Digital Platform Deterioration: Understanding "Enshittification," a Phenomenon Coined by Cory Doctorow

Many once-popular digital platforms and services are experiencing a noticeable decline in quality, a phenomenon globally known as "Enshittification". This term, coined by Canadian-American author and activist Cory Doctorow in November 2022, describes a gradual pattern of digital platform deterioration. This pattern begins with offering excellent service to attract users, then locking them into its ecosystem by increasing switching costs and making it difficult to move to alternatives. Afterward, the platform moves towards reducing service quality for users to extract maximum value from them, which is then used to attract business partners such as advertisers, vendors, and creators. Once the loyalty of these partners is secured, the platform also begins to degrade the quality of service provided to them, eventually transforming the platform into a deteriorated and inefficient digital environment.

This deterioration is clearly evident in giant platforms like Google, Facebook, Uber, and Amazon. The underlying reasons for this phenomenon are not limited to greed or the pursuit of venture capital, but also extend to changes in restrictions imposed on companies. These changes particularly include the level of competition and the legal environment that allows platforms to modify the user experience for each individual, while preventing users and competitors from taking countermeasures.

This decline in service quality has been gradual over the years. For example, in 2019, records from the monopoly case against Google revealed an internal struggle. Google, which dominates 90% of the search market share, was facing slowing growth. One executive suggested a strategy to reduce the quality of search results to make users conduct multiple queries, thereby seeing more advertisements. This represents the core of the "Enshittification" phenomenon, yet users continued to rely on Google due to lack of strong alternatives.

Users continue to use these products even after their deterioration due to the difficulty of switching to alternatives when there are no genuine and competitive alternatives. This situation is fueled by prevailing policies, as antitrust enforcement agencies for decades have adopted the "Chicago School" approach. This approach views monopolies as efficient and should only be punished if they lead to higher prices for consumers, not when a company acquires its most dangerous competitor. A classic example of this is Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, where Mark Zuckerberg openly admitted that buying Instagram would keep users as Facebook customers even if they never used Facebook itself. Despite this admission, the Obama administration approved the deal.

Platforms are particularly fertile ground for "Enshittification" because they act as intermediaries between two interdependent groups: end-users and business clients. Digital platforms possess a unique power to change business logic on a "per-user, per-interaction" basis. This constant manipulation of what a user sees and what they pay, while prohibiting independent users and developers from examining or bypassing what platforms do.

The phenomenon of "Enshittification" is expanding to include other sectors as they become digitized. When a sector is digitized, it transforms into a platform, and manipulation follows. This leads to "dynamic pricing" in the fast-food sector or "surge pricing" in ride-hailing services.

Prominent Examples of "Enshittification" in Major Platforms

Facebook is one of the prominent examples of "Enshittification". In its early days, Facebook attracted users with the promise of a reverse-chronological feed from people they chose, without surveillance or paid content. Once users were locked into the platform, Facebook began manipulating feeds to please business clients, such as advertisers and publishers. Then came the second pressure, as ad targeting accuracy declined and prices increased. At the same time, user feeds became filled with paid content until what they wanted to see became mere remnants of genuine content.

As for Amazon, it experienced "Enshittification" from the demand side. In a consumption-driven economy with increasing inequality, a decreasing percentage of households buy a disproportionate percentage of products, and most of these households are subscribed to Prime service. This means that if you sell goods, you must be on Amazon, and you must pay to appear in search results. Amazon's advertising business is not "advertising" in the classic sense; it's "bribery": pay to be placed at the top of search results. This means that the first result often isn't the best price or best quality, but rather for whoever paid the most, negatively impacting shoppers' experience.

Structural Solutions to Combat "Enshittification"

These structural problems require effective structural solutions. In the United States, the anti-monopoly coalition that briefly united members of both parties has waned. However, there is greater optimism regarding foreign antitrust efforts, particularly in the European Union and the United Kingdom, motivated by a desire to reduce their dependence on American platforms.

Worker power is also steadily increasing. Technology workers are increasingly realizing they are workers, not just "founders in waiting." Amidst the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of workers, and management waving artificial intelligence as a way to make workers feel replaceable, unions are emerging as a key solution to ensure their rights.

Additionally, "Enshittification" impacts the political landscape and generates a state of shock and nihilism. When there are a few large corporations, they often agree on the same approach, whereas when there are hundreds of competing companies, regulators hear conflicting demands, reducing their effectiveness. This leads to regulatory failure, and failure in turn leads to shock, and shock makes people vulnerable to exploitation by scammers. The solution is not to "restore trust" in existing agencies, but to "make agencies trustworthy", and the only way to achieve this is to dismantle the companies that have seized power and restore healthy and fair competition.

We are approaching a critical turning point where the balance will shift back towards consumers and rationality. The extraction of value cannot continue indefinitely. What comes next is uncertain, for the future is not just a place we discover, but a place we create with our own hands. Hope lies in connecting the dots between bad search results, locked cars, high drug prices, fragile supply chains, and polarized feeds, to build a strong enough coalition to change the rules and reshape the digital landscape for the better.