$27.00
Enshittification - Cory Doctorow
Available to pre-order now, released September 15th. As this an import, we may receive this a week late.
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Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online - X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple - this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed 'enshittification'.
First, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetized, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders. As a result, online public squares have become places of torment, and online retailers are hellish dumpster fires. The virtual gathering places where we once imagined the world's problems might be resolved are now a sewer of hatred and abuse - thoroughly enshittified.
Doctorow enumerates the symptoms, lays out the diagnosis, and identifies the best responses to these diseased platforms: the monopolies online must be shattered. Companies too big to fail or to jail - and much too big to care - must be cut down to size. Only an attack on corporate power will permit effective regulation and real privacy.
This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies.
