🕳 Enshitification — The slow rot of everything
Once-bright screens fading to grey, a digital autumn of decay.
🧠UX Interpretation: Platform decay through greed
Coined by writer Cory Doctorow, “enshitification” describes the lifecycle of most platforms. First they serve users. Then they balance users and advertisers. Finally, they serve only themselves. The pattern repeats across shopping, search, and social networks. Each tweak promises improvement; each one takes something away.
The slide isn’t dramatic. It’s granular. Ads appear where friends used to be. Links shorten, options vanish, and the feed grows louder and emptier at once. The tragedy of enshitification is that it feels normal while it happens.
🎯 Theme: Corruption of trust
Design built for connection becomes design for extraction. Metrics replace meaning. Growth teams rename harm as engagement, and UX becomes PR for a broken machine. People stay not because it’s good, but because leaving feels like losing history. Enshitification thrives on nostalgia as much as data.
đź’ˇ UX Takeaways
- Every “free” service needs a visible price tag.
- Watch where the ads appear — they mark the rot.
- Loyalty is fragile once the product turns predatory.
- Users notice erosion long before collapse.
- Good design ends before decay begins.
đź“Ž Footnote
Doctorow’s 2023 essay captured what most users had already felt: that digital life was being quietly downgraded. The term stuck because it fit so well. Enshitification isn’t a glitch — it’s a business model with a timer. Every click just winds it tighter.