Hate the Player AND the Game  ## Metadata - Author: [[pluralistic.net]] - Full Title: Hate the Player AND the Game - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [enshittification, antitrust, tech policy] author: Cory Doctorow source: pluralistic.net reference: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence] date created: 2025-11-08 14:00 --- # 🏷️ Title: Hate the player AND the game (permalink) ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened: The author argues that “enshittification” stems primarily from policy choices by regulators and lawmakers (“crooked umps”), not just bad corporate actors (“players”) or market dynamics (“the game”). - Why it matters: Naming policymakers behind antitrust erosion, DRM expansion, and net neutrality rollbacks is key to reversing harms. - Key stakeholders: Consumers, workers, creators, regulators, lawmakers, Big Tech/ISPs. - Risks and tradeoffs: Policy capture, regulatory fraud, speech/culture constraints via filters/DRM, concentrated market power. - Bottom line: Hate the players and the game—but fix the umpires through policy reform and accountability. ## 📖 Main Content - Core arguments: - Individual consumer choices can’t fix systemic enshittification; policy created the incentives. - Name and hold accountable policymakers who enabled monopolies and lock-in. - Examples: Robert Bork (consumer welfare antitrust), Bruce Lehman (DMCA §1201/DRM), Ajit Pai (net neutrality repeal), Axel Voss (EU copyright filters), Canadian ministers Moore/Clement (C-11). - Context/terms: - Consumer welfare standard: narrows antitrust to price/output, enabling monopoly. - DRM/§1201: bans circumvention, blocking repair/interoperability/preservation. - Net neutrality: bars ISPs from throttling/blocking/paid prioritization. - “Enshittogenic environment”: policy ecosystem that rewards predation. - Uncertainties/contested: - Extent of welfare gains from bigness vs harms. - Effect sizes of specific laws across sectors. ### 🗒️ Notes - “Hate the player AND the game…above all, hate the crooked ump.” - Rot Economy (Ed Zitron): financialized, short-termist executive incentives. - Author’s extension: policy umpires enabled the rot. - No “shop your way out”: individual consumption ≠ systemic fix. - Bork → monopoly-friendly antitrust. - Lehman → DMCA §1201 → no repair/interop/preservation, app tax lock-ins. - Pai → fraudulent docket, net neutrality repeal → ISP rent extraction. - Moore/Clement → Canadian C-11 → interop/repair chilled. - Voss → EU filters → AI upload filtering; later admitted not understanding vote. - Call to action: say their names; reform policy to remove “monster-shaped holes.” ## 📚 References - Enshittification audiobook (DRM-free) Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/enshittification-the-drm-free-audiobook/ - Ed Zitron’s Rot Economy: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ - Anil Dash on Apple leadership: https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/ - Microincentives and enshittification: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/ - Against Bork’s antitrust: https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/ - Monopoly by the numbers: https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers - Lehman/DMCA background: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16145640-ctrl-ctrl-ctrl - Unsafe at any speed (medical/repair DRM): https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/ - App store rent extraction: https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup - Rutledge pandemic conduct: https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/22/filternet/#thomas-rutledge-murderer - Pai’s docket fraud: https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts - Canada C-11 critique: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest - EU Article 13/17 filters: https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/26/article-13-will-wreck-the-internet-because-swedish-meps-accidentally-pushed-the-wrong-voting-button/ - Voss admission: https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/14/father-of-the-catastrophic-copyright-directive-reveals-he-didnt-know-what-he-was-voting-for/ ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - A: Corporate abuse persists because policymakers rewrote rules to reward it; accountability must target those rulemakers. - B: Market power, DRM, and ISP misconduct are symptoms of policy design, not consumer failings; name the architects and reverse their work. ## 📰 Newsletter - This week: a sharp look at how policy “umpires” enabled Big Tech’s enshittification. Dive into antitrust beyond consumer welfare, right-to-repair vs DRM, and the fallout from net neutrality rollbacks. For WordPress folks: track interoperability fights affecting plugins, storefront fees, and distribution. See also: Open Markets’ monopoly stats and EU upload filter debates. Links above. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Publish docs and demos enabling interoperability and data export. - Offer workshops on open standards and portability APIs. - Ship example repos for decentralized identity, payments, and webhooks. #### OSPO - Adopt contribution policies favoring open standards. - Compliance: audit for GPL/AGPL and third-party SDK license traps. - Security: SBOMs, provenance signing, disclosure policy; maintain embargo playbooks. #### Community - Maintainers: governance templates; release and security hygiene. - Contributors: first-issue rotations; pairing; mentorship cohorts. - Sponsors: milestone-based funding and transparent reporting. #### WordPress - Core: prioritize interop/Portability APIs; performance budgets. - Core AI: evaluation sets; red-team prompts; opt-out signals. - Plugins/Themes: provenance checks; review throughput; security liaisons. - Documentation: examples-first guides; style and glossary alignment. - Accessibility: WCAG audits; issue heatmaps; tooling integrated. #### The WPCC - Fund maintainers; microgrants; governance clinics; transparent ledgers. ### FAIR - Verify artifact signatures; local mirrors; anti-capture covenants; sunset clauses. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Narrow “consumer welfare” antitrust correlates with higher concentration and lower quality. - DRM anti-circumvention reduces independent repair and increases TCO. - Net neutrality repeal leads to higher prices and degraded service for competitors. - Mandatory upload filters increase Type I/II errors and suppress lawful speech. ### 📊 Methodology - Difference-in-differences on sectors pre/post policy shifts. - Event studies on §1201 exemptions vs repair market growth. - ISP performance/price panel data pre/post NN repeal. - Content moderation error-rate audits on filter deployments. ### ❓ Questions - Which policy reversals yield the largest consumer/creator surplus? - How to operationalize interoperability mandates without privacy regressions? - What institutional designs reduce regulatory capture? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal studies linking policy eras to innovation rates. - Comparative analyses across jurisdictions with divergent DRM/antitrust regimes. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: design for portability/interop by default. - Policy: restore structural antitrust; narrow §1201; codify NN. - Security: authentication without lock-in; repair-safe firmware. - Funding: public-interest tech and standards bodies. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level: Flesch-Kincaid ≈ Grade 10–11. #### 👀 Visual learners - Improve: policy timelines; market concentration charts. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Impro - URL: https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence [](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/) * [Hate the player AND the game](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#object-permanence): But above all, hate the crooked ump. * [Object permanence](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#retro): Library Tor nodes vs the DHS; Egg-board psyops; Fury Road amputation cosplay; NYPD's dirtiest cop. * [Recent appearances](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#recent): Where I've been. * [Latest books](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#latest): You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books](https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/10/say-their-names/#upcoming-books): Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. A 1930s editorial cartoon depicting a bloated baseball player labeled 'Monopoly Giants' sliding into home base but falling short. He is being tagged by a smaller, weaker player labeled 'consumer.' An umpire is striding into the frame, declaring the monopolist to be safe. The image has been altered: the slider has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The ump has the head of Robert Bork. The consumer has the head of a foolishly grinning child laborer, photographed at the turn of the 20th century. The epigram for my forthcoming book, *Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It* is a quote from Ed Zitron: "I hate them for what they've done to the computer" (Ed even recorded a little cameo of this for the audiobook): <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/enshittification-the-drm-free-audiobook/> Ed's a smart and passionate guy, and this was definitely the quote to sum up the rage I felt as I wrote the book. Ed's got a whole theory of who "they" are and "what they did to the computer," which he calls "the Rot Economy": <https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/> The Rot Economy describes the ideology of bosses, starting with monsters like GE's Jack Welch, who financialized companies, optimizing them for making short term cash gains for investors, at the expense of their workers, their customers, their products and services, and, ultimately, their long-term health. For Ed, these bosses (especially tech bosses) are the sociopaths who destroyed "the computer" (a stand-in for tech more generally). I don't disagree at all. There is a direct, undeniable line from the ideas and conduct of tech bosses and the tech hellscape we live in today. A good read on this subject is Anil Dash's scorching post from yesterday, "How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs": <https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/> I find the Rot Economy hypothesis entirely compelling, but also, *incomplete*. Ed's explaining why we should hate the players *and* why we should hate the game, but the enshittification thesis goes even further and explains why we need to hate the *umpires* – the policymakers, enforcers, economists and legal theorists who created the enshittogenic environment in which the Rot Economy took hold. Some early reviews of *Enshittification* have expressed dissatisfaction with book's "solutions" section, complaining that all the solutions are *policy* oriented, and