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"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
About the author
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults; HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about monopoly and conspiracy; IN REAL LIFE, a graphic novel; and the picture book POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER. His latest book is ATTACK SURFACE, a standalone adult sequel to LITTLE BROTHER. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina's School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.
Report
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
