Chickenization and VHS tapes: why are tech companies not getting cooler?

Michal Sutowski: The inverted centaur – a figure with a horse's head and a human torso – serves as a metaphor for subordinating workers' bodies to the machine's brain, in this case, a digital machine. But is this really a new phenomenon? The fact that machines were meant to serve humans, and then humans became their slaves, has been written about for at least a century and a half. A worker was already being pulled into the machine's gears in Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times in 1936…

Cory Doctorow: If we consider the current level of control and exploitation, quantity turns into quality. Take the example of contract nurses, who used to be employed through local employment agencies, 2-3 in each city. Today, they are replaced by nationwide apps, one of four across the entire USA. These apps have access, for example, to the nurses' credit card debt levels, allowing the algorithm to offer them lower rates for a shift, especially if they are in deep financial desperation.

Employers have always exploited workers' difficult situations – the higher the unemployment, the greater the pressure: if you don't like it, I have five others to replace you.

Sure, owners of mines 150 years ago would also gladly tie a worker's daily wage to whether their child was sick or if the ceiling was leaking in their room. But to recognize and assess each person's economic desperation in real-time, they would need to hire so many informants or Pinkerton detectives that the entire mechanism would be unprofitable. It's different if this process can be automated – through influencing regulations and technological development.

What regulations?

Knowledge about how much debt each American has on their credit card can be obtained because in the USA, we haven't updated privacy laws since 1988, when it was banned to disclose… the list of video tapes rented by a citizen. Other privacy violations are perfectly legal. And now, add artificial intelligence. AI isn't effective everywhere, but it excels at automated, multi-factor experimental analysis.

So what exactly?

In the series Mad Men, there's a scene where ad expert Don Draper segments the market: here are people who remember the Great Depression, so they'll buy canned food in bulk; and here are those who dropped out of high school but like technical and practical courses. Once he divides them, he conducts focus group research to understand them better. Today, with data from digital surveillance, you can use automated statistical inference tools. You categorize people based on their consumer behaviors and characteristics. But instead of focus groups, you run a series of small experiments.

And what do I learn?

Who and when might pay a higher price for a product or accept a lower rate for a job. You test on a population of millions whether you can squeeze out 10 percent more. Will they buy more expensive toothpaste, order pricier food? Will they accept a lower-paying gig or a project? You keep experimenting until the growth curve flattens. You don't need grand theories, just naive intuitions, lots of data, and automation. Quickly, you'll identify which consumers are most susceptible to temptations and which workers are desperate. And thus, value is transferred from labor to capital in real time.

And do these mechanisms always serve capital? Not labor?

Technology can be a double-edged sword. A computer is a Turing-Neumann machine, meaning it can run any program. In practice, this means that in a competitive environment—or at least where communities of users or workers can operate freely—all these mechanisms for monitoring work and boosting prices can be neutralized by other technological solutions. If someone bombards your screen with dozens of pop-up ads, you'll eventually install an ad blocker.

Then why don't poor nurses and Uber passengers use them?

Because here, regulatory capture is total. In Europe, reverse engineering of apps is illegal due to the copyright directive, which includes the so-called anti-avoidance clause. Americans imposed it on all trading partners, threatening import tariffs if they refused. In Europe, it was introduced in 2001; in Canada in 2012; nearly every industrialized country has similar laws. If these laws could be changed, many technicians could be hired to work for consumers, workers, or small and medium-sized companies entering the market—rather than trying to persuade big tech to change their practices or simply regulate them.

And why not regulate?

Because regulating companies like Apple proved impossible. They pretend to be Irish, where they are registered, and nothing can be done to them. Maybe we should stop convincing Apple to write and share code that would open their iPhones, and instead allow Poles or Finns to do it? Such decisions could be made in Warsaw, Helsinki, or Brussels—if we prevent Apple from using European courts to destroy Polish, Finnish, or any other local companies or cooperatives that would open their iPhones for people. This is still easier for Europeans than trying to influence how Apple writes its code, especially with Trump in the White House and Ireland as a tax haven.

