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- Defining the pattern: how platforms rot from the inside
- Why digital platforms are especially prone to decline
- Signs you’re inside an enshittified product
- Case studies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, and ride apps
- How policy choices and market theory enabled the decline
- Remedies that could reverse the trend
- Why some fixes look more feasible today
- Political and social fallout from concentrated platform power
- Where pressure for change is building
- Want the full conversation with Cory Doctorow?
Tech services that once delighted us — social networks, search engines, delivery apps — often follow the same downward arc. Cory Doctorow names that decline “enshittification,” and his new book explains how platforms lure users, lock them in, and then slowly degrade the experience to squeeze more profit. The idea has become a lens for understanding why familiar apps and websites feel worse each year, and what policymakers, workers, and users might do about it.
Defining the pattern: how platforms rot from the inside
Enshittification describes a repeatable lifecycle for digital platforms. It usually plays out in three stages:
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- Early delight: A service offers clear value to users and grows quickly.
- Lock-in tactics: The company builds barriers — network effects, subscriptions, DRM, exclusive content — that make leaving costly.
- Extraction: With users captive, the platform degrades the experience to extract more value from advertisers, sellers, or creators.
Platforms that follow this arc tend to remain dominant even as they worsen. That persistence is the mystery Doctorow unpacks: not just that firms get greedy, but that legal, economic, and technical conditions let them get away with it.
Why digital platforms are especially prone to decline
Platforms mediate between two or more groups: consumers, sellers, advertisers, and creators. That intermediation creates leverage. The platform can favor one side, monetise attention, and change rules per user.
“Twiddling” is Doctorow’s term for the ability to alter the experience on a per-user basis. When companies can tweak ranking, pricing, or visibility without transparency, users can’t easily compare or verify what’s happening.
- Legal protections shield firms from scrutiny. Anti-circumvention rules limit reverse engineering.
- Consolidation reduces choices. Fewer competitors mean less pressure to improve.
- Subscription and DRM lock customers into ecosystems and content libraries.
Signs you’re inside an enshittified product
- Search results favor paid placements over true relevance.
- Feeds and timelines become saturated with sponsored content.
- Merchant visibility depends on advertising spend, not quality.
- Dynamic pricing appears in places customers once expected fixed prices.
- Ways to inspect or challenge software behavior are legally or technically blocked.
Case studies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, and ride apps
Google — when search starts serving shareholders
Search once prioritized relevance. Over time, advertisers and internal incentives shifted results. Court filings and internal memos revealed strategies to increase ad impressions by encouraging multiple queries. That approach increases revenue while worsening the user experience.
Facebook — from friends-first to ad-funnel
Facebook launched with simple, chronological feeds. As it grew, the platform added targeting and promotional tools that benefited advertisers and publishers. Businesses relied on Facebook traffic, and Facebook relied on ad dollars. The result: users see less of what they want and more of what pays.
Amazon — the marketplace that charges for visibility
Amazon’s dominance reshaped retail. Sellers must pay to be discovered. Sponsored placement often outranks price or quality. Meanwhile, policies like “most-favored nation” clauses and DRM on digital goods extend Amazon’s control beyond its storefront. Subscription mechanics such as Prime and bundled credits cultivate habitual buying.
Uber and the false choice of convenience
Ride-hailing subsidized demand to displace taxis and public transit options. After competitors fell away, prices rose. The ecosystem that once offered convenience left users with fewer alternatives in moments of peak demand.
How policy choices and market theory enabled the decline
For decades, antitrust enforcement leaned on a narrow idea: consumer harm was measured by price increases. That view let platforms acquire rivals and concentrate power without being stopped. Mergers that removed options for users or sellers often passed legal muster because the short-term consumer price didn’t spike.
Regulatory capture and permissive merger policy made consolidation easier. When firms dominate markets, they gain influence over regulators and policymakers, deepening the cycle of decline.
Remedies that could reverse the trend
Doctorow groups fixes into four broad categories. Each targets a different lever of platform power.
- Antitrust action: Break up monopolies and block acquisitions that erase competition.
- Regulation with teeth: Rules that enforce transparency, limit anti-competitive clauses, and curb surveillance-based business models.
- Interoperability and user rights: The legal right to move data, run alternative clients, or audit software — in short, the right to “jailbreak” and verify.
- Worker empowerment: Stronger labor organizing and protections to rebalance bargaining power inside digital supply chains.
Why some fixes look more feasible today
Progress varies by jurisdiction. The EU and UK have been more aggressive on platform rules, driven in part by geopolitical concerns about dependence on U.S. tech firms. Their digital market and services laws aim to force structural changes.
Worker power is also shifting. Tech layoffs, disruptive AI narratives, and growing awareness of workplace realities have nudged engineers and gig workers toward collective action. Historically, legal protections followed organizing, not the reverse.
Political and social fallout from concentrated platform power
When a few firms control crucial information and commerce channels, public trust erodes. People who feel ignored by institutions find it easier to believe actors outside mainstream consensus. That distrust is fuel for misinformation and political polarization.
Regulatory capture worsens this dynamic. As industry consolidation narrows the chorus of demands regulators hear, oversight grows weak. Failure to check concentrated power leaves communities vulnerable to harms, which in turn opens space for charlatans and conspiracy narratives.
Where pressure for change is building
Coalitions are forming across causes that once seemed unrelated. Consumers annoyed by worse search results, workers facing precarious conditions, and independent businesses squeezed by marketplace fees are finding common ground.
Doctorow casts hope in this connecting work. By linking problems across sectors — from locked-down cars and opaque drug pricing to polarized feeds and brittle supply chains — advocates can build the political weight needed for lasting reforms.
Want the full conversation with Cory Doctorow?
His interview on The Gray Area podcast dives deeper into examples, legal history, and specific policy proposals. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or your preferred podcast app for the extended discussion and edited highlights.
