Life online is getting worse and worse? Leading tech critic, Cory Doctrow, author of The Internet Con, has the answer, and also wants to show how we can win it back. Life online is getting worse and worse? Leading tech critic, Cory Doctrow, author of The Internet Con, has the answer, and also wants to show how we can win it back.

"Enshittification" is Doctorow's word to describe the decay of online platforms, from exciting novelty to everyday essential, to what we have today. "Enshittification" has been word of the year in the UK, USA and Australia. It's been printed in the pages of the FT and declaimed from podiums at the EU. As a word, it captures the feeling of a world that is ever worsening. As an idea, it explains why it's getting worse, whose fault that is, and what to do about the misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, and fraud that have taken over the internet.

Enshittification is not a technical glitch. It is a technique that every platform - from X to TikTok, Amazon to Apple, has adopted. First they lure users onto their platforms, then attract businesses who might profit from this newly formed public, and then finally squeeze both for their own profit. Tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, draining profit at the cost of user experience. In the meantime our public squares have turned somewhere between the mall and a dumpster fire, that is unfit to deal with the problems of our times.

What is to be done? Like a surgeon, Doctorow sets out the symptoms, the diagnosis and the cure to these metastasizing platforms. We need to question the monopolies that dominate so much of our online lives, we must demand regulation and our privacy back, allow for interoperability, and win tech workers' rights.

'Enshittification' will be the most talked about tech book - and word - of the year.

Praise for The Internet Con:

One of the Internet's most interesting writers. -- Edward Snowden

This book fills me with hope that a radical yet plausible alternative to computational tyranny can be developed and deployed. -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Fittest

This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -- Astra Taylor

A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise. -- Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI

Autorentext

CORY DOCTOROW is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books. He writes nonfiction policy books such as The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism, as well as science fiction for adults – Red Team Blues and The Lost Cause – and for young adults – Little Brother. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and has been honored with the Arthur C. Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He was made an honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science by the Open University. For a quarter century, he has been an activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He co-founded the UK Open Rights Group and holds visiting appointments at the Open University, MIT, Cornell, and the University of North Carolina. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Burbank, California.

Klappentext

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025

Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online – X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple – this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed ‘enshittification’. First, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetized, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders.

As a result, online public squares have become places of torment, and online retailers are hellish dumpster fires. The virtual gathering places where we once imagined the world’s problems might be resolved are now a sewer of hatred and abuse – thoroughly enshittified.

Doctorow enumerates the symptoms, lays out the diagnosis, and identifies the best responses to these diseased platforms: the monopolies online must be shattered. Companies too big to fail or to jail – and much too big to care – must be cut down to size. Only an attack on corporate power will permit effective regulation and real privacy. Tech unions must protect the workers who should, in turn, defend us against their bosses’ sadism and greed.

Praise for The Internet Con:

"One of the Internet's most interesting writers." -- Edward Snowden

"This book fills me with hope that a radical yet plausible alternative to computational tyranny can be developed and deployed." -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Fittest

"This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better." -- Astra Taylor

"A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise." -- Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI