Big Tech is Like the Enclosure Movement

Email, RSS, the open hyperlink, and the early web were commons: shared infrastructure anyone could build on. Social platforms converted that commons into walled gardens, moving the audience inside and charging rent for access to it. In doing this, big tech companies were following a centuries-old playbook. The idea that an individual can own a piece of the earth’s surface is younger than most people realize, specific to certain legal traditions, and was imposed on much of the world by force. In most places throughout most of history, land was managed collectively via overlapping use rights rather than exclusive ownership. Understanding how private property in land was created, and what was destroyed in the process, lets us ask clearer questions about property rights generally: not “is this property?” but “who decided it was property, when, why, and who was dispossessed in the process?” The best-known example of communal land being privatized (to English speakers, anyway) is the…