Cory Doctorow has been on the internet longer than most of us, and he’s been paying close attention to what’s happened to it.
The Canadian science fiction author and essayist (who was teaching CBC viewers how to surf the net back in 1995) has spent decades writing and speaking about digital rights, monopoly power, and the creeping degradation of the internet.
The Canadian science fiction author and essayist has spent decades tracking the internet’s decline. He was even teaching CBC viewers how to surf the net back in 1995.
His latest diagnosis has a name: enshittification, a term he coined in 2022.
It’s the word he coined to describe the predictable arc of platform decay, and it’s the subject of his latest book.
In a recent interview with CBC’s Ian Hanomansing, and in a November 2025 keynote at OCAD University, he argued that specific policy decisions created an environment where treating users worse became more profitable than treating them well.
He also made the case that Canada’s copyright law is both a driver of that environment and an unexpected opening in the current trade war with the United States.
Finally, he offered a pointed view on AI, focused on what happens when the economics stop adding up.
Here are highlights from both the interview and keynote.
On structural problems over individual choices
“You will not shop your way free of a monopoly, any more than you will recycle your way out of wildfires. Shop as hard as you like, you will not — cannot — end enshittification.
“Enshittification is not the result of your failure to grasp that ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’ You’re the product if you pay. You’re the product if you don’t pay. The determinant of your demotion to ‘the product’ is whether the company can get away with treating you as the product.”
On copyright reform as Canada’s real trade war weapon
“Our current strategy is retaliatory tariffs, which is making everything we buy from America more expensive, which is a very strange way to punish America. It’s like punching yourself in the face as hard as you can and hoping the downstairs neighbor says ouch. If we were to legalize reverse engineering and making complementary products that improved it, we could sell that farmer the tools that he needs so that when he fixes his tractor, it’s just fixed… we could become his supplier and his customer, and when Trump gets angry at us and tries to retaliate, that guy would have our back, because we’re the ones who sold him the tools that he needs to fix his tractor, and we’re the ones buying his corn.”
On what actually worries him about AI
“Seven companies that make up 30% of the American stock market are just trading the same 100 billion dollar IOU back and forth as quickly as they can… They’ve spent $700 billion on data centres and training and they’re only making $50 billion a year, and… we are headed for a crash that’s going to make 2008 look like the best day of your life. That’s what I’m actually worried about.”
