4.5 stars. I found out about Doctorow's "Ensh*ttification" speech just last year & found it on-line = it really summed up to me everything that is going on right now. Very happy to read a copy of his longer and more detailed new book that details more of what it is, why it is & if anything can be done. Really good read - very easy to read a chapter or two a day as it's well-organized and the info flows well. Highly recommend to those who are frustrated by the insanity of our daily lives. My thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for my advance readers copy - really appreciated the opportunity the review it early.

Cory Doctorow launches into specific ways major social media companies have deliberately made their products shittier and the warped reasoning behind it. He tries his best to give hope but unfortunately this was finished right around the time that Trump got elected and kind of sent any hope of government backed improvements down the toilet. Doctorow will at least make you laugh as you realize the scale of the insanity and monopoly that tech companies have tried to wrangle. If you don't like snark, though, note that the tone might get old quick.

Cory Doctorow as certainly a satirical and blunt way of speaking the truth about the way the internet turned out to be. For the Generation which lived through the innocent beginnings, the first financial winter following the dotcom bust and the enshittifying bloom in the following spring, this is an eye opening, funny and at times sad account on the shift from digital altruism to full American capitalism.

However sad, it is still a very entertaining story.

I haven't read anything by the author before and was attracted by the theme, I like tech and the intersection between it and human life and with a title like this, who wouldn't want to read it? Doctorow mentions some things I did know and some other stuff that made me so angry that id there was a possibility (aka money and privilege) I'd choose to never use the internet.
The only beef I have with the author is his recommendations of alternative tech platforms or apps - there is nothing that can force these new platforms to act the same as the ones that already have a monopoly (because the economic system is the problem and the model for how these companies are managed) except laws and policy, which the book also mentions (another plus).
Let's hope that more people read this book and others like it and there are new policies for a better control of monopolies.
Thank you to the publisher (FSG) and to Netgalley for kindly intermediating the ARCs.

Good information, I would have enjoyed more some infographics as the material is quite dry on its own.

The Advanced Review Copy (ARC) was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting book. I definitely agree with the broad theory and uts explained well and convincingly. Clearly eyed and great at both diagnosing the problem and suggesting real potential solutions.

After a while the snarky tone got old but the writer is quite funny generally. At times he speaks with an absolute certainty which risks invalidating arguments (e.g. asserts his assumed reasons are the reasons for certain behaviour but correlation is not always causation). And gets repetitive towards the end - hence 4 not 5 stars.

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow--I love many of Cory Doctorow's other fiction works, from the Little Brother trilogy to Makers to Radicalized. In general, he takes a leftist, mildly libertarian approach to analyzing tech, science, and the future. In Enshittification, he lays out a comprehensive look at why things are bad--and getting worse--with respect to products and services we use daily. From lock-in for tech ecosystems and markets to every service moving to subscription and persistent revenue, Doctorow convincingly makes the case that there's a better way. He fleshes out an optimistic look at the current legal and regulatory landscape while discussing core principles he believes we should strive for: namely competition, regulation, interopability, and worker power. It's an interesting book, the biggest question I'm personally left asking is if it's already too late. I did receive a review copy of this book, and it comes out in October. Thumbs up.

I have long followed Cory Doctorow and am a big fan of his essays. This Enshittification expands on his two pamphlets The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation and How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, just to name the most recent ones. Obviously I agree with everything he writes while sometimes not understanding how it works, but I have never been a techhead, so I rely on those who understand more than I do.

Seguo da tempo Cory Doctorow e sono una grande fan dei suoi saggi. Questo Enshittification amplia i due pamphlet The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation e How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, solo per citare quelli piú recenti. Ovviamente sono d'accordo con tutto quello che lui scrive pur non comprendendone a volte il funzionamento, ma io non sono mai stata una techhead, quindi mi affido a chi ne capisce piú di me.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.