The Great Enshittening

Enshittification; it was love at first sound.

Enshittification Noun colloquial The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.

Be that definition as it may, to me, enshittification is an accurate word to describe the feeling of the general decay of ANYTHING. e it a product, a service, a person, or an organisation in general. Originally coined around the examples of an investor-backed process, in my view, it’s not only the profit-seeking side as a driving force to make something feel like it’s been enshittified…. complacency also breeds enshittification.

Enshittification Intolerant

I have a lot to complain about working in technology every day, just ask Paul Seymour, who, might I add, is very lucky to hear about it… Every day. Current running complaint is “why does my browser just not load half the bloody time”, of which he has a sensible answer like reinstall Windows. But let’s be honest, who has time to get around to that? Imma just keep on complaining and rebooting for a moment's reprieve.

I’m sure you’re not thinking it, but just in case you are jumping to some crazy conclusion that I’m just complaining all the time, which would most definitely be Paul’s commentary, I feel like I need to explain myself… just a tad.

Working with emerging technology for over 18 years through the build and design phases really lowers your tolerance and resilience as to how many technology issues you can handle. Issues that you might tolerate for days, I can't tolerate for more than a second.

Along with my gluten, dairy, and many other intolerances, I am “enshittification intolerant”, or one might say, diagnosed with enshittification fatigue.

The Classic Case of Enshittification

So just what the hell has been enshittified? Oh, so many of a thing. The easiest one to start with: Facebook.

Facebook is of course the most classic example of enshittification in action. Most people can relate to this, having been on the platform at some point in their lives. And if you’re still on it, the number of friends and family content is only a sliver of what is ultimately brain rot. TikTok-like videos and advertising is pretty much what the platform serves. For the life of me I want to get off it, but with the pull of family and friends I feel stuck. Oh, so very stuck.

Facebook has been in decay for a very, very, very long time.

Enshittification Recipe

In the nomenclator Cory Doctorow’s original article he talked to the stages a platform goes through over time, that highlights the overall enshittisfactory experience we lucky adopters get to inherit.

Whilst originally quoted as a 3-stage process, it’s more a 4 in my eyes.

Ingredients

1.      Be good to your users

2.      Exploit users for business customers

3.      Exploit business customers

4.      Terminal enshittification

Stage 1: Be good to your users

Facebook started by offering a clean, private alternative to MySpace and Bebo. It promised not to spy on us and attracted a massive user base through its network effects, as this is where all our friends and family were.

Shareholders were focused on growth.

Stage 2: Exploit users for business customers

Once we were all locked in, Facebook shifted value from users to advertisers. Advertisers gained deep access to user data for targeted advertising. Publishers got traffic from Facebook feeds. At this stage, everyone was dependent on the platform.

Shareholders were looking for monetisation, with a bit of surplus still left to make users happy. Oh, how lucky we were, lol.

Stage 3: Exploit business customers

The experience was now degrading for all, more pay-to-play content, ads, and less posts from friends. Advertisers had to pay more, for a worse performance. Publishers were throttled unless they produced more content with no links, becoming unpaid suppliers. Users stopped being the product and ultimately became the collateral.

Shareholders become the central focus, optimising for maximum shareholder value, aka, Return on Enshittification (ROE).

Stage 4: Terminal enshittification

Facebook stays in a fragile state, likely more between stage 3 and 4. Like in the case of me, I only stay out of inertia. Trust is gone, but not yet all the players. Meta with its foothold on so many other platforms, is still trying to pivot, or milk it for all its worth. I genuinely don’t know where it sits on this front, but it's likely to continue to breathe life for longer than it should.

Shareholders will keep on milking it until the light goes out.

Constraints

Enshittification in this example, is capitalism without constraints. Constraints are things like:

·       Competition (so users have other options)

·       Regulation (so companies can’t go full Darth Vader)

·       Self-help tools (like ad blockers or data export)

·       Worker power (to say no to unethical decisions)

When those guardrails are stripped away, capitalism defaults to extraction. It’s not about evil people running companies, it’s that the system rewards enshittification once a platform becomes dominant. It’s more about shareholders, than the users themselves. One might say… greed… or just doing what they are tasked with doing.

There are so many more examples of enshittification in action

While Facebook is an obvious example, here are a few other examples I’ve seen in the technology landscape:

Uber

Once a cheaper alternative to taxis, it now pretty much comes at the same cost due to surge pricing. Drivers are mistreated, car standards have dropped, and margins are squeezed. A large chunk of my rides get cancelled by drivers a long time after they accept, which is muchos fun (this is not to do with my star rating, which is quite high thank you very much).

Prime Video

All the content used to be included as part of your Prime Membership ad free, but lo and behold, ads are being served up to me. Oh, but good news, if I increase my payments per month, they can be removed. Hazzah. Amazing. Thanks.

Dating Apps

If you hear about people's experiences 6 or so years ago, they talk about how amazing it was, how easy it was. Now love isn’t the product, the consumer is. Matches are withheld, low-quality ones are shown to prompt boosts, and standouts are an extra fee to access. Constant paywalls, and algorithms that don’t serve the purpose of you falling in love, just handing over more cash, and staying on the platform for as long as possible.

Google Search

Is the whole first page now a set of ads? What am I looking at? What site can I actually trust? And you're going to get me to do all the work to find that out? This is just a general all-around enshittification experience.

eCommerce Experiences

Dear eCommerce owners. Please let me browse your platform for a MINUTE before prompting me to sign up for your discount code. And then, let me see that discount code again when I am ready to purchase.

Cookies

Guh! Damn cookies! Why am I still having to accept or decline you? Get that pop-up out of my face! Why can I not view the content on the page that's already loaded without having to click something? Spammy.

Chatbots

Why are you here, and why must I battle with you to get an answer? You don’t understand my question. Please give me a human to talk to.

TL;DR

If it started great, then slowly got worse while asking you for more money, time, or data — it’s probably been enshittified.

Stay tuned for my next instalment of enshittification: what the future holds.