Cory Doctorow

Timeline by topic

Topics follow the event kinds supplied in this index. Each entry links to its full record in the chronological timeline. Dates retain the precision supplied by the publisher.

Timeline

1. 1971-07-17Born in TorontobirthToronto, Canada

   Cory Efram Doctorow born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

   [5][4]
2. 1999-06 – 2003Co-founded OpenColafounded

   Free-software P2P company co-founded with John Henson and Grad Conn; sold to Open Text in summer 2003.

   [5][34]
3. 2000John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writeraward

   Won the Year 2000 Campbell Award, presented with the Hugos.

   [26][34]
4. 2001 – 2020-01-29Co-editor of Boing BoingroleBoing Boing

   Wrote for Boing Boing nearly every day for nineteen years; remains a co-owner after stepping back.

   [32][9]
5. 2002 – 2006-01EFF European Affairs CoordinatorroleElectronic Frontier Foundation

   Four years running EFF's European work; helped establish the UK Open Rights Group; left staff in January 2006 to write full-time.

   [13][5]
6. 2003-01-09Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom released under Creative Commonspublication

   First novel, published by Tor Books with the full text free under a CC license — the first novel so released.

   [14][21]
7. 2004-06-17Microsoft Research DRM talkmediaRedmond, Washington

   Delivered his canonical anti-DRM lecture at Microsoft, Redmond; the transcript became a reference document of the anti-DRM fight.

   [23][43]
8. 2006 – 2007Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public DiplomacyeducationUniversity of Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles

   One-year writing and teaching residency at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

   [5][1]
9. 2007EFF Pioneer AwardawardElectronic Frontier Foundation

   Honored for his body of work on digital civil liberties.

   [13]
10. 2008-04-29Little Brother publishedpublication

    YA novel that debuted at number 9 on the NYT children's chapter-books list — the first CC-licensed novel to make the list — later winning the Campbell Memorial, Prometheus, and Sunburst awards.

    [7][25][16]
11. 2015Rejoined EFF for the Apollo 1201 anti-DRM projectroleElectronic Frontier Foundation

    Returned as special consultant on a mission 'to eradicate DRM in our lifetime'; now listed as EFF Special Advisor.

    [13][11]
12. 2020Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fameaward

    Inducted in 2020, per his official bio.

    [1]
13. 2020-01-29Last day writing Boing Boingmilestone

    Nearly exactly nineteen years after his first day; he calls the split amicable and remains a co-owner.

    [32]
14. 2020-02-19Launched Pluralisticproject

    Solo daily publication on a POSSE model: his own tracker-free WordPress site plus full-text RSS, a plaintext newsletter, and mirrors to Mastodon, Tumblr, Medium, and then-Twitter.

    [33][32][3]
15. 2022-09-27Chokepoint Capitalism publishedpublication

    With Rebecca Giblin: how concentrated industries capture creative labor markets, and how to break the chokepoints.

    [18]
16. 2022-11-15Coined 'enshittification'milestone

    First used in 'Social Quitting' (Medium, November 15, 2022) and 'How monopoly enshittified Amazon' (Pluralistic, November 28, 2022).

    [27][28]
17. 2023Red Team Blues — start of the Marty Hench seriespublication

    Forensic-accountant thriller series: Red Team Blues (2023), The Bezzle (2024), Picks and Shovels (2025).

    [1][11]
18. 2023The Lost Cause publishedpublication

    Solarpunk climate novel from Tor Books.

    [1][11]
19. 2023-01-21'Tiktok's enshittification' / Wired 'Enshittification of TikTok'publication

    Pluralistic post of January 21 republished by Wired on January 23, 2023 — the essay that spread the word worldwide.

    [30][31]
20. 2023-09-05The Internet Con publishedpublication

    Verso hardcover: the case for seizing the means of computation through interoperability; a USA Today bestseller.

    [17]
21. 2024-01-05ADS names 'enshittification' 2023 Word of the YearawardAmerican Dialect Society

    The American Dialect Society's 34th annual vote; Macquarie Dictionary named it its 2024 Word of the Year later that year.

