an opportunity, abused vague copyright laws, and got booked.
The silver lining to all of this, and what I find most incredible, is that the successor to Megaupload, Mega, is an extremely popular filesharing service apparently used for legitimate purposes. It has over 50 million users and 20 billion files, but it’s no longer associated with Kim, so it’s hardly vindicating.
We Are Building Whole Sectors of the Digital Economy on the Concept of Addiction
Chapter 11 was when I started sending out texts telling people how good this book is. What’s said here almost makes up for the stumbles earlier in the book. Taplin discusses the “coliseum culture in which celebrities are thrown to the lions” with a level of clarity that no other writer has captured since the celebrity-throwing became a daily occurrence. If you pick this book up in a bookstore and only read one chapter, number eleven is what it needs to be.
Conclusion
Taplin makes a good effort but puts the blinders on when it is convenient for him. Sometimes his arguments sound like the college liberal. Other times, his lack of technical background causes prevailing logic to take a back seat. I don’t usually recommend books that I disagree with but I think this one is worth a look.
See this review and others on my blog
Move Fast and Break Things is a biased work in which a guy who spent his career in the music industry bemoans the death of that golden goose and blames tech for the plight of the modern artist.
It’s well-written. The pacing is perfect, but the underlying arguments, specifically those centered around the state of content creation, are flawed. Many of the later sections are quite good, but chapter one is particularly bad. I found it difficult to organize my thoughts, so here’s what I have to say.
Chapter 1
The first argument is that social networks are responsible for the proliferation of what was called fake news during the 2016 election cycle. Facebook’s main purpose is to curate content. Then, due to various external pressures, it moderates some content too. But I can’t understand the outrage surrounding fake news (well—I can—it’s because the bad guy won) because we as citizens have a duty to verify the authenticity of the news we view. People act like Facebook was running a ticker tape with fake news headlines. It wasn’t. It was just highlighting what most people were sharing and often this came from sites with no news credentials whatsoever. This was pronounced because everyone’s parents had joined Facebook since the last election cycle, so they didn’t view articles with titles like “Lil Wayne dies of Lean overdose” with the same suspicion as my generation.
The next point in chapter one is that studies have shown that 98% of people can’t begin to understand the implications of the internet. This is scary, but, having run a consumer-facing business on Instagram, I have to believe that this is true. And it generally helps push forward the arguments in this book.
Then we get to Peter Thiel and other megarich people wanting to prolong their lives into the 100s. I say let them. Eventually that technology will trickle down to me. Nay, says the author, for some reason this means that the average man’s life expectancy will fall to 60.
There is the argument about Amazon decimating the book industry. My family has held many different posts in the book industry, including, most recently, running a packaging and warehousing business, until—yeah—we closed up shop. The employees had lucrative layoff packages because the publisher we contracted for was able to prove in court that eBooks destroyed the print business and that, since eBook readers’ manufacturers were located overseas, the jobs were effectively outsourced. Did I cry over it this cruel twist of fate? Of course I did! We could no longer afford to pay my college tuition! But at the end, in all honesty, there was no point in scapegoating Amazon. The paradigm shifted, it took 15 years for us to feel the pain, and we were left behind fair and square.
The author talks about a lot of things such as income inequality, but, as is common amongst liberals, he frames otherwise innocuous words and phrases in a way that makes them seem dirty. I can tolerate this if it’s accompanied by some explanation, but it never is, and these sections are worthless.
It seems that musicians really have it rough these days. But is it such a terrible thing that mediocre musicians need day jobs? I can’t sympathize.
TimBL
There’s a lot of talk about Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the internet. There is a notion that he didn’t use his invention to enrich himself because he wanted to forever be known as the white knight (he literally has been knighted) who didn’t create a monopoly. The author mentions how TimBL is still dependent on government funding for his research and how that must be such a bad life. But he seems to forget that there are only a couple of companies that have monopolistic control over their segments of the internet. Of those, they all became monopolies sort of by accident. Is it not a possibility that Tim Berners-Lee didn’t fully understand what opportunities there were for generating profit on the internet? He’s had almost 30 years to latch on to one project that interests him and ride it to IPO. If the man wanted cash money he could have obtained it in a way that didn’t involve sullying his reputation.
Peter Thiel
Chapter 4 is the worst chapter in the book. The author takes aim at Peter Thiel and his controversial book The Diversity Myth. I just read it and find the author’s criticisms to be laughable. Particularly funny is that the author claims it is hypocritical that Peter Thiel, who is gay, spoke out against the collective behaviors of certain groups gay people in the book. If anything, Peter Thiel being gay and writing what he did in the book demonstrates even greater conviction in his beliefs.
Further, the author criticizes Peter Thiel’s takedown of Gawker. Peter Thiel didn’t like Gawker because the website ousted him as gay. The article was published while Thiel was in Saudi Arabia, the most homophobic place on Earth. Also, Thiel had friends whose reputations were damaged by Gawker coverage. It makes sense to me why he’d cut a couple million loose and try to take down the operation. Also omitted by the author is the Gawker ignored the court order from the first ruling (actually, openly mocked it), and that is what sent the website down the digital drain.
Chapter 5 Missteps
It is suggested that it is a bad thing that Google decided to index the entire world wide web. You know, they didn’t ask for permission. The author forgets that indexing was already recognized as a major need (at least by academics) and that, before search engines, websites would be listed in haphazard phonebook-like directories. I cringe at the thought.
Then the author pretends that early YouTube is the YouTube of today in that “all music,” even copyrighted music, is available there (with the insinuation that most of it isn’t hosted in a way that benefits the artist) and is easy to upload. Later in the book, he contradicts this directly by admitting that YouTube has an extremely strict ID system that can catch and prevent virtually any copyrighted track from being posted. Anyone who creates content on the site knows this because they have been affected by it. Very early YouTube (2007) was the wild west, but I don’t agree that any website should have to devout significant resources to moderating copyrighted content unless that website’s express purpose is distributing copyrighted content (Megaupload).
The Band vs The Bandits
I have to give it to Joseph Taplin, who wrote this book and was also the ex-manager of a group known as The Band. Back in 2012, he debated Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian over many of the points recounted in the book. The debate was centered around the fact that The Band’s Levon Helm had cancer and no longer could pay his bills due to the need to tour to make a living. Alexis, after proudly proclaiming that he downloaded copyrighted works for free, tried to get in the last word by sending an open letter. Between that letter being sent and Taplin responding, Levon Helm passed away. Taplin’s eventual response was soul-crushing. It was recounted in this book and it was powerful. If you don’t read the book, you need to look up the exchange, because, though it’s ancient history now, it encapsulates what this debate is all about.
I believe that the internet has empowered the modern content creator. Back in the golden days where the A&R “took care of you” and all that—that’s because any major label’s roster could only support so many artists. If you sounded like The Beatles in the 1960’s, you were that group that sounded like The Beatles and you could make a couple pence playing at your local pub. Sure, the income distribution has become way more stratified, but at least you have a chance now. In the past, everyone aside from exceptional talents needed a lot of luck and sex appeal to make it. Now, it’s totally possible to make it from SoundCloud to the big time. Especially as a rapper, producer, or instrumentalist. In the past, you’d have a demo tape and would have to pray that you could get it into the right hands. Now, artist discovery is easier than ever. The music industry is based on touring and performing, and that’s not great because older artists who aren’t superstars, like Levon Helm, can’t make the same living. If it’s any consolation, I enjoy the current atmosphere because music consumption is so much more democratic. Most kids don’t grow up listening to the radio anymore. Aside from the Grammy’s, there’s no centralized body telling you what to listen to or telling artists what to say. I think that’s a good thing.
