{"id":86138,"date":"2025-08-22T23:30:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/86138\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T23:30:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:30:04","slug":"why-the-internet-is-turning-to-shit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/86138\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Internet is Turning to Shit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, I bought a hardcover thesaurus\u2014Roget\u2019s in dictionary form, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.librarycat.org\/lib\/The_Book_Nook\/item\/144955736\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Delacorte edition<\/a>, printed in 1992. It\u2019s huge, it\u2019s heavy, and it smells faintly of mildew, probably because it was sitting on a shelf in a New Orleans used bookshop for years. But it was a necessary investment, because when I Google synonyms for a word, I can no longer trust that the results I get will be accurate or useful. Or, for that matter, when I Google anything. Instead, some weird AI-generated gunk is likely to come up, or a \u201csponsored\u201d ad, or both. Plenty of people online have <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=26543997\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">noticed this phenomenon<\/a>. Around the time I hoisted the jolly Roget, a series of <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@jsemrau\/how-many-rocks-should-i-eat-each-day-a62d8d115465\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">viral screenshots<\/a> showed that when people Googled the question \u201chow many rocks should I eat each day?,\u201d the search engine <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:AI_Overviews_result_for_%22How_many_rocks_shall_i_eat%22,_May_23,_2024.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told them<\/a> to consume \u201cat least one small rock.\u201d Its AI had apparently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.resfrac.com\/blog\/geologists-recommend-eating-least-one-small-rock-day\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">scanned a parody article from the Onion<\/a> and treated it as a real information source. More recently, I\u2019ve noticed that whenever I Google a politician\u2019s name, even if I put a year like \u201c2018\u201d in the search field, I mostly get very recent news stories, and have to dig for the information I actually want. (Try it yourself, folks.) Google is shit now, compared to its former self. But why?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/AD_4nXfNuaVwLFurjuqDwl1yxp4KpKCEKiSkocQD_mLlvTohkz0bq_N59i0bmORkll97-Wq5zWtWx30tNcz644WXkj9Jr2tmIFbF.png\" width=\"624\" height=\"671\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>just look at this mess. embarrassing.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In his forthcoming book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/products\/3341-enshittification\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It<\/a>, tech writer and novelist Cory Doctorow offers some answers. It would be an exaggeration to say Doctorow created the concept of \u201censhittification\u201d; back in 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181226032942\/https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/lifestyle\/a25645143\/facebook-privacy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Esquire\u2019s Dan Sinker<\/a> was writing about Facebook\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.greggant.com\/posts\/2018\/12\/27\/welcome-to-the-enshittening.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">enshittening<\/a>,\u201d and that same year Naked Capitalism blogger Yves Smith described the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2018\/11\/boeing-crapification-lion-air-crash.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">crapification<\/a>\u201d of modern Boeing planes. But it\u2019s certainly Doctorow who\u2019s done the most to popularize the idea, to the extent that the venerable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/slang\/enshittification\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Merriam-Webster dictionary<\/a> added \u201censhittification\u201d to its roster of words this January. As they define it, the term means \u201cthe degradation in the quality and experience of online platforms over time,\u201d whether it\u2019s Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other section of the internet. And as the book\u2019s subtitle suggests, Doctorow believes he\u2019s worked out both why it happens, and how to stop the shit from flowing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the first point, he has a strong argument. Doctorow\u2019s main thesis is that Big Tech companies \u201censhittify\u201d their products and platforms because they can. As profit-seeking enterprises, it\u2019s their natural tendency: \u201ccompanies would like to charge as much as possible for goods and services while spending as little as possible on\u2026 anything\u201d that makes the consumer\u2019s experience better. In the past, he writes, there have been countervailing forces that prevented tech companies from making their products as shitty as they\u2019d like. The four most important are competition from other companies, regulation from the government, resistance from a skilled workforce that doesn\u2019t want to make junk, and savvy consumers who will hack and modify their tech. But as