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

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About ItEnshittification is Doctorow's word to describe the decay of online platforms, from exciting novelty to everyday essential, to what we have today. Enshittification has been word of the year in the UK, USA and Australia. It's been printed in the pages of the *FT* and declaimed from podiums at the EU. As a word, it captures the feeling of a world that is ever worsening. As an idea, it explains why it's getting worse, whose fault that is, and what to do

Enshittification is Doctorow's word to describe the decay of online platforms, from exciting novelty to everyday essential, to what we have today. Enshittification has been word of the year in the UK, USA and Australia. It's been printed in the pages of the *FT* and declaimed from podiums at the EU. As a word, it captures the feeling of a world that is ever worsening. As an idea, it explains why it's getting worse, whose fault that is, and what to do about the misogyny, surveillance, manipulation, and fraud that have taken over the internet.

What is to be done? Like a surgeon, Doctorow sets out the symptoms, the diagnosis and the cure to these metastasising platforms. We need to question the monopolies that dominate so much of our online lives, we must demand regulation and our privacy back, allow for interoperability, and win tech workers' rights.