Also, was Netflix excluded because it didn’t fit into the narrative? My take is that new age video streaming services (including YouTube Red) have breathed a new life (and a hell of a lot of new money) into a nearly-dead industry. The author must have hit the skip button there.
Chapter 8
I’m going to say it—I like targeted ads. If there’s a server out there crunching all my data and determining what it is that I want, I’m all for it. I picked up cigar smoking as a hobby because I received a targeted ad for Cigars International. I purchased lip balm the other day because something out there made the educated guess that my lips were dry and knew that I preferred Burt’s Bees.
There’s the idea that it’s wrong for Facebook to treat us as lab rats. Every successful website on the internet treats users like lab rats. In the tech world, it’s called A-B testing and it’s where we display different things to different users. Sometimes at random; sometimes not. Facebook’s attempting to influence users’ moods does sound a bit extreme, but that’s all A-B testing is—seeing if different user segments respond differently to different versions of a site experience.
Kim Dotcom was a Loser
After spending his early life as a petty criminal, Kim Dotcom rose to prominence as the founder of Megaupload, which was one of the top torrent sites between 2005 and 2012. He hid behind the veil of being DMCA compliant, which basically means that the site owner has a duty to comply with all reasonable takedown requests. The only problem with Megaupload was that, by my estimate, 97% of the content on the site was infringing on copyrights.
In irony that has already been lost to the sands of time, major artists endorsed Megaupload. I remember visiting the site and seeing the hottest artists of the day coaxing me to rip their entire catalogues. What a strange few years those were!
Mr. Dotcom’s political ideology never became mainstream and the service he provided was parasitic. It’s no wonder that, once he got busted and stuck in the legal system, everyone stopped caring. He was not a pariah. He just found an opportunity, abused vague copyright laws, and got booked.
The silver lining to all of this, and what I find most incredible, is that the successor to Megaupload, Mega, is an extremely popular filesharing service apparently used for legitimate purposes. It has over 50 million users and 20 billion files, but it’s no longer associated with Kim, so it’s hardly vindicating.
We Are Building Whole Sectors of the Digital Economy on the Concept of Addiction
Chapter 11 was when I started sending out texts telling people how good this book is. What’s said here almost makes up for the stumbles earlier in the book. Taplin discusses the “coliseum culture in which celebrities are thrown to the lions” with a level of clarity that no other writer has captured since the celebrity-throwing became a daily occurrence. If you pick this book up in a bookstore and only read one chapter, number eleven is what it needs to be.
Conclusion
Taplin makes a good effort but puts the blinders on when it is convenient for him. Sometimes his arguments sound like the college liberal. Other times, his lack of technical background causes prevailing logic to take a back seat. I don’t usually recommend books that I disagree with but I think this one is worth a look.
See this review and others on my blog
October 8, 2017
Uma ótima crítica ao poder que Google, Amazon, Apple e Facebook têm e as mudanças estão provocando, mas com uma visão falha/parcial em certo ponto.
Jonathan Taplin foi produtor de Bob Dylan e de vários filmes. Então o ponto de vista do livro é o de como a internet e as grandes corporações atuais empobreceram bastante a indústria da qual ele fez parte. Sobre isso, tem uma série de outros livros que já li na tag internet, falando mais ou menos o mesmo. Como indústrias que ainda não são reguladas estão lucrando muito com essa brecha.
O que Taplin trouxe de novo e me surpreendeu muito foi seu foco em pessoas como Peter Thiel e os irmãos Koch e suas iniciativas de liberalismo econômico, desregulação de mercado e estado mínimo. Segundo Taplin, a mentalidade de desregulação da exploração de recursos naturais dos Koch se mistura bastante com o interesse de grandes empresas de tecnologia atuais. Daí o suporte de Thiel ao Trump, daí a defesa incondicional de meritocracia e pouca interferência e todo um discurso ideológico libertário que está cada vez mais difundido.
Ele apresenta uma série de discursos e textos de Thiel para expôr isso, mas ainda preciso ler mais sobre isso e pegar a opinião de outros autores. Se esse for realmente o contexto por trás da mentalidade atual, se explica muita coisa. Só por isso, o livro já vale muito, mesmo tendo uma discussão um tanto redundante.
O lado incompleto é que, provavelmente por vir desse background artístico norte-americano, o autor ignora uma série de boas consequências das mesmas empresas que condena. A crítica é bastante parcial. Ele não cita (se bobear não faz ideia) do quanto essa mesma cultura que Google, Amazon e Spotify estão sufocando (segundo Taplin) foi difundida pelas mesmas empresas, por exemplo. Quantos filmes, séries, músicas e livros não chegaram no Brasil só por conta do que ele condena. Então vale ler com um certo pé atrás, eu mesmo só pude ouvir seu livro porque comprei pela Amazon...
Jonathan Taplin foi produtor de Bob Dylan e de vários filmes. Então o ponto de vista do livro é o de como a internet e as grandes corporações atuais empobreceram bastante a indústria da qual ele fez parte. Sobre isso, tem uma série de outros livros que já li na tag internet, falando mais ou menos o mesmo. Como indústrias que ainda não são reguladas estão lucrando muito com essa brecha.
O que Taplin trouxe de novo e me surpreendeu muito foi seu foco em pessoas como Peter Thiel e os irmãos Koch e suas iniciativas de liberalismo econômico, desregulação de mercado e estado mínimo. Segundo Taplin, a mentalidade de desregulação da exploração de recursos naturais dos Koch se mistura bastante com o interesse de grandes empresas de tecnologia atuais. Daí o suporte de Thiel ao Trump, daí a defesa incondicional de meritocracia e pouca interferência e todo um discurso ideológico libertário que está cada vez mais difundido.
Ele apresenta uma série de discursos e textos de Thiel para expôr isso, mas ainda preciso ler mais sobre isso e pegar a opinião de outros autores. Se esse for realmente o contexto por trás da mentalidade atual, se explica muita coisa. Só por isso, o livro já vale muito, mesmo tendo uma discussão um tanto redundante.
O lado incompleto é que, provavelmente por vir desse background artístico norte-americano, o autor ignora uma série de boas consequências das mesmas empresas que condena. A crítica é bastante parcial. Ele não cita (se bobear não faz ideia) do quanto essa mesma cultura que Google, Amazon e Spotify estão sufocando (segundo Taplin) foi difundida pelas mesmas empresas, por exemplo. Quantos filmes, séries, músicas e livros não chegaram no Brasil só por conta do que ele condena. Então vale ler com um certo pé atrás, eu mesmo só pude ouvir seu livro porque comprei pela Amazon...
