Twiddling

Or Something Like It

During Cory Doctorow's keynote at PyCon US 2025, he pointed our attention to something he calls "twiddling," a way to fine-tune a nearly infinite number of knobs/settings that tech companies use to exploit users.

For example, one of the ways in which they can do this is through Algorithmic Wage Discrimination. This allows shitty companies to discriminate and exploit workers by paying different wages for the same work (think anything "gig economy").

That idea (among many others) has stayed couped up in my head ever since the keynote, and it apparently has no intentions of going anywhere, which is why I decided to write about it in this blog, in hopes of exorcising it away with words. Let's see if it works.

Disclaimer

One thing to quickly get out of the way here. What follows are rather reactionary opinions based solely on gut feelings. It will likely include exaggerations, bad arguments, assumptions, and a plethora of other opinion-adjacent nouns and adjectives. So proceed with care.

Leverage

During Doctorow's keynote, he highlighted the history behind Google's fall from grace. Built as a strictly "don't be evil" scrappy search engine that actually worked, it has become an ad- and AI-riddled pile of useless garbage.

I'm not attempting to detail the steps to enshittification here, as you can listen to the keynote yourself or take a gander over on Pluralistic.

But one pattern that's seemingly ubiquitous for many of these large tech companies is how they emerge with either a novel or well-implemented application. They entice users with "free" services and a bit of good will. But at the end of the road, users are commoditized (ads, tracking, etc...). The tech companies are no longer concerned with the users, but with satisfying investors and advertisers, often colluding to defeat and destroy anything that resembles or provides consumer protection (whether through competition or legislation).

But by the time that users begin to notice how shitty their services have become, these companies have already amassed enough leverage to keep them tied to the ecosystem.

In addition, tech companies ... sorry, I don't mean to personify these business entities.... what I mean is, executives and leaders (real human people making awful decisions) are defiant to laws, competition, and user pushback. They no longer fear that their toxic user policies will create enough of a backlash to dent their business aspirations.

Tech workers, those who once were somewhat secure in their field, are fearful of losing their jobs, their health insurance, their retirement, and so on... They have little sway on the direction leadership is taking, and often feel powerless (and are mostly powerless) to do anything about it.

The oligarchs seem to hold all the cards.

On The Other End

On the other end of this technological ecosystem, you have "free and open source software" (FOSS) that is essential to the digital economy. And that's probably an understatement.

I've been thinking of an interesting parallel between how some of these huge tech companies started and where they are now vs how some open source projects started, and where they find themselves today.

There are open source creators and maintainers that created innovative software, applications, tools, and so on—and then proceeded to give them away for free (or something like that).

On one hand, you have Sergey Brin and Larry Page who went on to create Google. Users could use Google for free, and it was great! To the point where "searching the web" became synonymous with "googling". But with their villainous heel turn, we're now left with Google AI telling us that Bob Dylan weighs around 6 or 7 pounds.

On the other end, you have someone like Daniel Stenberg, the founder and lead developer of cURL. He's been giving away the software for free since the 90s, and it is found in just about everything, including operating systems, games, mobile phones, TVs, cars, touch screens, and even on the Switch 2!

So what's the catch? Where's the leverage? What power do Daniel or the multitude of other open source creators and contributors have to protect their own interests?

Ha! (It's not a trick question... I really want to know!)

Seemingly, there is no leverage.

Instead, we find all sorts of businesses (and not just Big Tech) exploiting the work of these creators for immense profit.

Okay, sure, the word "exploiting" could be problematic when trying to get into the nitty gritty of what that even means. But I mean what I said. If you're unsure about that take, feel free to examine this talk by Christopher Neugebauer and then come back.

But the point is, it's almost like the inverse has happened here. All the goodwill that FOSS creators might have wished upon the world, Big Tech has gobbled up and nullified it. Users of most software applications today have been dehumanized and turned into zombie DAUs.

Reverse Leverage?

Since I'm here in this random little soap box in some corner of the web, I'll go back to where I started.

Twiddling.

What if we could twiddle with the abusive usurpers of open source?

What would happen, for example, if Daniel Stenberg added a licensing clause to cURL that explicitly required any company involved in enshittification to pay him billions of dollars to use any updated version of cURL?

What if, instead of the PSF desperately seeking sponsors for the next developer-in-residence or the next PyCon event, they started demanding payment from enshittifying companies before they were allowed to use updated versions of Python software?

What if that random guy from Nebraska had the wherewithal and ability to fine enshittifying companies for using their software?

Of course, this would be a nightmarish scenario. Navigating licensing. Litigation. Enforcement. Surgically applying it to "shitty" companies, etc...

Maybe in a similar vein, what if a large enough contingent of open source developers united to hold large tech companies hostage by refusing to release updates or security fixes to important packages? What if they colluded to coerce action through acts of resistance (and what might that look like in software)?

Or maybe there are smaller knobs to turn and sneakier buttons to push that are designed to produce pressure on these companies that historically, at least on paper, are holding all the cards.

(Maybe this is a point that Doctorow makes when he insists that workers have more power and leverage through collective organizing (unions) and grassroots efforts, but my thought experiment here is wondering about additional pressure points as well.)

Denouement

We're in the bad place. At the very least, it does seem like one of our best bets is to collectively squeeze the enshittifiers until they have few options left. I'm unsure that we can wait this one out and wait for things to get better on their own. Maybe we can do something.

And then, maybe that guy in Nebraska might actually be able to afford health care after all...