The Era of Enshittification

The Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2024

In the dying light of 2024, the Macquarie Dictionary, that venerable arbiter of Australian English, reached into the murky zeitgeist and pulled out a word that felt less like a linguistic innovation and more like a collective guttural groan: Enshittification.¹ It is a word that lands with a satisfying, Anglo-Saxon thud, a “very basic term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable,” as the dictionary’s committee so elegantly noted.² It beat out other contenders for the title, such as “brainrot”—a term describing the liquefaction of the human attention span caused by endless scrolling—but “enshittification” was the clear victor because it described the cause, not just the symptom.²

The definition provided is clinical, almost polite: “The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking”.¹ Yet, to the modern citizen navigating the ruins of the digital and physical commons, the word screams of something far more visceral. It captures the specific, grinding texture of modern life: the “doom loop” of a customer service chatbot that refuses to let you speak to a human; the “ghost flight” sold to you by an airline that knew the plane would never leave the tarmac; the “smart” TV that forces you to watch an advertisement before you can adjust the volume.

This essay, is compiled from the front lines of the “Enshittocene”—a geological epoch defined not by rock strata but by layers of digital sediment and corporate neglect—it [IT!] explores the lived reality of this decay where the “move fast and break things” philosophy of Silicon Valley metastasizes into “move slowly and break people.” It is a chronicle of how we moved from a world of “users” to a world of “useds,” and how the friction of daily life has been monetized, automated, and weaponized against the very population it was meant to serve.

The phenomenon is not merely an annoyance; it is a systemic shifting of value. As the writer Cory Doctorow, who coined the term in 2022, explains, it is a predictable lifecycle of platform decay. First, they are good to their users to trap them. Then, they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse both to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.³ But as they die, they drag us down with them, turning our public squares into ad-infested swamps and our essential services into bureaucratic torture chambers.

This essay dissects this “gradual deterioration,” tracing its tendrils from the servers of Palo Alto to the checkout lines of Australian supermarkets, and asking the ultimate question: Is this simply the cost of doing business, or is it the sound of a civilization dumbing itself down into oblivion?

Part I: The Mechanics of the Trap

The Lifecycle of Platform Decay

To understand the pervasive sense of decline, one must first understand the physics of the “two-sided market.” In the pre-digital era, a business that treated its customers with contempt would simply lose them to a competitor down the street. In the Enshittocene, the “street” has been privatized, and the competitor has been acquired or sued into bankruptcy.

The mechanism of Enshittification operates on a timeline that is now so predictable it could be set to a metronome. It begins with the Acquisition Phase, or what might be called the “Golden Age of Surplus”.⁴ During this period, platforms operate often at a loss, subsidized by Venture Capital (VC) funds. Uber rides are cheaper than established taxi services; Amazon allegedly sells books for less than they cost to print; Google Search is a pristine white page that magically finds the exact answer to your query. This surplus is a bribe. It is designed to lure users in and, crucially, to lock them down.

Once the users are secured—locked in by network effects (all your friends are on Facebook), switching costs (all your photos are in iCloud), or the destruction of alternatives (local taxi firms are bankrupt)—the platform enters the Extraction Phase.⁵ The surplus is shifted from the users to the suppliers. Amazon courts third-party sellers with the promise of access to its captive audience. TikTok offers creators massive “organic reach,” showing their videos to millions without charging them a dime. This entices the supply side to build their businesses on the platform’s shaky ground.³

Then comes the Terminal Phase, or the “Great Enshittening.” The trap snaps shut. The platform, now a monopoly or duopoly, withdraws the surplus from everyone. For the user, the feed is clogged with ads and “sponsored content.” For the supplier, the organic reach is throttled to zero, forcing them to pay for “boosts” to reach the followers they already earned. The platform sits in the middle, extracting “economic rent” like a feudal lord demanding a tithe for the privilege of existing on his land.⁶

The Moat and the Hostage

The key to this strategy is the “moat.” In medieval times, a moat kept enemies out. In the digital age, the moat keeps users in. This phenomenon, known as “lock-in,” is the prerequisite for Enshittification. If a user can leave easily, a company must compete on quality. If a user cannot leave—because of “high switching costs”—the company only needs to be slightly less terrible than the alternative, or simply the only game in town.³

Consider the “walled gardens” of the tech giants. Leaving the Apple ecosystem means losing access to hundreds of dollars of purchased apps and the “blue bubble” status that signifies social inclusion in certain circles. Leaving Facebook means severing ties with the “social graph”—the network of family and friends who refuse to move to a new platform. This lack of interoperability is the padlock on the prison door. It allows companies to degrade the user experience with impunity, knowing that the pain of leaving is greater than the pain of staying.³

The result is a “commodification of mediocrity.” Excellence is expensive. Mediocrity is profitable. When competition dies, the incentive to be good vanishes, replaced by the incentive to be “just good enough to prevent a riot.” And as we shall see, the threshold for a riot is surprisingly high.

Part II: The Digital Plaza — A Graveyard of Links and Logic

The internet was once conceptualized as a “Superhighway,” a conduit for the free exchange of human knowledge. Today, it more closely resembles a “Super-Shopping Mall” where the exits have been hidden and the map is designed to lead you in circles past the same three stores.

The Collapse of Search: From Information to “Slop”

For two decades, “Google” was not just a company; it was a verb. It was the portal to the internet, the arbiter of truth. To “Google” something was to find the answer. In 2025, to “Google” something is to wade through a swamp of “SEO spam,” “sponsored” links, and AI-generated hallucinations.