June 16, 2017
Anticipated reading this, believed I would enjoy reading it, but although I sympathize with the author argument on tech overlord monopolies, this isn't a good work. I have trouble envisioning the author as professor (as it says on the book sleeve) as it's written in the style of 3rd grade reading comprehension level political polemic. The author makes chain associations that are ridiculous and often veers into his animus over internet piracy and how back in the good 'ol days (the 60s and 70s) artists were treated well by recording industry and publishers and how the internet (& Google & Amazon) destroyed all that.
October 20, 2017
Tiene partes buenas, pero otras son puro cherry-picking con tufillo a señor mayor gritándole a las nubes.
December 5, 2017
I did not like this book, but I read it through to the end. It had a lot of false correlations, and seemed very biased to the author's personal experiences where Big Media started losing profits to the digital age.
March 16, 2018
Whither humans, and art and culture, in the age of Techtopia?
Does the specter of mass unemployment loom ahead for humanity as 47% of jobs will disappear in the next quarter century because of what a 2013 Oxford University study of 702 occupations termed as “computerisation”? Or are we headed towards a wonderful future, with 6 billion humans shed from the burdens of working and instead engaging in arts, culture and scientific discoveries, as tech visionaries like Marc Andreessen would have you believe?
Jonathan Taplin, who references the above study as well as an interview of Andreessen, firmly believes that its time to worry – and take a stand. He tears into the characterization by the latter of worries about growing unemployment as simply a matter of “reskilling” of workers – suggesting that only someone as rich, and hence out of touch with the common man, as Andreessen can think that a 50-year-old oil technician can simply reskill, learn coding and work for Google when he loses his job.
“Move Fast and Break Things” is a broadside against big tech, as a threat to democracy and cultural values. The growing role played by technology in everyday lives have been examined in quite a few books recently, although those generally focus on either the risks people take with allowing tech too deeply into their lives (broadly termed cybercrime) or are visions of what a future brave new world is going to look like. Taplin’s book worries about the socio-cultural impact, flowing in part from the economic impact of the growing dominance of a few tech giants which is the gist of his arguments.
Citing data showing that inequality has increased significantly in the US (and around the world) in the past 25 years, the book holds tech monopolies and near monopolies as a major factor in creating inequality. Rules that apply to normal companies such as anti-trust, monopolies, taxes - don’t apply the same way to internet companies, as internet entrepreneurs have convinced successive governments that these will come in the way of “efficiency”. The result is a few outsized winners, and many losers.
The problem is that the internet is particularly good at creating monopolies or duopolies as scale is easily achieved. An example of this dominance - Google’s Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index score in the online search segment is 7200. Regulators usually consider markets with HHI of 1500-2500 to be moderately and >2500 to be highly concentrated. The book contains numerous examples to illustrate this fact and its negative fallouts, whether it’s the slow death of traditional magazines and newspapers as online advertising sucks away their ad revenues, or Amazon leading to a shuttering of bookshops, small publishers as well as mom and pop corner stores.
Taplin’s bigger argument is socio-cultural, that society has put tech innovators on a pedestal and is not paying attention to the enormous costs their mode of thinking inflicts on societal cohesion, while almost exclusively celebrating their successes and innovations. As someone from the media and communications industry, he is a passionate believer in the value that artists of all kinds bring to society, something is being sharply eroded by the high concentration levels we are witnessing. He cites examples from personal experience to show how the music industry, or the film-making has changed, and how the artists are actually much worse off in the new regimes.
With insights into the thoughts of various Valley personalities, and their visions of tech driven Utopia, Taplin suggests that their underlying belief is that of a government hands-free libertarianism as espoused by Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. As he points out, these people forget that the internet was started through government funding, and the initial idea of the internet’s early pioneers, such as Tim Berners Lee, was to democratize and equalize everyone, not to create more inequality. In similar vein, he highlights the internal contradictions and personal and professional moultings of Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and spawner of the “Paypal Mafia” (those who worked at Paypal and went on to found Yelp, Linked, Youtube, Palantir, etc.)
There is a lot of merit in the central arguments which bears thinking about, but the book also suffers from various flaws. Stylistically, there are simply too many quotes! At times chapters feel like assemblages of quotations. That is not to say that he doesn’t have his own mind; he does marshal and furnish various views primarily to support his hypothesis. However, the constant intrusions of quotes make for a jarring reading or listening experience.
His personal experience in the media, entertainment and communications industry make his views on them most authentic, and make his suggestions innovative and positive (such as artists cooperatives much like the Californian orange farmers’ cooperatives to combat Youtube and improve film-making). And it does appear that things have gone off-course a fair bit, whether it’s what we read in the news about Peter Thiel’s increasing megalomania, or of the scarcely believable words of Andreessen considering his Netscape was the first to cry bully at Microsoft in the late Nineties.
But it’s not as if concentration is a problem exclusive to the tech industry, as the author himself acknowledges when he quotes (yes, again) Elizabeth Warren stating the growing concentration in industries as diverse as airlines, drugstores, and health insurance. This suggests that there may be larger factors at play in the American economy.
Finally, apart from the above innovative suggestion for the film industry, Taplin has no positive recommendations to offer other than government intervention to break the monopolies. And here lies the second flaw – the views are US-centric, but while they apply broadly to the world since these same companies dominate these fields in most countries, there are notable exceptions such as China. Knowing the Chinese government’s authoritarianism and the local tech giants’ willingness to abide by government diktats, their state is likely to be even worse. And the recommendations of this book are likely to hamstring one set of American companies against essentially Chinese competition for everything future tech related.
Does the specter of mass unemployment loom ahead for humanity as 47% of jobs will disappear in the next quarter century because of what a 2013 Oxford University study of 702 occupations termed as “computerisation”? Or are we headed towards a wonderful future, with 6 billion humans shed from the burdens of working and instead engaging in arts, culture and scientific discoveries, as tech visionaries like Marc Andreessen would have you believe?
Jonathan Taplin, who references the above study as well as an interview of Andreessen, firmly believes that its time to worry – and take a stand. He tears into the characterization by the latter of worries about growing unemployment as simply a matter of “reskilling” of workers – suggesting that only someone as rich, and hence out of touch with the common man, as Andreessen can think that a 50-year-old oil technician can simply reskill, learn coding and work for Google when he loses his job.
“Move Fast and Break Things” is a broadside against big tech, as a threat to democracy and cultural values. The growing role played by technology in everyday lives have been examined in quite a few books recently, although those generally focus on either the risks people take with allowing tech too deeply into their lives (broadly termed cybercrime) or are visions of what a future brave new world is going to look like. Taplin’s book worries about the socio-cultural impact, flowing in part from the economic impact of the growing dominance of a few tech giants which is the gist of his arguments.
Citing data showing that inequality has increased significantly in the US (and around the world) in the past 25 years, the book holds tech monopolies and near monopolies as a major factor in creating inequality. Rules that apply to normal companies such as anti-trust, monopolies, taxes - don’t apply the same way to internet companies, as internet entrepreneurs have convinced successive governments that these will come in the way of “efficiency”. The result is a few outsized winners, and many losers.
