Cory Doctorow gave a rude name to the way online platforms rot
Canadian writer Cory Doctorow popularised enshittification in a November 2022 blog post to describe a familiar pattern. A platform treats its users well, then squeezes them to please business customers, and finally squeezes everyone to hand the value to shareholders. The American Dialect Society made it its 2023 Word of the Year.
His theory rests on lock-in. A new service runs at a loss to win users. Once they are stuck, it sells cheap access to them to suppliers. Once suppliers are stuck too, high switching costs mean nobody can easily leave even when rivals exist, and the platform keeps adjusting its settings, which Doctorow calls twiddling, in search of slightly more profit. Economists would recognise a form of rent-seeking.
He points to Amazon, which lured shoppers with low prices and free Prime shipping, drew in sellers, then layered on fees; by 2023 more than 45% of an item's price went to Amazon. Facebook, in his account, filled feeds with media posts until publishers depended on it, then favoured paid boosts. Google grew on clean results with few ads before advertising and spam crept in. Apple's App Store lets it take commission of up to 30%, because developers have no other route to iPhone owners. Dating apps face a built-in conflict: a matched couple stops paying.
Doctorow's remedies are two principles. Platforms should deliver what users request, such as every post from accounts they follow and exact search matches ahead of sponsored ones. Users should also have a right of exit, which requires interoperability and freedom to take purchased media with them.
The word has escaped its origins. Australia's Macquarie Dictionary picked it for 2024, and people now apply it to self-checkouts, gig work, academic publishing and airlines. Doctorow says he is delighted, and in October 2025 he published a book on the subject.
Source: Enshittification
