Cory Doctorow: Enshittification

This is not a glitch. This is the creeping decay of the platforms we rely on, and what it might take to reclaim our digital future. Services degrade, platforms shift, and what once felt open and useful becomes harder to recognise. ‘ Enshittification ’, a term coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow , names what is already happening. In this talk, presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre, Doctoror outlines how major platforms like Facebook, Amazon and X are structured to follow this trajectory. First, users are drawn in with convenience and connection. Then, advertisers are invited into the system. Finally, the experience itself is stripped back in the pursuit of profit. Doctorow joins host Professor Lisa M. Given , Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University to map the collapse of the utopic early internet promise, the systems that sustain it, and what it might still take to redeem a more open digital future.