The problem is that the internet is particularly good at creating monopolies or duopolies as scale is easily achieved. An example of this dominance - Google’s Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index score in the online search segment is 7200. Regulators usually consider markets with HHI of 1500-2500 to be moderately and >2500 to be highly concentrated. The book contains numerous examples to illustrate this fact and its negative fallouts, whether it’s the slow death of traditional magazines and newspapers as online advertising sucks away their ad revenues, or Amazon leading to a shuttering of bookshops, small publishers as well as mom and pop corner stores.
Taplin’s bigger argument is socio-cultural, that society has put tech innovators on a pedestal and is not paying attention to the enormous costs their mode of thinking inflicts on societal cohesion, while almost exclusively celebrating their successes and innovations. As someone from the media and communications industry, he is a passionate believer in the value that artists of all kinds bring to society, something is being sharply eroded by the high concentration levels we are witnessing. He cites examples from personal experience to show how the music industry, or the film-making has changed, and how the artists are actually much worse off in the new regimes.
With insights into the thoughts of various Valley personalities, and their visions of tech driven Utopia, Taplin suggests that their underlying belief is that of a government hands-free libertarianism as espoused by Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. As he points out, these people forget that the internet was started through government funding, and the initial idea of the internet’s early pioneers, such as Tim Berners Lee, was to democratize and equalize everyone, not to create more inequality. In similar vein, he highlights the internal contradictions and personal and professional moultings of Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and spawner of the “Paypal Mafia” (those who worked at Paypal and went on to found Yelp, Linked, Youtube, Palantir, etc.)
There is a lot of merit in the central arguments which bears thinking about, but the book also suffers from various flaws. Stylistically, there are simply too many quotes! At times chapters feel like assemblages of quotations. That is not to say that he doesn’t have his own mind; he does marshal and furnish various views primarily to support his hypothesis. However, the constant intrusions of quotes make for a jarring reading or listening experience.
His personal experience in the media, entertainment and communications industry make his views on them most authentic, and make his suggestions innovative and positive (such as artists cooperatives much like the Californian orange farmers’ cooperatives to combat Youtube and improve film-making). And it does appear that things have gone off-course a fair bit, whether it’s what we read in the news about Peter Thiel’s increasing megalomania, or of the scarcely believable words of Andreessen considering his Netscape was the first to cry bully at Microsoft in the late Nineties.
But it’s not as if concentration is a problem exclusive to the tech industry, as the author himself acknowledges when he quotes (yes, again) Elizabeth Warren stating the growing concentration in industries as diverse as airlines, drugstores, and health insurance. This suggests that there may be larger factors at play in the American economy.
Finally, apart from the above innovative suggestion for the film industry, Taplin has no positive recommendations to offer other than government intervention to break the monopolies. And here lies the second flaw – the views are US-centric, but while they apply broadly to the world since these same companies dominate these fields in most countries, there are notable exceptions such as China. Knowing the Chinese government’s authoritarianism and the local tech giants’ willingness to abide by government diktats, their state is likely to be even worse. And the recommendations of this book are likely to hamstring one set of American companies against essentially Chinese competition for everything future tech related.
November 29, 2022
given up, rather than read, because it’s more diatribe than commentary.
October 26, 2017
Judging a book by its cover is not the mistake you want to make here. The title alone makes you want to dive right in at the library or Barnes and Noble and start reading before you even leave. This was not this case for me. Within the first three chapter I knew it was going to be hard to finish. Yes, Jonathan Taplin took the time to write this but this book could have been much better if it had not come from him. Google, Facebook, and Amazon did corner the market but that’s Capitalism. The simple fact that these companies thrived and evolved to fit the social norm today is the very reason they have undermined Hollywood and Musicians. Jonathan Taplin bias attitude in this book made it extremely hard to finish. I was hoping for more of a on the edge of your seat facts and information that I had not yet known about these “evil” companies. Those never came and I could barely stomach reading the book to the end. Yes, these companies have grown to the point that they have political sway but so did Hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s. You may like this book if you are a libertarian and hate Capitalism. I am always open to people’s views on capitalism and politics but this author seems to be frozen in time looking for people to pity him because he is not on the winning side anymore. The attitude in this book seemed as if he nagged the entire time and wouldn’t shut up. This author seems to be dwelling on things in the past that are still affecting him emotionally and causing him to blame others for his misfortune. This book would have been a great diary for him to address his issues. Wait, was this book a diary before he published it? Question for the ages I guess. Don’t Judge the book by its cover.
March 28, 2024
This is the one book that I would deem required reading for all citizens if I were Queen! In spite of whatever you may know about the downsides of Big Tech, you don’t know the half of it, likely. I was floored by some of the details of the libertarian agendas, tax evasions, Koch Brothers connections, and more. Including one jaw-dropping example of what Google did in one day via its search engine to turn the citizenry in USA against a bill that was poised to pass and protect musicians revenues. (The author was involved in the higher echelons of the music business and began this book to address the rip off of musicians but the connections to all else got him to write about so much more).
The author covers in particular PayPal, Amazon, Facebook somewhat, Google. Apple is the one major tech company he addresses that does come out as decent in regards to these issues.
The book is infuriating but he does talk about potential solutions in the end. Senator Elizabeth Warren (& others in Congress) met with the author, and you could hear in her speeches when she was running for President in 2019 that she GOT what a truly major issue reigning in Big Tech is, to save democracy. Just read it; you must. And then get everyone you know to read it also.
The author covers in particular PayPal, Amazon, Facebook somewhat, Google. Apple is the one major tech company he addresses that does come out as decent in regards to these issues.
The book is infuriating but he does talk about potential solutions in the end. Senator Elizabeth Warren (& others in Congress) met with the author, and you could hear in her speeches when she was running for President in 2019 that she GOT what a truly major issue reigning in Big Tech is, to save democracy. Just read it; you must. And then get everyone you know to read it also.
January 7, 2018
The main thesis is that Libertarians who digested Ayn Rand invented the Internet. They've caused all sorts of problems that we really haven't dealt with. Because of Robert Bork, our anti-trust laws have essentially disappeared. The Internet killed the musician. Data is the reason why Hollywood can't do anything besides superhero and other sequels. There were some good tidbits in this book and I enjoyed the book, although I have to admit that I'm a bit tired of scattershot books. This book could have only focused on Google and that would have been enough. Although this book nicely explained and summed up who the Koch brothers are. That one section of the book made the purchase right there.
Anyone have any suggestions for books that focus on one business story and dig deep?
Anyone have any suggestions for books that focus on one business story and dig deep?
October 30, 2018
All I want is the ability to add Wiki style “citation needed” tags whilst reading. Sloppy logic, bad writing. The author moved too fast in writing and broke his book.
September 1, 2017
I have a bit of a mixed reaction to this book. To start, the introduction seemed real scatter-shot in its writing style. Partly I think this was simply because it was a broad overview of the ideas he wanted to get to throughout the book, but the pattern continued, though to a lesser degree. However, I came to a greater appreciation of his broad scope of thought and forgive what I thought was a choppy execution.
Also, early in the book I struggled to accept his portrayal of the negative of the tech companies. The story of The Band's failure to continue to capitalize on their recordings felt somewhat like sour grapes since they had limited license control (as he compared to the song writers' rights). The fact that they were receiving royalties that resulted from their fans moving from format (vinyl) to format (CD) didn't win me over. However, his argument that the YouTube effect is limiting the subscription streaming services, does have merit, and would have a financial impact worth considering.
All in all, I think the book is a good read, and worth further consideration. I think there should be some consideration in to the monopoly impacts of these three companies, similar to what I recall of the MSFT antitrust lawsuits of the late 90's.
For a quick summary, and interesting discussion, check out Taplin's interview from the Aspen Ideas Fest - https://www.aspenideas.org/session/ha...
Also, early in the book I struggled to accept his portrayal of the negative of the tech companies. The story of The Band's failure to continue to capitalize on their recordings felt somewhat like sour grapes since they had limited license control (as he compared to the song writers' rights). The fact that they were receiving royalties that resulted from their fans moving from format (vinyl) to format (CD) didn't win me over. However, his argument that the YouTube effect is limiting the subscription streaming services, does have merit, and would have a financial impact worth considering.
All in all, I think the book is a good read, and worth further consideration. I think there should be some consideration in to the monopoly impacts of these three companies, similar to what I recall of the MSFT antitrust lawsuits of the late 90's.
For a quick summary, and interesting discussion, check out Taplin's interview from the Aspen Ideas Fest - https://www.aspenideas.org/session/ha...
May 1, 2017
I went into this book with some questions in my mind about where we are going with technology in our world. All three sites mentioned in the title are my "go to" sites where I spend a vast majority of my time on the internet. Before reading, I wondered if I would find connections with the author's background in the entertainment industry (particularly music) - I enjoy music, but my understanding of the "industry" is limited. He gives the reader enough of a backstory to make the reader empathize with the artists and their plight in the digital age. But, the book takes you so far beyond the effects of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others on music offering a truly disturbing look into the world of Trusts and the feeling that the world is changing under our feet while we are only focusing on the sky.
I found this book insightful, frightening and empowering. I've been inspired to try my own "social media" experiment by going cold turkey on FB and Twitter (my two most addictive sites) and see where it takes me. Jonathan Taplin has offered us an opportunity to pull back the veil and see who the Wizards are and look beyond the shiny "benefits" these companies offer and, more importantly, what they take from our lives.
I found this book insightful, frightening and empowering. I've been inspired to try my own "social media" experiment by going cold turkey on FB and Twitter (my two most addictive sites) and see where it takes me. Jonathan Taplin has offered us an opportunity to pull back the veil and see who the Wizards are and look beyond the shiny "benefits" these companies offer and, more importantly, what they take from our lives.
Read
June 11, 2018The contention is that Silicon Valley is not the virtuous cradle of innovation as we'd like to think of it. Some of the tycoons there (e.g., Peter Thiel) are guided by the Ayn Rand-style libertarianism. Their financial success has a tendency to reinforce their view that greed is good, government is inept and even. Yet, much of the technical innovation that fueled the financial success comes from publicly funded research elsewhere (case in point ARPA net --> internet). What the valley is good at is to monetize technology or figuring out way to profit from the crowd. And here lies the danger: if you are not the customer (paying for something you use), you are the product. Google and Facebook essentially profit from their customers at the expense of some unquantifiable cost of privacy etc. When tech titan becomes so powerful, they can be dangerous as a force of suppression. Google uses its enormous sway on average user to stop the anti-piracy bill called SOPA in 2012, purportedly to protect its commercial interest as search of pirated content is an important part of Google's business. Streaming music now makes the artists' life much more difficult as royalty plummets. The book also talks about how artists might gang together to regain some leverage in negotiations etc.
March 13, 2017
Though I've only read an excerpt from the limited ARC I got, my interest has been piqued. It's quite rare to find a person Taplin, whose background was working with musical legends, and showing us that this background could bring out a story that handles a part of internet history that we're not privy to and how a core group of people and companies could create the value system surrounding the web and dictate how we as consumers use the internet today.
I look forward to buying the book to see if what I saw in the first chapter is sustained through, but for now, the introduction's got me hooked!
I look forward to buying the book to see if what I saw in the first chapter is sustained through, but for now, the introduction's got me hooked!
September 29, 2019
Perhaps this book was early in recognizing the threat that these tech monopolies present to a vibrant economy or artistic community, but it is not the best by a wide range. It is pretty personal and not at all data-driven.
July 26, 2018
This book was free from the publisher.
If reading the synopsis for Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy makes you feel nauseous, or scared, or a little bit of both, don’t worry. I felt the same way. And I probably had every right to feel that way. I don’t know what made me feel so drawn to reading what is, in essence, a textbook on the business of Amazon, Google and Facebook.
Much like reading a textbook, there were times I almost fell asleep. Anyone who follows me on Instagram probably saw my twenty five stories where I whined about how I had zero focus, etc. Fun fact: when I am really really into a book, I don’t usually lose focus. Another textbook-like feature of this read was the face that it was very terminology heavy. Maybe everyone else knows what antitrust law means, but not me. I had to google things so many times that I kind of just gave up googling the words I didn’t know. (Yes, I do notice the irony of using Google to google a word from an anti-Google book). The hardest part to read was the first part in particular, where Taplin outlined the history of the firms and of the internet. There was just so much information jam-packed into the first half of the book that I could only read a few pages at a time before I felt like I was studying for a business midterm.
One other thing that peeved me quite a bit was the whining feel of Taplin throughout. So many times, he complained from the side of artists, that they weren’t making any money because of the tech businesses. He complained about piracy laws, about antitrust laws, about monopsonizing art… (also not sure if thats a word or not)… but not once did I hear about the good things that social media and technology have done for art. Sure, maybe the YouTubers of today may not be the art that you dream of in a renaissance, but they are the art that this generation finds appealing. Furthermore, with social media, people who had no chance of “getting discovered” without connections are making music, and art, today. One needs to look no further than The Weeknd or XXXTentacion, who used SoundCloud to rise up through obscurity.
Despite all the things I did not enjoy about the book, parts were informative to me as a person. Taplin raised good questions about social media. At one point, I posted on Snapchat a line from the book, “Is your friend who spends three hours a day on Snapchat really free?” with the caption “triggered”. I joked, but the truth of it is that these media applications we use truly can be addictive. I love my bookstagram community, but I do sometimes log off for a day if I feel myself getting on too often. It’s all about the balance.
My absolute favorite thing about Move Fast and Break Things were the quotes that the book was absolutely chock full of. Taplin gathered many thought-provoking, truth-seeking quotes, and I wanted to underline each and every one of them. Even if I did not learn anything from the book, I at least found some quotes to look up, and some new books and papers to read.
If reading the synopsis for Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy makes you feel nauseous, or scared, or a little bit of both, don’t worry. I felt the same way. And I probably had every right to feel that way. I don’t know what made me feel so drawn to reading what is, in essence, a textbook on the business of Amazon, Google and Facebook.
Much like reading a textbook, there were times I almost fell asleep. Anyone who follows me on Instagram probably saw my twenty five stories where I whined about how I had zero focus, etc. Fun fact: when I am really really into a book, I don’t usually lose focus. Another textbook-like feature of this read was the face that it was very terminology heavy. Maybe everyone else knows what antitrust law means, but not me. I had to google things so many times that I kind of just gave up googling the words I didn’t know. (Yes, I do notice the irony of using Google to google a word from an anti-Google book). The hardest part to read was the first part in particular, where Taplin outlined the history of the firms and of the internet. There was just so much information jam-packed into the first half of the book that I could only read a few pages at a time before I felt like I was studying for a business midterm.
