BONUS: How the Internet Got Worse with Cory Doctorow

What It Covers

Cory Doctorow explains enshittification, his framework for understanding platform decay across digital services. He traces how companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Uber lock in users, extract value from business customers, then degrade service quality while maintaining monopoly power through legal protections that prevent competition and user modification of software.

Key Questions Answered

• •Enshittification Pattern: Platform decay follows three phases: companies first attract users with good service, then lock them in. Second, they degrade user experience while courting business customers. Third, they extract surplus from business customers too, leaving minimal service quality while legal barriers prevent users from switching or modifying products to meet their needs.
• •Anti-Circumvention Laws: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to modify software with technical protection measures, even for lawful purposes. This prevents users from installing ad blockers in apps, using generic printer ink, or running third-party software on devices they own, creating $500,000 fines and five-year prison sentences for first offenses.
• •Amazon's Rent Extraction: Amazon's advertising business grew from 32 billion dollars to over 50 billion dollars, making the top search result 29 percent more expensive than the best match. Merchants now pay 50 to 60 percent in junk fees including mandatory fulfillment, Prime participation, and advertising costs, reducing their ability to invest in product quality.
• •Algorithmic Wage Discrimination: Uber uses private data to offer different wages to drivers based on calculated desperation levels. When drivers accept lowball offers during the few seconds allowed to decide, that becomes their new wage ceiling. The algorithm continuously nudges wages downward, turning selective drivers into workers who accept any fare regardless of profitability.
• •European Interoperability Requirements: The EU now mandates that users leaving social media platforms can continue communicating with people left behind, similar to phone number portability between carriers. Trump's tariff policies eliminate previous trade pressure that prevented Europe from requiring reverse engineering tools, potentially forcing a global revival of data migration and platform-switching technologies.