The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

Every tech platform that we use frequently today has gone through the same progression. They start off user focused and great. We love them because of the need they fill. Then they get popular and start bringing in corporate dollars (usually through ads) and start serving the companies rather than the users. Then they opt for scaling at all costs and start screwing the companies too. That's the final stage of what author Cory Doctorow calls "enshittification." When I read this several months ago, I had to rack my brain to find an example of a tech platform that might prove his theory wrong. I could only come up with one: eBay (video on this coming soon). Otherwise, his premise felt immediately and sadly true.

Beyond diagnosing this problem, the book does offer some prescriptions for how to solve this challenge. The real problem is the incentive model that causes the enshittification in the first place. The path to profitability in tech is no longer having a good business model or serving your customers or even providing great value. It's creating the illusion that you're worth a vast multiple of your (sometimes non-existent) revenue to private equity or another acquiring entity and then waiting for your big payday. Until that changes, enshittification will continue to happen all around us.

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.