    [15][36]
22. 2025-10-07Enshittification (book) publishedpublication

    MCD x FSG nonfiction expanding the essay into a diagnosis and remedy; listed by Macmillan as winner of the 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction.

    [19][20]

Themes

• The enshittification lifecyclestatedphilosophy

  Platforms are good to users, then abuse users for business customers, then abuse business customers for shareholders, then die — a consequence of 'twiddling' plus two-sided markets and lock-in, enabled when competition, regulation, worker power, and self-help all fail.

  [31][30][10]
• Interoperability and the right of exitstatedbelief

  The remedy for platform power is interoperability — mandated or adversarial — because lowering switching costs lets communities leave together. 'The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.'

  [17][29][41]
• Chokepoint capitalismstatedphilosophy

  With Rebecca Giblin: monopolies and monopsonies construct 'anti-competitive flywheels' that lock in buyers and sellers and squeeze creative labor — visible from Amazon's 45% junk fees to Spotify's ghost artists — and labor must batter the chokepoints back.

  [18][28]
• Against digital locksstatedbelief

  Two decades of anti-DRM advocacy: the 2004 Microsoft talk, 'Doctorow's Law,' the Apollo 1201 project. A lock on something you own, without the key, is never for your benefit — and DRM hands platforms the legal teeth that make enshittification enforceable.

  [23][13][24]
• Free circulation as publishing practicestatedmethod

  Since 2003 every trade book has carried a free Creative Commons text on craphound.com. He treats copying as promotion: the enemy of the midlist writer is obscurity, not piracy — a discipline he has maintained for over twenty years.

  [21][22][1]
• POSSE: post own site, share everywherestatedmethod

  Pluralistic is engineered to be un-twiddleable: a self-hosted, tracker-free WordPress site, full-text RSS, plaintext newsletter, and mirrors on every platform — designed so no intermediary can decide whether his readers see his work.

  [32][3][33]
• Fiction as policy laboratoryinferredmethod

  His novels and his advocacy share one research program — reputation economies seeded OpenCola, Little Brother dramatizes surveillance-state pushback, Marty Hench turns forensic accounting into thriller mechanics — suggesting the fiction functions as scenario-testing for the politics.

  [34][1][16]
• Against 'great forces' determinismstatedphilosophy

  He rejects both tech-genius mythology and doom: the enshittocene came from named people's reversible decisions, and the goal is not the good old days but 'the good new days' — optimism framed as organizing rather than sentiment.

  [10][41]
• Criticism as a working craftreportedpractice

  Press coverage frames him less as a pundit than as a practitioner: daily essays, books, podcasts, standards work, and activism interlock so that each column is both diagnosis and recruitment for systemic fixes.

  [35][40][39]

Works and projects

• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdombookpublished2003-01-09

  Debut novel (Tor Books); first novel released under a Creative Commons license, relicensed BY-NC-SA in February 2004.

  [14][21][22]
• Little Brotherbookpublished2008-04-29

  YA techno-thriller; NYT bestseller; won the 2009 Campbell Memorial, Prometheus, White Pine, and Sunburst awards; Hugo and Nebula nominee.

  [16][7][25]
• Homelandbookpublished2013

  Second Little Brother novel.

  [1][11]
• Walkawaybookpublished2017

  Solarpunk post-scarcity novel (Tor/Head of Zeus).

  [1][11]
• Attack Surfacebookpublished2020

  Third Little Brother novel, following counterterrorism contractor Masha.

  [1][11]
• How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalismbookpublished2021

  Nonfiction (OneZero/Medium) arguing monopoly, not ads alone, is the core harm.

  [11][1]
• Chokepoint Capitalismbookpublished2022-09-27

  With Rebecca Giblin (Beacon Press US; Scribe ANZ/UK): monopoly and monopsony capture of creative labor markets.

  [18]
• Red Team Bluesbookpublished2023

  First Marty Hench forensic-accountant thriller (Tor).

  [1][11]
• The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computationbookpublished2023-09-05

  Verso; the interoperability case against Big Tech; USA Today bestseller.

