The Great Digital Decay: How 'Enshittification' Is Killing the Internet We Once Loved

The platforms that once promised to connect us are now extracting value from us. Here's how we got here — and where we might go next.

Remember when Amazon was just a bookstore that delivered quickly? When Google gave you exactly what you searched for without wading through ads? When Facebook was actually about connecting with friends?

Those days feel like a distant memory. Today, these digital giants have transformed into something far less user-friendly, following a predictable pattern that tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed "enshittification" — a process so pervasive it was named Word of the Year by multiple language authorities in 2023.

The term might sound crude, but it captures something profound about our current digital moment: the systematic degradation of online platforms that once served us well. And understanding this process isn't just academic — it's essential for anyone trying to navigate, or escape, the increasingly hostile terrain of the modern internet.

The Three-Act Tragedy of Platform Decay

Enshittification follows a predictable three-act structure, like a tragedy written in code and quarterly earnings reports.

Act One: The Honeymoon
Platforms start by showering users with value. Facebook was clean and focused on genuine social connections. Instagram celebrated authentic photography from friends. Amazon prioritized customer satisfaction with reliable shipping and competitive prices. Google delivered fast, accurate search results without the clutter.

This isn't altruism — it's strategy. Platforms need to build a massive user base before they can extract value from it. They're essentially subsidizing user experience with venture capital, creating something genuinely useful to hook millions of people.

Act Two: The Pivot
Once users are locked in, platforms shift their attention to business customers — advertisers, sellers, and data brokers. Facebook's timeline fills with sponsored content. Instagram's feed becomes dominated by influencer marketing. Amazon's search results prioritize paid listings over relevance. Google's results pages sprout more ads than organic links.

Users notice the decline, but they're already invested. Their photos, connections, purchase history, and digital lives are trapped within these platforms. The switching costs feel insurmountable.

Act Three: The Extraction
In the final stage, platforms squeeze both users and business customers to maximize shareholder value. The user experience becomes actively hostile. Amazon's search is "swamped by advertising" and fake reviews. Google's AI-generated overviews crowd out reliable sources with nonsensical information. PayPal introduces aggressive fees and holds that prioritize profit over user trust.

This isn't a bug — it's the business model working exactly as designed.

The Enshittification Hall of Fame

The evidence is everywhere, but some examples are particularly stark:

Amazon has transformed from a customer-obsessed retailer into what critics call a "service pipeline for extracting value." Prime shipping, once reliably fast, has become inconsistent. Search results prioritize Amazon's own products and paid listings over customer needs. Third-party sellers report operating at break-even or losses after Amazon's fees, while customers navigate an increasingly cluttered and unreliable marketplace.

Google search, once celebrated for its clean interface and relevant results, now requires users to scroll past multiple ads, shopping links, and AI-generated snippets of questionable accuracy. The company's own research shows that users are spending more time searching and finding less of what they need — a perfect inversion of Google's original mission.

PayPal has evolved from a simple payment processor into an aggressive financial services company that frequently freezes accounts, imposes surprise fees, and bombards users with loan offers. The platform that once promised to make online payments frictionless now creates friction at every turn.

The pattern is so consistent it feels almost algorithmic: build trust, exploit trust, extract value, repeat.

The Human Cost of Digital Decay

The statistics tell a sobering story. Surveys in 2024 found record-low satisfaction and trust in major tech platforms. Over 60% of U.S. adults believe social media has a negative impact on democracy. Users report spending more time managing platform dysfunction — dealing with spam, navigating confusing interfaces, fighting algorithmic suppression — than actually accomplishing their goals.

This isn't just about inconvenience. Enshittification represents a massive transfer of value from users to shareholders. We provide the content, the data, the network effects that make these platforms valuable. In return, we get an increasingly degraded experience designed to extract maximum value from our attention and wallets.

The psychological toll is real too. Platforms that once felt like digital town squares now feel like hostile territories optimized for engagement over enlightenment, profit over people.

Signs of Digital Life

But the story doesn't end with decay. Across the internet, alternatives are emerging that resist the enshittification playbook entirely.

Nebula, a video platform that's 50% owned by its creators, represents a fundamentally different approach. Instead of extracting value from creators and viewers, it shares profits with the people who make the content. The platform is ad-free, subscription-supported, and designed around quality rather than viral engagement.

"When creators own the platform, their incentives align with user experience rather than shareholder extraction," explains one Nebula creator. The platform invests in original programming, pays creators fairly, and maintains the kind of user-focused experience that mainstream platforms abandoned years ago.

Other examples include Mastodon and the broader Fediverse, which distribute control across communities rather than concentrating it in corporate hands. Are.na offers thoughtful content curation without algorithmic manipulation. PeerTube provides video hosting without surveillance capitalism.

These platforms share common characteristics: they're often creator-owned or community-governed, funded by subscriptions rather than ads, and designed around user needs rather than engagement metrics.

The Path Forward

The rise of enshittification isn't inevitable — it's a choice. Platforms decay when they prioritize short-term extraction over long-term value creation. They thrive when they align their success with user satisfaction.

Doctorow argues that the solution lies in interoperability — making it easy for users to move their data and connections between platforms — and maintaining the end-to-end principle that keeps platforms neutral rather than manipulative.

But perhaps the most important step is recognition. Once you see the pattern of enshittification, you can't unsee it. You start noticing when platforms prioritize their needs over yours. You become more willing to seek alternatives, even if they're smaller or less convenient.

The internet we fell in love with — open, user-focused, genuinely useful — isn't gone forever. It's just been temporarily buried under layers of corporate extraction. But every time we choose a creator-owned platform over a surveillance capitalist one, every time we prioritize quality over convenience, we're voting for a different kind of digital future.

The question isn't whether enshittification will continue — it's whether we'll continue to accept it. The platforms that resist this pattern are showing us what's possible: an internet that serves people rather than shareholders, creators rather than extractors, communities rather than corporations.

That internet is still out there, waiting for us to choose it.