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A review by bootman
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow
5.0
I’ve been creating content on YouTube as well as self-publishing books for years now, and this is a must-read book for anyone who is a creative entrepreneur. Doctorow and Giblin did such an amazing job with this book taking the reader behind the curtain to show how all of the major platforms like Amazon, Spotify, Audible, YouTube and others create a “chokepoint” that screws over creators. I knew about a lot of what the book discussed, but I had no clue about a lot of it.
This is also an important book for those who are consumers of content. If you want to support the creatives you love, whether they’re YouTubers, writers or musicians, you need to understand how they’re being taken advantage of. This world doesn’t have nearly as many creators as there could be due to the fact that these platforms are screwing them. There are also other chokepoints like DRM that make the experience terrible for consumers as well by locking them into platforms.
Giblin and Doctorow also offer a ton of great solutions in this book. If I was forced to have a criticism of this book, I think it would have done better by discussing more stories about how this affects individual creatives. For example, the story about Audible’s return policy was great, but I really don’t care about multi-billion dollar companies like Epic Games losing money from Apple. Sections like would have been better if it had stories from small app developers.
But again, in this age where there are so many middlemen between consumers and creators, this is a must-read for everyone.
This is also an important book for those who are consumers of content. If you want to support the creatives you love, whether they’re YouTubers, writers or musicians, you need to understand how they’re being taken advantage of. This world doesn’t have nearly as many creators as there could be due to the fact that these platforms are screwing them. There are also other chokepoints like DRM that make the experience terrible for consumers as well by locking them into platforms.
Giblin and Doctorow also offer a ton of great solutions in this book. If I was forced to have a criticism of this book, I think it would have done better by discussing more stories about how this affects individual creatives. For example, the story about Audible’s return policy was great, but I really don’t care about multi-billion dollar companies like Epic Games losing money from Apple. Sections like would have been better if it had stories from small app developers.
But again, in this age where there are so many middlemen between consumers and creators, this is a must-read for everyone.