If you’ve ever scrolled Instagram only to be served AI-generated slop… or searched Google and found nothing but SEO spam… or paid more for Netflix while getting less content—you’ve felt it. That sinking sense that the digital world is rotting from the inside out.
Cory Doctorow has a name for it: enshittification. And in his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, the sci-fi author and digital rights activist argues this isn’t just bad luck—it’s by design.
What Is Enshittification?
Doctorow defines enshittification as a three-stage decay that plagues dominant tech platforms:
- Stage 1: Platforms woo users with great experiences (think early Facebook or Amazon).
- Stage 2: Once users are locked in, platforms exploit them to attract business customers (e.g., selling user data or pushing ads).
- Stage 3: Once businesses are dependent too, platforms jack up fees and degrade service for everyone—except shareholders.
“We remain trapped in their carcasses, unable to escape,” Doctorow writes. And the result? A digital ecosystem that feels increasingly hostile, extractive, and broken.
More Than a Meme—A Movement
What started as a cheeky blog post in 2022 has exploded into a cultural shorthand for tech’s decline. But Doctorow isn’t just complaining—he’s prescribing solutions: break up Big Tech, enforce antitrust laws, and restore user control over technology.
His ideas are gaining traction. Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, calls him “lucid and astute.” Fellow tech critic Tim Wu (his childhood coding buddy) sees their shared mission as reclaiming a lost “paradise” of open, empowering tech.
Why This Book Matters Now
In an age of AI-generated junk, subscription fatigue, and algorithmic despair, Enshittification gives people language—and hope. Doctorow insists the internet doesn’t have to be this way. It can be remade into a tool for creativity, connection, and democracy.
As he puts it: “I am simultaneously extremely excited and hopeful… and terrified of how bad technology will be for that project if we get it wrong.”
