*** Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025 ***
"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