the companies in question become larger and more powerful, often becoming monopolies, each of these obstacles to enshittification has become less and less effective, and company executives have pushed the envelope more and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Doctorow breaks down the shit-making process into four steps. First, there\u2019s an initial period where a company launches a website or a piece of software, and it\u2019s great for users. Think Facebook or Google, circa 2010. Douglas Adams <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/sap\/2014\/07\/07\/douglas-adams-technology-rules\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">once quipped<\/a> that \u201cwe are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works,\u201d and these early-stage platforms just worked. They did the things you\u2019d expect them to do, simply and effectively. Everyone liked using them. And because they did, they got \u201clocked in.\u201d All their friends and photos were on Facebook, or all their carefully-curated music playlists were on Spotify, so it would be a major pain to switch to a different platform. Once enough people are locked in, the company moves to Stage Two: abusing their users on behalf of business clients. They put more and more ads into your feed, or they collect more and more data about your online habits and sell it off to the highest bidder. That way, the business clients become \u201clocked in\u201d too, because they need access to all those users to sell their products and services. So the Big Tech companies move to Stage Three, and they abuse the business clients too, charging more and more money to place ads, manipulating algorithms to boost some clients and bury others, and all kinds of other chicanery. Finally, Stage Four arrives: the once-great platform is now awful for both the average users and the business clients, but everyone\u2019s trapped there, while the tech CEOs vacuum up billions of dollars. Enshittification is complete.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/hs\/cta\/wi\/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLIBcULjXvJPv3OeXotbg5Cup%2FwrFXOrI2uVubLZtP6U6Esi8VrE7x5Ky0qmiW6CMvzliTGgEAK3H3ZVrkzIvA836BPwjloYNq55yqoybjGT8WJ4LHZl%2BILYNBsaS1K8%2FYrG8FM5mV9gN1H%2Fk7xIIhqFXbwb4M6quuYo1W62RXFbM2baz54PGryRc8Jx&amp;webInteractiveContentId=185722520716&amp;portalId=43971025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Subscribe\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/interactive-185722520716.png\" style=\"height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: fill; margin: 0 auto; display: block; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px\" onerror=\"this.style.display='none'\" align=\"center\"\/> <\/a> <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Take Amazon, one of Doctorow\u2019s most compelling case studies. Initially, it was great for customers: \u201cThe company raised a fortune from early investors, and then a larger fortune by listing on the stock market. Then it used that fortune to subsidize many goods, selling them below-cost. It also subsidized shipping and offered a generous, no-questions-asked, postage-paid returns policy.\u201d This attracted a massive consumer base and allowed Amazon to kill off many of its competitors (RIP, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cantonrep.com\/story\/business\/2018\/10\/15\/sears-was-amazon-its-day\/9547652007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sears catalog<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/technology\/2013\/10\/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Diapers.com<\/a>). The Prime subscription program, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amazon_Prime\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">introduced in 2005<\/a>, got people \u201clocked in\u201d for long periods of time. Then the search engine changed. instead of showing you the best match for the product you\u2019re looking for, it now shows you whichever sellers paid a premium to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9news.com\/article\/money\/consumer\/steve-on-your-side\/amazon-sponsored-results-search\/73-f3cffc2b-836b-4e90-9710-429529648694\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">have a \u201csponsored\u201d result<\/a>, and the item you actually want is on Page 2 or deeper. That locked in the sellers, and now Amazon exploits them too, becoming more and more extortionate: \u201cAdd all the junk fees together, and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45 to 51 cents on every dollar.\u201d The company even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigates\/special-report\/amazon-india-rigging\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">copies popular products<\/a> to make \u201cAmazon Basics\u201d or \u201cEssentials\u201d versions and buries the original sellers in the algorithm, sometimes driving them out of business.