Enshittification - by Cory Doctorow (Hardcover)

About the Book

Enshittification: it's not just you--the internet sucks now. Here's why, and here's how we can disenshittify.

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction
As seen in Alex Gibney's 2026 documentary Musk

Enshittification: It's not just you--the internet sucks now. It's been enshittified. That was no accident, and it's not gonna fix itself. Here's how we'll disenshittify it so we can have a new, good internet.

We are all living through the Enshittocene--the Great Enshittening--a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are being turned into giant piles of shit. It's frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.

The once-glorious internet has degenerated into "platforms" that rose to dominance because they delivered convenient and delightful services efficiently and reliably. But once we were locked in to those services, the tech bosses turned on us, relying on our dependency to keep us using the services even as they got worse and worse. The platform bosses did the same to the companies that had flocked to their services to sell stuff to us. Once we were all locked in--businesses and users--the tech companies stripped out all utility, save the bare minimum needed to stave off total collapse.

In Enshittification, Cory Doctorow shows us where it comes from: not the iron laws of economics, or the great forces of history, but specific policy choices made by powerful people who ignored every warning about the consequences of those choices. These are choices that can be undone. Enshittification is a Big Tech disassembly manual, a road map for the seizure of the means of computation. It is a diagnosis, and it is a cure.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

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,