Is the internet getting worse — and what can we do about it?

The internet isn't what we were promised. In its infancy, Google's stated ambition was to "organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"; today, you'll have to wade through adverts to complete a simple search.

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Paid-for subscription services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, continue to build paywalls around ad-free viewing, marketing them as "plus" or "premium" accounts.

You're not imagining it - things have been getting worse.

For the past decade, Cory Doctorow blogger, digital rights activist, and Big Tech giant slayer has dedicated his work to chronicling the decline in quality of the internet and digital platforms. He's even given it a name: enshittification.

His new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, charts in granular detail the monopolisation of the tech space. He argues that Big Tech no longer faces significant competition in the market - a key driver of improvement and innovation - so standards have dropped, prioritising shareholder value over user experience.

More than this, he argues, these companies Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others - have developed multifaceted levels of skulduggery and corporate bullying, such as the weaponisation of IP law and the manipulation of interoperability standards, all to rip people off and squash competition. This, he says, doesn't just affect the consumer- everyone is getting a poor deal, including businesses, publishers and advertisers.