  [17]
• The Lost Causebookpublished2023

  Solarpunk climate-transition novel (Tor).

  [1][11]
• The Bezzlebookpublished2024

  Second Marty Hench novel (Tor).

  [1][11]
• Picks and Shovelsbookpublished2025

  Third Marty Hench novel — the series' origin story (Tor).

  [1]
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About Itbookpublished2025-10-07

  MCD x FSG nonfiction expanding the thesis into case studies and remedies; 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction per Macmillan.

  [19][20][37]
• The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AIbookin_progress2026-06

  Announced on his January 2026 bio as his next book (June 2026); publication status after that date is not captured in the cited record.

  [1]
• Pluralisticprojectongoing2020-02-19

  His daily solo publication: ad-free, tracker-free, full-text RSS and plaintext newsletter, mirrored across platforms under the POSSE model.

  [3][33][32]
• Boing Boing (co-editor, 2001-2020)projectcompleted

  Nineteen years of near-daily posts on the blog he co-edited; he remains a co-owner. His author archive runs to roughly 2,700 pages.

  [9][32]
• UK Open Rights Group (co-founder)projectcompleted

  British digital-rights organization he helped establish while EFF's European Affairs Coordinator.

  [11][5][1]

Appearances

• 'Enshittification': how we got the internet no one asked forThe Guardian podcast2025-11-24

  with Nosheen Iqbal

  Guardian interview tying the book to the daily experience of platform decay.

  • audio: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2025/nov/24/enshittification-how-we-got-the-internet-no-one-asked-for-podcast
  [42]
• Fighting EnshittificationEFF Podcast2024-06

  with Cindy Cohn, Jason Kelley

  EFF's Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley on the enshittification analysis and the interoperability remedy.

  • audio: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/podcast-episode-fighting-enshittification
  [41]
• Cory Doctorow wants to wipe away enshittification of techThe Register2024-01-30

  Interview on the causes of enshittification and the dormant competition law needed to reverse it.

  • article: https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2024/01/30/cory-doctorow-wants-to-wipe-away-enshittification-of-tech/713793
  [40]
• Platform capitalism and the curse of 'enshittification'ABC Radio National — Future Tense2023-10-29

  Feature interview on why the digital world feels exploitative and how it might be improved; originally broadcast July 2, 2023.

  • audio: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/futuretense/cory-doctorow-enshittification-platform-capitalism/102953478
  [39]
• TikTok Isn't For Creators AnymoreSlate ICYMI podcast2023-01-28

  with Rachelle Hampton

  Interview on the Wired enshittification essay, platform lifecycles, and regulation.

  • audio: https://slate.com/podcasts/icymi/2023/01/cory-doctorow-how-online-platforms-die
  [38]
• DEF CON enshittification speechDEF CON2023

  Speech on the enshittification thesis at the 2023 DEF CON infosec conference, cited by The Register's interview.

  [40]
• Microsoft Research DRM talkMicrosoft Research, Redmond2004-06-17

  His canonical anti-DRM lecture, hosted by the company whose DRM strategy it attacked; Microsoft still hosts the recording.

  • video: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/drm-and-msft-a-product-no-customer-wants/
  • transcript: https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
  [23][43]

Relations

• OpenColafounded1999-06 – 2003

  Co-founded the free-software peer-to-peer company in June 1999; sold to Open Text Corporation in summer 2003.

  [5][34]
• John Hensoncofounder

  OpenCola co-founder.

  [5][34]
• Grad Conncofounder

  OpenCola co-founder.

  [5][34]
• Open Rights Groupfounded

  Helped establish the UK digital-rights organization while serving as EFF's European Affairs Coordinator.

  [13][5][11]
• Electronic Frontier Foundationemployed by2002 –

  European Affairs Coordinator for four years until January 2006; rejoined in 2015 as Apollo 1201 special consultant and is now an EFF Special Advisor.

  [13][11][12][5]
• Boing Boingemployed by2001 – 2020-01-29

  Wrote nearly every day for nineteen years as co-editor, 2001 to January 29, 2020; remains a co-owner.

