PRECIS
MAJOR CLAIM: Doctorow argues in his McLuhan lecture on enshittification (2024) that platforms degrade through a three-stage process of user exploitation, business exploitation, and shareholder extraction leading to a world of digital decay known as the enshittocene.
HOW: Doctorow develops this argument through a detailed case study of Facebook, tracing the three stages of enshittification (from user surplus to business surplus to shareholder surplus) while systematically dismantling the historical constraints that once prevented such decay, and showing how the erosion of competition, regulation, self-help, and labor power enabled the collapse of digital trust.
PURPOSE: The author’s apparent purpose is to diagnose the systemic decay of digital platforms and show how it spreads across industries in order to empower users, workers, and policymakers to reverse the trend and build a more equitable, open digital world.
MEMO
INITIAL OBSERVATION: WHAT IF there's a connection with Bory; what if tech ceos believe themselves to be the hero of the journey? This'd create a cultural narrative in which enshittification is not a failure, but a necessary stage of progress. THEN this mythos might normalize the extraction of surplus from users, workers, and business partners, treating exploitation as a form of "service" or "evolution"? #to-investigate #possible-thesis
KEY: The reading matters because it reframes enshittification not as a technical process, but as a cultural one. #cultural-processes
MY CONTRIBUTION: Doctorow's framework shows how platforms collapse through a three-stage exploitation process: user → business → shareholder. There's a connection here with Bory’s critique, which reveals that this process is culturally enabled by a narrative in which the founder is the hero, and the platform the vessel of a moral mission. When founders say, "I created this to serve humanity," they are not just describing a product; they are enacting a myth. And when that myth is accepted, enshittification becomes not just a crisis, but a natural consequence of leadership.
