Hardcover, 352 pages
English language
Published by MCD.
Enshittification: it’s not just you―the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify.
We’re living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.
Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.
When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).
The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users―and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then …
Enshittification: it’s not just you―the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify.
We’re living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.
Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.
When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).
The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users―and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then the platforms turned to abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. In the end, the platforms die.
Doctorow’s argument clearly resonated. Once named, it became obvious that enshittification is everywhere, so much so that the American Dialect Society named it its 2023 Word of the Year, and was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror.
Here, now, in Enshittification the book, Doctorow moves the conversation beyond the overwhelming sense of our inevitably enshittified fate. He shows us the specific decisions that led us here, who made them, and―most important―how they can be undone.
If you remember the good internet and see this POS we use today, you can use this guide to what happened and how to change it.
The stories are clear and easy to understand, precise and full of the right heat about what was stolen and how, what can change and how.
This is the book to give to normies about what’s been done to them.
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.
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.
I felt it was a rather middle of the road collection of essays. I'm enjoying "The AI Con" much more.
I felt it was a rather middle of the road collection of essays. I'm enjoying "The AI Con" much more.
I don't care much for Doctorow's fiction but he has a knack to explain complicated things clearly. And this is true here, as he explains all the ways we got to our enshittified stated. As importantly, the last part of the book is dedicated to potential solutions. 4 stars instead of 5 because the idea that Trump might have an "anti-trust agenda" is laughable.
I don't care much for Doctorow's fiction but he has a knack to explain complicated things clearly. And this is true here, as he explains all the ways we got to our enshittified stated. As importantly, the last part of the book is dedicated to potential solutions. 4 stars instead of 5 because the idea that Trump might have an "anti-trust agenda" is laughable.
This is an extremely enjoyable read, and as a popular account that loosely sketches the causes of enshittification it stands up. However, Doctorow often uses a scan of news articles instead of deep historical or empirical research, with a variety of claims made without any proof beyond vibes to back them up. His biases are also on full display here but masquerading as fact - he clearly really likes tech workers, absolving them of all responsibility for many of the trends in the industry. He could be correct! But beyond his individual, subjective observations he brings no other proof to the party. Overall, this is a decent book on an important topic, but it is easily refutable in its current form and feels like a missed opportunity.
Enshittification has become an easy way to describe how tech goes bad, but Doctorow has done the work of backing up that wonderful new word he added to our lexicon with a framework and survey of tech's history to flesh it out. He provides a path forward to reverse Enshittification and his focus on coalition building is a key part of that. This book is for both veterans in the fight against Enshittification and those just now recognizing how bad things have gotten.
Enshittification has become an easy way to describe how tech goes bad, but Doctorow has done the work of backing up that wonderful new word he added to our lexicon with a framework and survey of tech's history to flesh it out. He provides a path forward to reverse Enshittification and his focus on coalition building is a key part of that. This book is for both veterans in the fight against Enshittification and those just now recognizing how bad things have gotten.
