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On occasion, a word proves so fitting, its significance so obvious and pertinent to our situation, that it transcends mere trendiness, evolving into a defining feature of an era. “Enshittification,” a term devised by the prolific tech pundit and author Cory Doctorow, embodies this. Doctorow crafted this phrase in 2022 to articulate how the digital platforms that have become progressively central to our everyday lives appeared to be concurrently deteriorating. Google Search had undergone enshittification, displaying advertisements and sponsored content instead of pertinent website outcomes. TikTok suffered enshittification, unnaturally “boosting” select videos to propel them to viral status, sparking replications and amplifying interaction while causing distress for creators whose content lacked similar promotion. Twitter seemed destined for supreme enshittification upon its metamorphosis into X, forfeiting its position as a worldwide public forum as it descended into Muskian radicalism, rewarding hucksters and meme generators over reliable sources of information. Spotify, iPhones, Adobe programs, email accounts—it proved challenging to identify any platform or gadget that wasn’t exhibiting a decline in user satisfaction. Wasn’t tech presumed to continually advance in the long view? Such counterproductive corporate meddling evoked recollections of a Silicon Valley fiasco from 2017, wherein Juicero amassed over a hundred million dollars to engineer a juice-pressing apparatus whose specialized pouches, it turned out, could be readily squeezed manually—an enshittified device without peer.
“Enshittification” gained recognition as the term of the year by the American Dialect Society in 2023 and by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary in 2024. This widespread adoption mirrored a shared feeling of disappointment. Technology was progressing, after a fashion, but frequently those advancements enhanced platforms’ capacity to extract worth from users and patrons, boosting earnings and participation for the enterprises themselves. As Facebook’s user experience worsened, Meta squeezed increasingly unpaid labor from content producers while preserving ad income. Uber ultimately achieved profitability by employing algorithms to tweak driver compensation, while accustoming users to diminished service standards; the ride-sharing application even became saturated with advertisements. Musk’s X, reduced to a right-wing echo chamber filled with bots, could repurpose its user information to nourish Musk’s own AI venture.
Doctorow’s perspective suggests enshittification represents a deliberate strategy employed by tech corporations. In his recent book of the same title, he transforms his various blog posts and articles on the topic into a comprehensive thesis on “why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it,” as the subtitle explains. Enshittification transpires in three stages: initially, a company is “good to users,” Doctorow notes, attracting them in vast numbers, similar to a funnel trap for beetles, through promises of connection or ease. Secondly, once a substantial audience is secured, the company prioritizes being “good to business customers,” compromising certain functionalities so that the most profitable clients, primarily advertisers, can flourish on the platform. It’s during this intermediate phase that, for example, our Facebook streams become cluttered with advertisements and branded posts. Finally, the company converts the user interaction into “a giant pile of shit,” deteriorating the platform for both users and businesses to further enrich the corporation’s proprietors and executives. Facebook’s stream, now overflowing with AI-produced trash and brief videos, is deeply entrenched in the third phase of enshittification. The same holds true for TikTok, which has congested its design, to the point of distraction, with e-commerce features, in an endeavor to rival Amazon—which also has enshittified its market search results, promoting meaningless brands.
Maybe we had overly optimistic expectations for the digital platforms we use. The joys experienced in social media’s early days and on-demand apps proved unsustainable; the originally free or subsidized offerings would ultimately need to sustain themselves. The ideal of the nascent, more unrestricted internet entailed individuals connecting with each other with reduced mediation, and Doctorow delineates the structural elements that defended against enshittification during that period. These encompassed moral opposition from tech employees, who previously possessed such high market value that they could effectively hold their employers at ransom with resignation threats, as well as the enforcement of antimonopoly regulations, which deterred firms like IBM and Microsoft from unduly squeezing their users in past decades. These safeguarding elements have weakened, yet users have also shared culpability in their exploitation. Specific features that render apps so user-friendly, such as instant support or quick purchases, also heighten their susceptibility to abuse. Uber possesses the ability to instantly modify its fees for both consumers and its workforce, a ploy Doctorow refers to as “twiddling.” The platform’s algorithms aim to manipulate us into engaging, and frequently succeed, even when against our better judgment. Uber drivers accepting every offered assignment out of an “indiscriminate desire to please the algorithm” are essentially “signaling that they are easy pickings” who will operate for “sub-starvation wages,” as Doctorow articulates.
A frequently overlooked exit strategy for those tired of enshittification involves opting out: as users, we possess the capability to abandon platforms that commercialize our latent participation and offer limited value in return. More equitable apps and platforms exist, be it Bluesky for social networking absent pervasive toxicity, or Curb for on-demand transportation minus labor infringements. Nonetheless, Doctorow seems less persuaded by the likelihood of a mass departure from enshittified platforms. Rather, his focus centers on structural shifts, suggesting legal and technical solutions ranging from improved antitrust enforcement to dismantling tech conglomerates and regulating the utilization of personal information, thus empowering users with stronger digital rights. On this final point, there is optimism to be found: fresh legislation in the UK and the EU compel tech firms to treat users within those territories with greater care, which could, consequently, enhance conditions worldwide, given the ease of constructing a unified version of a product over various locally tailored versions. Nevertheless, US businesses instigated many of these problems, and the American government has, to date, taken inadequate steps to rectify them.
“Enshittification” represents a trenchant and streamlined composition, driven by Doctorow’s sarcastic diction, which clearly manifests as professional blogging expanded to over three hundred pages. The book encompasses significant material, yet leaves the reader yearning for a broader utilization of his concept across further facets of culture and society. A concise epilogue poses the query, “Is Enshittification Just Capitalism?” The answer, Doctorow contends, is affirmative, given that our existing economic model permits the “enshittification lever” to be cranked towards unchecked extraction. What would genuinely impede that process entails dismantling Silicon Valley’s distinct form of self-serving startup funding, which has spawned a cohort of billionaires convinced of their competence not merely to manage enterprises but to steer political organizations and federal entities. The book refrains from completely projecting enshittification onto national politics, though the term undeniably applies within that context. If the strategy Doctorow describes involves promising benefits only to capriciously revoke, and degrade, current services, then Donald Trump occupies the role of enshittifier-in-chief. During his second term, scientific inquiry, diplomacy, corporate oversight, and welfare services have all deteriorated. The primary recipient, naturally, is Trump himself. Perhaps enshittification’s gravest consequence is that it induces us to anticipate negativity and presume that matters will inevitably decline. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
