Upstream

Every wonder why it feels like almost every single tech product you use is actively trying to screw you? Why it is that your printer requires you to subscribe to ink cartridges that, ounce for ounce, cost more than gold? Why you can’t read websites anymore because of all the moving, deceptive advertisements clogging up the screen? Why you’re paying substantially more for an entire suite of buggy streaming services than your parents ever were for cable TV? Why your BlueTooth enabled electric toothbrush keeps breaking? Why airplanes are falling apart mid-flight?  Well, it might not seem like it at first glance, but all of these phenomena are related. They have a single cause: deregulation. Specifically, deregulation driven by big tech monopolies that have found all sorts of creative and coercive ways to use the legal system to screw over not just their customers, but increasingly their employees, clients, vendors, advertisers—basically everybody but a handful of shareholders and C-suite decision-makers who are