It hardly needs to be said, but one of the most nefarious activities of the corporate oligarchs and their fellow Epstein Class tech bros is trying to get us all to use ‘apps’ for everything online, instead of the open World Wide Web.
Apps are simply a covert attempt at privatization of the commons of the internet. When corporations put stuff on the web, they have to (mostly) play by the well-established rules of what you can and can’t do there, established in the public interest.
But when corporations operate on their own private ‘app’, they set the rules. They control what you can and can’t access, and under what conditions. They control the data on your attention, your demographics, your politics, your buying habits and history, and your ‘preferences’. So they can sell that data to others unimpeded. An “app” is a walled corporate fiefdom that has enclosed and replaced a public space.
If you imagine the web as a huge mall, then the ‘app’ is a locked store with opaque windows and guards determining who goes in and what gets out, as well as everything that goes on inside. And, of course, the price of everything inside, subject to increasing “personalized” surveillance pricing based on everything they know about you.
Apps are the corporatists’ version of the dark web they’ve always warned you about. They don’t want you on their website, where it’s easy for you to escape to another ‘store’ in the mall. They want your total attention, with any ‘competitors’ and public information and warnings well out of sight and mind.
Of course they will tell you that ‘apps’ are more versatile and customized to your ‘needs’ as a user of their information and products, and better suited to the tiny phone screens that most people use to access everything online. But that’s because they deliberately design their websites that way, with constant rejoinders to “download the app” to access “special features” and “member benefits”. It’s a total con.
This might be a losing battle, even though all the rest of us are on the same side. By turning the web into a junkyard of non-functioning sites, flea markets, misinformation, and spam, they are dirtying up the playpen precisely when they invite you to a different one.
My method for trying to limit the number of ‘apps’ I am complicit in supporting (by using them) is to stick to a certain maximum number of ‘apps’ I will not exceed, either on my laptop (8) or on my phone (10). As soon as I feel compelled to add an app, I search for one to delete, and delete it first. So far I’m sticking to that, and my laptop ‘desktop’ contains all eight (non-Mac) ‘apps’ I use, while my phone ‘home page’ contains all ten ‘apps’ I use on it, and nothing else. I have no ‘commercial’ apps that can be accessed just as easily through my browser.
So that’s my Public Service Announcement. As everything falls apart, we’re going to have to learn again how to create and manage ‘commons’ together. Let’s hold on to the few remaining commons we already have as that happens.
