Enshittification

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:37:07 -0800

Cory Doctorow coined this term a while back and even wrote a book about it.

“Enshittification” is the gradual degradation of online platforms, where services initially provide high-quality, free, or cheap value to attract users, then pivot to prioritize advertisers, and finally extract all value for themselves, ultimately harming both users and business customers.

I love this term.

It describes so much of what I’ve seen in tech over my lifetime. Seriously great products and processes enabled by the “world wide web” of the mid to late 90’s, eventually to succumb to ads, paywalls, popups, and “nickel and dime” schemes in both physical and online products.

Enshittification on A Blog for the Uninitialized

Enshittification