The decline of Google Search is perhaps the most quantifiable metric of Enshittification. A study by GrowthSRC Media in May 2025 found that the click-through rate (CTR) to the number one organic result dropped by a staggering 32% following the rollout of Google’s “AI Overviews”.⁹ These AI summaries, which scrape information from websites and present it directly on the search page, arguably act as a “plagiarism engine.” They strip-mine the value from content creators—news sites, recipe blogs, independent researchers—and present it as Google’s own, often without attribution or a click.¹⁰

The user experience (UX) of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) tells a story of hostile design. A query for “best running shoes” in 2025 does not return independent reviews from runners. It returns:

A block of four “Sponsored” shopping ads.
An “AI Overview” summarizing a consensus of generic advice.
A “People Also Ask” widget designed to keep you on Google.
Another block of ads.
Finally, below the “fold” (the point where you must scroll), a link to a website that has likely been optimized by an SEO agency to please the algorithm rather than inform the human.⁶

This phenomenon creates a “Dead Sea effect.” Quality publishers, starved of traffic, die off or lock their content behind paywalls. This leaves the open web populated only by “content farms” generating low-quality “slop” designed solely to game the search engine. The result is a feedback loop of garbage: Google’s AI trains on the SEO spam, which was written to please Google’s AI, resulting in a degradation of information quality that borders on the surreal.* ¹¹

Social Media: The “Shrimp Jesus” Apocalypse

If Search is the library that burned down, Social Media is the town square that was flooded with sewage. Platforms like Facebook (Meta), Instagram, and X (Twitter) have abandoned the “social graph”—the idea that you should see what your friends post—in favor of the “interest graph”—the idea that an algorithm should show you whatever keeps your eyes glued to the screen for the longest possible second.³

This shift has opened the door to the “Dead Internet Theory”—the conspiratorial notion that the majority of internet traffic is bots talking to bots. In 2024, this theory moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Facebook feeds were inundated with “AI Slop”: bizarre, procedurally generated images such as “Shrimp Jesus” (a hybrid of a crustacean and the messiah), children building sandcastles that looked like aircraft carriers, and log cabins with seventeen porches.¹³

These images are not art. They are “engagement bait.” They are generated by server farms to harvest likes and comments from bots and the credulous elderly. A user comments “Amen” on a picture of Shrimp Jesus, signaling to the algorithm that they are susceptible to this content. The algorithm then feeds them more slop, interlaced with ads for drop-shipped junk or political disinformation. The human connection—the “social” part of social media—is collateral damage. The platform does not care if the engagement comes from a grandmother or a Russian botnet; it only cares that the line on the graph goes up.¹⁵

Table 1: The Indicators of Social Platform Decay (2024-2025)

Platform	The “Golden Age” (User Surplus)	The “Shift” (Supplier Surplus)	The “Enshittification” (Extraction)
Facebook	Chronological feed, status updates from friends, no ads.	News articles, viral videos, brand pages with organic reach.	“Shrimp Jesus” AI slop, zero organic reach, algorithmic “For You” feed, massive bot infestation.⁵
Twitter (X)	“The global town square,” verified journalists, real-time news.	Threaded conversations, embedded video, creator tools.	“Blue check” for sale, prioritized replies from paid users (often scams), bot swarms, loss of moderation.⁶
Instagram	Chronological photo feed, “polite” filters.	Stories, brand partnerships, influencers.	Reels (TikTok clone) forced into feed, “suggested posts” replacing friends, shopping tab dominance.¹⁶
TikTok	High organic reach for new creators, accurate “For You” algorithm.	Creator fund, live streaming tools.	“TikTok Shop” spam in every swipe, suppression of non-monetizable content, potential bans.⁴

The “Dating” of Despair

Even the search for love has been enshittified. Dating apps like Tinder and Hinge, once promising to “be designed to be deleted,” now operate on a model of “designed to be addicted.” The incentive structure is perverse: if the app successfully matches a user with a partner, the app loses two paying customers. Therefore, the algorithm is tuned to provide just enough hope to keep the user swiping, but not enough success to let them leave. It is the gamification of loneliness, turning the search for a soulmate into a slot machine where the payout is a “match” that never messages back.³

Part III: The Marketplace of Mediocrity — Amazon and the “Junkification”

Amazon, the “Everything Store,” has quietly transformed into the “Everything Ad.” The user experience of shopping on the platform in 2025 is a masterclass in hostile architecture. A search for a specific product—say, a “Samsung TV”—will often yield a result page where the first row is “Sponsored” listings for brands that did not exist six months ago, with names like “XGODY,” “FROGGIE,” or “SUPER-GOOD-TEK”.⁵

The Ad Tax

This is the third stage of Doctorow’s cycle. Amazon now extracts massive rents from its sellers. To be seen, a seller must pay for “Sponsored Products” placement. This advertising cost—often 15% to 30% of the sale price—is inevitably passed on to the consumer. We are paying an “Enshittification Tax” on every tube of toothpaste and USB cable we buy, funding the very mechanism that makes our shopping experience worse.¹⁸

The “Amazon Choice” badge, once a signal of quality or popularity, has been revealed to be largely a function of which seller is willing to pay the most or game the system most effectively. The reviews, once the trust engine of the internet, are now a warzone of paid fakes and bot-generated praise. A product with 4.8 stars and 10,000 reviews is just as likely to be a fire hazard as it is to be a bargain.⁵

