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Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification" audiobook routes around the very problem it critiques [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2025-08-25

Remember when Google started as a helpful librarian then became a pushy salesperson? This scenario— enshittification—is an example of how "all the internet platforms we rely on were turning into piles of shit," says Cory Doctorow, who coined the term.

And now Cory, a friend and one of the first editors of Boing Boing, has written a book called Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (October 7, 2025).

He's selling the audiobook version through Kickstarter to avoid Amazon-owned Audible's DRM straitjacket. If you buy it, you won't have to worry about the audio file getting bricked. You'll get non-enshittified audio you can listen to on any player.

From the Kickstarter:

In early August, I spent four days in the booth at Skyboat Media in Los Angeles, the wonderful studio that Wil Wheaton introduced me to in 2013 when I hired him to record my first independent audiobook, Homeland. Once again, I was directed by the award-winning, legendary audiobook director Gabrielle De Cuir. As I type these words, the book is being mastered by John Taylor Williams of Wryneck Studios, who has edited my podcast and mastered my audiobooks since the mid-2000s. It was a blast, and it's sounding great. I'll have the book in the can and ready for distribution long before the on-sale date (October 7) and I'm confident I can get the book to backers day-and-date with the hardcover release.

Listen to a sample here.

Previously:

• Subreddits planning to go dark over Reddit's initial public enshittification

• Enshittification is coming for everything

• Cory Doctorow's new book on beating big tech at its own game

• What being online is like now

• Scientists are flocking to Bluesky because of 'fewer Nazis'

• Twitter's 'for you' feed will show only paying subscribers

[END]
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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/08/25/cory-doctorows-enshittification-audiobook-routes-around-the-very-problem-it-critiques.html

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