Why the internet sucks (and keeps getting worse)

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you ever feel like the internet just doesn't work as well as it used to?

Or maybe you wish you could go back to the old internet? Where your search queries actually served you what you wanted, and your feeds weren't overrun by ads? Well, it's not just you - the internet IS getting worse, and platforms are getting harder to leave. But how did we get here? Journalist and tech activist Cory Doctorow joins Brittany to lay out why in his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:05.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:09.5	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
0:11.5	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
0:15.3	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:18.8	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24.5	A warning.
0:25.3	This episode contains explicit language.
0:29.3	I made up this funny, dirty word and shittification.
0:32.5	And it turns out that the secret to getting people to really engage with a technical, political,
0:39.6	and economic critique of platform capitalism is to let them swear.
0:43.6	They just love to swear.
0:48.8	Hello, hello.
0:50.3	I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:54.0	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
1:07.0	Do you ever feel like the internet just doesn't work as well as it used to?
1:12.0	Or maybe you wish you could go back to the old internet, the one where you didn't get a bunch of ads on your feeds and where your search queries actually served what you wanted?
1:21.3	Well, me too.
1:23.4	My guest this week, Corey Doctor-Roe is going to tell us his theory on why everything digital suddenly seems so crappy.
1:32.3	In shitification describes an observation about how platforms go bad.
1:36.8	It proposes a theory about why they're all going bad right now.
1:40.6	It describes why it's so hard to leave them even as they go bad.
	...

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