What does «Enshittification» mean? Why everything got worse and what we can still do to save ourselves.

If there were a word capable of summarizing the spirit of our time, it would have to include fear, exhaustion, disillusionment with the future, and the feeling that everything, from digital platforms to public institutions, is slowly deteriorating. That word exists, and it's enshittification. It was coined by Canadian writer and journalist Cory Doctorow to describe the progressive degradation of digital platforms and, more broadly, of contemporary technological capitalism.

According to Doctorow, the process by which an online service turns from promise to disappointment always follows the same pattern. At first, a platform is «good to users»: it offers a positive, free or low-cost experience that attracts millions of people thanks to its apparent generosity. It’s the phase of excitement, of «connecting people», of the illusion of freedom. Then, once the user base is consolidated, the platform becomes «good to business clients»: it changes algorithms, introduces more advertising, and favors brands that pay for visibility. This is the moment when feeds fill with sponsored content, searches become less transparent, and organic results get buried. Finally comes the third and darkest phase: the platform caters exclusively to its shareholders and investors, squeezing out anything useful or enjoyable to maximize profits. «At that point,» Doctorow writes, «the experience turns into a giant pile of shit» for both users and businesses.

From Digital Dependency to Lock-In

This trajectory is not accidental but the result of a specific economic structure. Digital platforms operate in «two-sided» markets, where on one side they collect data and content from users, and on the other they sell visibility and advertising to businesses. As long as both sides remain balanced, the system works. But when a platform reaches a dominant position, the balance breaks: users become prisoners of their data and social networks, while the platform begins to extract value from every action. This is what Doctorow calls lock-in, the dependency mechanism that prevents us from leaving a service even when we know it's harming us.

In the past, however, there were barriers that slowed this decline. Antitrust authorities limited concentrations of economic power; companies like IBM and Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s were forced not to push too far for fear of sanctions. Even workers in the tech sector had moral leverage: they could refuse unethical or harmful business decisions because demand for skilled professionals was extremely high, and employers couldn’t afford to lose them. Today, that ethics has weakened, replaced by a culture of infinite growth, backed by venture capital and a new elite of investors who no longer merely fund companies but seek to influence politics and public opinion.

Enshittification and Digital Capitalism

Responsibility, however, doesn't lie solely with platforms or markets. Users themselves, in the name of convenience, have accepted a system that controls and exploits them. The very features that make apps «intuitive», instant clicks, personalization, invisible payments, are exactly the things that facilitate abuse. Doctorow strongly emphasizes this in the New Yorker: our passivity is the fuel of enshittification. We complain about invasive ads, toxic content, the loss of privacy, yet we remain connected and continue to consume.

And yet, despite everything, some signs of reversal are beginning to emerge. New European and British regulations, such as the Digital Markets Act, impose transparency and interoperability requirements on major tech companies, limiting their ability to abuse their dominant positions. As The New Yorker notes, these rules, designed for Europe, could have a global impact, because for a multinational it’s easier to standardize practices globally than to develop separate local versions. It’s a demonstration of how politics, when equipped with courage and competence, can still influence the course of change.

Resisting Enshittification

Doctorow also suggests another form of resistance, perhaps more radical but within everyone’s reach: stop feeding the platforms that exploit us. «Opting out» means abandoning services that turn our data into profit and supporting fairer, decentralized, or cooperative alternatives. It’s not easy. Social media and apps have become infrastructures of our daily lives, and imagining living without them is like imagining life without electricity. But small actions, like choosing an independent search engine, supporting open-source software, reducing time spent on toxic platforms, can become forms of cultural dissent.

In the end, the biggest question remains: is enshittification just a symptom, or is it the very definition of digital capitalism? Doctorow leans toward the latter. The current economic system, he argues, allows the «extraction lever» to be pushed further and further, with no restraints. The speculative logic of Silicon Valley generates an ecosystem in which the immediate interests of shareholders prevail over all other concerns, ethical, social, environmental. Truly stopping enshittification would mean rethinking this model at its root, not exactly a walk in the park.