How to Save the Internet From “Enshittification”

The activist and writer Cory Doctorow spoke to Jacobin about the steady decline of the “enshittified” internet and what we can do to save it.

There are very few people that have written as consistently and incisively about the internet and its broken promises than the digital rights activist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow. His new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, explains what ruined, and is continuing to ruin, the web. Jacobin spoke to Doctorow about the origin of the neologism he coined, and how the process of enshittification is beginning to spread from screens to physical reality.

You start your book by saying: “It is not just you, the internet is getting worse, fast.” You’re adamant enshittification is not the result of vaguely rela