The internet wasn’t always like this. Once a space for discovery, connection, and creativity, it’s become increasingly extractive and disheartening — a pattern Cory Doctorow has coined enshittification. In his new book, Enshittification: How the Internet Got So Bad — and How We Can Fix It, Doctorow diagnoses what went wrong and charts a path toward repair.

As platforms consolidate power and prioritize profit over people, Doctorow argues that the same forces hollowing out the digital world are shaping our physical one — from the tools we use to the systems we depend on. But his message isn’t just about decline — it’s about the possibility of reversing it.

A longtime friend of Bioneers, Doctorow’s ideas challenge us to imagine a future where technology serves humanity, not the other way around. Below, we’re sharing an excerpt from Enshittification. Scroll to the bottom of this article to view a recording of his Bioneers keynote and an interview exploring what it means to build an internet—and a world—fit for human thriving.

The following excerpt is posted with permission from Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (MCD, 2025).

It’s not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, that we once loved? They’re all turning into piles of shit, all at once. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. The world is increasingly made up of computers we put our bodies into, and computers we put into our bodies. And these computers suck.

This is infuriating. It’s frustrating. And, depending on how important those services are to you, it’s terrifying.

I’ve been an internet activist for a quarter of a century, working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital human rights group that more or less invented the whole idea of digital human rights. I’ve been a United Nations observer and helped draft internet treaties; I’ve lobbied legislatures and agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom. I’ve been through street protests and virtual blackouts.

I’ve never seen anything like this.

In 2022, after decades of striving to get people fired up about the esoteric world of internet policy, I coined a term to describe the sudden-onset platform collapse going on all around us: enshittification. To my bittersweet satisfaction, that word is doing big numbers. In fact, it has achieved escape velocity.

It’s a funny, naughty word, and it’s funny and naughty to say, and I’m proud of that. But that’s not why the American Dialect Society named it its word of the year in 2023, nor why Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary named it its word of the year for 2024, nor why millions of people have used it to describe the inescapable online dumpster fire that’s roasting them alive.

The reason for enshittification’s popularity is that it embodies a theory that explains the accelerating decay of the things that matter to us, explaining why this is happening and what we should do about it.

Because enshittification isn’t just a way to say “Something got worse.”* It’s an analysis that explains the way an online service gets worse, how that worsening unfolds, and the contagion that’s causing everything to get worse, all at once.

You see, this moment we’re living through, this Great Enshittening? It’s not a mystery. It’s not the Great Forces of History bearing down on our moment, decreeing that we must all suffer through the end of services that once met our needs. It’s a material phenomenon, much like a disease.

Like a disease, it has symptoms, a mechanism, and an epidemiology. The first part of this book will explain these components of enshittification.

But the point of this analysis isn’t to merely give you a more technically informed way to feel demoralized and furious about the state of the digital world— I wrote this book to propose a cure. That’s the second part of the book.

This era, the Enshittocene, is the result of specific policy decisions, made by named individuals. Once we identify those decisions and those individuals, we can act. We can reverse the decisions. We can name the individuals. We can even estimate what size pitchfork they wear. Or at the very least, we can make sure that they are never again trusted with the power to make policy decisions for the rest of us.

We can make a new, good internet, one that’s fit for human thriving. We can create the digital nervous system we need to connect and coordinate us through a twenty-first century haunted by climate collapse, genocide, authoritarianism, and economic chaos.

We can create enshittification-resistant infrastructure for a new, good world.

* Though it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way! One of the glories of English is its malleability. English words mean whatever English speakers say they mean. Go nuts. You have my blessing.

More from Cory Doctorow

Reclaiming the Digital Commons

Doctorow’s message to Bioneers audiences in 2017 remains urgent today: the internet is the nervous system of the 21st century, and if we want a thriving planet and just societies, it must be free, fair, and open to all. Watch his keynote, The Fight for a Free, Fair and Open Internet, to hear his call to action in full.

How Big Tech Took Over — and How We Take It Back

Continue exploring Cory Doctorow’s vision for a more democratic, accountable tech future in This Will All Be So Great If We Don’t Screw It Up.

In this 2019 interview, Doctorow dives deep into how monopoly power and deregulation paved the way for Big Tech’s dominance — and why restoring fairness and pluralism in technology begins with reclaiming public control.

Read the full interview →