Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What We Can Do About It argues that online platforms often decline in a recognizable sequence: they first attract users, then shift value toward business customers, and eventually extract value from both. Its strength is giving that pattern a memorable name and connecting it to dependence and lock-in. Its limitation is that it is a polemical theory illustrated with selected cases, not a neutral survey or a book-wide empirical test of why digital services deteriorate.
What does “enshittification” mean?
Doctorow uses “enshittification” for a staged pattern of platform decline. A platform makes itself useful to attract users; after those users become difficult to move, it changes the service to benefit business customers such as advertisers or sellers; once those customers are dependent too, it extracts more value for its owners, leaving both groups with a worse deal.
In his 2023 essay “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok,” Doctorow describes this as a consequence of platforms’ ability to change how value is allocated in a two-sided market: a service mediates between groups, and each group’s dependence on the other can make it hard to leave. The book develops this account into a broader critique of platform power. This is Doctorow’s explanatory framework, not an established law that every platform follows.
How does the book explain platform decline?
Users are attracted, then become hard to move
In Doctorow’s account, a platform begins by offering a service people want. Over time, social connections, accumulated data, habits, or network effects can make departure costly: a user may lose access to the people, content, or tools they rely on. The service can then change without losing everyone at once.
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Business customers become dependent as well
Platforms also mediate access between users and businesses. Doctorow argues that advertisers, publishers, sellers, and other commercial users can become reliant on the platform’s reach. Once both sides have limited alternatives, the platform has more leverage to change the terms in its favor.
Value is extracted from both sides
The final stage, in Doctorow’s description, is that the platform captures more of the value passing between users and business customers. The outcome is not necessarily an immediate shutdown; it may be a service that remains useful enough to keep people there while delivering less value to them.
What examples does Doctorow use?
Facebook and dependence on the feed
Doctorow presents Facebook as a canonical case. He describes the service as attracting users with a promise about feeds and privacy, then benefiting from the difficulty of leaving a social network. Advertisers and publishers, in his telling, also became dependent on access to the platform. His interview connects this account to changes in ad targeting and ad fraud. These are claims in Doctorow’s explanation; the book’s examples should not be mistaken for independent verification of each historical or causal detail.
The Procter & Gamble advertising anecdote
Doctorow says Procter & Gamble cut $200 million per year in surveillance-ad spending to zero and saw no sales decline. In a Democracy Now! interview, he dates the change to 2017; the Macmillan publisher excerpt describes it as occurring in 2018. The discrepancy matters, and neither account alone establishes the anecdote as independently verified evidence. It illustrates Doctorow’s argument about advertising effectiveness, but it cannot by itself prove that surveillance advertising generally has no value.
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Doctorow’s 2023 essay also makes claims about Amazon marketplace fees and paid placement. Those are author claims in a polemical essay; without corroboration from underlying company information, regulators, or independent reporting, precise figures should not be treated as settled facts. Across the book’s cases, the useful question is whether a specific change is documented and whether dependence or market power explains it—not simply whether the service has become less pleasant.
What remedies does Doctorow propose?
The remedies aim to restore competition and user power rather than rely on platforms to voluntarily reverse course. Reviewers summarize proposals that include:
- Encouraging competition: reduce the conditions that allow a small number of platforms to control access between users and businesses.
- Stronger privacy statutes: limit the extraction and use of personal data that can reinforce platform power.
- Data-transfer standards: make it easier for people to move their data and relationships to alternatives.
- More choice on iPhone: enable use of an iPhone without relying on Apple’s App Store.
- Antitrust, European legislation, and worker organization: Publishers Weekly highlights these as part of the book’s political program, including tech-worker unionization.
These are proposals, not demonstrated outcomes. Their effectiveness depends on how laws and technical standards are designed and enforced, and on whether real alternatives become viable. The book’s political case is clearest when it identifies leverage—switching costs, control over distribution, or weak competition—and then asks how policy might reduce it.
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The concept is useful because it connects familiar frustrations—worse feeds, rising costs, reduced reach, or declining service quality—to a question of power and dependence. It encourages readers to ask who benefits from a platform’s rules and whether users or business customers can realistically leave.
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That clarity is also the book’s constraint. A staged theory can make diverse histories look more uniform than they are. A platform may worsen for reasons other than deliberate extraction, and the fact that a service changes after gaining users does not by itself establish Doctorow’s causal account. The book is best read as an argument that organizes examples and advocates remedies, not as a comprehensive empirical account of every platform’s decline.
Kirkus describes the treatment as erudite yet breezy and calls its conclusion a persuasive polemic. Publishers Weekly characterizes the writing as wry and notes the contrast between its discussion of techno-feudalism and intellectual property and a more optimistic remedies section. Those are reviewers’ judgments, rather than objective findings.
Who should read it, and which edition?
This is a good fit for readers who want an accessible, politically engaged framework for thinking about platform power, lock-in, and policy responses. Readers looking for a neutral survey of competing explanations or a quantitative test across platforms should treat the book as a starting argument, not the final word.
Macmillan lists an on-sale date of October 7, 2025, and identifies the book as a 2026 Locus Award winner for nonfiction. MCD lists a 2025 hardcover edition. Page counts vary by edition: Kirkus gives 352 pages for its main edition, while Publishers Weekly lists a 384-page paperback. See the Macmillan listing or the MCD listing for edition and purchase information.
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