Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Got Worse—and What We Can Still Do to Fix It
The Decline of Platforms We Once Loved
Over the past two decades, technology promised liberation—connection, convenience, and creativity on a global scale. Facebook helped us stay in touch with distant friends, Google opened the universe of knowledge, and Amazon reshaped how we shop. Yet as these platforms matured, users began noticing something unsettling: the experience was getting worse, not better. Cory Doctorow, a celebrated journalist and digital-rights activist, calls this phenomenon enshitification—the gradual decay of online platforms driven by corporate greed and structural lock-in.
In his book Enshitification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Doctorow explores this dysfunction not as a fluke of capitalism, but as a predictable outcome of specific policy choices and monopolistic behavior. Speaking with Harvard Business Review’s Adi Ignatius and Alison Beard, he dissects how tech platforms evolve from beloved innovations into exploitative ecosystems that serve only shareholders and executives.
How Good Platforms Go Bad
According to Doctorow, every platform follows a three-stage pattern of decline:
-
Stage One: Serve the users.
At launch, platforms focus entirely on user satisfaction. Facebook, for instance, was once a refuge from MySpace’s clutter, promising privacy and authenticity. Amazon offered unbeatable prices and convenience. These companies earned our trust and attention through genuine value. -
Stage Two: Exploit the users for business customers.
Once a loyal user base is secured, platforms shift toward courting advertisers, publishers, and other business clients. Facebook began monetizing its users’ personal data, violating early promises of privacy. Google’s search algorithms evolved to favor sponsored results. Platforms become middlemen, extracting value from both sides of the market. -
Stage Three: Exploit both for shareholders.
The final stage is where the decline becomes visible. User satisfaction declines while costs for business partners rise. Ads get more expensive but less effective; creators and small sellers earn less. Eventually, every participant—except investors—feels trapped. The bond between users and providers erodes into resentment.
Doctorow calls this endgame a system where “only a homeopathic residue of value remains”—enough to keep everyone locked in, but stripped of joy or fairness.
The Mechanics of Lock-In
If everyone agrees that platforms get worse, why don’t people just leave? Doctorow points to lock-in—the deliberate creation of switching costs that make departure painful or impossible.
For consumers, this might mean losing access to friends, followers, or content ecosystems. For businesses, it means dependence on a platform that controls market access. Facebook’s publishers, YouTube’s creators, or Amazon’s third-party sellers can’t simply move elsewhere without sacrificing their audiences or revenue. Even smaller examples, like printer manufacturers using software chips to block third-party ink cartridges, highlight how companies legally enforce captivity through digital rights management (DRM) and restrictive laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The effect is a marketplace where consumers and businesses exist inside walled gardens, subject to arbitrary rule changes—higher fees, degrading service, and invasive data practices—with no practical escape route.
The Role of Monopoly and Monopsony
Economic concentration amplifies the decay. For decades, antitrust enforcement has weakened, allowing tech giants to buy or kill potential rivals. Facebook absorbed Instagram; Google dominates search; Apple controls its entire app ecosystem. These are monopolies, but Doctorow also identifies monopsonies—markets with few dominant buyers rather than sellers. When one platform controls access to consumers, producers must comply with its terms or perish.
Uber’s rise is a case study. By underpricing for years—losing billions to destroy competitors—it captured ride markets worldwide. Once the competition disappeared, prices surged. “What are you going to do?” Doctorow asks. “The bus isn’t coming, the taxi company’s gone—it’s just Uber.”
Political Capture and the Failure of Discipline
Doctorow argues that capitalism’s failures here are not inevitable. Historically, markets contained disciplining forces—competition, worker empowerment, and interoperability—that kept greed in check. Those forces have withered.
-
Competition faded as regulators allowed massive mergers and tolerated monopolistic dominance.
-
Labor power eroded as the once-respected tech workforce faced mass layoffs.