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2025, Amazon is thoroughly enshittified. The site started as a bookseller, but nowadays when you search for a book, you\u2019ll find umpteen AI-generated knockoffs or \u201csummaries\u201d of that book cluttering up the page, which Amazon seems to be in no hurry to remove. Investigative journalist <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/sethharpesq\/status\/1958979563821654083?t=UUDdQI16KcGM1G1GZpE8CQ\" rel=\"nofollow\">Seth Harp<\/a>, who recently released a bestselling book called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/730414\/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Fort Bragg Cartel<\/a> about drug trafficking on U.S. military bases, has been the latest victim of this phenomenon:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot 2025-08-22 at 5-23-36 PM-png.png\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1526\" height=\"1172\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Seth Harp via Twitter<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But aside from knockoffs, the platform is also full of low-effort pseudo-books. Take the biography series \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B0FG689B5C?binding=hardcover&amp;ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_thcv\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Titans of Power: The Lives That Shaped Politics<\/a>,\u201d which contains 19 short books (and counting!)\u00a0about different politicians, all summarizing information you could find on their Wikipedia pages with a plain blue cover. (My favorite: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Relentless-Will-Tim-Burchett-instincts\/dp\/B0FGQB946Y\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Relentless Will of Tim Burchett<\/a>.) Amazon is absolutely clogged with stuff like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the same when you search for a clothing item\u2014look up \u201cmen\u2019s Oxford shirts,\u201d for example, and a lot of the top results are either Amazon Essentials or weird all-caps brands like \u201cCOOFANDY,\u201d \u201cCIGENU,\u201d or \u201cJ. VER,\u201d which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/CIGENU-Regular-Wrinkle-Free-Business-Button-Down\/dp\/B0D9HJP3V1\/ref=sxin_16_pa_sp_search_thematic-asin_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.5fc1ab9b-e3b9-4b11-bbe3-32c11b0c8106%3Aamzn1.sym.5fc1ab9b-e3b9-4b11-bbe3-32c11b0c8106&amp;crid=2UIBO6BWZU44B&amp;cv_ct_cx=men%27s%2Boxford%2Bshirts&amp;keywords=men%27s%2Boxford%2Bshirts&amp;pd_rd_i=B0D9HJP3V1&amp;pd_rd_r=9a10df81-7e2f-4ea6-ac7c-9b23f7e5fc7b&amp;pd_rd_w=l1fPH&amp;pd_rd_wg=xtKeS&amp;pf_rd_p=5fc1ab9b-e3b9-4b11-bbe3-32c11b0c8106&amp;pf_rd_r=B51RZNHNJ2ZNKJDV0DK7&amp;qid=1755814406&amp;sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&amp;sprefix=men%27s%2Boxford%2Bshirts%2Caps%2C121&amp;sr=1-3-baa1f287-65d3-41a3-a655-8bbba0531537-spons&amp;sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">list their origin<\/a> simply as \u201cimported\u201d and use only the finest polyester. You have to scroll for a while to find anything halfway decent, and because roughly <a href=\"https:\/\/cybernews.com\/security\/millions-amazon-reviews-fake\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">43 percent of Amazon product reviews are fake now<\/a>, you can\u2019t trust any of the information you find there, either. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/jeff-bezos-wealth-new-high-amazon-stock-increases-trump-2024-11\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">never been richer<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or, for another example, consider Facebook. It\u2019s hard to remember now, but Facebook was fun to use at one point. There\u2019s a reason it overtook Myspace to become the dominant social media site. But here again, the same pattern Doctorow identified has played out. The site got so many users they were all mutually \u201clocked in\u201d; it started shoving ads down their e-throats and tracking their every click; then it started ripping off the companies that buy the ads, to the extent that \u201cIn 2018, Proctor &amp; Gamble zeroed out its $200 million annual \u2018programmatic advertising\u2019 budget\u201d\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adweek.com\/brand-marketing\/when-procter-gamble-cut-200-million-in-digital-ad-spend-its-marketing-became-10-more-effective\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saw no reduction in sales<\/a>. More recently, Facebook has also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cly74mpy8klo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">gotten rid of its fact-checking staff<\/a>, and the site has been flooded with all kinds of bizarre nonsense. According to one estimate, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stanventures.com\/news\/facebook-flooded-with-ai-over-40-of-posts-are-machine-generated-1847\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as much as 40 percent<\/a> of new Facebook posts may be AI-generated. If you want to see an oddly shiny image of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/meta-facebook-ban-ai-slop-images-shrimp-jesus-why-2024-6\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jesus made out of shrimp<\/a>, that\u2019s your place.