Anil Dash
Writer and technology executive; blogs at anildash.com, was CEO of Glitch, and helped build Movable Type and ThinkUp.
Anil Dash did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Shaming people out of using a harmful technology does not work, because the companies selling it have already priced the stigma into their plans.
In short, the venture capitalists and CEOs of Silicon Valley have priced the costs of shame into their business plans.
anildash.comSaid 21 Aug 2026This on korrents
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People often keep using large tech platforms whose harms they object to because of the platforms' coercive power over their lives.
There are millions of people who don't like that they're using LLMs provided by the Big AI companies, but end up using them anyway.
anildash.comSaid 15 Jun 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
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21 August
From one piece Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI 3 beliefs · anildash.com
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Their words
He gave them an affirmative alternative to move toward, and in doing so, empowered both those people and himself to do something better.
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Their words
People being embarrassed or ashamed while still using the technology does not bother the authoritarian owners of those platforms in the least, as long as they’re profiting off of those ashamed users.
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Their words
In short, the venture capitalists and CEOs of Silicon Valley have priced the costs of shame into their business plans.
20 August
24 July
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15 June
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Their words
There are millions of people who don't like that they're using LLMs provided by the Big AI companies, but end up using them anyway.
30 April
From one piece Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? 3 beliefs · anildash.com
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korrents.com
Authoritarian governments seek to destroy or falsify public records, including digital ones.Their words
The traditional authoritarian impulse to destroy or falsify the public record has not spared the digital realm under the current administration.
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Their words
the incredibly positive and generous intent of these open licenses has since been exploited by extractive Big AI companies, who ransacked all of the images on Flickr that had permissive licenses without any consent from, or compensation to, the creators.
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Their words
In contrast, platforms that are run by technically fluent, well-intentioned and thoughtful technologists can be very effective in maintaining content over a timescale of decades.
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 19 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Shaming people out of using a harmful technology does not work, because the companies selling it have already priced the stigma into their plans.
In short, the venture capitalists and CEOs of Silicon Valley have priced the costs of shame into their business plans.
Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI Said 21 Aug 2026
Stigma changes what people admit to rather than what they do: they keep using the platform and simply get quieter about it.
People being embarrassed or ashamed while still using the technology does not bother the authoritarian owners of those platforms in the least, as long as they’re profiting off of those ashamed users.
Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI Said 21 Aug 2026
Critics of a technology only change anything by offering people a better alternative to move towards, rather than an argument to feel bad about.
He gave them an affirmative alternative to move toward, and in doing so, empowered both those people and himself to do something better.
Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI Said 21 Aug 2026
Show 16 more
People often keep using large tech platforms whose harms they object to because of the platforms' coercive power over their lives.
There are millions of people who don't like that they're using LLMs provided by the Big AI companies, but end up using them anyway.
Maybe it's time for lots of little indie AIs to take over Said 15 Jun 2026
Platforms run by technically capable, well-intentioned people can preserve content more reliably over decades than typical government or corporate web infrastructure.
In contrast, platforms that are run by technically fluent, well-intentioned and thoughtful technologists can be very effective in maintaining content over a timescale of decades.
Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? Said 30 Apr 2026
Large AI companies have used creators' permissively-licensed work without seeking their consent or offering compensation.
the incredibly positive and generous intent of these open licenses has since been exploited by extractive Big AI companies, who ransacked all of the images on Flickr that had permissive licenses without any consent from, or compensation to, the creators.
Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? Said 30 Apr 2026
Authoritarian governments seek to destroy or falsify public records, including digital ones.
The traditional authoritarian impulse to destroy or falsify the public record has not spared the digital realm under the current administration.
Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? Said 30 Apr 2026
AI works best when it solves a specific problem for a particular community rather than trying to be all things to all people.
And that's the way AI should work - solving a specific problem for a particular community, instead of trying to be all things to all people, which is when these platforms start becoming unaccountable and start harming massive numbers of people.
(One) Good AI Is Here Said 28 Apr 2026
The harmful behaviors of major AI companies -- training without consent, opaque code, no user control -- are choices, not unavoidable features of the technology.
The Big AI companies that take content without consent, or who refuse to let people see their code, or who insist they can't give people control over how their models run and whether they are responsible about their environmental impact can now be definitively refuted.
(One) Good AI Is Here Said 28 Apr 2026
Public sentiment is turning against tech companies that force unwanted features on their users.
I think the tide is turning, and people are so fed up with the software-brained CEOs forcing things on them that they don't want.
