Lessons from Cory Doctorow

Lessons from Cory Doctorow

Journalist, activist, and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow is a persistent critic of digital monopolies and copyright overreach. He coined "enshittification" to describe the inevitable decay of online platforms, pushing for interoperability to counter tech centralization. This profile collects his views on digital rights, corporate power, and the future of the internet.

Part 1: Enshittification

1. On Platform Decay: "First, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit." — Source: Goodreads
2. On Choice: Doctorow frames enshittification as the result of specific decisions and eroded constraints, not an impersonal law of history; in his Kagi essay he makes the same point concretely, arguing that Google's degraded search results are a choice because better results are technically possible. — Reference: Pluralistic essay where Doctorow argues Google's enshittified search results are a choice, not a technical inevitability
3. On The Enshittocene: "We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit." — Source: Medium
4. On Personal Responsibility: "I need to tell you something unsatisfying: your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life." — Source: Medium
5. On Structural Causes: "Enshittification is not the result of people making bad choices: it's the result of bad policies that produce bad systems." — Source: Medium
6. On Two-Sided Markets: "Enshittification is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a 'two sided market'." — Source: Reddit
7. On Hostage Dynamics: Platforms sit between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, while raking off an ever-larger share of the value passing between them. — Source: Reddit
8. On The Banality of Evil: "Enshittification is when you combine the banality of evil with an internet-connected device and a federal law that criminalizes fixing it." — Source: Goodreads
9. On The Trajectory of Platforms: "Enshittification is a way of talking about how platforms decay. It describes the process of the decay, the characteristic steps of decay." — Source: The RSA
10. On Reversing the Decay: Enshittification poses a theory about why decay is taking place now, and has a prescriptive component about policies we can make to reverse the decay and guard against it in the future. — Source: The RSA

Part 2: Copyright & Intellectual Property

1. On Doctorow's First Law: "Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you a key, they're not doing it for your benefit." — Source: Wikiquote
2. On Digital Locks: "Digital locks are roach motels: copyrighted works check in, but they don't check out." — Source: Goodreads
3. On Artificial Ecosystems: "Effectively, it's a law that says if you buy books from Amazon, you have to buy the bookcase, chair, lamp and lightbulb from there too. And only Amazon can release customers from this arrangement." — Source: Publishing Perspectives
4. On Modifying Property: The DMCA makes it a felony to modify your own property in ways that the manufacturer disapproves of, even if your modifications accomplish a totally innocuous, legal, and socially beneficial goal. — Source: Medium
5. On Cultural Participation: "In my world, copyright's purpose is to encourage the widest participation in culture that we can manage." — Source: The Guardian
6. On Intellectual Property Terminology: "'Intellectual Property' is one of those ideologically loaded terms that can cause an argument just by being uttered." — Source: Free Souls
7. On IP as Control: "That, I think, is the right way to think about how IP, copyright, and monopoly all fit together. They're all part of the same project of monopolization." — Source: Jacobin
8. On Corporate Terms: Turning every part of the creative process into IP only accomplishes making it harder to create without taking terms from a giant corporation. — Source: Reddit
9. On Technological Change: "The activities that copyright regulates—copying, transmission, display, performance—are technological activities, so when technology changes, it's usually the case that copyright has to change, too." — Source: Goodreads
10. On Supporting Creators: "People actually like supporting the artists whose work they like. It makes them feel happy. You don't have to force them." — Source: Goodreads

Part 3: Interoperability & Lock-In

1. On Interoperability's Nature: "Interoperability is one of those ideas that is so natural and latent in the world, it's easier to define by things that aren't interoperable than things that are." — Source: Chicago Policy Review
2. On Switching Costs: "The lower the switching costs are, the better a company has to treat you if they want to keep your business." — Source: Goodreads
3. On Self-Determination: "Beyond 'competition,' 'efficiency' and 'innovation,' interop delivers self-determination." — Source: Pluralistic
4. On Adversarial Interoperability: "Adversarial interoperability is when a new market entrant comes up with a way to plug something into an existing market entrant's product without that existing market entrant's permissions." — Source: Blubrry
5. On Contempt of Business Model: Tech giants have conjured up a new offense: felony contempt of business model, which is the right of large firms to dictate how customers, competitors, and critics must use their products. — Source: Goodreads
6. On Hypocrisy: "When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy." — Source: Medium
7. On Mandates as Ceilings: "Any kind of interoperability mandate has the risk of becoming the ceiling on innovation, not the floor." — Source: EFF
8. On Retaining Users: "The fight for interoperability is not technical. It is a legal battle against Big Tech because these companies retain users rather than outperform their competitors." — Source: DataEthics
9. On Apps: Doctorow argues that apps let companies wrap web-like services in enough intellectual-property law to block user self-help: ad blockers, interoperability tools, and worker counter-apps become legally dangerous rather than merely technically difficult. — Reference: Pluralistic McLuhan lecture where Doctorow links apps, IP law, DMCA 1201, ad blockers, and the loss of user self-help

