Cory Doctorow wants to fix the internet | The Vergecast

Enshittification. It’s fun to say, hard to spell, and a useful descriptor of exactly how the internet has gone wrong. Cory Doctorow, the author and activist who coined the term a few years ago, recently published a book on the subject, called Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. He was on Decoder a few weeks ago to explain what happened, and joins The Vergecast this week to help us figure out what to do about it. Can we, as regular people on the internet, help to de-enshittify the place? What responsibility do we have, and what kinds of choices should we be making? Cory has lots of thoughts on whether you can shop your way out of a monopoly, and what it really takes to enact structural change online.

0:00 Intro and Personal Update
1:45 Understanding Enshitification
3:31 Cory’s Perspective on Enshitification
8:35 The Three Steps of Enshitification
14:04 Challenges and Solutions for Digital Platforms
18:27 Policy Recommendations and Future Outlook
34:35 The Local First Software Movement
35:48 Challenges of Data Ownership
37:03 Email and IMAP Servers
41:11 Facebook Groups and Privacy Issues
44:42 Adversarial Interoperability and Gig Economy
50:09 Geopolitics and Tech Monopolies
01:01:04 Vergecast Hotline

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Post from The Verge on November 18, 2025

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