EP 346 Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Got Worse and What to Do About It

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Jim talked with @corydoctorow—prolific sci-fi and nonfiction author, journalist, activist, EFF special adviser, and author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It—about how structural forces degraded the internet, and what citizens (not consumers) can actually do about it.

They discussed:

The origin of “enshittification”—Cory’s January 2023 blog post, its viral spread, and its naming as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society

Two-sided markets & the persistence of intermediaries

Crad Kilodney as a self-publishing illustration, and why platform middlemen survive even when they shouldn’t

Monopsony vs. monopoly

The real statistics of Amazon’s dominance of book sales

The three-stage enshittification life cycle, using Facebook as the case study

The brittle equilibrium of late-stage enshittification—the thin line between “I hate this but can’t leave” and mass exodus

The metaverse as Facebook’s terminal pivot—Zuckerberg’s “legless, sexless, low-polygon” avatar world stolen from a 25-year-old cyberpunk novel, and why it still served him by forestalling investor sell-offs

Zuckerberg as Rich Uncle Pennybags, not Willy Wonka

Amazon’s early history & Bezos’s “your margin is my opportunity” mantra

Amazon’s junk fees (now 50–60% and rising) and the $80 billion/year advertising payola business

The consumer welfare doctrine—Robert Bork’s antitrust theory that monopoly is efficient, and why allowing monopsonies inevitably produces monopolies

Jim’s personal experience with the Thomson-West legal publishing merger

Tech workers as a structural check on enshittification

The convergence enabling enshittification: merger to monopoly → regulatory capture → loss of worker leverage → DMCA blocking entrants → abuse

The moral decay of business culture—from “we won’t do profitable things we think are wrong,” to “do whatever’s arguably legal,” to “do whatever’s illegal if the fine is less than the benefit”

Google’s $20 billion/year payment to Apple to stay off the search market

Why predatory pricing cases went unenforced

What citizens (not consumers) can do

The death of federal antitrust enforcement and international ripple effects

State-level antitrust action as a remaining avenue

The right to repair as an easy entry point

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs as a paradoxical opportunity

Tech as geopolitical weapon—Microsoft accounts bricked for a Brazilian judge who sentenced Bolsonaro; the ICC chief prosecutor’s accounts shut down after the Netanyahu arrest warrant

The vision for open, auditable, sovereign digital public goods to replace the enshittified American Internet—run internationally, controlled locally

… and much more.