Enshittification, also known ascrapification andplatform decay, is the term used to describe the pattern in whichonline products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
WriterCory Doctorow coined theneologismenshittification in November 2022,[1] though he was not the first to describe and label the concept.[2][3] TheAmerican Dialect Society selected it as its 2023Word of the Year, with Australia'sMacquarie Dictionary following suit for 2024.
Doctorow advocates for two ways to reduce enshittification: upholding theend-to-end principle, which asserts that platforms should transmit data in response to user requests rather than algorithm-driven decisions; and guaranteeingthe right of exit—that is, enabling a user to leave aplatform without data loss, which requires interoperability. These moves aim to uphold the standards and trustworthiness of online platforms, emphasize user satisfaction, and encourage market competition.
Enshittification was first used byCory Doctorow in a November 2022 blog post[4] that was republished three months later inLocus.[5] He expanded on the concept in another blog post[6] that was republished in the January 2023 edition ofWired:[7]
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
In a 2024 op-ed in theFinancial Times, Doctorow argued that"'enshittification' is coming for absolutely everything" with "enshittificatory" platforms leaving humanity in an "enshittocene".[8]
Doctorow argues that new platforms offer useful products and services at a loss, as a way to gain new users. Once users are locked in, the platform then offers access to the userbase to suppliers at a loss; once suppliers are locked in, the platform shifts surpluses to shareholders.[9] Once the platform is fundamentally focused on the shareholders, and the users and vendors are locked in, the platform no longer has any incentive to maintain quality. Enshittified platforms that act asintermediaries can act as both amonopoly on services and amonopsony on customers, as highswitching costs prevent either from leaving even when alternatives technically exist.[7] Doctorow has described the process of enshittification as happening through "twiddling": the continual adjustment of the parameters of the system in search of marginal improvements of profits, without regard to any other goal.[10] Enshittification can be seen as a form ofrent-seeking.[7]
To solve the problem, Doctorow has called for two general principles to be followed:
Doctorow's concept has been cited by various scholars and journalists as a framework for understanding the decline in quality of online platforms. Discussions about enshittification have appeared in numerous media outlets, including analyses of how tech giants likeFacebook,Google, andAmazon have shifted their business models to prioritize profits at the expense of user experience.[12] This phenomenon has sparked debates about the need for regulatory interventions and alternative models to ensure the integrity and quality of digital platforms.[13]
TheAmerican Dialect Society selectedenshittification as its 2023word of the year.[8][14]
TheMacquarie Dictionary namedenshittification as its 2024 word of the year, selected by both the committee's and people's choice votes for only the third time since the inaugural event in 2006.[15]
Originally meant to be a cheap alternative to hotels,Airbnb became a popular company in theplatform economy. However, in similar enterprises in the platform economy which offer very cheap prices, once theventure capital runs out, the cheap prices are gone. This is presumably what happened to Airbnb, where prices of many places hosted there have since increased to be higher than hotels, often with less amenities, deceptive advertising, additional rules and fees by hosts, less quality control, and sometimes hidden cameras.[16]
In Doctorow's original post, he discussed the practices ofAmazon. The online retailer began by wooing users with goods sold below cost and (with anAmazon Prime subscription) free shipping. Once its user base was solidified, more sellers began to sell their products through Amazon. Finally, Amazon began to add fees to increase profits. In 2023, over 45% of the sale price of items went to Amazon in the form of various fees.[citation needed] Doctorow described advertisement within Amazon as apayola scheme in which sellers bid against one another for search-ranking preference, and said that the first five pages of a search for "cat beds" were half advertisements.[7]
Doctorow has also criticized Amazon'sAudible service, which controls over 90% of the audiobook market and applies mandatorydigital rights management (DRM) to all audio books. He pointed out that this meant that a user leaving the platform would lose access to their audiobook library. Doctorow decided in 2014 to not sell his audiobooks via Audible anymore but produce them himself even though that meant earning a lot less than he would have by letting Amazon "slap DRM" on his books. He has since then published over half a dozen of his audiobooks independently as Amazon's system would not distribute them without DRM.[17][18]
The market fordating apps has been cited as an example of enshittification due to the conflict between the dating apps' ostensible goal of matchmaking, and their operators' desire to convert users to the paid version of the app and retaining them as paying users indefinitely by keeping them single, creating aperverse incentive that leads performance to decline over time as efforts at monetization begin to dominate.[19] Mathematical modeling has suggested that it is in the financial interests of app operators to offer their user base a sub-optimal experience.[20]
According to Doctorow,Facebook offered a good service until it had reached a "critical mass" of users, and it became difficult for people to leave because they would need to convince their friends to go with them. Facebook then began to add posts from media companies into feeds until the media companies too were dependent on traffic from Facebook, and then adjusted the algorithm to prioritize paid "boosted" posts.Business Insider agreed with the view that Facebook was being enshittified, adding that it "constantly floods users' feeds with sponsored (or 'recommended') content, and seems to bury the things people want to see under what Facebook decides is relevant".[21] Doctorow pointed at theFacebook metrics controversy, in which video statistics were inflated on the site, which led to media companies over-investing in Facebook and collapsing. He described Facebook as "terminally enshittified".[7]