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Zoom out a little, and we can see that broader political and economic forces have been at work to make all this possible. One, Doctorow writes, is the gradual abandonment of antitrust law by American politicians since the 1980s. In the past, the U.S. government would break up companies that became too big or powerful; this is what famously happened to <a href=\"https:\/\/jpt.spe.org\/twa\/the-antitrust-legacy-of-standard-oil-in-todays-world\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Standard Oil in 1911<\/a>, creating several smaller companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil that are still around today. But even more recently, the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations made a serious attempt to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.historyofinformation.com\/detail.php?id=923\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">break up IBM<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is a fascinating chapter of U.S. corporate history, and Enshittification brings it to life. IBM, Doctorow says, was \u201ctech\u2019s first great monopolist,\u201d and it pressed its advantage the same way Amazon and Google do today: it \u201cgouged its customers on some of its products, and used predatory pricing, long-term exclusivity contracts, and engineering tricks to prevent competitors from entering the market.\u201d The federal government, which had IBM hardware in practically every office, was the biggest client to get ripped off, and they got sick of it. So Republican and Democratic administrations alike waged a twelve-year legal battle that was later dubbed \u201cantitrust\u2019s Vietnam.\u201d It ended when Reagan got into office, and IBM ultimately stayed intact, but it made a difference. After being under government scrutiny for so long, IBM halted some of its worst anti-competitive practices, and smaller, newer companies like Microsoft and Apple were able to get a foot in the door, creating the computing landscape we have today. But ever since Reagan, both Republicans and Democrats have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalejreg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/01.-Douglas-Article.-Print.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">gradually abandoned antitrust<\/a> enforcement, and that dereliction of duty has allowed new monopolists and shit-merchants to flourish.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another critical factor is the steps companies have taken, both on the legal and the engineering front, to restrict the ways in which consumers can use their technology. In the past, Doctorow says, tech users would resort to \u201cself-help\u201d to fix or get rid of any tech product they didn\u2019t like, and this put a limit on how much enshittification companies could get away with. For example, if Microsoft Office added too many bloated, useless features\u2014or tried to paywall existing features\u2014people can just switch to a different word processor that can also read .DOCX files. Or if ink cartridges get too expensive, people could stop buying them and use off-brand equivalents for half the price. But over time, companies have made technical changes to make \u201cself-help\u201d harder or impossible, and they\u2019ve lobbied governments to punish the people who engage in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/hs\/cta\/wi\/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLI%2B14pWb%2B%2FRpMEXftKjjo1kBITOPAVwfeuCr8BAt2Y4hwzpnaBG2xwJJviAlZk%2FPlu%2BIFW5ZdMwhp%2Fe8Q5liBz359K1ej3rRhRCf5Un69OJ6m7hKCl15bYrrM5BdJ%2B20CeE7Sfx7fZTEfouZ4%2FdATsk8%2Be0TZH4Nsg049UKKn%2BX6DxpwCGsC50fItV%2Fb3RN&amp;webInteractiveContentId=185722520384&amp;portalId=43971025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"5-Dollars-News-Briefing-Ad-2025\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/interactive-185722520384.png\" style=\"height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: fill; margin: 0 auto; display: block; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px\" onerror=\"this.style.display='none'\" align=\"center\"\/> <\/a> <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/news\/ancheta-\/-fixing-tech\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Ancheta wrote<\/a> for Current Affairs this May, Apple is one of the worst offenders here. It pioneered something called \u201cparts pairing,\u201d which means that many iPhones won\u2019t accept any part that\u2019s not \u201crecognized,\u201d including parts from an old scrap iPhone or ones made by a third-party company. Unless you\u2019re particularly tech-savvy, this means you\u2019re forced to either rely on Apple itself to fix your phone if it breaks\u2014for a heavy price\u2014or just buy a new one. Many printers use pairing now too, so <a href=\"https:\/\/support.hp.com\/ie-en\/document\/c02632486\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">only official (and expensive) HP ink<\/a> will work in an HP printer without tinkering. Or with software, there\u2019s the infamous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/issues\/drm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Digital Rights Management (DRM)<\/a>, which makes it impossible to, say, take your Kindle books and put them on anything but the authorized Kindle platform, the way you could put a .DOCX document into any word processor. It\u2019s not just engineering: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it\u2019s also <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/tech\/you-can-remove-drm-from-your-digital-books-but-its-probably-illegal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">illegal to remove DRM<\/a> from media files in many cases. So even though you theoretically bought your ebooks, Amazon controls how and where you can use them, and it reserves the right to modify or even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/18\/technology\/companies\/18amazon.