And what about attempts to persuade Facebook or X to, for example, moderate public debate?

First: do we really want that? To have Mark Zuckerberg responsible for what people can say? I don't. Today, we see how biased the moderation algorithms are. And because they are extremely non-transparent and operate on a large scale, it would be very difficult—second—to enforce restrictions like hate speech limits. Because first, we need to define what constitutes hate speech in a way that a layperson can understand. Then, identify examples where it was allowed on the platform. Next, confirm that the statement fits the definition, and finally, verify whether Facebook took appropriate actions to prevent it. Since only Facebook engineers truly understand how it works, in ten years, we might be able to decide on the legitimacy of lawsuits over events happening 100 times a minute. It's absurd!

So what can be done?

Make it possible to leave Facebook without losing contact with friends who stay there, and with the content they want to share with us.

And is that really possible?

Yes, just like filtering out all the junk that floods our feed—ads and materials that push down our friends' posts. In 2024, two teenagers created an OG APP, using reverse engineering—specifically for Instagram. You provided your login and password, the app logged into Instagram pretending to be you, then relayed to you what your followers had to show, in reverse chronological order, filtering out what Instagram boosts for money, ads, and all that junk. Both Apple and Google app stores saw it enter the top ten most downloaded apps during the day, until both stores removed it. Because Facebook asked them to.

See, I’m not one of those who say the market should always decide, but for something like this, people would really be willing to pay, wouldn't they?

And was that legal?

Of course not, due to, among others, the copyright directive and other regulations. But it could be legalized.

Legalize breaking codes and hacking apps?

But in a way that protects other values: in Europe, you have GDPR, workers' rights, and strong consumer protections. If I bypass your app or device security, you can sue me. But then I have the right to a quick preliminary hearing: if I don't violate workers' rights, consumer rights, or privacy, there’s no trial, and the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. That would be a compromise, somewhat similar to anti-SLAPP laws that protect whistleblowers and critical journalists from lawsuits. If my app introduces a virus into your phone, tracks you, or sends scams to your friends, that’s obviously illegal. It’s not hard to distinguish useful and beneficial solutions from harmful ones. I omit the trivial detail that this would embody Zuckerberg’s principle—Move Fast and Break Things—at its best.

Why?

Designing and sharing technology to serve workers and consumers, in accordance with the noble principle “nothing about us without us,” even at the cost of breaking barriers and restrictions imposed by monopolists—this is much easier to achieve than forcing Zuckerberg or Musk to behave decently. Europe has exceptionally favorable conditions to escape the dilemma: a free-for-all for everyone or a “constitutional monarchy,” where some bureaucrats can impose certain restrictions on King Zuckerberg but do not dethrone him.

We started with history and old ideas about humans and machines. Maybe another historical analogy: the metaphor for the entire industrial capitalism era was Henry Ford’s factory and assembly line. In the book Gównowacenie. Jak cyfrowi giganci zmieniają nasz świat na gorsze, you suggest that a good metaphor for today’s times is… a chicken farm. Why?

Indeed, I write about “chickenization,” meaning the business model of big tech companies becoming similar to how chicken farms operate today. In the USA, they raise chickens according to strictly defined rules set by the monopolist in that territory. Farmers bear all the risk and uncertainty related to the technological process and market conditions, over which they have no control. They invest their money, infrastructure, and follow prescribed production methods—yet, in the end, their pay depends on the buyer.

Like a big homesteader?

A mix of the worst traits of a homesteader and a factory worker. You bring your tools and financial inputs into the business, then are strictly controlled, like in a Taylorist factory, where a supervisor measured your movements with a stopwatch and enforced norms. Today, monitoring and organization are enabled by machines.

But how does that relate to a chicken farm?

The buyer of chickens can run an experiment: change the lighting in your coop or the feed composition. Other farmers serve as a control group. If the experiment succeeds and the chickens grow fatter, great; if not, the farmer gets less money than expected. In the past, a homesteader’s work looked similar: my grandfather, when he came to Canada, was a tailor who sewed for a larger client. He worked in his own workshop, which he had to organize himself, and if the client didn't like the product, he didn't take it—and my grandfather suffered a loss. But at least he wasn't constantly monitored like in a home-based workplace today.

