Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What We Can Do About It

This trenchant treatise from journalist and novelist Doctorow (The Internet Con) explores how and why the internet has devolved into a wasteland of scams, ads, and surveillance. Platforms from Google to Apple to Facebook have deliberately worsened themselves, he argues—as their users “remain trapped in their rotting carcasses unable to escape”—by pursuing monopolistic goals including limited competition, regulatory capture, and diminished worker power, all of which has rendered these platforms not only too big to fail but “too big to care.” Some infuriating examples of callousness include Amazon’s “mountain of junk fees” for merchants, which make up “nearly 50%” of the company’s revenue, and Uber’s “algorithmic wage discrimination,” which lowers the rates of drivers who work longer hours. The book’s wonky discussions of techno-feudalism and IP are balanced by the author’s wry sense of humor—“For a man with a dick-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos sure has an abiding hatred of our kidneys”—especially his deeply held and repeatedly emphasized contempt for the “extractive” inkjet printer market (the “most depressing category of goods imaginable”). The book staves off doom and gloom with a latter section that analyzes potential remedies, among them antitrust efforts like those pursued by former FTC chair Lina Kahn, recent legislation in Europe, and the unionization of tech workers. The result is a razor-sharp yet subtly optimistic look at the soul-sucking state of the internet. (Oct.)