THE FILM
Enshittification follows writer and activist Cory Doctorow as the term he coined sparks a global conversation about what’s gone wrong with the internet — and what we can do to fix it.
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
— CORY DOCTOROW
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ABOUT THE FILM
Enshittification is a feature documentary about the steady degradation of the internet — and the human cost of platforms that have turned against the people who made them thrive. At the heart of Enshittification is a deceptively simple question: what happened to the internet we were promised? The film builds on our shared, everyday experience: social media that feels abusive, digital marketplaces that exploit creators and workers, and online spaces that seem to worsen the longer we use them.
Enshittification follows Cory Doctorow as he takes this idea into the world — speaking internationally, engaging with policymakers, technologists, creators, and audiences, and helping to lead a growing public conversation about what has gone wrong and what might come next. The film weaves this verité access together with the rich human stories and case studies from across the digital economy that reveal how platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google systematically reshaped themselves in ways that benefit capital while degrading trust, labour, and creativity.
This concept is “enshittification”, a term coined by writer and activist Cory Doctorow. Services begin by serving users, then shift to extracting value from them in the service of business customers, and finally prioritise shareholder profit at the expense of everyone else. The term went viral because it named something millions of people could already sense but had no language for — giving shape to a widespread feeling of loss and betrayal.
Through a layered combination of verité, animation, graphics, found footage, and design-led storytelling, the film pulls back the curtain on how the internet was lost. Crucially, it also shows that this decline is not accidental or inevitable. Enshittification is structural — the product of monopoly power, lock-in, surveillance economics, and regulatory failure — and therefore something that can be challenged.