  [32][9][33]
• Rebecca Giblincollaborated

  Co-wrote Chokepoint Capitalism (Beacon Press US; Scribe ANZ/UK, 2022).

  [18]
• University of Southern Californiamember of2006 – 2007

  2006–07 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy — a year of writing and teaching residency in Los Angeles.

  [5][1]
• Cornell Universitymember of

  AD White Professor-at-Large, per his bio.

  [1]
• MIT Media Labmember of

  Research Affiliate, per his bio.

  [1]
• The Open Universitymember of

  Visiting Professor of Computer Science; also an honorary doctorate in computer science.

  [1]
• University of North Carolinamember of

  Visiting Professor of Practice at the School of Library and Information Science, per his bio.

  [1]
• Rachelle Hamptoninterviewed by

  Slate ICYMI interview about the Wired enshittification essay, January 2023.

  [38]
• Cindy Cohninterviewed by

  EFF podcast episode on the enshittification analysis and the interoperability remedy.

  [41]
• Jason Kelleyinterviewed by

  EFF podcast episode on the enshittification analysis and the interoperability remedy.

  [41]
• Nosheen Iqbalinterviewed by

  Guardian podcast interview tying the book to the daily experience of platform decay, November 2025.

  [42]

Claims

• factCory Efram Doctorow was born on July 17, 1971, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; his bio notes he now lives in Los Angeles and London.[5][4][1]
• factHe holds Canadian, British, and American nationality.[5]
• factIn June 1999 he co-founded the free-software peer-to-peer company OpenCola with John Henson and Grad Conn; it was sold to Open Text Corporation in the summer of 2003.[5][34]
• factHe won the Year 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, presented alongside the Hugo Awards.[26][34][5]
• factHe began writing for Boing Boing around the start of 2001 — he describes his last day, January 29, 2020, as nearly exactly nineteen years after his first day — and became co-editor of the site.[32][9]
• factJanuary 29, 2020 was his last day writing Boing Boing. He calls the departure 'unplanned (but overdue and amicable),' and remains a co-owner and reader but is no longer involved in the site.[32][33]
• factOn February 19, 2020 — three weeks after leaving Boing Boing — he launched Pluralistic, a solo, ad-free, tracker-free daily blog run on a POSSE ('Post Own Site, Share Everywhere') model mirrored to a newsletter, RSS, Mastodon, Tumblr, Medium, and (at the time) Twitter.[33][32][3]
• factHe worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years as its European Affairs Coordinator, helping establish the UK Open Rights Group, before leaving the staff in January 2006 to write full-time.[13][5][11]
• factEFF gave him its Pioneer Award in 2007 for his body of work on digital civil liberties.[13]
• factHe was the 2006-2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, including a year of writing and teaching residency in Los Angeles.[5][1]
• factIn 2015 he rejoined EFF as special consultant to the Apollo 1201 Project, a mission 'to eradicate DRM in our lifetime'; he is currently listed as an EFF Special Advisor.[13][11]
• factHis first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Tor Books, 2003), was released January 9, 2003 with the full text free under a Creative Commons license — widely described, including by Doctorow and Creative Commons, as the first novel released under a CC license.[14][21][5]
• factIn February 2004 he relicensed Down and Out under the less restrictive Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, explicitly permitting non-commercial derivative works such as translations, radio plays, and fan fiction.[22][5]
• factOn June 17, 2004 he delivered his 'Microsoft Research DRM talk' in Redmond — 'Greetings fellow pirates!' — arguing DRM systems don't work and are bad for society, business, and artists; Microsoft Research still hosts the recording.[23][43][24]
• factLittle Brother was published by Tor on April 29, 2008, debuted at number 9 on the New York Times children's chapter-books bestseller list, and won the 2009 John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the 2009 Prometheus Award, the White Pine Award, the Sunburst Award (young adult), and the Golden Duck Hal Clement Award; it was a Hugo and Nebula nominee.[7][16][25][5]
• factHe coined 'enshittification' in November 2022 — first in 'Social Quitting' (published on Medium November 15, 2022, later his January 2023 Locus column) and then in the Pluralistic post 'How monopoly enshittified Amazon' (November 28, 2022) — before the 'Tiktok's enshittification' post of January 21, 2023, republished by Wired on January 23, 2023, made it famous.[27][28][30][31][6]
• factHis canonical formulation: '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. I call this enshittification.'[30][31][15]
• factOn January 5, 2024, the American Dialect Society selected 'enshittification' as its 2023 Word of the Year in its 34th annual vote; Australia's Macquarie Dictionary followed by naming it its 2024 Word of the Year.[15][36]
• factThe Oxford English Dictionary attests scattered earlier uses of 'enshittification' dating to 2013; Doctorow's November 2022 coinage was independent, and he is credited as the term's popularizer.[6][8]
• factChokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back, co-written with law scholar Rebecca Giblin, was published September 27, 2022 by Beacon Press in the US and Scribe in Australia and the UK.[18]
• factThe Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation was published in hardcover by Verso on September 5, 2023 (paperback September 3, 2024) and was a USA Today bestseller.[17]
• factEnshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It was published October 7, 2025 by MCD x FSG; Macmillan lists it as winner of the 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction.[19][20][37]
