Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It by Cory Doctorow – Review

By Gail Schuster

Cory Doctorow (b. 1971) is a Canadian-British author, journalist, and digital rights activist. Best known for novels like Little Brother and for his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organisation defending civil liberties in the digital world, where he served as director. He writes extensively on technology, monopoly power and the struggle for an open internet.

“Enshittification” is Doctorow’s word to describe the life cycle of online platforms. He explains how enshittification happens in three stages: first, platforms are valuable to their users to attract them; then, they shift the benefits to business customers and advertisers; finally, they extract value for themselves at the expense of everyone else. The result is a steady decline in quality and trust, as we’ve seen with platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Apple, Amazon, or TikTok, to name but a few.

The title Enshittification, while blunt and irreverent, perfectly captures the everyday frustration people feel when once-useful digital services become exploitative. It also reflects Doctorow’s style; witty, and unafraid to cut through jargon to name a problem most of us have experienced but struggled to articulate. The memorable title is part of his goal to make discussions of monopoly power and platform decay accessible to a wider audience.

The concept helps explain why online platforms keep deteriorating, who is responsible, and how we might push back against the surveillance, manipulation, fraud, misogyny and conspiracy theories, that now dominate the internet. In the process of enshittification, our digital public spaces have been transformed into spaces poorly suited to addressing the challenges of our time.

Doctorow does more than invent a new word; he sets out a framework for understanding why the internet feels increasingly hostile and what can be done about it. A key strength of the book is the way he links personal frustrations like sluggish services, manipulative advertising and declining trust, to the structural problems of monopoly power and weak regulation. He argues persuasively that enshittification is not inevitable but the result of deliberate choices by companies seeking ever-greater profits, aided by governments too slow or unwilling to rein them in.

“Shaped by manipulation and profit”

The book is written in a direct style that makes complex economic and technological arguments accessible without oversimplifying them. For example, Doctorow discusses Amazon’s transformation. Amazon used to prioritise low prices, a vast selection, and a user-friendly shopping experience. However, as it gained dominance, Amazon began prioritising its own products in search results, flooding the marketplace with sponsored listings, and squeezing both customers and third-party sellers for more profit. This shift exemplifies enshittification: a platform once focused on serving users gradually changes to serve advertisers and, ultimately, its own bottom line.

Technology suppliers aren’t stopping with the enshittification of the online world. A potentially frustrating form is being brought to the real world in the form of electronic shelf labels in supermarkets. Indeed, I spotted them a few weeks ago in a supermarket. These enable the price of everything in a particular shop or chain to be adjusted with the click of a mouse. Doctorow tells us that in Norway, where these are popular, prices can be adjusted by some merchants more than two thousand times a day.

Doctorow mixes humour with sharp critique, which keeps the narrative engaging even when tackling sobering subjects such as surveillance, fraud, and corporate abuse. Some people might find his tone forthright, but this is part of the book’s strength: it exposes just how much control and freedom we have given up over our online lives to a handful of powerful technology corporations.

Enshittification is especially relevant now, given the ongoing discussions surrounding artificial intelligence, online misinformation, and the regulation of major technology companies. Doctorow not only identifies these issues but also proposes solutions, including dismantling monopolies, enforcing interoperability, and restoring the internet as a true public space. His approach is urgent yet remains optimistic, underlining that systems created by people are open to change.

Doctorow gives a clear name to a common experience: the internet has changed from a creative, social space into one shaped by manipulation and profit. By calling this process “enshittification”, he helps people recognise and talk about what’s happened. The book isn’t just a warning. It’s a prompt to push back and think about how the internet could work better for everyone.

‘Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It’ by Cory Doctorow is published by Verso Books

Gail Schuster( Writer )

Gail is a woman with many interests.  She loves a bracing walk through the countryside, filling her lungs with air and enjoying the flora and fauna along the way. An animal lover, she has found herself sharing her home with creatures with four, six and eight legs, though some of the ones with a higher number of legs have been introduced by her daughter! A keen theatre goer, Gail once ran the entertainment section of her work’s social club. When she’s not walking or enjoying a performance, you can usually find her in the garden or cooking up something in the kitchen. An enthusiastic home cook who likes to try her hand at new dishes which are mostly appreciated by her husband and daughter, broccoli roulade or cauliflower pizza aside. Able to converse in several languages, Gail eventually found her cosy corner in her adopted Yorkshire.

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