He at least had his home office…

And today, home office isn't working from home but living at work, especially since the pandemic. A whole range of so-called bossware technologies have emerged—monitoring tools used by employers to oversee remote workers—allowing them to watch via camera, listen through microphones, and even check keystrokes and data flow over home Wi-Fi. The worker pays rent, water, electricity, heating, and still has their home scrutinized by the boss. Similarly, the farmer pays for the workshop but has no real control over it.

You're talking about the possibilities and advantages that digital technologies give to giants, aided by regulations and monopoly conditions—how all this fosters “chickenization” of consumer offerings, working conditions, and cooperation. But you also show, through examples like Facebook, Google, or Amazon, that this was a process. Does that mean there was once, for example, a “good old Amazon” that truly served customers, workers, and contractors?

But of course! In the early days, Amazon was loved not only by consumers but also by publishers and authors. The platform had excellent book recommendations. And since the 1990s were the era of J.K. Rowling’s rise, Amazon really drew people into reading. For Harry Potter fans who had never read anything else, it suggested 50 more titles and often turned them into bookworms.

Let’s remember, Amazon started as a bookstore.

Yes, books have the advantage of being fairly standardized: almost all paperbacks in the USA are 6 by 9 inches, making packing and shipping easier. Customer service was initially excellent—they accepted returns almost without questions, at their own cost. When they brought in other sellers, they shared some shipping and return costs. Sellers were delighted, and so were customers. And at that time, they didn't even squeeze publishers for more profit.

Why was that possible?

Firstly, because they provided truly excellent service. And secondly, because they raised enormous funds from the stock market—Bezos really knew how to attract investors with his vision. I saw him around 2003, when he explained that Amazon was a long-term investment—if you're a trader playing quick sales, don’t get involved, because daily fluctuations are highly unpredictable. He showed a chart: up-down-up-down. He explained: here, we had to invest in infrastructure; here, in acquiring a competitor. Then he drew a trend line, which was clearly upward—just right for smart money, investors who understand that the future belongs to them.

They raised money from the stock market and invested in quality services. And then?

Then came, for example, the “Gazelle operation,” squeezing out small bookstores—on the same principle as predators choosing the weakest gazelle in a herd. They demanded bigger discounts to get listed on the platform… And from there, it just escalated, up to the current sclerosis.

What does that mean?

The most profitable part of Amazon’s business is search advertising. They run auction-based positioning: who appears first for a given keyword, second, third, etc. The top position seen by the customer is on average 29% more expensive, and the entire first page about 25% more costly than the best offer on, say, the 17th position. Interestingly, recently, the Federal Trade Commission—an agency under Trump’s administration!—began investigating them for manipulating second-price auctions. The idea is that each seller submits their highest bid—whoever bids the most for the “top spot” pays the second-highest bid plus a cent. It’s a standard auction model that speeds up the process—except that the winners paid much more than the second bids, apparently stealing around $25 billion this way.

But how does a company go from a nice business serving everyone to such a leviathan?

They started expanding beyond their book niche into other industries, then developed their own infrastructure, gradually creating a kind of moat around themselves and fencing off larger parts of the market.

Books weren’t enough?

The book business was very successful; they created a great platform for selling. But they simply bought out the entire retail trade—looking for the best seller of… anything: toys, shoes, cleaning products—and just acquired them. There was a diaper company, Diapers.com, which refused to be bought out. Amazon then began illegally selling diapers and baby products below cost.

Classic price dumping to crush competitors.

Yes, that’s prohibited by the Clayton Act from 1914 and the Federal Trade Commission Act, but no one enforced it. And here’s where it gets really interesting: Diapers.com was part of a larger network of various retailers that Amazon hadn’t yet targeted. Eventually, it was put up for sale, and Walmart offered a better price—but Amazon still bought them, fearing that if they sold Diapers.com to Walmart, Amazon would crush the remaining competitors. In short: all this is possible thanks to enormous capital advantage and “regulatory tolerance,” meaning no one enforced the laws. If dumping against competitors were banned, the capital for acquisitions wouldn’t flow so freely.

