The concept of enshittification, as coined by the author and activist Cory Doctorow, just feels right. Whether you’re searching on Google, shopping on Amazon, or scrolling on Facebook, large platforms often feel like they’re not trying to bring us value so much as extract every bit of value they can out of us. It wasn’t always like this, was it? Can we get it back?
On this episode of The Vergecast, Doctorow has an answer: no, it wasn’t always like this, and yes, we can get it back. Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, is filled with explanations about how large, successful, once user-focused products go wrong, and the ways in which regulators and competitors can make things better again.
Doctorow was recently a guest on Decoder, explaining the nuts and bolts of the enshittification process. Here, we mostly tackle the question of what to do about it now. Doctorow’s work focuses largely on bigger-picture regulatory issues and technical changes, and his book largely advocates for changes at those levels. There’s no rousing speech in Enshittification about how users need to demand better, embrace friction, shop local, or get off Zuckerberg’s platforms.
Why not? Is there anything that we, the users of these products, who supposedly vote every day with our wallets and our attention spans, can do to push the internet back in the right direction?
Doctorow has some answers, and some ideas. But he’s also quick to say that the way things are is not your fault. And fixing it is not your problem. (Unless you have the power to change bad laws — then it’s very much your fault and your problem.) The good internet is still out there, he says, and we have to go get it back.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
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