One other thing that peeved me quite a bit was the whining feel of Taplin throughout. So many times, he complained from the side of artists, that they weren’t making any money because of the tech businesses. He complained about piracy laws, about antitrust laws, about monopsonizing art… (also not sure if thats a word or not)… but not once did I hear about the good things that social media and technology have done for art. Sure, maybe the YouTubers of today may not be the art that you dream of in a renaissance, but they are the art that this generation finds appealing. Furthermore, with social media, people who had no chance of “getting discovered” without connections are making music, and art, today. One needs to look no further than The Weeknd or XXXTentacion, who used SoundCloud to rise up through obscurity.
Despite all the things I did not enjoy about the book, parts were informative to me as a person. Taplin raised good questions about social media. At one point, I posted on Snapchat a line from the book, “Is your friend who spends three hours a day on Snapchat really free?” with the caption “triggered”. I joked, but the truth of it is that these media applications we use truly can be addictive. I love my bookstagram community, but I do sometimes log off for a day if I feel myself getting on too often. It’s all about the balance.
My absolute favorite thing about Move Fast and Break Things were the quotes that the book was absolutely chock full of. Taplin gathered many thought-provoking, truth-seeking quotes, and I wanted to underline each and every one of them. Even if I did not learn anything from the book, I at least found some quotes to look up, and some new books and papers to read.
January 25, 2019
Ahhhh. So this is the new electronic era.
Rather educational. I am glad I read it. Now from here I can expand and learn new things. This is an Internet history book essentially about how big business tried to take over the world by grabbing hold of the music, television, film, news and publishing industries.
The alternates to Facebook, Google, and Amazon are not well-publicized. Open-source software, which is not discussed in this book, spreads around the Internet in a viral manner.
Moreover, I checked the index for his discussion of piracy and didn't find it very useful, just a little.
So I am generally leery of books from this section of the library due to the fast-eroding nature of the Internet. However, you may find Jonathan Taplin's Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy useful in your own quest to learn more about this digital world!
Rather educational. I am glad I read it. Now from here I can expand and learn new things. This is an Internet history book essentially about how big business tried to take over the world by grabbing hold of the music, television, film, news and publishing industries.
The alternates to Facebook, Google, and Amazon are not well-publicized. Open-source software, which is not discussed in this book, spreads around the Internet in a viral manner.
Moreover, I checked the index for his discussion of piracy and didn't find it very useful, just a little.
So I am generally leery of books from this section of the library due to the fast-eroding nature of the Internet. However, you may find Jonathan Taplin's Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy useful in your own quest to learn more about this digital world!
Read
November 14, 2020This is great reading about (per the subtitle) “how Facebook, Google, and Amazon cornered culture and undermined democracy.” The subject isn’t my usual fare AT ALL, and perhaps the book’s greatest strength is how clear and accessible it is to people who might *not* be immersed in the intricacies of business economics. I highlighted so much and nodded along and felt like I was learning a lot about not just the world as it is but also as it might be. Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror” was amazing but also made me well up with (righteous) rage, but by some magic this book left me feeling more hopeful than depressed. It’s at least as inspiring as it is infuriating, and whether that’s merely a product of the author’s privilege or also partially the fruition of his intention to make us *want* to wake up/resist/change, it really worked for me. Highly recommend (and I’d love to see a follow-up version about everything that’s happened since this was published in 2017).
April 27, 2020
Good but not great book that was made more interesting because I was also listening to the audiobook of Cory Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want to Be Free. Not at literally the same time, of course. While Taplin claims that the music industry and the careers of most musicians have been destroyed by the availability of free downloads of music on the Internet, Doctorow makes a mostly opposing claim. One of the main differences is that Taplin focuses on the traditional ways that musicians have made a living, while Doctorow emphasizes that there are other ways. This has been the case for many industries, especially in manufacturing.
September 13, 2017
In the spirit of a central premise of the book (respect the providers of original content) here are some informed reviews:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.thenational.ae/arts-cultu...
Worth reading if you want to gain a better understanding of the ideology and personalities behind the rise of the internet and the impact it has had on culture.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.thenational.ae/arts-cultu...
Worth reading if you want to gain a better understanding of the ideology and personalities behind the rise of the internet and the impact it has had on culture.
June 21, 2021
This book will make you want to throw your phone out the window. A terrifying but important read. I am so glad that I read it but so very sad about the future of art, community, society etc.
Lots of big questions asked, and Taplin proposes some solutions in the last chapter.
Lots of big questions asked, and Taplin proposes some solutions in the last chapter.
Want to read
May 9, 2017requested via library
February 6, 2021
Quite interesting and informative. Recommended.
Read
March 29, 2021I think this book is good. I don’t understand why the top reviews here are negative.
March 21, 2018
I could throw this book on to the crime and tragedy shelves I've created but it's actually non-fiction. Taplin shines a spotlight on the dystopia we're all presently living in but haven't noticed. He invites you to look up from your screens and think about the men behind the curtain of technology.
There's a Wild West frontier being developed in the digital world and from the lawlessness of the early internet some powerful groups have developed and are fighting to keep it the way they like it. But don't worry, they've got nice slogans and smiles so we can probably trust them, after all how bad can people be whose philosophy is "Do the right thing"?
Examining the libertarian philosophy behind Facebook, Google, Amazon, and from individuals such as Peter Thiel (PayPal), Kim Dotcom (PirateBay) and Sean Parker (Napster), Taplin looks at the land-grab they've made to ensure their unassailable monopolies can set the agenda of the digital world we live in. Sadly, I still love these companies (the "legal" ones at least), and their products yet seeing the effects of their business practices is more than a little disheartening.
These large companies do not dominate by accident. Proprietary platforms, monopsonist practices (driving prices down to drive competition out) and lobbying at all levels allows them to crush competition and step back from responsibilities they could easily manage to assume and which they arguably bear a lot of moral responsibility for. Moral responsibility, however, seems to be for the weak in the libertarian eye. With the unspoken code of "Who's going to stop me?" (from Ayn Rand's `The Fountainhead`) these companies and individuals have contributed to the loss of payments to music industry artists, massive copyright infringement across all cultural and artistic forms (barring perhaps pottery and Morris dancing), terrible worker conditions, the demise of the local book / record / video stores and job losses in multiple sectors.
But they're so convenient. I like the benefits.
At the time of writing this Cambridge Analytica is in the firing line for abuse of data gained via a Facebook personality app, which tapped into not just the 2,700 people who took part in the app's test but all of their contacts too. Data which was then sold on to a third party group and allegedly mined to provide crucial voter details for the 2016 US elections allowing for targeted ads to manipulate the readers' voting choices. Allegedly, at this moment. The thing is Facebook is a "surveillance marketing" company more than anything else. It's platform has moved beyond a cool place for college kids to hang out and connect, it's now a multi-billion dollar data-harvesting tool that can find out what you buy, where you live, who you're connected to, what you did each weekend, what sort of news you like, what you "like" when you click that button and an array of tiny details that build up into a consumer, or voter, profile that becomes enormously valuable to advertisers who really want to target 25 - 35 year old women who love cycling and live within 30 miles of their store (Facebook's example from their own site). In exchange for giving up that information, we get access to their beautifully convenient platform. Google do the same with your searches while Apple encourage ad-blockers because, well, they sell phones and computers, not data.