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">erase them<\/a> any time it likes. If it adds some awful feature to Kindle, you\u2019re stuck with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there\u2019s the labor side of things. An underrated brake on companies\u2019 drive to enshittify, Doctorow says, is tech workers themselves. For a long time skilled software engineers and other technicians had leverage over the companies that employed them: they were \u201cvery hard to replace, and in enormous demand, so they had to be kept happy or they might defect to a rival.\u201d That\u2019s why companies like Google created their infamous <a href=\"https:\/\/candor.co\/articles\/tech-careers\/perks-of-working-for-google-a-playground-for-grownups\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">playground-like \u201ccampuses\u201d<\/a> in the 2010s, full of free snacks and games. But another way they kept their workforce in line was by inculcating a sense of \u201cmission,\u201d bandying around high-minded slogans like Google\u2019s now-defunct \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">don\u2019t be evil<\/a>\u201d or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/photo.php?fbid=10103818114983761&amp;id=4&amp;set=a.612287952871\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook\u2019s<\/a> \u201cbring the world closer together.\u201d This use of \u201cmission\u201d to keep workers in line isn\u2019t unique to tech; it\u2019s also used to manipulate and exploit doctors, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/article32670861.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">teachers<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2019\/08\/nonprofits-industrial-complex-socialist-organizing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nonprofit workers<\/a>, and others who think of themselves as making the world better. But it also has a side effect. Having bought into the \u201cmission\u201d framing and made personal sacrifices to devote themselves to a company, many tech workers \u201cexperienc[e] a sense of betrayal and profound moral injury\u201d when they\u2019re told to enshittify their products, and refuse to do it. They have an inconvenient thing called principles.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, \u201ctech has resolved its labor scarcity problem,\u201d and is now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/tech-industry-amazon-microsoft-meta-google-companies-intensity-hardcore-2025-3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">firing and laying off workers<\/a> at a record pace. It got help from the U.S. government, which ramped up the production of skilled tech workers through the STEM and \u201clearn to code\u201d education push of the 2010s\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/2\/14\/11559052\/obama-everybodys-got-to-learn-how-to-code\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">thanks, Obama<\/a>. And increasingly, the industry is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodinthemachine.com\/p\/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech-f39\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">replacing tech workers with AI<\/a>. Worse still, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doctorow.medium.com\/https-pluralistic-net-2025-04-25-some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others-9acd84d46742\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tech union density is so low it can barely be charted<\/a>,\u201d so when workers are no longer scarce, they don\u2019t have much power. So the situation is degrading by the day, tech workers are more and more likely to be forced into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dice.com\/career-advice\/are-most-game-developers-still-dealing-with-crunch-time-and-overwork\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">abusive \u201ccrunch\u201d situations<\/a> where they work 60-80 hour work weeks, and enshittification is accelerating.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Doctorow does a fine job diagnosing the problem. After more than <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_other_writings\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">20 years writing<\/a> about technology and the companies that make it, he knows the subject better than most people alive, and it shows in the book. But after a long examination of the rot spreading through today\u2019s Silicon Valley techno-capitalism, we\u2019re left with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/lenin\/works\/1901\/witbd\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the perennial question<\/a>: what is to be done? And that\u2019s where I found Enshittification a little frustrating.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that the solutions Doctorow proposes are wrong, in and of themselves. In the back half of the book, he lays out a multi-part approach that mirrors his diagnosis. To solve the lack of competition that allows companies like Google and Amazon to operate as monopolies, he wants a return to the muscular antitrust enforcement of the early 20th century, and praises Biden-era Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan for her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/opinion\/lina-khan-ftc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">efforts to break up Big Tech<\/a>. Fair enough. Khan was a superstar, which you could tell because the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/two-billionaire-harris-donors-hope-she-will-fire-ftc-chair-lina-khan-2024-07-26\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tech