Enshittification
en-SHIT-ih-fih-KAY-shunnoun
DiagnosisProgressive, terminal
What it means
The predictable arc in which a platform is good to its users until it has enough of them, then good to its advertisers until it has enough of those, then good to nobody.
What it actually means
It was good, you were the product, and now there is nothing left to extract.
How it is used in a sentence
"Search results are unusable now. Full enshittification."
Why this one is here
Coined by Cory Doctorow in a January 2023 blog post, and voted Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society within twelve months. It stuck because it names something everybody had already watched happen and nobody had a word for. Note the shape of it: the definition is not a complaint, it is a sequence, and sequences are harder to argue with.
Filed under
Systemic Absurdities — Prices, platforms and institutions that were designed this way and would prefer you assumed otherwise.
Diagnosis — The phrase already names a real problem. We define it properly.
Related entries
The Algorithm
Social Dynamicsthee AL-guh-rith-umnounEuphemism
An unseen ranking system, blamed for every failure of reach and never credited with the fact that you are still awake at two in the morning.
Real meaningIt is not suppressing your work. It is showing people what they actually want.
Planned Obsolescence
Systemic Absurditiespland ob-suh-LES-unsnounDiagnosis
Designing a product to stop working at the point where repairing it becomes expensive, so that replacement looks like a choice.
Real meaningIt was built to die on schedule.