#chokepoint-capitalism — Public Fediverse posts

@MrGR @onekind I would challenge the claim "important sales channel". Marketing people claim that #Spotify was the most important channel for all audio. But most creatives don't earn any money there. So, is it? Question the premise. Like Amazon for ebooks & Audible for audiobooks, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but we can – and should – work without them.

You might want to read Chokepoint Capitalism by @pluralistic (followed by The Internet Con & Enshittification). #ChokepointCapitalism

Pluralistic: Raymond Biesinger's "9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off" (28 Oct 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/28/productive-seething/

"It's companies vs people"

Exactly! I wish, more people would realize that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QvVnjiegE

https://piped.video/watch?v=M1QvVnjiegE

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=M1QvVnjiegE

#capitalism #HumansBeforeProfit #corporateGreed #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #Oligarchy #Corporatocracy #SocialInequality #CostOfLiving #CostOfLivingCrisis #QualityOfLife #EvanEdinger

Reacted like someone with zero critical faculty, #GitHub 👏🏻

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #noAI #genAI #generativeAI #promptEngineering #vibeCoding #LLM #ChatBots #aiChatBot #enshittification #ensh11n #gaslighting #DeceptivePatterns #darkPatterns #automaticOptIn #trainingLLMsIsTheft #HumansBeforeProfit #corporateGreed #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #intellectualProperty

"The cap Google, Facebook, X, Flipboard, Newsbreak, SmartNews, Yahoo, MSN, Reddit, and every other platform puts on independent publishers has crept lower and lower until there’s no space left for us to operate in."

#JoshuaTyler

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/independent-ends.html

I was nodding in sympathetic agreement as I read this post, until I reaches the paragraph where it says ...

(1/?)

#ChokePointCapitalism #IndependentPublishing #WebSearch #SocialMedia

I saw only part of the #ModernMedicalMafia documentary. When they described how PBMs (pharmacy benefits managers) worked, I could see it was an example of #ChokepointCapitalism. It’s been pulled from #Amazon and #Vimeo, but it’s still on #YouTube. #PBM

People have died because they could no longer afford their medications, or they have to choose between rent and food and medication.

https://modernmedicalmafia.com

Almost all of the online payment providers you interact with is backed by one of a handful of giant payment processors (eg PayPal and Stripe, or in China, AliPay and WeChatPay). That are essentially an API between you and the credit card company your card belongs to. That are, in turn. basically APIs between you and the company that hosts your bank accounts.

In other words, companies are squeezing on chokepoints between you and your bank.

(2/?)

#payments #OnlinePayments #ChokePointCapitalism

https://www.advicenow.org.uk/

https://www.advicenow.org.uk/training

https://www.advicenow.org.uk/get-help/benefits/personal-independence-payment-pip

I used one on my second attempt to get PIP (successful)!
ICR whether it was https://www.advicenow.org.uk/get-help/benefits/personal-independence-payment-pip/pip-mandatory-reconsideration-letter-tool or any of

https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2018/january/pip-and-dla-mandatory-reconsideration-letter-tools
https://templatestoolkit.com/mandatory-reconsideration-pip-letter-template/
https://cpag.org.uk/welfare-rights/tools-templates/personal-independence-payment-tools-and-templates
https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/59301/pip-mr-letter-tool

#UnitedKingdom #UK #England #GB #GreatBritain #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #benefits #money #legal #law #RuleOfLaw #lawyer #support #help #information #options #ideas #PIP #UC #UniversalCredit #PersonalIndependencePayment #Unemployment #Income #apply #application #survive #survival #MutualAidSavesLives #MutualAid #education #learn #info #tutorial #HowTo #guide #disabled #disability #DisabilityRightsUK #DisabilityAwareness #capitalism #CapitalismIsKillingYou #ChokepointCapitalism

The role of commercial policy in politics is to keep private companies under control not to do them favors. That's to ensure, that #capitalism is not unleashed. That's the duty of the state towards its citizens. Because capitalism, at its core, is an Ouroboros that would devour itself if given the chance.

#chokepointCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #corporateGreed #HumansBeforeProfit #Corpocracy

Money is finite. The world is a closed system. In order do make huge amounts of money, you have to take it from somewhere. You do not generate this money out of nowhere.