The Mushroom Death Trap

The stakes of this “junkification” are not just wasted money; they are life and death. In late 2023 and throughout 2024, mycologists and foraging experts sounded the alarm: Amazon was being flooded with AI-written mushroom foraging guidebooks. These books, generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) that “hallucinate” facts, contained advice that could kill. One such book advised tasting a mushroom to determine its toxicity—a method that is lethal with species like the Death Cap.²¹

Despite warnings, Amazon’s automated systems failed to flag these books. The platform’s “frictionless” publishing model, designed to maximize the volume of goods (and therefore fees), had no mechanism to distinguish between a lifetime of expertise and a millisecond of algorithmic spew. It is a chilling example of the “move fast” ethos applied to biological safety. The platform is not a curator; it is a pipe, and it does not care if the pipe delivers water or poison, as long as the flow rate is high.²³

Part IV: The Streaming Mirage — Now You See It, Now You Don’t

For a brief, golden moment in the mid-2010s, it seemed that the problem of media piracy had been solved. “Access” replaced “ownership.” We happily traded our DVD collections for a Netflix subscription, believing that the library in the cloud would be eternal.

We were wrong.

The Great Deletion and the Tax Write-Off

In 2024, the streaming giants pulled the rug out. Disney+, Max (formerly HBO Max), and Paramount+ began purging vast swathes of their libraries. They removed original movies and series—content that existed only on their platforms—not because nobody was watching, but to claim tax write-offs.²⁴

A “tax write-off” in this context is a euphemism for cultural arson. By declaring a show like Willow or Westworld to be an “impaired asset” with zero value, the corporation can reduce its tax bill. However, tax rules often require that the asset cannot be monetized in the future to qualify for the write-off. This creates a perverse incentive to delete art from existence. Shows that cost millions to produce and employed hundreds of artists were vaporized to massage the quarterly earnings of a media conglomerate.²⁶

The Commodification of Music

Spotify, under the leadership of CEO Daniel Ek, has followed a similar trajectory. While Ek speaks of “improving value” and “empowering creators” in investor calls, the reality for the user is a steady drumbeat of price hikes and interface clutter.²⁸ The platform is pushing “Discovery Mode,” a system that critics liken to “digital payola,” where artists accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for algorithmic boosting. The listener believes the “shuffle” is random or curated for taste; in reality, it is increasingly curated for the platform’s margin.³⁰

The Resistance: The Return to Physical Media

The cultural reaction to this digital volatility has been a resurgence of the physical. In a twist of irony, “Gen Z”—the first truly digital-native generation—is driving a boom in vinyl records, CDs, and even cassette tapes. Sales of 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays spiked in 2025 as cinephiles realized that a disc on a shelf is the only thing a CEO cannot delete remotely.³¹

This “return to physical” is not just nostalgia; it is a survival strategy. It is a rejection of “subscription serfdom,” where you own nothing and pay for everything forever. It is the realization that in the Enshittocene, if you can’t hold it in your hand, you don’t own it. The “cloud” is just someone else’s computer, and that person does not like you.³³

Part V: The Bureaucracy of Suffering — When the Government Enshittifies

Perhaps the most terrifying manifestation of this trend is when it migrates from the private sector to the state. When a social network becomes unusable, you can close the tab. When a government service becomes unusable, you starve.

Australia’s Robodebt and the “Doom Loop”

Australia stands as a grim pioneer in the field of “automated cruelty.” The “Robodebt” scandal, which ran until 2019 but whose shockwaves are still felt in 2025, saw the government use a crude algorithm to average out income and illegally raise debts against half a million welfare recipients. The burden of proof was reversed: the citizen was guilty until they could prove their innocence to a machine.³⁵

Though Robodebt was eventually declared unlawful, the mindset that created it persists in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). In 2024 and 2025, participants reported being trapped in “doom loops” of automated decision-making. Funding plans were slashed without explanation, and appeals were routed to call centers manned by staff with no authority to fix anything. The language of the NDIS shifted from “care” and “support” to “sustainability” and “insurance principles”—corporate speak for “cutting costs by denying service”.³⁶

Sludge: The Weaponization of Friction

Behavioral economist Cass Sunstein coined the term “Sludge” to describe the friction, red tape, and administrative burdens that make it difficult for people to access services.³⁸ In the Enshittocene, Sludge is not an accident; it is a feature.

Consider the experience of dealing with Centrelink (Australia’s social security agency). In 2024, reports surfaced of phone lines that simply disconnect after an hour of holding, or “smart” voice bots that refuse to put a caller through to a human. This is “time theft” on a massive scale. It imposes a “cognitive tax” on the most vulnerable, acting as a rationing mechanism. If the process of claiming a benefit is sufficiently traumatic, a percentage of people will simply give up and go away.⁴⁰

The Utility Scandal: Thames Water

In the UK, the privatization of water companies offers a literal interpretation of Enshittification. Thames Water, loaded with debt by private equity owners who extracted billions in dividends, failed to invest in infrastructure. The result? Raw sewage—literal shit—pumped into rivers and seas at record rates in 2024.⁴² The profit was privatized; the pollution was socialized. It is the ultimate metaphor for the era: the public is forced to swim in the waste of the private sector’s greed.

Part VI: The Corporate Shield — The Monetization of Unaccountability

In the modern corporation, “Customer Service” is viewed as a “cost center” to be eliminated. The goal of corporate communications is to ensure that a human being never speaks to another human being, ever again.

The Chatbot Defense

Enter the AI Chatbot: the frontline soldier in the war against accountability. These bots are not designed to help; they are designed to deflect. They trap users in circular logic, offering a menu of irrelevant options while hiding the phone number deep in the website’s footer.⁴³

A landmark case in 2024 involving Air Canada exposed the legal absurdity of this automation. A passenger, Jake Moffatt, asked the airline’s chatbot about bereavement fares after his grandmother died. The chatbot, hallucinating a policy that did not exist, promised him a refund. When he later applied for it, the airline refused. In court, Air Canada argued that “the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions”.⁴⁴

Read that again. A multi-billion dollar corporation argued that the software tool it put on its own website was a rogue agent for which it bore no responsibility. The tribunal rejected this argument, ruling that a company is responsible for its information regardless of whether it is delivered by a human or a robot. But the audacity of the defense reveals the corporate mindset: automate the transaction, outsource the liability.⁴⁶

Dark Patterns: The Roach Motel

If getting help is hard, leaving is impossible. Dark Patterns are manipulative interface designs used to trap users. The “Roach Motel” strategy is standard practice: signing up takes one click, but canceling requires a phone call to a “retention specialist” who is only available on Tuesdays between 2 AM and 4 AM, or navigating a ten-page gauntlet of “Are you sure?” screens.⁸

Adobe faced legal action in 2024 for hiding exorbitant early termination fees in the fine print and making the cancellation button nearly impossible to find. These are not “design choices”; they are traps. They rely on the fact that for many people, the time and emotional energy required to cancel a $15 subscription is simply not worth the fight. It is theft by attrition.⁴⁸

Part VII: The Physical World — When Enshittification Hits the Streets

The digital rot has leaked into the physical world. The principles of “efficiency” and “extraction” are reshaping our grocery stores and our skies.

“Colesworth” and the Illusion of Choice

In Australia, the supermarket duopoly of Coles and Woolworths—colloquially merged by the public into the singular, monstrous entity “Colesworth”—demonstrates how a lack of competition breeds contempt.⁴⁹ In 2024 and 2025, amid a crushing cost-of-living crisis, these giants posted record profits while consumers faced skyrocketing prices. This disparity led to a government inquiry into “price gouging,” but for the shopper in the aisle, the enshittification is in the experience.⁵⁰

Checkout staff have been replaced by self-service kiosks that bark accusations of theft (“Unexpected item in the bagging area!”). “Smart gates” lock customers in the store until they scan a receipt, treating every grandmother buying milk as a potential shoplifter. The aisles are clogged with “pallet drops” and cardboard boxes because staffing levels have been cut to the bone. The store is no longer a marketplace; it is a high-security extraction facility where the customer performs the labor of the cashier for the privilege of paying higher prices.⁵¹

The Flying Bus: Qantas and the “Ghost Flights”

Qantas, once the “Spirit of Australia,” has become a case study in reputational suicide. Under the guise of post-COVID recovery, the airline aggressively cut costs, illegally sacked 1,700 ground staff, and engaged in the practice of selling tickets for “ghost flights”—flights that had already been cancelled in the system but were kept on sale to maximize cash flow.⁵³

The “Alan Bond Award for Corporate Misconduct” was sarcastically suggested by internet users for the airline’s leadership. The flying experience has been stripped to the bone: credits that are impossible to redeem, call centers with four-hour wait times, and a “Chairman’s Lounge” for politicians to ensure that regulation remains toothless. It is the “Ryanair-ification” of the world, where dignity is an expensive upgrade and the base fare guarantees only a seat and a grimace.⁵⁴

Part VIII: The AI Accelerant — Automating the Race to the Bottom

If the Enshittocene is a fire, Artificial Intelligence is the gasoline. The integration of Generative AI into every aspect of business and culture threatens to accelerate the decay exponentially.

The “Slop” Factory and Model Collapse

AI makes it cheap to produce mediocrity at scale. We are seeing a tsunami of “slop”—low-quality, AI-generated text and images—flooding the internet. Content farms use LLMs to rewrite news articles, often introducing errors. This creates a feedback loop known as “Model Collapse”.⁵⁶

As the internet fills with AI-generated slop, future AI models are trained on the output of past AI models. This “digital inbreeding” causes the models to become increasingly incoherent and detached from reality. We are poisoning the well of human knowledge with synthesized noise.⁵⁶

The Cheating Epidemic and the Death of Thinking

In education, the impact is profound. Universities are grappling with an epidemic of AI-generated assignments. But the issue is not just “cheating”; it is the outsourcing of cognition. If a student uses ChatGPT to summarize a text and then write a response, they have not engaged with the ideas. They have merely acted as a middleman between two machines.⁵⁸

Researchers warn of a decline in critical thinking skills, a “dumbing down” where the ability to synthesize information, construct an argument, and evaluate evidence is atrophying. We are creating a generation of “cognitive passengers” who have access to infinite information but a diminishing capacity to understand it. The “Brainrot” of TikTok is now being codified in the curriculum.²

Part IX: The Cultural Ramifications — Techno-Feudalism

The cumulative effect of these trends is a shift in the power structure of society. We are moving away from a market economy toward Techno-Feudalism.⁶¹

In this new order, the Big Tech companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta) are the feudal lords. They own the land (the servers, the app stores, the cloud infrastructure). We, the users and smaller businesses, are the serfs. We work on their land (creating content, selling goods, driving cars) and pay them a heavy tithe (30% app store fees, ad spending, personal data).⁶¹

