Finn Myrstad, director of digital policy at the Norwegian Consumer Council, joins Plutopia to explain how dominant technology companies degrade digital products by exploiting monopoly power, locking users into services, harvesting personal data, and using manipulative design to maximize attention and advertising revenue. He warns that generative AI may accelerate this “enshittification,” particularly as costly AI systems become embedded in government services, while surveillance devices, opaque terms of service, scam advertising, and addictive social-media features further erode privacy and consumer choice. Drawing on investigations involving Apple, Grindr, location-data brokers, and Snapchat, Myrstad argues that fines alone cannot restrain powerful platforms; regulators need stronger enforcement, limits on surveillance advertising, meaningful corporate accountability, and fairer competition. Despite the dangers, he remains optimistic that public resistance can produce a better internet in which people control their data and feeds, move their content between services, and are no longer manipulated into remaining on platforms.
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Finn Myrstad:
I feel often when I discuss these things, it becomes very doom and gloom. And I do think, I really, think we can change this. It might feel like an impossible thing to do because this company is so powerful. There’s a deregulatory push in Europe and in the US, which are the two regions that I work with the most. So you can get quite depressed and we have a right, we have an authoritarian wave, in Europe as well. So you could be quite depressed looking at some sort of political situation. But I do feel like there is an optimism now that we can change these things. And in the latest report that we wrote on a enshittification, published in March, our first chapter is about a positive vision for the internet. and where we sort of try to outline what can a good internet be. And it’s about how you can decide what comes in your feed, where you can move your content between services, where you are actually in control of your data. And I do think there’s a move now because I do think maybe the tech companies have gone too far.