[PREV - PLATCAP_HISTORY]    [TOP]

ENSHITTIFICATION

                                             February 03, 2026
                                             February 14, 2026


About Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification" (2025).

Doctorow means something specific by
"enshittification": it's the process
by which the major internet                        But he also comments that he
platforms have gone bad.                           doesn't object to other,
                                                   looser usage.  There's
  (1) platforms are good to users to               unfortunately plenty of other
      lure them in,                                phenomena you can call
                                                   "enshittification".
  (2) then they start to abuse them to get
      more value for their business customers--


So far, a familiar story to all of us mere
"end users", but it doesn't stop there.

  (3)  After that, the sites start abusing their business
       customers to siphon off more of the money that roped
       *them* in--

At which point they become "a giant pile of shit",
and yet everyone still feels locked-in to using
them.                                                  The "three acts" phrase
                                                       is not from the book
"There you have it, a tragedy in three                 but from an inter-
acts", as Doctorow has put it.                         view about the book.

                                                       Doctorow is pretty
                                                       expert at *every*
                                                       phase of getting a
                                                       message across,
                                                       it doesn't end just
                                                       with publishing a book.

That's clear enough, and you may well feel you know
all this already, but you still need to read this
book.  Doctorow has been in the thick of the shit
for decades now-- working with the EFF, testifying
to UN commissions, etc-- and he almost certainly
knows a lot more about this than you do.  Brace
yourself, you're about to learn it's all worse than
you thought.

But Doctorow also points the way toward ways of fixing
these problems, and he's got some examples of things
working right that I also hadn't heard... so it's not
all a downer.

                  I must say though, it's a struggle to summarize
                  this book: Doctorow wastes very few words-- he's
                  expert at covering a lot of ground succinctly.


--------
[NEXT - DOCTOROW_EVIL]