We have no rights, only “Terms of Service.” We can be evicted (de-platformed) at any moment without due process. We do not own our tools or our data; we merely rent them. The Enshittification is simply the lord tightening the screws on the peasantry because he knows they have nowhere else to go. This creates a culture of learned helplessness and cynicism. Trust in institutions collapses. People expect to be ripped off. They expect the service to fail. They expect the news to be fake.⁶³

Part X: A Vocabulary for the End Times

To fight this phenomenon, we need language to describe it. Beyond “Enshittification,” a new lexicon is emerging from the streets and the sociology departments to describe our decay:

Table 2: The Dictionary of the Enshittocene

Term	Definition	Example
Enshittification	The gradual degradation of a platform due to profit-seeking.¹	Facebook filling your feed with ads and “suggested” junk.
Sludge	Intentional friction/red tape designed to discourage access.³⁸	Centrelink’s phone bots hanging up on callers.
Doom Loop	A customer service cycle that never resolves.⁴³	Being transferred between three different chatbots.
Brainrot	The cognitive decline caused by low-quality, high-speed content.²	Watching 4 hours of “Skibidi Toilet” videos.
Digital Decay	The rotting of links and obsolescence of formats.⁶⁴	A 2015 news article with all its image links broken.
Techno-Feudalism	An economic system where tech giants act as rent-seeking lords.⁶¹	Paying Apple 30% of your income to be on the App Store.
Fast Tech	Cheap, disposable electronics designed to break.⁶⁴	$5 earbuds from Temu that last two weeks.
Ghost Flight	A service sold that the provider knows will not be delivered.⁵⁴	Qantas selling seats on a cancelled plane.
Algorithmic Rent	The price paid to gatekeepers for visibility.⁶⁵	Paying Amazon to show your product in search results.

Part XI: The Resistance — Can We Reverse the Rot?

Is the Enshittification inevitable? Cory Doctorow argues it is not a law of nature, but a result of policy choices. We built this prison, and we can dismantle it.⁶⁶

The Return of the “Small Web”

There is a growing counter-movement seeking to reclaim the internet. The “Small Web” or the “Fediverse” (federated universe) offers an alternative to the walled gardens. Platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky operate on decentralized protocols (like ActivityPub). Here, there is no central algorithm to enshittify the feed. You see what you follow. It is a return to the human-scale internet of the blog era, a digital “farm-to-table” movement.⁶⁷

Regulation and the “Right to Exit”

Governments are waking up. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a bold attempt to force gatekeepers to open their doors. It mandates interoperability, allowing users to communicate across platforms and breaking the lock-in that drives enshittification.⁶⁹ If users can leave Facebook without losing their friends, Facebook must compete on quality again.

Similarly, the “Right to Repair” movement challenges hardware lock-in, demanding that we be allowed to fix the devices we own. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on “junk fees” and difficult cancellation processes, proposing a “Click to Cancel” rule that would require cancellation to be as easy as signing up.⁴⁸

Conclusion: The Fork in the Road

The naming of “Enshittification” as the word of the year is a watershed moment. It signals that the spell of Big Tech has broken. We no longer look at Silicon Valley with awe; we look at it with suspicion. We recognize that the glitchy app, the impossible-to-cancel subscription, and the sewage in the river are not accidents, but the logical endpoints of a system designed to prioritize capital over human life.

We stand at a fork in the road. One path leads further into the Enshittocene: a world of total surveillance, automated mediocrity, and techno-feudal serfdom. A world where AI generates the content we watch, the essays we write, and the rejection letters we receive. A world where we own nothing and are happy—or at least, too distracted by the brainrot to notice we are unhappy.

The other path is harder. It requires regulation, antitrust enforcement, and a cultural rejection of convenience at the cost of autonomy. It requires building and supporting the “Small Web,” buying physical media, and demanding that our governments treat us as citizens, not users. It requires us to refuse the “slop” and demand the human.

The Enshittification is here. But the compost of the old internet might yet grow something new, if we are willing to get our hands dirty and tend the garden. The “Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes” has given us a name for the enemy. Now, we must decide if we have the will to fight it.

7,165 words, 38 minutes read time.

*Produced with the help of Gemini Pro 3.0 AI Assistant who provided the research in the Google’s practices!

Endnotes

1 The Guardian. “Enshittification: Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2024 Explained.” 2024.

72 The New Daily. “Macquarie Dictionary names ‘enshittification’ as its word for 2024.” 2024.

73 Al Jazeera. “Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary picks ‘enshittification’ as word of 2024.” 2024.

