Enshitification by Cory Doctorow (book review).
I have to confess that until this book by Cory Doctorow, I’d never come across its title word, ‘enshitification’, despite the fact that it was acknowledged as a proper word a couple of years back. In short, it means that business websites are deteriorating as they go from being useful to customers to selling out to big business. As Doctorow points out here, when companies grow too big, they use their wealth to take advantage of their customers. Let’s see how much I’ve understood because this has worldwide implications.
His targets here are specific to American social media and business websites. Now, I don’t use social media. In my life offline, my diabetes/agoraphobia/IBS tended to restrict any social life. I’m pretty open about my medical conditions and such and not anti-social, just unsocial. The geek in me tends to not follow the crowd, so social media has never been a priority in my life. When I heard about how some of these websites were trading in their customers’ information years ago, I tended to see my choice as a lucky escape.
What Doctorow does here is describe how the main five social media companies draw in customers by promising a lot and reneging on other companies’ advertising pressure by supplying them with their customers’ information so you’re targeted. No doubt this is the chunk of money and ensures shareholders get something for their investment. The thing is, until the Internet, there was no business model for a social product like this and its statistics for advertising where it could be targeted at individuals as detailed as this.
I’d probably clarify that better than Doctorow in that with so many million customers, there would be some grouping patterns. My own buying habits are so scattershot that I don’t really fit any pattern, and I pop in the odd thing occasionally just to misdirect. Looking at how these social websites grab customers and make it difficult to leave could be considered criminal if it was done offline. Having people loyal to the company isn’t unusual. You tend to stay with the company you bought your last product from unless it goes seriously wrong because you know its reliability far more than any changes with later models. When it’s applied to your social habits, people tend to start looking at the numbers of people looking in on their pages and serve them more than their family and close circle of friends, and then it changes its purpose. It’s hardly surprising that these websites have a different business model.
The thing is, it’s very much big business in America with little to stop monopolising and company buyouts and mergers. When there is government action, IBM and even Microsoft just wait out the cases until the next presidential inauguration and the case is dismissed. The thing is, reading here, all the companies do it because it’s their business practice. They buy out the competition, take what they can use if that, and close them down, often losing a better product. If you think using Apple gets around this, Doctorow points out they are actually the worst of the bunch by limiting what outside companies’ software could run on their computers. In a later chapter, he points out Apple’s current CEO has their computers made mostly in China under intolerably cheap costs and has nets to stop suicides. Hardly a nice company.
I would comment on his remarks about Lotus 1-2-3. When I was at work, I played with its DOS version and then on Windows later. Considering you had to have a card over the keyboard to remind you what particular function keys it had, it slowed down activities considerably. In comparison, Excel didn’t have that and made it much easier to use and had none of Lotus’ problems with macro commands, so I chose to use it in preference as it slowly took over. It can be a better product situation sometimes.
I do think the chapter ‘The End Of Competition’ will open your eyes to a lot of American business practices, with little on how it’s done in other parts of the world. He doesn’t cover Linux, but I doubt if it’s seen as a threat yet to their businesses because the numbers who use it are relatively small. I’d like to know where the antivirus companies lie in all of this. Google points out there are many, but I bet you only look between the top two. In many respects, the printer companies get off lightly with barely a mention of the fact that the likes of Epson have switched from the standard small plastic things to eco-tanks and brought the ink prices down.
Really, you can’t avoid the main companies’ software if you’re going to access the Internet. What their actions do is stifle competition and innovation, which is a worry for developments, but, unlike Doctorow, I do think the bubble will eventually burst because monopolising companies do have a habit of simply not keeping up when a new development happens.
Reading how these companies manipulate laws for their own ends. It makes it bad how copyright law is done on the smallest component by Apple. The same with ebooks, where it’s less about buying them outright but more like leasing them while you use the software that allows you to read them. The manipulation of the buyer, that’s you by the way, is done to limit your choices if you let it.
Looking at the Net as a whole, you would think it would be big enough for many companies, not limited to half a dozen significant sites, but they do their best to keep your custom and stop you looking elsewhere.
Doctorow also addresses the problems of being an employee of these companies, who also ensure you’re boxed in by various laws. They even remove bosses and switch them to software to remove liability. From what I read here, these companies manipulate existing laws and probably keep under the attention of the government.
I do think this book will make you think, especially about how these companies trade in information about us. Oddly, something Doctorow barely touches on is signing agreements without reading them. I suspect we’re all guilty of that, mostly because they repeat the same lines all the time, so if some other clause is added, you aren’t necessarily going to spot it, let alone the implications. At least some companies do flag anything significant, although I doubt if that will force you to move elsewhere.
I do think one of the biggest problems with American laws is how they are adjusted to which party is in power and can manipulate the judges into a pro-stance instead of being neutral in making their decisions.
Doctorow does hit on UK and European laws for part of a chapter, but a lot of it rarely hits the national news as much as it should. It does go back to the old problem that the Internet is regarded as international and where these companies place their head offices; he cites Luxembourg and Ireland, although it’s actually Southern Ireland, both of which offer tax breaks. As these companies trade in other countries, then all these governments need to enforce local tax laws and working regimes.
Have I said enough to convince you to buy this book? Really, it is an important book and should make your eyes widen as to how much you are manipulated on the Net. We know we can’t avoid using any of their products, and if you have to select, it’s more a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. Who actually looks at how these companies are run when buying anything? It will more likely make you decline giving data clearance than give companies your information indiscriminately. From what Doctorow says, declining doesn’t mean they don’t get your information. Don’t just depend on one company when it comes to choosing where you buy something from. Individually, we as customers don’t have much power; as a collective, we can kick any company where it hurts to not get too greedy. Convince yourself by reading this book.
Geoff Willmetts
December 2025
(pub: Verso/New Left Books, 2025. 334-page hardback. Price: £22.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-83674-223-4).
Check out the website: www.versobooks.com.
