I’m not going to lie—it was the pile-of-poo emoji on the front cover along with the irreverent title that grabbed my attention. I stuck around for the argument.

In 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the titular phrase to describe the “sudden-onset platform collapse going on all around us” (4). We are now living in the diseased enshittocene—the era where platforms that are supposed to be serving us—Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, Twitter, for example—are exploiting us.

Historically, businesses were kept in check by competition, regulation, self-help, and tech workers. These factors have now failed. Doctorow unpacks the epidemiology of enshittification, revealing characteristics of the disease and showing how it has made everything worse.

If you’re frustrated by the constant demand for rent from our technofeudalist overlords (for a mere $2 per month, your top-shelf Sous Vide machine will keep working!), this book explains how we got to this position and how movements like “right to repair” that are pushing back.

While the subtitle of the book suggests what we can do about the state we’re in, there are no easy or individually implemented solutions. Jailbreaking your device as an act of righteous rebellion may feel good, but will not move the needle. What will, Doctorow claims, is grassroots public sentiment that pushes back until government has no choice but to notice. Despite Doctorow’s hopeful tone at the end of the book, I’m not holding my breath.

Doctorow, Cory. Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025. Epub.