INTERNET

 CNN -  Facebook is full of AI slop. X is full of “free thinkers” peddling conspiracies. Google’s search results are telling us to eat rocks. More and more, it feels like the internet has gone bad. There’s an increasingly popular theory about why: “enshittification.”

The term, coined in 2022 by the author, journalist and activist Cory Doctorow, refers broadly to the deterioration of services (especially online) as a result of giant companies extracting maximum profits from their customers. In a 2023 essay for Wired, Doctorow laid out the basic arc of enshittification, or the process by which 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.”

In other words: Products are good when they first hit the market, because companies need to lock in as many consumers as they can to achieve the huge scale they desire. Once everyone’s using the product, the company refocuses on creating value for business partners, padding its profit margins and letting the product corrode. Eventually, the company maxes out what it can extract from its business partners, too, and the whole thing fades into obsolescence.