On building Digital Solidarity

How we politicize technology in service of a better world is an open and contested question. A few days ago I shared a piece on historicising enshittification. In it, Arvind L. U. explores the limits of how Doctorow’s framing around that term is both ahistorical, in that it limits itself to a view that ignores the realities of the global south, and lacking imagination for not even considering a real alternative political economy of the internet. In response, Henrik shared a quote out of Digital Solidarity – a new book by Aline Blankertz and Malte Engeler – which similarly considers the enshittification framing to conceal the fact that it’s the pinnacle of capitalism and not an aberration. Intrigued by this, I really wanted to read the whole, longer argument that Aline & Malte are making in their book. Luckily, I managed to score a review copy of it, which I went through over the weekend. As the book is unfortunately right now only available in German, I thought I’d at least attempt to…