Part 4: Surveillance Capitalism

1. On Monopoly vs. Mind Control: Doctorow's surveillance-capitalism critique is anti-monopoly rather than mystical: he argues that Big Tech does not possess mind-control rays, but does use concentrated control over online markets and user choice to shape what people can do. — Reference: Craphound page for How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism describing Doctorow's anti-monopoly critique and rejection of Big Tech mind-control claims
2. On Surveillance Systems: Big Tech services function as delivery systems for persuasion, trapping users in endless torrents of arguments to maximize time spent on their platforms. — Source: Boundary 2
3. On Privacy First: Comprehensive privacy laws are the key to solving many internet ills, operating on the simple principle: "No surveillance, no targeting." — Source: Medium
4. On Policy Choices: The surveillance internet is not a technical necessity but a policy choice that flourished because of a massive commercial legislative vacuum. — Source: AI Weekly
5. On Predistribution: We should focus on banning the collection of data at the source rather than attempting to redress harm only after it has already occurred. — Source: AI Weekly
6. On Security: "Like all security, privacy is hard." — Source: AZ Quotes
7. On The War on Terror: "Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the 'war on terror?'" — Source: Goodreads
8. On Business Practices: The focus should be on ending the business practices that make mass surveillance profitable, rather than treating the technologies themselves as magical or unstoppable. — Source: Goodreads
9. On Information: "Information clearly doesn't want anything. Information is an abstraction... but our age is made out of networked information and without good access to good information, there are many ways in which we can't be free." — Source: Circulating Ideas

Part 5: Antitrust & Monopoly Power

1. On Unchecked Power: Monopolies are companies that can act independently without needing to consider the responses of competitors, customers, workers, or even governments. — Source: Medium
2. On The Flywheel Effect: "Monopoly is a flywheel: Big companies subvert politics." — Source: Goodreads
3. On Redistribution: "Antitrust systematically attacks the sky-high monopoly rents extracted by the largest corporations and redistributes them to working people and small businesses." — Source: Medium
4. On The Long Game of Deregulation: "Reversing 40+ years of pro-monopoly policy was always going to be a slog... Once monopolies have conquered your economy, getting rid of them is far harder." — Source: Medium
5. On Structural Separation: The structural separation doctrine states that important platforms cannot be allowed to compete directly with their own users. — Source: Pluralistic
6. On Chokepoint Capitalism: "Chokepoint capitalism is about the other side of monopoly — it's about monopsony." — Source: Jacobin
7. On Squeezing Workers: The corporate doctrine for forty years has been that monopolies are fine if they don't raise prices on consumers, which ignores how companies use their power to squeeze workers and creators. — Source: Jacobin
8. On Fixing the Internet: "Rather than fixing tech companies, we can fix the internet. We can empower communities and individuals to escape monopoly platforms, through interoperability." — Source: Medium
9. On Scale: "To make tech better, we have to make it smaller—small enough that the bad ideas, carelessness and blind spots of individual tech leaders are their problems, not everyone else's." — Source: Goodreads

Part 6: Activism & Internet Freedom

1. On Determination: "Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor." — Source: Goodreads
2. On Persistence: "We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less." — Source: AZ Quotes
3. On Fighting: "Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing." — Source: AZ Quotes
4. On Taking Freedom: "I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself." — Source: AZ Quotes
5. On Political Engagement: "Just because you're not interested in politics does not mean that politics won't be interested in you." — Source: Wikiquote
6. On Youth Risk-Taking: "If they understood risks, they wouldn't join uprisings and march in the streets and the world would be a simpler place. Not a better one, of course. But simpler." — Source: Goodreads
7. On Construction: "If I can't build, I don't wanna be a part of your revolution." — Source: Goodreads
8. On Observation: "If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you." — Source: Goodreads
9. On Making Issues Concrete: Because digital rights issues can be abstract and long-term, activists must create framing devices, metaphors, and parables to make these issues urgent for the public before it is too late. — Source: The Walrus
10. On Winning Better Tech: Free, fair, open tech is a precondition for winning other important fights, because failing to fix tech extinguishes any hope of winning those other battles. — Source: DataEthics

Part 7: Writing & Science Fiction

1. On Sci-Fi as Allegory: "All science-fiction novels are at some level allegorical until the problems they're discussing can be fixed, and many are diagnostic." — Source: Bwog
2. On The Luddite Lens: Science fiction should ask not what a technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for. — Source: Medium
3. On Futuristic Parables: "I like to feel like futuristic parables are a good way to understand the present, but they only work as parables if they feel plausibly futuristic." — Source: Writing Excuses
4. On the Writing Process: "Write even when the world is chaotic. You don't need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement." — Source: AZ Quotes
5. On Daily Targets: "Set a daily word target. Make it small. 75 words a day is a novel a year." — Source: Advice to Writers
6. On Stopping Mid-Sentence: "Finish in the middle of a sentence, so you can type three or four words the next day without having to be 'creative.'" — Source: Advice to Writers
7. On Worldbuilding: A good approach to worldbuilding is taking a single technology or phenomenon and following the logical causal chains and branches to see where they lead. — Source: Writing Excuses
8. On Economic Fiction: In worldbuilding, economics are essential, requiring authors to ask what people actually do and what their jobs are in this new reality. — Source: Writing Excuses
9. On Obscurity: "Of all the people who failed to buy one of my books today, the vast majority did so because they never heard of them, not because they got a free digital copy from the Internet." — Source: Wikiquote

Part 8: Technology Policy & Society

1. On Intellectual Humility: "If I'm wrong, I promise that I'll be wrong in a well-informed and interesting way." — Source: Goodreads
2. On Content vs. Conversation: "Content isn't king. Conversation is." — Source: Goodreads
3. On The Value of Conversation: "Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about." — Source: AZ Quotes
4. On Computational Capacity: "There's enough computational capacity in a junkyard to launch a space-program, and that's by design." — Source: Goodreads
5. On Corporate Flexibility: "The proprietary advantage once enjoyed by companies who assembled teams under their own roofs and used them only on their own products has been surrendered in the rush to attain some semblance of 'lean, efficient' flexibility." — Source: Goodreads
6. On General Purpose Computing: The real danger is restricting the general purpose nature of computers through laws and technical barriers that stop users from deciding what software to run. — Source: Medium
7. On Fearmongering: "What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!" — Source: AZ Quotes
8. On Private Corners: "There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you." — Source: Goodreads
9. On Technology and Power: "This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy." — Source: Quotations Page