In Which Cory Doctorow Channels James Madison

I didn’t think the world needed another review of Enshittification, Cory Doctorow’s new book on why internet platforms decay so quickly, until I read the book.

Yes, dear reader, I spent a part of the holiday break by the tree, in a comfy chair, reading a nonfiction tirade with a smiling poop emoji on the cover. In 2025, that doesn’t even qualify as odd.

The other reviews I’ve seen do a good job of summarizing the first part of Doctorow’s argument, but they either skip or misunderstand the second part. The two make sense together.

The first part, which is largely diagnostic, sets out a cycle by which platforms decay. (The key word here is “platforms.” Doctorow focuses on services and sites that sell things produced by others, taking a large chunk of revenue for themselves.) In Doctorow’s telling, at the first stage, platforms provide excellent value to their users. This is typically achieved through burning cash (Amazon) and/or skirting rules (Uber). By providing valuable goods and services below cost, the platforms build customer loyalty.

At a certain point, though, customer growth isn’t enough to sustain the business. At that point, they start exploiting customers to benefit their business partners. In the case of Meta/Facebook, for example, they start harvesting all manner of customer data and selling it to advertisers. In some cases, too, this is where price increases start showing up. For example, YouTube TV, which is part of the Google Cinematic Universe, has more than doubled its monthly price since it began. Despite the hostile turn towards users, most users stick around because realistic options are few and the cost in lost network externalities from leaving is too much to bear.

I can attest to the latter. Although most of my social media posting moved from Twitter to Bluesky a while back in an attempt to escape what had increasingly become hostile territory, I haven’t deleted the Twitter account yet. Some people whose writing I value haven’t moved over yet, and by virtue of the lists function, I can follow them without too much detritus in the stream. When most of them move, I’ll happily abandon Twitter.

Step two of enshittification involves the platform putting the screws to its business customers.

Small vendors might not like the commission that Amazon charges, and app developers may not be fans of the Apple tax, but at a certain point, that’s where the customers are. They’re as trapped as we are.

Finally, the platform starts to collapse. Twitter is probably the most spectacular case, though, in fairness, it’s also a bit of an outlier. It has never made a profit, and it has been … how to put this … enlisted in a different mission.

To his credit, Doctorow focuses much less on the Kremlinology of various tech companies than on the economic logic that allows them to emerge and evolve as they do. Uber is more useful to customers when it has more drivers; a new competitor would have to overcome the critical mass problem before it would pose any sort of threat. A new social network needs a critical mass of users before it becomes attractive to other users. The barriers to entry aren’t just technical; they’re social.

In the second, less noticed part of the book, Doctorow turns to solutions. This is the part I wish would get more attention.

In Federalist paper No. 10, James Madison tackled the question of how to blend freedom of speech and association with political stability. If everyone is just running around looking out for themselves, what keeps a government in power? As Madison put it, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” If you have enough “factions,” as he called them, they tend to cancel each other out. As long as the citizens are bickering among themselves, then “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or any other improper and wicked project” won’t get traction. If you want stability, you don’t crack down on freedoms; you encourage them—the better to divide and rule.

Doctorow argues for a similar logic, though from a more egalitarian perspective. On one level, a revitalized antitrust movement would do a world of good. Multiplying factions makes it harder for any single one of them to wield too much power.

But the core issue—network externalities—requires a different tack. Here Doctorow advocates for legalizing application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow users of new platforms to bring everything over from previous ones, and to make it easy for people to find each other on the new platform. Lower the barriers to entry and make platforms vulnerable to real competition. That would force platforms to compete on value and usefulness rather than inertia. It would also likely prevent a few platforms from becoming so economically and politically dominant that they effectively set the terms of political debate. As Madison would put it, we need to multiply factions. They’d be too busy competing with each other to mess around with elections. In that setting, everyone wins, except for a few billionaires who have already won more than enough.

Although Doctorow is typically considered a leftish thinker, his solution to market consolidation is … more competition. I think he’s right.

Ironically, given its title and cover, the book is a breath of fresh air. Doctorow has an attitude and doesn’t try to hide it; his perspective-on-his-sleeve approach actually helps with credibility. There’s nothing disingenuous in his presentation; like it or not, he follows his argument where it leads. And he applies classic political theory to a rapidly evolving contemporary problem so pervasive that we almost don’t notice it as a problem.

He doesn’t frame it as such, but the book is an excellent example of the liberal arts in action. It’s well written, heavily researched, thoughtful and urgent. Even better, it assumes that the reader can follow a sophisticated argument.

Ignore the emoji. This one’s a winner.