• factHis books include the Little Brother YA series (Little Brother 2008, Homeland 2013, Attack Surface 2020), the solarpunk novels Walkaway (2017) and The Lost Cause (2023), the Marty Hench forensic-accountant series (Red Team Blues 2023, The Bezzle 2024, Picks and Shovels 2025), and nonfiction including How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (2021), Chokepoint Capitalism (2022), The Internet Con (2023), and Enshittification (2025).[1][11]
• factHis official bio, updated January 2026, lists his next book as The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (June 2026).[1]
• factHis bio lists him as a Cornell University AD White Professor-at-Large, an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at the Open University, and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina's School of Library and Information Science, with honorary doctorates in laws from York University and in computer science from the Open University.[1]
• factHe was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2020, received the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award in 2022, and the Media Ecology Association's Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2024.[1][17]
• factHis Boing Boing author archive spans roughly 2,700 paginated pages of posts — tens of thousands of items written across nineteen years.[9]
• stated beliefDoctorow argues enshittification is not individual greed alone but a structural failure: platforms decay when the disciplines that once constrained them — competition, regulation, worker power, and interoperable 'self-help' — collapse, letting executives 'twiddle' the knobs that shift value from users to business customers to shareholders.[31][10][40]
• stated beliefHe holds that interoperability — including 'adversarial' or 'guerrilla' interop built without permission — is the shovel-ready remedy for platform power: forcing Big Tech to interoperate tears down walled gardens and lets users leave without losing their communities.[17][41][29]
• stated belief'Doctorow's Law': 'Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit' — his axiom on DRM, which he has pressed on EFF's behalf for two decades.[13][23]
• stated beliefHe believes giving away the full text of his books under permissive licenses builds rather than cannibalizes a writing career — the 2003 'grand experiment' with Down and Out 'worked out very satisfactorily,' and every book since carries a free download on craphound.com.[21][22][1]
• stated beliefWith Rebecca Giblin he argues we live under 'chokepoint capitalism': corporations build insurmountable barriers to competition to seize value that should go to creative workers, and remedies run from transparency rights and collective action to radical interoperability and contract terminations.[18]
• stated beliefHe argues the laws needed to break Big Tech already exist — the Sherman, Clayton, and FTC Acts — but have gone unenforced; he wants bans on predatory pricing and predatory acquisitions and 'muscular' privacy statutes.[40][37]
• stated beliefHe insists individual consumer choices cannot fix enshittification: 'Systemic problems just don't have individual solutions' — which is why he channels readers toward collective action through EFF.[12]
• stated beliefHe rejects great-man and deterministic accounts of tech history: the enshittocene was produced by 'specific decisions made by real people; decisions we can reverse and people whose names and pitchfork sizes we can learn.'[10]
• stated beliefHe chose a self-hosted site mirrored everywhere — rather than platform 'kremlinology' — because the ability to leave a service without penalty is 'the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.'[32][29]
• stated beliefHe describes himself to his hosts at Microsoft as 'not a lawyer — a kind of mouthpiece/activist type,' and frames his activism and fiction as one practice: 'I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer.'[23]
• patternAcross two publications and twenty-five years he has maintained a near-daily public writing practice: roughly nineteen years of daily Boing Boing posts followed, after a three-week pause, by six-plus years of Pluralistic essays published five or more days per week.[32][33][9]
• patternFrom Down and Out (2003) through his latest releases, every trade book is paired with a free Creative Commons download on craphound.com — a two-decade publishing discipline that treats free circulation as promotion rather than piracy.[21][1][25]
• patternHis fiction and activism form one loop: OpenCola's software grew partly out of Down and Out's reputation-economy ideas, and novels from Little Brother to the Marty Hench series dramatize the same surveillance, DRM, monopoly, and forensic-analysis themes he argues as an activist.[34][16][1]
• patternHe repeatedly occupies insider platforms — a Microsoft auditorium, the Financial Times, Cornell, MIT — to deliver anti-establishment arguments, a pattern visible from the 2004 DRM talk through the 2024 FT enshittification column.[23][10][1]
• patternHe has a sustained habit of minting diagnostic vocabulary that escapes into public use: 'enshittification,' 'chokepoint capitalism' (with Giblin), 'social quitting,' and the 'enshittocene' all originated in his essays and columns and recur in press coverage worldwide.[15][18][27][36]
• speculationThe timing of his Boing Boing exit — weeks before the pandemic made owned channels decisive — plausibly reflected accumulated strain with platform-mediated publishing; beyond his own 'overdue and amicable' account, the motive is not publicly documented.[32][33]
• speculationThe speed of 'enshittification's' spread likely owes something to his deliberate distribution design — the same word seeded simultaneously through Pluralistic, Wired, Medium, Twitter, and Mastodon — though the ADS record credits the word's own memetic fitness.[15][31][32]
• speculationHis lifecycle model predicts a fourth stage — 'then they die' — yet platforms like Facebook persist in a degraded state; whether terminal enshittification or indefinite decay is the true endgame remains an open empirical question the cited record does not settle.[31][35][10]

