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

Jim talked with Cory Doctorow—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