Enshittification

Enshittification is Cory Doctorow’s term for the slow ruining of a platform after it has made itself hard to leave. First it is wonderful to users. Then suppliers get squeezed. Then everybody gets more adverts, worse search, stranger rules, and a button that used to be visible is now hiding behind six menus and a subscription. No single update announces that it has been made worse on purpose; the decline arrives dressed as optimisation, and convenience keeps people there while the bargain changes underneath them. The book places it beside model collapse because both systems can rot through their own incentives while still looking successful from outside. One hollows out the platform; the other flattens the model.