74 Language Log. “Enshittification announcement.” 2024.

2 Macquarie Dictionary. “Word of the Year 2024.” 2024.

3 Wikipedia. “Enshittification.” 2024.

66 YouTube. “Cory Doctorow: The Enshittification of the Internet.” 2024.

75 CloudFest. “Cory Doctorow on Enshittification.” 2024.

4 Wired. “The Enshittification of TikTok.” 2023.

6 Medium. “Enshittification of Technology Platforms.” 2024.

5 Tchop.io. “How Social Networks and Platforms Decline.” 2024.

9 Purge Digital. “The Death of Google Search.” 2025.

10 The Guardian. “AI Summaries Causing Devastating Drop in Online News Audiences.” 2025.

11 Reddit. “Google’s search results have drastically decreased.” 2024.

76 SBS News. “44,000 Australians Overpaid Centrelink.” 2024.

77 The Guardian. “Centrelink Centrepay Overhaul.” 2024.

35 Vice. “The Story of How the Australian Government Screwed Its Most Vulnerable People.” 2024.

40 Reddit. “Is Centrelink’s poor services standards a reflection of the Australian government?” 2024.

41 The Guardian. “Centrepay report that found major failings ignored.” 2024.

8 Caboodle. “Dark Patterns in UX.” 2024.

47 KnownHost. “Hardest Subscriptions to Cancel.” 2024.

78 Google Public Policy. “Unpacking Deceptive Designs.” 2024.

48 Duane Morris. “FTC Brings Dark Patterns Complaint Against Adobe.” 2024.

43 Customer Experience Dive. “3 of the spookiest customer experiences.” 2025.

18 Canopy Management. “Amazon PPC vs Organic Rankings.” 2025.

19 SalesDuo. “Amazon Search Term Optimization Guide.” 2025.

20 Optmyzr. “Amazon Ads Strategy 2025.” 2025.

24 Iowa Public Radio. “The Streaming Model is Cratering.” 2023.

26 Reddit. “Disney to Take $1.5 Billion Content Write-off.” 2023.

25 What’s On Disney Plus. “Willow Writer Criticizes Disney.” 2023.

27 Reddit. “Why are companies removing cartoons?” 2023.

3 Wikipedia. “Enshittification (Dating Apps).” 2024.

17 Reddit. “What happened to online dating?” 2025.

61 Portal Cioran. “Oligarch Plan: Feudal Future.” 2025.

62 TripleC. “Digital Feudalism.” 2025.

65 Developing Economics. “Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans.” 2025.

63 ResearchGate. “Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans.” 2025.

21 The Guardian. “Mushroom Pickers Urged to Avoid Foraging Books on Amazon.” 2023.

22 Gizmodo. “AI Mushroom ID Dangerous.” 2024.

23 The Guardian. “Dangerous Nonsense: AI Authored Books.” 2025.

13 YouTube. “Shrimp Jesus and AI Content Flood.” 2024.

15 One Man and His Blog. “Shrimp Jesus and AI Slop.” 2024.

14 Medium. “Shrimp Jesus and AI Slop.” 2024.

79 Wikipedia. “AI Slop.” 2024.

44 CBC. “Air Canada Chatbot Lawsuit.” 2024.

46 American Bar Association. “Air Canada Chatbot Liability.” 2024.

45 CBS News. “Air Canada Chatbot Discount.” 2024.

16 Galaxy. “Dead Internet Theory Evidence.” 2025.

57 JKU. “AI-Generated Slop and Creativity.” 2025.

31 Irish Star. “Music Fans Urged to Check Old CD Collections.” 2025.

32 Cognitive Market Research. “4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Market Report.” 2025.

33 HCC Egalitarian. “The Resurgence of Physical Media.” 2025.

34 The Gadget Man. “Rethinking How Smart We Want Our Phones To Be.” 2025.

12 Warner Crocker. “Jia Tolentino and Enshittification.” 2025.

42 Reddit. “Thames Water Urged to Get a Grip.” 2024.

69 MacRumors. “EU DMA Failed to Lower App Store Prices.” 2025.

70 EU Digital Markets Act. “What is the DMA?” 2025.

67 Blog.Godshell.com. “Small Web and Fediverse.” 2025.

68 Small-Tech.org. “Small Web News.” 2024.

53 Reddit. “The Alan Bond Award for Corporate Misconduct.” 2024.

54 Reddit. “When did flying become so terrible?” 2024.

55 Newtown Review of Books. “Joe Aston The Chairman’s Lounge.” 2024.

36 Byron Echo. “NDIS Automated Decision Making.” 2025.

37 Reddit. “NDIS Doom Loop.” 2025.

28 Seeking Alpha. “Spotify Q3 2024 Earnings Call.” 2024.

30 Spotify Newsroom. “Spotify Investor Day 2022.” 2022.

29 Spotify Newsroom. “Daniel Ek Remarks.” 2022.

58 MDPI. “Student Critical Thinking Decline AI Study.” 2025.

59 Harvard Gazette. “Is AI Dulling Our Minds?” 2025.

60 Microsoft Research. “Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking.” 2025.

38 Taylor & Francis. “Sludge and Administrative Burden.” 2025.

39 OECD OPSI. “Behavioural Science Spotting the Sludge.” 2024.

71 Bloomberg Cities. “Cass Sunstein Removing Sludge.” 2025.

50 Reddit. “What happened to prices on everything?” 2024.

51 Reddit. “Price Gouging and Enshittification.” 2024.

56 Techdirt. “AI Models Trained on Clickbait Slop.” 2025.

7 Medium. “Cory Doctorow McLuhan Lecture.” 2024.

49 SBS News. “What the words of the year reveal about 2024.” 2024.

52 Reddit. “Enshittification is the Macquarie Word of the Year.” 2024.

64 Cambridge Dictionary. “New Words 2025.” 2025.

80 Arxiv. “Digital Decay and Data Preservation.” 2025.

Works cited

‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/26/enshittification-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-explained
Word of the Year 2024 – Macquarie Dictionary, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2024/
Enshittification – Wikipedia, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Doctorow – The Enshittification’ of TikTok | PDF | Facebook | You Tube – Scribd, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.scribd.com/document/795383586/Doctorow-The-Enshittification-of-TikTok
Enshittification: how social networks and platforms decline – tchop™ CommUnity Pulse, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://blog.tchop.io/en/how-social-networks-and-platforms-decline/
Enshittification of Technology Platforms | by Mark Carey – Medium, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://medium.com/@Mark_Carey/enshittification-of-technology-platforms-bddf747906ea
My McLuhan lecture on enshittification | by Cory Doctorow | Medium, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://doctorow.medium.com/my-mcluhan-lecture-on-enshittification-ea343342b9bc
Dark Patterns in UX (updated examples for 2025) – Caboodle Studio, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://caboodle.studio/blog/dark-patterns-in-ux-with-examples
The Death of Google Search? | Purge Digital, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://purgedigital.com.au/the-death-of-google-search/
AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences, online news media told – The Guardian, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/24/ai-summaries-causing-devastating-drop-in-online-news-audiences-study-finds