Sources

1. About Cory Doctorowcraphound.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   The subject's official biography page, last updated January 2026; self-reported.

2. Cory Doctorow's craphound.comcraphound.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
3. Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory DoctorowPluralistic · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   His daily blog since February 2020: 'No trackers, no ads. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.'

4. Cory Doctorow (Q110436)Wikidata · reference · dataset · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
5. Cory DoctorowWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
6. EnshittificationWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Notes OED attestations of the word back to 2013; credits Doctorow with popularizing it in 2022.

7. Title: Little Brother — ISFDBInternet Speculative Fiction Database · reference · dataset · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
8. enshittification — etymology, origin and meaningEtymonline · reference · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
9. Cory Doctorow, Author at Boing BoingBoing Boing · archive · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   His Boing Boing author archive, running to roughly 2,700 paginated pages of posts.

10. 'Enshittification' is coming for absolutely everything (FT capture)Financial Times · 2024 · archive · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Archived capture of his Financial Times column of 8 February 2024.

11. Cory Doctorow | Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    EFF staff bio: 'EFF Special Advisor'; former European director.

12. Find Cory Doctorow | Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
13. Cory Doctorow Rejoins EFF to Eradicate DRM EverywhereElectronic Frontier Foundation · 2015 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    EFF press release: rejoined as special consultant to the Apollo 1201 Project; records his four years as European Affairs Coordinator and his 2007 EFF Pioneer Award.

14. Doctorow's Down and Out Released TodayCreative Commons · 2003 · primary record · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    CC's own record of the novel's release under a CC license.

15. 2023 Word of the Year Is 'Enshittification'American Dialect Society · 2024 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
16. Little Brother — MacmillanTor Books / Macmillan · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
17. The Internet Con by Cory Doctorow — Penguin Random HouseVerso / Penguin Random House · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Hardcover published September 5, 2023; paperback September 3, 2024.