So, as I understand, booksellers became sellers of everything for everyone?

At the same time, they observed that in the successive phases of growth along the K-curve—where the top gets richer and the bottom poorer—the top 10 percent of consumers really matter. In America, this top decile accounts for half of consumption, so if you take over most of it, the market is yours. If they buy into Amazon Prime, paying upfront for shipping, they will buy only from Amazon—meaning, if you, the seller on Amazon, are absent, you don’t exist. And if you don’t offer Prime delivery, your ranking drops.

Is that a monopsony? The sole intermediary and buyer from the sellers’ perspective?

Exactly, and with a monopsony, they can squeeze them like lemons. First, by raising margins—up to 60 percent—and second, by enforcing the so-called “highest privilege clause.” They prohibit sellers from raising their prices on Amazon unless they do so everywhere else, including their own stores. This way, they maintain the lowest market prices while increasing their margins. The customer loses the chance to find cheaper goods elsewhere. Finally, couriers are forced to urinate into bottles in their trucks because delivery standards are absurdly high.

Maybe at least the customer gets the package on time…

Not even that, because in the name of absurdly strict efficiency and oversight, Amazon tells drivers when they cannot move their trucks between deliveries. You park here, and you must deliver, say, seven packages. If not, your pay per package drops from 50 cents to 10 cents. Sometimes, that makes no sense—an object might be so large or complex that it would be better to drive a bit further rather than walk hundreds of meters. Of course, these drivers are formally not Amazon employees but subcontractors, even if their trucks bear Amazon logos, their vests, and their phones are full of apps that regulate and monitor their work.

That 60 percent margin is better than Polish real estate—probably on the level of… arms trade in a country under an American embargo?

Yes, drugs, human trafficking—that’s probably the level.

Is this a natural or necessary process? Did it have to happen this way? Were there initially nice companies because capital flowed in, and then it had to be squeezed from everyone around?

I explain this through the model of internal conflict within the company. In Gównowacenie, I illustrate this with Google, whose search revenue plateaued in 2020 when they reached 90% market share. There was nowhere further to grow. Then, as revealed by emails published during the Department of Justice case against Google, a faction led by Prabhagar Raghavan, formerly at McKinsey, proposed that they could still grow if… the quality of search deteriorated. Because if you need to search more than once, they could show two sets of ads, right? There was also a faction arguing that this was wrong, that they had built something great…

And if it’s so perfect, why destroy it?

It was their life's work: they were proud of Google, dedicated a lot to it, skipped birthday parties for their children and funerals for their mothers… But they lost.

Why did Raghavan win?

Primarily because he was not the first in the company to have this idea, but the first to convince the management. And again, legal and market factors played a role. Google was allowed to acquire most direct competitors earlier. They were permitted to bribe Apple—$20 billion annually just to keep it out of the search market. The result is similar to Amazon’s: sclerosis, marked by a drastic decline in service quality and profits from monopoly rents.

Amazon earns from search ranking fees, and others?

Facebook’s biggest revenue comes from extorting ad placements, over which advertisers have no control, while Apple’s second-largest income after the iPhone is a 30% fee on transactions in their app stores. To be clear: many tech companies, after years of decent activity, eventually started offering outdated junk or diverged from the epoch’s demands: IBM, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Compaq, Dell, Univac… But competition eventually pushed them out because entering this industry technologically is easier than in traditional sectors like automotive.

Why?

If your printer doesn’t support cheaper third-party toner, you can install a program that fixes that. If your phone doesn’t support a certain app, you can find something that hacks it. The entry barrier is very low, and such innovations—destructive yet revolutionary—discipline giants. I don’t claim this will replace workers’ rights, consumer rights, or privacy laws, but legal enabling of such innovations would radically improve our situation.

Regarding antitrust efforts—led by Lina Khan, then FTC commissioner—initiated during the 2020-24 administration, arguably the most far-reaching since Franklin D. Roosevelt. But why do the solutions from FDR’s era remain long-lasting, while those from Biden and Trump are so easily reversed?

