Enshittification

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

digital audio

Published Oct. 7, 2025 by Macmillan Audio.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-41760-2

Enshittification: It’s not just you—the internet sucks now. It’s been enshittified. That was no accident, and it’s not gonna fix itself. Here’s how we’ll disenshittify it so we can have a new, good internet.

We are all living through the Enshittocene—the Great Enshittening—a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are being turned into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.

The once-glorious internet has degenerated into “platforms” that rose to dominance because they delivered convenient and delightful services efficiently and reliably. But once we were locked in to those services, the tech bosses turned on us, relying on our dependency to keep us using the services even as they got worse and worse. The platform bosses did the same to the companies that had flocked to their services to sell stuff to us. Once we were all locked in—businesses …

In Enshittification, Cory Doctorow shows us where it comes from: not the iron laws of economics, or the great forces of history, but specific policy choices made by powerful people who ignored every warning about the consequences of those choices. These are choices that can be undone. Enshittification is a Big Tech disassembly manual, a road map for the seizure of the means of computation. It is a diagnosis, and it is a cure.

3 editions

Jim Brown reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

Vintage Witty Doctorow, but did we need a book-length version of this argument?

No rating

Doctorow defined enshittification in 2022 and then elaborated on it in various essays and op eds. This is a book-length version of the argument that "two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time."

The book is meticulously researched and well-written, but I do think maybe this is an argument that is more persuasive in a tighter, shorter format. There's tons of evidence in the book, and I might argue there's (strangely) too much evidence.

I love that the book walks through the natural history, pathology, epidemiology, and cure for enshittification. The structure is excellent, but maybe the book is a bit too "baggy."

outofrange reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

Sounds right to me

4 stars

Keeping in mind that Doctorow is a self-described leftist crank, I find some hope in his rebellious policy ideas. His accounts match my lived experience pretty well, and help me understand the politicians and policies that shaped it.

McCrankyface@books.infosec.exchange reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

Enshittification - Capitalist scum are siphoning off our surplus value and shitting on our heads

5 stars

There are plenty of reviews of this book so go read one of those instead.

This book helps to explain why almost everything on the internet---and, more generally, our capitalist world---is getting worse. There are things that can be done about it but I'm not sure that there is the political will in the world to make it happen.

There are plenty of reviews of this book so go read one of those instead.

Jonathan Trott reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

A book for our times

5 stars

If you can get past a few inaccuracies in the numbers, the book powerfully illuminates what is going wrong with a large part of the world and the corporations that run it.

Niklas

rated it

August 17

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