Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
07-14, 14:00–15:50 (US/Eastern), Marillac Auditorium

The rapid, precipitous decline of every digital service we depend on isn't a coincidence. It's the result of specific known, policy choices made by specific, named individuals. We can reverse those decisions (and we can determine what sized pitchfork those individuals wear).

Enshittification wasn't inevitable: it was the foreseeable outcome of a plan to encourage digital monopoly platforms and turn them loose to extract unimaginable value from both their users and business customers, leaving behind a homeopathic residue of utility to keep us locked in.

This talk will explain what enshittification is, how it works, why it's happening now - and, most importantly, how we can reverse it, by seizing the means of computation and building a new, good Internet suitable to serve as the digital nervous system of a connected world confronting environmental collapse, genocide, and rising fascism.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Bezzle (a follow-up to Red Team Blues) and 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 Seize the Means of Computation, a big tech disassembly manual. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
craphound.com