This month I want to highlight an article, ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything, by Cory Doctorow. Cory coined the term ‘enshittification’ in 2023 to describe how online platform businesses start awesome to attract customers, degrade over time as they chase durable business value, and eventually become devoid of customer obsession. As we mature alongside the internet, enshittification becomes self-evident in the long-running platforms we use every day. In this article, the author does a great job describing the problem space, providing deep examples, and offering a little bit of hope. The article is long, however I highly recommend reading the entire composition as it contextualizes the lifecycle of tech products all around us.

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

“Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders…But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between ‘I hate this service, but I can’t bring myself to quit,’ and ‘…why did I wait so long to quit?’ is razor-thin.”