During the election process conservatives complained to Facebook about biases in trending topics due to liberal moderators. When Zuckerberg then fired the moderators, Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica (remember them?) used an army of bots to manipulate trending topics. Because they can. And, "Who will stop me?"
There's a hopeful thought that things can change and suggestions for how best to improve the way the companies contribute to society. Of course for that to work they'll have to choose to do so themselves (and nothing indicates they wish to give up any advantage they have - who would?), or be forced to do so. Every attempt to block or change these companies' direction (in the USA) has been short-lived, through funding, lobbying and cross-pollination of staff between regulators / government and these major tech companies. Unless financial imperative drives them to change, it's likely it will be this way forever. Most of us won't even notice.
Should we care? I think so. About $6.8 billion of advertising revenue is generated via bots clicking web-links and convincing companies that the traffic their sites receive justifies the extra payments they're making. Costs which get passed onto the consumers. Us. Meanwhile, artists who rely on the work they've created to pay them as they grow older are being left high and dry. The argument to just go out and keep on touring doesn't work for most and truthfully the majority of the money earned by musicians goes to a tiny percentage of top-tier stars. One million plays of a song on iTunes could earn a musician $900,000, on Google owned YouTube they'd get $900.
Devaluing culture means we get less variety, worse quality and ultimately miss out. Computer algorithms are being used to identify pop hits or even write some dance tracks. Others are being created to make screenplays. Meanwhile monopolies cut competition which cuts jobs. For all of Facebook's $80 billion in the bank and millions of annual income it only employs around 15,000 people. Job creation comes with competition as does innovation. We're missing out but don't see it.
Taxes are viewed as optional to these multibillionaires; Thiel himself is financially backing seasteading, creating artificial islands outside of any government controlled territory and therefore immune to taxation and regulation. Google's Larry Page is researching privately owned city-states. Both men are funding research to extend lives, specifically theirs, so perhaps they can make it to 150 and maybe long enough to see themselves uploading their consciousness for the betterment of… well, themselves.
Our culture and commerce are experiencing a Game of Thrones level body count. House Facebook ("Vanity trumps privacy"), House Google ("Control the menu, control the choices") and House Amazon ("Nobody has a right to happiness") are all vying for the throne left by Queen Ayn Rand ("Who will stop me?"). The populace is suffering but their eyes remain fixed on the prize. Sadly, each one gets a throne in this scenario. Each gets their own kingdom but share dominion over the one world consumer-populace.
For me this raises concerns about the next steps on the path as it is currently set out. Peter Thiel's stated view that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" leaves an uneasy sense that the future is in doubt. Not just because he himself is a close friend to Jared Kushner, influential in the White House and a rumoured pick as Trump's second Supreme Court appointment but because of the influence he both spreads and represents which already exists across the stratosphere of American politics and industry. The Koch Brothers (Koch Industries is oil based) laid the foundations for this in their pursuit of an antiregulation, antitax legislative environment which seems to be making happy headway under President Trump. These Kochs have laid the foundation in the physical world for the Empires being built in the digital realm. A realm ruled by the corporations, not by the people it was opened up for.
This book is heavy-going at time; always approachable, just a lot to get your head around. It is worthwhile reading though, so much so that I'll be reading it again. It's eye-opening and may challenge your views but you'll be a stronger person than me if it also changes your online habits. Perhaps it will encourage you to support changes in legislation, or to question the messages that "techno-determinists" send as they shape our thoughts on what internet freedom really means. Perhaps, Matrix-like, we will wake up to the world around us and really make a change and start a co-operative to drive demand in a different direction and empower content creators.
Whatever comes from this book, be alert because the future is being written now.
There's a Wild West frontier being developed in the digital world and from the lawlessness of the early internet some powerful groups have developed and are fighting to keep it the way they like it. But don't worry, they've got nice slogans and smiles so we can probably trust them, after all how bad can people be whose philosophy is "Do the right thing"?
Examining the libertarian philosophy behind Facebook, Google, Amazon, and from individuals such as Peter Thiel (PayPal), Kim Dotcom (PirateBay) and Sean Parker (Napster), Taplin looks at the land-grab they've made to ensure their unassailable monopolies can set the agenda of the digital world we live in. Sadly, I still love these companies (the "legal" ones at least), and their products yet seeing the effects of their business practices is more than a little disheartening.
These large companies do not dominate by accident. Proprietary platforms, monopsonist practices (driving prices down to drive competition out) and lobbying at all levels allows them to crush competition and step back from responsibilities they could easily manage to assume and which they arguably bear a lot of moral responsibility for. Moral responsibility, however, seems to be for the weak in the libertarian eye. With the unspoken code of "Who's going to stop me?" (from Ayn Rand's `The Fountainhead`) these companies and individuals have contributed to the loss of payments to music industry artists, massive copyright infringement across all cultural and artistic forms (barring perhaps pottery and Morris dancing), terrible worker conditions, the demise of the local book / record / video stores and job losses in multiple sectors.
But they're so convenient. I like the benefits.
At the time of writing this Cambridge Analytica is in the firing line for abuse of data gained via a Facebook personality app, which tapped into not just the 2,700 people who took part in the app's test but all of their contacts too. Data which was then sold on to a third party group and allegedly mined to provide crucial voter details for the 2016 US elections allowing for targeted ads to manipulate the readers' voting choices. Allegedly, at this moment. The thing is Facebook is a "surveillance marketing" company more than anything else. It's platform has moved beyond a cool place for college kids to hang out and connect, it's now a multi-billion dollar data-harvesting tool that can find out what you buy, where you live, who you're connected to, what you did each weekend, what sort of news you like, what you "like" when you click that button and an array of tiny details that build up into a consumer, or voter, profile that becomes enormously valuable to advertisers who really want to target 25 - 35 year old women who love cycling and live within 30 miles of their store (Facebook's example from their own site). In exchange for giving up that information, we get access to their beautifully convenient platform. Google do the same with your searches while Apple encourage ad-blockers because, well, they sell phones and computers, not data.
During the election process conservatives complained to Facebook about biases in trending topics due to liberal moderators. When Zuckerberg then fired the moderators, Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica (remember them?) used an army of bots to manipulate trending topics. Because they can. And, "Who will stop me?"
There's a hopeful thought that things can change and suggestions for how best to improve the way the companies contribute to society. Of course for that to work they'll have to choose to do so themselves (and nothing indicates they wish to give up any advantage they have - who would?), or be forced to do so. Every attempt to block or change these companies' direction (in the USA) has been short-lived, through funding, lobbying and cross-pollination of staff between regulators / government and these major tech companies. Unless financial imperative drives them to change, it's likely it will be this way forever. Most of us won't even notice.
