Doctorow's prescription: "right of exit" requires interoperability, not just open source
Claim: Doctorow's prescription against enshittification is a "right of exit" — guaranteeing users can leave a platform without losing access to their data, which requires interoperability (not just open-source licensing).
Source: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Doctorow (Verso Books, October 2025); Pluralistic posts 2023-2025.
Confidence: Verified.
Operational version for Candid clients: "If your agency / platform / vendor can't produce a clean export today, you don't own that layer of your stack." This is the empirical test that turns the framing into a checkable predicate. See Ownership Checklist: what an SMB must be able to walk away with at agency separation for the full checklist and RULE: Require a working database export on Day 1 of any engagement. Test it. Re-test quarterly. for the contracting rule.
Referenced by (4)
- reference IndieWeb POSSE: "Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere" (Tantek Çelik, June 2012) relates-to
- reference Solid project (Tim Berners-Lee) — data-pod architecture; ODI took stewardship Oct 2024 relates-to
- rule RULE: Require a working database export on Day 1 of any engagement. Test it. Re-test quarterly. depends-on
- reference Research brief: Owning your stack — why agency-managed platforms cost more than they save (piece 4 of 15) relates-to