Enshittification

Platform decay, commonly known as Enshittification or crapification, is a practice in which companies (usually large ones) allow the quality of the products or services they provide to decline over time.

The term was first coined by tech blogger Cory Doctorow in November 2022^[1], popularized by Arun Maini (Mrwhosetheboss)^[2][3][4], and has since gained widespread recognition.^[5]

The platform decay practice is done in three stages. Initially, the companies create high-quality products or service offerings, usually by offering users a product or service at a low price (or sometimes for free). This works as an easy way to attract users and consumers and undercut the competition. Later, the offerings and platform quality decline, often with subtle changes, worsening users' experience during a transition to prioritize profits for business customers. At the end, they decline quality for both regular and business customers to prioritize shareholder profits.

It is an effective practice amongst large corporations that offer a monopoly product or service. When there's no significant competence, the enshittification may persist longer, as users may be unable to leave the platform because they're used to it or because they can't find similar alternatives that meet their needs. These practices could also cause provider companies to incur irreparable reputational damage. According to Cory Doctorow on Wired, 2023:

"It is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them." ^[6]

Companies begin by offering a product or service that provides a high-quality experience or usage for users, while constantly listening to user feedback. Another common practice to attract users is to offer a low or affordable price for most consumers. They basically create something "too good" to be free or low-cost. This leads to a visible, well-known product or service that makes it easy to build communities and user bases.

A documented example of this phase is Uber aggressively using investor capital to fund massive subsidies, paying to acquire both drivers and passengers.^[7] It was initially well-received for offering competitive transportation prices, leading to a large user base adopting the platform.^[8]

Once communities and user bases are stable, companies begin offering products and services to business customers, providing strong incentives. These partnerships and the new profit-making focus are eroding the user experience through tactics such as ads and sponsored content.

A documented example of this phase is seen in the case of Reddit removing free access to its API near the time of its Initial public offering (IPO).^[9] Then, in 2024, Reddit struck a $60 million deal with Google to grant access to its user-generated content for AI training data.^[10]

When both users and business partners are locked in, the company shifts its surpluses to the shareholders. It no longer has any incentive to grow or maintain quality for either of its customer bases, and it relentlessly seeks profit at any cost for shareholders. Companies at this stage also tend to have such a large market presence that switching barriers naturally (or intentionally) fall into place for those trying to leave for alternatives.

An ongoing example is YouTube's crackdown on users who use ad blockers.^[11] While such a crackdown might reduce ad-blocker usage and increase short-term shareholder returns, it degrades the user experience and reduces the quality of impressions for advertisers. Over 30% of the world's population uses YouTube, with a ~98% market share in online video media.^[12][13]

It can cause frustration among customers; for example, Netflix has started locking movies behind expensive plans, forcing customers to subscribe to a more expensive plan.

Enshittification can also lead to feature creep - especially when new features of a product are intended to lock in users further and increase revenue. This creep can lead to an overall reduction in performance due to bloat and increased complexity, reducing a product's usability. A prime example of feature creep, in large part due to late-stage enshittification, is Microsoft Windows.

Enshittified platforms that act as intermediaries can act as both a monopoly on services and a monopsony on customers, as high switching barriers prevent either from leaving even when better alternatives technically exist. These barriers can be intentionally put in place - such as restricting the user's ability to transfer data or communicate between platforms - or unintentional, such as a platform's userbase being so large that it naturally makes it near impossible for users or partners to find equivalent engagement on an alternative platform.

An example of this would be a long-time eBay seller hoping to leave the site for an alternative with lower fees (such as eBay's competitors, like Etsy or Mercari). They might first encounter issues migrating all of their listings over to the new platform, a process that could be tedious. Their feedback history will certainly not carry over to the new platform, so buyers are initially less likely to view them as trustworthy, potentially impacting sales. Lastly, the alternative platform likely has a vastly smaller user base than eBay, so, despite any potential benefits, the seller is less likely to be successful on the new platform than on eBay.

Such switching barriers can create an adversarial relationship between platform users or business partners and the company on which they depend. Users or partners cannot succeed without access to the platform's wide reach, but that access leaves them wholly dependent on a company whose interests no longer align with theirs.

A potential end-scenario for enshittified platforms is death, usually caused by a large enough exodus of users and business partners, and a general loss of trust. A platform may not truly "die" per se, but it can completely lose the identity that made it successful in the first place - and might not ever regain it. An ongoing example is Twitter post Elon Musk's takeover. Under its new ownership and branding, the platform lost swathes of its userbase and advertisers to alternative platforms (such as Bluesky after its policy shifts proved widely unpopular.

