So many of the things we use daily are objectively terrible, online and off. Google search results, once the clearest pathway between us and the internet’s vast maze of websites and information, is now littered with AI slop, scores of paid-for links and Google’s own products. Amazon too has transformed from a functional online marketplace, into a maze of knock-offs, fake reviews and fly-by-night makers with unpronounceable names. Out here in the physical world, dollar stores offer some of the worst, most chaotic shopping experiences in the history of modern retail — which wouldn’t be so bad, except they’re one of the only shopping choices left for so many communities around the country. Many of our industries and our experiences with them have, as Cory Doctorow would put it, been enshittified.
Doctorow is an author, activist and journalist who has been fighting for fair competition, digital rights and data privacy online for decades. His new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, details the rapid, monopoly-fueled decline of so many once-great products, and how antitrust, regulation and other pro-competition and pro-people policies can help us fight back. Here, in our inaugural episode of the Who Shall Rule, hosts Ron Knox and Danny Caine talk to Cory about the book, and how grassroots fights against monopoly power can help turn the enshittification tide.
