enshittification
/in-SHIT-uh-fi-KAY-shun/noun
Meaning
The gradual deterioration of an online platform, product, or service as advertising, fees, data extraction, algorithmic manipulation, or other profit-making priorities make it less useful and more unpleasant for users. The word often suggests a recognizable pattern: a service attracts users with a good experience, locks in users and business customers, then extracts more value from both.[1][2][3][4]
- 1. The decline in quality or usefulness of an online platform, such as a social network, search engine, marketplace, streaming service, or app.
- 2. The broader process of deliberately or predictably making a product or service worse in pursuit of profit.
- 3. A condition in which a once-useful digital service has become cluttered, exploitative, unreliable, or difficult to leave.
Examples
“The new update is pure enshittification.”
“Every app I use is going through enshittification.”
“The platform was great until enshittification hit.”
“More ads, worse search, higher prices—classic enshittification.”
“I opened the site for one recipe and got buried in pop-ups. Enshittification wins again.”
Origin and spread
Cory Doctorow introduced and popularized the modern platform-specific sense in 2022, describing a three-stage decline in which a platform first serves users, then business customers, and eventually its own shareholders. His November 28, 2022 blog post is the earliest widely documented use of this sense, while a January 21, 2023 post developed the idea and helped spread the word. The formation combines en- meaning “cause to be,” the vulgar noun shit, and -ification meaning “making” or “producing.” Merriam-Webster notes that independent online coinages appeared in the 2010s and that the related word shittification appeared earlier; those records are not necessarily predecessors of Doctorow’s modern slang sense. The word became especially prominent in 2023, when the American Dialect Society named it its Word of the Year, and it was Macquarie Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year.[1][2][3]
How to use it
Enshittification is informal, blunt, and deliberately vulgar. It is common in tech criticism, online commentary, and casual complaints about ads, subscriptions, search results, recommendation feeds, customer service, or platform lock-in. It can also be extended beyond technology, but that broader use is usually rhetorical rather than technical. In professional or family-friendly settings, use a less profane alternative such as degradation, decline, or quality erosion.
Sources
- 1. Cory Doctorow — Pluralistic: Tiktok's enshittificationSupports: meaning, origin.
- 2. American Dialect Society — 2023 Word of the Year Is “Enshittification”Supports: meaning, origin.
- 3. Macquarie Dictionary — Word of the Year 2024Supports: meaning, origin.
- 4. Cambridge Dictionary — Meaning of enshittification in EnglishSupports: meaning, earliest documented use.
