It's not your job to fix the internet

What It Covers

Cory Doctorow explains enshittification's three-stage decline of tech platforms and argues systemic policy changes—not individual consumer choices—offer the only viable path to reversing monopolistic practices and rebuilding competitive digital markets.

Key Questions Answered

• •Enshittification stages: Platforms first attract users with good service while locking them in, then degrade user experience to favor business customers, finally extract value from both groups for shareholders until only minimal functionality remains to prevent complete abandonment.
• •Policy over shopping: Individual consumption choices cannot solve systemic monopoly problems. Organizing for political change through groups like Electronic Frontier Alliance chapters achieves more impact than attempting to boycott Amazon or Facebook, which wastes energy better spent on collective action.
• •Interoperability mandates: Requiring platforms to provide data portability files—like activity pub's follower export feature—enables users to switch services easily. This enforcement mechanism proves simpler than policing hate speech because it requires no subjective judgment, just technical compliance verification.
• •Adversarial tools unlock markets: Apps like Para expose hidden DoorDash tip amounts through reverse engineering, helping gig workers calculate true unit costs of labor offers. Legalizing such adversarial interoperability would enable thousands of similar tools to extract monopoly rents from dominant platforms.
• •Ulysses pacts prevent corruption: Startup founders should unionize workforces, make software irrevocably open source, and ensure fifty-one percent of users access via APIs. These constraints prevent future enshittification by making it impossible to degrade products without immediate business failure.