#WealthDistribution #WealthRedistribution #Oligarchy #capitalism #chokepointCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #corporateGreed #HumansBeforeProfit #oligarchy #Corporatocracy #SocialInequality

Let's say, there's a rich person who owns a company. Said person has the role "capitalist" and the goal "make profits". So, making profits here is neither good nor evil in itself (I don't like it and I dislike the person for being profit-driven, but that's not the point here), it is just what a person in that role does.

2/

#capitalism #chokepointCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #corporateGreed #HumansBeforeProfit #oligarchy #Corporatocracy

@heiseonline Entschuldigung, aber ist es eine gute Idee, mehr Menschen in den Amazon-walled-Garden zu schicken, wo sie direkt in die Abhängigkeit kommen? Mag ja sein, dass es da ein hübsches Tool gibt, aber das alleoine ist kein Grund, sich von einem US-Unternehmen abhängig zu machen. Sagt den Menschen doch wenigstens, wie sie plattformübergreifend frei publizieren. #publishingwide #Selfpublishing #Amazon #ChokepointCapitalism #Enshittification

@kristiedegaris Thank you so much for sharing your story on the unpaid labour of book authors.

I first learned about this through the 2022 book "Chokepoint Capitalism" by @pluralistic which describes in detail how publishers (and other intermediaries) systematically exploit creative workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokepoint_Capitalism

The system is in an advanced stage of #enshittification, and things must change.

#ChokepointCapitalism #author #books #publishing

#capitalism #chokepointCapitalism #oligarchy #Corporatocracy #predatoryCapitalism #corporateGreed #technocracy #HumansBeforeProfit

I am sure. I would love to disable it, but you deliberately didn't include a "disable" button and then sent all the devs into their Christmas and New Year vacation

#GitHub #AI #GitHubCopilot #ChatBot #ArtificialIntelligence #genAI #generativeAI #amCoding #amProgramming #softwareEngineering #softwareDevelopment #ensh11n #enshittification #chokepointCapitalism

MBAs with a focus in SPOF.

@arclight a.k.a. #ChokepointCapitalism

Much-deserved kudos for Cory Doctorow:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/26/enshittification-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-explained

#enshittification #CoryDoctorow #ChokepointCapitalism

Why specifically #TikTok is a problem?

– Because it's a Chinese app (#racism) and people like to suppress the fact how problematic big American tech companies are (#corpocracy)
– Because right-wing propaganda works and middle and left-wing politicians don't want to admit that they just didn't try to be equally present there

#Corporatocracy #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism #privacy #privacyMatters #MyPrivacyisNoneofYourBusiness

How long until this next #enshittification "feature":

Premium users can see your cam in the meeting software, non-premium users can't—BUT: You can't either and you can't deactivate your cam.

#ensh11n #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism

Bsky raises $15m from Blockchain Capital, the VC's press release hints at what they're interested in:

https://www.blockchaincapital.com/blog/bluesky-13m-users-and-growing-our-investment-in-blueskys-re-imagined-social-network

Bluesky [is] designed to foster a new ecosystem of applications. [...] It is interoperable with existing internet protocols and blockchain-based systems, opening the door for a more connected, less siloed social experience. Since its launch in April 2023, over 100 clients have been built on the AT Protocol, and users have created more than 50,000 custom feeds. And the best part of it all? By building on top of the AT protocol, these developers have access to Bluesky’s 13M users worldwide.

The VC firm sees bsky and their ownership of the relay as being a potentially very lucrative chokepoint, where the users of bluesky are the asset to rent to platform developers who want "access" to them. I've written before how atproto's decentralization is effectively meaningless with the relay system, where it's decentralized in the same sense as google alerts is decentralized - sure you can host your own PDS, but it's only useful because the main relay crawls it, and then either bsky or someone else who (inevitably) pays for access can send it back to you.

edit: here's why i think the relay is a chokepoint and why there will never be a second: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/113365406995624763

#bsky #bluesky #atproto #ChokepointCapitalism

I wish @creativecommons had a license like “CC PDD (Public-Domain-on-Death)” which would activate upon the creator’s death, allowing them and publishers to freely monetize their work while they’re alive, but which would release the work into the #publicdomain immediately after.

