The internet isn’t what we were promised. In its infancy, Google’s stated ambition was to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”; today, you’ll have to wade through adverts to complete a simple search. Paid-for subscription services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, continue to build paywalls around ad-free viewing, marketing them as “plus” or “premium” accounts. You’re not imagining it — things have been getting worse.
For the past decade, Cory Doctorow — blogger, digital rights activist, and Big Tech giant slayer — has dedicated his work to chronicling the decline in quality of the internet and digital platforms. He’s even given it a name: enshittification.