billionaires funding Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign<\/a> were emphatic that she should be fired. Anything that makes Reid Hoffman nervous is typically good, and things probably would get better if you, say, broke Amazon into five smaller companies. Doctorow also wants to see a large-scale unionization of the tech industry: again, a good and necessary idea. There have been some impressive victories here, like when more than <a href=\"https:\/\/uniglobalunion.org\/news\/activision-workers-become-the-biggest-certified-video-game-union-in-the-u-s\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">600 video-game workers at Activision<\/a> unionized last year, and Doctorow is at his most compelling when writing about the crucial role organized labor plays in society:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Unions don\u2019t just represent the workers who pay their dues; they represent labor, in solidarity, against the forces of capital. To effectively support their members, unions can\u2019t confine themselves to fighting the employer\u2014they have to fight corporate power itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, he urges new \u201cright to repair\u201d laws removing restrictions on how people can hack, fix, alter, and otherwise tinker with their tech, arguing that things like HP\u2019s restrictions on ink cartridges violate the most basic concepts of personal property:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">If your printer is yours[&#8230;] then it is certainly none of HP\u2019s goddamned business whose ink you use. Hell, fill your printer with ditchwater if you want! Or with vintage Veuve Clicquot (which costs a fraction of what HP charges for ink).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Doctorow also points out that any government action will not originate from the government, but will come as a response to political pressure from below, noting that Lina Khan\u2019s appointment was a concession to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. He urges more grassroots organization to create more of that pressure, in hopes it can generate even bigger results.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is all well and good, as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn\u2019t go far enough. Throughout the book, Doctorow uses an extended medical metaphor, naming his sections things like \u201cThe Pathology,\u201d \u201cThe Epidemiology,\u201d and finally \u201cThe Cure.\u201d But remember, he identified the root cause of enshittification as the profit-seeking nature of corporations themselves, as corporations. By nature, they \u201cwould like to charge as much as possible for goods and services while spending as little as possible on\u2026 anything.\u201d And as good as they are in a vacuum, none of the proposals in Enshittification would remove that root problem. Instead of a cure, what we get is a series of palliatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/hs\/cta\/wi\/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLITv5Pha%2FJ054TVbnST9Y6A8yjgb7N3fdxOoPzM34yC0ubPe1K7dD%2FUipyyBjmDkFMzO46CXdjEcrE391MyzC0utKP%2Fgg3Xi74Zum1%2FhCwafZk5l0WSaJ78znNNliXi4Q%2BqftcpSNu3qRs%2FG7b%2FQNy7gj24bzA%2F7IQFd2X7qZv3MoQzmrdb6og%3D&amp;webInteractiveContentId=185722520731&amp;portalId=43971025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Donate\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/interactive-185722520731.png\" style=\"height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: fill; margin: 0 auto; display: block; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px\" onerror=\"this.style.display='none'\" align=\"center\"\/> <\/a> <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the book\u2019s conclusion, Doctorow writes that he\u2019s \u201cno true believer in markets as the best arbiter of how our society should work,\u201d and that \u201clike other leftists, I am deeply suspicious of capitalism.\u201d Elsewhere, he\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/10\/31\/books\/review\/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">written favorably<\/a> about China Mi\u00e9ville\u2019s commentary on the Communist Manifesto. But with that in mind, it\u2019s strange that the solution he arrives at isn\u2019t particularly anti-capitalist or anti-market. In a memorable metaphor, he describes tech CEOs as showing up to work every morning, \u201cgoing directly to the giant ENSHITTIFICATION lever installed in the C-suite and yanking on it as hard as they can.\u201d But, he says, \u201cthe difference is that the lever used to be stuck. It was gummed up by competition, by regulation, by interoperability [users\u2019 ability to easily switch\u00a0software], and by tech workers\u2019 power and conscience.\u201d By restoring all of those things, he hopes to re-gum the lever.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But this is a limited horizon to aim for. It promises restrained and regulated tech companies, perhaps chastened and better-behaved, but it does not challenge the idea that for-profit companies should be the ones making and maintaining the technology we all rely on. The question remains: why should we accept the existence of a malevolent CEO with an enshittification lever at all? Instead of better-regulated companies, why shouldn\u2019t the solution be no more companies?