Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It

(Hardback)

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"Enshittification" is Doctorow's word to describe the decay of online platforms, from exciting novelty to everyday essential, to what we have today. "Enshittification" has been word of the year in the UK, USA and Australia. It's been printed in the pages of the *FT* and declaimed from podiums at the EU. As a word, it captures the feeling of a world that is ever worsening. As an idea, it explains why it's getting worse, whose fault that is, and what to do about the misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, and fraud that have taken over the internet.

Enshittification is not a technical glitch. It is a technique that every platform - from X to TikTok, Amazon to Apple, has adopted. First they lure users onto their platforms, then attract businesses who might profit from this newly formed public, and then finally squeeze both for their own profit. Tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, draining profit at the cost of user experience. In the meantime our public squares have turned somewhere between the mall and a dumpster fire, that is unfit to deal with the problems of our times.

What is to be done Like a surgeon, Doctorow sets out the symptoms, the diagnosis and the cure to these metastasizing platforms. We need to question the monopolies that dominate so much of our online lives, we must demand regulation and our privacy back, allow for interoperability, and win tech workers' rights.

'Enshittification' will be the most talked about tech book - and word - of the year.

Praise for The Internet Con:

One of the Internet's most interesting writers. -- Edward Snowden

This book fills me with hope that a radical yet plausible alternative to computational tyranny can be developed and deployed. -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Fittest

This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -- Astra Taylor

A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise. -- Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI

Reviews

Punchy, pungent and utterly compelling - a book that will change the way you see the world, and just might change the world itself. You simply must read it. -- Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective
Big Tech does not just plunder your data. It does not merely rob you of your privacy. It does something far, far worse than that. You know it. You feel it. But you won't be able to put your finger on it until you have read Cory Doctorow's Enshittification. Once you do, you will know and, more importantly, you will stand a better chance of resisting -- Yanis Varoufakis, author of Technofeudalism
Remember when the internet was young and alive, vibrant and accessible and free Cory Doctorow does, and he knows what's gone wrongand he sees a way forward. This is a magnificent book -- James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information
With his hallmark clarity and energy, Cory Doctorow lays out how tech monopolies innovated ways to disregard, abuse, and suck dry their users. We must heed Doctorow's no-bullshit account of how to fight back -- Jathan Sadowski, author of The Mechanic and the Luddite
Enshittification explains the exploitation that changed the internet and our lives. Doctorow gave us the word to describe how these companies immiserate humanity on a planetary scale * Edward Snowden *
The steady decline of the technology you use every day isn't just in your imagination-and in Enshittification, Cory Doctorow explains how we got here. Witty, incisive, and urgently relevant, this book reveals how we can reclaim our digital lives from the forces that have degraded them. -- Molly White, editor of Web3 Is Going Just Great and Citation Needed

Author Bio

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently THE INTERNET CON, CHOKEHOLD CAPITALISM, and HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about monopoly and conspiracy; IN REAL LIFE, a graphic novel; and the picture book POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER. He is also the author of numerous novels and YA titles, most recently In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolinas School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.