Fascinating read by Cory Doctorow:
With a Kickstarter campaign now underway for the audio edition of his new book, ‘Red Team Blues,’ Cory Doctorow shares the mistakes of his past campaigns—and why it’s all worth it
It’s a mystery why this is all so complicated. And actually, it doesn’t have to be. You can skip all of this nonsense and just sell the files within an app that can handle all the downloading, unzipping, and playback behind the scenes. But every in-app purchase comes with a 30% commission to Apple or Google, which would explain why these two tech giants have completely enshittified direct downloading: the worse the direct download experience is, the better handing over a third of your gross revenue starts to look. It’s the mobile duopoly’s version of the airline industry continuously dreaming up new petty cruelties for their coach fares.