Podcast Summary

Podcast: Intelligence Squared
Episode: Why Does It Feel Like Everything is Getting Worse? With Cory Doctorow
Date: October 17, 2025
Host: Carl Miller (for Intelligence Squared)
Guest: Cory Doctorow – author, journalist, and digital rights activist

Overview:

This episode delves into the concept of "enshitification," a term coined by Cory Doctorow to describe the perceived decline in the quality of digital platforms and services as they become more monopolistic and extractive. Doctorow explores how this process is not inevitable, but the consequence of deliberate policy choices and eroded safeguards such as competition, regulation, tech worker power, and interoperability. The conversation also investigates potential solutions, including adversarial interoperability, restored regulations, and strengthened privacy protections.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Birth and Rise of "Enshitification"

• Definition and Origins
  • Cory Doctorow coined "enshitification" in 2022 to capture how tech platforms degrade as they gain dominance (01:34).
  • The term’s popularity is attributed to its mix of technical accuracy and a “minor life license to be a little bit rude.” Doctorow points out this makes it memorable and fun, especially for journalists: "You get a kind of winning combination that journalists, academics, everyday people, they just love cussing." (03:30)
• Impact: The word went viral because it encapsulates a complex reality in one pithy, zeitgeist-grabbing term.

2. The Three Phases of Enshitification (07:13–15:51)

• Doctorow’s Framework (using Facebook as a primary example):

  • Stage 1: Platform delivers value to users, luring them from competitors (e.g., Facebook promised not to spy like MySpace).
  • Stage 2: Platform locks in users, raising switching costs (social ties, rare groups, organizational dependencies).
  • Stage 3: Platform claws back value—first from business partners (publishers/advertisers), and then from users themselves, degrading the experience while extracting maximum profit.
    • Doctorow illustrates this through Facebook’s evolution from user-centric to algorithm-driven, ad-heavy, and resistant to external links:

      "The quantum of material in your feed that consists of people that you've asked to see things from has dwindled to a kind of homeopathic residue." (13:27)

• Monopsony Power:

  • Platforms also become dominant buyers (e.g., advertisers and publishers rely heavily on them), creating “brittle equilibria” that collapse spectacularly at tipping points.

3. Why It Happens – Policy and Power, Not Iron Laws

• Doctorow stresses that enshitification is not “inexorable,” but stems from reversible policy failures—allowing monopolies, blocking competition, and gutting user/worker power:
  • “My thesis about inshidification is that we took decisions in living memory... policymakers who were warned at the time that the kind of decay that we see was the likely outcome of taking those decisions.” (04:37)
• Acquisitions (e.g., Facebook’s purchase of Instagram/WhatsApp) and anti-circumvention laws removed external checks (16:30–23:17).
• Regulatory capture, weak enforcement (especially noted in EU GDPR), and lack of tech worker leverage further enabled this slide.

4. How Can We Fight Back?

• Doctorow’s Four Pillars for Recovery:
  1. Regulation
  2. Tech Worker Power (e.g., unionization)
  3. Restored Competition
  4. Interoperability (especially adversarial interoperability)
• The host asks where resistance should begin (25:50):
  • Doctorow proposes tactical focus based on context, but highlights “adversarial interoperability”—developing technologies/tools that allow users to break free of platform lock-ins by scraping/mirroring/importing data, even against the original platform’s wishes.
    • Example: Facebook’s early use of a bot to liberate MySpace data for migrating users (28:00).
    • Quote:

      "There are lots of things that stand to be broken, and if we have to get permission from the people who made them to break them, we're going to be stuck with them for a long time." (29:25)

• Repealing Anti-Circumvention Laws:
  • Critical for Europe or any state seeking tech sovereignty and innovation.
  • Potential for economic revitalization (e.g., third-party printer ink, independent repair, alternative social media clients).

5. Privacy as a Foundation Issue (36:03–41:35)

• Doctorow unpacks privacy as a central, unifying concern:
  • In the US, outdated privacy laws (last addressed in 1988) and regulatory capture keep users vulnerable.
  • In the EU, GDPR suffers from lack of enforcement (e.g., Ireland serving as a "crime haven" for tech companies).
• He links privacy erosion to a spectrum of harms: wage discrimination (Uber-for-nurses apps), consumer exploitation (McDonald's dynamic pricing), discriminatory hiring, deep fakes, and political manipulation.
  • Quote:

    "If we could show them that privacy is the thing we should do first to address all of their problems... then you get everyone under one tent and you can be a very powerful force." (40:28)

  • Doctorow draws a historical parallel: before “ecology,” disparate environmental concerns weren’t united—privacy could serve this rallying function.

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Policy Choices Enabling Enshitification:

  “If you know which policies caused it, then at the very least you could start operating different policies. And at the most, you might actually, I don't know, hold those people who made those bad decisions to account and never let them near any kind of lever of policy again.” — Cory Doctorow (06:36)

• On Platform Degradation:

  “The difference between, 'I hate this but I can’t bear to leave' and, 'I hate this and I’m not coming back'—it just takes one little push to tip it over.” — Cory Doctorow (14:20)

• On Adversarial Interoperability:

  “I'm perfectly fine with moving fast and breaking Mark Zuckerberg's thing.” — Cory Doctorow (29:35)

• On Privacy as Political Force:

  “You have all these people who are furious and sad about harms that are downstream of the lack of privacy enforcement, who, if we could show them that privacy is the thing we should do first to address all of their problems... you can be a very powerful force.” — Cory Doctorow (40:28)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:34 — Doctorow defines and explains "enshitification"
• 04:37 — The thesis: Why things feel like they’re getting worse
• 07:13 — The three-stage path of platform decline (with Facebook as example)
• 15:51 — Acknowledgment of initial value from platforms
• 16:30 — Policy failures, monopoly power, and regulatory capture
• 25:50 — Where to start with resistance; role of interoperability
• 28:00 — How Facebook used adversarial interoperability on MySpace
• 29:25 — Arguing the value of “breaking” the right things in tech
• 36:03 — The crisis and importance of privacy
• 40:28 — Privacy as a coalition-building principle

Tone & Final Thoughts

• The episode is candid, irreverent (“You have my permission to curse”), but densely packed with technical, social, and policy analysis. Doctorow is critical, excoriating about tech's downward spiral, but also hopeful that naming the problem and restoring lost checks can open a path forward.

Recommended for listeners interested in:

• Digital rights & tech policy
• The political economy of Silicon Valley
• Online privacy and surveillance
• Practical activism and regulatory solutions