Google’s search results have drastically decreased in quality recently – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/scrl7v/googles_search_results_have_drastically_decreased/
blogging – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://warnercrocker.com/tag/blogging/
Shrimp Jesus is Flooding Facebook | Clip – YouTube, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGfyXzQKvYI
Shrimp Jesus and AI Slop – by Michal Mikulasi – Medium, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://medium.com/@michalmikuli/shrimp-jesus-and-ai-slop-0ccf8169f744
Shrimp Jesus and other unexpected results of the AI boom – One Man & His Blog, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://onemanandhisblog.com/2024/04/shrimp-jesus-and-other-unexpected-results-of-the-ai-boom/
Dead Internet Theory: How AI Broke Online Truth – Galaxy, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.galaxy.com/insights/perspectives/dead-internet-theory-collapse-online-truth
What happened to online dating in the last 8 years? – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/OnlineDating/comments/1j1kzhu/what_happened_to_online_dating_in_the_last_8_years/
Are You Still Treating Amazon PPC and Organic Rankings as Separate Strategies?, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://canopymanagement.com/are-you-still-treating-amazon-ppc-and-organic-rankings-as-separate-strategies/
Amazon Search Term Optimization Guide for 2025 – SalesDuo, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://salesduo.com/blog/amazon-search-term-optimization-guide/
Amazon Ads Strategy 2025: How to Boost Visibility, Sales & Organic Rankings – Optmyzr, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.optmyzr.com/blog/amazon-ads-strategy-2025/
Mushroom pickers urged to avoid foraging books on Amazon that appear to be written by AI, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai
Don’t use AI to identify mushrooms or you might die – Quartz, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://qz.com/ai-mushroom-id-dangerous-1851364485
‘Dangerous nonsense’: AI-authored books about ADHD for sale on Amazon – The Guardian, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/04/dangerous-nonsense-ai-authored-books-about-adhd-for-sale-on-amazon
The streaming model is cratering — here’s how that’s hurting actors, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.iowapublicradio.org/2023-07-24/the-streaming-model-is-cratering-heres-how-thats-hurting-actors-writers-and-fans
“Willow” Writer Criticizes Disney About The Shows Upcoming Removal From Disney+, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://whatsondisneyplus.com/willow-writer-criticizes-disney-about-the-shows-upcoming-removal-from-disney/
Disney to Take $1.5 Billion Content Write-Off Charge in June Quarter After Pulling Dozens of Titles From Streaming Services – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/13yoo9a/disney_to_take_15_billion_content_writeoff_charge/
Why are companies removing cartoons shows from their streaming service and digital? : r/animation – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/animation/comments/1gjla57/why_are_companies_removing_cartoons_shows_from/
Spotify Technology S.A. (SPOT) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript | Seeking Alpha, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://seekingalpha.com/article/4736645-spotify-technology-s-a-spot-q3-2024-earnings-call-transcript
Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek’s Investor Day 2022 Remarks, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-06-08/spotify-founder-and-ceo-daniel-eks-investor-day-2022-remarks/
Spotify Shares Our Vision To Become the World’s Creator Platform, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-06-08/spotify-shares-our-vision-to-become-the-worlds-creator-platform/
Music fans urged to check old CD collections for albums worth up to $10,000 | Irish Star, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/music-fans-urged-check-old-35502094
Global 4K Ultra HD Blu ray Player Market Report 2025 Edition, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.cognitivemarketresearch.com/4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-player-market-report
The Possible Resurgence of Physical Media and Analog technology – The Egalitarian, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://hccegalitarian.com/12795/culture/the-resurgence-of-physical-media-and-analog-technology/
Gen Z Archives – Matt Porter, The Gadget Man – Creative Technologist – AI & Tech News and Reviews, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.thegadgetman.org.uk/tag/gen-z/
The Story of How the Australian Government Screwed Its Most Vulnerable People, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-story-of-how-the-australian-government-screwed-its-most-vulnerable-people-v27n3/
lƖōōƖŔ ƐſëǔĶĈ ĎĶƆëƆƐĕſ ōşşŔĶŕīǽ ƱëſŕƆ ćĶǀ – The Echo, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.echo.net.au/downloads/byron-echo/volume-40/ByronEcho4015.pdf
Feeling disturbed after a sales call — Need to vent : r/NDIS – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/NDIS/comments/1iz8uiz/feeling_disturbed_after_a_sales_call_need_to_vent/
Full article: Administrative burdens, behavioural insights and economic dignity: the case of Robodebt – Taylor & Francis Online, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2025.2517647
Spotting the sludge: Behavioural audits to improve public services across countries, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://oecd-opsi.org/blog/behavioural-science-spotting-the-sludge/
Is Centerlink’s poor services standards a reflection of the Australian government’s attitude to those in need of help? – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAustralian/comments/15e1pr1/is_centerlinks_poor_services_standards_a/
Centrepay report that found major failings ‘ignored’ by successive Coalition governments, author says – The Guardian, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/07/centrepay-report-that-found-major-failings-ignored-by-successive-coalition-governments-author-says
Thames Water urged to ‘get a grip’ after testing just one property in illness outbreak – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1d39ni2/thames_water_urged_to_get_a_grip_after_testing/
3 of the spookiest customer experiences | CX Dive, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/3-of-the-spookiest-customer-experiences/804335/
