Enshittification
(2025-12-12T18:42.775Z)
Perplexity Query
(2025-12-12T18:42
.775Z)
Question:
Write a comprehensive one-page article about "Enshittification".
Model: sonar-pro
Introduction
Enshittification is a slang term for the way online platforms and digital services gradually become worse over time, especially for users.
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It matters because it captures a pattern many people feel but struggle to name: beloved apps, sites, and marketplaces slowly turning from useful tools into frustrating, exploitative systems driven by short‑term profit.
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Main Content
At its core, enshittification describes a cycle of degradation in which a platform initially treats users well, then gradually shifts value away from them and toward business customers and investors.
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In the early stage, the service feels generous—low prices, clean design, few ads, and strong features—because the priority is growth and user acquisition.
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As it becomes dominant, the platform starts inserting more ads, pushing paid options, and collecting more data, eroding the original experience.
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In the final stage, it aggressively extracts value from everyone—users, business partners, and workers—until the service feels “ruined.”
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Common examples include social media sites that once showed mostly posts from friends but now bury them under sponsored content, recommendations, and intrusive ads.
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Streaming platforms may raise prices while removing features like account sharing or offline viewing, or quietly downgrade libraries and search tools to steer people toward their own content. Marketplaces can favor their own brands in search results, charge higher fees to sellers, or flood results with low‑quality products, making it harder for users to find what they want.
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Even productivity tools can suffer: free tiers shrink, privacy terms loosen, and dark patterns nudge users into subscriptions.
Understanding enshittification has practical uses for consumers, workers, policymakers, and designers. For users, it offers a vocabulary to recognize when a platform’s incentives have shifted and to decide when to leave, downgrade, or look for open or community‑run alternatives.
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For regulators and advocates, the concept helps frame discussions about antitrust, data protection, and platform accountability, highlighting how consolidation and lack of competition make it easier for dominant players to degrade services.
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Designers and engineers can use it as a warning sign: when key metrics prioritize extraction (ad impressions, lock‑in, engagement at any cost) over user value, the enshittification cycle may be underway.
There are also challenges and considerations. Not every price rise or design change is enshittification; services have real costs, and sustainable business models sometimes require trade‑offs. The term is emotionally powerful but somewhat imprecise, so overuse can blur the line between necessary monetization and genuine degradation. Moreover, users often tolerate gradual declines in exchange for network effects (all their friends or customers are there), which makes it hard for alternatives to gain traction and for enshittified platforms to face real consequences.
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Recognizing these dynamics is crucial for turning the term from a complaint into a tool for analysis and reform.
Current State and Trends
Enshittification has moved from niche internet slang into mainstream discussion, with major dictionaries adding the word and highlighting its association with the “gradual degradation” of online platforms.
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Commentators and authors have used it to explain how capitalism and investor pressure can systematically worsen digital services over time, especially when companies chase growth and quarterly returns above all else.
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Key players and technologies in this story are large platforms in social media, e‑commerce, search, app stores, and streaming. Their control over data, distribution, and attention gives them the power to change rules and extract more value once they reach dominance.
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Recent developments—such as more aggressive advertising, increasing subscription bundles, pay‑for‑visibility schemes, and stricter monetization policies—are often cited as evidence that enshittification is accelerating across the digital economy.
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Future Outlook
Looking ahead, many observers expect enshittification pressures to intensify as competition, investor expectations, and AI‑driven optimization push platforms to squeeze more revenue from users and partners.
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At the same time, growing awareness of the pattern may fuel stronger antitrust enforcement, interoperability rules, data‑portability rights, and interest in open‑source, federated, or cooperative platforms designed to resist this cycle. How governments, users, and builders respond will shape whether the next generation of digital services becomes more user‑centric—or continues down the path that enshittification describes.
Conclusion
Enshittification names a widespread pattern in which once‑useful digital platforms gradually degrade as they prioritize extraction over user value.
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Recognizing this cycle is a first step toward demanding better platforms, supporting healthier alternatives, and shaping a digital ecosystem that serves people as well as profits.
Citations
[ifok5j] 2025, Jan 30. ENSHITTIFICATION Slang Meaning - Merriam-Webster. Published: 2025-01-30
[ndhh92] 2025, Sep 21.
. Published: 2024-11-25 | Updated: 2025-09-21[yv0t2w] 2025, Dec 11. Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to .... Published: 2025-12-11