The internet is failing us– and it’s time we reversed the big-tech decisions that caused this, writes Cory Doctorow in this extract from his new book

It’s not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, that we once loved? They’re all turning into piles of shit, all at once. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. The world is increasingly made up of computers we put our bodies into, and computers we put into our bodies. And these computers suck.

This is infuriating. It’s frustrating. And, depending on how important those services are to you, it’s terrifying. I’ve been an internet activist for a quarter of a century, working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital human rights group that more or less invented the whole idea of digital human rights. I’ve been a United Nations observer and helped draft internet treaties; I’ve lobbied legislatures and agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom. I’ve been through street protests and virtual blackouts. I’ve never seen anything like this.

In 2022, after decades of striving to get people fired up about the esoteric world of internet policy, I coined a term to describe the sudden-onset platform collapse going on all around us: enshittification. To my bittersweet satisfaction, that word is doing big numbers. In fact, it has achieved escape velocity.

It’s a funny, naughty word, and it’s funny and naughty to say, and I’m proud of that. But that’s not why the American Dialect Society named it its word of the year in 2023, nor why Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary named it its word of the year for 2024, nor why millions of people have used it to describe the inescapable online dumpster fire that’s roasting them alive. The reason for enshittification’s popularity is that it embodies a theory that explains the accelerating decay of the things that matter to us, explaining why this is happening and what we should do about it.

Because enshittification isn’t just a way to say “Something got worse.” It’s an analysis that explains the way an online service gets worse, how that worsening unfolds, and the contagion that’s causing everything to get worse, all at once. You see, this moment we’re living through, this Great Enshittening? It’s not a mystery. It’s not the Great Forces of History bearing down on our moment, decreeing that we must all suffer through the end of services that once met our needs. It’s a material phenomenon, much like a disease. Like a disease, it has symptoms, a mechanism, and an epidemiology.

The first part of this book will explain these components of enshittification. But the point of this analysis isn’t to merely give you a more technically informed way to feel demoralized and furious about the state of the digital world – I wrote this book to propose a cure. That’s the second part of the book.

This era, the Enshittocene, is the result of specific policy decisions, made by named individuals. Once we identify those decisions and those individuals, we can act. We can reverse the decisions. We can name the individuals. We can even estimate what size pitchfork they wear. Or at the very least, we can make sure that they are never again trusted with the power to make policy decisions for the rest of us.

We can make a new, good internet, one that’s fit for human thriving. We can create the digital nervous system we need to connect and coordinate us through a twenty-first century haunted by climate collapse, genocide, authoritarianism, and economic chaos.

We can create enshittification-resistant infrastructure for a new, good world.

This is an extract from Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (Verso Books, £22). Buy a copy from bookshop.org here.

Or buy a copy from Blackwell’s here.

CORY DOCTOROW
AT THE IDLER FESTIVAL

Cory Doctorow is appearing at the Idler Festival on Saturday 11 July. He’ll be joined by Tom Hodgkinson to discuss how social media giants have made fortunes and destroyed the value of the internet through “enshittification” – and what we can do about it.

The Idler Festival runs from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 July at Fenton House and Gardens in Hampstead, London NW3.

See who else is performing and buy tickets with our Festival poster here. Click on the performer’s name for details.

See you there!

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