Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

Cory Doctorow
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Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

Cory Doctorow
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BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR384 PAGESENGLISH

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“In his account of the Great Enshittening, Doctorow offers a masterly polemic, its scope so sweeping that it does, finally, seem to explain every pungent odor wafting from Silicon Valley.”
—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s Magazine

“[Doctorow] certainly knows how to make an idea memorable. You could not ask for a clearer, more ambitious or better-written business book than this one . . . Doctorow deserves thanks for his service.”
—Henry Mance, Financial Times

Enshittification is a pointed and efficient text, driven by Doctorow's snarky prose.”
—Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker

“Remember when the internet was young and alive, vibrant and accessible and free? Cory Doctorow does, and he knows what’s gone wrong―and he sees a way forward. This is a magnificent book.”
—James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information

Enshittification explains the exploitation that changed the internet and our lives. Doctorow gives us the word to describe how these companies immiserate humanity on a planetary scale.”
—Edward Snowden

“I always love Cory’s shit, but Enshittification is not only a smart, funny, and refreshingly furious screed on how tech has betrayed us all, but also a bracing, daringly optimistic plan for how we can free ourselves from the awfulness.”
—John Hodgman

“Cory Doctorow is a genuine tech hero. He has encapsulated here much of what’s going wrong with the internet, and he suggests how the spirit of the original internet might be brought back. This is a great book for those of us hoping to make things better for everyone.”
—Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

“Punchy, pungent, and utterly compelling. Enshittification 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 Undercover Economist

“Big Tech does not just plunder your data. It does not merely rob you of your privacy. It does something far, far worse. You know it. You feel it. But you won’t be able to put your finger on it until you have read Enshittification. Then you will know and, more important, you will stand a better chance of resisting.”
—Yanis Varoufakis, author of Technofeudalism

“Cory Doctorow brilliantly diagnoses how our digital commons became a wasteland of extraction and surveillance. But his greatest contribution is showing us the escape routes, reminding us that the internet’s promise isn’t lost, it’s merely captured. We built it once; we can build it again, better.”
—Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s cyber ambassador and first digital minister

“With his hallmark clarity and energy, Cory Doctorow lays out how tech monopolies innovated ways to disregard, abuse, and suck dry their users. We must heed Doctorow’s no-bullshit account of how to fight back.”
—Jathan Sadowski, author of The Mechanic and the Luddite

“Cory Doctorow spells out why our experience online keeps getting worse—and what we can do to turn this around. Reading Enshittification is essential to understand today’s digital economy.”
—Rohit Chopra, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

“I spent twenty years trying to explain how monopoly power plus shareholder power was strip-mining the core infrastructure of our world. Then Cory Doctorow distilled the process into a single glorious term, while providing reams of brilliant new analysis. Watching Cory think through a gnarly problem is like watching Jackie Chan fight through a phalanx of bo-staff-wielding thugs. Fast, furious, perfect. Cory is one of the most original and important thinkers of our time.”
—Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute and author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction

“The steady decline of the technology you use every day isn’t just in your imagination―and in Enshittification, Cory Doctorow explains how we got here. Witty, incisive, and urgently relevant, this book reveals how we can reclaim our digital lives from the forces that have degraded them.”
―Molly White, editor of Web3 Is Going Just Great and Citation Needed

“A funny and enlightening read that makes a serious problem in technology and policy widely accessible.”
Library Journal (starred review)

“Erudite yet breezy . . . Doctorow has a gift for distilling complicated ideas. If we want a ‘new, good internet,’ we’ve got to make Big Tech ‘weaker.’ It’s a potentially galvanizing argument. A persuasive polemic aims to defang Big Tech—and improve life for everyone else.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A razor-sharp yet subtly optimistic look at the soul-sucking state of the internet.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This is Doctorow in full-on angry author mode; he pulls no punches here, naming names and calling out guilty parties . . . Readers will be upset, informed, and inflamed.”
—Booklist

Overall rating: 4.0 / 5 from 1 reviews.

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Reviews

Tech giants: Good servants but poor masters.

"Every government Minister of Trade, Commerce, Competition, Anti-trust, Consumer Affairs. etc. . needs to read this book. While some offer superficial criticism of the author's for railing against capitalism, this book provides detailed and accounts of how some of the giant tech companies take advantage of consumers. Anyone who thinks ""no one was ever fired for buying IBM or Microsoft"", think again. Doctorow has done his research and it is alarming. An index would have been helpful. The nice thing about hardbacks is that one is spared the icky, plasticky coating now so common on trade paperbacks"

Reluctant U. (4/5)

Q&A

  • Published date: Sep 01, 2026
  • Language: English
  • No. of Pages: 384
  • Publisher: Picador
  • ISBN: 9781250448194
  • Dimensions: 5.38" W x 1.0" L x 8.25" H
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian, British, American blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty-three years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to further and safeguard our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books like this one, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science from the Open University. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. He holds visiting professorship and research appointments at MIT, the University of North Carolina, Cornell University, and the Open University,

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