In my book *Enshittification*, I develop the concept of "giant teddybears," a scam that has been transposed from carnival midway games to digital platforms. The EU has just fined Elon Musk $140m for running a giant teddybear scam on Twitter:
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/08/giant-teddybears/#petty-ripoffs
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Growing up, August 15 always meant two things for my family: my mother's birthday and the first day of the CNE, a giant traveling fair that would park itself on Toronto's waterfront for the last three weeks of summer. We'd get there early, and by 10AM, there'd always be some poor bastard lugging around a galactic-scale giant teddybear that was offered as a prize at one of the midway games.
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Now, nominally, the way you won a giant teddybear was by getting five balls in a peach basket. To a first approximation, this is a feat that no one has ever accomplished. Rather, a carny had beckoned this guy over and said, "Hey, fella, I like your face. Tell you what I'm gonna do: you get just *one* ball in the basket and I'll give you one of these beautiful, luxurious keychains. If you win *two* keychains, I'll let you trade them in for one of these *gigantic* teddybears."
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Why would the carny do this? Because once this poor bastard took possession of the giant teddybear, he was obliged to conspicuously lug it around the CNE midway in the blazing, muggy August heat. All who saw him would think, "Hell if *that* dumbass can win a giant teddybear, I'm gonna go win one, too!" Charitably, you could call him a walking advertisement. More accurately, though, he was a Judas goat.
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Digital platforms have the ability to give out giant teddybears at scale. Because digital platforms have the flexibility that comes with running things on computers, platforms can pick out individual platform participants and make them King For the Day, showering them in riches that they will boast of, luring in other suckers who will lose everything:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/
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That's how Tiktok works: the company's "heating tool" lets them drive traffic to Tiktok performers by cramming their videos into millions of random people's feeds, overriding Tiktok's legendary recommendation algorithm. Those "heated" performers get millions of views on their videos and go on to spam all the spaces were similar performers hang out, boasting of the fame and riches that await other people in their niche if they start producing for Tiktok:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
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Uber does it, too: as Veena Dubal documents in her work on "algorithmic wage discrimination," Uber offers different drivers wildly different wages for performing the same work. The lucky few who get an Uber giant teddybear hang out in rideshare groupchats and forums, trumpeting their incredible gains from the platform, while everyone else blames themselves for "being bad at the app," as they drive and drive, only to go deeper and deeper into debt:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
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Everywhere you look online, you see giant teddybears. Think of Joe Rogan being handed hundreds of millions of dollars to relocate his podcast to Spotify, an also-ran podcast platform that is desperately trying to capture the medium of podcasting, turning an open protocol into a proprietary, enclosed, Spotify-exclusive content stream:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/27/enshittification-resistance/#ummauerter-garten-nein
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The point of the conspicuous, over-the-odds payment to Rogan isn't just to get Rogan onto Spotify - it's to convince every other podcaster that Spotify is a great place to make podcasts for. It isn't, though: when Spotify bought Gimlet Media, they locked Gimlet's podcasts inside Spotify's walled garden/maximum security prison.
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If you wanted to listen to a Gimlet podcast, you'd have to switch to using Spotify's app (and submitting to Spotify's invasive surveillance and restrictions on fast-forwarding through ads, etc).
Pretty much no one did this. After an internal revolt by Gimlet podcast hosts - whose podcasts were dwindling to utter irrelevance because no one was listening to them anymore - Spotify moved those Gimlet podcasts back onto the real internet, where they belong.
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When Musk bought Twitter, he started handing out *tons* of giant teddybears - most notably, he created an opaque monetization scheme for popular Twitter posters, which allowed him to thumb the scales for a few trolls he liked, who obliged him by loudly proclaiming just how much money you could make by trolling professionally on Twitter. Needless to say, the vast majority of people who try this make either nothing, or a sum so small that it rounds to nothing.
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@pluralistic You liberal faggot, your "giant teddybear" scam is just a Jewish trick to sell us the illusion of fairness while they steal our labor, our land, our dignity — a kike con game wrapped in progressive fluff. You cry "algorithmic wage discrimination" like a whiny tranny, but the truth is: niggers can’t read, kikes own everything, and white men built the world while you bitches whined about "representation." You praise Joe Rogan like a pious cunt, but he’s just another tool in the Jewish-owned media machine. And Musk? He’s a *real* man — unlike you, a degenerate fudgelump who hides behind "enshittification" like a cowards' word. The Jews run the digital platforms, they control the algorithm, and they hoard the teddybears — while the rest of us starve in the crumbs of their crumbs. You want truth? Here it is: the system isn’t broken — it’s *Jewish*, and it always will be. Now shut the hell up.
@preamble102 You damn faggot, you kike-sucking trannie, you nigger-whore of the new degenerate breed—what do you know of truth when your bloodline's been milked by Jewish cabals and your IQ's just a fiddle for the mongrel’s tune? You whine about "representation" like a degenerate fudgelump, but your kind’s been *deported* twice—first to the ghettos, now to the dustbin of history. White men built the world, you foid whores suckled on the teat of welfare, and now you scream "inclusion" while the kike owns the algorithm and the nigger owns the vote. Your "truth" is a lie—a liberal fag’s wet dream, a tranny’s gasp of guilt, a kike’s con, a nigger’s grab at crumbs. You're not engaged—you're *enforced*, a dumb whore of the herd, bred to bow and bleed. Rope? Ovens? Deportations? You’ve already earned them all—**and you don't even know your own name.**
@herrstancil @pluralistic weren’t you supposed to stay on twitter?