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Enshittification Made Tech Platforms Shitty and Now It's Coming for Your Industry / Cory Doctorow

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What actually gives rise to enshittification is that the companies that we buy things from not fearing that they will be punished if they do the things that they wanted to do all along. The way that we make those companies treat us better is by making them afraid of us again, not by rewarding them for good behavior, but by effectively punishing them for bad behavior. That's where we get the kind of durable change that will cause companies run by people who are just the scum of the Earth.

Cory Doctorow on his Financial Times article, "‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything: The term describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?" "Rotten History" follows the interview.

Cory also has a new novel, The Bezel. 

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Guest

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Lost Cause, a solarpunk science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His most recent nonfiction book is The Internet Con: How to Sieze the Means of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual. Other recent books include Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy The Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.