(One) Good AI Is Here Said 28 Apr 2026
The bargain that funded the open web was that a crawler could take your pages because it would send you readers; an AI crawler that sends nobody has broken it.
The deal was always simple: search engines had permission to crawl sites because they were going to be sending users to those sites. If they're hitting your site half a million times for every one user they send to your site, all they're giving you is higher costs.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
Whether the open web survives will be decided by what ordinary people collectively do, not by the companies that profit from it.
Whether or not they succeed is going to be decided by decisions that we all make as a community in the coming months.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
The web is being flooded with coherent, generic, generated text that buries the writing worth reading.
As publishers see the danger from AI bots expand, they retreat to putting more and more content behind either password protection or payment walls or both, leaving the only publicly-accessible content to be AI-generated slop; open resources like research work, scientific analysis, and fair use of content all suffer as a result of people responding to the bad actors, since legitimate uses of open content are no longer possible.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
Closing off interoperability is how a platform locks people in, and that lock-in is what lets the service be made worse without losing them.
Meanwhile, others like Spotify and Netflix leverage their dominant positions in the market to coerce creators to abandon open podcasts entirely, in favor of proprietary formats that require listeners to be on those platforms — locking in both creators and their audiences so they are stuck as they begin the enshittification process.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
A browser that answers with generated prose instead of links is not a web browser but an anti-web browser, and it hides that substitution from the person using it.
Atlas is a browser, but it is not a web browser. It is an anti-web browser.
ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web Said 22 Oct 2025
A generated answer that looks like a page of search results but contains no link to the subject's own site has quietly removed the web from the reader's view.
I had typed "Taylor Swift" in a browser, and the response had literally zero links to Taylor Swift's actual website. If you stayed within what Atlas generated, you would have no way of knowing that Taylor Swift has a website at all.
ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web Said 22 Oct 2025
People need an online identity that outlives the platforms hosting it, which is why it should live on a domain they control rather than as a handle on somebody else's site.
This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.
The Web We Lost Said 13 Dec 2012
Attaching advertising revenue to links changed the web for the worse, because a link stopped being an act of expression and became a transaction.
The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse, by corrupting links.
The Web We Lost Said 13 Dec 2012
Platforms wrongly believe that giving users flexibility and control makes a product too complex to grow, and that belief is the root of most of their mistakes.
The primary fallacy that underpins many of their mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user experience complexity that hurts growth.
The Web We Lost Said 13 Dec 2012
Beliefs others hold too
The web is being flooded with coherent, generic, generated text that buries the writing worth reading. 3 hold this
As publishers see the danger from AI bots expand, they retreat to putting more and more content behind either password protection or payment walls or both, leaving the only publicly-accessible content to be AI-generated slop; open resources like research work, scientific analysis, and fair use of content all suffer as a result of people responding to the bad actors, since legitimate uses of open content are no longer possible.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
Whether the open web survives will be decided by what ordinary people collectively do, not by the companies that profit from it. 2 hold this
Whether or not they succeed is going to be decided by decisions that we all make as a community in the coming months.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
Closing off interoperability is how a platform locks people in, and that lock-in is what lets the service be made worse without losing them. 2 hold this
Meanwhile, others like Spotify and Netflix leverage their dominant positions in the market to coerce creators to abandon open podcasts entirely, in favor of proprietary formats that require listeners to be on those platforms — locking in both creators and their audiences so they are stuck as they begin the enshittification process.
Endgame for the Open Web Said 27 Mar 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 13 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Liked iChat
I also probably use iChat more than any other app, and feel like it gets a bit less credit than it deserves.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Loved MacBook Air (11-inch)
I’m not a big hardware fetishist, but I have to say it’s my favorite laptop I’ve ever owned, and remarkably fast.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Loved Dropbox
And increasingly, across all these platforms and scenarios, I find my work all grounded in DropBox. It may be one of the more revolutionary apps I've ever used, and makes me excited about it as a platform like nothing I've seen since the early days of MS Office.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Show 10 more
Loved Google Authenticator
I really love the Google Authenticator app, which is a token generator for Google's 2-factor authentication, but makes me feel very safe and high-tech every time I open it up.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Uses Facetime
Interestingly, the most-used new app I've started running on an almost-daily basis this year is Facetime, either on my laptop or more frequently on my phone.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Liked Preview
Preview gets a big workout, and is another one of those apps that people overlook for its utility.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Liked Tower
I use Tower extensively because I love Git and GitHub but am too dumb to figure out how to work them properly.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Uses TextWrangler
If I'm hacking on something, I'm probably in TextWrangler and Photoshop, and I use Tower extensively because I love Git and GitHub but am too dumb to figure out how to work them properly.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Liked ThinkUp
Probably goes without saying, but I check my ThinkUp instance all the time; I really am excited about how the app is evolving and what I'll be able to do with my network once it's really matured as a platform.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
their own
Mixed on Evernote
I always want to use Evernote, but somehow it just has a little bit too much interface getting in the way most of the time.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Uses Movable Type
I still run my blog on Movable Type, nothing really new there.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Uses Google Chrome
Well, I spend all day in Google Chrome, and that's where I do a ton of work, never really touching other browsers unless I'm testing something.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Loved MacBook Air
These days I'm mostly on my 11" MacBook Air. I'm not a big hardware fetishist, but I have to say it's my favorite laptop I've ever owned, and remarkably fast.
