Platform Socialism
A Conversation with James Muldoon
Happy Monday! If you, like me, are in the UK, hope you are surviving the heat and the political turmoil . . .
On the podcast, I talked to James Muldoon, a senior lecturer at Exeter University and the author of “Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech.” We discuss how GDH Cole’s guild socialism could be applied to tech corporations, what platforms mean for the future of capitalism, whether we should implement local and democratic control of associations and some real ideas for how to avoid dystopia. The book and conversation are extremely interesting, so be sure to check it out!
You can follow James Muldoon on Twitter @james_muldoon_ or buy the book Platform Socialism here.
As always, you can listen to it here or subscribe here (Spotify) or here (Apple Podcasts). If you like us, please rate, review and share the Anti-Dystopians to help us get new listeners. If you want to support the production of the show, you can visit here.
Further reading from the episode:
Order James Muldoon’s Platform Socialism (bonus points if you don’t use Amazon, but support your local bookstore through Hive)
Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism
Michael Kwet on Digital Colonialism
Tim Hwang’s The Subprime Attention Crisis
James Scott’s Two Cheers for Anarchism
What I’ve been reading
Elon Musk withdrew his Twitter bid (I feel extremely smug as I have said from the beginning that I didn’t think the deal would go through). Check out our past episode of the Anti-Dystopians where we talk about why this is bigger than just Musk.
A pregnant woman in Texas was pulled over for driving in the carpool lane. She says after Roe v. Wade was appealed, her baby should count as a person and therefore a passenger for the purposes of carpool.
Speaking of driving, Wired reports about the Danger of License Plate Readers in Post-Roe America
Really excellent and well-researched piece on why the anti-trans campaign is working — “religious fundamentalists ... see trans kids as a wedge issue, and they’ve aggressively targeted libraries, districts, schools, and individual teachers, implicitly calling on followers to do their worst."
Leaked Videos Show Disney Is the Biggest Ad Tech Giant You've Never Heard Of
The US Feds admit they Don't Know How Often They're Using Facial Recognition
A million-strong troll army is targeting Iran’s #MeToo activists on Instagram
If you liked last week’s episode with Paris Marx about Silicon Valley and the future of transport, you’ll enjoy the fact that cruise robotaxis blocked traffic for hours on this San Francisco street
Tweet(s) of the week
Boris Johnson has said he will resign as Prime Minister, setting off a Tory leadership contest — thoughts go out to British politics nerds whose productivity plummeted this week as their eyes were glued to the screens
