How to dis-enshittify the world, with Cory Doctorow

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Does Cory Doctorow even need an introduction at this point? If you spend any amount of time at all online, then you’ve encountered his work, his ideas, his words. But the ultra-prolific science fiction writer, digital rights activist, and coiner of the “Enshittification” verbiage that’s become universal shorthand for the degradation of the internet (and, to an extent, everything else), has been especially ubiquitous lately. His book-length treatment of the Enshittification thesis [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/] was just published by FSG last month, and he’s been on the press tour war path. And good! “Enshittification” is vintage Doctorow—it’s sharp, frisky, freewheeling, and erudite; call it elevated, book-length blogging, perhaps. It’s also going to be the book I recommend to folks interested in getting into Cory’s nonfiction work; it so ably ties together the many strands of his thought and his various crusades into a manifesto of sorts. And, naturally, it persuasively makes the case for how big tech and its monopolistic platforms have conquered the internet, systematically siphoned it of vitality and utility to placate shareholders, and left an enshittified husk of what the web, and the world, ought to be, in its wake. So naturally, I wanted to have Cory on Blood in the Machine: The Podcast to discuss it all. Cory has given approximately 4,000 interviews for this book and topic at this point (I recommend the New York Times mag profile [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/books/review/cory-doctorow-enshittification.html] for a look at his life and career, as well as his backyard, where he throws some great parties). So I thought I’d pick his brain specifically on how he thinks workers—tech workers and otherwise—can help turn the tides of enshittification. My instinct was to call this “deshittifying” the web, but Cory prefers “dis-enshittification”, which, fair enough. Regardless, we cover a lot of fertile ground, and field some good questions and comments from the chat (thanks to everyone who popped in when we were live). Cory and I don’t agree on everything—copyright law in particular is a point of contention—but there is a lot of food for thought here, if I do say so myself. We cover why tech workers are both woefully under-organized and potentially powerful vectors for change, AI, sectoral bargaining, and more. I always have a good time chatting with Cory; I hope you enjoy our conversation, too. Which reminds me: If you do enjoy chats and recordings like this, consider chipping in a few bucks a month so I can continue doing them. It takes time and energy to research and write these posts, to schedule interviews, and to find the adequate angle at which to prop up my phone on a stack of books on my desk so I can record the thing. Thanks to all those who already to pitch in; you make the whole BLOOD project possible. Man, this was a busy week. On top of my chat with Cory, I also joined host Alexis Madrigal and fellow tech writer Charlie Warzel on KQED’s Forum; you can listen to that here [https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101911907/if-we-are-in-an-ai-bubble-what-happens-if-it-pops]. I also joined Lauren Goode and Michael Calore on WIRED’s Uncanny Valley podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-four-criteria-for-a-tech-bubble/id266391367?i=1000735566122], to discuss the AI bubble piece I wrote for the magazine last month [https://www.wired.com/story/ai-bubble-will-burst/]. I also spoke with CBC’s Nora Young about the invisible labor that makes AI systems possible; that article is out here [https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ai-economy-human-labour-data-annotation-fine-tuning-jobs-9.6967918]. Okay! That should bring us about up to speed. Hope everyone had a solid weekend and maybe even found a little respite. I, for one, I might add, had a fantastic weekend. The conference on New Luddism at Columbnia was a smashing success. I’ll have more to share soon, but the event brought together academics, journalists, labor organizers, policy heads, and student activists. I met so many folks doing great work in the space, the conversations were stimulating, and it was quite possible, for a few hours, to glimpse a future where our systems are no longer fueled by relentless worker exploitation and surveillance, or beholden to big tech and the oligarchs that operate it. I’ll write a longer debrief on all of the above soon, but for now: great stuff. A shout to the organizers for knocking it out of the park. On Saturday, Paris Marx, Edward Ongweso Jr, Jathan Sadowski and I held a Luddite Tribunal before an absolutely packed house at the Starr Bar in Brooklyn. More on that before long, too, but it was just such good fun. It was kind of like the conference, in fact, just with more hammers. Thanks so much to everyone who came out, joined the chaos, and brought tech to submit for judgement. I’ve got a lot of things cooking for this week, so I’ll end here for now. More soon, thanks for reading—and hammers up. Get full access to Blood in the Machine at www.bloodinthemachine.com/subscribe [https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Meet the new Luddites rebelling against big tech

