Enshittification

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

352 pages

English language

Published Oct. 7, 2025

ISBN:: 978-0-374-61932-9

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(5 reviews)

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).

Enshittification: it’s not just you―the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify.

Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.

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.

2 editions

artfors reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

intressant men seg

3 stars

Det här är en bok huvusakligen skriven för en amerikansk publik, och då menar jag USA. Är man intresserad av amerikansk arbetmiljö, fack- och inrikes politik så är det här guld. Visst, Cory tar upp saker som berör oss allla han går ganska snabbt igenom EU, UK- och världspolitik med men tyvärr blandar han dessa delar i delarna med USA-politiken så det går inte att hoppa över delar.

Boken är bra och intressant, om hur storföretagen gör allt för att tjäna mer pengar åt dem som styr medans kuder och arbetare får det allt värre.

Första tredjedelen är bra, intressant och stundtals rolig. Andra tredjedelen är tung och seg och går igenom mycket amerikansk politik, arbetsrätt, arbetsförhållanden och fackkultur. Saker som är helt anorlunda och funkar på ett helt annat sätt hör i Sverige och EU. Vilket gör boken seg och trögläst, i alla fall för en som inte är intresserad av amerikansk inrikespolitik. Treje tredjedelen är även den informativ, intressant och blandar inslag av de två första delarna.

McCrankyface@books.infosec.exchange reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

Enshittification - Capitalist scum are siphoning off our surplus value and shitting on our heads

5 stars

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.

Apollo reviewed Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Duplicate)

The Definitive Look at Rotten Tech

5 stars

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.

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