there's nothing suggested for us to do in our capacity as individual consumers: <https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems> Those criticisms are correct: there *is* nothing we can do as individual consumers. Agonizing about your consumption choices will not fight enshittification any more than conscientiously sorting your recycling will end the climate emergency. Enshittification isn't caused by "lazy consumers" who choose "convenience" or are "too cheap to pay for online services": <https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/#or-give-me-death> The wellspring of enshittification isn't poor consumption choices, it's poor *policy* choices. The reason monsters are able to destroy our online lives isn't their personal moral failings, it's the system that rewards predatory, deceptive and unfair commercial practices and elevates their foremost practitioners to positions of power within firms: <https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/> And here's the kicker: we know where those policy choices came from! The people who made these policy choices did so in living memory. They were warned at the time about the foreseeable consequences of their choices. They made those choices anyway. They faced *zero* consequences for doing so, even after every one of the prophesied horrors came to pass. Not only were they spared consequences for their actions, but they *prospered* as a result – they are revered as statesmen, lawyers, scholars and titans of economics. As Trashfuture showrunner Riley Quinn often says, the curse of being a leftist is that you have object permanence – you actually remember the stuff that happened and how it happened. You don't live in an eternal now that has no causal relationship to the past. It's not enough to hate the player, nor the game – we've got to remember the crooked umps who rigged the match. We have to say their names, because that's how we root out their terrible ideas and ensure that our policy interventions make real change. If Elon Musk OD'ed on ketamine tomorrow, there'd be ten Big Balls who'd tear each others' throats out in the ensuing succession fight, and the next guy would be just as stupid, racist, and authoritarian. Musk, Cook, Zuck, Pichai, Nadella, Larry Ellison – they're just filling the monster-shaped holes that policy-makers installed in our society. Start with Robert Bork, the jurist who championed the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust, which promotes monopolies as efficient and counsels policymakers not to punish companies that take over markets, because the only way to *really* dominate a market is to be so good that everyone chooses your products and services. Wouldn't it just be perverse to use public funds to shut down the public's favorite companies? Bork was a virulent racist, a Nixonite criminal, and he was dead wrong about the law *and* the economics of monopoly: <https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/> Bork's legacy of pro-monopoly advocacy is, unsurprisingly, *monopolies*. Monopolies that make everything more expensive and worse: from athletic shoes to microchips, glass bottles to pharmaceuticals, pro wrestling to eyeglasses: <https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers> These monopolies did not arise because of the iron laws of economics. They are not the product of the great forces of history. They are the direct and undeniable consequence of Robert Bork convincing the world's governments to embrace his bullshit, pro-monopoly policies. Satan took Bork to hell in 2012, but you know who's still with us? Bruce Lehman. Bruce Lehman was Bill Clinton's copyright czar, the man who, in his own words, "did an end-run around Congress" by getting a UN treaty passed that obliged its signatories to ban reverse engineering: <https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16145640-ctrl-ctrl-ctrl> Lehman's used the treaty to get Congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and section 1201 of the DMCA made it a felony to break DRM. Bruce Lehman is why farmers can't fix their own tractors, hospitals can't fix their own ventilators, and your mechanic can't fix your car. He's why, when the manufacturer of your artificial eyes bricks a computer that is permanently wired to your nervous system, no one else can revive it: <https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/> Bruce Lehman is why you can't use the apps of your choosing on your phone or games console. He's why we can't preserve beloved old video games. He's why Apple and Google get to steal 30 cents out of every dollar you send to a performer, software author, or creator through an app: <https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup> Yeah, Tim Cook is a venal billionaire who owes his wealth to the Chinese sweatshops of iPhone City, where they had to install suicide nets to catch the workers who'd rather end it all than work another day for Tim Apple, but Tim Cook's power over those workers is owed to Bruce Lehman and Robert Bork. Then there's the ISP sector, whose Net Neutrality violations and underinvestment mean that people who live in the country where the internet was invented have some of the slowest, most expensive internet in the world. Big ISP bosses are some of the worst people on Earth. Take Thomas Rutledge, who was CEO of Charter/Spectrum when covid broke out. At the time, Rutledge was America's highest-paid CEO. He dictated that his back-office