Enshittification

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Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, companies create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.

The term was first coined by tech blogger Corey Doctorow in November 2022 and has since gained widespread recognition.

How it works

"It is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them." -Corey Doctorow, Wired, 2023

Enshittification at it's core is a three-stage process.

Stage 1 - Incentivizing Mass Adoption

Companies offer their product or service to users with great incentive to try and build an established userbase. It is usually during the early stage of the company is the most focused on providing a positive user-experience and listening to feedback.

For example, Uber was initially well-recieved for offering competitive prices for transportation, leading to a large userbase adopting the platform.

Stage 2 - Catering to Business Clients

Once a stable userbase is locked in, companies begin offer access to the userbase to business customers with great incentive. This stage is usually when the user-experience begins to decline as the company is now more focused on catering to partners such as suppliers and advertisers.

For example, in 2023, Reddit removed free access to their API nearing the time of its IPO. Then, in 2024, Reddit struck a $60M deal with Google to give access to its user-generated content for AI training data.

Stage 3 - Quality Degradation for Shareholders

When both users and business partners are locked in, the company shifts it's surpluses to the shareholders. It no longer has any incentive to grow or maintain quality for either of it's customer bases and relentlessly seeks profit at any rate for the shareholders. Companies at this stage also tend to have such a large market presence that switching barriers naturally (or intentionally) fall into place for those trying to leave for alternatives.

An ongoing example is YouTube's crackdown on users using ad-blockers. While such a crackdown might reduce ad-blocker usage and increase short-term shareholder returns, it degrades the experience for users and reduces the quality of impressions for advertisers. Over 30% of the world's population uses YouTube, with a ~98% market share in online video media.

Why it is a problem

Erosion of user experiences

It can cause frustration among customers, for example Netflix has started locking down movies behind expensive plans, so customers are frustrated into subscribing to a more expensive plan.

Enshittification can also lead to feature creep - especially when new features of a product are intended to further lock in users and increase revenue. This creep can lead to an overall reduction in performance due to bloat and increase complexity, reducing a product's usability. A prime example of feature creep caused in large part by late-stage enshittification is Microsoft Windows.

Switching barriers

Enshittified platforms that act as intermediaries can act as both a monopoly on services and a monopsony on customers, as high switching barriers prevent either from leaving even when better alternatives technically exist. These barriers can be intentionally put in place - such as restricting the user's ability to transfer data or communicate between platforms - or unintentional, such as a platform's userbase being so large that it naturally makes it near impossible for users or partners to find equivalent engagement on an alternative platform.

An example of this would be a longtime eBay seller hoping to leave the site for an alternative with lower fees (possibly Mercari or Etsy). They might first encounter issues migrating all of their listings over to the new platform; a process which could be tedious. Their feedback history will certainly not carry over to the new platform so buyers are initially less likely to view them as trustworthy, potentially impacting sales. Lastly, the alternative platform likely has a vastly smaller userbase than eBay so despite all the possible benefits - the seller is less likely to be successful on the new platform than they are on eBay.

Such switching barriers can create an adversarial relationship between platform users or business partners and the company they're dependent on. The users or partners cannot be successful without access to the wide reach of the platform - but it leaves them wholly dependent on a company that no longer has their best interests in mind.

Platform death

A potential end-scenario for enshittified platforms is death, usually caused by a large enough exodus of users and business partners, and a general loss of trust. A platform may not truly "die" per-say, but it's completely lost the identity that made it successful in the first place - and might not ever regain it. An ongoing example is Twitter post-Elon Musk's takeover. Under it's new ownership and branding, the platform drove away swathes of it's userbase and advertisers to alternative platforms (such as Bluesky) after it's policy shifts proved widely unpopular.

However, the death of an enshittified platform is not an entirely positive end result. It uproots a long established userbase and can greatly disrupt their activities. There is also the chance that alternative platforms lack feature parity with the old platform or that it might not even be able to support the massive influx of new users - at least for some amount of time. At worst, data loss could be involved meaning years worth of information - if not archived beforehand - could potentially be lost if a platform shuts down in some capacity.

Possible solutions

End-to-end principal

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Right of exit

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Public backlash

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Alternative platforms

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Examples

E-commerce

In Doctorow's original post, he discussed the practices of Amazon. The online retailer initially drew in users with products sold below cost and free shipping. Once its userbase was well established, more sellers began to sell their products through Amazon. Finally, Amazon began to add fees to increase profits. In 2023, over 45% of the sale price of items went to Amazon in the form of various fees. Amazon also allows sellers the ability to push their listing higher in search results via it's paid Sponsored Products program. Doctorow described advertisement within Amazon as a payola scheme in which sellers bid against one another for search-ranking preference, and said that the first five pages of a search for "cat beds" were half advertisements

eBay is another e-commerce site that followed a similar trajectory, initially offering low fees and a robust buying/selling protection system. Once it's userbase of largely secondhand buyers and sellers was solidified, eBay raised seller fees and began incentivizing large volume sellers - often actual businesses - with lower selling fees should they subscribe to eBay Store. eBay sellers are also no longer able to leave negative feedback for buyers, greatly reducing the ability of sellers to avoid bad actors. Since then, eBay has introduced promoted listings that are effectively analogous to Amazon's paid sponsored listing system. eBay has also encouraged sellers to use AI generated descriptions that often misrepresent the condition of items being sold, along with opting all of it's users into in-house AI training by default as of it's April 21, 2025 privacy policy revision.

Media streaming platforms

The enshittification of Netflix is similarly reflected in other streaming platforms such as YouTube TV and Amazon Prime Video, where prices have increased despite a decline (or at least no perceivable improvement) in overall service quality.

Search engines

Google...

Social media

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Software

Adobe...

Windows...

Video Games

Unity...