Enshittification

by Cory Doctorow

An interesting read explaining in detail how the web has become enshittified to serve only the profits of BigTech.

An interesting quotes from the book:

When capitalisms philosopher-theorists lionized free markets they didnt mean markets that were free from regulation, they meant markets that were free from rent.

The chapter on the administrability of legislation is interesting. This shows how it is not enough to have legislation. The legislation needs to actually be enforceable.

For example, a right-to-exit a platform can be easily validated by regulators. Likewise a principle similar to network neutrality whereby intermediaries show you the results you asked for not the ones of the highest bidders can be checked. The business offering the service you asked for should not need to outbid other businesses in order for them to appear at the top of your feed.

An intermediaries job is to faithfully serve the parties it sits between. Facebook's job is to deliver the data you asked for, not the ads they wished you'd asked for. Then all parties using Facebook will be protected from shakedown demands to pay to boost the content to reach their confirmed subscribers.

Overall this is a good book with a clear left of centre lean, demanding better regulation and improved workers rights. It makes the point that this is not something revolutionary, but actually how things were until about 40 years ago.

From 18.11.2025 to 12.12.2025