Name: 為何網路上的東西越來越糟？ | The Gray Area (Why everything on the internet is getting worse | The Gray Area)
Uploaded: 2025-11-19T17:45:52.000Z
Duration: 43 min 29 s

For the show this week, I'm talking to Corey Doctoro.

這週節目，我要跟 Corey Doctoro 聊聊。

He's an author, a journalist, a science fiction writer, and

他是一位作家、記者、科幻小說家，

he's got a new book out called why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and what To Do About It.

而且他有本新書叫做《為什麼所有東西都突然變糟了，以及該怎麼辦》。

It's a fun book, but it's also a serious book and a smart book and a probing book.

這本書很有趣，但同時也很嚴肅、很聰明、很有深度。

It explains why so many of the technologies and platforms we use continue to get worse and worse in similar ways and for similar reasons.

它解釋了為什麼我們使用的許多科技和平臺，會以相似的方式、相似的原因，不斷變得越來越糟。

Let's just start with the basics here, Corey.

Corey，我們就從基本問題開始吧。

I, for my entire adult life, or at least the majority of it, have worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that works on digital rights.

我成年後的大部分時間，或者說至少大部分時間，都在 Electronic Frontier Foundation 工作，這是一個致力於數位權利的非營利組織。

And these are very abstract, technical questions.

這些問題其實很抽象、很技術性。

They eventually become very concrete and immediate.

但最後都會變得非常具體、非常切身。

But that's usually when something terrible has happened to you.

不過通常都是在你遇到什麼糟糕的事情之後。

So the challenge is to get people to care about it beforehand.

所以挑戰就在於，要怎麼讓大家事先就開始關心這件事。

And so enchitification is not a new idea.

所以 enchitification 並不是一個新概念。

It's really an encapsulation of decades of things that I've been trying to get people to care about.

它其實是總結了我幾十年來一直想讓大家關心的各種事情。

But it turns out that when you start swearing, it's kind of a magic combination and people start paying attention to it.

但結果發現，當你開始罵髒話時，這組合有點神奇，大家反而會開始注意。

The formal definition of insertification is both a kind of descriptive and theoretical idea.

insertification 的正式定義，既是一種描述性概念，也是一種理論性概念。

So descriptively, it describes how platforms go bad, that first they're good to their end users, they find a way to lock those end users in, and

描述性的部分，它說明瞭平臺是如何變壞的：一開始它們對終端用戶很好，找到方法將用戶鎖定在內，然後

then they make things worse for those end users, because the lock in means that the end users are unlikely to depart.

再讓這些終端用戶的情況變得更糟，因為這種鎖定意味著用戶不太可能離開。

They use that new surplus to make things good for business customers.

他們利用這些新的盈餘來讓企業客戶受益。

They lock those business customers in, making them dependent on those end users.

他們將這些企業客戶鎖定住，讓他們依賴這些終端用戶。

They make things worse for the business customers, too, and then they turn into a pile of shit.

他們也讓企業客戶的情況變得更糟，然後就變成一堆爛泥了。

This, I think, is a process that many of us can recognize in platforms as diverse as, like, Uber or Google.

我認為，這個過程是我們許多人都能在像 Uber 或 Google 這樣的平臺上認出來的。

But what is, I think, more interesting and important is the theoretical work on why this is happening now.

但我認為更有趣、更重要的是關於為什麼現在會發生這種情況的理論研究。

How come all these platforms are doing this now?

為什麼所有這些平臺現在都在做這件事？

So when would you say the great enshitning officially began?

那麼，你認為大範圍的 enshitning 究竟是從什麼時候開始的？

If you had to bark the era, where would you start?

如果你必須為這個時代命名，你會從哪裡開始？

Not that it's that neat, but where would you start?

並不是說它那麼精確，但你會從哪裡開始？

嗯，就像你說的，這不是那麼明確。

I think the defining characteristic of inshidification is not that things got worse, but

我認為 inshidification 的定義特徵不是事情變糟了，而是

that we kept using them after they got worse.