18. Chokepoint Capitalism — Beacon PressBeacon Press · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
19. Enshittification — MCD x FSGMCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
20. Enshittification (audio edition) — MacmillanMacmillan · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Carries the honor 'Winner of the 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction'; on sale October 7, 2025.

21. Welcome to the site (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom)craphound.com · 2003 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
22. Down and Out relicensed todaycraphound.com · 2004 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
23. Microsoft Research DRM talkcraphound.com · 2004 · first person · transcript · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Canonical plaintext of his anti-DRM talk given at Microsoft, Redmond.

24. My 2004 Microsoft DRM Talkcraphound.com · 2024 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
25. Little Brother goes into its fourth week on the NYT Bestseller list!craphound.com · 2008 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
26. The Campbell Award!craphound.com · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    His note on winning the Year 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

27. Social QuittingMedium · 2022 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    First published use of 'enshittification'; later ran as his January 2023 Locus column.

28. How monopoly enshittified AmazonPluralistic · 2022 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
29. Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Social QuittingLocus Magazine · 2023 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
30. Tiktok's enshittificationPluralistic · 2023 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
31. The 'Enshittification' of TikTokWired · 2023 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
32. Pluralistic is three. Time flies when you're writing blogs.Medium · 2023 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Records that January 29, 2020 was his last day at Boing Boing and explains the POSSE model behind Pluralistic.

33. Pluralistic: 19 Feb 2022 — now we are twoPluralistic · 2022 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Second-anniversary post calling his Boing Boing departure 'unplanned (but overdue and amicable)'.

34. Taking a Page from Science FictionInc. Magazine · 2001 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
35. Users, advertisers — we are all trapped in the 'enshittification' of the internetThe Guardian · 2023 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
36. 'What many of us feel': why 'enshittification' is Macquarie Dictionary's word of the yearThe Guardian · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
37. Enshittification — Kirkus ReviewsKirkus Reviews · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
38. TikTok Isn't For Creators Anymore (ICYMI)Slate · 2023 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Rachelle Hampton interviews Doctorow about the Wired enshittification essay.

39. Platform capitalism and the curse of 'enshittification'ABC Radio National — Future Tense · 2023 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Feature interview; original broadcast July 2, 2023.

40. Cory Doctorow wants to wipe away enshittification of techThe Register · 2024 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
41. Podcast Episode: Fighting EnshittificationElectronic Frontier Foundation · 2024 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley interview Doctorow.

42. 'Enshittification': how we got the internet no one asked forThe Guardian · 2025 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Nosheen Iqbal interviews Doctorow.

43. DRM and MSFT: a product no customer wantsMicrosoft Research · 2004 · archive · video · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Microsoft's own recording of the DRM talk.

Coverage and method

Scope as of

2026-09-17T03:00:00Z

Coverage supplied by the publisher

• biography
• work
• beliefs
• philosophy
• projects
• media

Method

public-person-index-v1

Tool

soulscrape

Contributors

• Soulscrape research workflow

Assembled

2026-09-17T03:00:00Z

Human review

No review status or review date is supplied. An assembly timestamp does not establish human review.

Open questions

See the supplied open questions

Open questions

• His exact first day at Boing Boing is not pinned down: he describes January 29, 2020 as 'nearly exactly 19 years after my first day,' so the start is early 2001 but the specific date is not in the cited record.
• Down and Out's release date is split: Creative Commons and craphound date the CC release to January 9, 2003, while Wikipedia's infobox gives February 1, 2003 — probably the print-on-shelves date versus the free-text release.
• Whether The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI shipped on its announced June 2026 schedule is not covered by the cited record (his bio, last updated January 2026, still lists it as 'next').
• The OED attests 'enshittification' uses back to 2013; how much weight to give those scattered earlier uses versus Doctorow's independent November 2022 coinage is a framing question, not a settled one.
• The extent of his current co-ownership stake and formal status at Boing Boing — he calls it 'an indefinite, unpaid sabbatical' — is not documented beyond his own account.
• His DRM-free audiobook self-publishing operation (Kickstarter campaigns for titles like Attack Surface and Picks and Shovels) is well known but not covered by any source catalogued here.