The Enshittification of Everything Has a Cure... Tax the Shit Out of Shit!
Something has gone wrong with almost everything at once. Here is why, and what we can do about it. There is a word for what is happening to us, and we have the writer Cory Doctorow to thank for coining it. Enshittification. The process by which platforms, products and services that once genuinely worked for us are slowly, methodically degraded, their value extracted from our pockets and our attention and redistributed upwards, until what remains is a hollow shell wearing the face of something we once found useful. The name is crude because the phenomenon is crude. But Doctorow is missing something. His diagnosis is sharp; his prescription is not. This essay attempts to identify the root cause and, more importantly, the cure, because until we name the driving force correctly, we will keep producing clever analyses and achieving precisely nothing. The genius of Doctorow's framing is that it describes a mechanism, not merely a feeling. Things are not just worse. They are being made wo...
