{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "Here's the natural history of enshittification: First, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit. Cory Doctorow is an invaluable tech critic, writer and advocate (he also spells his name correctly). Enshittification isn't cliché, it's simply pervasive and Doctorow lays out a clear, easy to understand argument for this, having originated the term. Everything is getting worse as companies twiddle and extract rents. Apple has gone from selling devices, to spying on their users, advantaging their services over those of their rivals, hindering the adoption of web technology to push software distribution threw its app stores and fighting necessary, corrective regulation at every turn. Streaming services promised value and a better experience only to claw that back into what amounts to cable over a different delivery mechanism. Everything we've relied on has gotten worse. You aren't allowed to repair anything. Any media you once owned is now forced through channels where you have to rent it in perpetuity. It's all increasingly difficult to escape. Repair and interoperability should be fundamental rights, but these companies use every lever available to them to fight both. Doctorow advocates for these solutions, he advocates for right to repair, for unionization, for adversarial interoperability, for freedom from these decaying, extractive platforms. All of this will be difficult to achieve, but all of this is necessary as the unacceptable alternative is to remain trapped in these platforms as they get worse and worse. This is an essential read for the moment we find ourselves in.",
  "path": "/reading/books/9780374619329/enshittification",
  "publishedAt": "2025-10-26T00:00:00Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:sttgf52vkk46f6yuknvqxvgh/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "economics",
    "tech",
    "social media",
    "social science",
    "business & economics",
    "enshittification"
  ],
  "title": "Enshittification"
}