Enshittification: How Our Favorite Apps Turn Into Cash‑Grabbing Shells

Ever notice how a once‑lovely app suddenly feels like a money‑sucking machine? That feeling has a name now – enshittification. The word pops up in tech blogs, economic round‑tables and, oddly enough, even in parliamentary debates, all because it captures a very specific, all‑too‑common pattern.

In plain English, enshittification is the gradual erosion of an online service’s quality. First, a platform rolls out a generous, often free experience to reel users in. Once the audience is glued, the service starts catering to corporate customers – advertisers, third‑party sellers, you name it. Finally, when both users and business partners are locked in, the platform squeezes every last drop of profit for shareholders, leaving a stripped‑down, ad‑laden version of what it once was.

The phrase was coined in 2022 by Canadian‑British writer and internet activist Cory Doctorow. He laid out the three‑stage decay cycle in a blog post and later expanded on it in a 2023 Wired article. Doctorow’s crisp description went something like this: a platform begins as a loss‑leader, pivots to extract value from business clients, and ultimately claws back value from everyone to boost its owners’ bottom line.

That very year, the American Dialect Society crowned “enshittification” its Word of the Year, cementing its place in modern tech jargon. Though it started as vulgar slang, the term quickly slipped into respectable discourse – economists, journalists, and policy makers now use it to discuss algorithmic platform capitalism without having to invent a new, bland synonym.

Real‑world examples are everywhere. Your social‑media feed, once full of friends’ updates, now feels like an endless stream of sponsored posts and click‑bait videos. Streaming services that once boasted massive libraries now shuffle a handful of titles behind ever‑rising subscription fees. Even search engines have joined the club, pushing paid links to the top while burying organic results.

Because the word’s profanity can raise eyebrows, Doctorow suggested a cleaner alternative for formal settings: “platform decay.” Yet no polite phrase quite captures the sting of watching a beloved service degrade before your eyes.

Synonyms you might hear include platform decay, monetisation decay, or quality degradation. Antonyms – the hopeful side of the story – are terms like optimization, value addition, and user‑centric improvement.

So the next time you mutter about the latest app update that feels more like a cash grab than a convenience, you now have a word for it. Enshittification isn’t just a gripe; it’s a recognized stage in the life‑cycle of many digital services, and understanding it can help users make smarter choices – maybe even switch to open‑source alternatives that haven’t yet taken that turn.