When writer Cory Doctorow introduced the term enshittification in 2023, he captured a pattern many users had already noticed in their personal lives.
The social media platforms, e-commerce sites and search engines they were using had noticeably deteriorated in quality. Many had begun to prioritise content from advertisers and other third parties. Profit became the main goal.
Doctorow frames this decline as a death spiral: the online platforms once offered value to their users, but slowly shifted their focus to extracting value, with little regard for consequences.
