Teh “Enshittification” of the Internet: why Your Favorite Platforms Are Getting Worse
Table of Contents
The digital spaces we once navigated with ease are increasingly plagued by intrusive ads, irrelevant content, and a general sense of degradation. this decline, coined “enshittification” – a deliberately provocative term – by journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow, describes a predictable cycle of platform decay impacting tech giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok.
The concept of enshittification, named the American dialect Society’s word of the Year for 2023, has resonated widely as it encapsulates a universal frustration: the erosion of user experience on the networks and applications we rely on daily. Doctorow, whose forthcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It (Verso Books, 2025) expands on this theory, outlines a three-step process. First, platforms prioritize users to build engagement. Second, once users are hooked, the experience is degraded to benefit business customers – often through advertising or data tracking. with both users and businesses trapped, services are further diminished to maximize shareholder profits.
“The combination of this little license to vulgarity and the detailed critique seems to have been a very triumphant combination,” Doctorow says.”It’s a way of talking about something that people feel, but haven’t quite been able to put their finger on.”
The Power Dynamic and Regulatory Challenges
Doctorow argues that the sheer scale of power wielded by these tech monopolies makes effective regulation challenging, as these companies can outspend and outmaneuver their regulators, and “have so much money that they can make people swallow their lies.”
Is any platform immune? Doctorow points to Wikipedia as a notable exception. “It’s not that it’s ever good, but when it fails, it pays the consequences and is under constant pressure to improve.”
A Regulatory Impasse and the Return of Trump
The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency represents a “gigantic step backwards” for Silicon Valley regulation, exacerbating the digital decline. However, a global backlash against these monopolies is growing, seemingly autonomous of political ideology.According to doctorow, “The Chinese state treats these companies not as allies in a project of world domination, but as competitors for power at both the national and global levels, and they are taking steps to reduce their size.”
In the European Union, the Digital markets Act aims to force these companies to make their services interoperable, allowing users to seamlessly migrate their data between platforms.Doctorow stresses that breaking down these “walled gardens” is crucial. “If people love their friends more than they hate Mark Zuckerberg, then they can stay on Facebook because it’s difficult to coordinate with their friends to leave alone,” he explains. “That explains why people who belong to disadvantaged minorities and who are exposed to a lot of hate speech and harassment remain in these antagonistic spaces.”
A Radical Solution: Reclaiming the Code
Despite these regulatory efforts, Doctorow remains skeptical of the state’s ability to effectively control these corporate giants.The recent case of Apple threatening legal action against the European Commission over payment system changes – possibly tying up Brussels in a decade-long legal battle – illustrates this challenge. “No matter how well-intentioned, the law could take a long time to take effect, if it ever does,” he notes.
As an choice, Doctorow proposes a more radical solution: repealing US intellectual property law imposed on its trade partners, which prohibits reverse engineering – the process of dissecting a technology to understand and modify its functionality.This would allow access to the algorithms of platforms like Instagram or TikTok, enabling the creation of more democratic and user-amiable alternatives. “Europe could create its own tools and export them to consumers around the world who want to escape ‘Big Tech’,” he suggests.
He emphasizes the urgency of this approach, warning that trump has made it clear that all countries are rivals and competitors of the US, and that he will order tech companies to “destroy” those who don’t comply with his demands. The future of the internet, and our digital experience, may depend on a willingness to challenge the status quo and reclaim control of the technologies that shape our lives.
