📱What is enshittification?

Have you ever watched as a social platform devolved from a user paradise into a low-quality nightmare filled with shitty AI-generated content? (see example below)

Welcome to the concept of “enshittification” — a term that captures the systematic degradation of online platforms.

What is Enshittification?

When the Internet first appeared, it seemed to provide a new tool for bringing people together.

The first Internet communities were websites known as Internet forums or message boards.

Internet forums emerged around shared interests, where people could chat with like-minded peers.

The vast majority of internet forums were non-profit entities run by volunteers. (see an example of what an old-school internet forum looked like below)

Everything changed in the early 2000s.

Starting with MySpace — and later, Facebook — internet forum culture was replaced by social media platforms run by for-profit corporations.

After Facebook, we got Instagram, Twitter (now X), and LinkedIn.

Today, the vast majority of Internet users are spending time on these corporate platforms instead of old-school forums.

Tech writer Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe how & why these digital platforms seem to get worse over time.

Doctorow said enshittification happens when:

The term has grown in popularity as the process it describes seems to play out again and again on popular platforms.

This process has also been called “platform decay.”

Stages of decay

A key feature of platform decay is that the process follows several predictable steps:

Stage 1: User Seduction

Platforms grow rapidly by offering an incredible user experience or resolving widely shared problems.

Services are high-quality and (usually) free.

The high quality and low cost of the platform makes the business unsustainable. 

But, the company behind the platform is able to attract venture capital investment that can allow it to remain unprofitable — for a time.

As the platform attracts enough users, it squeezes out competition and becomes the dominant social network.

As a result, users become “locked in” to the new platform’s growing ecosystem.

Stage 2: Business Optimization

Once users are locked in, platforms start prioritizing business customers.

This usually takes place once early investors start demanding that the company focus on becoming profitable.

Platforms generally look to the advertising market as a way to fund their operations while keeping some of their key features free.

Businesses are often given preferential treatment over users, leading to a gradual deterioration of the user experience.

Users are subjected to aggressive monetization tactics, like data selling and invasive advertising.

Algorithmic changes are sometimes introduced to promote the influence of corporate entities at the expense of organic reach.

These changes make its platform so attractive for business customers that they become just as “locked in” to the platform as individuals are.

Stage 3: Extractive Decline

In the final stage, the platform becomes ruthlessly monetized at the expense of users and business customers.

Users suffer as the platform increasingly builds “dark patterns” into its graphical interface. 

Dark patterns are sophisticated psychological tricks intended to keep users trapped & monetizable.

They include:

• Infinite scroll designs (like the ‘For You’ page on Instagram & TikTok) that prevent natural stopping points

• Deliberately complex privacy settings that make opting out challenging

• Notification systems engineered to trigger dopamine responses

In addition to these dark patterns, enshittified platforms also prioritize ads and low-quality engagement bait content.

Instead of seeing wedding photos from your cousin, you see advertisements or stuff like this:

Enshittification is a natural result of social media being controlled by for-profit corporations, as investors & shareholders demand continuous growth and monetization.

These demands transform platforms from:

What can we do about it?

Experts point to a few possible solutions to enshittification & platform decay:

• Antitrust regulations that prevent monopolistic behaviors

• Data privacy laws that limit the ability to monetize user data

• Support for open-source alternatives to huge platforms and user-owned models of digital interaction

It’s tricky, because running social media platforms is very expensive.

Fundamentally, stopping enshittification requires a widespread reimagining of digital platforms as public utilities rather than profit-generating machines.

ART OF THE DAY

Best Buddies by Keith Haring. 1990.