staff could not work from home (imagine a telco boss who doesn't believe in telework!), and those back-offices all turned into super-spreader sites. Rutledge's field workers – the people who came to our homes and upgraded our internet so *we* could work from home – did not get PPE or danger pay. Instead, they got vouchers exclusively redeemable at restaurants that had shut down during the pandemic: <https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/22/filternet/#thomas-rutledge-murderer> Fuck Thomas Rutledge and may his name be a curse forever. But the *reason* Thomas Rutledge – and all the other terrible telco bosses – were able to reap millions by supplying us with dogshit internet while literally murdering their employees was that Trump's FCC chairman, an ex-Verizon lawyer named Ajit Pai, let them get away with it: <https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/12/ajit-pai/#pai> Ajit Pai engaged in some of the most flagrant cheating ever seen in American regulation (prior to Jan 20, 2025, at least). When he decided to kill Net Neutrality, he accepted obviously fraudulent comments into the official record, including one million identical comments from @pornhub.com email addresses, as well as millions of comments whose return addresses were taken from darknet data-dumps, including the email addresses of dead people and of sitting US senators who supported Net Neutrality: <https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts> Pai – and his co-conspirators – are the umps who rigged the game. Hate Thomas Rutledge to be sure, but to prevent people like Rutledge from gaining power over your digital life in future, you must remember Ajit Pai with the special form of white-hot rage that keeps people like him from ever making policy decisions again. Then there's Canada's hall of shame, which is full of monsters. Two of my least favorite are James Moore and Tony Clement, who, as ministers under Stephen Harper, rammed through a Canadian version of the DMCA, 2012's Bill C-11, despite their own consultation, which found that Canadians overwhelmingly rejected the idea: <https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest> Clement (now a disgraced sex-pest) and Moore (still accepted into polite society as a corporate lawyer) are the reason that Canada's Right to Repair and interop laws are dead on arrival. They're also why Canada can't retaliate against Trump's tariffs by jailbreaking US products, making everything cheaper for Canadians and birthing new, global Canadian tech businesses: <https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham> In Europe, there's Axel Voss, the man behind 2019's "filternet" proposal, which requires tech platforms to spend hundreds of millions of euros for copyright filters that use AI to process everything posted to the public internet in Europe and block anything the AI thinks is "copyrighted": <https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/26/article-13-will-wreck-the-internet-because-swedish-meps-accidentally-pushed-the-wrong-voting-button/> For years, Voss maintained that none of this was true, that there would be no filters, and dismissed his critics as hysterical fools: <https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/03/after-months-of-insisting-that-article13-doesnt-require-filters-top-eu-commissioner-says-article-13-requires-filters/> But then, after his law passed, he admitted he "didn't know what he was voting for": <https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/14/father-of-the-catastrophic-copyright-directive-reveals-he-didnt-know-what-he-was-voting-for/> Fuck the media lobbyists who spent hundreds of millions of euros to push this catastrophic law through: <https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/13/clash-of-the-corporate-titans-whos-spending-what-in-europes-copyright-directive-battle/> But especially and forever, fuck Axel Voss, the policymaker who helped turn those corporate bribes into policy. Ed Zitron is right to hate the people who implement the Rot Economy for what they did to the computer. But those people are only doing what policymakers *let them do*. Corporate monsters thrive in an enshittogenic environment. But political monsters are the ones who *create* that enshittogenic environment. They're the ones who are terraforming our planet to sideline human life and replace it with the immortal colony organisms we call "limited liability corporations."  * Dwayne Johnson Will Play the Chicken Man in ‘Lizard Music’ <https://gizmodo.com/dwayne-johnson-to-next-play-the-chicken-man-in-lizard-music-2000655464> * Qualifying Conditions <https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/qualifying-conditions/> * Cindy Cohn Is Leaving the EFF, but Not the Fight for Digital Rights <https://www.wired.com/story/eff-cindy-cohn-stepping-down/> * Five technological achievements! (That we won’t see any time soon.) <https://crookedtimber.org/2025/09/09/five-technological-achievements-that-we-wont-see-any-time-soon/> * A notional design studio. <https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/a-notional-design-studio/> A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.' #20yrsago Anti-trusted-computing video <https://www.lafkon.net/tc/> #10yrsago Library offers Tor nodes; DHS tells them to stop <https://www.propublica.org/article/library-support-anonymous-internet-browsing-effort-stops-after-dhs-email> #10yrsago Ashley Madison’s passwords were badly encrypted, 15 