The year has been marked by the rise of open, widespread [https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/its-open-season-for-refusing-ai], and increasingly spirited backlash [https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-the-ai-backlash-has-turned-violent] to AI, data centers, and big tech. As such, the stage was well set for the Summer of Ludd, a series of protests, performances, talks, and meetups in New York City organized around the idea that we need to get people into the streets and break Silicon Valley’s grip over our lives. There were mock trials of big tech, plays staged detailing the Luddites’ true origin story, marches, and teach-ins. By just about any count, it was a smashing success; the event drew favorable coverage everywhere from the Washington Post [https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/trends/2026/06/22/activists-launch-irl-push-tech-free-summer/] to WIRED [https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/] to the Economist [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/07/09/rise-of-the-gen-z-luddite]. It was even, amusingly, transmuted into a clickbait MSN listicle [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/10-things-to-know-about-the-luddite-festival/ss-AA27nQX2] produced to maximize on-screen engagement. I sadly couldn’t be there on the ground for the proceedings, so I did the next best thing: I invited the Luddite documentarian, organizer, and activist Amanda Hanna-McLeer, who was there for the festivities, and who directed the Luddite Recreations play that ran throughout the week in Tompkins Square Park, to give us the rundown. Hanna-Mcleer has been documenting the youth-led Luddite movement for years now [https://www.amanda-hanna-mcleer.com/]; as she explains, it started with the Luddite Clubs students formed to reject social media and organize offline activities in high schools and colleges across the nation. In many ways, the Summer of Ludd is a culmination of that movement thus far. It also, however, Hanna-McCleer notes, feels like the beginning of something else, something even bigger. We get into all of that: the size of the crowds, the enthusiasm among so many people have for logging off and plugging in, and how the people who encounter the new Luddites are increasingly open to movements that challenge big tech. One simple reflection of all this is the positive news coverage I mentioned above. I can comfortably say from my experience as a tech journalist, that even five to ten years ago, these kids and activists would have been mocked and scorned. Instead, most people immediately get where they’re coming from. Their message about fighting big tech, anyway, if not the gnome hats. Progress is progress. Events like the Summer of Ludd—which not only protest big tech but proactively envision an alternative, participatory future; one grounded in community, commonality, and sociality—are dovetailing with data center protests, AI-critical labor movements, and students (and everyone else!) roundly booing AI. It does feel like the ground is shifting in some real and interesting ways, and that new spaces are opening up. Here’s to hoping. Some related reading: Now for some other stories about our rapidly unfolding dystopia that caught my eye this week, and about those fighting to keep it at bay. BUT FIRST, before we move on: Today’s edition of BITM is sponsored by DeleteMe [https://joindeleteme.com/?utm_source=influencer&utm_campaign=LUDDITES&coupon=LUDDITES], whose mission is hunting down and, yes, deleting the data that brokers have hoovered up about you over the years and made available to their clients. DeleteMe is Wirecutter’s top-rated data removal service [https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-data-removal-services/], and I’ve used it myself, to locate and eradicate scores of sites that were listing and selling personal info like my home address and phone number. If you’re interested in taking DeleteMe for a spin, sign up here [https://joindeleteme.com/LUDDITES] and use the code LUDDITES for 20% off an annual subscription. OK! Onwards. A treasury report drafted by Trump officials outlines fears of the AI bubble bursting This is a bit of news that seemed to glance the surface without breaking through. I didn’t see this too widely reported, but thought it was pretty telling nonetheless. The report isn’t public, but was obtained by journalists; including those at NOTUS [https://www.notus.org/economy/treasury-internal-report-warning-dangers-ai-bubble], who report that This draft report inside the Treasury Department is set to warn of the risks posed by the artificial intelligence market, likening key aspects of it to the dotcom bubble that upended the U.S. economy when it burst in the early 2000s. Career Treasury analysts found that AI firms are more deeply entrenched in the U.S. economy than their dotcom predecessors and pose significant risk to the entire system if financial conditions change, productivity goals are missed or various choke points stymie growth. A downturn in the AI market would send shockwaves throughout the entire economic ecosystem, the analysts wrote. What’s so notable isn’t really the message, which should be pretty familiar to critics of the AI bubble by now, but the way that it breaks from the narrative put forward by the Trump administration, which is, to the public, endlessly optimistic about AI’s transformational power. Waymo called the police on teen riders who were playing with a toy gun and allegedly drinking The Waymo stopped, detained the kids until the cops could arrive on the scene, which they did, and then approached the vehicle with guns drawn. 