Cory Doctorow: Enshittification

25 Aug 2026
07:00pm - 08:00pm
$45-$52
Capitol Theatre

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RMIT University is proud to partner with The Wheeler Centre and Now or Never to present acclaimed science fiction author, activist, journalist and tech critic Cory Doctorow in conversation with RMIT University's Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences, Lisa Given.

You're not imagining it: the experience of being online is getting worse. Services degrade, platforms shift and what once felt open and useful becomes harder to recognise.

What was once good is now… sh*t. This is not a glitch. In fact, it's by design. 'Enshittification', a term coined by Cory Doctorow, names what is already happening.

In this conversation with Professor Lisa Given, Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University, Doctorow will outline how major platforms like Facebook, Amazon and X are structured to follow this trajectory.

First, users are drawn in with convenience and connection.

Then, advertisers are invited into the system.

Finally, the experience itself is stripped back in the pursuit of profit.

This is not a glitch. This is the creeping decay of the platforms we rely on and what it might take to reclaim our digital future.

Hear Doctorow map the collapse of the utopic early internet promise, the systems that sustain it and what it might take to reclaim experiences online.

Presented by RMIT University in partnership with The Wheeler Centre and Now or Never.

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Cory Doctorow: Enshittification