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

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

Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.

When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).

The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users—and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then the platforms turned to abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. In the end, the platforms die.

Doctorow’s argument clearly resonated. Once named, it became obvious that enshittification is everywhere, so much so that the American Dialect Society named it its 2023 Word of the Year, and was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror.

Here, now, in Enshittification the book, Doctorow moves the conversation beyond the overwhelming sense of our inevitably enshittified fate. He shows us the specific decisions that led us here, who made them, and—most important—how they can be undone.

"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

"[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 gave 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 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 Craiglist

"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, its 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. Enshittification is an essential read 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 stripmining 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