Escape Forward: Connecting dots beyond the antitrust island Enshittification of our digital experience: the pathology is clear, but is there a cure?
Nov 27, 2025
Cory Doctorow, an influential author and tech activist, dives into the concept of 'enshitification'—the decline of our online experiences. He discusses the intertwining of market concentration and surveillance that erodes our digital rights. Exploring real-world implications, he highlights the lack of privacy regulations and critiques anti-circumvention laws that stifle innovation. However, Cory remains optimistic about the resurgence of antitrust movements and the potential for competition and regulation to restore a balanced digital ecosystem. His insights are both enlightening and motivating!
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Surveillance Is A Policy Choice
- Market concentration enabled surveillance because firms spy on users simply because they can.
- Cory Doctorow says policy choices, not inevitability, allowed commercial surveillance to flourish.
Nurses Penalized By Data Brokers
- Nurses are hired via apps and penalized by their credit-card debt history purchased from data brokers.
- Cory Doctorow uses this example to show how surveillance harms workers' wages and safety.
Guerrilla Tools Once Disciplined Platforms
- Intermediaries were disciplined by the ability of users to escape or modify services, e.g., ad blockers or jailbreaks.
- Expanded IP and anti-circumvention law removed those guerrilla checks, empowering platforms to extract more value.
