"A decolonial critique of technology is not simply 'the internet was always bad.' It is rather: the conditions that made the internet harmful to specific communities were never peripheral to its design; they're an integral part of it. And any politics that aims to restore something like the pre-enshittification internet without reckoning with those conditions is doomed to reproduce them."
"Minstrel shows were popular for two reasons. First it allowed white people to revel in all of the most base and hateful Black stereotypes in public. It validated all of their treatment of real Black people and turned that hate into entertainment. But secondly it allowed for a bit of taboo fantasy.... The audience got to engage with Blackness indirectly and yet still feel like they were experiencing something authentic. Another identity they could pick up and put down at will. What these AI creations make clear is that desire hasn’t gone away in the passing century."