Doctorow citesGoogle Search as one example, which became dominant through relevant search results and minimal ads, then later degraded through increased advertising,search engine optimization, and outright fraud, benefitting its advertising customers. This was followed by Google rigging the ad market throughJedi Blue to recapture value for itself. Doctorow also cites Google's firing of 12,000 employees in January 2023, which coincided with astock buyback scheme which "would have paid all their salaries for the next 27 years", as well as Google's rush to research an AI search chatbot, "a tool that won't show you what you ask for, but rather, what it thinks you should see".[7][11][22][23][24]
After years of competing fiercely in the "streaming wars", Netflix emerged as the main winner in the early 2020s.[25] Once it had achieved a quasi-monopolistic position, Netflix proceeded to raise prices, introduce an ad-supported tier, with Netflix also discontinuing its cheapest ad-free plan in the UK and Canada in 2024,[26] as well as a crackdown on password sharing.[27]
In 2023, shortly after its initial filings for aninitial public offering,Reddit announced that it would begincharging fees for API access, a move that would effectively shut down many third-party apps by making them cost-prohibitive to operate.[28] CEOSteve Huffman stated that it was in response to AI firms scraping data without paying Reddit for it, but coverage linked the move to the upcoming IPO; the move shut down large numbers of third-party apps, forcing users to use official Reddit apps that provided more profit to the company.[28][29][30] Moderators on the site conducted a blackout protest against the company's new policy, although the changes ultimately went ahead. Many third party Reddit apps such as theApollo app were shut down because of the new fees.[31][29][32]
In September 2024, Reddit announced that moderators will no longer have the ability of changing subreddit accessibility from "public" to "private" without approval from Reddit staff. This was widely interpreted by moderators as a punitive change in response to the 2023 API protests.[33]
The term was applied to the changes toTwitter in the wake of its2022 acquisition byElon Musk.[34][22] This included theclosure of the service's API to stop interoperable software from being used,suspending users for posting (rival service)Mastodon handles in their profiles, andplacing restrictions on the ability to view the site without logging in. Other changes included temporary rate limits for the number of tweets that could be viewed per day, theintroduction of paid subscriptions to the service in the form of Twitter Blue (later renamed to X Premium),[34] and thereduction of moderation.[35] Musk had the algorithm modified to promote his own posts above others, which caused users' feeds to be flooded with his content in February 2023.[36] In April 2024, Musk announced that new users would have to pay a fee to be able to post.[37]
The changes led to a dramatic decline in revenue for the company. The increase in hate speech on the platform, particularlyantisemitism andIslamophobia during theIsrael–Hamas war, led to some organizations pulling advertisements.[38] According to internal documents seen byThe New York Times in late 2023, the losses from advertisers were projected to cost the company $75 million by the end of the year.[39] Musk delivered an interview on November 29, 2023, in which he told advertisers leaving the website to "go fuck yourself."[40][41] By August 2024, revenue had fallen 84% compared to before Musk's ownership.[42] As a result of Musk's acquisition tens of millions of users migrated to a new platform,Bluesky.[43][44][45]
App-basedridesharing companyUber gained market share by ignoring local licensing systems such astaxi medallions while alsokeeping consumer costs artificially low by subsidizing rides viaventure capital funding.[46] Once they achieved aduopoly with competitorLyft, the company implementedsurge pricing to increase the cost of travel to riders and dynamically adjust the payments made to drivers.[46] The suitability of Uber surge pricing as an example of the phenomenon of enshittification is questionable, however, as surge pricing has been found to increase the quantity of drivers during periods when the surge pricing is in effect and a reallocation of rides to those who receive the most benefit from them.[47][48] This increase in quantity has been found to increase the availability of Ubers for riders, keeping waiting times low and ride completion rates high during periods of surge pricing.[47][48]
The proposed (and eventually abandoned) changes to theUnity game engine's licensing model in 2023 were described byGameindustry.biz as an example of enshittification, as the changes would have applied retroactively to projects which had already been in development for years while degrading quality for both developers and end users, while increasing fees.[49] While the Unity Engine itself is not a two-sided market, the move was related to Unity's position as a provider of mobilefree-to-play services to developers, including in-app purchase systems.[50]
In response to these changes, many game developers announced their intention to abandon Unity for an alternative engine, despite the significantswitching cost of doing so, with game designerSam Barlow specifically using the wordenshittification when describing the new fee policy as the motive.[51] Use of the Unity engine at game jams declined rapidly in 2024 as indie developers switched to other engines. Unity usage at theGlobal Game Jam declined to 36% that year, from 61% in 2023. TheGMTK Game Jam also reported a major decline in Unity usership.[52][53]
Dating apps aren't alone in seemingly getting worse when they try to make money. In fact, last year journalist Cory Doctorow coined a term for this pattern: 'enshittification.' Basically, Doctorow says tech platforms start off trying to make their user experiences really good because their first goal is to try to become popular and achieve scale. But over time, they inevitably pursue their ultimate goal of making money, which ends up making the whole user experience 'enshittified.'
That means lots of blue ticks stop paying – but everyone else is forced to read the low-quality content that the remaining blue ticks produce. This is what is powering the enshittification of Twitter.
A similar phenomenon is playing out across the digital economy, as tech-powered giants who surfed the digital wave to success abandon the practices that made them popular with consumers in the first place. Having done that, they then turn on their suppliers as well, in a bid to claw back all the value for themselves. Whenever this happens it doesn't end well for anyone.
The dictionary definition ofenshittification at Wiktionary