Cory Doctorow writes about how the Internet changed from an exiting and adventurous place to be, to an extractive machine made to make a small group of people and companies richer and us users less free on the internet. He argues that the change is a process that follows a set three stage process:
- Make it really good for users to lock them in.
- Make it really good for companies by dialing back some of the user value.
- Once everyone are locked in and dependent they move to the extracting faze where everything is a bit (or a lot) shit for everyone but the platform owner.
This is the enshittification process and can be found in many many platforms we rely on, or used to rely on, on the Internet. Companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon are all examples from his book which have gone through this process and have all positioned themselves as some of the most powerfull and valuble companies in the world as a result.
«This is infuriating. It’s frustrating. And, depending on how important those services are to you, it’s terrifying.»
– Cory Doctorow
That quote is from the very start of the book and it perfectly clarifies why the enshittification of products, platforms and services we all use and depend on is such a big problem. It isn’t simply a nerdy «I want my old Internet back again!», but a fundamental problem for our society. If you depend on an enshittified service your life is meaningfully affected and most likely worse off than it was before the enshittification started.
Doctorow’s main argument for how we got here is several decades of monopolization and too weak antitrust enforcement leading to a situation where the largest are too big to fail and consequently too big to care. The result is an Internet where only a few players have almost all of the power and everyone else are stuck simply dealing with what’s available.
Overall Enshittification is a very good book I think you should read for yourself. Go find it where you usually buy books.