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Big Tech’s regulatory capture means that we have arrived at a juncture where copyright affords few rights to creators who make new works, and substantially more rights to a store whose sole contribution to those works is hosting a file server and payment processor that allows the public to buy the works, which gives Amazon not only a 30 percent cut of the purchase price but also the perpetual, legally enforceable right to veto the creators in their relations with the audience making those purchases.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 150)

An app is a website wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to install an ad blocker or any other modification that makes the product work better for you at the expense of the company’s shareholders.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 146)

Enshittification is when you combine the banality of evil with an internet-connected device and a federal law that criminalizes doing anything with that device that the manufacturer dislikes.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 141)

The [sell-side platform] and [demand-side platform] send all this information about what kinds of users are sought and what kinds of users’ attention is available to a “marketplace” that conducts eyeblink-fast auctions where advertisers bid to buy slots on pages that are currently being assembled.

That long delay after you reach a web page but before it shows up in your browser? That’s the “surveillance lag,” the delay while all those auctions are concluded. Web publishers design their pages so that nothing loads until the ads are ready; otherwise you might get the information you’re looking for and close the tab before the ad is shown to you.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 129)

A company can yield to the temptation to do only those things that are technically possible. Likewise, before a corporation can be corralled into a course of action that is adverse to its users, that course of action must be possible for the corporation.

You can’t be tempted or forced to do something impossible. The instant Adobe moved its software to the cloud and eliminated the non-subscription versions of its apps, it put a gun on the mantelpiece. It was only a matter of time until someone opened fire on Adobe’s customers with that gun.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 98)

So tech workers constituted a final bulwark against their bosses’ enshittificatory impulses. Even as other constraints weakened, crumbled, and fell, tech workers valiantly held the line for their users.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 67)

Companies can’t enshittify to their heart’s content because it wouldn’t work. Workers would quit over low pay. Suppliers would stop shipping product over unpaid invoices. Customers would balk at high prices.

In other words, companies don’t enshittify when they can’t enshittify.

Which means that companies start to enshittify when they can.

In other words, anytime you see good products produced ethically and offered at fair prices, it’s because the world from which those products emerged punishes cheating: low quality, poor labor practices, and high prices all cost the company more than it stands to make from indulging them.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 57)

Enshittification—deliberately worsening a service—is only possible when people value that service to begin with. Enshittification is a game of seeking an equilibrium between how much people like the thing that locks them to the service (often, that’s other people) and how much they hate the management of that service.

— Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow (Page 51)

“Who’s your favorite James Bond?” “That’s a better question,” says Connie. “Pierce Brosnan. I’d climb that man like a tree.” “Agreed,” says Ron. “Except the bit about the tree.”

— The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club, #5) (Page 285)