enshittification
noun
| in-shit-uh-fuh-KAY-shun
When a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits
What does enshittification mean?
Enshittification is an informal word used to criticize the degradation in the quality and experience of online platforms over time, due to an increase in advertisements, costs, or features. It can also refer more generally to any state of deterioration, especially in politics or society. Similar forms include enshittify and enshittified.
Examples of enshittification
I think the worst part, truly, is the enshittification of Google. Search engines put the Internet on the map, it was the tool that allowed normal people to start using it. Now, it’s just AI hallucinations, fake news, and slop.
—@roanokemarxist.bsky.social, Bluesky, 20 Jan. 2025
Enshittification is everywhere you look. The collapse of liberal society and the hegemony of wealthy overlords is nearly complete. Los Angeles is burning but people in Oklahoma want to ban any actions designed to address the results of an overheating planet.
—Xbox Game Pass remains one of the best deals in gaming, but it is getting worse. This week, Microsoft completely upended its pricing structure for its game subscription service … Once you start raising prices and restricting common features, you’re already on the path toward enshittification.
—
Where does enshittification come from?
Enshittification is an archly elaborate formation for “having been made shittier,” or “worsened.” It combines the vulgarism shit, the prefix en- (“cause to be”), and -ification (a noun combining form meaning “making” or “producing”). Several independent coinages of enshittification are found online in the 2010s, with evidence for the similar shittification seen even earlier.
The term was popularized by the Canadian writer Cory Doctorow starting in 2022, when he suggested a patterned decline in the quality of online platforms resulted from capitalistic incentives. Doctorow explained the decline as a process in which a platform first offers value to users, then to other businesses, then back to themselves and shareholders after it dominates the market. He notably applied the word enshittification in critiques of Big Tech companies and social media sites.
Enshittification received considerable attention in 2023, after the American Dialect Society chose it as its Word of the Year (followed by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary doing so in 2024).
How is enshittification used?
Enshittification is most commonly used to call out degraded user experiences of tech platforms, especially social media, streaming sites, and on-demand services. The word is also used to voice concerns about the erosion of social conditions, especially when thought to be worsened by capitalism or conservatism.
Its similar form, enshittify, is widely used as a transitive verb for the action of enshittification (“The new CEO enshittified the site with distracting AI tools”), as well as an intransitive one for this process (“The service kept enshittifying so I stopped using it.”) Something that has undergone enshittification is described as enshittified. Enshittification is subject to other playful formations, too, such as enshittificatory (“causing or serving to enshittify”).
Because of its vulgar roots, enshittification may be considered offensive or inappropriate in many contexts.