-
Interoperability, the freedom to build products compatible with existing platforms, was crippled by intellectual property laws and digital locks.
This erosion means companies now face little external pressure to remain fair or innovative. “We removed the sources of discipline,” Doctorow explains. “Being shriven of all discipline allows your stupidest ideas to conquer your life.”
The Human Cost of Platform Decay
While enshitification may sound theoretical, its social effects are tangible. In healthcare, Doctorow notes how “Uber-for-nurses” staffing apps exploit contract nurses by buying their credit data. Those with high debt are offered lower pay rates—an algorithmic form of exploitation that shifts wealth from labor to capital. Patients ultimately pay the price in care quality.
In the digital sphere, search quality has declined despite—or because of—Google’s dominance. With a 90% market share and little fear of competition, even the gateway to information has degraded. AI tools show promise, but Doctorow warns that they may simply extend the same exploitative logic—replacing workers with imperfect automation under the guise of innovation.
Can AI Renew the Web?
Asked whether AI could reverse the decline, Doctorow is skeptical. “The investment in AI is not about making cool pictures,” he says. “It’s about displacing labor.” The true goal of corporate AI adoption is wage reduction, not empowerment. While large-language models impress users, they also excel at surveillance pricing—detecting exactly how much a buyer or worker will accept, and charging or paying accordingly. Far from restoring equilibrium, AI risks deepening inequality.
What Businesses and Policymakers Can Do
For all its sweeping analysis, Doctorow’s diagnosis leads to a pragmatic conclusion: individuals and small businesses cannot fix this alone. “This is a policy question,” he insists. Real change depends on structural reform—antitrust enforcement, privacy legislation, and fair competition rules.
However, there are bright spots. Companies like Epic Games have taken meaningful action, suing Apple and Google for anticompetitive practices over app store fees. Such lawsuits, though expensive, can reset legal precedents that benefit thousands of smaller firms. Local chambers of commerce, Doctorow adds, should represent small and medium enterprises (SMEs) directly rather than acting as mouthpieces for monopolists.
Regulatory revival is already under way. Since 2019, a new wave of enforcement has emerged not just in the U.S. but across the EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and China. Lawsuits, fines, and policy experiments are testing how to rebalance digital markets in favor of fairness and openness.
The Moral Evolution of Innovators
One of Ignatius’s most compelling questions touches on psychology: how do once-idealistic founders become monopolistic predators? Doctorow believes it comes down to the removal of constraints. Absent accountability, founders rationalize their worst impulses. In competitive markets, greed can serve progress. But without rivals or oversight, it mutates into self-destruction. “The scientific method exists because we’re good at kidding ourselves,” he notes. “Markets once had a similar structure of discipline. Remove it, and the same self-deception runs wild.”
Hope vs. Optimism
Despite the bleakness of his analysis, Doctorow ends on a note of cautious hope. For him, hope is not a naïve belief that things will magically improve—it’s the willingness to act despite uncertainty. “Hope doesn’t mean you think things will go well,” he says. “It means you can see a way to make them better.”
The unexpected global resurgence of antitrust enforcement gives him reason for that hope. Even as Big Tech tightens its grip, pressure for regulation and fairness is growing. The pendulum may finally be swinging back.
The Way Forward
Doctorow’s theory of enshitification forces a reckoning with the digital world we now inhabit. Platforms that shaped a generation have not merely stagnated—they have turned against their users. But this decay was not destiny; it was a political choice. And like any policy choice, it can be reversed.
If the internet was built on openness, competition, and human ingenuity, then restoring those principles is our only path out of decline. Better laws, empowered workers, interoperable systems, and real accountability can revive what’s been lost. The web became worse through deliberate design; it can become better the same way.
In the end, Doctorow’s message is not despair but responsibility: if enshitification is man-made, then so too is redemption.
Keep forward of the curve with NextBusiness 24. Discover extra tales, subscribe to our publication, and be part of our rising neighborhood at nextbusiness24.com