Should we care? I think so. About $6.8 billion of advertising revenue is generated via bots clicking web-links and convincing companies that the traffic their sites receive justifies the extra payments they're making. Costs which get passed onto the consumers. Us. Meanwhile, artists who rely on the work they've created to pay them as they grow older are being left high and dry. The argument to just go out and keep on touring doesn't work for most and truthfully the majority of the money earned by musicians goes to a tiny percentage of top-tier stars. One million plays of a song on iTunes could earn a musician $900,000, on Google owned YouTube they'd get $900.
Devaluing culture means we get less variety, worse quality and ultimately miss out. Computer algorithms are being used to identify pop hits or even write some dance tracks. Others are being created to make screenplays. Meanwhile monopolies cut competition which cuts jobs. For all of Facebook's $80 billion in the bank and millions of annual income it only employs around 15,000 people. Job creation comes with competition as does innovation. We're missing out but don't see it.
Taxes are viewed as optional to these multibillionaires; Thiel himself is financially backing seasteading, creating artificial islands outside of any government controlled territory and therefore immune to taxation and regulation. Google's Larry Page is researching privately owned city-states. Both men are funding research to extend lives, specifically theirs, so perhaps they can make it to 150 and maybe long enough to see themselves uploading their consciousness for the betterment of… well, themselves.
Our culture and commerce are experiencing a Game of Thrones level body count. House Facebook ("Vanity trumps privacy"), House Google ("Control the menu, control the choices") and House Amazon ("Nobody has a right to happiness") are all vying for the throne left by Queen Ayn Rand ("Who will stop me?"). The populace is suffering but their eyes remain fixed on the prize. Sadly, each one gets a throne in this scenario. Each gets their own kingdom but share dominion over the one world consumer-populace.
For me this raises concerns about the next steps on the path as it is currently set out. Peter Thiel's stated view that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" leaves an uneasy sense that the future is in doubt. Not just because he himself is a close friend to Jared Kushner, influential in the White House and a rumoured pick as Trump's second Supreme Court appointment but because of the influence he both spreads and represents which already exists across the stratosphere of American politics and industry. The Koch Brothers (Koch Industries is oil based) laid the foundations for this in their pursuit of an antiregulation, antitax legislative environment which seems to be making happy headway under President Trump. These Kochs have laid the foundation in the physical world for the Empires being built in the digital realm. A realm ruled by the corporations, not by the people it was opened up for.
This book is heavy-going at time; always approachable, just a lot to get your head around. It is worthwhile reading though, so much so that I'll be reading it again. It's eye-opening and may challenge your views but you'll be a stronger person than me if it also changes your online habits. Perhaps it will encourage you to support changes in legislation, or to question the messages that "techno-determinists" send as they shape our thoughts on what internet freedom really means. Perhaps, Matrix-like, we will wake up to the world around us and really make a change and start a co-operative to drive demand in a different direction and empower content creators.
Whatever comes from this book, be alert because the future is being written now.
May 21, 2017
The tedium of non fiction
July 6, 2017
The next time you post on Facebook, upload a video to YouTube, or use a Google product, take a moment to stop and realize that you are, in essence, an unpaid employee of these corporations. After all, you are creating the content from which they are reaping billions of dollars in terms of marketing and advertising. Taplin examines the rise of these "monopoly platforms" which have created the surveillance-data mining-marketing culture in which we now live. He frames his argument from the perspective of the music industry. He points out that Google and Facebook achieve their massive net profit margins because they dominate the means by which content is distributed on the net, while creating very little of it themselves. For instance, You Tube (owned by Google) has in excess of 55% of the streaming audio business but only contributes 11% of the revenue that is distributed to the creators of this content. Contrast this with TV networks whose profit margins are much smaller because of their expenditures on creating actual content, the television shows they broadcast. He explores the libertarian mindset of the men who created these platforms (Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Trump supporter Peter Theil) and how it affects their business practices, such as overlooking the piracy of books, music and film, while undermining and deliberating invading the privacy of their users. He even examines their connections to the Koch Brothers: their shared hatred of government and its laws, regulations, taxation and copyright protection. They are all in the extraction business, he notes. But instead of oil, the Web entrepreneurs extract data, "as much personal data from as many people in the world at the lowest possible price and to resell that data to as many companies as possible at the highest price possible." This is a definitely a polemic, but it's a lively read with anecdotes about the music business (Taplin was a tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band) and some eye-opening statistics and arguments about how the Internet was hijacked and monopolized and what we can do to reclaim it.
March 3, 2021
Several decades ago, when the internet was in an embryonic stage, digital pioneers envisioned that it would function as a decentralized network where individuals could share ideas unfettered by existing social structures. That didn't happen. Today, the internet is essentially an oligarchy, dominated by Amazon (which controls e-commerce), Facebook (social media), and Google (just about everything else).
These monopolies have attracted a lot of scrutiny in recent years for their part in widening inequality and undermining democracy in the U.S. But their pernicious effects go beyond that. In Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin argues that these gigantic companies have also coarsened and cheapened American culture. Many people who used to be able to make a living in the arts — filmmakers and musicians, namely — now operate in a universe when services like Spotify and YouTube essentially give away their work for free.
What's to blame for this? One culprit is the tectonic shift in our understanding of monopolies. Rather than protect against industry consolidation, modern antitrust only considers customer prices; in other words, since Amazon makes things cheaper — what's the problem? A lot, as it turns out. The men who built the modern internet giants were largely influenced by libertarian principles of dominance, not egalitarian notions of decentralized networks. As a result, American culture has become more disposable, formulaic, and slow to innovate.
Taplin, who's had a fascinating career, is well positioned to write this book. Now in his seventies, he got his start in the music industry, working for The Band and Bob Dylan in the late 1960s, before becoming a successful film producer. In the mid-'90s, he launched a business, ahead of its time, to stream video over the internet. One thing he isn't is a fluid writer — Move Fast and Break Things is a little clunky at times. But it's very much a worthwhile addition to the growing collection of criticisms of internet companies that, as recently as a decade ago, enjoyed rosy reputations.
These monopolies have attracted a lot of scrutiny in recent years for their part in widening inequality and undermining democracy in the U.S. But their pernicious effects go beyond that. In Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin argues that these gigantic companies have also coarsened and cheapened American culture. Many people who used to be able to make a living in the arts — filmmakers and musicians, namely — now operate in a universe when services like Spotify and YouTube essentially give away their work for free.
What's to blame for this? One culprit is the tectonic shift in our understanding of monopolies. Rather than protect against industry consolidation, modern antitrust only considers customer prices; in other words, since Amazon makes things cheaper — what's the problem? A lot, as it turns out. The men who built the modern internet giants were largely influenced by libertarian principles of dominance, not egalitarian notions of decentralized networks. As a result, American culture has become more disposable, formulaic, and slow to innovate.
Taplin, who's had a fascinating career, is well positioned to write this book. Now in his seventies, he got his start in the music industry, working for The Band and Bob Dylan in the late 1960s, before becoming a successful film producer. In the mid-'90s, he launched a business, ahead of its time, to stream video over the internet. One thing he isn't is a fluid writer — Move Fast and Break Things is a little clunky at times. But it's very much a worthwhile addition to the growing collection of criticisms of internet companies that, as recently as a decade ago, enjoyed rosy reputations.
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