我們在它們變糟之後還是繼續使用它們。

And so that makes it hard to find a demarcation point.

所以這讓很難找到一個劃分點。

There's definitely like moments where we can say, oh, this is definitely post inshitification, like 2019.

當然有一些時刻，我們可以說，喔，這絕對是 enshitning 之後的時期，像是 2019 年。

We see in the court records from the Google antitrust case last year that these two executives at Google had a fight.

我們從去年 Google 反壟斷案的法庭記錄中看到，Google 的兩位高管發生了爭執。

There was the head of Google search, a guy called Prabhakar Raghavan, and

有一位是 Google 搜尋的負責人，叫做 Prabhakar Raghavan，

the head of Google search technology, a guy called Ben Gomes, who'd been with Google since it was like one server under a desktop and had built out all their server infra.

另一位是 Google 搜尋技術的負責人，叫做 Ben Gomes，他從 Google 剛起步、只有一臺桌上型電腦底下的伺服器時就加入了，並且建置了他們所有的伺服器基礎設施。

Raghavan had this idea to make search growth come back after the company had achieved a 90% market share, after which it's very hard to grow by making search worse.

Raghavan 有個想法，要在公司達到 90% 的市佔率後，讓搜尋成長回來，因為在那之後，透過讓搜尋變差來成長是非常困難的。

So you'd have to search more than once to get your answer.

所以你必須搜尋不只一次才能得到答案。

而且他們可以給你顯示更多廣告。

And clearly most of us are still using Google today.

而且很明顯，我們大多數人今天還在使用 Google。

But I wouldn't say that that's like the moment it happened.

但我不會說那就是事情發生的那個瞬間。

So why do we keep using shit after it gets worse?

那為什麼東西變差了我們還繼續用？

Why don't we just quit and move to something that isn't shit?

為什麼我們不乾脆不用了，換個不是那麼爛的東西？

So I think there's a kind of galaxy brain version of this where it's like stage one.

所以我認為這有個類似「銀河腦」的版本，就像第一階段。

It's because consumers are dumb and you like shopped wrong.

那是因為消費者很笨，而且你購物的方式不對。

And if only you shopped better and been willing to pay for things rather than getting them ad supported, everything would be fine.

如果你購物方式好一點，願意付錢買東西，而不是靠廣告支持，一切都會沒事的。

Because if you're not paying for the product, you're the product.

因為如果你沒有為產品付錢，你就是產品。

It's not just that the platforms were greedy or that VCs were greedy because VCs been greedy and platforms have been greedy forever.

這不只是因為平臺貪婪，或是創投貪婪，因為創投和平臺一直以來都很貪婪。

I think the thing to understand the thing that changed is that the constraints on firms changed.

我認為要理解改變的是，企業面臨的限制改變了。

The things that punished them when they did poorly, One of them was competition.

那些在他們表現不好的時候懲罰他們的因素，其中一個就是競爭。

It's very hard to take your business elsewhere when there's nowhere else to take your business.

當沒有其他地方可以去的時候，要將你的生意轉移到別處是非常困難的。

As Tom Eastman says, I'm old enough to remember when the Internet wasn't five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four.

就像 Tom Eastman 說的，我年紀大了，還記得網路還不是隻有五個大型網站，裡面充斥著其他四個網站的文字截圖。

The cartelization of the Internet was downstream of a bunch of very explicit policy choices to support monopolies.

網路的卡特爾化是許多明確政策選擇的下游結果，這些政策選擇旨在支持壟斷。

We have the Chicago school in the 70s and 80s saying monopolies are efficient.

我們有七、八零年代的芝加哥學派，他們說壟斷是有效率的。

It's perverse to punish companies for having products so good that we all use them.

懲罰那些產品好到我們都使用的公司，這很奇怪。

Antitrust enforcement is a fool's errand.