It might incentivize publishers to get their creators health insurance. 😀

(a thought I had while rereading Rebecca Giblin and @pluralistic ʼs #ChokepointCapitalism )

@jwz @timbray @codinghorror I was really hoping cryptocurrency would have freed us from having %age based middlemen siphoning off my earnings that I want to direct at creators. Instead, even the "best" cryptocurrency just completely fails at being a good way to transfer my resources to someone else digitally. :(

#ChokepointCapitalism (from Apple and Google, but ALSO Valve and Patreon) is driving everyone towards #enshittification and #TechnoFudalism and I hate it. :(

It somehow feels appropriate that this post is both a throwback to things I wrote about back in the much earlier days of my blog, and, a #NewMusicAlert. In other words, Happy Blaugust!

See also: Alex Cornish at the Troubadour (2008); Alex Cornish with a string section (2009)

All the way back in the early 2000s – when MySpace was still a thing, even!! – I came across a singer/songwriter who I’ve continued to follow and listen to1 for the past two decades: Alex Cornish.

We’ve seen Alex live a couple of times in the past 12 months with his regular collaborators Paul Gilbody and Bevis Hungate, most recently in January at an intimate gig close to home, at The Half Moon in Putney. We’ve met them many times – he’s just such an amazingly nice, humble, gentle mannered and great guy, as are the band.

Today, I’ve had an email announcing his latest album, the eighth, titled Henry Found the Time. In classic Alex manner, he writes an incredibly honest and humble assessment of the world of streaming services and how they particularly affect solo self-publishing artists2 – naturally, for me, this was an instant purchase as music to keep3, via Bandcamp.

What do I think of it? I haven’t listened to a single note of it so far, but I wanted to post about it anyway – it’s going to be great, and I can’t wait to hear the tracks live when Alex and the gang are on the road again! Going straight into my home music server and collection, and I’ll have it on repeat this week!

Oh, and also:

Support independent musicians. Buy their music, buy their merchandise, go to their shows. They deserve it.

1. According to Last.FM, Alex is my most-listened artist (closely followed by Cindy Alexander). ↩︎
2. For more on this, you need to read Chokepoint Capitalism, by the marvellous Cory Doctorow. ↩︎
3. Incidentally, I was intrigued by an article by Kelly Sims, Ownership in the Rental Age, which talks about whether or not we do still get to own our music. Interesting perspective. ↩︎

Like it? Share it -

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https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/10/henry-found-the-time/

#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #album #AlexCornish #bandcamp #chokepointCapitalism #gigs #liveMusic #Music #NewMusicAlert #recording

It should be mandatory to display the revenue of tracking and selling personal identifiable data as the cost of a free plan.

#privacy #privacyMatters #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism #corporateGreed #dataCapitalism

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Wow, this link preview makes you so excited! This sure boosts usage of this site 👏🏻

#enshittification #ensh11n #platformCapitalism #predatoryCapitalism #chokepointCapitalism

Wealth of Jeff Bezos: $185 billion (2021). It's a literally unimaginable amount of money.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

#SuckUpEconomics #ChokepointCapitalism

Wer vermutet, dass #Microsoft zu wenig Geld verdient und deswegen #Werbung innerhalb ihres Betriebssystems schalten "muss", irrt gewaltig. Microsoft betreibt mit #Xandr einen riesigen Datenmarktplatz und nutzt seine anderen Produkte als Anzeigenfläche. #Advertising #SurveillanceCapitalism #PeakCapitalism #AdvertisingIndustry #ChokepointCapitalism

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/24/24138949/microsoft-windows-11-start-menu-ads-recommendations-setting-disable

https://netzpolitik.org/2023/microsofts-datenmarktplatz-xandr-das-sind-650-000-kategorien-in-die-uns-die-online-werbeindustrie-einsortiert/

Basically, the threat of AI isn't that it will outpace humans in quality & cost effectivity - it's that everything will be replaced with it, even though it does way worse on both those parameters, because the #ChokepointCapitalism gatekeepers stand to make more money that way.

https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/112271566528376734