million+ passwords headed for the Web <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/ashley-madison-password-crack-could-spell-trouble-across-the-internet/> #10yrsago Heathrow security insists that ice is a liquid <https://gizmodo.com/what-happens-if-you-take-frozen-liquids-through-airport-1729772148> #10yrago DoJ says it will consider jailing executives who order corporate crimes <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/us/politics/new-justice-dept-rules-aimed-at-prosecuting-corporate-executives.html> #10yrsago Government-run egg board waged high-price, secret PSYOPS war on vegan egg-replacement <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/06/usda-american-egg-board-paid-bloggers-hampton-creek> #10yrago Using sandwiches to teach the Socratic method <https://web.archive.org/web/20140810204054/https://medium.com/@kmikeym/is-this-a-sandwich-50b1317eb3f5> #10yrago Fury Road cosplay: amputated arm edition <https://web.archive.org/web/20150911194228/http://www.tor.com/2015/09/09/afternoon-roundup-furiosa-real-prosthetic-arm-cosplay/> #5yrsago Kids' smart-watches unsafe at any speed <https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/10/booksellers-vs-big-tech/#digital-parenting> #5yrsago Georgia voter suppression, quantified <https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/10/booksellers-vs-big-tech/#georgia-suppression> #5yrsago The rise and rise of one of NYPD's dirtiest cops <https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/10/booksellers-vs-big-tech/#50a> #5yrago Inaudible <https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/10/booksellers-vs-big-tech/#audible-exclusive> A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium. * Ithaca: Enshittification at Buffalo Street Books, Sept 11 <https://buffalostreetbooks.com/event/2025-09-11/cory-doctorow-tcpl-librarian-judd-karlman> * Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 <https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/> * Ithaca: Enshittification at Autumn Leaves Books, Sept 13 <https://www.autumnleavesithaca.com/event-details/enshittification-why-everything-got-worse-and-what-to-do-about-it> * Ithaca: Radicalized Q&A (Cornell), Sept 16 <https://events.cornell.edu/event/radicalized-qa-with-author-cory-doctorow> * Ithaca: Communication Power, Policy, and Practice (Cornell), Sept 18 <https://events.cornell.edu/event/policy-provocations-a-conversation-about-communication-power-policy-and-practice> * Ithaca: A Reverse-Centaur's Guide to Being a Better AI Critic (Cornell), Sept 18 <https://events.cornell.edu/event/2025-nordlander-lecture-in-science-public-policy> * NYC: Enshittification and Renewal (Cornell Tech), Sept 19 <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enshittification-and-renewal-a-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1563948454929> * NYC: Brooklyn Book Fair, Sept 21 <https://brooklynbookfestival.org/event/big-techs-big-heist-cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-adam-becker/> * DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8 <https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825> * NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9 <https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm> * New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12 <http://www.contraflowscifi.org/> * Chicago: Enshittification with Anand Giridharadas (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15 <https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/10-15-2025-kara-swisher-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification/> * San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 <https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25> * Madrid: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28 <https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/> * Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469> A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast. * Nerd Harder! (This Week in Tech) <https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1047> * Techtonic with Mark Hurst <https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/155658> * Cory Doctorow DESTROYS Enshittification (QAA Podcast) <https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/cory-doctorow-destroys-enshitification-e338> A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers.. * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (<https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels>). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([the-bezzle.org](http://the-bezzle.org)). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (<http://lost-cause.org>). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (<http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org>). Signed copies at Book Soup (<https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245>). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books <http://redteamblues.com>. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 <https://chokepointcapitalism.com> A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo. * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 <https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/> * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026  Today's top sources: **Currently writing:** * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/> Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. 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