There are many differences between FDR and Biden, but I’d point out one: Roosevelt made no concessions to the right wing of his party. Capital representatives among Democrats were told to “go jump in a lake,” and when they attacked the president, he organized a rally at Madison Square Garden and said he welcomed their hatred, I welcome their hatred. He made his policy a political banner, used it for his campaigns. Meanwhile, Biden did neither.

What does that mean?

Biden tried to pull the wagon in two directions: right-wing Democrats got judicial nominations, while the left got executive positions. The latter have to argue before judges to push their agenda. When Lina Khan sued Microsoft to block the acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, the federal judge—nominated by Biden, whose son works at Microsoft—ruled the merger was fine. Moreover, neither Biden nor Harris publicly called for the Department of Justice, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or FTC to curb corporate power to give voters more money. Vote for us, and we’ll fix it! Meanwhile, the corporate wing and billionaire donors in the party went to the media, saying that when Kamala Harris wins, they’ll fire Khan and others like Rohit Chopra or Jonathan Kanter.

Finally, I ask for a ray of hope. Where does goodness come from, and what should we do? Historically, as you write, tech giants faced opposition from regulators, unions, sector workers’ elites, innovative officials, and especially competitors. But today?

I believe that comrade Trump will save us, because he persuades everyone not to use American internet, just as he provoked a war with Iran to show why oil is such a risky energy source. Let’s remember that the European Union adopted a copyright directive because America threatened to impose import tariffs if they didn’t. Yet Trump still imposes tariffs… So why follow that law?

And you can’t build European digital sovereignty until reverse engineering and modification of American technology are illegal. You won’t be able to transfer all your ministries’ data from Microsoft’s cloud if you can’t modify Microsoft products, which you currently can’t due to copyright law. Until that changes, you remain at Trump’s mercy. He has something better than a neutron bomb…

That is, a weapon that kills people but leaves buildings intact.

If Office 365 in Poland is turned off, all companies and ministries are down, right? Why invade Greenland when you can cut Denmark off from digital infrastructure?

Actually, Danes have already started switching to open-source systems, though it will take time.

Sure, but there are more such areas. Remember in 2022 when Putin’s soldiers stole John Deere tractors from Ukraine and transported them to Chechnya. Then the company remotely disabled them.

We’re glad.

Sure, but that shows tractors can be disabled anywhere—Ukraine, Poland, Denmark—wherever they operate.

In short: hope lies in the fact that European governments will start fighting digital giants out of concern for their own security?

And alongside security, the issue of business development arises. Because those American trillions in profits could be turned into European billions, right? Jeff Bezos liked to say, “your margins are my opportunity.” That means: someone—namely, American giants—are making absurdly high profits, while their companies are suffering from sclerosis, their products and services are getting worse, and people hate them.

Gownowacenie in full swing. But what next?

You can sell your products everywhere, not just in Europe. If you change laws to enable better software production, we will buy it in Canada too. Since Americans learned to buy Canadian medicines via the US postal service, Americans and Canadians will figure out how to import better European software. You’re wondering how Finland could create a second Nokia, but you don’t need a second Nokia—making such things, transporting them across the ocean, stocking warehouses, and risking unsold inventory is a very tough business. Let Apple sell hardware…

And Europe?

It could fill the checkout counters of every Carrefour, Lidl, and Aldi worldwide with adapters costing a few dollars, which, when plugged into a smartphone, hack it and allow installing a European app store that doesn’t take 30% transaction fees, only about 3%. Apple’s margin is your big opportunity. Why would people download apps from it instead of the App Store? Because prices would be lower without paying Americans pretending to be Irish a toll.

Okay, I understand what to do, but the problem is probably that no one knows how or who should do it…

The most powerful coalitions are those formed by people who disagree on everything else but share a common opinion on this issue. Digital civil rights hippies like me, investors wanting to build billion-dollar tech businesses in Europe, national security hawks fearing threats from America and China—solar panels and electric cars from there should also be hacked, right?