404 Media reports [https://www.404media.co/waymo-called-police-on-teens-san-mateo/]: On Monday, the San Mateo Police Department posted on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/CityofSanMateoPolice/posts/pfbid0oZgz37UUtDyNHAKPJMeKVGe16ZAm4xc4DJu8mGFNizL5NBYxSHMYgxFSoZ94h9JZl]: “Parents do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!” The police department continued in the post: “Two 15 year olds up to trouble in a Waymo this afternoon were detained after Waymo reported they were drinking and shooting from the vehicle. After calling us and stopping the car, we were able to safely remove both subjects and determined they were shooting Orbeez from the car as they sipped on afternoon libations while being chauffeured around town in the driverless vehicle.” Pretty grim stuff! And your regular reminder that Waymos are continuously surveilling both the inside and the outside of their vehicles, collecting data that is recorded and made available to authorities, and now, apparently, proactively intervening when an automated system or someone at Google decides a criminal act has occurred—and putting teens at legitimate risk of being shot for being dumb teens. It seems only a matter of when, not if, we see an interaction like this that ends more tragically. Big data center resistance news: The largest-ever proposed data center, a 2,100 acre, 22 million square-foot facility slated for Prince William County in Virginia, has officially been cancelled [https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/largest-data-center-project-ever-190000713.html]. The project failed after receiving sustained pushback from a local historical society—it would have been built on top of a famous Civil War battlefield and the graves of all the soldiers killed there—and a local homeowner’s association. Meanwhile, all of Scotland is considering a “sweeping” data center moratorium. The Guardian reports [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/07/scotland-could-freeze-datacentre-projects-in-challenge-to-uks-ai-strategy]: Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)’s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/scotland]. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider. It could apply to all datacentre projects that have not yet received planning permission… The move emerged as the Guardian on Monday revealed how the developer and the UK government misrepresented the technical feasibility of a massive datacentre hub [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/06/lanarkshire-scotland-ai-datacentre-project-renewable-energy] in Scotland in the face of community fears that their land would be subsumed by the development, and promised jobs and investments would never materialise. This site, in Lanarkshire, was to be an “AI growth zone”, a key element of the government’s strategy to build national AI infrastructure in rural areas of Britain. The SNP’s resolution came amid signs of a wider upheaval in the UK’s AI strategy as Andy Burnham prepares to replace Keir Starmer in Downing Street. He is reportedly considering a review of several critical planks of Starmer’s technology policy. The Guardian previously reported that an “AI growth zone” in North Tyneside was more of a publicity stunt than a viable project [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/04/openai-apparent-failure-visit-key-site-questions-stargate-uk-project], despite being supposedly backed by the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI. Several other big UK AI projects have been found to be “phantom investments” [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/09/revealed-uks-multibillion-ai-drive-is-built-on-phantom-investments] after the government failed to audit investment numbers or jobs claims. And I was surprised I didn’t see this making more of the rounds: Apparently, Meta’s data centers contaminated Cheyenne, Wyoming’s wastewater system with a “rare bacterial contaminant” According to the Cowboy State Daily news [https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/07/02/cheyenne-wont-take-data-center-wastewater-after-meta-company-contaminated-system/]: Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities isn’t accepting industrial wastewater associated with data center systems until further notice after a contractor for Meta Platforms contaminated the city’s wastewater system, prompting months of cleanup. The announcement was made by the Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) on Thursday in conjunction