At root, enshittification can only take place when companies can move value around. Digital tools make it easier than ever to do this, for example, by changing prices on a per-user, per-session basis, using commercial surveillance data to predict the highest price or lowest wage a user will accept:
Pluralistic: The web is bearable with RSS (07 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Never let them tell you that enshittification was a mystery. Enshittification isn't downstream of the "iron laws of economics" or an unrealistic demand by "consumers" to get stuff for free.
Pluralistic: The enshittification multiverse (27 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
It's official: you have my consent and enthusiastic blessing to apply "enshittification" to things that aren't digital platforms! Semantic drift is good, actually:
Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification (21 Jan 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Pluralistic: Ad-tech is fascist tech (10 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:
Pluralistic: Ad-tech is fascist tech (10 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:
Enshittification Arises from Enclosure: Open Protocols refuse both - Identity Woman
I am posting this on the first full day of Decentralized Web Camp on July 9th, 2026. TLDR: Infographic! Doctorow named what we’re all feeling Cory Doctorow gave us the word: enshittification and a description of a pattern that keeps happening. His original framing, from his January 2023 Pluralistic post: “First, they are good to […]
Cory Doctorow at CF 25: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It
Seven Rules For Internet CEOs To Avoid Enshittification
It seems that we’ve had a rash of formerly loved internet services going down the enshittification curve. As coined (brilliantly) by Cory Doctorow, enshittification is the process by which a compan…
Digital products and services are getting worse – but the trend can be reversed
A new report from the Norwegian Consumer Council shows how enshittification affects both consumers and society at large. Luckily, it‘s possible to turn the tide.
Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
It's safe to say that the past couple of years have been good ones for me publishing-wise, thanks to a string of international bestsellers, both novels (Picks and Shovels) and nonfiction (Enshittification, Reverse Centaur), as well as plenty of awards and accolades:
Pluralistic: A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (10 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Sometimes, you really can vote with your wallet. I know, I'm generally pretty down on this kind of thing, but sometimes, it works!
Pluralistic: Market participation is exhausting (30 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
We're a diverse species, cognitively speaking – different ways of thinking come more easily to some of us than others. I'm good at a lot of things, but I have terrible spatial sense. I can't parallel park or catch a ball, and I get lost so easily it's almost comical (it's a running joke in my family).
Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled "A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.
Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Hardly a day goes by without my getting an email from someone looking for a way to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods.
Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Hardly a day goes by without my getting an email from someone looking for a way to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods.
Pluralistic: Capital formation (14 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Funny thing about competition: there's both a pro-market and an anti-market case for a competitive system. https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/13/one-chokable-throat/#too-clever-by-half