Enshittification
Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
by Cory Doctorow
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Pub Date Oct 07 2025 | Archive Date Nov 07 2025
Description
Enshittification: it’s not just you—the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify it.
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.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
"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, economist and former Minister of Finance of Greece
"Doctorow, a genuine tech hero, has encapsulated much of what's going wrong with the Internet as much of it serves to take advantage of the people who use it. He also suggests how the spirit of the original Internet might be bright back. Great book for those of us hoping to make things better for everyone." —Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder
"Remember when the internet was young and alive, vibrant and accessible and free? Cory Doctorow does, and he knows what’s gone wrong—and he sees a way forward. I hope everyone will read this magnificent book." —James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information
"With his hallmark clarity and energy, Cory Doctorow takes us on a tour of how our digital world was wrecked by the avarice of tech monopolies that innovate new ways to disregard, abuse, and suck dry their users. And as the forces of enshittification accelerate and consume everything—hello, AI—we must heed Cory’s no bullshit account of how to fight back and take power from the shittiest people alive." —Jathan Sadowski, author of The Mechanic and the Luddite
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374619329 |
| PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 352 |
Available on NetGalley
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