Saving the news from Big Tech with end-to-end social media

The final installment in my EFF series on saving the news.

Big Tech steals from the news, but it doesn’t steal content — it steals money. In “Saving the News From Big Tech,” a series for EFF, I’ve documented how tech monopolies in ad-tech and app stores result in vast cash transfers from the news to tech, starving newsrooms and gutting reporting:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now we’ve published the final part, describing how social media platforms hold audiences hostage, charging media companies to reach the subscribers who asked to see what they have to say. And, as with the previous installments, we set out a proposal for forcing tech companies to end this practice, putting more money in the pockets of news producers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

The issue here is final stage of the enshittification cycle: first, platforms offer good deals and even subsidies to lure in end users. Then, once the users are locked in, platforms offer similarly good deals to business users (in this case, publishers, but see also Uber drivers, Amazon sellers, YouTube performers, etc) to lure them in. Once they’re locked in, the platform flips the script: it…