And you see that proceeding over the decades since with the result of Increasing concentration everywhere.

幾十年來，我們看到各地區的集中度不斷提高。

I think my favorite example of this is Facebook buying Insta, where they're buying this company with 12 employees, they're giving them a billion dollars.

我覺得我最喜歡的例子是 Facebook 收購 Insta，當時他們花十億美元買下一家只有 12 名員工的公司。

The CFO of Facebook sends an email to Mark Zuckerberg and says, this seems like an awful lot of money for a relatively small firm.

Facebook 的財務長寄了一封電子郵件給 Mark Zuckerberg，說這似乎是個相對小公司來說非常多的錢。

Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously in writing said it is better to buy than to compete, sent his CFO a memo saying, we're buying them because people like Instagram better than Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg 之前曾寫過「與其競爭不如收購」，他回覆財務長一封備忘錄說：「我們收購他們是因為大家喜歡 Instagram 勝過 Facebook。」

They leave Facebook, they go to Instagram.

他們離開 Facebook，去了 Instagram。

If we buy Instagram, they will still be Facebook users even if they're not using the platform.

如果我們收購 Instagram，即使他們不使用這個平臺，他們仍然是 Facebook 的用戶。

You know, if you're an antitrust enforcer, this is like an admission in writing, right?

如果你是反壟斷的執行者，這就像是書面的自白，對吧？

And yet the Obama administration waved that merger through.

然而，歐巴馬政府卻準許了這項合併案。

In fact, they presided over so many of these anti competitive mergers, just like the Bush administration, just like the Trump administration, and

事實上，他們就像布希政府、川普政府一樣，見證了這麼多反競爭的合併案，

The monopoly competition point, because we, we're going to get there.

關於壟斷競爭的部分，因為我們，我們很快就會講到。

Before we do, I just want to make sure we sort of break down the physics of insertification.

在我們講之前，我想先確保我們把 insertification 的原理講清楚。

People understand what's happening and why.

讓大家瞭解正在發生什麼事，以及為什麼。

One of the points you make, right, is that when we're talking about this, we're talking about a pattern, a process, whatever you want to call it, that infects a specific kind of digital business, right?

你提到的一點是，當我們在談論這個時，我們談論的是一種模式、一個過程，或者你想怎麼稱呼它，它會感染特定類型的數位企業，對吧？

為什麼是平臺特別容易被感染？

Why are they such fertile, fertile soil for shit?

為什麼它們會是這麼肥沃的土壤，滋生這些亂七八糟的事情？

Well, we need platforms on the Internet, right?

嗯，我們在網路上需要平臺，對吧？

A platform is just a thing that mediates between two different groups of users.

平臺就是一種在兩群不同使用者之間進行協調的東西。

And unless you want to do it all yourself, unless you not only want to write a newsletter, but

除非你想自己來，除非你不但想寫電子報，

also process the payments and write the mail server and maintain the mail server and so on, you need an intermediary in there.

還要處理付款、架設郵件伺服器、維護郵件伺服器等等，你都需要一個中間人。

It's nothing wrong with not being required to gnaw your own Internet stack out of a whole log with your own teeth.

如果你不需要自己動手，從頭開始打造你的網路架構，這沒什麼不對。

It's great to have middlemen who handle stuff for you.

有中間人幫你處理事情，這很棒。

The problem is that they manage to usurp the role between end users and business customers.

問題是，他們設法篡固了終端使用者和企業客戶之間的角色。

The way that they do that is that they have the distinct advantage of digital technology, which is that you can alter the business logic on a per user, per interaction basis.

他們做到這一點的方式是，他們擁有數位科技的獨特優勢，也就是你可以針對每個使用者、每次互動來改變商業邏輯。

It makes it very hard for either group of users to make things better.

這讓兩群使用者都很難讓事情變得更好。

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為何網路上的東西越來越糟？ | The Gray Area (Why everything on the internet is getting worse | The Gray Area)

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