with naming the Meta company as the source of the initial contamination. It also comes more than four months after the Meta company — which is building a huge $800 million data center in south Cheyenne — disrupted the city’s reclaimed wastewater system with a rare bacterial contaminant. I’ll just leave that one there without further comment. Microsoft is cutting nearly 5,000 jobs, many of them at Xbox According to Reuters [https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/microsoft-joins-ai-driven-tech-layoff-wave-with-4800-job-cuts-2026-07-06/], Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs and overhauling its Xbox unit, and AI is once again at the forefront, in a bit of a different way. The “Chief People Officer” Amy Coleman told employees in a memo that “the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI [...] At the same time, what  is  true is that AI is changing how work gets done.” The comment reflects the changing attitudes around AI; a year ago, the market probably would have rewarded Microsoft for saying AI was behind the cuts. Now it’s more of a liability. For its part, the Communication Workers of America, the union that represents many of the Xbox workers, has vowed to fight: Claude Cummings Jr., President of CWA said “make no mistake – whether our members have a contract in hand, or are still at the bargaining table, CWA members at Xbox have the power and protection of union membership. When Microsoft decides to treat the workers who built Xbox as expendable, it should know who they’re dealing with. This is not just a fight with the thousands of workers across Xbox; it’s a fight with each and every member at CWA — hundreds of thousands of people strong.” Popular AI agents built by Anthropic and OpenAI can be easily exploited and turned against their users. My friends at AI Now have some startling new research on AI agents, and concluded that they should essentially, as it stands, never, ever be used in conjunction with critical digital infrastructure: AI Now’s latest research demonstrates a critical attack vector on popular AI agents, built by Anthropic and OpenAI, when used for defensive purposes that actually turn the agent against its user. Attackers can use these models’ existing weaknesses to execute malicious code on a system deploying an AI agent when used for often-advertised defensive purposes. Specifically, users relying on these agents to assess the security of open or third-party sources are instead exposed to the very risks these agents are meant to identify and defend against. This exploit is achievable through prompt injections, a common exploit tactic where attackers can manipulate large language AI models by “injecting” harmful instructions through the data or input they ingest. The full report [https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/friendly-fire-exploit-brief], Friendly Fire, is by Heidy Khalaf and Boyan Milanov, and you can read it here [https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/friendly-fire-exploit-brief]. Alright, that’s about it for this week. Before I go, I will also recommend Ed Zitron’s piece on letting AI burn [https://www.wheresyoured.at/let-ai-burn/]; as I mention in the pod this week, OpenAI and Sam Altman especially are already openly angling for a government bailout in the event of the AI bubble bursting. They want the Trump administration to take a 5% stake in the company, and are selling this as a way of spreading the “benefits” of AI. This is nonsense, and a self-serving hedge. Ed makes the case that the AI industry, which has garnered historic levels of investment for comparatively tiny revenue generation, must be allowed to fail in the event that its backing begins to unravel, which seems common sensical to me. Also recommended: Gaby Del Valle’s rather horrifying piece [https://www.theverge.com/report/963106/ice-doxxing-office-of-professional-responsibility-free-speech?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Follows%20Digest%202026-07-10&utm_term=Verge%20Follows%20-%20Today%27s%20Sends] on ICE agents growing propensity for making house calls to their online critics. Also: Naomi Klein [https://substack.com/profile/691711-naomi-klein] has a new newsletter, which will focus in part on tech, AI, and end times fascism. Check it out. OK OK OK. I know I promised more writing, and I have an essay drafted about the World Cup, VAR, automation and AI that I am very much looking forward to sharing here, but I didn’t want to overload the inboxes today, so look out for that soon. In general, it’s honestly just been a LOT to be in the very hot city, corralling the kids, and trying to get this podcast/video thing off the ground, so the next 2-3 weeks may simply be a bit less writing and focusing on getting the show in good shape (and actually going outside in this vibrant and delightful city). Hope that’s cool. Until next time, everyone—hammers up. Get full access to Blood in the Machine at www.bloodinthemachine.com/subscribe [https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

10 jul 202644 min

How to dis-enshittify the world, with Cory Doctorow

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