`Author:` Cory Doctorow `Availability:` ## Summary Cory Doctorow's concept of "enshitification" is a powerful and influential framework for understanding the lifecycle of many modern digital platforms. It's not just a catchy, crude term; it's a specific theory about a recurring, predictable process. Here’s a breakdown of its core principles. The Core Definition Doctorow defines enshitification as: "The process by which a platform slowly, incrementally becomes worse for its users, partners, and sometimes even its shareholders, as it prioritizes extraction of value over value creation." The key is that it's not a single bad decision, but a predictable sequence of phases where the platform shifts value away from one group to another, ultimately undermining the entire ecosystem. --- The Three-Stage Lifecycle of Enshitification Doctorow's model describes a platform's journey through three distinct phases, each defined by who the platform is serving and who it is exploiting. Stage 1: Seduce the Users · Goal: Achieve growth and network effects by any means necessary. · How it Works: The platform is wonderful for users. It's often free, easy to use, and packed with features. Customer service is responsive. The goal is to create a vibrant, engaged community that becomes essential to people's lives. · Example: Early Facebook was a clean, ad-free space to connect with friends. Early Amazon had incredible customer service and the best prices. Early Twitter was a chaotic but fun real-time conversation hub. Stage 2: Trap the Business Customers (and Lock in the Users) · Goal: Monetize the captured user base. · How it Works: Once the platform has a large, locked-in audience, it pivots to attract business customers (advertisers, merchants, creators). It offers them access to this valuable audience. Simultaneously, it makes it difficult for both users and businesses to leave by creating high switching costs (e.g., your social graph, your purchase history, your business's primary revenue stream). · Example: Facebook and Google offering hyper-targeted advertising. Amazon inviting third-party sellers to its marketplace and then using their sales data to launch its own competing products (Amazon Basics). Twitter building its entire ecosystem around verified accounts and media personalities. Stage 3: The Squeeze · Goal: Extract maximum value from everyone. · How it Works: This is the stage of true enshitification. With everyone locked in, the platform begins to degrade the experience for all parties to increase its own profit margins. · Users see more ads, worse algorithmic feeds, less privacy, and more junk (spam, bots, low-quality content). · Business Customers (like advertisers and sellers) are charged more for worse service, with their reach and effectiveness artificially limited unless they pay for "boosts" or "premium" placements. · The platform's own employees may be subjected to layoffs and worse working conditions as the company seeks to "do more with less." · Example: Facebook's News Feed algorithm prioritizing engagement (including outrage) over meaningful connection. Amazon search results being cluttered with ads and sponsored products, making it harder for users to find what they want and for sellers to compete fairly. Twitter (post-2022) degrading its API, pushing users toward a paid model, and allowing a flood of spam and low-quality replies. --- The Underlying Mechanisms and Principles The lifecycle is driven by a few key economic and technological principles: 1. The Fiduciary Duty to Shareholders: In a publicly traded company, the legal imperative is to maximize shareholder value. Once growth plateaus, the easiest way to do this is often by extracting more value from the existing user base rather than creating new value for them. 2. The Leverage of Lock-in (Network Effects): The platform's entire strategy depends on creating a "walled garden" that is too painful or impractical to leave. Your friends, your photos, your business reviews, your playlists—they all become hostages. 3. The "Two-Sided Market": Platforms often serve two distinct groups (users and advertisers). The classic strategy is to subsidize one side (users) to create a product to sell to the other side (advertisers). Enshitification occurs when the balance is destroyed in favor of pure extraction from both sides. 4. The Erosion of Interoperability: Early, healthy platforms often allow data to be easily moved in and out (e.g., with RSS feeds or open APIs). A core tactic of enshitification is to shut down these "fire escapes," making the walled garden even more封闭. Is Enshitification Inevitable? Doctorow argues that while not absolutely inevitable, it is a systemic tendency driven by our current economic models and a lack of regulation. The pressure from venture capital (to show massive returns) and public markets (to show endless growth) makes it extremely difficult for a platform to resist the enshitification cycle. The antidote, in his view, is: · Regulation: Laws that promote competition (antitrust) and enforce interoperability (the ability to leave a platform and take your data with you). · Decentralization: Supporting protocols (like email or ActivityPub, which powers Mastodon and the Fediverse) rather than platforms. No one company owns the protocol, so it can't be enshitified. In summary, "enshitification" is not just a complaint that a website got worse. It's a specific model of how the internal dynamics of venture capital, network effects, and platform capitalism create a predictable progression from a user-centric service to a value-extracting trap. ## Key Takeaways ## Quotes - ## Notes > [!info] > ![[Enshittification_0955.webp]] `Concepts:` `Knowledge Base:` [[Books index]]