usesthis.com 7 May 2011
Where they publish
Blog anildash.com His blog.
Recent
- We are going to kill “unalive” 6 Oct 2026 I talk to a lot of old people, those who were born in the 20th century, and if I ask them what the word “unalive” means, they usually have no idea what I’m talking about, except for some of them who have kids or who stu…
- The Facebook Fake-out 29 Sept 2026 There’s a pattern that Facebook (well, Meta — you know, those folks behind Instagram and WhatsApp and the direct enabling of the Rohingya genocide) has been following for decades now that everyone in the worlds of polic…
- At 25, we are all New Yorkers, again 11 Sept 2026 Every year, for 25 years, I’ve written on the observance of this anniversary. Some years, it’s been for me, some years it’s been for the people who’ve been with me along the way. Some years, I didn’t know why I was even…
Show 9 more
- Cancer Capital: It sucks for founders, too! 9 Sept 2026 So, we've been breaking down the way venture capital has evolved over the last two decades or so (spoilers: it got worse!), but a lot of that has been kind of theoretical. Now it's time for us to talk about how that imp…
- Cancer Capital: VC didn’t use to work like this 4 Sept 2026 When I talked about the rise of Cancer Capital, I mentioned that it represents a massive shift from how venture capital has worked over the years. But my conversations in recent years with people in tech, and especially…
- VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital 2 Sept 2026 We really, really need to talk about venture capital. Because it’s not “venture capital” anymore. There’s a huge disconnect between what most people think of VC, where an investor has a big fund and cuts checks to help…
- Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI 21 Aug 2026 These days, the conversation in tech and business, and in a lot of society, is still all AI, all the time. And one of the most fundamental questions boils down to: How do you get people to change what they’re doing in r…
- Introducing Dashboard Touch, a build-your-own version of Touch ID 20 Aug 2026 For years, I’ve wanted to have a standalone version of Apple’s Touch ID authentication feature for my Mac, but without having to use an Apple keyboard. (I generally like their keyboards, but my daily driver keyboard the…
- Becoming Skilled at Making Documents 24 Jul 2026 The vast majority of the documents people use to do business are really quite poor. Presentations that make your eyes glaze over, memos that are inscrutable or unclear, and all kinds of artifacts that say more about how…
- How we’ll fight the platform war against Big AI 23 Jun 2026 One aspect of strategy that’s been largely lost in the tech industry in recent years is how to compete against platforms, since the major tech companies have gotten so big that markets are no longer competitive. However…
- Maybe it's time for lots of little indie AIs to take over 15 Jun 2026 “[T]here can be alternatives. What we can imagine is, rather than the ChatGPT killer, a lot of different little AIs from little responsible players.” That’s me, in The Guardian a few days ago, trying to distill a messag…
- Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr? 30 Apr 2026 If you followed along with the recent joyful celebrations of the Artemis cruise around the moon, and took a moment to dive into the photographic archives of the mission, you might have noticed that all of the original i…
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Bluesky anildash.com Where he posts.
Recent
- This is why I say I'm "a big fan of being a big fan" of things — it's good for the people that make things, and it's good for your soul, too! 19 Oct 2026
- I dare her to call her mother and verify that she loves her. 19 Oct 2026
- This is what car brain calls “safe”. 18 Oct 2026
Show 2 more
- These white supremacists can get the fuck off of the Internet, the highway system, and also the goddamn railroads that Hindu Americans and South Asians helped build, including the ones who were living & born in the U.S. pre-WWII. May your next illness be tended to be only your own demographic. 18 Oct 2026
- Here at the “Some Kings” rally, where is everybody?! 17 Oct 2026
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
LinkedIn anildash His professional profile.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.