Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

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 gi- ant 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, the tech bosses turned on us, relying on our dependency even as their services 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 and users--the tech companies stripped out all utility, save the bare minimum needed to stave off total collapse.

In Enshittification, Cory Doctorow shows us where the problem comes from: not the iron laws of economics, or the great forces of history, but specific policy choices made by powerful people. These are choices that can be undone. Enshittification is a diagnosis, and it is a cure.