Enshittification: Why your favourite apps feel worse every year

What is enshittification?

In simple terms, enshittification refers to the decay of a platform or product due to greed. As Doctorow puts it: “Enshittification isn’t just a way to say ‘Something got worse.’ It’s an analysis that explains the way an online service gets worse, how that worsening unfolds, and the contagion that’s causing everything to get worse, all at once.”

The Enshittification Process

The 352-page book documents how a handful of tech giants were corrupted by the power their popularity gave them. (Generated using AI)

Doctorow argues that platforms follow a predictable four-stage decline. The 352-page book documents how a handful of tech giants were corrupted by the power their popularity gave them, ultimately exploiting the very users and workers who helped them succeed. The process, he argues, looks like this:

📌 Platforms are good to their users.
📌 Then they abuse their users to benefit their business customers.
📌 Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back value for themselves.
📌Finally, they turn into a giant pile of st.**
📌Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter: The Gods Who Sold Out

Doctorow charts the (d)evolution of four major brands – Facebook, Amazon, the iPhone, and Twitter – all of which began as empowering, user-friendly platforms but, in his telling, have reached stage four and achieved “excreta status”.

He does not stop there. Google, once proudly committed to “not being evil”, is accused of shaping search results to benefit itself, all while ensuring that users remain too dependent to realistically try any other search engine.

The dark, disturbing side of tech

Despite its humour, Enshittification is often unsettling. Doctorow draws on years of experience – including his time as co-editor of the influential Boing Boing blog – to pull back the curtain on the darker side of the tech industry.

Particularly chilling are the stories of factory workers at Foxconn, Apple’s primary contractor, where “suicide nets” were installed to prevent despairing employees from jumping to their deaths. He outlines how numerous tech brands have weakened labour unions, giving them free rein to treat workers in ways that border on the abusive.

Doctorow writes without sentimentality and revels in irreverence. Tech fanboys may wince at lines such as:

“Google might be very good at operations, but it’s objectively terrible at innovation.”

“The reason Apple’s board picked Cook to replace co-founder Steve Jobs, after he juice-cleansed his way into an early cancer death, was not his sunny disposition.”

The rise and all of the tech bros

In many ways, Enshittification reads like a tech-centred Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Brands rise by promising to empower consumers, only to later betray them in pursuit of profit.

Doctorow shows how platforms trap both users and advertisers. A person cannot easily leave Facebook or Instagram, because their friends and social connections are already there. Likewise, brands have little choice but to pay to reach these users. In the end, neither consumers nor advertisers win – the platform does.

He also details how companies fight ruthlessly for monopolistic dominance. Uber used billions in venture capital to undercut taxi operators, while Amazon not only wiped out smaller rivals but often copied successful products and sold them under its own brand.

Some might call Doctorow cynical, but it is difficult to dismiss the mountain of evidence he presents.

Is there a way out?

To Doctorow’s credit, the book is not merely a doom-laden rant. He proposes practical solutions, many of which have worked in the past.

Among them:

📌Break up monopolies through robust enforcement of antitrust and competition laws.
📌Increase interoperability, ensuring users can move their data and content freely between platforms.📌Restore user control so individuals retain ownership over their information and are not locked into any one service.

Doctorow is realistic enough to acknowledge that none of this will be easy. Still, he insists it is essential if the Internet – and society – is to avoid further decay. As he concludes:

“It may be true that the law can’t force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being … but it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly.”

A must-read wake-up call

This is precisely why Enshittification is a must-read for anyone concerned about the health of the modern Internet. A small warning, though: this book may permanently alter how you view some of the world’s biggest brands and most celebrated tech personalities.

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It by Cory Doctorow
Verso
352 pages
₹999 (expected), ₹924 on Kindle