Lest anyone should conclude that the title of this book is merely a blatant foul-mouthed outcry for reader attention, Doctorow states in the acknowledgement section that “in late 2023, the American Dialect Society named enshittification their Word of the Year.” He then goes on to list some of the festivals, podcasts, and talk shows at which he was subsequently asked to speak on the topic. Doctorow, besides being a popular science fiction writer, is also a leading tech activist. Enshittification builds on ideas he proposed in his recent book The Internet Con, but ultimately goes far beyond it. In short, the largest internet companies, as well as auto manufacturers and many others, have ruthlessly eliminated competition to establish monopolies and cartels that they rule over unopposed, and they have taken advantage of their powerful positions to invade your privacy and degrade the quality of their products so that they might squeeze you for more and more profits.

To make the situation clear, Doctorow begins with a series of chapters detailing case studies of some of the worst offenders: Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, and Twitter. These examples are all horror stories of extreme and deliberate enshittification – in other words, reducing value to customers and businesses. He then delves into an equally horrific explanation (which he calls “the epidemiology”) of how things got this bad. As he convincingly explains: “All our tech businesses are turning awful, all at once, and they’re not dying. We remain trapped in their rotting corpses, unable to escape.” Hyperbole? Not at all. It is a mere statement of fact. That’s what makes this book so scary: because it is so true.

Establishing aggressive monopolies is a key to the success of the largest tech companies. Doctorow provides numerous examples of their misdeeds, but one of the most blatant, egregious, and well-documented instances is the deliberate decision of Google to dumb-down search results. If the results are less effective, this causes people to search again multiple times, and this in turn makes more money for Google through its sponsored advertising. For a more obvious personal example, I need only look at my feed on Facebook. It used to be that when my relatives and friends would post content, I would be able to scroll through and read these posts. Nowadays, though, my feed is inundated with advertisements and so-called “boosted” content – that is, content that someone has paid a lot of money to shove before my eyes whether I want to see it or not. As for the content I have logged on to view – the content that connects me with my loved ones – it is hopelessly buried in this – let’s face it: there is no word that better describes it: shit.

One of the favorite tactics of these “purveyors of cloud-based products” is what Doctorow calls “bait and switch.” These tech companies monitor every keystroke you make, and when they find out what facets of their services are most valuable to you, they “remove that feature from the product’s basic tier and reclassify it as an upcharged add-on.” And don’t think that you will be able to upgrade again in a one-time purchase; no, they’ll charge you rent for that upgrade for as long as you want to use it. If certain programs are desperately needed, you may have no choice. As Doctorow states: “Enshittification is what happens when the executives calculate that they can force you to go along with their schemes.”

The vile stench of evil, all too prevalent in American corporations nowadays, makes this uncomfortable reading. Nevertheless, it is vitally important to see how things are and how they got this way; otherwise, how are we going to have a chance to change it all? And Doctorow does offer some possible solutions, although none of them are easy. He affirms that we can have a new, good internet if we “restore the four forces that discipline technology firms.” These are competition, regulation, interoperability, and tech worker power. Antitrust legislation enables competition, and Doctorow explains the status of such legislation around the world, including in the United States. Regulation, of course, puts the greed of massive corporations in check. Interoperability enables us to own and repair our devices rather than have to be forced to go to company-approved repairers at bloated prices whenever anything goes wrong. As Doctorow demonstrates by example, tech workers used to be idealistic and hold tech executives and boards in check; now, however, tech workers who misbehave are being fired by the hundreds of thousands.

I have summarized a few basic ideas from this book, but these are merely examples. Before we can change things, we have to know how bad they have become. And they have become much, much worse than we could have imagined. Tech executives see us as chumps, nothing more. They want to extract as much value as they can from us and then toss us aside. The only way we can make things better is to first of all understand what is going on. Doctorow provides excellent explanations of the current state of affairs. This is essential reading for all of us. Highly recommended.