However, the death of an enshittified platform is not a particularly positive outcome. It uproots a long-established userbase and can greatly disrupt their activities. There is also the chance that alternative platforms lack feature parity with the old platform or that they might not be able to support the massive influx of new users, at least for some time. At worst, data loss could be involved, meaning years' worth of information - if not archived beforehand - could potentially be lost if a platform shuts down in some capacity.

Products and services that are affected by enshittification usually apply these practices (that could be subtle at first) to their product or services:

• Modifications of terms of service or terms of use to include anti-consumer practices.
• Advertising overload to prioritize advertiser profits and encourage users to pay to disable (or limit) ad visibility.
• Pay-walling or limiting functions or features, usually ones that were free at first. This can also lead to monetization overload. In some cases, a function or feature might be completely removed.
• Integration of Bloatware.
• Price gouging or surge pricing.
• In physical products, lower-quality or less durable materials are used to manufacture products to minimize costs. In some cases, this practice is alongside planned obsolescence.
• In software, low-quality updates and features, in some cases involving the usage of AI slop.
• Provider companies ignore user feedback that calls for reverting or removing features that reduce partnership or shareholder profits.
• Difficulties or inabilities to remove a payment method or to cancel a subscription.

In Doctorow's original post, he discussed Amazon's practices. The online retailer initially drew in users with products sold at a loss and free shipping. Once its user base was well established, more sellers began selling their products on Amazon. Finally, Amazon began to add fees to increase profits. In 2023, over 45% of the sale price of items went to Amazon through various fees. Amazon also allows sellers to push their listings higher in search results via its paid Sponsored Products program. Doctorow described advertisement within Amazon as a payola scheme in which sellers bid against one another for search-ranking preference, and said that the first five pages of a search for "cat beds" were half advertisements

eBay is another e-commerce site that followed a similar trajectory, initially offering low fees and a robust buyer and seller protection system. Once its userbase of largely secondhand buyers and sellers was solidified, eBay raised seller fees. It began incentivizing large-volume sellers - often actual businesses - with lower selling fees if they subscribed to an eBay Store. eBay sellers are also no longer able to leave negative feedback for buyers, greatly reducing sellers' ability to avoid bad actors. Since then, eBay has introduced promoted listings, which are effectively analogous to Amazon's paid sponsored listings. eBay has also encouraged sellers to use AI-generated descriptions that often misrepresent the condition of items being sold and has opted all of its users into in-house AI training by default as of its April 21, 2025, privacy policy revision.

The enshittification of Netflix is similarly reflected in other competing streaming platforms such as YouTube TV and Amazon Prime Video, where prices have increased despite a decline (or at least no perceivable improvement) in overall service quality. Multiple providers have also downgraded their cheapest paid plans, now bundling ads.

Google started as an ad-free search engine but then began adding sponsored links at the top of search results, making them less distinguishable from non-ad links. ^{[citation needed]} In 2024, Google started rolling out AI Overview, an AI-generated summary that appears at the top of the search results. Due to the release being rushed and not having proper revisions, the AI Overview showed inaccurate and potentially dangerous overviews, such as encouraging eating rocks, suggesting putting glue on top of pizza as a solution to cheese sliding off, encouraging smoking during pregnancy, encouraging suicide, and suggesting users jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.^[14] Google has responded to those issues and temporarily disabled the AI overview. While those incidents have been fixed and the AI Overview has been made available again, the AI overview still shows inaccurate results caused by hallucinations, biases, and the citing of non-verifiable sources, often citing satire comments as factual sources or making stuff up. The AI overview has also been criticized for being considered unwanted or unnecessary, environmentally harmful, raising privacy concerns, and reducing traffic to genuine sites, encouraging people to rely on the overview instead of visiting sites to obtain the information they're looking for.^[15][16]

Main article: Facebook

Facebook has shifted from a network for personal connections to a platform dominated by advertising and algorithmic manipulation. User data is monetized at the expense of privacy, while the quality of organic content has steadily declined.

Main article: Instagram

Instagram once centered on creativity and social sharing, but now prioritizes sponsored posts, shopping features, and influencer marketing. Users’ ability to control their feeds has been reduced, reflecting the platform’s focus on profit over consumer experience.

Main article: Reddit

Reddit’s 2023 API changes exemplify enshitification, undermining community tools and third-party apps in favor of advertising revenue. This has eroded user autonomy and restricted consumer choice.

Main article: X Corp

Following its acquisition and rebrand, Twitter/X introduced paywalls for basic features, weakened its moderation, and increased sponsored content. The result has been degraded service and a diminished consumer experience.

Main article: TikTok

TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm drives engagement but also funnels users into repetitive content while saturating feeds with advertising. Concerns over data exploitation further highlight the imbalance between corporate gain and consumer rights.

