Cory Doctorow Discusses Ensh*ttification

BPL Presents welcomes Cory Doctorow, to discuss Ensh*ttification, which argues that “it’s not just you—the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can fix—or disensh*ttify—it.”

When Cory Doctorow coined the term ensh*ttification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better). The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users—and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then the platforms turned to abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. In the end, the platforms die.

Doctorow’s argument clearly resonated. Once named, it became obvious that enshittification is everywhere, so much so that the American Dialect Society named it its 2023 Word of the Year, and was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror. Here, now, in Ensh*ttification the book, Doctorow moves the conversation beyond the overwhelming sense of our inevitably ensh*ttified fate. He shows us the specific decisions that led us here, who made them, and—most important—how they can be undone.

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PARTICIPANTS

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian, British, American blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty-three years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to further and safeguard our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science from the Open University. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. He holds visiting professorship and research appointments at MIT, the University of North Carolina, Cornell University, and the Open University. Photo credit Jonathan Worth

Lina M. Khan served as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from June 15, 2021 to January 20, 2025. Khan got her start in antitrust as a business reporter and researcher examining consolidation across markets. While at the FTC, Khan focused on exercising the full suite of the FTC’s statutory authorities, regularly engaging with and hearing from the public, and ensuring the agency is updating its tools and skillsets to tackle new market realities and next-generation challenges. Priority initiatives included reinvigorating antitrust and consumer protection enforcement, tackling noncompete clauses, protecting people’s sensitive data from unchecked surveillance, and taking on illegal conduct that deprives Americans of access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. Prior to joining the FTC, Khan served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. She was also an associate professor at Columbia Law School.