Air Canada found liable for chatbot’s bad advice on plane tickets | CBC News, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit-1.7116416
Air Canada chatbot costs airline discount it wrongly offered customer – CBS News, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aircanada-chatbot-discount-customer/
BC Tribunal Confirms Companies Remain Liable for Information Provided by AI Chatbot, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/business-law-today/2024-february/bc-tribunal-confirms-companies-remain-liable-information-provided-ai-chatbot/
Hardest Subscriptions to Cancel – KnownHost, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.knownhost.com/blog/hardest-subscriptions-to-cancel/
FTC Brings “Dark Patterns” Complaint Over Online Subscription and Cancellation Practices Against Company and Two Executives – Duane Morris, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/ftc_brings_dark_patterns_complaint_over_online_subscription_cancellation_practices_against_0624.html
Colesworth, demure and brat: What the Words of the Year reveal about 2024 | SBS News, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/what-the-words-of-the-year-reveal-about-2024/8z0cx0bev
What the fuck happened to prices on everything in Australia? – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1hjl4g2/what_the_fuck_happened_to_prices_on_everything_in/
Maybe I’m getting old, grumpy and impatient, but – a rant about queues. : r/australia – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1h5a9bw/maybe_im_getting_old_grumpy_and_impatient_but_a/
“Enshittification” is the Macquarie word of the year. – australian – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1gztacb/enshittification_is_the_macquarie_word_of_the_year/
The Alan Bond Award for Corporate Misconduct: What is Australia’s worst company?, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1nvn8sh/the_alan_bond_award_for_corporate_misconduct_what/
When did flying become so terrible : r/australia – Reddit, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1m34lvu/when_did_flying_become_so_terrible/
JOE ASTON The Chairman’s Lounge. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/joe-aston-the-chairmans-lounge-reviewed-by-braham-dabscheck/
Study: AI Models Trained On Clickbait Slop Result In AI ‘Brain Rot,’ ‘Hostility’ – Techdirt., accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/31/study-ai-models-trained-on-clickbait-slop-result-in-ai-brain-rot-hostility/
AI-Generated Slop: JKU Researcher Warns of “End of the Line for Creativity and Knowledge” | Faculty of Law, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.jku.at/en/faculty-of-law/news-events/detail/news/ai-generated-slop-jku-researcher-warns-of-end-of-the-line-for-creativity-and-knowledge/
AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6
Is AI dulling our minds? – Harvard Gazette, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/is-ai-dulling-our-minds/
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers – Microsoft, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf
The Oligarch Plan for our Feudal Future | Science Fiction with Damien Walter ▶️, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://portalcioranbr.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/oligarch-plan-feudal-future/
View of Technological Developments and Capitalist Subsumption – tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1552/1669
Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans? Critiquing the Techno-Feudalism Narrative, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391866828_Digital_Lords_or_Capitalist_Titans_Critiquing_the_Techno-Feudalism_Narrative
New words – 18 August 2025 – Cambridge Dictionary blog, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2025/08/18/new-words-18-august-2025/
Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans? Critiquing the Techno-Feudalism Narrative, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://developingeconomics.org/2025/05/05/digital-lords-or-capitalist-titans-critiquing-the-techno-feudalism-narrative/
The Enshittification of Everything: And What to Do About It – YouTube, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaoWpQ-3Zs
Tag: networking – Technological Musings, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://blog.godshell.com/tag/networking/
News – Small Technology Foundation, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://small-tech.org/news/
EU’s Digital Markets Act Failed to Lower App Store Prices, Apple-Commissioned Study Says, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/12/dma-no-lower-fees-study/
Digital Markets Act (DMA) | Updates, Compliance, Training, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.eu-digital-markets-act.com/
Cass Sunstein on removing ‘sludge’ from the gears of city hall – Bloomberg Cities Network, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://bloombergcities.jhu.edu/news/cass-sunstein-removing-sludge-gears-city-hall
Macquarie Dictionary names ‘enshittification’ as its word for 2024 – The New Daily, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/entertainment/books/2024/11/26/macquarie-dictionary-enshittification
Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary picks ‘enshittification’ as word of 2024 | News – Al Jazeera, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/26/what-many-of-us-feel-enshittification-named-word-of-the-year
Macquarie’s 2024 WoTY is “enshittification” – Language Log, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=67086
Cory Doctorow at CF 25: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It – YouTube, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ai-fC-2Bpo
Nearly 44,000 Australians are owed Centrelink refunds. Some died without knowing – SBS, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/44-000-australians-overpaid-centrelink/hgf4bn7pn
Media exposure has forced the government’s hand on Centrepay. The contrast with robodebt could not be more stark – The Guardian, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/03/centrelink-centrepay-overhaul-ntwnfb
Unpacking deceptive design – Google Public Policy, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://publicpolicy.google/resources/unpacking_deceptive_designs.pdf
AI slop – Wikipedia, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop
Mafoko: Structuring and Building Open Multilingual Terminologies for South African NLP, accessed on December 6, 2025, https://arxiv.org/html/2508.03529v2