Main article: YouTube

YouTube has expanded ad loads and aggressively promoted subscriptions, while algorithmic changes often disadvantage independent creators. Consumers face reduced choice and increased intrusion, hallmarks of enshitification.

Main article: Discord

Discord's primary selling point is that it is the most widely used platform for online communication, especially for communities.^{[citation needed]} Because of this dominance, it has caused barriers for users intending to switch to alternative platforms such as Stoat or Matrix, as a lack of common users between platforms makes it difficult for more users to transfer over.^{[citation needed]} This fact has been abused by Discord with its infrastructure showing signs of decay,^{[citation needed]} the introduction of advertisements in the format of "quests",^{[citation needed]} and the degradation of free perks.^{[citation needed]}

Main article: Adobe

Users losing their perpetual licenses: Starting in 2013, Adobe eliminated the option to purchase perpetual licenses for core products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. Users must now maintain an ongoing subscription to access the software. Canceling payments disables applications regardless of prior investment, dramatically increasing long-term costs and removing user ownership in favor of recurring subscriptions.

Loss of files on deactivated products: Many Adobe file formats (PSD, AI, INDD, AE project files) are proprietary and poorly supported by third-party software. When a subscription ends, users are unable to open, export, or meaningfully edit their own historical work, effectively creating data lock-in for user-created content to enforce continued payment.

Mandatory Creative Cloud account: By applying DRM to offline tools, software that normally runs locally requires frequent online authentication via the Creative Cloud desktop app. Forced sign-ins, background services, and periodic license checks can unexpectedly disable software, undermine reliability, and make professional tools dependent on Adobe’s servers.

Dark patterns in subscription cancellation: Adobe’s subscription plans use confusing billing structures (such as “annual plans billed monthly”) that impose early termination fees. Cancellation flows are deliberately complex, with obscured options and repeated retention prompts, leading users to pay for longer than intended or to be penalized for leaving.

Main article: Microsoft Windows 11

Forced Microsoft account sign-in: Beginning with Windows 10 and further enforced in Windows 11, Microsoft increasingly requires users to sign in with a Microsoft account during setup. This restricts offline use, obscures the option to create a local account, and facilitates expanded telemetry collection and ecosystem lock-in.

Baked-in advertising: Despite being a commercial software, Windows includes advertisements and promotional content in the Start Menu, lock screen, system notifications, and settings panels, used to promote Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Edge, and other services and proprietary software. Even when users disable these features, they are frequently re-enabled after major updates.

Dark patterns in first-party applications: Microsoft applications repeatedly nudge users toward Microsoft-preferred choices. Edge persistently prompts users to set it as the default browser and displays warnings when switching away. OneDrive frames cloud uploads as “protecting your files,” obscuring the fact that local folders are being redirected to Microsoft’s servers. Subscription prompts often lack a clear “Never ask again” option, offering only choices such as “Try for free” or “Maybe later” as in Microsoft 365. Windows U.S.

Baked-in telemetry: Telemetry and diagnostic data collection are enabled by default, particularly in non-Enterprise editions, with only limited controls available to disable or reduce them. Most data collection is vaguely documented, undermining informed consent.

Loss of user control over updates: Windows updates cannot be permanently disabled through standard settings. Users can only defer updates for a limited period (up to four weeks), after which downloads and installations are often forced, sometimes causing unexpected restarts or re-enabling previously disabled features without user consent.

Degraded local search in favor of web search: The start menu and file search experience has progressively gotten worse, blending local results with Bing web searches. This often prioritizes online content and advertisements over fast, predictable local file and application discovery, thereby reducing usability to promote Microsoft’s search and advertising ecosystem.

Main article: Unity

Unity Software Inc. implemented sweeping changes to its Unity pricing model, affecting all engine users, forcing them to either adopt the per-download fee or delist their games.

A lot of mobile games have fallen into enshittified experiences. The Free-to-play business model took off with users bombarded by ads, microtransactions, battle passes, energy systems, and more, to extract as much money as possible from players' pockets while making the experience less fun. The video game Angry Birds is a good example of this. What started as a very simple game now has all the aforementioned tactics baked in, rendering the playing experience tedious and unpleasant.

The right of exit, or Data portability, is the right of a user to leave a platform without losing the data stored on it, and instead to export and access it in various applications of the user's choice.^[17]

• https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel
• https://www.darkpattern.games/

• "A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator", by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council, 2026
• "Y'all mind if I complain for 15 minutes?", by Jaiden Dittfach, 2025. In this video, she talks about how things have "become less efficient" and "more stupid".
• "The rise of Whatever"
• "Digital chains and modern feudalism"