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not like for-profit corporations are the only possible model. You can nationalize things. In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s incarnation of the Labour Party had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/election-2019-50427369\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">detailed proposal<\/a> for a publicly-owned internet provider, which drove his critics berserk (the BBC called it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prospectmagazine.co.uk\/politics\/39638\/from-broadband-communism-to-a-marxist-dystopia-how-labours-social-democratic-reforms-have-been-branded-as-hard-left-fantasies\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cbroadband communism.\u201d<\/a>) That would undoubtedly be better than for-profit monopolies like Comcast, which are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/home\/internet\/my-internet-provider-is-a-monopoly-heres-why-yours-probably-is-too\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">common across the United States<\/a> and often charge people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.milkenreview.org\/articles\/the-scandalous-cost-of-internet-in-america\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">absurd prices<\/a> for sub-par service. Or, right here in the U.S., the IRS had a <a href=\"https:\/\/marylandmatters.org\/2025\/05\/27\/direct-file-is-free-easy-and-trusthworthy-so-why-does-trumps-administration-want-to-end-it\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">very promising pilot program<\/a> to release its own \u201cDirect File\u201d tax-preparation website and provide a free alternative to the <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/turbotax-tricked-taxpayers-into-paying-for-its-free-too-1834730542\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">increasingly enshittified TurboTax<\/a>. Right-wing critics of the program <a href=\"https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/workforce\/2025\/08\/irs-plans-to-rescind-some-deferred-resignation-offers-to-fill-critical-vacancies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hated<\/a> how it \u201ccompetes with software from tax-preparation companies,\u201d and they\u2019ve successfully <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lobbied Donald Trump to kill it off<\/a>. But having a public competitor was exactly the point, and if TurboTax can\u2019t keep up with one, it deserves to die.<\/p>\n<p>The same logic can be applied to a lot more areas. There\u2019s no technical reason we couldn\u2019t have a nationalized search engine to compete with Google, completely devoid of advertising or surveillance. That\u2019s what the public library card catalog used to be. In an <a href=\"http:\/\/infolab.stanford.edu\/%7Ebackrub\/google.html#a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">initial concept paper<\/a> about Google, even Larry Page and Sergey Brin warned that \u201cthe issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives\u201d that it would be \u201ccrucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm,\u201d suggesting it could be run by a public university or a consortium of them. You could even have public alternatives to social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, serving as the PBS to their Fox News.\u00a0Plenty of people smarter than me have <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/02\/web3-social-media-google-utility-worker-coops\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made the case<\/a> that all major web platforms <a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/opinion\/2025-05-25\/do-we-need-publicly-owned-social-networks-to-escape-silicon-valley.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">should be publicly owned<\/a>, since they serve\u2014or claim to serve\u2014the purpose the \u201cpublic square\u201d did in previous eras. But a serious discussion of nationalization and public ownership is strangely absent from Enshittification. What we get in its pages is social democracy at best, not socialism. Reform, not revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m really not sure why that is. In the past, Doctorow has never had an issue with seemingly radical political content\u2014I still remember fondly his young-adult novels about people who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2012\/12\/pirate-cinema\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">illegally pirate and remix Hollywood films<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel)\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">teenage hackers fighting the Department of Homeland Security<\/a>. Maybe he\u2019s made a calculation that in the current Trump administration, the best we can hope for is regulation and new trade unions, and that the Big Tech companies\u2019 position is so dominant there\u2019s no practical possibility of overthrowing them any time soon. Maybe he\u2019s got some kind of libertarian concern about \u201cbig government.\u201d In any case, I still think Enshittification is worth reading for its insight into how we got here. But considering the size of the shit-heap we\u2019re facing, I can\u2019t help but wish it provided a bigger shovel.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About a year ago, I bought a hardcover thesaurus\u2014Roget\u2019s in dictionary form, the Delacorte edition, printed in 1992.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-86138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}